A Grave Waiting

by Jill Downie

  Moretti had read somewhere that men had two and a half times the sex drive of women, but clearly Sandy Goldstein had not been one of the female subjects of the study. At some point they had got upstairs to the bedroom, but the lasagna had not got as far as the fridge. Much later on that night he realized he had completely forgotten about his headache and his hunger.

  Ah well, he thought, in one briefly sane moment. She wasn’t a witness, or a potential suspect. She wasn’t married to anyone else. She had nothing to do with yachts, or gun-running, or MRI machines. Or murder. And it had been such a long, long time.

  Day Eight

  They were making breakfast and laughing together when the phone rang. It was wonderful to laugh with a woman with whom he had just spent the night.

  “Must you answer it?”

  “Yes, I must.”

  As he picked up the phone, Sandy Goldstein put her arms around him, and kissed his ear.

  “Guv? I think your mobile’s off.”

  It was Liz Falla. A wave of guilt washed over him, followed by anxiety. He should have checked in with her the night before, made sure everything was all right.

  “Falla? Are you okay?”

  Moretti felt Sandy Goldstein stiffen, then move away from him.

  “I’m okay, and Mrs. Machin’s okay. But there’s been another murder.”

  Moretti’s anxiety heightened. Christ, he should have moved Garth, but his annoyance with him had clouded his judgement, leaving Garth to take his chances.

  “Garth?”

  “No. I just checked in with PC Le Marchant, who was on duty overnight, and nothing happened.”

  That left one prime target, and Moretti knew who it would be.

  “Coralie Fellowes, Guv. Mrs. Evans just arrived and found her.”

  “I’ll meet you there, Falla.”

  Moretti put down the phone and turned to look at Sandy. She was not laughing anymore.

  “I know. You gotta go, right?”

  “Yes. I’ll order you a taxi to take you back to La Veile.”

  She was already in the sitting room, picking up her red coat. Moretti noticed it had a hood. Which probably made him the big, bad wolf. Certainly he was being made to feel like it.

  On his way to St. Martin, Moretti made another call to Falla.

  “Where is Melissa Machin? Still at your place?”

  “No, Guv. I thought she was safer now back with her Fort Knox security system and a police guard. Was that right?”

  “That was right.”

  “Oh, and I think we’ve got the car they used to go to Fort George, Guv. It was rented at the harbour by the crew members and returned later that afternoon. All above board and no attempt to hide. Said they wanted to take a look at some of the fortifications.”

  “They are cool, those two.”

  Moretti rang off, phoned Hospital Lane, and arranged for Garth’s wife to be taken to the airport and put on a plane to the mainland.

  Then he gave some thought to Sandy and her hostility after the phone call. She was the one who had come bearing gifts, not the least of which was herself. Surely she knew he was a policeman, she knew he was on a case, so why the animosity? Could it be it had more to do with Liz Falla than his abrupt departure? And why would that be? After all, they were not “an item.”

  Later, Moretti would wonder if he had deliberately blinded himself by thinking only about female rivalry, and not about other, more disturbing possibilities. At the time his only concern was that his night with Sandy might turn into a one-night stand, and that he would not be treated to a repeat performance. A kaleidoscopic vision of a diamond-centred tattoo flowering beneath magnificent breasts whirled dizzily through his tired mind.

  “Why did you leave her overnight?”

  Mrs. Evans, who had been sobbing uncontrollably, became indignant. She looked up at Moretti from the kitchen chair on which she sat, and fairly spat her answer back up at him. “I’ve got a home of my own, and a family of my own, and my son was sick of going over to let the dog out and walk him. He really only obeys me, and can be very uppity with other people — the dog, I mean, not my son. Though goodness knows he’s been difficult enough — my son, I mean —”

  Moretti cut her off in mid-flow. “Of course, Mrs. Evans, perfectly understandable. Now I want you to tell me exactly what happened, from the moment you walked in.”

  Mrs. Evans pulled herself together with a rolling forward and backward movement of her plump shoulders, took a sip of water from the glass on the kitchen table, a deep breath, and began. “Well, I walked Rambo and got here about eightish. Lady Fellowes is not an early riser, and I know better than to disturb her, so I got her breakfast together — well, black coffee and some toast, eats like a bird — then I heard it.”

  Mrs. Evans gulped, and looked over at the policewoman standing by the kitchen door.

  “I could do with a nice cup of tea. Steady my nerves. Tea bags are in the canister by the cooker. Milk and two sugars, love.”

  Moretti nodded at the officer, who crossed to the stove and put the kettle on.

  “Heard it, Mrs. Evans? Was someone in the house?”

  Mrs. Evans shook her head vigorously. “No, they weren’t, but I didn’t know that, not right then. Oh, I thought, she’s got visitors, bless her. She hardly ever has people come to see her, and never at that hour in the morning. Usually I’d take the tray upstairs to the bedroom, but this time I picked up the breakfast tray and went through to the sitting room. And oh my Lord, there she was, and you’ll find the tray too, where I dropped it.”

  Just as the kettle started to whistle, Mrs. Evans began moaning, and the two sounds crescendoed together in an unearthly harmony.

  “Heard what, Mrs. Evans?”

  The policewoman handed the cup of tea to the housekeeper, who took a noisy sip and looked up at Moretti. “The music, Inspector. That’s what I heard. The music.”

  SOC were already there, shrouded in their ghostly working whites, figures of death in the midst of Coralie Fellowes’s rose-lit mausoleum. Jimmy Le Poidevin was leaning over Coralie’s body, which lay on the chaise. The voluminous fringed shawl that Moretti remembered from his earlier visit was folded around her, exposing her tiny feet in stiletto-heeled shoes. As he came into the room, slipping the shoe covers by the door over his own shoes, the head of SOCO looked up.

  “Christ, you look terrible. Worse than the deceased. Thank God you’ve finally got here. We can switch the frigging music off.”

  Moretti stepped over the shards of china and slices of toast from Mrs. Evans’s breakfast tray. The spilled black coffee had created a new pattern on the carpet, ebony on rose. He pulled a pair of gloves out of their plastic package, put them on, and went over to the tape player on the ormolu-topped table near the window. How many times had the music of Coralie’s heyday played and replayed through the last night of her life? He turned the player off and removed the tape. It must have been made for her, because it had no commercial label. When he came in, it was playing something easily recognizable: Charles Trenet’s “La Mer.”

  “I’ll need to listen to this at some point.”

  “Not right now. We could all do without an encore, thanks very much.”

  Moretti joined Jimmy Le Poidevin by Coralie’s body.

  “Looks peaceful, doesn’t she?” Jimmy straightened up and groaned, holding his back.

  She did. Coralie Chancho looked as if she had lain down for a moment for a nice rest, and had gone to sleep. There was little skin discolouration, and her kohl-rimmed eyes stared back at Moretti with what looked like a touch of amusement. Even in death, her maquillage was perfect, as it had been when he and Falla first interviewed her. So that had no particular significance, because she had not been expecting them, and Mrs. Evans said she had few visitors. The makeup was for her, Coralie Chancho, and her alone.

  “Looks like a natural death, but I gather it’s not.”

  “Nope. She was smothered, probably by that.” Jimmy Le Poidevin i
ndicated an overstuffed silk cushion on the carpet near Coralie’s deathbed. “It’s red, but you can see the lipstick smear on it.”

  “You’ll check that, of course.”

  “Of course. They sent someone from the hospital when the housekeeper phoned emergency, a new young hotshot who just arrived on staff.”

  “He’s gone? Wish he could have hung around a bit longer.”

  Moretti spoke with mild irritation, and Jimmy Le Poidevin snapped back. “Wish you could have got here sooner. But your DS couldn’t get hold of you, and the hospital’s understaffed at the moment. Dr. Watt has taken sick leave, apparently. The young hotshot hinted at a nervous breakdown, which seems unlikely in Nichol’s case. That giant ego of his usually makes him bulletproof.”

  Moretti did not respond to Jimmy’s barb. He was right, of course. So, even Nichol had his breaking point, and such a collapse at this precise moment put him squarely back into the frame.

  “Does the hotshot have a name, and will he be doing the autopsy?”

  “Yes. Dr. Burton, and you’ll know more then. But he did say there’s something odd about this. She’s a frail old bird, and would have died quickly, but he’d still expect to see more signs of resistance, if not a struggle, and I agree. Natural human reaction to fight back when someone is trying to smother you.”

  “No signs of a struggle?”

  “Nothing. Nada.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Burton thought after midnight, more like the small hours of the morning, rather than earlier.”

  “Any signs of a break-in?”

  “None that we saw, but you’ll double-check that, no doubt.”

  “Was the shawl draped over her like that when you first saw her?”

  “Yup. Like she’d been laid out by the murderer. The doc moved it a bit to examine her, then replaced it.”

  Moretti looked around the room. It seemed exactly as he remembered it, with its plethora of photographs in their gilded frames.

  “Wait a minute.”

  On a low table by the window, the only photo on it was knocked over, lying on its face. Moretti straightened it up. It was one of the nude portraits, Coralie smiling with a huge feathered fan in her hands, strategically placed over her hips.

  “There’s one missing.”

  “How can you possibly tell? The place is littered with them, like mice droppings.”

  “Because I have been in this room before. Definitely one missing.”

  “A souvenir, a trophy. Quite common, isn’t it?”

  “Guv.” Liz Falla had come quietly into the room and joined him by the table. She looked across at Coralie Fellowes’ body. “Poor woman.” There was a quaver in her voice. “Not even golden lasses are spared, are they, Guv?”

  His partner’s emotional reaction took Moretti by surprise, then he remembered Falla singing with the former Folies star. “La Vie en Rose.” Almost certain to be on the tape someone had compiled for her.

  “Falla, I’m sure there’s a photo missing from this table. Of her, of course, but can you remember anything more?”

  His DS looked at him, surprised. It was not often he had to rely on her memory. Probably the head injury. He looked terrible.

  “Yes. Nude. No fan in this case, and it was signed, with some sort of message. I remember that, but I didn’t get close enough to see what it said. It had faded, after such a long time.”

  “Can I get on now?” Jimmy’s familiar plaintive cry filled the room.

  They left him and his cohorts and returned to the kitchen, where Mrs. Evans still sat, nursing her third cup of tea.

  “Oh, I know you,” she said to Liz Falla. She dabbed her eyes and mouth with a tissue, then added, “Well, I know your mum. She says you’ve got the power, but you don’t want to know about it. Be useful in her job, I said, save a lot of time, second sight would, I said —”

  Liz Falla broke into the housekeeper’s flight of fancy, her earlier emotions on seeing Coralie Fellowes nearly getting the better of her. “Solid police work and investigative techniques are what I was trained to use, Mrs. Evans, not ignorant superstition.”

  “Well, I never.” Mrs. Evans returned her empty cup noisily to its saucer.

  Smothering a wild desire to laugh, which he could only put down to lack of sleep, Moretti pulled out the chair opposite Coralie’s housekeeper and sat down.

  “Mrs. Evans, can you answer a few more questions for me?”

  “For you, yes.” A pointed glance at Moretti’s DS.

  “Was the cushion on the floor when you found Mrs. Fellowes, or did you remove it from — anywhere else?”

  Mrs. Evans shuddered. “It was on the floor beside her. I thought she was asleep at first, and I went over all cheery to wake her up. Then I saw her staring up at me, and I dropped the tray.”

  “To your knowledge, did Mrs. Fellowes have a will?”

  “Oh, yes.” Mrs. Evans perked up and beamed at Moretti. “I was one of the witnesses. Me and the gardener, Ted Priaulx. He’s always done the gardening and odd jobs for her and Colonel Fellowes. She hadn’t made a will since her husband died, she said, and she suddenly decided to make one. She’s left both me and him — Ted, that is — a nice little something for our trouble.” Mrs. Evans suddenly became flustered. “But that doesn’t mean I’d harm a hair on her head, Inspector. I’ll never be able to get another job like this one.”

  Moretti leaned across the table and touched the housekeeper’s hand, still clutched around the tissue. The gesture brought on a fresh bout of sobbing. “Of course, and I believe you, Mrs. Evans. So there were a number of bequests. Was there also a principal beneficiary?”

  “Yes, there was.” Mrs. Evans expression softened, and she started to smile. “He was so good to her, he was, really her only visitor. Made her laugh, talking about the old days. A real gentleman, not like some.”

  “And his name?”

  Mrs. Evans’s smile was warm and tender. “A real gentleman,” she repeated fondly. “Bit of a ladies’ man, I suppose you might say. Professor Ross — do you know him? Ludo, she called him. Darling Ludo, she used to say to me, my oldest, bestest friend.”

  Any wild desire to laugh instantly abandoned Moretti. He turned to see Liz Falla had moved, and was now standing next to him.

  “I need to speak to you, Guv. Urgently,” she said.

  Moretti stood up, feeling his calf muscles shake at the effort. No point in thinking about sleep. Sleep would not be knitting up his ravelled sleeve for quite a while, the way things were going.

  “When did this happen? After the Masterson murder?”

  They were on their way to Ross’s, having arranged for Mrs. Evans to be taken to the station to make a written statement, after which she had been assured she would be given a lift back to her home and to Rambo duty. Moretti had also set up a search of the property, looking for signs of a break-in, but both he and Liz knew how easily she let complete strangers into her home. Perhaps loneliness had made her open the door to her own death.

  “Yes.” Beside him in the Triumph, Liz Falla groaned. “It was when I went to see him, to ask him why he hadn’t said anything to you about that business with Mr. Machin. I got nowhere — of course. That man knows how to keep a secret, said it had nothing to do with anything, was a personal matter. But, see, I just don’t buy Ludo as some lonely hearts confidant. I was just gobsmacked when he went for me like he did. Losing control is not Ludo’s thing, is it?”

  “No.” It was a characteristic he and Ludo had in common, but it was amazing what women and sex could do with that one. “I have to ask you this, Falla. Might it not be because you —?”

  “Gave him the push? Could have been, but what he did really put any chance of that out of the window, didn’t it, and he’s one smart cookie, is Ludo.”

  “True. So he got very angry when you made certain comments about Coralie Fellowes.”

  “Yes. Got personal. Trashed me and, what’s worse, trashed my music.”

  “Y
our music?” Moretti turned to look at Liz Falla. She was looking out of the car window and he couldn’t see her face. “That’s serious stuff, and I know it’s not true. You bowled him over, Falla, so we’ve caught him out in one lie, at least.”

  “Thanks.” His DS turned back and smiled at him. Moretti returned the smile, feeling suddenly a lot better about everything, although why he was not sure.

  “Here we are. And he’s not expecting us, so watch out for those hell-hounds of his.”

  As if on cue, the two ridgebacks appeared, followed by their master. He was smiling as Moretti wound down the window.

  “I recognized the Triumph,” he said. “To what do I owe this unexpected — double — pleasure?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ludo Ross sat hunched over on his elegant red chaise, weeping.

  Not what he had expected, this collapse. Women and sex, yes. Oh, yes. But Coralie Fellowes? She had to be at least a decade older than Ludo.

  Liz Falla made a move toward the chaise as if to comfort him, but Moretti restrained her. He did not want to give Ludo any chance to recover his equilibrium.

  “You knew her well?”

  “In the old days. The very old days, when the world was young. I was still a virgin, and had the unbelievable luck to have La Chancho as my first lover.” Ludo Ross looked up and it was at Liz Falla he was looking. “Not like your generation, where sex is available à la carte from early puberty to all and sundry. I left my boarding school to do my degree, and was recruited straight into the secret service. I’d been heavily petted and that was it, until Paris and Coralie. And no guilt! Just sex. God, what a baptism. What an initiation.”

  Moretti interjected. “This was during the war?”

  “Almost.” Ross was pulling himself together. Perhaps it was a grimace, but he seemed to be smiling now. “My service really started when mushroom clouds were going up and iron curtains were coming down. But France after the war was in chaos, and it was difficult to tell at the time who were the bad guys — apart from the Germans, of course — because many had collaborated. Inevitable, when your country is taken over for five years. It happened here in Guernsey. People just want to survive. And they fall in love.”