A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “Stop it!” Sumalee cried.

  Clare grabbed Alastair, who was many inches shorter than Francis but stockier by far. She thought this would stop the action, but it only exacerbated it. Francis landed a blow squarely on Alastair’s jaw, and this knocked Clare off balance so that she released her grip upon him. Alastair launched himself at Francis and when Sumalee tried to intervene by stepping between them, Charlie went for her, dragging her off and then tossing her to the ground to give his stepfather access to his father.

  Fights between men were shocking, ugly, silent things, having none of the drama or excitement of filmed depictions of them. This particular fight was over in less than two minutes when Alastair head-butted Francis, knocking him to the ground and then grabbing him and jerking him upwards by means of an arm locked round the other man’s neck. When he tightened his grip, panting and red in the face, Clare attempted to pull him off but he was far too strong. He punched Francis’s face repeatedly. Clare shouted, “Charlie, do something,” only to hear Charlie say, “He fucking deserves it and so do you, Clare.”

  “He’s going to kill him.”

  “And I hope he does.”

  “Francis!” Sumalee cried.

  “Alastair! Stop it!” This was, at last, Caroline. She came at a run from the memorial stone. “Stop it! Stop it!” she shrieked.

  That was when Charlie’s wife India arrived, running up the lane. She fell upon Alastair to help Clare drag him back from Francis. They achieved this, leaving Francis gasping for air among the weeds and the scrambled earth.

  Sumalee crawled to Francis. He struggled to breathe. She was wide-eyed as she looked at all of them. “What kind of people are you?” she asked.

  That, Clare thought, was the question of the hour.

  SHAFTESBURY

  DORSET

  Rory had, Clare saw, managed to get everyone out of the memorial site. They were either already in the back garden at the house above in Bimport Street or, at least, they were well on their way up the lane in that direction and consequently completely out of earshot. No one remained but herself and those involved in the confrontation.

  Both Francis Goldacre and Alastair MacKerron were filthy, and bruises were blooming on Francis’s face. Clare thought it amazing that so much damage could be done to the body in so little time. Alastair’s own face was swelling from the blow it had taken, his trousers were ripped at one knee, and his shirt and jacket were streaked with what looked like dog excrement. Francis was also bruised round the neck, and his fine summer suit would need repair. But the worst appeared to be Sumalee, who cradled her wrist at her breast.

  The first words were spoken by Francis and not to Alastair but rather to his son: “I could kill you for that.” He got to his feet and raised his wife to hers. He said to Charlie, “If you ever think to come within fifty yards of her again . . .”

  “Francis,” Sumalee said, “you must not.”

  “He’s hurt you and I’ll have him in the dock for assault.”

  “You leave that lad out of this,” Alastair said. “This’s between us. Be a man for once, you limp little—”

  “Enough. Please, Alastair.” It was Caroline who spoke. She said to Francis, “I don’t know why you’ve come. I don’t know why you brought her.” Her chin began to quiver. “But you can see that—”

  “We came because we were invited,” Francis snapped. “We had a message by phone. We were stupid enough to take the invitation as a sign not only that you had finally come to your senses but also that you had apparently decided to begin living in the real world instead of one you invent as you go along.”

  Caroline swiftly turned towards Clare as Alastair took a threatening step in Francis’s direction to deal with the insult. This time Charlie stopped his stepfather as Caroline said to Clare, “You! You phoned . . . But why . . . Did you actually think this would make me . . . Oh my God.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

  This gave Clare opportunity to say to her, “I had no idea. You can’t possibly believe—”

  “You planned it all, didn’t you? This . . . and . . . and Francis and her showing up to humiliate me.”

  “Caroline, that’s absolutely not true.”

  “Lily invited them.” It was India who spoke. “I’ve only just talked to her. She more or less told me she’d invited them.”

  Charlie said, “Lily? Is she here?” and with the others he looked round among the cars on the verge.

  “That bloody . . . If she’s round here, I’ll sort her,” Alastair said.

  Caroline had gone quite pale. “Lily’s come to the memorial?” And once again, “Clare. Did you . . . Lily Foster as well?” And now she did finally weep. It was as if the name of Lily Foster had done her in.

  “Where did you see her?” Charlie said.

  “Just up the street,” India explained. “But Charlie, she’s very changed. And she gave me this for you.” And here she bent to retrieve a padded envelope that she’d thrown to one side when she’d come to assist Clare in the midst of the men’s scuffle.

  “Don’t open it!” Caroline cried. “It could be a bomb.”

  Charlie cast his mother a look. “I doubt Lily’s taken up bomb making,” he said.

  “You don’t know what she’s become,” Caroline said. “She’s gone straight round the bend. Don’t open it. Alastair, tell him.”

  Alastair was terse in his explanation. Lily Foster had turned up in Dorset some twenty months ago. She’d begun at first to haunt his shops, never buying but always lurking, talking to his customers and warning them off whatever she fancied he was putting into his baked goods to poison the populace. Then she’d installed herself on the grounds of the bakery, waiting for what no one knew, always watching his every move, taking notes and murmuring cryptically. When he’d phoned the police about her, she moved off to the road. But after a week, she was at the house itself. Then in the mornings, they began to find nasty bits on their doorstep. Animal excrement, a dead bird, a half-eaten rat, and finally the head of a cat.

  “She’s had an ASBO filed on her,” he concluded. “We’ve not seen her since.”

  “She told me she has a tattoo shop in town,” India said.

  “How would she have known about this?” It was Francis who asked.

  “She told me she knows everything,” India said. And then to Caroline directly, “She said she makes it her business to know everything that’s going on in your lives.”

  “Whose lives?” Clare asked.

  “Caroline’s. Alastair’s. She means to cause trouble,” India concluded, her gaze directed to her husband now. “Your mum’s right, Charlie. Don’t open the envelope. Toss it in the rubbish. Burn it. Lily’s completely changed. She doesn’t mean you well.”

  Charlie turned the envelope in his hands. It was stapled shut. All of them could see his name printed in large letters across the front of it. He said, “She could just as easily have mailed it. She knows where I live. It’s probably nothing.”

  “Give it to the police, lad,” Alastair told Charlie.

  “Please do, Charlie,” his mother begged. “She’s done terrible things to us. And now if something happens to you because of her . . . If it’s awful—what’s inside there—then the police will have another reason to file some kind of charges against her . . . Because something has to be done to force her to leave us in peace.”

  Charlie nodded. He said he would take the envelope to the police station in town, where the name Lily Foster was, it seemed, well known.

  NOW

  29 SEPTEMBER

  MARYLEBONE

  LONDON

  Rory Statham employed as much patience as she could muster as she gave her explanation once again to the literary agent seated opposite her: The advance offered her client could not possibly be increased. Why? Because the publishing house was sitting on ten thousand copies of the
author’s last book, all of which were going to have to be remaindered; because while the discovery of the body of Richard III in a Leicester car park did indeed shine a spotlight on that controversial king, it was not likely that yet another book on the disappearance of the princes in the Tower—

  In the midst of her explanation and through the interior windows of her office, Rory caught sight of Clare Abbott’s arrival. She frowned when she saw Caroline Goldacre trailing her. She thought she’d talked Clare out of bringing Caroline along. Obviously, her argument for leaving the woman behind in Shaftesbury had accomplished nothing. Rory said to the agent, “I am sorry. And I certainly understand if Professor Okerlund wishes to take his book to another publisher.” She stood and Arlo did the same, stretching and eyeing the literary agent’s capacious shoulder bag, from which a wrapped sandwich was protruding. He was too good a dog to go anywhere near it, but Rory could see how much he wanted to do so.

  She bid the agent a friendly but firm farewell and went to greet Clare. She was there to affix her signature to one thousand copies of Looking for Mr. Darcy prior to their being shipped into the European marketplace. Caroline was there to assist, Clare said, after which the two women were heading to Cambridge for an event at Lucy Cavendish College: what purported to be a lively debate between Clare and the Very Reverend Marydonna Patches, a long-ago graduate of Lucy Cavendish and a well-known proponent of “a woman’s place is at the kitchen sink,” according to how Clare described her. She and Caroline would spend the night in the university city, and in the morning Clare would do a live radio programme, followed by a lecture in the afternoon.

  With Arlo padding along at her side, Rory took Clare and Caroline to the conference room just down the corridor where her assistant had unpacked the cartons of books. They stood in neat stacks both on the floor and on the table, and Rory saw Caroline’s lips press together when she took them in. She murmured to Clare, “I’ll do my very best.”

  “Soldier on till you can’t cope, and I’ll manage from there,” Clare told her.

  “It’s just that . . .” Caroline cast a glance at Rory. Something unspoken passed between Caroline and Clare.

  “I’ll help as well,” Rory said. “The books have been flapped, so it shouldn’t take terribly long.”

  Caroline said, “But you probably have other business to attend to?”

  “None so important that I can’t help here. Are you unwell today, Caroline?”

  “A bit.”

  “Perhaps you should be at home?”

  “I’m not that unwell. Clare? If you’re ready . . . ?”

  Rory said nothing more until, a mere one-tenth of the way through the signing of the books, Caroline suddenly declared that she needed the ladies’ toilet at once. This took her quickly out of earshot. Then what Rory said was, “If she’s ill, why are you taking her with you to Cambridge, Clare?”

  She was surprised when Clare’s answer was, “She needed to get away.” She glanced through the open door and down the corridor, where Caroline was rushing towards the ladies’ toilet. “It’s Alastair. He’s become involved with another woman. Seriously, it seems.”

  “Alastair? You said they were having difficulties, but I thought he was devoted to Caroline. How did this come to light?”

  “Photographs. Sent anonymously to Caroline at my address.”

  “Who would have done such a thing?”

  “I wager it was Lily Foster.” She explained to Rory who the young woman was, concluding with, “It wouldn’t be out of character for her to have dug up something to hurt Caroline as she holds her responsible for Will’s death. And vice versa.”

  “Do they know for certain?”

  “That she sent the pictures? I doubt there’s a way to prove it. Whoever sent them was wise enough to post them from Dorchester.”

  “What about the woman? Alastair’s paramour. God. Where do these antique terms come from? Who is she?”

  “Sharon Halsey. She works for him. He’s been groveling at Caroline’s feet since the Big Reveal, seeking for grace and vowing to be wise hereafter, but Caroline isn’t ready to forgive unless Alastair gives the woman the sack. Well, who can blame her for that? But he doesn’t want to sack her.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “Evidently, Sharon Halsey has been holding his business together for years. Without her, according to Alastair, the whole enterprise would go under in weeks. So he has no intention of sacking her, and he and Caroline have reached an impasse about it all. Thus”—she waved her hand round the conference room as Rory continued to place open books in front of her and she continued to sign them—“this little outing. A brief break from the drama at home.”

  “She’s going to be useless to you in Cambridge if she’s ill. She probably won’t even be able to manage her own luggage.”

  “I can manage luggage for both of us. Really, Rory.” Clare looked up at her and blew a few wiry strands of grey hair off her forehead. “The poor woman has had a trolley full of horse dung dropped into her lap. First Will’s suicide, then Charlie’s breakdown and his marriage falling into ruin, then Lily Foster tormenting her, and now this. She’s reeling. She’s not yet come close to recovering from Will and—”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Clare. Does she want to recover?”

  Rory saw that Clare’s surprise straightened her spine like a pole. She said, “What a very odd thing to ask.”

  Rory said, “Sorry. I don’t mean to be cruel. But it’s just that one progresses through grief. It’s a process, and if one wants to recover, one engages in the process. One joins a grief group. One gets involved in other aspects of life. One struggles to get through it. Has she done any of that?”

  Clare set her pen to one side. She pulled a chair out from the table—as Rory had been standing—and patted its seat. Rory obliged her and Arlo did the same, jumping to take a place on Rory’s lap. Clare said, “You did, darling. You got through it. But what she endured is the loss of a child and, childless though you and I both are, I think we can agree there’s nothing worse than that. The love a mother has for her child . . . It’s different from the love you had for Fiona. I’m not saying it’s stronger or better,” she added as Rory turned her head away, “but merely different. It has to be simply because of the actual birthing of a child and then the raising of it . . . One has to be altered by that, don’t you agree? So the loss and the recovery from the loss will be different from the loss of someone else dearly loved.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound so compassionate.” Rory was aware of the sadness in her own voice. She couldn’t have kept it away.

  “I’m not exactly devoid of compassion. I expect you know that.”

  “Oh, I do.” Rory covered her friend’s hand with her own. Impulsively, they leaned towards each other, each resting her forehead against the other’s.

  “Goodness! Am I disturbing a tender moment between you two?”

  They started, moved away from each other. Caroline was back with them, standing in the doorway.

  Rory got to her feet, sliding Arlo to the floor. She said to Clare, “I’ve an appointment in a quarter hour. I’ll check back afterwards to see how you’re coping with all this.” She left her, then, Arlo trotting at her side.

  She wasn’t quick enough, though, to miss Caroline’s question to Clare. “Really, Clare, it’s completely unseemly. Can’t she keep her hands to herself?”

  30 SEPTEMBER

  BAYSWATER

  LONDON

  Rory finished her swim at her normal time, just after eight in the morning. She always arrived at the old leisure centre as early as she could drag herself there, which was generally at a quarter past six. Today had been different due to a late-night phone call from Clare, reporting on the event at Lucy Cavendish College. She’d ultimately felt sorry for the Very Reverend Marydonna Patches, Clare had admitted with a rueful laugh.
It had not been the wisest venue for the clergywoman to have chosen for the debate. As Clare had put it, “When one depends entirely upon the Bible for one’s interpretation of what it is to be female . . . Well, you know how that sort of thing is likely to go down in circumstances in which you’re surrounded by university women.”

  “A crucifixion, if I might borrow from the Bible myself.”

  “Hmmm, perhaps a stoning? But book sales were quite brisk at the end, I’m happy to tell you. And I daresay there wasn’t a woman present who wanted even to picture poor Elizabeth Bennet’s life post her marriage to the smouldering Fitzwilliam. When the curtain falls, the drudgery begins. Pemberley be damned.”

  Rory laughed. “You must have been in your element.”

  “Darling, I was.”

  “And Caroline?” Rory couldn’t resist asking the question. “How did she hold up?”

  “I’m sorry to report we’ve only just now had a few too many sharp words and she’s gone to her room in a huff. I didn’t make things easy for her tonight, I’m afraid. I’d sworn that we’d be finished up by ten, but the event went till half past eleven and she was rather put out by that. I can’t actually blame her. It was the signing. It went on and on. Everyone wanted to have a word when they got to the table and Caroline’s best laid plans to get the entire business over and done with simply fell apart. Absolutely no one who wanted to have a chat was to be moved along quickly, no matter what she tried.”

  “Did she remove your business cards from whomever you might have given them to?”

  Clare chuckled. “Probably but I’ve actually no clue.” She yawned loudly and added, “Good God. Look at the time.” At which point, they rang off.

  Now, Rory lifted herself from the pool, muscles spent. All of the lanes were occupied at this point, and hers was taken over before she had a chance to remove her goggles and pick up her towel. The volume of noise had increased in the cavernous hall which housed the pool, and the air was heavily redolent of chlorine. Best to vacate the premises at once, Rory thought.