Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  ‘Mr Drew’s very busy. Can I help?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s personal.’

  ‘Hold the line and I’ll see if I can get hold of him for you.’

  A minute passed. And a second. Then Gillon Drew was on the line. The man with his nose stuck between Amy’s boobs at her launch party, I remembered. ‘What’s all this about Amy Morrison?’ He sounded like a man trying to assert authority and at the same time hide a prurient curiosity.

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it on the phone,’ I said. ‘I’m not far from you. Could I buy you a drink after work? Or now, even.’

  ‘Let me think … Yes, I could spare half-an-hour or so this evening. How about meeting me at the Cock and Bull at five forty-five?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ I disengaged before he could ask any further questions.

  In spite of the chill, the patrons of the Cock and Bull had overflowed onto the pavement outside. The noise level was high enough to be heard two streets away. Most of the clientele were Hooray Henry city-types: stock traders, bond salesmen, arbitrageurs and the like, with three or four bar-flies in grubby shirts perched stubbornly on high stools up at the bar, resolutely ignoring the in-crowd. A few tourists were grimacing over their warm beer but happily soaking up the atmosphere, feeling that they were seeing a slice of genuine English culture.

  I shoved through the crowds to the bar, but couldn’t see Gillon Drew. I ordered two double single-malt whiskys, and thrust my way back to the entrance, hoping there wasn’t a side access. A table beside me suddenly became free and I sat down swiftly, ignoring the couple who had been waiting for it, who stared at me indignantly. Luckily, Drew arrived very shortly afterwards. I watched him standing at the door as he tried to find me, and shouted his name across the hubbub, raising a glass to indicate that I had a drink for him.

  ‘Very kind.’ Standing at my table, he loosened a canary-yellow cashmere scarf and undid the buttons of his British Warm to reveal a Young Fogeyish three-piece suit of green tweed. ‘God, it’s cold out there, and getting colder by the second,’ he said. Although comparatively young (compared to what, I wondered, the thought having flashed across my mind: Methuselah?), he had a headful of thin white hair, and eyebrows in need of a trim.

  He started to toss back a slug of the whisky I offered him, then hesitated. ‘Just a minute. You are Ms Quick, I take it.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Glad I’m not drinking someone else’s drink. I believe I met your brother recently. And of course I know your work. How is Doctor Drummond?’

  ‘Well, I hope.’

  He had his eyes fixed on the small TV above the bar, and as he raised his glass again, he stiffened, so suddenly that whisky slopped onto his scarf. He brushed absently at it, at the same time exclaiming, ‘Christ on a bicycle, isn’t that Amy Morrison? What the hell is going on?’

  By the time I had turned round to look up at the soundless screen, the picture had given way to Inspector Alan Garside mouthing silently at the camera.

  ‘That’s a policeman …’ Drew knocked back the contents of his glass and turned to me. ‘Does this make any sense to you?’ Before I could respond, another thought struck him. ‘Is this why you wanted to meet up with me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What’s happened to Amy? Is she … she’s not … dead, is she?’ His eyes remained fixed on the screen, which now showed the front of Helena’s house near Canterbury, cordoned off with police-tape.

  Again I nodded.

  ‘My God! How? What happened? That’s impossible!’

  ‘I’m afraid not. The police seem to think they know who’s probably responsible, but I disagree with them. And it occurred to me that someone like you might have more information about Ms Morrison than I – or they – do. Because as I see it, that’s the best way to find who really killed her.’

  ‘I can’t say I was that close to her,’ Drew said hastily, avoiding my eye. ‘And of course, I only knew her on a purely professional basis. She came into the gallery from time to time, in the course of doing research for this Masaccio book, and of course we talked.’

  ‘Is that all? I understood you knew her quite well,’ I said, taking a punt.

  ‘Well, when I say professional …’ Drew wriggled uneasily.

  ‘Assuming her death wasn’t either accident or suicide, what I need to know is whether you’re aware of anyone who might have had it in for Amy.’

  ‘Oh my Lord, where to start?’

  This was the sort of information that I had been hoping for. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The woman isn’t – wasn’t, I suppose I should say – exactly Miss Congeniality. She must have got across half of London’s male population – and I don’t mean just figuratively speaking. Extremely attractive, of course, but a first-class bitch with a heart of ice would sum her up, in my opinion.’

  I was guessing that in spite of the wedding-ring on his hand, Gillon Drew had tried it on with Amy Morrison and been rudely and comprehensively rebuffed. ‘So you would definitely see yourself lining up alongside the possible suspects?’

  ‘Me? Me?’ He almost screamed the word. ‘What are you, crazy or something?’ He pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his upper lip. ‘Apart from anything else, I can’t stand the sight of blood.’

  ‘She could have been strangled. Or poisoned.’ I was rather enjoying this. ‘But to be serious, could you point to anyone in her world who might have a reason to kill her?’

  ‘Apart from just about everyone who knew her,’ he said sulkily.

  ‘Anyone in particular that you can think of?’

  ‘I feel a bit like the tell-tale-tit at school, but there is someone else who loathed her more than the average person. A woman called Sadie Johns.’

  ‘And what did Ms Morrison do to her?’

  ‘I know Sadie quite well. A sweet woman, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Teaches art at one of those exclusive London girls’ schools, St Paul’s or North London Collegiate, somewhere like that. She’s something of an expert on Italian Renaissance painters, contributes learned articles to the relevant journals.’

  ‘So what’s her beef with Amy?’

  ‘Claims that she not only used Sadie’s research without acknowledgement or even permission, but was also instrumental in blocking a book deal with Amy’s former publishers which was already in the pipeline.’

  ‘Why did they agree?’

  ‘The sex factor. Obvious, isn’t it?’ Drew looked pityingly at me, as though I were a particularly dense student. ‘Trouble is, if you’ve got something to promote, publicity-wise, the gaudy peacock is going to win out every time over the brown sparrow. Not to mention the age difference between the two of them. But Sadie with a knife in her hand? No, I can’t see it.’

  ‘Who says Amy was knifed?’

  ‘Just a figure of speech.’

  A billow of raucous laughter gusted in through the door as someone opened it to leave. I debated offering Drew another whisky but quailed at the thought of pushing through the crowd, which showed no signs of thinning out.

  But Drew was right there. He stood. ‘Another?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He brought back refills and sat down again. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m shocked, of course. But I can’t say I’m all that surprised. If ever there was a woman who was likely to get her come-uppance one of these days …’

  ‘Do you think this murder has to do with her professional life?’

  ‘If I was investigating her death, that’s certainly where I’d start looking.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Dear oh dear. Amy Morrison dead. It’s hard to take in.’ He didn’t sound as if he was all that bothered.

  ‘So you have no inkling at all of who could be behind her death?’

  ‘None at all. I know she’d made enemies in the business – your colleague Helena Drummond among them – but to take another person’s life …’ He shook his head. ‘Quite a step, really. And not one I can imagine anyone I know taking. Sorry not to be more hel
p.’

  SEVEN

  Later that evening, there was a rapping of fingers at the basement door. I recognized my brother’s knock and let him in.

  ‘Got everything you want?’ He looked round the flat. ‘Discover the whisky?’

  I had indeed found it, had even poured myself a small dram and savoured it so appreciatively that I was eventually tempted to have a second one. I wasn’t about to say so. I shook my head in feigned bewilderment. ‘No?’

  Hereward delved into the recesses of one of the beneath-the-counter kitchen cupboards and pulled out a bottle of the twenty-five-year-old Macallan. ‘Here.’ He thrust a glass at me. ‘So, what are you up to?’

  Yet again I explained. ‘Amy seems to have been universally disliked,’ I continued. ‘The perp could be one of hundreds, far as I can gather. But you’d have to narrow it down a bit more than that. So since I’ve got to start somewhere, I’m starting with her professional life.’

  ‘Anyone she’s known to have had a recent altercation with, you mean?’ Herry wrinkled his rather noble brow, which made him closely resemble our father. ‘At that do of Gillon Drew’s I mentioned, I did hear someone offering unflattering remarks about the woman. And when I say unflattering, I mean downright vindictive.’

  ‘What did they say she’d done?’

  ‘Stolen other people’s work, if I heard right.’

  ‘It seems to have been a speciality of hers. Do you remember the person’s name?’

  ‘The one they particularly alleged she’d ripped off was an academic of some kind. Susan? Sarah? Sophie? Something like that.’

  ‘Sadie?’

  ‘That’s the one. Sadie.’

  ‘Sadie Johns. Was she at this gathering?’

  ‘Someone pointed her out to me. Untidy-looking woman with a nice face.’

  This was the second mention of Sadie Johns. Tomorrow I would make an appointment – or maybe not: nothing like surprise for winkling out the truth – and flog down to Epsom, current home of North London Collegiate School for Girls. I had no serious worries about finding myself closeted with a mad murderer intent on not being found out and prepared to kill again to preserve her freedom. But someone with a real beef about Amy Morrison might shed further light on the woman … and the sooner light was shed, the sooner Helena would be in the clear.

  I refused to contemplate for a single moment the possibility that Helena herself was in any real danger, outside my thriller-fuelled imagination. Nonetheless, the thought of her chained, gagged and terrified was hard to dismiss. So much so that I wondered if going after Amy Morrison’s connections was a futile waste of time, compared with the urgency of finding my friend. But where to start?

  For the moment, I had no idea in which direction to go, who to interrogate, where to start looking, whereas, as far as Amy Morrison was concerned, at least I had some leads to follow up.

  ‘Big favour to ask you,’ Hereward said suddenly.

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘I want Anton to live here while we’re away.’

  ‘Who’s Anton?’

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘You know I don’t like dogs.’

  ‘Anton is a rescue dog.’ Herry carried on as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘An Airedale terrier. You’ll like him.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’ll bring him down tomorrow morning before I go to the airport.’

  Sunlight sparkled off the frosty lawns and playing fields surrounding the wedding cake building of the famous girls’ school. I was directed to the drawing school and design technology block, where Miss Johns was said to be currently working. The building was modern – brick, wood and glass – pleasantly situated by a pond where in summer there would be water-lilies and shrubs.

  Inside, I asked directions from a group of girls in brown sweaters over blue shirts, and found my way to an office containing drafting tables, desk, several adjustable drawing boards. The unassuming woman seated at a desk looked up when I knocked at the open door. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Excuse me for not making an appointment beforehand.’ I explained who I was, and indicated that we had met at Amy Morrison’s party.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Johns said. ‘I remember seeing you and Doctor Drummond there.’

  ‘Very sad about poor Ms Morrison,’ I said, when Miss Johns didn’t grab the bait.

  ‘I suppose it was.’ The response was about as perfunctory as it could be.

  ‘Murdered,’ said I, with a fake shiver. ‘I wonder who could have been responsible.’

  ‘Any of a dozen people, I should imagine.’ Johns reached for one of the several pencils pushed into the wild nest of her hair. ‘Excuse me … I need to make a note of something.’

  ‘Goodness. Odd that it happened in Helena Drummond’s house, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not particularly. As I understood it, Doctor Drummond had once been her tutor; perhaps she was passing and decided to drop in.’

  ‘Kind of unlucky to have chosen the very evening that a killer also decided to drop in.’

  ‘Unless they were together.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Amy and her killer might have arrived together, and then … then what?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Helena was always a bit of a gal: maybe he was Morrison’s boyfriend and Helena came on to him. There’s a bit of an altercation between the two women, he tries to break it up and—’

  ‘And what? Accidentally smashes Amy’s head in? It doesn’t seem very likely. Especially as that evening Helena happened to be out with friends and couldn’t have arrived home much before midnight, if she came home at all.’

  ‘And I’m bothered because … as my students like to say?’ Johns shrugged. It was a disturbing gesture, indicating total indifference. It didn’t sit well with her motherly image.

  ‘Each man’s death diminishes me, and all that,’ I said.

  ‘Not Amy Morrison’s. It doesn’t diminish me in the slightest.’

  Her tone was so harsh and aggressive that I seriously began to wonder if Miss Johns could have travelled to south-east Kent and killed Amy herself. ‘Moving on,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard here and there that Amy was in the habit of – shall we say – “borrowing” other people’s work.’

  Johns stuffed the pen she was holding into her hair, and looked directly at me for the first time. ‘Stealing,’ she said. ‘Say it like it is. She stole. She turned plagiarism into a fine art. Academically, she was like a magpie, hopping about, picking here and there at other people’s research, and then turning it in as her own work. While I still taught at the art school she attended, I had several students complaining bitterly about it, especially the men.’

  ‘Why the men?’

  ‘That was her preferred modus operandi. She would target the brightest guys, give them the best sex of their lives, then steal their ideas, their words, their research. She was fairly blatant about it, too.’

  ‘Why wasn’t anything done?’

  ‘I tried once to have her answer for her sins, but she simply insisted that the other party was the one who was stealing, taking her own original stuff and trying to pass it off as their own. And you were there at her launch party. You saw how she was. The arch-manipulator. She just gave her inquisitors – ninety-five per cent of them men – the full force of her dimples and boobs and they actually, the stupid idiots, bought it.’

  ‘So could you perhaps nominate someone who hated her enough to kill her?’

  ‘As I said when you first arrived, any one of a dozen people. But if you think I’m going to nominate anyone in particular, finger someone as a murderer, well, that’s simply out of the question.’

  My mind moved on. There was still the possibility that Helena didn’t come home at all that evening. Since it was late, I could easily envisage her deciding to stay in Canterbury overnight, perhaps with the man Paul Sandbrook had told me was called Peter, especially as she was over the limit. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Amy and the boyfriend wait up, Helena never arri
ves, they decide to indulge in a bit of rumpy-pumpy, they have a quarrel, he bashes her over the head and when he realizes she’s dead, he runs for the hills.

  ‘Look, Miss Quick,’ Sadie Johns said. ‘You probably think me cruel and callous for not showing more concern over Amy Morrison’s death. I couldn’t give a flying – if you’ll excuse the word – fuck about the woman. I loathed her. She was cruel, arrogant, petty. She hurt a lot of people, especially those who could least afford to be hurt. If she’s been killed, it’s not before time. And if you’re wondering, I wouldn’t demean myself to have any hand in the woman’s death. And what’s more,’ she half-turned in her seat so she was looking out at the lawns in front of her, ‘I hope she suffered, the way she made so many other people suffer.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘You can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘Close the door when you leave,’ she said, and bent back to the papers in front of her.

  On the way back to Chelsea, I stopped the car by a municipal park and fished out Anton, who was lying mournfully on the back seat, paws stretched in front of him, looking undeniably cute. ‘Sorry, guy,’ I said, ‘you’re okay, but you won’t win me over.’

  I let him off the leash and watched as he bounded away, stopping to sniff at rubbish bins and the legs of concrete picnic tables before lowering his hindquarters to the grass.

  Mouth in a moue of disgust, I went over and picked up his droppings in a plastic bag and dropped it into a red-painted box set on a metal stalk. ‘You are revolting,’ I told Anton.

  Not everybody shared my view. I was stopped at least half a dozen times by people wanting to tell me how lovely he was and asking where he came from. ‘He’s a rescue dog,’ I said, not sure whether that was a brand of dog or not, and people nodded sagely.

  Back in my brother’s basement flat, I opened my briefcase and pulled out the text and pictures for the next Drummond & Quick anthology, stuff I had been accumulating for several weeks. If Cliff Nichols stayed true to his word and came up with a definite contract, I wanted to be prepared. Eat, Drink & Be Merry, our next book, was well advanced but still needed work. Should we include Da Vinci’s Last Supper? A melancholy image, it was not strictly compatible with the expectations set up by the jolly title we had chosen for the anthology. All the more reason to include it as an antidote to all the bucolic Peasant Weddings and Arcimboldos, Helena argued, while I felt that incorporating it would demean the spirit of a great iconic painting. I set it to one side. Ralph Going’s A1 Sauce was iconic too, but in a different way. Livelier and with much more heart than Warhol’s vastly overrated soup cans. That was definitely going in.