Dastardly Deeds

by Evans, Ilsa

  About Dastardly Deeds: A Nell Forrest Mystery 4

  It was supposed to be the holiday of a lifetime …

  When Nell Forrest’s life hits a speed bump (which is most definitely not a midlife crisis) a cruise around the Mediterranean seems like just the ticket.

  Unfortunately, that’s an idea shared by her mother, her ex-husband, his new partner, and a police detective with whom Nell has a stormy history. Fortunately, meditation is just one of the many activities offered aboard the luxury liner, but Nell will need more than that to face what lies ahead.

  A tragic death in Rome is quickly followed by another in Turkey. Then an unexpected discovery provides a link between the two, and Nell must stow her plans for relaxation once and for all.

  One of her shipmates is a cold-blooded murderer, and it seems that Nell is the only one with the wherewithal to figure it out. But figure it out she must, because the murderer, like the cruise, has only just begun …

  Dastardly Deeds is the fourth book in Ilsa Evans’ Nell Forrest Mystery series. The other three are Nefarious Doings, Ill-Gotten Gains and Forbidden Fruit.

  This cosy mystery is perfect for fans of Alexander McCall Smith, M.C. Beaton, Kerry Greenwood and Joanna Fluke.

  Contents

  About Dastardly Deeds: A Nell Forrest Mystery 4

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  About Ilsa Evans

  Also by Ilsa Evans

  Copyright

  In memory of

  Charlotte Anna Evans

  1933 – 2015

  Chapter 1

  I am writing to let you know that I really miss your column. You’re my very favourite writer bar none. Along with Chrissie Swan and Jane Caro and Dear Abby, except I think she’s dead. Oh, and that gay guy from the Sunday paper with the giant sudoku. He’s really funny.

  News of the woman’s death swirled around the Colosseum like the echoing moans of ancient Christian martyrs. Actually, that’s probably a trifle dramatic. It was more a waft than a swirl; a single pocket of conversation that was overheard simply because I happened to be skulking nearby. Also, according to the sign I was reading at the time, and despite the compelling evidence offered by Hollywood, it seemed that there was little to support the whole martyrs versus lions scenario anyway. Historical research had uncovered a single cleric who was accused of treason, not religious fervour, and subsequently disembowelled. So while undoubtedly a game-changer for him, this does not a pattern make.

  It was the excitable tone that first caught my attention, closely followed by the realisation that the accent was Australian. In the two hours I had been wandering around the Roman Colosseum, having become separated from my family almost immediately after entry, I had been surrounded by a cornucopia of languages – few of them English and none spoken with the flat vowels I was accustomed to. Not that I was complaining; after three days sharing a room with my youngest daughter, next door to my mother and her partner, with assorted other Australians behind every other door in the hotel corridor, some non-Australian alone time was just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I had spotted various familiar faces several times during the past two hours and had promptly made myself scarce. Fortunately, the Colosseum was literally studded with plinths, pillars and porticoes. It was possibly the best hide-and-seek venue in the world.

  It was only through an unexpected series of events that I was at the Colosseum in the first place. In December, four months ago, I had barrelled into a bit of a wall, both professionally and personally. In retrospect, it was no surprise. The two previous years had been a rollercoaster, with my twenty-five-year marriage imploding and my ex-husband promptly impregnating his new partner. I had moved house, become a grandmother (twice), reconnected with my estranged father, watched my sister move to Europe, sabotaged a fledgling relationship of my own, and been somehow caught up in the aftermath of several murders.

  If I’d had any other employment, I probably would have taken a chunk of personal leave. Perhaps pottered around the garden or taken up some therapeutic macramé. But as a columnist, I needed to produce at least five hundred pithy words each week, usually using my own life as fodder. At a certain point this stops being cathartic. December was hard, January was worse, and February was impossible. Every so often I managed to produce a handful of words that gambolled incoherently, forming the occasional sentence more by good luck than good management. I soon exhausted my collection of back-up columns and began dodging increasingly irritated calls from my editor.

  While all this was going on, a close friend, Deb Taylor, who managed the local community centre of our little country town, was busily making arrangements for an amazing reunion trip with some old university friends. Five days in Rome followed by a ten-day cruise that took in Gallipoli, Istanbul, Athens and the island of Santorini. Her husband, Lew, a little peeved that the trip did not include partners, started actively recruiting for his own tour group. Initially I was dismissive, but the long hours spent staring blankly at the laptop had to be occupied somehow and fantasising about a Mediterranean cruise seemed as good a way as any. I had never been on a cruise, Mediterranean or otherwise. Plus, getting away from it all had never held so much appeal.

  Things came to a head work-wise in early March. Sympathetic but business-like, the editor-in-chief proposed that a series of guest writers take over my column until I worked through what she just stopped short of calling a midlife crisis. She also embraced the idea of my upcoming holiday with rather unflattering eagerness. It would ‘give me something to write about’, a chance to win back some of the readers who, apparently, would soon begin fleeing like rats deserting a sinking ship. Her faith in their loyalty was not exactly inspiring.

  So there I was, in one of the most breathtaking cities on the planet. Photos didn’t do Rome justice. Ancient buildings that surged seamlessly from well-worn cobblestones, soaring domes that glinted gold in the sunshine, monuments that eulogised men who were footnotes in the encyclopaedias I had read as a child. In Australia, two-hundred-year-old buildings were heritage-listed; here, plaques bore dates that were one thousand, two thousand years old.

  I was drunk with history. But instead of bearing down heavily, it felt as light as gossamer. My problems were inconsequential, a whisper in the fabric of time. It was a heady realisation, providing a perspective that, with a surge of optimism, I thought might break through my writer’s block. But no such luck. Putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, still felt like drawing blood from a stone – and then using the same stone to beat oneself repeatedly against the forehead.

  History might have whispered but the tall Australian woman at the Colosseum definitely didn’t. Her voice broke through my perusal of the Christian martyrdom sign. Somewhat fittingly, the first words she uttered were: ‘Oh my god!’

  I turned to see her staring at two men around my age. They were frowning with surprise
.

  ‘Oh my god!’ she repeated, clapping her hand to her chest. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere! April is dead!’

  This seemed a trifle melodramatic, not least because we were only midway through the month in question. The breathless woman was clad in a voluminous skirt and several layers of loose tops, one of which looked like a doily. Long salt-and-pepper hair hung down her back in a plait, but her face was framed by tendrils of fluffy white. It looked quite odd, although I was hardly in a position to judge given my own hair generally looked like I’d put my finger in an electric socket. Hence my predilection for hats, today’s being a brown felt number that I fancied brought out the green in my eyes.

  My first inkling that the tall, plaited woman was not, in fact, referring to the calendar came with the shocked reaction of the men she was addressing. One of them, a well-built guy with artfully ruffled hair, recoiled, shaking his head.

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘Yes! April’s dead!’ The woman burst into tears, damp and noisy. ‘She – she jumped.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ The other man stepped forward. He was slim and bespectacled with thick eyebrows that were currently meeting in the middle. ‘We were all together last night. She was fine.’

  ‘She’s not fine. She’s dead.’

  The slim man took her by the arm. ‘Phoebe, calm down. You have to tell us what’s going—’ He suddenly paused and looked straight at me. ‘You right there? Want us to speak up?’

  I flushed. Then I did something as instinctive as it was foolish. ‘Pardon?’ I said, with as good a French accent as I could muster. Pardon was the only French word I knew, apart from a phrase that my daughter Scarlet had brought home from school many years ago. However, ‘Voulez-vous venir à une fête dans mon pantaloons?’ – or, ‘Do you want to come to a party in my pants?’ – did not seem terribly appropriate under the circumstances.

  ‘Nothing,’ said the man dismissively. He guided the now sobbing Phoebe over to a stone balustrade, with his companion supporting her from the other side.

  I was left alone, feeling embarrassed. Odd spot: Has-been Australian columnist sprung using fake French accent in Rome. ‘She used to be normal,’ says former editor sadly. I shrugged, turning instead to wonder who April was and why she had jumped. Shading my eyes, I glanced up towards the top tier of archways but it seemed unlikely she had leapt from there. Tourists still milled contentedly along the pathway, posing for photos against the familiar backdrop. But there were plenty of other places in Rome that would have the requisite height – or, indeed, plenty of places outside Rome also. April may well have been based elsewhere.

  It didn’t really matter though. It had nothing to do with me. I just hoped that whatever April had done, and wherever she had done it, it had been a decision she was comfortable with. And that she was now at peace.

  Chapter 2

  I liked that column you did last year asking what things made us grumpy. Here’s my list: public transport, spitting, hyenas, the Kardashians (all of them), selfies, and you not doing the ‘what makes you grumpy’ column since then.

  The room I was sharing was a compact one, with three single beds dominating much of the space. The bathroom, however, was massive, with a toilet and matching bidet perched atop a marble platform. Every visit was a performance, made a little more adrenalin-fuelled by the absence of a lock on the door.

  I scrabbled through my suitcase for a pair of heels and tugged them on as I checked my make-up. Tonight was the get-together dinner, organised by our fearless leader – a chance for ‘Lew’s Crew’ to touch base mid tourism. Lew was also the one who had come up with the sobriquet ‘Lew’s Crew’, which he had then used liberally until we all stopped laughing. He had even created a masthead for the weekly newsletter, Stay Afloat with Lew’s Crew News!

  My stomach was airy with nerves. But it was not the get-together that was unsettling me; rather, it was the imminent arrival of my sister and my daughter from England. I hadn’t seen Petra since Christmas, and I hadn’t seen my second-eldest daughter for even longer. Sixteen months and twenty-three days, to be precise.

  I had five daughters, and there was rarely a moment that at least one of them wasn’t in crisis. Sometimes it was like they were playing tag, occasionally it was a more a team effort. My eldest, Scarlet, currently seemed to have everything together. She had a secure job, a happy engagement and a gorgeous fourteen-month-old son. The next daughter had none of that. After dropping out of an array of university courses, Ruby had abruptly sold most of her worldly possessions the year before last and signed up for a year of volunteer work abroad. This had ended last November, but instead of coming home, she had flitted over to England to join her aunt. I had no idea how she had been supporting herself, nor did I know if she even had the money to return to Australia; I certainly didn’t know how she was paying for the cruise we were about to embark on. Skype had severe limitations when it came to transparency.

  My third was Bronte, more commonly known as Red because of her gingery hair. She was the most private of my children but, to all intents and purposes, she appeared to be doing just fine. I was happy to take that on face value. Next in line was Lucy, my airy-fairy twenty-two-year-old. She had given me a great deal to worry about until the birth of her own daughter, Willow, who had turned one in February. Lucy had grown up overnight. She was now halfway through her business diploma, working full-time in my mother’s bookshop and doing a truly remarkable job as a single mother.

  Last, but never least, was sixteen-year-old Quinn. My accidental, slip-of-the-condom daughter. So far she was giving me no more than typical teenage angst, but no doubt she would up the ante in the years to come. I cast a glance at her bed, where an open suitcase was spilling entrails of clothing. There were also two hair straighteners and a dog-eared copy of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch.

  I was running late. I slid the swipe card into my jacket pocket, pulled the door open and almost walked straight into my sister’s fist, which had been raised ready to knock.

  She grinned. ‘That was close! Nearly punched you in the nose!’

  ‘Petra!’ I leant in to give her a quick, fierce hug and then stepped back, feeling a little embarrassed. We weren’t a particularly tactile family.

  ‘Missed me, huh?’

  There was no doubt about that. I’d missed her company, her devil’s advocacy, and the fact she was the only other person who fully appreciated the complexities of our mother. Petra was a more streamlined version of me – a little taller, a little slimmer, a little more certain of her place in the world. Even her hair was more manageable. It was like our parents had used me as a practice run. Yet there was no envy and only a sliver of competitiveness between us. I wanted her life no more than she wanted mine.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ she said, examining me. ‘You’ve cut your hair again.’

  ‘Yeah, I was starting to look like a cartoon. How long have you been here? Where’s Ruby?’

  ‘We got here about an hour ago. I think she’s still downstairs. Quinn waylaid us.’

  ‘I see.’ I made an effort to sound blasé, but I had assumed, since Ruby hadn’t arrived at the room with her suitcases, that they had been running late. Instead, it seemed, she was downstairs socialising.

  Petra gave me a shrewd look. ‘I think Ruby’s nervous about seeing you. Worried she’ll get the third degree. Perhaps she figured there’s safety in numbers.’

  I didn’t reply. We walked down the stairs, changing the subject to updates about the family members who weren’t joining us on this holiday, focusing most particularly on the two newest members, whose advanced development could keep me talking for hours. I had just finished sharing an anecdote which had Willow naming not one but two of the colours of her birthday balloons when we reached the dining room. Petra pushed the door open and we were faced with Lew’s Crew, clustered around a long table that ran the length of an ornately decorated room. I ran my eye over the gathering as they
turned.

  An empty chair sat at the head of the table, beside my mother and her partner, Jim Hurley. Opposite them was Jim’s much older sister, Enid, a triangular woman with skin like molten lava. Next were the Russos, Michael and Lyn, just across from the couple from hell, my ex-husband Darcy and the new love of his life, Tessa Sheridan. Their inclusion had come as something of a shock. I strongly suspected that, despite his protestations to the contrary, Lew had deliberately withheld the information until I committed to the holiday. He assured me that it was a large ship. About the size of Tasmania should be sufficient.

  There were a few spare seats around the centre of the table and then came the cohort of generations Y and Z, Griffin Russo alongside my two, Quinn and Ruby. My stomach hollowed. Ruby looked thinner, her cheekbones more defined, and I thought I could detect lilac smudges under her eyes. Even as I was washed with a desire to hug her, sharp words were already forming on my tongue. So nice of you to stop by and say hi before you caught up with your sister. Great to see I’m such a priority. Swallowing them was painful but I didn’t want to embarrass her – or draw attention to her lack of filial affection.

  ‘Why, hello, Petra,’ said my mother from the other end of the table. ‘So nice of you to call in and say hello before you caught up with your sister. Perhaps you could prioritise me later. No rush.’

  I stared at her, gobsmacked.

  ‘Close your mouth, Nell, you look daft.’

  Uncle Jim leant back, placing an arm casually around my mother’s shoulders. His Buddy Holly glasses glinted under the chandelier. She relaxed almost imperceptibly into him, even as her gaze remained steady. He winked at us.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ said Ruby quietly, redrawing my attention. She pushed her chair back and stood so it seemed only fair to meet her halfway. We hugged.

  ‘How are you? You look tired.’