by Jill Downie
“I’m taking you home, then coming in to check around and then I’ll try again to persuade you to get out of there.”
As she swung around in her seat, he put the Triumph into gear and she jolted against him. Perhaps because of the rose lying on the wet pavement, he felt nothing this time. But the brush of her wet hair against this face reminded him to put on the heater.
“Ed, on an island this size I cannot run very far, I certainly can’t hide, and I have no intention of leaving Guernsey.”
The rest of the drive was in silence. It had started to rain and, as it spattered lightly on the car window, in his head Moretti heard his former sax player, Garth Machin, playing a riff on “It Takes Two to Tango.”
Get out of my head, Garth, and stop being so bloody unsubtle, he thought.
The music changed to another tango and another musician, Lonnie playing “Mi Buenos Aires Querido” on his bass, and this time Moretti listened.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Huxley was right. They drove to Elodie’s house in silence, and Moretti listened to Lonnie.
As they pulled into Elodie’s driveway and got out of the car, Elodie said, “Yes, I still need you to check around and no, I don’t want you to do any arm-twisting.”
Moretti looked at her over the top of the Triumph.
“Then you can convince me why you are the last person to involve yourself with anything to do with blood play or the undead.”
She didn’t reply, but walked ahead of him, let them both into the house, then said, “I’m going to get a towel and dry my hair and change into a sweater. I’ve no clothing to offer you, so why don’t you get us both a Scotch. In the cupboard next to the fridge. Glasses on the sideboard in the sitting room.”
Elodie disappeared upstairs and Moretti did as he was told, switching on a small lamp by the sofa in the sitting room. A few minutes later she was back, barefoot, in a voluminous black sweater, rubbing her hair with a white towel. He handed her the Scotch, waited for her to sit down on the sofa on which he had first seen her, and sat down opposite her. She wrapped the towel into a turban around her head and raised her glass.
“Salut. Okay, so now I’ll tell you. It’s a long, complicated, dirty piece of personal laundry that I have never shared with anyone — not even Liz, and I don’t want her to know. I am probably crazy to be telling it to a policeman, and if you took it any further I would deny every word.”
“That bad?”
“That bad.” Elodie took a sip of her Scotch, and a deep breath. “Here we go. As I imagine you know, I was married, once. It was what the tabloids call a love match. We were crazy about each other. My ex-husband was a brilliant medical researcher and pathologist, specializing in heart disease in children. About a decade or so ago, there was a huge scandal, when the parents of a child who had died of congenital heart disease discovered that her body had been returned to them without her heart, which had been kept for research, without their permission. This was just the tip of a gigantic iceberg. Literally thousands of children’s hearts had been removed during post mortem examinations, and more than one hospital was implicated. The motivation, of course, was financial: huge donations from pharmaceutical companies to the hospitals involved. My ex was one of the pathologists who did this, and he made no attempt to deny it. He vehemently defended the practice. I can remember exactly what he said. ‘The advances we have made in surgery, in understanding, in diagnosis, would not have been possible without this collection.’” Up to this point, Elodie’s voice had been even, the tone measured, but now it changed. “It was when he used that word. Collection. I remember looking at him and thinking, I have been blinded by love. I really don’t know you at all.”
Gently, Moretti interrupted. “But he was right, wasn’t he, about the advances in medicine? And I have worked with many pathologists, attended more than one post mortem, and if they did not somehow manage to distance themselves, separate themselves from — in your ex’s case — those tiny bodies lying on a slab in front of them, they would not survive. Policemen do it too, make jokes or sound cold and unfeeling in the face of tragedy and human suffering.”
In response, Elodie held out her glass, and Moretti took it from her, refilled it and handed it back to her. He watched her for a moment, then said, “You implied there was a risk in telling me because of my profession, but I am assuming there was an enquiry, new guidelines set up, and all the shit that happens to appease an outraged public. So I am also assuming there’s more.”
“There is.” She drank no more of the Scotch, but held the refilled glass in front of her, twisting it in the light from the lamp on a side table near the sofa. “Remember I said ‘financial motivation’? There was something about my ex’s face when he defended the practice, and it looked like fear. Since he didn’t seem to have a conscience about it, I wondered what else he hadn’t told me. I’m pretty good with computers, and so I hacked into his emails, and some of his other files. Actually, it wasn’t that difficult.”
Elodie leaned forward and pulled the towel off her hair. Like the whisky in the glass, it shone in the light from the lamp.
“Guess what his email password was, Ed.”
She paused, and Moretti took a chance.
“Elodie.”
She nodded. “Yes, plus the year we married. As I told you, we loved each other, and that’s what he kept saying when I found out the full story. ‘But I love you, I love you.’”
“The full story?”
This time she drank some of the Scotch before answering.
“He had a private arrangement of his own with a pharmaceutical company in Europe, and was selling the hearts of children. For profit — obscene, vast amounts of money. I found some of his financial transactions also. And you know what he said when I confronted him? ‘For God’s sake, Elodie, you’re a scientist. Stop being sentimental. They’re dead.’ Then, with that wonderful smile of his he said, ‘You’re not going to shop me, are you?’”
Elodie leaned back, and closed her eyes.
“So, Detective Inspector Moretti, I have not the least interest in blood plays and the un-dead. My ex-husband’s collection of children’s hearts is my alibi, for what it’s worth.”
Moretti remembered the rose on the sodden pavement, and easily resisted the impulse to go over to her.
“And you didn’t shop him.”
“No. I let him pay me off, settled for a fortune in his dirty money, came back to the island, and swore never to be sentimental again.” She raised her glass to Moretti and said, “And so far so good.”
Message taken. “I should go,” he said. “I’ll check around first.”
When he came back downstairs, Elodie was lying on the sofa. He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as he came in.
“Thanks, Ed.” She sat up and swung her bare feet back on to the carpet. She had no rings on her fingers, but she had one on her toe, and it looked like a diamond.
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes.
Absurdly, the old nursery rhyme came into his head, and the thought crossed Moretti’s mind that it might once have been on the ring finger of her left hand. A kind of symbolic trampling underfoot of sentimentality, perhaps. The fancy added eroticism to the thought.
“Just a moment more of your time, Detective Inspector,” she said. “I have a suggestion to make. About another woman in far more danger than me.”
Moretti sat down again, carefully averting his glance from her feet.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Rebecca Falla, the wise woman of Icart, that’s what your godmother calls her.”
“That’s what she calls herself. Or that’s what her planchette circle calls her. You talked about this after the showdown at the Lorrimers’ party?”
“Yes.” Moretti returned Liz’s direct look with one of his own. “She phoned earlier than I expected, so I took her with me to the farm.
Maud Cole had just contacted me about Meg’s return. Your aunt already knew Maud Cole, and they had at some point talked about Meg. She also says that, if anyone can get Meg to open up, it’s your Aunt Becky, and she thinks they know each other, because your great-aunt knew Gus Dorey.”
Liz put down her glass of beer, and sighed. “Now my boss and my godmother conspire to undo all the years of dodging Auntie Becky. What do you want me to do?”
“Go and see her, find out if she does know Meg, and see if she’ll take her in for a while.”
“Take her in?” Liz looked sceptical. “Why would she do that?”
“Because, according to Elodie, she takes in waifs and strays from time to time — cats, dogs, humans.”
Liz looked surprised.
“El must have kept in contact.”
“She has. One of life’s originals, she finds her. About as unscientific as anyone she has ever met, but at the same time as devoid of sentimentality as anyone she has ever met.”
“And that appeals?”
“That appeals.”
The thought crossed Liz’s mind that her Guvnor knew her godmother better than she did. She stood up.
“Thanks for the beer, Guv. I’ll leave you a message after I’ve seen her.”
“Saturday tomorrow, but we should meet, the three of us. I didn’t say it this morning, but Al is going to talk to the cleaning staff at Aaron Gaskell’s office, see if they have anything more to say, and I’m going to talk to Gord Martel again.”
“I’ve got a rehearsal tonight with Jenemie for a gig next weekend. Besides, I’d rather visit Auntie Becky in daylight.”
They both laughed, although both of them knew she was not joking.
It was dusk by the time Moretti reached Hugo Shawcross’s house. There was really no way to avoid passing Elodie’s place, and he wondered if she might see his Triumph go by. With any luck she would be in her study, catching up with work. She had told him she was taking on something new and was behind schedule.
As he drove past the limestone gateposts, he took a look through the gloaming at the bijou little nest, built on blood money. Of course Elodie should have turned her ex in, and perhaps she would have been freer of him if she had. Simplistic, he thought. Stopping loving someone is not like turning off a tap. As he should know.
When he got out of the car in Hugo Shawcross’s driveway, he saw a face peering out of the window. There was no doorbell, only a knocker, and Moretti called out as he rapped on it.
“Mr. Shawcross, it’s Detective Inspector Moretti.”
A moment later, the door opened halfway, and Hugo Shawcross looked around it.
“Detective Inspector. You’re on your own?”
His voice was still rasping, but possibly the wavering tone had as much to do with fear as damaged vocal cords. Opening his front door must still require a real summoning up of the blood for Gandalf.
“Yes. Seemed best. May I come in?”
“Of course!”
False jollity now, probably at the phrase “seemed best.”
Brenda Le Huray’s home seemed very much as she had left it. The style of furniture was more likely to be hers than its present occupant, with flowery cretonne covers, frilly lampshades and numerous knickknacks still in place on numerous small, heavily varnished tables. Moretti wiped his feet on a mat that faintly read “Welcome” and followed Hugo through the hallway, past what Brenda Le Huray would probably have called a lounge, to the back of the house. As he did so, a large cat streaked past him into one of the front rooms, from whence came the sound of vigorous scratching as Mrs. Le Huray’s cretonne came under attack.
“Stoker, I presume.”
“Yes. Don’t know what I’d do without him. Very grateful to your detective sergeant. She likes cats?”
“She likes Ms. Ashton. We didn’t want her helping out, for obvious reasons.”
They were now in a room overlooking the back garden, or what Moretti could see of it through the dusk. Hugo Shawcross had set it up as his study, and in this room the furniture looked functional rather than frilly. Besides a desk of modern design with a laptop on it, the walls were lined with bookshelves, many of which were still empty. In front of the desk was a swivel chair in fake leather, and there was another, similar chair in front of a panel television on a space between the bookshelves.
“A drink, Detective Inspector? Coffee? Something stronger?”
“No thank you, sir.” Moretti crossed over to the window. “This room is on the ground floor and you have no covering on your window. Perhaps you should change that.”
“Great minds, Inspector!” Again, the mock-jollity. “I’ve got someone coming in to measure for blinds tomorrow.”
“Good. Let’s get started.” Moretti turned the chair in front of the television screen around to face the one by the desk, and Hugo took the hint, sat down and leaned forward earnestly.
“How can I help you, Inspector? As you know from my statement, I saw nothing of my attacker.”
“That’s not why I’m here. I want you to tell me why you are in Guernsey — oh, not because of the business with the underage daughter of a cabinet minister, I know about that — but why specifically Guernsey. It wasn’t the scenery that brought you here, was it?”
A gobbling noise came out of Hugo, and for a minute Moretti wondered if his shock attack might have been too much for Gandalf’s present state of health. The face behind his now re-growing beard went white, then red, then purple.
“I don’t see what you …”
“You do, sir, and I need that information to find out who attacked you, whoever is putting the fear of God in Marla Maxwell and, more significantly, who killed a harmless old man. I think part of the answer lies with you, and this was not a random attack after all. I think you knew that all along, and I’m here on my own because the reason you are in Guernsey may not be illegal, but is so important to you that you are unwilling to share it.”
Moretti leaned back, unbuttoned his jacket, rested his head against the high back of the chair, and waited. It didn’t take long before it all came tumbling out, interspersed with gulps of brandy that Gandalf had brought out, after asking, from a cabinet in the desk unit.
It was all about books.
Or a book.
“I am not a book collector, Detective Inspector, but my field of expertise is folklore and I am particularly interested in vampirology, witchcraft, that sort of thing. I am involved with a research group looking at the Malleus Maleficarum …”
“The Hammer of Witches. I know about this from Sergeant Falla. Go on.”
“A few months ago, one of our members came to a meeting with very exciting news. It came from a Canadian newspaper — he has family there — and it was about the discovery at the University of Alberta of an incredibly rare book called Invectives Against the Sect of the Waldensians. Written around 1465 by a French monk, the article described it, not inappropriately, as a how-to guide on battling witchcraft. There are only three other known copies in various universities, and this one is thought to be the actual original, beyond price. But what really excited me was that this member of our group said he had spoken about it to a London book dealer, and he said he was pretty sure that, years ago, he had sold something similar to a regular customer. The dealer said he was just starting out and was too young and wet behind the ears to realize what he had sold, until this book came to light. Of course, as he said, he could be wrong, but all he could remember about the buyer was that he came from Guernsey. They had talked about the folklore and the superstitions here, which is why he remembered.”
Hugo Shawcross took another swig of brandy and coughed.
“Voice tired,” he said, putting up an apologetic hand. “Give me a moment.”
Moretti waited, then said, “And it would have suited you, I imagine, to leave the country for a while?” Hugo Shawcross nodded, gingerly. “So you came here, joined the Island Players, and started to talk about vampires and similar subjects — or did yo
u know who you were looking for?”
Hugo shook his head vigorously, then winced. “No idea. Saw an ad for the group in the paper, thought it might give me a start. Then all the funny stuff started to happen.”
“So you assumed, when you were attacked, that someone thought you were on the trail of something they also wanted? Had you dropped hints about the actual book?”
Hugo nodded. “Only indirectly.”
“Can you remember to whom you spoke, and what do you mean by ‘indirectly’?”
Hugo looked thoughtful. “Actually, now I come to think of it, I may have said something about it when all the discussion started about vampires and so on, and Marie Gastineau got up on her high horse. But it was all in the context of the power of the written word, and I am pretty sure I never mentioned the title.”
“Do you remember who was there?”
“Most of the Island Players la Gastineau calls ‘the ones who matter.’” Hugo gave a snort of disdain, and clearly regretted it.
“You say you’re pretty sure you didn’t mention the title. Why not? Wouldn’t that have speeded up your search?”
“Inspector, when there are millions involved, one can’t be too careful.”
“Millions?”
Hugo nodded again. “Possibly.” He examined his empty glass, got up, and refilled it from the bottle of excellent cognac.
Moretti stood up and fastened his jacket.
“There’s the motivation for all this, Mr. Shawcross, rather than abstract twaddle about vampires and the undead. Money. I wish you’d said all this earlier, instead of limiting yourself to variations on the theme of ‘evil exists.’”
“Oh, but it does.” Hugo swung around, moving his whole body to avoid turning his neck. It was now very dark in the room, and he switched on a light on the desk, and turned on his laptop. “Let me show you what I am talking about,” he said.
It took Hugo Shawcross only a few moments to find what he was looking for. On the screen appeared a photograph of a battered leather-bound book, looking all of its five-hundred years of age, with what appeared to be studs on the cover. There was an article beneath it.
