A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  Behind her, he said, “Never mind. That was . . .” He paused as if seeking a way to describe what he was feeling, and he settled on saying, “All of a sudden I felt myself doing a werewolf thing. Only there’s no full moon and I don’t suppose I mean a werewolf anyway.”

  She turned from the window. “Whatever are you talking about?” she asked with a smile.

  “Sorry. I think I meant caveman. I grab you by the hair and drag you into my lair. I don’t think werewolves do that.”

  “Did cavemen have lairs?”

  “They had to have something else they wouldn’t be called cavemen. It’s quite odd, though, isn’t it? The primitive is always there, just beneath the surface of our civility, all those carefully cultivated social mores. One still wants to lay claim, and the claim comes down to possession. My fire, my hearth, my . . . whatever.”

  “My woman,” she finished for him. “But I don’t want to be anyone’s woman.”

  “I understand. And the truth is that I wouldn’t want you to want to be someone’s woman, even mine. It’s just that moments come when what I really want is to make definite something that can never be definite. Because, of course, nothing ever is.”

  She returned the gaze he was directing at her. She felt such a swelling within her, a real movement towards him although she wasn’t herself moving at all. She wondered at it, asking herself if this particular sort of feeling was what she’d always been meant to experience with and for a man. But she didn’t know because she had to admit to herself that part of what she felt was the desire for Nat to sweep into her life and make all of her decisions for her.

  Nat roused himself. With a nod at the photo, which Caroline had deposited on the table, he said, “This is what you’d have to look forward to, by the way. I’ll go on to tempt you with the menu for Christmas lunch later. It’s always spectacular. And of course the great gathering of the clan to hear the Speech in the afternoon. That’s always accompanied by plum pudding with massive amounts of cream.”

  She returned to him and to the table, where she picked up the photo and looked at his achingly young adolescent face. She said, “May I keep this? Somehow, the sight of your teenage self—complete with a few spots, I see—makes you seem . . . I don’t know the word.”

  “Less like a caveman? Although a caveman would have had hair, not spots, I expect.”

  She looked from the picture to him. “You’ve a lovely history behind you, don’t you? Family, love, traditions, security.”

  “For my sins,” he admitted. “I’m embarrassed to tell you that I allow my brothers’ and sisters’ children to crawl all over me. There are—God forbid—ten of them now. And counting, as my youngest sister is pregnant again.”

  “That’s very compelling.”

  “Her pregnancy?”

  “All of it.” She put the picture down and slid her arms up and around his neck. When they kissed, she let go of everything else that was eating at her mind: Caroline, Charlie, loyalty, love, guilt, and fear. Instead she allowed herself the pull of her desire for him. His arms encircled her and drew her close, and she saw his desire was a match for her own.

  The doorbell rang. As if with guilt, they jumped apart. They stared at each other, and India knew they shared the same thought: Charlie.

  Caroline was down the stairs in an instant, before India could make a move. She scurried into the sitting room where she did her bit with the curtains, calling back to them, “Another man? Goodness, aren’t you the sly one, India.”

  CAMBERWELL

  SOUTH LONDON

  Lynley had left Arlo in the car this time. It had been a long and invigorating day for the dog—at least that was how Lynley liked to think about it—and he was happy to snooze in the passenger seat of the Healey Elliott, which Lynley left just outside the house where Charlie Goldacre’s wife India apparently now lived.

  When he rang the bell, he had to do so twice. He was surprised when it was opened not by a woman who might have been married to Charlie Goldacre but rather by a man. He was tall and dark of hair, eyes, and eyebrows, and his skin suggested the need to shave more than once a day. He was wearing a suit that fitted him very well in the manner of something not off the peg, and his shirt was white and crisp, even with his tie removed and his collar unbuttoned. Physically, he was completely different from Charlie Goldacre.

  His expression was somewhere between wary and confused. Behind him stood a young woman whom Lynley recognised from the photo in her estranged husband’s flat. Behind her and just emerging from what was apparently a sitting room to the left of the entry was an older woman: far too heavy, double-chinned, a great deal of spectacular eye shadow, showy gold earrings, two necklaces, swirls of brightly designed silk fashioned into some sort of garment meant to disguise her body’s shortcomings, leggings stretched beneath. Presumably, this was Charlie’s mother.

  Lynley removed his police identification from his jacket. He introduced himself. He saw Caroline Goldacre fall back, as if with the hope of going unnoticed, which was hardly likely. He said he was there to speak with her. “I understand from Charlie that you’re in town for a few days,” he said. “If you might give me five or ten minutes?”

  Caroline said, “What’s this about?” as India said, “Of course. Come in, Inspector. I’m India Elliott. This is Nathaniel Thompson.”

  Thompson said to her, “Shall I . . . ?” and indicated the street outside with an inclination of his head.

  “No. Please stay,” India said.

  He stepped back from the door, admitting Lynley to the house as Caroline Goldacre protested with, “I’ve already spoken to the police. I don’t see what more I can possibly have to say to anyone.”

  Lynley made no reply to this. Inside the house, he saw that the sitting room wasn’t actually a sitting room but rather something of a medical suite. It contained an examining table of sorts, along with a blocked fireplace, a cabinet, and shelving being used to store equipment and filing folders. He’d seen the sign on the front window advertising acupuncture. This, then, must be where India met her patients.

  She said to him, “I’m afraid we’ll have to go to the kitchen if you don’t mind. Would you like a coffee?”

  Caroline said sharply, “India,” in a way that suggested how unacceptable to her was the other woman’s hospitality. India ignored this and led the way to the kitchen. Everyone followed.

  Lynley saw that the washing up from dinner was in progress, some crockery languishing on the draining board and some pots piled in the sink with a washing-up brush tilted down among them. It wasn’t a large room, and four people crowded it. India offered to leave him with her mother-in-law but Caroline protested. She wanted a witness, she insisted.

  Lynley wondered what she thought was going to happen, but he let it go. He had the mobile fingerprinting kit with him, and he set this on the table, saying that India’s presence or absence from the scene was no matter as he wouldn’t be there long. He told Caroline Goldacre that he’d been in Spitalfields at her son’s flat in order to—

  “How did you know I’d gone to Charlie?” Caroline demanded.

  “My colleague Barbara Havers,” he said. “She went to speak to you another time in Dorset, only to be told by your husband that you’d come up to town.”

  “Why did she want to speak to me?” Caroline had not sat at the table. Neither had anyone else. India stood near the sink and the unwashed pots, Thompson leaned against the fridge, and Caroline herself remained in the doorway, ready to fly at the least provocation, Lynley reckoned. She continued when he didn’t immediately answer, “I told you. I’ve already spoken to her. More than once. And with you as well. That was you on the phone, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.”

  “I’d only gone to Clare’s to fetch the rest of what’s mine, you know,” she said. “I tried to tell her that. I don’t understand why you lot need to have
my personal belongings. They are, after all, mine. A letter opener, an antique toast rack that I used for the post, a Sellotape dispenser that I bought because Clare couldn’t be bothered, my coffee mug, a lunch kit I’d forgotten was there. None of this can be relevant.”

  “It’s all procedure,” Lynley told her pleasantly. “Another way of clearing the deck of suspects.”

  He saw India and Thompson exchange a glance as Caroline’s voice rose on, “And what am I a suspect of?”

  “It’s awkward, of course,” Lynley said, “considering you were the last person to be with Clare Abbott before she died.”

  “Aside from whoever killed her,” Caroline pointed out. “If she was murdered at all because this whole business of something supposedly causing her heart attack . . . Your sergeant told me, by the way. And what, may I ask you, is meant to do that?”

  She spoke, Lynley thought, as if it was a personal affront to her that Clare had died. He said, “That’s why I’ve come, actually. I’m going to need your fingerprints to rule you out as a suspect. The source of the substance that caused Clare Abbott’s heart arrhythmia, seizure, and death had three sets of fingerprints on it. We’re in the process of identifying all of them.”

  “And you believe one set of them is mine.”

  “This is all normal procedure, Ms. Goldacre,” Lynley told her another time.

  “Oh please. Of course that’s what you’d say. But do you actually believe I had a reason to kill anyone?”

  “The substance in question—the poison—was found in toothpaste. We’ve learned only today that this toothpaste belonged to Clare. Since you were traveling with her when she died—”

  It was Caroline’s expression that stopped him. From pinched and annoyed, her face had altered to unmistakable shock or a very good imitation of it. He said, “What is it?”

  “Mine.” Her tone of alarm seemed genuine enough.

  “The toothpaste?”

  “Yes. Oh God.” She swayed. India moved to her. She drew out a chair from the table and told her to “Sit, Mum. Here.”

  Caroline did so. She spoke with her eyes fixed on the mobile fingerprinting device on the table. “Clare had forgotten hers. We had words. Yes, I admit we did have words because I was exhausted and she’d sworn to me that the evening wouldn’t go on past ten, but it had. Earlier, before we argued, she’d realised she’d forgotten to bring her toothpaste along to Cambridge, so I gave her mine. To borrow, not to keep. But we had a . . . a discussion and things got heated, and I left her. I locked the door between our rooms as I didn’t want to have anything more to do with her that night. She could be so overbearing and full of herself and . . . You do see what happened, don’t you? I realised later that I had no toothpaste, so I phoned down to reception for a resident’s kit or whatever they’re called. But there wasn’t one, so I went without.” She placed her hand over her ample left breast as if to pledge to the truth of what she was saying, but instead of making that pledge she said, “I feel unwell. India, dear . . . Is there water?”

  India brought her a glass of mineral water that she took from the fridge. Before drinking, Caroline examined the glass’s contents and then India’s face as if with suspicion that her daughter-in-law was about to do her in directly in front of New Scotland Yard. But she drank and said, “My heart is absolutely pounding. Give me a moment please.”

  They all watched her. Whatever she was feeling, her expression was of a woman considering the ramifications of having in her possession and then giving to another what had apparently been the means of that other’s death. She said, “You do see what happened, don’t you? I’m the only person who was ever meant to die.”

  19 OCTOBER

  THORNFORD

  DORSET

  Alastair reached Sharon’s house at seven forty, when the sun was just beginning to strike the outlying fields so that their heavy-topped grasses coruscated like diamonds as the dew that bent them was hit by the daylight. For the very first time he’d left the job of loading up the bakery’s delivery vans to his assistant and to the three drivers who’d then deliver fresh goods to his shops. But despite this, he was suffering from not a single moment of guilt. Instead his arrival at the farmhouse tucked so neatly among the terraces and cottages in Church Road felt completely natural.

  He allowed himself a mad fantasy as he approached the front door. He was a husband coming home to a wife who was waiting for him with breakfast cooking. She was a wife who’d risen at half past six to lay his place at table and who was now, even as he inserted his key in the lock, anticipating his footsteps coming along the stone floor.

  He’d phoned the moment Caroline had stormed off from Shaftesbury. He’d told her that Caroline had gone to London, and he tried not to sound anticipatory, hopeful, or anything else that might make her think he presumed. She’d said, “Has something happened, Alastair? Are you at odds with Caroline?”

  “When are we not at odds?” he said. “She’s gone to Charlie. For protection is what she said.”

  “Are you not her protection?”

  “Doesn’t seem that way.”

  “What are you meant to do now?”

  “I’m meant to be with you.”

  She’d not said anything at first, and Alastair thought he’d gone too far. In his hours alone he’d dwelt too much on a future he was daily more determined to have with her.

  Finally, she said, “But surely, she’s not gone off forever. This is just a bump in the road.”

  “I’m sick and tired of bumps in the road,” he told her.

  “I do wish I could smooth them for you, my dear.”

  He let the my dear reach into him. He could feel it touch the heart of who he was truly meant to be.

  She said, “Would you like to come to dinner, Alastair?”

  “I would.” So he’d gone to her and after they’d eaten, they went to bed. He’d risen at half past one in order to get to the bakery by two, and he was bleary-eyed because he’d slept so little because he had not wanted to sleep.

  She’d not slept either, not more than two hours. She’d come to the door with him and had sent him off with a flask of hot coffee to get him going. And now here he was, back in Thornford, where she was no doubt in bed trying to catch up on a few hours’ kip.

  He couldn’t help himself. He yearned—that was indeed the word for it—to feel her hand on the back of his neck, the lightest caress as he sat at table, waiting for the breakfast she would cook him. Or just the touch, the touch itself, no breakfast at all because it was, truthfully, only the touch that he wanted.

  He entered the house. At once, he smelled coffee. He went to the kitchen, and there he saw that two places were laid on the table with a shaft of sunlight falling upon them. At each place a half of a grapefruit glistened, and these were joined by a box of cornflakes, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar. On the work top across from the table, two slices of his bakery’s wholemeal bread were upright in the toaster, and a bowl in front of this held four eggs, companions to the half dozen or more rashers of bacon that lay neatly in a pan on the hob.

  It was like an advert for marital bliss. The blessed woman meant to cook him breakfast, but he decided he would set about it himself and surprise her with a tray brought to her bedside.

  He broke the eggs into the bowl and went for the rubbish to toss the shells. That was when he saw her through the window, up and about already and fully dressed for the day. She was sitting beneath the laburnum tree in one of the two colourful lawn chairs. It was leafless now—that elegant tree, so long safely unplanted till her children were older—and it wept its thin and deadly brown pods onto the lawn beneath it. Sharon was fingering one of these pods as she looked beyond her garden and out into the fields of the farm behind it where the sheep were grazing.

  He was surprised to see her at repose like this, so clearly thoughtful and dwelling on something that he could
only hope was himself. In the times they’d been together, she’d always been at work: sewing a button onto his shirt, ironing table napkins worn thin with age, folding laundry, cutting spent flowers from the herbaceous border that fringed the lawn and formed an undulating motley against the house. She still wrote letters, and when her chores were done, she sat at a narrow secretaire in the sitting room and penned them in her neat handwriting to her children. No email for her, she told him. A letter lasts, she explained. A letter could be saved, collected, and bound with a ribbon to send onward to the next generation. An email could not. True, one had to wait for a letter, but she was a patient woman, and she’d taught her two children to be likewise. One has to learn to wait for what’s important, she explained.

  Perhaps, he thought now, that was what she was doing outside in the morning light. Not thinking or dwelling at all. Merely waiting for what was coming.

  Since she did not know he was in her house, he continued to watch her. He was taken with how the morning sunlight struck her hair. Caroline called it mousy, he recalled. Thin and baby fine and straight and “You can hardly call it hair at all,” she’d scoffed, but he could see in this light that blonde worked its way through it in strands so subtle that you wouldn’t notice them if you were not looking.

  She seemed to realise that she was being observed, for she turned in her chair and at that point he knocked upon the window. She didn’t look at all surprised to see him, but her expression did seem pleased. She got to her feet and came across the lawn in his direction, tossing the laburnum pod to one side and running her fingers back through her hair as if to neaten it. She wore her gardening clogs, he saw, the bright red of them a pleasing contrast to the equally bright green of the lawn. He heard them hit the back step with a thunk as she removed them, and then the door opened and she was with him.

  He’d turned the burner on beneath the bacon, and he’d lowered the bread into the toaster. She saw this and said, “I’m meant to be doing that for you,” to which he replied, “How’d you know I’d be back?”