Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  ‘What would that accomplish?’

  ‘Possible guilt.’

  ‘Or innocence.’

  He looked at me hopefully. ‘If you decide to go, I’d be more than happy to come with you.’

  ‘What about your bookshop? And the Christmas season rush?’

  ‘It’s not going to collapse because I take a few days off here and there. I can always hire in a student or two: some of the PhDs are always looking for casual employment. Besides, coming with you means I’ll be flexing my detective muscles, something I’ve wanted to do since reading Father Brown and John Dickson Carr by the light of a torch under the bedcovers.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘I think a glass, or even tumbler, of something alcoholic might be drunk in order to celebrate, don’t you?’

  ‘We haven’t caught our hare yet, Alex.’

  ‘But I genuinely feel that at last we’re close enough to put salt on his tail.’

  He grinned. ‘I didn’t realize that was how you caught hares. Was Mrs Beeton aware?’ He grew more serious. ‘Look, Alex, we don’t even know that Doctor Drummond was murdered.’

  ‘Not for sure, we don’t. But I know. Her acute hydrophobia says it all, far as I’m concerned. Not many people knew about it, which might be the way we track down the person responsible for her death, since he was trying to make it look like suicide—’

  ‘Or even an accident.’

  ‘Either way, drowning is the last method Helena would have chosen. If it’s Laurence, the guy we think it is—’

  ‘An absolutely suppositious notion. It’s not even circumstantial.’

  ‘—and we can find evidence to prove it, maybe we can solve the case.’ I found gin, ice, martini in my parents’ fridge. Poured us each a glass, added a slice of lemon, passed one to Sam, swallowed mine quickly and poured another. The alcohol travelled through my system, loosening the knots, both physical and emotional, which bound me. ‘Forgive me if I sound frivolous, but away we go!’ I nodded my glass to him. ‘Here’s to homicide.’ I wasn’t smiling.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sam and I drove slowly past the garden wall of La Tuilerie. Nothing much had changed since my previous visit, though a few over-eager crocuses stood half-open in the grass under the bare tangled branches of a plum tree which already showed a few frail pink buds. The sun shone mildly from a blue-white sky. It was hard to believe that in south-east England, people were shivering inside thick coats.

  We knew someone must be home, because all the doors of the house were open, as they had been last time I was here. I directed Sam to drive on and park around the corner. ‘Gives them less time to prepare,’ I explained.

  ‘Or scarper.’

  ‘Indeed. Though I would guess that Ainslie Gordon’s scarpering days are long gone. But it’s not him we’re here to see, it’s Laurence Turnbull.’

  ‘If Ainslie really is his father, do you think he knows about Laurence’s past? The terrible car accident, and those poor girls he killed?’

  ‘Possibly not. I would imagine the relationship has only recently been renewed.’

  ‘Activated might be more accurate. From sperm to full-grown adult is a bit of a stretch.’

  ‘Either way, it’s quite possible he hasn’t been informed.’

  ‘Are we going to confront them with our knowledge?’

  ‘I think we go in and act as if we’re perfectly aware of the connection, haven’t assumed anything else,’ I said. ‘Without necessarily bringing it up.’

  We got out of the car and quietly pushed the doors shut, not wanting to announce our presence before we had to. When I turned, it was to see a gnarled gentleman in a greasy old beret wearing bleu de travail standing behind an iron-barred gate, with three surly dogs poised alertly at his side. There was muck and straw behind him, two or three muddy tractors stationed inside wall-less barns, stacks of wood to one side, a hint of hens, trails of red baling twine. He stared at me knowingly, though I had no idea what he thought he knew. Perhaps he imagined I was another of Ainslie Gordon’s conquests.

  Speaking in French, I told him that we had come to see Monsieur Laurence.

  ‘Laurence? Ce type?’ He spat phlegmily into the muck round his boots.

  ‘If,’ I added, ‘he has returned.’

  ‘Returned?’ echoed the old boy.

  ‘I understood he went to England a few days ago?’ I was all innocence.

  He did that shoulder-lifting thing that the French are so good at, far more expressive than a mere shrug. ‘It is possible. I don’t see him every day, that is for sure. He does not inform me of his movements. And I certainly do not inform him of mine. If I think about it, I definitely did not see this person in the past few days. It has to be said that, yes, when I met Madame Montras at the market on Tuesday, she did tell me that this Monsieur Laurence had gone abroad.’

  ‘Abroad?’

  ‘She did not say where. Anyway, he was away for some time until the other day, when he came roaring back up the lane on that infernal machine of his, waking my poor old mother from her après-déjeuner nap, and setting all the dogs whining and barking, not to mention the baby.’

  ‘Baby?’ Sam said. The man looked much too old to have a baby. Or a mother, for that matter.

  ‘The child of my daughter,’ he explained.

  ‘And which day was it that you heard this motorbike roaring in the lane?’

  He paused, lifting his beret to scratch beneath it. ‘Must be three, maybe four days ago. I am getting old, I do not remember so well.’ He grinned, showing stubby yellow teeth.

  ‘Where would we find this Madame Montras?’ Sam asked.

  ‘She sells fish,’ he said. ‘Every day she moves from market to market with her fish, because here in Aquitaine there is always a market in a different town.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Eels, scallops, lobster, halibut, octopus,’ he recited, as though from an unseen sales board. ‘Anchovies and monkfish, bream and brill. Grenadier, mullet, salmon.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating,’ I said.

  ‘Also pilchards.’

  ‘Could somebody turn him off?’ I said.

  ‘And oysters, of course.’

  ‘Where will she be tomorrow?’ asked Sam.

  ‘At Riberac. Her stall is just along from the dried fruit and spices.’

  ‘This Laurence, he is the son of Monsieur Gordon, n’est-ce pas?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I do not know. I do not enquire, me. His business is his business, just as mine is mine.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said.

  ‘But I think he may not be,’ the farmer said rapidly, as we turned to go, not wanting to lose his audience. ‘He may be the son of one of Monsieur Gordon’s petites amies, of which there are very many.’ Again he made with the shrug. ‘I do not know, but maybe not also of Monsieur Gordon. He does not call him Papa.’

  ‘If Monsieur Gordon is not his father,’ Sam asked, ‘why did he come here to France?’

  ‘He is a student, a pupil. He wishes to be an artist, like our famous Monet or Matisse.’ The farmer spat brown liquid at one of his dogs.

  ‘Does Monsieur Gordon often have a student living here?’ I asked.

  ‘This is the first, I think.’

  In English, I said to Sam, ‘Do we need any more information?’

  ‘Not really. Especially since we don’t know what further questions to ask.’

  ‘You do realize my theory about Laurence only works if Helena is his mother?’

  ‘I’m very well aware of that, ma chère.’

  ‘Do you also realize that if we are to catch this Madame Montras and talk to her, we shall have to stop overnight?’

  ‘I hadn’t, no. But it sounds like an excellent idea.’ Sam lifted rakish eyebrows at me.

  Dream on, I thought.

  We reverted to French to say thank you and goodbye, while his dogs set up such a racket that I could barely think straight. French backwater dogs are trained with kicks and sticks to make a heck of a noise
, so as to repel strangers, but this seemed a little over and beyond, especially given that there were six other houses nearby, all of whom must have been regularly disturbed by the noise.

  Any notion of a surprise arrival was by now out of the question. Indeed, when we turned down the lane back to La Tuilerie, Ainslie Gordon was standing in the doorway, scowling.

  ‘What the bleeding hell is that infernal racket,’ he growled. ‘And who the hell are— Oh, it’s you. What do you want this time?’

  ‘Hoping to have a quick word with your son,’ Sam said, smooth as double cream.

  ‘I haven’t got a fucking son.’

  I kept to myself the retort about a celibate one which sprang to my lips. I looked up at my companion. ‘Mr Willoughby means Laurence – who I believe is Helena’s son, not yours.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Gordon’s purple-red-suffused face darkened. ‘Of course he’s bloody not. Helena doesn’t have a son, any more than I do.’

  Was he telling the truth? Did he even know? What difference would it make to him, either way? One thing his remark told me was that he had probably still been in touch, however desultorily, with his former wife.

  As for Laurence, I wished I had access to his computer. Or at the very least, his papers: documents, diary, chequebook, whatever. I was guessing he didn’t keep much order in whichever room he was occupying. Short of communicating telepathically with Sam to ask him if he would keep Gordon occupied elsewhere, I couldn’t see any easy way I could nip upstairs and have a look.

  ‘Is Laurence actually here?’ Sam asked, sounding more like a police officer than any police officer I knew.

  ‘As it happens, he’s not.’ Gordon glanced at the semi-derelict barn which had housed the motorbike on my last visit.

  ‘Does he often disappear for the day?’

  ‘What kind of damned question is that? He’s gone to Bordeaux, not disappeared. And if he decides not to come back until tomorrow, that’s his affair. So what the hell does it have to do with you, whoever the fuck you are?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ Sam admitted.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Except that he could turn out to be the chief suspect in a murder enquiry.’

  Gordon began to splutter. ‘In a murder … chief suspect … Laurence … what fucking bullshit are you …’ He stopped. ‘Who’s dead?’ he asked, in a more reasonable voice, which it was clear he was fighting to keep under control.

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘Obviously not, or I wouldn’t bloody well be asking, would I?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, as kindly as I could, ‘they found your former wife’s body floating in the river at a place called Dovebrook. Three days ago.’

  He stared strongly at me, his eyes glassy. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ he said more quietly, though it was quite clear that I wasn’t.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Dear God.’ He had turned a curious greyish peach colour. ‘Helena? Dead? I don’t – I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Not Helena …’ He turned and walked inside the house. ‘Not her. Not … dead.’

  With shaking hands, he found a bottle on one of the counters, tore out the cork, raised it to his lips and drank deep, his unshaven neck bobbing up and down as he did so. Brandy … it seemed to do him good because the heart-attack colour returned to his cheeks. He motioned at the bench alongside the table.

  ‘Sit down. Explain it all to me.’

  We did so while very slowly, like an old, old man, he found three glasses, a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, muttering to himself all the time. He looked as though he had aged ten years since I had announced the unpleasant news: it was clear that Helena’s death had been a tremendous blow. His large spatulate hands still trembled, but not so much. Every now and then, as we told him what had happened, he snorted derisively, and once a tear quivered in the bags below his eyes.

  ‘I can tell you here and now that it bloody well wasn’t suicide,’ he said eventually, though the sting had temporarily gone out of his belligerence ‘Not by drowning, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Hydrophobia.’ I nodded knowledgeably.

  He pushed the bottle of wine at us. ‘So why are you here to see Laurence?’

  ‘They’ve made a connection between him and Helena,’ Sam said.

  ‘What connection? There is no fucking connection.’

  ‘Frankly, Mr Gordon …’ I leaned confidingly towards him, and put a hand on his arm, knowing there was nothing like accusation to get a reaction. ‘… they think he may have been responsible for Doctor Drummond’s death.’

  ‘What bloody bullshit and bollocks!’ he roared. His face had now returned to the same deep red colour as his wine. He stood up and banged the table, making the bottle and glasses jump and slopping wine on to the rough wood. He ran his thick artist’s fingers through the greying mop of his curls. I was glad Sam was with me: I wouldn’t want to feel those big-knuckled hands round my throat. I had a sudden flashback moment to Amy Morrison’s neck and that deep line of red which marred it. ‘Anyway, when was Helena supposed to have …’ He sucked in a breath. ‘… died?’

  ‘They’re not quite sure. Certainly within the past week. See, what they think happened is that Laurence …’ I outlined my theory about growing resentment gradually boiling into a murderous rage, the impetuous decision to track down the mother, the sudden fatal blow. The use of the nebulous ‘they’ lent a bogus authority to what I was saying, and – so far – Gordon didn’t seem to have realized just how spurious it was.

  ‘So what exactly is Laurence’s connection with Doctor Drummond?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Like I said, there isn’t one. Not that I know of, anyway. Not in a blood-relative sense at any rate – unless she somehow managed to substitute herself for my sister when Athol was being tupped by one of her many one-night stands.’

  That rocked me back on my heels. My theory was crumbling into speculative dust. If Helena wasn’t Laurence’s mother, he had no obvious motive for killing her. ‘So when your sister found she was pregnant, she went on to have the baby but gave him up for adoption?’

  ‘Exactly. And then thirty years or so later, three or four months ago, to be more precise, he turns up here, calling me Uncle Ainslie, saying he was at some poncey art school but got kicked out, did I think he could make it as a painter, would I have a look at his work?’

  ‘Which poncey art school was he talking about?’

  Ainslie shrugged. ‘I never asked him. They’re all poncey, far as I’m concerned. Can’t teach art to save their lives.’

  ‘So it could have been somewhere Doctor Drummond taught,’ said Sam.

  ‘Very possibly. I wouldn’t know.’ He was lying.

  ‘How did he know you existed?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s apparently spent a lot of time and trouble trying to track down his birth mother, in other words my sister, Athol, and then getting in touch with her and her family.’

  ‘Next question,’ I said. ‘Just before she died, Helena was reading the Masaccio book by Amy Morrison.’ I didn’t go into the ramifications of it originally being beside her bed in her own home, nor how it ended up in that of my parents’. ‘And tucked into it I found a photograph of you and Laurence, standing outside your door. That door.’ I gestured at it.

  ‘You and he look so similar, like father and son,’ Sam put in.

  ‘Not surprising, given that we’re uncle and nephew.’

  ‘I just wondered how Helena happened to get hold of the photo,’ I continued, ‘or did you send it to her?’ There must have been some connection between her and Laurence.

  He stared at me. ‘Um …’ he said, clearly trying to think up some plausible lie.

  ‘Did they have a flaming row or something?’ Sam asked. ‘She took off back to England, he vowed to get even, one way or another? Something like that?’

  ‘Mutual friends of hers and mine came to stay this summer,’ Ainslie said eventually. ‘Helena sh
owed up too, just for a weekend. One of them was taking photos, so he probably gave Helena a copy.’ He poured more wine for us all. ‘Helena,’ he said. Tears stood in his eyes. I guessed that once we had gone, he would put his head down on the table and weep.

  ‘But,’ said Sam, ‘if Laurence only arrived here a month ago, how could that be?’

  ‘I’m no good on times and dates,’ Ainslie said, irritation corrugating his face. ‘Maybe it was three or four months ago – the weather here stays summery well into the autumn months, which is one of the reasons I choose to live here. And for your information – or theirs, whoever they are – Laurence didn’t leave the place at all last week, or this. Too busy working on a painting – I had to practically tie him up and force feed him to get him to stop working and eat something.’ He wouldn’t meet my eyes, an admission in itself.

  ‘So you can alibi him?’

  ‘Certainly I can.’

  ‘We have witnesses who saw him leaving on his bike,’ Sam said, extrapolating from the farmer next door plus the so-far indefinite fish lady.

  ‘The boy isn’t a prisoner here,’ bristled Gordon. ‘Perfectly free to go when and where he bloody well pleases.’ He gazed at the watch strapped to his hairy arm. ‘Now if there’s nothing else, I have an exhibition to prepare for.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘London. First week in May. I’ll send you a ticket to the vernissage, if you like.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I fished out one of my business cards and laid it on the table.

  ‘Ever sold to the Lamonts?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Bob and Mercy? I should hope I have. Without their imprimatur, you’d have to work twice as hard to get recognized. They more or less guarantee your reputation.’

  ‘This art school which Laurence had been kicked out of,’ Sam said. ‘Was it Doctor Drummond who was responsible?’

  He hesitated, which was all the answer we needed. ‘Uh … I’m not sure.’

  ‘What was the reason?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Drugs, I imagine, from what you told me last time I was here. He’d probably gone back to dealing, or using his body. Something sordid, anyway.’