Wicked Beauty

by Susan Lewis

  Just after he rang off the sound of female laughter told him that the evening’s light entertainment had arrived, so downing the rest of his vodka he went back out to the bar for a refill. He had no personal interest in the kind of girls that were brought in for these parties, but he was always fascinated by how loose-lipped the men became in their presence, which was why he was staying around. If any more was going to be said, or surmised, about Katherine Sumner, or anything else come to that, he wanted to hear it.

  ‘Monsieur Matisse,’ a voice behind him said, as he recharged his glass.

  He turned to find himself staring into the direct, inquisitive gaze of Dr Bombola himself, whose official role in the world was that of visiting lecturer at several prominent European and American universities on the subject of international trade and finance in developing countries. Unofficially he was head of the Demand Section of the Phraxos Special Project.

  ‘I can’t say parties are really my cup of tea,’ Bombola remarked, in the deep, chocolatey tones that revealed his predominantly British education, ‘so I was hoping you might consider joining me for dinner. Just the two of us. I think you’ll find we have a lot to discuss.’ He smiled, charmingly. ‘Should I continue to call you Matisse, by the way? Or would you prefer I use your real name?’

  Surprise caused his eyebrows to arch. ‘Do you know it?’ he said.

  Bombola smiled again, this time showing a few gold teeth that glinted amongst his pristine white ones. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘It’s no secret, is it?’

  He shook his head.

  Bombola’s eyes were almost overpowering in their intensity. ‘But I’m rather entertained by your friend’s artful use of pseudonyms, so perhaps I’ll stay with Matisse,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Henri, please,’ he insisted, and after catching Rudy’s eye across the room, he returned his full glass to the bar and allowed the good professor to lead him away.

  Chapter 7

  AFTER JUST TWENTY-FOUR hours of being in Cornwall there was a softness, almost a glow, to Rachel’s skin that had been absent since even before Tim died, for the early stages of pregnancy and the strain of the campaign had seemed to dull the inner radiance that gave her her own kind of beauty. But now, being in a place she loved, surrounded by the stirring splendour of the cliffs and moors and the soothing rhythm of the waves, the natural blush was returning to her dusky cheeks, and a warm light was showing in her eyes, despite the sheer awfulness of being here without Tim.

  It was late in the afternoon, and she and Anna were pottering about in the small garden at the front of the cottage, clearing weeds from the flowerbeds that hugged the whitewashed stone walls, and mowing the overgrown lawn, while Jake, a local handyman, repaired the mesh that protected the thatched roof from the birds. Hers was one of the two cottages that sat high up on the headland, and looked down on the secluded cove of Killian, where the village nestled quaintly in the deep U of the bay, and fishing boats cluttered the tiny pebble beach. From where she was standing now, she could see the narrow road that descended into the cove, snaking steeply down the rugged hillside to loop like a giant horseshoe around Killian’s sprinkling of stone cottages, before making an ascent on the other side to the closest village, three miles away. At that moment she was absently watching a tractor as it chugged down the hill, following its progress round past the Killian Arms and the winch house, towards the beach, where several fishermen in rubber boots and oilskins were working on their boats and smoking the roll-ups they never seemed to be without. She was too far distant to make out their faces, but guessed that she’d probably know them all, if not by name, then certainly by sight.

  Her eye was caught then by a lone figure, emerging from between the two cottages that were perched out on the todden, which was what the locals called the small outcrop of rock that divided the mouth of the bay like an uvula, with a tiny, black sand beach on the far side, invisible from where she was, that was used for bathing and swimming during the hot summer months.

  ‘Isn’t that Nick, Beanie’s nephew?’ she said, shading her eyes from the sun.

  Anna winced as she stood straight. ‘Looks like him,’ she replied. ‘But it’s hard to tell from here.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ Rachel said, and waved just in case.

  ‘Must be someone else,’ Anna chuckled, when the man continued strolling out to the end of the todden and didn’t wave back.

  Surprised that she was wrong, Rachel went to sit on the low, stone wall that paralleled the grassy footpath outside and provided some small privacy for her and Beanie’s cottages. Looking back at her own, with its mullioned windows and white lattice porch draped in wisteria and roses, she felt her heart twist with longing. There wasn’t a single inch of this place that didn’t bring back at least a dozen memories, so just how easy it was going to be staying here, after Anna had gone, she could hardly dare think about. But as difficult as she knew it would be, now she was here, the mere thought of London, and all it had come to represent, was enough to make her shrink from the idea of ever going back again, never mind any time soon.

  Inhaling deeply the warm, salt-tinged air she turned to gaze out at the sea. ‘Do you know what I find so special about this place?’ she said to Anna. ‘Its separateness from everywhere else. Even from Roon Moor. The world as we know it seems to end up there, doesn’t it? It’s as if we’ve tipped off the edge of Dante’s Inferno and come to rest in this lovely little cove, that sits here basking in its own sea of tranquillity, so real and uncomplicated and … I don’t know, resistant, I suppose, to any kind of change, other than in the little ways that suit it.’

  ‘Mm,’ Anna responded, smiling. ‘It is special, isn’t it?’ Then with mischief in her eyes she added, ‘And here comes something else that makes it so. Beanie and her decadent teas.’

  Smiling, Rachel turned to watch the stout little woman with soft grey curls and the warmest sky blue eyes coming up the footpath towards them. ‘Here, let me,’ she said, reaching out to take the overloaded tray from Beanie’s hands.

  ‘Careful, it’s heavy,’ Beanie warned. Then satisfied that Rachel had it, she plonked herself down on the wall and swung her legs over.

  ‘This could do with a lick of paint,’ she commented, eyeing the rickety iron table Rachel was putting the tray on. ‘Jake can do it tomorrow.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Rachel demanded, peering into the milk jug.

  ‘Whisky,’ Beanie responded, as though it were the most natural ingredient for a milk jug. ‘Just in case anyone fancies a drop. You still there,’ she called out to Jake, up on the roof. ‘There’s some tea down here, if you want some. Fresh crab sandwiches too. Got the crab from your dad, this morning.’

  ‘Mmm, heaven,’ Anna murmured, catching a whiff of the alcohol as she came over to join them.

  ‘Half tea, half Scottish milk for me,’ Beanie said, waggling her eyebrows at Anna as Rachel picked up the teapot. ‘It’s gone half-past four, so it’s all right,’ she assured her.

  ‘I thought it was supposed to be half-past five,’ Anna grinned.

  ‘That’s according to you foreigners,’ she retorted. ‘You’re in Killian now, and you know what they say – when in Killian, do as the Killians do, which is make it up as you go along.’

  Anna burst out laughing. ‘Then half tea, half Scottish milk for me too,’ she said to Rachel.

  ‘Is there any of the cow variety for those of us undergoing forced abstinence?’ Rachel demanded, searching the small flowery pots and plates.

  ‘Just a drop, in the bottom of one of the cups,’ Beanie told her. ‘That one’s yours, and you don’t want to go spilling it now, or the fairies’ll be moving in, and you know what that means.’

  Rachel slanted her a look, which made the old lady chuckle with delight.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I don’t know, and nor does she,’ Rachel answered. ‘She makes it up as she goes along.’

  ‘Oi! Bean! Stand on the bottom of the ladder, w
ill you?’ Jake shouted down.

  Beanie immediately went to balance on the first rung, then gripped the sides as though some unearthly force was about to swing her off into orbit. ‘I been baking today,’ she told him, as his bandy legs began their descent, ‘so there’s a nice bit of herring pie for you to take home to your dad. He’s partial to a bit of herring, is Jake’s dad,’ she informed Rachel and Anna.

  ‘Partial to you, more like,’ Jake told her, chucking her under the chin as he reached the bottom. ‘And who can blame him, you little cupcake, you.’

  ‘You behave, young man,’ she chided, her eyes glowing with pleasure. ‘I’m too old for all that. Or I will be by the time your old dad gets round to anything,’ she added, with a bawdy wink at Rachel and Anna.

  ‘He’s working up to it,’ Jake assured her, making a beeline for the sandwiches.

  Rachel was laughing, but as she picked up a sandwich too, a wave of memory intruded on the moment and swept her appetite away.

  Noticing her put the sandwich back, Beanie said, ‘I’ve got some nice red mullet for your tea, which you can have with the new potatoes I picked from my garden and the green beans I got from yours. Nice and healthy for the baby.’

  Rachel rolled her eyes and shook her head. ‘You don’t have to go to all that trouble,’ she scolded gently. ‘We should be cooking for you.’

  ‘Oh, no thanks,’ Beanie said, starting with alarm. ‘Not one of your strong points, cooking, as I recall. Don’t know about Anna, though. Are you any good?’

  ‘Not a patch on you,’ Anna replied. ‘But I’m Delia compared to her.’

  Sticking her nose in the air, Rachel turned to Jake whose quirkily elfin features were so mobile in their munching that they made her smile. ‘Are you going to have whisky in your tea?’ she asked, as his dirty fist reached for several more crab and cucumber triangles.

  ‘Got any rum?’ he replied, his words mumbled by the food.

  ‘There should be some,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’

  As she disappeared round the side of the house to go in through the kitchen, Beanie’s four-year-old black Labrador came sailing over the knobbly stone wall to join them.

  ‘Oh, woke up at last, have you?’ Beanie said hoitily, as the excited beast made straight for Anna.

  ‘Romie!’ Anna cried, grabbing the dog’s face and ruffling her up. ‘You smelt the sandwiches, you greedy old thing?’

  Wolfing down a crust, Romie took off to greet Jake. ‘Cor blimey, Rome!’ he grunted, as she landed her front paws dangerously close to his tenderest parts. ‘Haven’t you grown out of that yet?’

  Her answer was to give him a thorough licking, before going off in search of Rachel.

  ‘Oh, there’s our Nick over on the todden,’ Beanie declared, starting to wave. ‘What’s he doing, wandering about by himself? Wonder if he wants some tea?’

  Anna watched in surprise as Nick waved back. So it was him. Of course there was a good chance he hadn’t spotted Rachel waving just now, so taking umbrage at his failure to respond might be out of place. However, she couldn’t ignore the fact that there had been other incidents like it since they’d arrived, with people seeming to go out of their way to avoid them, or barely muttering a reply when they said hello. It saddened her to think it, but she guessed the wariness stemmed from a general awkwardness with the nature of Rachel’s bereavement, for it was hard to know what to say to grieving relatives when the death was normal, so when it was as shocking and scandalous as murder, it wasn’t really surprising that people found themselves at a total loss how to handle it.

  Helping herself to another sandwich, she smiled, and laughed as Beanie took a noisy slurp from her teacup then put her head back and declared, ‘Nectar,’ to anyone who might be passing overhead. What a blessing Beanie was at this time, Anna was thinking, so practical, and motherly and wise, yet mischievous and eccentric too. She had one of the most beautiful auras Anna had ever sensed in another human being, for there were times when she emanated such a soothing inner calm that it was hard to imagine anything ever going wrong around her. And then there were other times when her sense of merriment, or of the absurd, was so hilariously enchanting that it seemed as though nothing ever had a right to be anything but fun.

  With a pang Anna realized how very much she’d like to spend some time with Beanie now, to have her own anxieties smoothed over by the old lady’s gentle perspicacity, but Rachel’s need was much greater, and besides, Robert’s difficult spell would probably pass soon anyway. She just wished she hadn’t had to come away the very day after the disastrous dinner party on Saturday night, when Robert had been so embarrassingly rude to Stacey that Anna had called her early the next morning to apologize. In typical Stacey fashion, she’d merely laughed, and assured her that she hadn’t taken it personally; she understood that he was under pressure and sometimes things didn’t come out quite the way one intended.

  Well, Anna didn’t know about that, but she did know that Robert certainly hadn’t deserved the enthusiasm that both Stacey and Ernesto Gomez had shown for the joint art and poetry exhibition, when he’d all but ridiculed their interest from the moment they’d shown it. And even now, she could feel herself cringing at the way he’d scorned Ernesto’s suggestion that Stacey should be the model. It was almost as if he was trying to sabotage the project before it began, though that hardly made any sense, when she knew very well that he was all for it.

  Taking another sip of her nicely potent tea, she glanced at her watch and saw that it was still too early to ring him yet, but the children would be expecting a call any minute, so she’d just wait until Rachel returned with the rum then go inside to use the phone. Come to think of it, Rachel had been gone rather a long time. Maybe she should pop in to check she was all right. But before she could even put her cup down Rachel came round the corner of the house holding up a half-bottle of rum.

  ‘I knew we had some somewhere,’ she declared, as she handed it to Jake. ‘Take as much as you like.’

  Despite the sunniness of her smile, it was plain to them all that she’d been crying, and Anna’s heart went out to her.

  ‘So when’s this famous reporter supposed to be coming?’ Beanie demanded, pouring more tea from the teacosied pot into Rachel’s cup.

  ‘The day after tomorrow,’ Rachel answered. ‘Which reminds me, we should book her a room at the pub.’

  ‘We’ll do it when we go down after dinner, or tea, as Beanie likes to call it,’ Anna replied, teasingly.

  ‘What reporter’s that?’ Jake said, his hand pausing en route to another batch of sandwiches.

  ‘Her name’s Laurie Forbes,’ Rachel told him.

  He frowned. ‘What’s she coming here for?’ he asked.

  Rachel was about to answer when Anna said, ‘She’s coming to write all about you, Jake Tucker. She’s going to expose all your naughty little secrets to the world at large, so you’d better watch out.’

  Jake’s face was turning red. ‘I got nothing to hide,’ he told her gruffly.

  ‘Pppfff!’ Beanie snorted. ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide then I got nothing up here,’ she told him, tapping her head.

  ‘Then, it’s like I said, I got nothing to hide,’ he responded, guffawing at his own joke.

  As they laughed, the phone started to ring inside the house, and Rachel’s heart seemed to fold in on itself as Anna jumped up, because of course, it would be for her. For one awful moment she thought the grief was going to rise up and claim her again, but mercifully she managed to hold it back, though what she really wanted to do was sink to the ground and sob with despair, or worse, hurl herself down over the cliff onto the rocks below and into the sea.

  ‘Rachel! It’s Lucy for you,’ Anna called out through the window.

  Surprised, for she’d only spoken to Lucy an hour ago, Rachel finished her tea and got up. ‘Did she say what it’s about?’ she asked Anna, as they passed in the kitchen.

  ‘No,’ Anna answered.

&n
bsp; Hoping it wasn’t going to be yet another irritating insurance glitch, Rachel descended the single step under the arch into the sitting room, and went over to the TV table to pick up the phone. ‘Luce?’ she said, wishing she could stop herself expecting the worst every time Lucy rang. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Lucy’s rhythmic Australian voice replied. ‘There’s a message on the machine. It must have come in while I was down in the flat … I think you should hear it.’

  Rachel’s heart was already filling up with dread. ‘Who’s it from?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. You need to listen.’

  A moment later another voice came down the line. ‘Mrs Hendon?’ it began, and her insides turned to ice, for the accent was unmistakably foreign. ‘Your husband has a certain sum of money that I’m afraid does not belong to him,’ the caller informed her. ‘We would please like you to return it. You will receive instructions through the mail in the next day or two, telling you what to do. Please follow them exactly.’

  Rachel’s thoughts were in chaos as she heard the sound of the line disconnecting, then a beep to signal the end of the message.

  ‘Did you get it?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered weakly. Quickly pulling herself together, she said, ‘Has anyone called since? Can you dial 1471?’

  ‘I’ve already tried,’ Lucy told her. ‘It didn’t work.’

  Rachel put a hand to her head, trying to think what to do. ‘Play it again,’ she said. ‘I need to hear it again.’

  Dutifully Lucy reran the message. By the time it finished Rachel felt more agitated than ever, for there was something different about it, something that didn’t quite fit with the other calls.

  ‘Should I erase it?’ Lucy said.

  ‘No! No, keep it for now, but don’t let anyone else hear it, OK?’