by Janet Brons
Yes, it had made him bitter, not that he would have used that word. He retained enough faith in people—not suspects, of course, but regular people—to give them the benefit of the doubt, for a while at least. Five minutes anyway. When faith proved justified, he was as loyal a friend or lover as any. But if it did not, he turned away and never looked back. Hay remembered imperfectly a quotation from Pride and Prejudice, from Darcy, to the effect that his good opinion once lost was lost forever. He knew that this had come back to mock Darcy, but it was a damn good motto nonetheless.
Hay knew that he had become increasingly suspicious over the years, and inclined toward waspishness. He was happy enough to carry a grudge and felt no compulsion to apologize for it. He had become angrier, too, in recent years. Less able to suffer fools at all, let alone gladly, and his definition of fools had become wider. He was saddened by this but seemed incapable of reversing it. And perhaps, he thought, he didn’t want to; perhaps it was time he grew up.
Dr. Julian Cox, co-founder of Eco-Action, ushered Ouellette and Wilkins into the sitting room of his cluttered apartment. “I suppose I’ve been expecting you,” he said, once settled into the depths of his armchair.
The apartment didn’t look as though it was expecting anyone. Newspapers, books, and magazines littered every surface, and papers were heaped haphazardly on the floors. One wall was stacked almost to the ceiling with yellowing documents, and there was an unpleasant odor, both sour and sweet, in the room. Amid the disorder, a few struggling houseplants vied for sunlight. A tabby cat leaped from a pile of newsprint onto the arm of Cox’s chair and stared balefully at the visitors. Wilkins hoped that his allergies wouldn’t flare up. He didn’t like cats anyway, found them somewhat sinister and disconcertingly boneless.
Another wall made a convenient bulletin board to which posters, pamphlets, and bulletins were carelessly affixed with great swathes of masking tape. A baby seal, eyes black and suffering, stared silently at the newcomers from an anti-sealing poster. SAVE THE PLANIT!! exclaimed a great green-and-black banner strung across one of the longer walls.
“My daughter,” explained Cox, following Ouellette’s gaze. “She was only five when she did that. Lives with her mother now, of course.”
“Why were you expecting us, sir?” asked Wilkins.
“It’s in all the papers, isn’t it? And I saw Natalie Guévin Thursday afternoon. Stands to reason. Care for a coffee?”
Wilkins shook his head, stifling a grimace. “What did you want to see Miss Guévin about, Dr. Cox?”
Cox tapped his pipe against the heel of his boot. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope, she asked to see me. She was quite angry, actually. It was about an Internet site, one affiliated with us. There’s an ‘Enemies of the Environment’ page, and someone had added Natalie’s mug shot to it. I didn’t have anything to do with that, although I didn’t necessarily disagree with the choice. It’s this bloody sealing business in Canada, you see,” said Cox, the pitch of his voice changing a bit. “A disgraceful, inhumane slaughter. The Canucks seem to want to ignore the carnage, babbling on about traditional rights and depletion of the cod stocks—hypocritical nonsense, of course. Anyway, Natalie had stumbled across the Internet site, or at least someone had told her about it, and she was livid.”
“So you had an argument.”
“No, actually, we didn’t. I agreed to try to have her deleted from the page, even though it wasn’t on our own website. She was fine with that. Then we had something of a discussion of the issues. Climate change, emissions, that sort of thing. I’d always found her quite well informed—even liked her in a way.”
“You had known her for long?” asked Ouellette.
“Since she came to London. I make a point of getting to know the relevant Embassy officials.”
“And your relationship had always been good?”
“Of course not.” Cox smiled. “We often came to blows over the sealing. And leghold traps. It could hardly have been otherwise. Things became quite . . . heated during our anti-sealing demonstration at the Canada Trade Fair last month, in fact.” He smiled at the memory. That had been a good day. “But then she always took a harder line than Wesley.”
“You are referring to the High Commissioner?” asked Ouellette. “You know him too?”
A telephone rang from somewhere amid the papers, but Cox waved it off vaguely. “Oh yes. We first met awhile back, at the Environment Conference in Rio. All the bigwigs were there, yakking up a storm. Talk about gas emissions.” He smiled at his joke. “Anyway, Wesley was Canada’s environment minister at the time.”
“At what time did you leave the High Commission Thursday afternoon?” asked Wilkins.
“Do me a favor, Sergeant. You know very well it was about 5:15. The High Commission log must have told you that.” The phone rang again. “Answering service’ll get it,” grumbled Cox, who seemed to be enjoying the interview.
“What did you do afterward?”
“I came home and went on to a six o’clock meeting with colleagues. We’re organizing the press so that we can get some actual footage of the sealing early next year. That should get the ball rolling.” He showed some yellowing teeth through his beard. “Then we went to dinner at a Vietnamese place, The Saigon.”
Ouellette had been staring hard at Dr. Julian Cox throughout the interview, trying to place that intelligent face with its abundance of facial hair. Then he got it. Dr. Cox had been one of the ringleaders of a group of anti-sealing activists who had been severely clubbed and beaten by Canadian sealers somewhere in Quebec last year. He knew he had seen that face before.
Cox closed the door slowly as the young sergeants departed. He returned thoughtfully to the sitting room and sank again into his armchair. Reflecting on the conversation with the police, he realized he should probably have expressed more sympathy for the victim, but that wasn’t really his way. People were all very well, but when it came right down to it, they did much more harm than good. Look what they were doing to the environment, the wildlife, even the atmosphere.
His gaze fell upon his unfinished article, which detailed the atrocities committed by the sealers in the Canadian north. He was lucky, really, to have so much time to devote to his worthy causes. It was not as though he actually had to work, having been sole heir to a considerable fortune upon his father’s unexpected passing, just as Julian was completing his latest degree at Cambridge. It must be a sign, he thought, that he was meant to devote his talents and energies to saving the planet from mankind. Or in this case, perhaps, womankind.
“And just what,” Sharon Carruthers asked her husband, “am I supposed to do about that carpet?” She was carefully outlining her lips with a medium-brown pencil.
“Don’t, Sharon. Please. Not now.”
Sharon smiled a little and snapped shut her powder compact. “It’s white, you see. Brand new white carpeting from Toronto. Must have cost a bomb. Now it’s soaked straight through, all the way around. Full of blood.” She shook her head. “Never knew blood was that dark a color.” She wrinkled her pert surgically sculpted nose and added, “Smells nasty, too.”
High Commissioner Wesley Carruthers fled his wife. Sharon gave a little shrug, refastened an insubordinate button on her cuff, and poured some more black coffee into her china cup.
Hay was wading through the forensics report. No matter how often he read these documents, he was always bemused by the unusual, if scientifically correct, use of the English language. He found himself quite comfortable in the Brandy and Cigars room, with its collection of fine hunt prints, its richly colored Azeri carpets, and the melodic wall clock with its impressive timekeeping. How long they would be allowed to stay here was another matter; the rationale for the task force remaining on the premises was rapidly fading, and they would probably be assigned back to the Yard fairly soon. At least when they did move, thought Hay, they wouldn’t have to wade through oceans of reporters every morning.
&nbs
p; He hated the press. Years ago, as a freshly minted sergeant, he had been badly misquoted by a reporter, resulting in a serious reprimand from his commanding officer. During his career he had seen many a promising young officer embarrassed, if not compromised, by genuine attempts to be informative and helpful to the press. Of course the dealings between CID and the press had now become extremely formalized and regularized. It was unlikely that any young officer might be put in a vulnerable position again, but Hay’s loathing of the “gentlemen of the press” endured.
It annoyed him that there was as yet no suspect in custody. Of course it was early days, but lately he had become accustomed to cases that almost solved themselves. He often found himself wondering if the criminal classes were in fact becoming stupider.
Inspector Liz Forsyth bounded in from her morning’s ride. Like a Labrador puppy, he thought ungenerously. She certainly looked better for it, though, younger even. Not so plain. What was she anyway—late thirties, early forties? Anyhow, a couple of hours on horseback with the colonel had rendered her a new woman. She probably hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the case, he thought, and said, a bit stiffly, “Good morning, Forsyth. You enjoyed Hyde Park?”
“Wonderful. I’ll tell you something, though—Guévin must have been a fine horsewoman. That mare is quite a handful, and I’m no amateur myself. She’s not at all spooky. She’s bold enough but strong and a bit opinionated.” Liz stopped, thinking she detected signs of boredom. “Do you ride, Hay?”
“Good Lord, no.”
She shook her head, “With a name like that, too.” He didn’t laugh. With a little sigh, Liz sat. Like pulling teeth this morning.
Hay inquired politely, “And how is the dashing colonel today?”
“Seems alright. I’ve found something out, though, that could be important.”
“You Canadians conducting a parallel investigation again, are you?”
Liz looked quickly at Hay and saw he wasn’t joking. “Of course not.” She felt her shoulders stiffen slightly. “It was just something Lahaie said yesterday that I thought might usefully be followed up. As it happened, I got the answer without the colonel’s help. This is it, if you’re at all interested.” She slid a crumpled piece of paper in front of him.
Liz watched Hay as he read the note. Had she stepped on some toes here? It had only been a hunch, after all. Not her fault if it had paid off.
Natalie my love,
You’re wrong, you know. And to prove it, I’ve told her. She will give me a divorce, but only once we’re all out of here; she doesn’t want a public scandal. We can wait that long, surely? You must know by this how I feel. See me tonight, please. You know where.
No date, no signature. “Where did you find this?”
“In the tack locker at the stables. Underneath a pair of breeches.”
“Plain View?” inquired Hay dryly.
“Plain View,” replied Liz.
“If you say so,” said Hay. “Did you mention it to Lahaie?”
“No. I thought if we were to follow up with him we could bring him back here for questioning.”
He noticed the deliberate use of the word we and regarded her steadily. “So what was this famous hunch of yours?”
“Remember yesterday when Lahaie said there had been rumors about Guévin and him? He said his wife had laughed, found it amusing. I would suggest that no matter how much a woman trusts her husband, she finds nothing remotely funny about people thinking he’s having an affair. At least, I never did.” She flushed slightly, then continued, “Unless, of course, the wife knows for a fact that the alleged other woman is very seriously involved with someone else.”
Hay nodded. This was all becoming very interesting.
“I had thought I would pursue the point with Lahaie. ‘There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse,’” she declared.
Hay raised an eyebrow.
“Robert Smith Surtees,” she said, then added helpfully, “1805 to 1864. But as it happened, I didn’t have to raise it with him at all.”
“So what did you talk about?”
“Peacekeeping, mostly.”
“Peacekeeping? The topic of choice among the horsey set?”
Liz was pleased to see that the DCI had lost his earlier stiffness and was back to what she hoped was his usual self. “Quite interesting, really. Lahaie seems to be one of the few senior army officers to have managed a blemish-free service record. Quite a feat in the Canadian forces. Ever since that business in Somalia a few years back, the press has been out for blood. A Canadian soldier can’t sneeze the wrong way without making the front page and sparking a formal inquiry. It’s a true shame. Anyway, Lahaie seems to have maneuvered his way pretty effectively through that particular minefield.”
For some reason, Hay was finding the virtues of Colonel Lahaie the tiniest bit irritating. “So he didn’t actually have anything interesting to say,” he observed.
“Well, if it’s dirt you’re after, he did say there had been some trouble in one of the sectors while he was in command. Something about allegations of impropriety by Canadian soldiers in a Bosnian hospital and rumors of black marketeering. He didn’t elaborate much. He said there had, in fact, been a few disciplinary problems, but the culprits had been dealt with and sent home. It seems there wasn’t much to it, and he appears to have come out of it alright.”
“No doubt,” grumbled Hay.
“He also mentioned that Natalie had asked him about rumors of a Western drug-trafficking operation out of Bosnia, something about drugs transiting through Bosnia from Central Asia. There were some rumors flying about that as well, and the implication was that some of the Russian and even Western peacekeepers or other agencies might be involved. But those rumors only surfaced after Lahaie’s tour, and he was out of there by then.”
“Of course he was,” said Hay. He was starting to look bored again.
“Oh yes, one other thing. I asked him if he knew what that notation ‘Spk Claude’ in Guévin’s appointment book might have meant. He said the only thing he could think of was that it might be connected with a horse show they planned to attend on the weekend. That she might have had a question about that.”
“Mmm,” said Hay, having heard enough about the colonel. “Anyway, I’ve a bit more information from forensics. They’ve catalogued a file drawer full of prints from the anteroom and the dining room. Nothing interesting at the moment, but at least we’ll have them for comparison purposes if we need them. We have a bit more on Guévin as well. One of your chaps from Ottawa called for Ouellette, but he was out with Wilkins at the time interviewing the eco-tourist.”
“Don’t you mean eco-terrorist?”
“Whatever.” Hay smiled for the first time that day. “Anyway, for what it’s worth, that small dry-cleaning business the father started in Montreal has grown into something of an empire. He’s made a lot of money out of one-hour service, it seems. Moreover, it appears that Mr. Lukjovic is something of a Serb nationalist, very active in the Canadian Serbian community. He seems to be harassing your Foreign Affairs for early release and dispatch of the body back to Montreal.”
Hay paused for breath. “And that club, the one used to bludgeon Guévin. Clean of prints, by the way. It was already bagged when Sergeant Carpenter went in to ID the body, so he never had a chance to see it. But he dropped by this morning and we had a chat. When I described it to him—white ax handle tipped in red—he said it sounded a lot like what the Canadian hunters use to club seal pups.”
“So you’ve been a busy boy. I suppose all of this is supposed to make me feel guilty about going for my ride.”
“Not at all,” said Hay, “you’ve brought back a nice little note. I think that we might spend some time now in trying to identify its author. I have a few hunches of my own.”
“So have I,” agreed Liz, “but first I have to call home and see how Rochester’s doing.”
“You have a lover called Rochester?” Hay asked, lifting an
eyebrow.
“I have a mongrel dog called Rochester,” she answered, choosing to ignore the other part of the question. “But you know,” she continued gravely, “you really ought to try horseback riding. With your name . . .”
“Don’t push your luck, Forsyth,” he grumbled.
Annie Mallett had been meeting Ethel and Sybil on Saturdays for close to twenty years. They had started at The Cock and Lion but had gone off the food after that trouble with the haddock. Then The White Hart had burned down, and they settled on The Victoria and Albert. They never ran out of things to talk about. Sybil’s aches and pains alone could keep them going for hours. Annie smiled to herself. Not that Sybil’s problems ever stopped her going to the pub, especially not on a Saturday. Anyway, the girls would always show for what they liked to call “a good old natter.”
Today, Annie was early. She knew she would be the center of attention and had dressed for the part. Today it would be Annie who had all the news because of all the exciting goings-on at the High Commission. So she was wearing her new rust-colored wool dress from M&S. Who said you had to be twenty and thin to wear a wool dress? She looked womanly, curvy. The dress Annie had carefully accessorized with the little pewter and amber brooch her Lily had sent her from America. Her hair was carefully back-combed upward in an orange—well, Annie called it auburn—flame, and she had on her tiny pearl earrings. Real pearls, mind, not artificial ones.
Of course Annie had a theory about the murder, but she wasn’t about to tell the girls. She might tell that detective chief inspector, though. He would surely be impressed if she solved the case all by herself. She might be a type of Miss Marple, really. She was certainly clever enough. Though much younger, of course. Annie had become quite impressed by the DCI of late. He didn’t have a pretty face, but it was strong. Full of character, she thought, although he didn’t smile much. Maybe he didn’t have much to smile about.
