Beau Death

by Peter Lovesey

  “Was the house your own design?”

  “Ed’s, you mean? Yes. We had our usual long-suffering architect who put up with me and my maddening changes of mind. He’s already at work on our next property.”

  “Won’t you be staying here?”

  “Georgie, we’re forever on the move. I don’t think we’ve had more than five years in one place all our married life. Ed’s a nomad.”

  A rich one, Georgina thought. “Are your houses always modern in style?”

  “Without exception. We’re currently on a steel and glass kick, as you see. He adores glass. I can put up with living in a goldfish bowl, especially as we’re in the middle of nowhere, but some of my clients are uncomfortable with it.”

  “You’re in business? I didn’t realise.”

  “Wasn’t it on the card I gave you? I wouldn’t call it business. More like a service for ladies of a certain age. Holistic beauty treatments. Massage is a vital part of it so the glass walls aren’t ideal. I had to have blinds installed. Are you feeling chilly?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “You drew your arms across your chest.”

  “It’s the thought of being massaged in front of an open window.”

  “Exactly the point I was making.”

  “And do you do facials?”

  “Much else besides. Botox, dermal fillers, hair removal. Our lovely city has more than its share of rich ladies wishing they were prettier than they are. You know the old saying: time is a great healer and a lousy beautician.”

  “But how satisfying to be in a job that leaves people feeling better about themselves.”

  “Charming thought. What do you do for a living, Georgie?”

  Georgina didn’t hold back this time. She’d already decided to be truthful. She wasn’t ashamed of her job. It was just the other evening after the G&Ts that she’d chosen to be secretive. “I’m a rather senior police officer.”

  “Ooh. How senior? Stripes on your sleeve?”

  “No stripes.”

  “Crowns?”

  “A silver wreath with crossed tipstaves.”

  “God help us. You must be the chief cop.”

  “Almost.”

  “Well, paint me green and call me a cucumber. I never thought I’d have anyone as high-powered as you sitting on my patio. Do you ride a horse?”

  “That isn’t necessary. I’m behind a desk most of the time seeing that things run smoothly.”

  “I bet they do with a woman in charge. I must tell Ed. He gets worried reading in the Chronicle about crimes in Bath. We’ll both sleep easier now we’ve met you.”

  “I’d rather you told him later, after I’ve gone,” Georgina said. “Most men seem intimidated when I tell them what I do.”

  In another fifteen minutes darkness was descending and the moon was up, reflected in stepped bars down the centre of the pool.

  “It’s so lovely.”

  “Sometimes I sit here in the evening and the bats put on an aerobatic display for me. I don’t know whether they’ll treat us tonight.”

  Georgina gazed upwards and tried not to see bats. They gave her the creeps, but she wouldn’t be saying so to her titled friend.

  “Oh Himmel,” Sally said. “There they go again.”

  “The bats?”

  “The fireworks. Didn’t you hear? It’s too much, every night this week. I’m told it’s some sort of competition and Bath ought to be proud of staging it, but I can’t agree. You heard that one, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, I did,” Georgina said. “Ooooh.”

  An amazing eruption of light spread across the sky and lit up the pool. Plumes of gold and silver sparks soared and tipped in wonderful parabolas mirrored in the water.

  “Exciting.”

  “Not for me,” Sally said. “We’ll see no bats tonight. Stay here and watch if you want. I’m going indoors.”

  Georgina felt she had no other option than to follow.

  They got up and moved towards the floodlit house. To Georgina’s eye, the ultra-modern building was a monstrosity, a three-storey structure with a twist, thrust into the hillside like a massive corkscrew and completely out of sympathy with the natural contours of the Charlcombe valley. Enormous sheets of reinforced glass formed the walls. Bright red exterior steel staircases to some of the rooms gave the ultimate lie to any concept of symmetry. It could have been a giant pylon after an earthquake.

  At the top of the main staircase, Sally said, “I know what you’re thinking about the house. Everyone thinks the same when they visit. Personally, I’d be willing to live in the lodge, which is altogether more humble and homely, but Spearman is installed there with his wife and son so I can’t. No matter. Tell Ed this aberration gets your juices going and he’ll be in ecstasy.”

  Georgina had no intention of telling Ed any such thing. Ed in ecstasy wasn’t a prospect she wished to experience. But Sally was stimulating company, outspoken and so disarming. You would never have known she was Lady Sally.

  “Believe me, Ed’s going to be impressed by you. He’s really turned on by powerful women. Be sure to keep out of the bedroom when he shows you round the house.”

  Georgina nearly choked on a nut she was chewing.

  “Joke,” Sally said. “He’s a pussycat really, whatever may be going on inside his head. Now that I’ve given him this build-up, I mustn’t keep you in suspense any longer. Shall we join him?”

  Their steps echoed on white oak floorboards. They were in a large living room, larger than it appeared through the glass outside. The leather sofa looked so low that Georgina wondered if she’d ever be able to get up from it. Otherwise the room was sparsely furnished with matching armchairs, low tables and bowls of flowers that may have been silk but so well made you would scarcely have known.

  “Take a seat and I’ll see if the master of the house is respectable,” Sally said. “He’s been having a nap.”

  In as dignified a fashion as she could, Georgina lowered herself into the sofa and pulled the hem of her skirt over her knees. Left alone, she decided on a strategy for meeting Ed. Better not talk about architecture. She’d be at odds with him there. It would be hypocritical, not to say dangerous, to give the impression she liked the steel and glass. The Beau Nash Society ought to be a safer topic. She’d learned things about the real Beau Nash in recent days.

  If she survived this test, her next meeting with Peter Diamond would be something to relish when she tossed in the titbit that she’d recently visited the current Beau. The look on that seen-it-all-and-bought-the-T-shirt face would be priceless.

  The boards creaked again. More than one person for sure. Every move in this house was telegraphed.

  “Don’t get up, Georgie,” Sally said. “No need to stand on ceremony. You two have met already.”

  The barrel-shaped man with her was in a white bathrobe and leather flip-flops and festooned with gold jewellery. He grinned and raised a limp hand in the way Roman emperors do in films. At a guess he was fifteen to twenty years older than Sally, but the face, being pudgy, was well preserved—probably improved by Sally’s anti-wrinkle treatment. He was completely hairless except for a triangle of white fuzz on his chest showing above the bathrobe.

  Without being asked, Sally helped lower her husband into one of the chairs. “So,” he said to Georgina, “you’re a cop.”

  “A top cop,” Sally said.

  “Funny we haven’t met before at some civic bunfight,” Ed said. “Don’t you have to do the glad-handing like me?”

  “Not much,” Georgina said. “I’m overseeing operations mostly.” She shifted the interest away from herself in a way she thought rather neat. “But as president of the Beau Nash Society you must know just about everyone of importance in the county.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Little me.” Sally
had spoken from across the room where she was gazing out at the fringes of the city, ribbons of light linking building developments very likely put there by her husband’s company. “Someone needed to explain why you were wearing your Beau costume.”

  “When was this?”

  “In the car the night before last, when we gave Georgie a lift.”

  Ed looked blank. “I can’t remember fuck about the night before last.”

  “Honey,” Sally said with a click of her tongue.

  “It’s a fact.”

  “I wish I could say you were tired and emotional but it wouldn’t be true. You were paralytic.”

  “Take a word of advice from a man who knows,” he said to Georgina. “Never drink anyone else’s homemade wine. Do you know anything about Beau Nash, Georgie?”

  “The basics,” Georgina said. She was already resigned to being addressed as Georgie in this house, but she would make damn sure nobody at work ever took such a liberty. “I’ve lived here long enough to call myself a Bathonian and as he was our most famous son it’s splendid that you keep his name alive.”

  “Famous son, my arse.”

  Sally shot him down. “Ed, that was uncalled for.”

  “But true. He was a Taffy, born in Swansea and raised on leeks and seaweed.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Laverbread is made from seaweed.”

  Good thing he didn’t know Georgina’s idea of happiness was visiting Wales. She would keep that to herself.

  “There’s worse I could say about the Taffies.”

  Sally said, “And we don’t wish to hear it.”

  “I’m not wearing the costume now. I can say what I like in my own gaff. I’ll tell you this for nothing, Georgie. After the best part of twenty years being the Beau, I’ve honoured the old poser long enough. I’ve learned the dances, worn the wig, played the card games, rolled the dice, eaten the food and listened to more bum-numbing lectures than Einstein ever did and now I deserve a break. I’m a builder ferchrisssake. What am I doing poncing about in a frock coat?”

  “It’s the honour,” Sally said. “They respect you.”

  “They did at the beginning. The glamour fades.”

  Georgina wasn’t sure how to proceed. She hadn’t expected this tirade.

  “How did you get involved?” she asked.

  “When I was thinking about expanding into restoration work, doing up old buildings, I went to this slide lecture in the Guildhall. Got chatting to the geezer in the next seat and it turned out he was from the Beau Nash Society. He’s dead now. Anyway, he asked me to be his guest at the annual dinner and ball and I thought it would be a bit of a laugh so I agreed. Forgot about it until a card with a gold edge arrived and I found out what I’d let myself in for, like hiring a costume and learning to dance before I even got to the dinner. This was before I met Sally. Blow me if I didn’t enjoy myself. Took to the dancing lessons like a duck to water.”

  Sally said, “The fact that several gorgeous young women were learning with him had nothing to do with it.”

  “Minuets, cotillions, you name it. Looking at me, Georgie, you may not think so, but I’m light on my feet. Twinkle-toes. I can chassée with the best.”

  Certainly it took some believing.

  “To cut the story short, they took to me in a big way at the ball and persuaded me to join. Inside three months I got my own tailor-made coat and breeches. That’s another story, the fittings—”

  “Oh for God’s sake, get on with it,” Sally said.

  “I’m getting there. Next thing was the Beau dropped dead. Professor from the university. He hadn’t been in the position long. Overwork, they said. A case of high Beau pressure, I say.”

  “Give us a break,” Sally said.

  “Nobody wanted the job and for a while it looked like the society might fold. So they asked me. I wasn’t keen at the time. I’m not a Nash scholar. Then the bait was offered. Lunch with the lord lieutenant and stuff like that, useful contacts for my corporate empire, so I took it on. And if I say so myself, I’ve done them proud, unselfishly giving my time to the cause for no reward.”

  “Apart from all the extra contracts,” Sally said.

  “Such as?”

  “Kelston, Norton St. Philip, Westbury.”

  “We put in our bids in the usual way.”

  “And always came out the winner. How strange.”

  “You extended well beyond Bath?” Georgina said, to put a stop to the bickering. It was making her nervous.

  “No scope for development in this city,” Ed said. “Wherever you turn there are preservation orders.”

  “Ed’s company only takes on large-scale projects,” Sally said. “Anything under five hundred houses doesn’t interest them.”

  “Between ourselves, house building isn’t the way to go any more,” Ed said. “Too much government interference. I told them what they can do with their affordable housing. We take on big commercial builds.”

  “Police stations?” Georgina said on a sudden impulse.

  “What?”

  They both stared at her.

  “We were forced to sell our building in Manvers Street.”

  “To the university. I know about that,” Ed said.

  “And since then we’ve been moved from pillar to post. We have to lease buildings. We’re currently in Concorde House, out at Emersons Green, and the lease runs out in a few years. A new purpose-built police station would be wonderful.”

  “For you, maybe,” Ed said.

  “For the community.”

  “Stuff that.”

  “Ed does a lot for the community already,” Sally said. She was clearly used to smoothing the way when her husband came out with such putdowns. “New supermarkets make a difference to people’s lives. He builds schools. A church once.”

  The mention of supermarkets had triggered something in Georgina’s brain. “You wouldn’t be speaking about the site at Twerton, by any chance?”

  “Twerton?” Ed said. “No, that’s one of my rivals. He’s a cheapskate. Did you read in the paper about the skeleton? They were using a wrecking ball, would you believe? Everyone uses hydraulic excavators these days. If they’d brought one in for the demolition the damned skeleton would never have been found and I’d have been saved no end of grief.”

  “Grief? Why?”

  “The Beau Nash suit and Y-fronts. Guess who’s known for wearing both. Old flames I hadn’t heard from for years got in touch to see if I was dead. My ex told her solicitor to put in a claim for a slice of my estate.”

  “The whole thing was weird,” Sally said. “Are you any closer to knowing who the man was?”

  “We have some ideas about his age and appearance, but it’s still a mystery,” Georgina said. “It may be one of those cases that never gets solved.”

  “He was murdered, wasn’t he?” Ed said.

  “Apparently, and I have our top detective working on it.”

  “He hasn’t spoken to me.”

  “If you can throw any light, I’m sure he’d be only too pleased to meet you.”

  “When did the murder happen?”

  “Anything up to twenty-five years ago going by the style of the victim’s underwear.”

  “Too far back. I didn’t join the society until 2000. I’m the millennium Beau. I can’t tell you much about what happened before then.”

  “Professor Plum,” Sally said.

  “Is that a joke?” Georgina asked.

  “Only between Ed and me,” Sally said. “Silly private joke. He was the previous Beau, the one Ed took over from. Professor Orville Duff. You must have heard of plum duff.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “Well, he isn’t your skeleton, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ed said. “He was cre
mated. I went to the funeral along with most of the society. One of them spoke the eulogy and we all went back for a drink to his memory at the Garrick’s Head, our favourite watering place. You know why?”

  “I can’t say I do.”

  “It was where the Beau lived. The real Beau. The original.”

  “I see. And who was the president before Professor Duff?”

  “Offhand, I couldn’t tell you. Before my time. I could find out. Some of our older members were around then.”

  “Ideally, my SIO should speak to them. I’m sure Detective Superintendent Diamond would find it helpful.”

  “Send him along. We have a meeting a week Wednesday in our rooms in the Circus. I’ll introduce him to the old-timers.”

  “What a good idea. We’ll certainly take you up on it.” Then she had another thought, a rather subversive one. “But don’t you insist on eighteenth-century costume?”

  “For the meeting, yes. It’s one of the rules.”

  Georgina tried to picture Diamond in lace and satin. “And if there’s one thing Beau Nash demanded it was observance of the rules.”

  “Silly arse, yes. Listen, Georgie, there’s no need for your fellow to dress up. He can catch us after we finish.”

  “But if he wants to see you in session?”

  “That’s another thing. He can come as my guest.”

  “But not in a lounge suit?”

  “For that, he’ll need to hire the kit.”

  15

  A voice from behind said, “D’you mind, dude?”

  Diamond swung around. He was about to step into Georgina’s office next morning to ask her to authorise the dig at the Twerton site. No one in Bath Central had ever called him “dude.”

  He was looking at a young man who was clearly not police. Hair to his shoulders, white bucket hat covered in badges. Black T-shirt with the word FIXER across it in yellow, faded blue jeans and trainers.

  “Talking to me?” Diamond said.

  “I need two minutes, max.” He winked. “Pig of a day coming up.”

  You couldn’t say he was charming or persuasive, but something about the wink and the voice caused Diamond to shrug and say, “Go ahead then.”