A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “But where does that fit in?”

  “Aside from everything else going on in her head, Mum seems to think she’s set up to be next because she worked for Clare and because Rory was Clare’s editor. But to be completely honest with you, India, she was going off in every possible direction when I spoke to her: She’s next in line because of Clare’s book. She’s next in line because someone discovered that Clare—under Mum’s name—was having it off with a cartload of adultery-seeking blokes and one of their wives discovered this or one of the blokes decided to kill her because . . . I don’t know . . . because she was threatening him? Blackmailing him? What makes it all worse is that Mum says she doesn’t feel safe around Alastair either. She thinks everything that’s happened could be down to Sharon Halsey trying to kill her in order to get her hands on Alastair. Or it could be Alastair trying to kill her to get his hands on Sharon.”

  “Doesn’t that beg the question: Why target Clare?”

  “Of course it does. But you know Mum. When she gets going, there’s a terrible gap between here”—he pointed to his head, meaning his brain, naturally—“and here”—he pointed to his lips. “She apparently rang the local police about all of this, but they’re in the dark or they’re merely saying they’re in the dark as it’s a Scotland Yard case. Could be they know very well what’s going on and are trying to fend her off. I just don’t know.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “It was the devil trying to sort out everything that she was throwing at me over the phone. But the long and short of it is that she’s on her way and . . .” He paused, sipped his martini, looking over the rim of the glass at her.

  In his hesitation, India knew exactly why he’d asked her to stop by, why he hadn’t wanted to talk on the phone about his mother. He was going to request that she take Caroline in, and he wanted to make the request in person. He could hardly take her in himself as he met his clients here in the flat. India said, “Charlie . . .”

  “I swear, it will only be for two days at the most, till I can sort things out.”

  “What things?”

  “Mum and Alastair for one. This murder business for another. For all we know, could be she’s got the wrong end of the stick on everything and is just confused.”

  “I don’t see how I can manage it, Charlie. Can’t she go to a hotel?”

  “Believe me, she’s in no state to be alone in a hotel. I know it’s a lot to ask of you. I know it’s too much to ask of you. If I didn’t have the new clients, I’d take her in myself. Or if the flat was larger. But as it isn’t and as I do have clients . . .”

  India knew at least part of his present problem was down to her, as she’d been the one to insist upon the Art Deco flat when she’d seen it. He had consented because he’d wanted to please her since she’d gone to such lengths to make herself pleasing for his mother. They were both caught by Caroline, India thought with resignation. It always seemed to come down to that.

  India realised that she could actually do this for Charlie without unspeakable trouble to herself. She was working long hours at the clinic anyway; she was seeing Nat most evenings after work as well, which she could easily arrange to occur away from her home. She could give Caroline her bedroom and herself use the sofa in her office. For two days only, she could do this. How difficult could it actually be?

  She said, “Two days? You promise?”

  He held up his hand. “Had I a Bible. I can offer this as well: I’ll keep her here tonight and bring her to Camberwell in the morning. If you’ll leave me a key, you don’t even have to be there. If it helps, I also swear that I won’t look through your knickers drawer . . . although I can’t promise Mum won’t. You’ve not got anything you mind if she sees?”

  Her birth control, India thought. She would have to remove the pills and put them somewhere away from potential snooping by her mother-in-law, although it was something of a pleasant jolt to realise that she no longer regularly thought of Caroline as her mother-in-law at all. Other than that, there was nothing for Caroline to find and nothing that she could conclude about India or her life.

  “Very well, Charlie,” India told him. “If you’ll promise . . .”

  “I do,” he told her.

  18 OCTOBER

  PRIMROSE HILL

  LONDON

  Lynley parked the Healey Elliott in Chalcot Crescent and walked the short distance from there to Primrose Hill. He’d offered to go directly to the zoo just inside Regent’s Park—which actually would have been easier for both of them, considering the weather—but Daidre had said that, as it was time for Arlo’s midday walk and as this walk generally involved a saunter across Prince Albert Road and up to the top of Primrose Hill, she would meet him there.

  The rain had lessened. What had earlier been something of a downpour was now merely a heavy mist creating a tenebrous shroud over most of the city but hardly enough to warrant an umbrella. So Lynley left his on the floor of the car, and he turned up the collar of his coat instead. By the time he reached the top of Primrose Hill, he regretted this but reckoned he’d survive.

  Daidre was not yet there. Considering the nature of the day, no one else should have been either, but the carpet of rising lawn that comprised the hill was dotted with people nonetheless, both on the grass and on the paved paths that triangulated the slope. Nannies with pushchairs and prams strolled together, exposing their charges to whatever fresh air managed to reach them beneath the plastic tenting that kept the drizzle away, three optimistic young men kicked a football among themselves, an elderly couple studied what could be seen of the view and compared it to the engraved cityscape that stood on a pedestal at the top of the hill and faced in the general direction of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a middle-aged woman sat on one of the benches a short distance from this engraving, moodily smoking beneath a golf umbrella.

  Under the glowering sky, Lynley took a position close to the engraving and looked at the route Daidre would take from the zoo. She was not yet on it. He glanced at his watch and from there to the trees that bordered Regent’s Canal on the north side of the park. They were autumnal, but their colours were dulled by the day’s lack of sunlight. Soon enough their leaves would be gone altogether, heralding months of gloom, extremely short days, rain, and, as was becoming more common, snow.

  He felt grim. He’d spent the morning at his desk, having finally carved out enough time to read the letters and to go through the photographs that Havers and Nkata had found in Rory Statham’s flat. The photographs appeared to document the holiday that Rory and her partner Fiona Rhys had taken to Spain, which had ended in Fiona’s death. There they were on the strand, with the surf coming in behind them, as they stood arms round each other and grinned happily at the camera. They sat at a bar with tall lagers and a shared plate of fried fish. They shopped at colourful markets where the Mediterranean fruits and vegetables gleamed in the dappled sunlight. All they had wanted—like so many British before them—was a bit of sun. It certainly hadn’t been a lot to ask.

  They looked happy, Lynley had thought. They looked in the photos like a longtime couple who knew each other’s rhythms and who accepted how these individual rhythms contributed to the ebb and flow of a human relationship. But the collection of letters that Nkata and Havers had given to him showed something else.

  They were all from Clare Abbott. They formed a revealing arc of emotion, which began as one professional to another, evolved to friends in correspondence over life, deepened to a form of intimacy in which serious issues were explored, and then dropped with a sudden thud to a firmness whose genesis was not in question. Since Clare was the only writer involved—Rory’s letters to her being either somewhere in one of Clare’s houses or, perhaps, tossed away when answered—there were gaps in what they revealed. They spanned a number of years, but in them Lynley learned that the paradise of passion and devotion which one would hope for in a relationship with another human was not quite what
it seemed on the surface when it came to Rory and Fiona.

  Children were the crux of their problem. Fiona’s desire came into conflict with Rory’s caution, with the reason for Rory’s caution going unspoken to Fiona. Anorexia nervosa had evidently been the dead elephant whose rotting corpse was fouling the air of the women’s partnership. Fiona was the sufferer; Rory was the anxious witness. In and out of treatment for repeated bouts with it, Fiona was not—Rory thought—material for parenthood. She had shared this and other concerns with Clare, who lectured her on “the value of honesty for the love of God, Rory,” to no avail. Instead, Rory watched Fiona’s eating or lack thereof with a growing obsession that undermined their commitment to each other, breaking them apart for a period of time, which estrangement had resulted in Rory’s leaning upon Clare for emotional succour. This had been given freely and then withdrawn when it became apparent to Clare that Rory was misinterpreting the buttressing of a friend in time of need for something that did not interest Clare at all.

  Fiona’s murder had thus been followed by an understandable amount of guilt: the guilt of a survivor of a terrible crime, the guilt of a lover who knew that passion was dead and the sustaining influence of devotion had been beaten over time like a harvest of rice, the guilt of a fugitive whose escape had come at enormous cost to another. Through this, Clare Abbott had been at Rory’s side both physically and metaphorically, but at the end of the day, she’d had to be frank: “I miss you as well, Rory, but it’s not the same for me as it is for you, and you and I both know that life must go on.”

  Or must it? Lynley asked himself. Murder-suicide came to his mind. He sorted back through what he knew of the days leading up to Clare Abbott’s death, and in his notes he found what he’d sought: Clare had been in London on the morning of the night she died, signing books at her London publishing house, in the company of Caroline Goldacre but, perhaps more tellingly, also in the company of Rory Statham.

  He was considering everything this might signify when his mobile rang. He assumed it was Daidre letting him know that she was either held up at the zoo or on her way, but he saw it was Barbara Havers, and in short order the detective sergeant brought him into the picture of a website that Winston Nkata had turned up on Clare’s computer on which someone calling herself Caro24K (“As in twenty-four carat-gold, as in Goldacre, Inspector,” Havers added in case he hadn’t twigged the reference) had ostensibly looked for extramarital sexual encounters.

  “Caroline’s claimed Clare was using her name while she slinked round Dorset and regions beyond in order to do the deed with married blokes. She threw down the gauntlet and told us to take her picture and Clare’s round to these blokes if we didn’t believe her.”

  “And?” Lynley asked.

  “Winnie’s onto that. He’s still sorting these blokes’ real names and their phone numbers or their addresses. You know Winnie. He’ll wring it from the wireless universe eventually. And he reckons once he has what he needs, the magic words New Scotland Yard and murder enquiry are going to be the open sesame with these blokes.”

  “What’s your thinking on it, Sergeant?”

  “Clare’s got some interview sheets filled out for a couple of blokes,” Havers said. “And there was a book proposal I found in Rory’s desk in London—” Here Havers paused as she apparently rustled through her notebook for information. “The Power of Anonymous Adultery: Internet Encounters and the Dissolution of Family. But Caroline says there was no book being written, and I got to tell you, she might be right.”

  “Meaning?”

  “This proposal? It’s all about sex and the Internet and married geezers and birds looking for love in all the wrong places. But I can’t find any evidence of a book. Winnie and I are thinking it’s possible something else was going on.”

  “Which is?”

  “Caroline and these blokes having sex.”

  “But doesn’t that fly in the face of Caroline suggesting that you show her photo and Clare’s to these blokes? And what about the interview sheets you mentioned?”

  “Could be Clare worked out what Caroline was up to and interviewed these blokes in the afters. As to the picture bit, could be she’s bluffing. She doesn’t expect we’ll be able to find the blokes in question. She also doesn’t expect that they’ll talk to us even if we manage to find them. But, like I said, you know Winnie. This is nothing for him. Meantime, I’m trying to sort out a key I found in a drawer in Clare’s desk. A locked drawer, matter ’f fact. First I thought it was a locker key of some sort, but when I brought it into town just now—”

  “Hang on,” Lynley said. “Is Winston with you?”

  “Like I said, he’s sorting Clare’s computer.”

  Lynley knew where this could lead. He felt his jaw tightening. He said, “Barbara, weren’t your orders to remain with Winston at all times? Weren’t Winston’s orders to remain with you?”

  There was a little silence. On her end of the call, he heard a man calling out, “You missed a bit here, Patrick,” presumably someone on the Shaftesbury pavement along with Havers. She finally said, “I didn’t reckon we were supposed to be joined at the hip, Inspector.”

  “I want you working together. You were expressly told to work together.”

  “We are bloody working together. You never said we were meant to be lockstep. What’re we s’posed to be, like those bathing beauties in a pool swimming about underwater with their legs scissoring round in the air? What’re they called anyway?”

  “Don’t let’s get off the topic, Sergeant. This is precisely the way it begins with you and you know it.”

  “What begins?”

  “An interpretation of orders. Which quickly becomes a slight bending of them. Which then transforms into sidestepping police regulations. Which then finds you creating your rules as you go along. Have you any idea at all how seriously Isabelle looks at—”

  “Have you any idea at all that you sound like an hysterical . . . I don’t even know what. C’n I point out that Isabelle didn’t exactly give us a murder squad to sort this out? We got me and Winnie in Shaftesbury and you in London and mountains of clobber to sort through without a scrum of promotion-hungry DCs to help out anywhere. Winnie ’n’ me have got to be able to divide up actions. Now I can hang over his shoulder like a devoted bride to please you and Isabelle or I can get on with things, one of which is working out what this bloody key that Clare had squirreled away in her desk was used for.”

  The repetition of Superintendent Ardery’s first name was, he knew, meant to derail him, but he didn’t intend to go there. Instead he considered what the sergeant was saying. There was actually some truth to it.

  She went on, obviously recognising the advantage when she had it. “That key opens something. I need to find it. I’m on to some sort of locker in town. I’ve had a look through Clare’s house and up in her loft, but there’s no joy there. I don’t know what the hell she has inside whatever this key opens, but you and I know we got to see it. So are you willing to help me out here or should I just come back to London and return to pulling my forelock in Ardery’s direction? Has she had you in her office for a report about me yet? If not, she will. And when she does, you can tell her whatever you want, but for the moment Winnie and I are going at this best we can with limited manpower and limited resources and—”

  “For God’s sake, cease,” Lynley cut in. “Carry on as you are.” He saw Daidre at last, crossing Prince Albert Road, Arlo in his assistance dog vest and on the lead trotting along at her side. He raised his arm to wave, but she didn’t take note. She and the dog made for Primrose Hill and soon left the paved path to cross the lawn for a shortcut.

  “Ta, sir,” Havers said at her end. “What’re you on to, then?”

  “I’m going back to the hospital to talk to Rory. There’s more to her relationship with Clare Abbott than meets the eye. And Clare and Caroline were in Rory’s office in Maryle
bone prior to leaving for Cambridge, weren’t they?”

  Havers confirmed this and asked what was up.

  “Rory may have been in love with her.”

  “Bloody hell,” Barbara said. “That’s more or less what Caroline Goldacre’s claimed. I hate to think that nasty cow was right.”

  They rang off, and Lynley watched Daidre coming towards him along the rise of the land. He reflected on the entire idea of love and how kindness, pity, compassion, or simple generosity of spirit could be mistaken by someone in extremis for devotion leading to commitment. In that moment of observing Daidre and the little dog, he couldn’t help wondering if injudicious thinking on his part was at the bottom of how he interpreted Daidre’s behaviour, unable to distinguish love from what was only the kindness of a compassionate woman directed towards a man who’d had his life torn asunder.

  When she reached him, no umbrella sheltering her, he said, “I would have come directly to your office, you know. And now I’ve no umbrella to offer you.”

  “It is a bit odd,” she said, gazing round their surroundings. “Looking out of the window, I thought there was no rain. But the mist is more daunting than I expected.” She looked back at him and smiled at him fondly although he couldn’t tell how much of him she could actually see since her glasses were covered with a watery down that also beaded her sandy hair and his own. “At any rate, Arlo needed his walk and as I’ve been spending my lunch hours walking him, this is fine. And it’s lovely to see you. My heart quite leapt at the sight of you up here. I felt rather like a Victorian heroine. Tommy, that raincoat looks ancient. Wherever did you get it?”

  “My father’s,” he told her. “And I have a feeling it was his father’s before him. I’m not sure it’s effective at repelling rain any longer, but I like the look of it.”

  “It’s rather MI6-ish,” she said.