This Body of Death

by Elizabeth George

  She said thoughtfully, “But Jemima Hastings doesn’t know that, does she, because she doesn’t know he’s being protected.”

  “Exactly. He hasn’t told her. He hasn’t seen the need or perhaps he doesn’t want to tell her.”

  “Perhaps she was with him when he found the treasure,” Isabelle said. “Or perhaps he brought something into their house because he himself didn’t yet know what he had. He cleans it off. He shows it to her. They return to the spot where he’s found it and—”

  “And they find more,” Lynley finished. “Jemima knows it has to be reported. Or at least she assumes they’re supposed to do something besides dig it up, clean it off, and display it on the mantelpiece.”

  “And they can hardly spend it, can they?” Isabelle said. “They’d want to do something with it. So she’d need to find out—anyone would—what one actually does with such a find.”

  “This,” Lynley noted, “puts Jossie in the worst possible position. He can’t allow his discovery to be publicly known, so—”

  “He kills her, Thomas.” Isabelle felt deflated. “Be reasonable. He’s the only one with motive.”

  Lynley shook his head. “Isabelle, he’s practically the only one without a motive. The last thing on earth he wants is to have anyone’s attention focused on him, and it’s going to be focused on him intensely should he kill her because she lives with him. If he’s in hiding, he’s going to be desperate to remain in hiding, isn’t he? If Jemima is insistent upon dealing with the treasure appropriately—and why wouldn’t she be since selling it on the open market will bring them a fortune?—then the only way to stop this and to keep himself out of the public eye isn’t to kill her at all.”

  “My God,” Isabelle murmured. Her glance locked on his. “It’s to tell her the truth. And that’s why she left him. Thomas, she knew who he was. He had to tell her.”

  “And that’s why he came looking for her in London.”

  “Because he was worried that she might tell someone else … ?” Isabelle saw the pieces click neatly into place. “Which was what she did. She told Frazer Chaplin. Not at first, of course. But once she saw those postcards of her photo from the Portrait Gallery, with Gordon Jossie’s mobile number on them. But why? Why tell Frazer? Is she afraid of Jossie for some reason?”

  “If she’s left him, I think we can assume she either wanted nothing more to do with him or she wanted time to consider what she was going to do. She’s afraid, she’s repulsed, she’s worried, she’s staggered, she’s concerned, she’s greedy for the treasure, she’s had her life fall to pieces, she knows that to continue living with him puts her in danger …It could be any number of things that send her to London. It could be one reason that morphed into another.”

  “She runs away first. She meets Frazer second.”

  “They become involved. She tells him the truth. So you see, it comes back to Frazer.”

  Isabelle said, “Why doesn’t it come back to Paolo di Fazio, since she’s been lovers with him and he’s seen the postcards? Or Abbott Langer, for that matter, or—”

  “She ended her relationship with Paolo prior to the postcards and Langer never saw them.”

  “—Jayson Druther if it comes down to it. Frazer has a bloody alibi, Thomas.”

  “Let’s break it, then. Let’s do it now.”

  FIRST, LYNLEY TOLD her, they needed to stop in Chelsea for another call upon Deborah and Simon St. James. It was on the route they were going to take anyway, he said, and he reckoned the St. Jameses had in their possession something that might prove quite useful.

  A pause in the incident room brought forth information from Winston Nkata that the CCTV tapes were showing nothing more than they had showed before, which was also nothing. Specifically, there was documented on film no lime-coloured Vespa belonging to Frazer Chaplin and shouting advertisements for DragonFly Tonics. Hardly a surprise, Isabelle thought.

  She also discovered that like Lynley, DS Nkata had spoken to the maddening Barbara Havers that morning. “According to Barb, tip of the thatcher’s crook shows who made it,” he said. “But she says to cross the brother off the list. Robert Hastings’s got blacksmith clobber on his property, she says, but it’s not been used. ’N the other hand, Jossie’s got three kinds of crooks and one of the kinds’s like our weapon. She wants to know ’bout the e-fits ’s well.”

  “I’ve asked Dee to send them down to her,” Lynley told him.

  Isabelle told Nkata to carry on, and she followed Lynley to the car park.

  At the St. James house, they found the couple at home. St. James himself came to the door with the family dachshund barking frantically round his ankles. He admitted Isabelle and Lynley and admonished the dog, who blithely ignored him and continued barking until Deborah called out, “Good Lord, Simon! Do something about her!” from a room to the right of the staircase. This turned out to be the dining room, a formal affair of the sort one found in creaking old Victorian houses. It was decorated as such as well, at least as far as the furniture went. There was, mercifully, no plethora of knickknacks and no William Morris wallpaper although the dining table was heavy and dark and a sideboard held a mass of English pottery.

  When they joined her, Deborah St. James was apparently using the table to examine photographs, which she quickly gathered up as they entered. Lynley said to her, “Ah. No?” in some sort of reference to these.

  Deborah said, “Really, Tommy. I’d be far happier if you read me less easily.”

  “Teatime not being … ?”

  “My cup of tea. Right.”

  “That’s disappointing,” Lynley said. “But I did think afternoon tea might not be …hmm …shall I say a strong enough vignette to display your talents?”

  “Very amusing. Simon, are you going to allow him to make fun or do you plan to rise to my defence?”

  “I thought I’d wait to discover how far the two of you could carry an appalling pun.” St. James had come only to the doorway, and he was leaning there against the jamb.

  “You’re as merciless as he is.” Deborah said hello to Isabelle—calling her Superintendent Ardery—and she excused herself “to throw this wretched stuff” into the rubbish. Over her shoulder as she went out of the room, she asked if they wanted a coffee. She admitted that it had been sitting on the hot plate in the kitchen for hours but with the addition of milk and “several tablespoons of sugar” she reckoned it would be drinkable. “Or I could make fresh,” she offered.

  “We’ve not got time,” Lynley said. “We were hoping to have a word with you, Deb.”

  Isabelle heard this with some surprise, as she’d concluded they’d come to Chelsea not to pay a call on Deborah St. James but rather on her husband. Deborah seemed as surprised as Isabelle, but she said, “In here, then. It’s much more hospitable.”

  “In here” was a library of sorts, Isabelle reckoned as she and Lynley entered. It was situated where one would normally expect to find a sitting room, with its window overlooking the street. There were masses of books—on shelves, on tables, and upon the floor—along with comfortable chairs, a fireplace, and an ancient desk. There were newspapers as well, piles of them. It looked to Isabelle as if the St. Jameses subscribed to every broadsheet in London. As a woman who liked to travel light and live unencumbered, Isabelle found the place overwhelming. Deborah appeared to note her reaction because she said, “It’s Simon. He’s always been like this, Superintendent. You c’n ask Tommy. They were at school together, and Simon was the despair of their housemaster. He’s not improved in the least since. Please just shove something to the floor and sit. And it’s not usually this bad. Well, you know that, Tommy, don’t you?” She glanced at Lynley as she said this last. Then her gaze went back to Isabelle, and she smiled quickly. It was not in amusement or friendliness, Isabelle realised, but to cover something.

  Isabelle found a spot that required the least amount of removal. She said, “Please. It’s Isabelle, not superintendent,” and again that quick smile in re
turn from Deborah followed by her glance at Lynley. She was reading something directly off him, Isabelle reckoned. She also reckoned that Deborah St. James knew Thomas far better than her airiness suggested.

  “Isabelle, then,” Deborah said. And then to Lynley, “He’s got to have it tidied by next week at any rate. He’s promised.”

  “Your mother’s paying a visit, I take it?” Lynley said to St. James.

  All of them laughed.

  It came to Isabelle once again that the group of them spoke some form of shorthand. She wanted to say, “Yes, well, let’s get on with things,” but something held her back and she didn’t like what that something told her: either about herself or about her feelings. She didn’t have feelings in this matter.

  Lynley brought them round to the purpose of their call. He asked Deborah St. James about the National Portrait Gallery show. Might he have another copy of the magazine with pictures taken on the opening night? Barbara Havers had the magazine off him, but he recalled Deborah had another. Deborah said of course and went to one of the stacks of periodicals where she dug down to unearth a magazine. She handed this over. Then she found another—a different one, this—and handed that to Lynley as well. She said, “Really, I didn’t buy them all, Tommy. Simon’s brothers and his sister …And then Dad was rather proud …” Her face had coloured.

  Lynley said solemnly, “In your position I’d have done exactly the same.”

  “She’s claiming her fifteen minutes,” St. James said to Lynley.

  “You’re both impossible,” Deborah said, and to Isabelle, “They like to tease me.”

  St. James asked, not unreasonably, what Lynley wanted with the magazine. What was happening? he wanted to know. This had to do with the case, hadn’t it?

  Indeed, Lynley told him. They had an alibi to break, and he reckoned the photos of the gallery opening were going to be helpful in breaking it.

  With the magazines in their possession, they were ready to set out on the next phase of their journey. Isabelle couldn’t see how a set of society photographs were going to be useful, and that was what she told Lynley once they were out on the pavement again. They got into the Healey Elliott before he replied. He handed the magazines to her. He leaned over when she found the photos of the National Portrait Gallery’s opening show, and he pointed to one of them. Frazer Chaplin, he said. The fact that he was at the opening was going to serve as the wedge they needed.

  “For what?”

  “To separate a lie from the truth.”

  She turned to him. He was, of a sudden, disturbingly close. He seemed to know this because he looked as if he was about to say something else or, worse, do something that both of them would come to regret.

  She said, “And exactly what truth would that be?”

  He moved away. He turned on the ignition. He said, “When I thought about it, the date on his contract didn’t mean anything.”

  “What date? What contract?”

  “The contract with DragonFly Tonics, Frazer Chaplin’s agreement to use his Vespa to advertise the product. The contract called for a bright colour of paint; it designated the number of transfers required. His signature makes it appear as if he went out directly and had the work done.”

  “He didn’t,” she said, understanding now. “Winston’s watching those films for a lime green Vespa with transfers. The house to house is asking about a lime green Vespa with transfers.”

  “Something likely to be seen and remembered.”

  “When he didn’t use a lime green Vespa with transfers to get up to Stoke Newington at all.”

  He nodded. “I rang the paint shop in Shepherd’s Bush after I spoke to Barbara about meeting her snout. Frazer Chaplin went there indeed to have the Vespa painted and the transfers applied. But he did it the day after Jemima died.”

  BELLA MCHAGGIS WAS wrestling a new worm-composting bin from her car when Scotland Yard arrived. Her visitors comprised the two officers she’d spoken to at the Met, on the day when she’d found poor Jemima’s handbag. They parked across the street from Bella’s house in an antique motorcar, which was how she noticed them at first, because of the car itself. The appearance of such a vehicle in Oxford Road—or any road, she reckoned—was going to draw attention. It spoke of indulgence, money by the bucketful, and petrol swallowed down willy-nilly. Where was conservation? she wondered. Where was good sense? She couldn’t remember their names, but she nodded a greeting as they came across the street towards her.

  The man—he politely reintroduced himself as DI Lynley and his companion as Superintendent Ardery—took over the removal of the composting bin from Bella’s car. He had manners. There was no doubt about it. Somebody had brought him up correctly, which was more than one could say about most people under the age of forty these days.

  Obviously, they hadn’t come to Putney to help her with her worm composting, so Bella asked them into the house. The inspector needed to put the bin into the back garden anyway, and since the only way to get there was through the house, once they were inside Bella did the proper thing and offered them a cup of tea.

  They demurred, but they did say—this was the woman, Superintendent Ardery—that they’d like a word. Bella said of course, of course, and she added stoutly that she hoped they’d come to tell her an arrest had been made in this terrible affair of Jemima’s death.

  They were close, DI Lynley said.

  They’d come to talk to her about Frazer Chaplin, the superintendent added.

  She said it kindly, and the kindness made Bella’s antennae go up. She said, “Frazer? What’s this about Frazer? Haven’t you done anything at all about that psychic?”

  “Mrs. McHaggis.” It was Lynley now. Bella didn’t half like the way he sounded, which was unaccountably regretful. Less did she like his expression because it suggested to her an element of …Was it pity? She felt her spine stiffen.

  “What?” she barked. She felt like showing them the door. She wondered how many more times she was going to have to direct these stupid people where they needed directing, which was on to Yolanda the Flipping Psychic.

  Lynley again. He began an explanation of sorts. It had to do with Jemima’s mobile and calls made to it on the day of her death and calls made to it after her death and pinging towers, whatever they were. Frazer had rung her within the time frame of her death, it seemed, but he had not rung her afterwards, which, apparently, was suggesting to the coppers that Frazer thus had murdered the poor girl! If there was ever anything more nonsensical than that, Bella McHaggis did not know what it was.

  Then the woman copper chimed in. Her explanation had to do with Frazer’s motorbike. She banged on about its colour, the transfers he had put upon it to raise a bit of needed money, and how transporting oneself on a scooter like Frazer’s made getting round town a rather simple thing.

  Bella said, “Hang on just a minute,” because she wasn’t as thick as they seemed to think and she suddenly understood where this was heading. She pointed out that if it was scooters they were interested in, had they thought about the fact that the scooter they were yammering about was an Italian scooter and Italian scooters could be hired for the day and she had an Italian living right there in her house, one who’d been thick as you know what with Jemima before Jemima had ended things between them? And didn’t that damn well suggest that they ought to be looking at Paolo di Fazio if they were so intent upon pinning this crime on someone in Bella’s house?

  “Mrs. McHaggis.” Lynley again. Those soulful eyes. Brown. Why did the man have hair so blond and yet eyes so brown to go with it?

  Bella didn’t want to listen and she certainly didn’t want to hear. She reminded them that nothing of what they were saying mattered because Frazer hadn’t been anywhere close to Stoke Newington on the day of Jemima Hastings’ death. He’d been exactly where he always was between his work at the ice rink and his job at Duke’s Hotel. He’d been here in this house, showering and changing. She’d told them that, she’d bloody well told them, h
ow many more times was she going to have to—

  “Has he seduced you, Mrs. McHaggis?” It was the woman who asked the question and she asked it baldly. They were all sitting at the kitchen table, and there was a set of condiment containers on it and Bella wanted to hurl them at the woman or perhaps at the wall, but she didn’t do so. She said instead, “How dare you!” which, she realised, was an antique remark that betrayed her age more than anything else she might have said. Young people—people like these two officers—talked about this sort of thing all the time. They didn’t use the word seduce either, when they talked about it among themselves, and they thought nothing of what it meant to invade someone’s privacy in such a way—

  “It’s what he does, Mrs. McHaggis,” the superintendent said. “We already have confirmation on this from—”

  “This house has rules,” Bella told them stiffly. “And I’m not that sort of woman. To suggest …even to think …even to begin to think …” She was sputtering, and she knew it. She expected this made her seem a perfect fool in their eyes, an old bag who’d somehow fallen victim to a smooth-talking Lothario come to remove her from her money when she had no money in the first place so why would he have even bothered with the likes of her? She gathered her wits. She gathered what dignity she had left. She said, “I know my lodgers. I make a habit of knowing my lodgers because I’m sharing a bloody house with them, and I’m not very likely to want to share my house with a murderer, am I?” She didn’t wait for them to reply to this question, which was largely rhetorical anyway. She said, “So you listen to me because I’m not going to repeat myself: Frazer Chaplin’s been here in this house from the first week I started letting rooms, and I think I’d have sorted out that he was …whatever you seem to think he is …a bloody long time before now, don’t you?”