Blood Will Out

by Jill Downie

  “There it is,” said Hugo, his voice hushed in awe now, rather than discomfort.

  “What sort of size and length is it?” Moretti asked.

  “Not big. A hundred and fifty pages. You can read the article if you like.”

  “Give me the gist.”

  With a sudden burst of energy, Hugo swung around in the chair to face Moretti. Behind him on the laptop the image of the Invective Against the Sect of the Waldensians glowed in the bubble of light from the desk lamp.

  “The article quotes a professor of mediaeval history at the university saying it is a picture of human beings as agents of the Devil and he doesn’t like to touch it, or be near it. When I said ‘evil exists,’ I wasn’t joking, Detective Inspector. Looking for this book nearly cost me my life. I think anyone else doing that should be very, very careful.”

  Backing out of Gandalf’s driveway was a relief and a pleasure, and Moretti took the corner too sharply as he came onto the road, the Triumph brushing against the post holding up the name of Brenda Le Huray’s house, “Cosy Corner.”

  Moretti swore, loudly, to rid himself of the creepy feeling left by the interview. Anything less suitable than Cosy Corner as a name for its present incarnation would be hard to find. His feeling of discomfort was not eased by seeing a car in Elodie’s driveway as he drove past. He slowed down and made a mental note of the number. The make of car was easy to remember and Moretti had a suspicion he knew whose it might be.

  He drove on until he was out of sight of the house, pulled to the side of the road, and left a message on both Falla’s private and police mobiles. Then he looked at his watch, saw it was still quite early, turned the car around and drove back into St. Peter Port.

  The first people he saw at Emidio’s were Don Taylor and Irene Edwards, sitting in a booth near the window. They were laughing together, and Moretti was about to walk past and not intrude on their privacy when Don looked up.

  “Look who’s here! We came to get something to eat, and in the hopes you might be playing. Deb said she’d no idea, but that didn’t mean anything. Join us.”

  Irene Edwards seemed as delighted to see him as Don and, a bowl of stracciatella later, Moretti was feeling much better. Don and Irene seemed very comfortable with each other, and that too made him feel good. Then Lonnie and Dwight walked in and the miasma that had hung over him since the interview finally dispersed. The four of them went downstairs to the club, where the beautiful Latvian girl was serving a handful of customers, most of whom were there because of her, and not for the décor. She seemed relieved to see their arrival, and waved at Lonnie, who waved back, then turned to Moretti.

  “Let’s open with ‘You Go to My Head.’ Marika’s favourite. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Moretti grinned, sat down and opened the piano. A few minutes later, and all there was in his head and his heart was the music.

  Gradually, the Grand Saracen began to fill up, and when they took a break, Moretti saw that Don and Irene were no longer there. They played another set, and then prepared to leave. Or, rather, Moretti and Dwight did. Lonnie was making his way over to the bar. As Moretti passed him, Lonnie called out.

  “Hey Ed, nearly forgot. Billie the Bus Bum had a message for someone called Perkins. Copper, he said.”

  “Where to find Meg? Tell him not to worry. We found her.”

  “I’ll tell him. Only he wants to know, because someone else is looking for her, and he’ll get a reward if he knows. A gent, he says. Mind you, you never know with Billie, do you?”

  “No,” said Moretti. Back in the Triumph he texted Al Brown.

  “Among the hermit’s books, was there one called ‘Invective against the Sect of the Waldensians’?”

  The miasma returned, as if it had never left.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The run-through with Jenemie had taken Liz Falla’s mind off things, and she had got back to her flat on the Esplanade to find Dwight sitting on the doorstep. Normally the sight of his smiling face would be reason for celebration, but Ed Moretti’s two messages had put her mind right back on things temporarily forgotten.

  Falla, there’s a car in your aunt’s driveway I think belongs to Aaron Gaskell. Jaguar. Did you take details when you helped him with his parking problems?

  She had, and it was.

  She had dismissed Dwight, to his disappointment and her own, phoned her aunt, to Elodie’s annoyance, and her own discomfort.

  “Are you all right, El?”

  “I was. I was asleep. Why, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, just checking.”

  “At this hour?”

  “You had a visitor and we wondered …”

  “We? Oh.”

  Click, as the line went dead.

  Well, at least Elodie wasn’t.

  It was so long since Liz visited her great-aunt that she had to check municipal records to make sure of the address, and she still got lost in the winding maze of lanes that ran between Le Gouffre and Le Havre de Bon Repos on the south coast, most of them ending up close to the cliff edge with nowhere further to go. Unless you were a goat, that is, and not driving a Figaro. There were few houses in this area, some crumbling Napoleonic battery sites and watch towers, and, with most of the tourists gone, the only visitors were the flocks of gulls and other seabirds wheeling and screaming overhead. It had been a wet and windy night, and the damp coolness in the air added to the chill Liz felt about this whole expedition.

  Just as she was about to give up and make her way back to the main Forest-l’Erée road, she saw a sign on the roadside and turned the Figaro in the direction of the arrow beneath the words, “Planchette, Tarot, Palms Read. Goat’s Milk and Cheese.”

  Auntie Becky, who else.

  The cottage had been part of a sixteenth-century farmhouse on the cliffs, probably the cattle byre, and was now all that remained. Built in island granite, it had a wide entrance with double doors, and only one window, beneath a steeply sloping roof on the upper floor facing the road. There was a sturdily constructed picket fence around the cottage to protect the wise woman’s fruit and veggies from any marauding goat, and the rest of the land was open, because Becky tried to keep her goats tethered, much as Guernsey cows were. At some point, Liz’s Uncle Vern had put in a couple of skylights in the sloping roof and updated the plumbing. That is, he had installed a bathroom. As far as Liz knew, there was still no electricity.

  As she pulled the Figaro up close to the front door, Aunt Becky appeared.

  “It’s you,” she called out as Liz opened the car door. “I thought you were my ten o’clock.”

  Not second sight, then.

  “I should be gone by then, Aunt Becky. It’s only 9:30.”

  Rebecca Falla was dressed in black from head to toe, which showed off her wonderfully thick silver-white hair. She always wore it in a beautiful smooth coil around her head, and if there was anything Liz wouldn’t mind inheriting from this so-called Becquet ancestor of hers it was that magnificent mane. At this moment in her life, her own was too short to judge. Her aunt had the tall genes of the Falla and Ashton families, her deeply wrinkled face tanned year-round by sun, wind and rain. As befitted a witch, her eyes were green and not brown, and beneath two strong, dark eyebrows they were fixed on her niece with what looked like melancholy.

  “Come in,” she said. “I am in mourning.”

  Without waiting to explain, she disappeared back into the house and Liz followed her.

  Inside, the cottage was dark, lit only by two oil-lamps in the main space that served as siting-room, consulting room and séance room. The planchette wheel was on a circular central table covered by a crocheted cloth with astrological symbols embroidered in black and silver, and her aunt’s crystal ball glowed beneath the light of one of the oil lamps on a spectacularly carved sideboard in a dark wood of some kind.

  “Why are you in mourning?”

  Her aunt turned back and said, “It’s the subsidence.”

 
She had retained into old age the mellifluous voice used to great effect in her métier, but her explanation was as woolly and unclear as many of her divinations, as Liz remembered them. They usually covered a range of possibilities.

  “Come. I’ll show you.”

  Liz followed her through into the small kitchen at the back of the cottage. There was a pleasant and un-otherworldly aroma of fresh baking in the air, and cups, saucers and small plates were set on the red-and-white gingham tablecloth over the kitchen table. It looked as if Aunt Becky’s ten o’clock was going to have some cake with the clairvoyance. Her aunt opened the back door of the kitchen, and Liz followed her onto the stretch of land behind the cottage, the wind hitting her face with salt spray. It was dotted with tethered goats of various colours chewing away at the rough grass. They looked up, some more interested in their arrival than others.

  “There. Take a look. I won’t come with you.”

  Her aunt was pointing at the edge of the cliff, and Liz walked over, moving cautiously between the tethered animals. At some point in her childhood she had been butted by one of her aunt’s goats, and it had hurt both her backside and her feelings. The drop was vertiginous, the cliffs high and steep at this point, the sea below churning around rocky outcrops, whipped up by the strong wind. There was always subsidence here, caused by the collapse of one or more of the numerous caves that honeycombed the coastline — many of which could only be reached at low tide, some only by boat.

  Then she saw what she had been sent to see. Way below, caught on an outcrop of rock was a large chunk of grass-covered soil, and on it lay the remains of a goat, almost obscured by the clouds of gulls and other seabirds doing what scavengers do. She turned back and looked at her aunt, who was crying.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “My precious Delilah. Toggenburg-Saanen cross she was. Lovely milker. The earth broke away. I tried to save her, but when I looked over I saw she was dead, strangled by the rope. Hung by the neck until she was dead. Then the earth dropped down the cliff.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Liz, again.

  Not entirely devoid of sentimentality, Elodie, Liz thought.

  Her aunt moved back into the cottage, and Liz followed her. Sitting at the table in the warm, cosy kitchen was a very thin, very old woman, eating a large slice of cake, and Liz did not have to be clairvoyant to know she was looking at Meg the gypsy.

  When she saw Liz come through the door, Meg got up from her chair in distress, still clutching her piece of cake. Becky went over and touched her shoulder.

  “This is my niece, Liz. Not to worry, Margie.”

  “Carrot cake,” said Margie to Liz. “My favourite,” and went back to the matter in hand.

  “How did you know?”

  They were now in the front room. Aunt Becky sighed, more irritated now than grieving.

  “I didn’t, though with your attitude I don’t know why I should be honest about that. She comes here, she always has, and there’s none that knows it, though with that fancy car of yours outside I’ll have to worry about that now.”

  “Becky, did you know Gus Dorey? Elodie says you did.”

  “Margie’s friend. ’course I knew him. I saw it all, in the cards.” She indicated the Tarot pack near the planchette wheel. “It’s all there, the hermit, the hanged man. Death.”

  Here we go, thought Liz.

  “And the Lovers.”

  Liz started to pay attention.

  “What do you know about that?”

  Aunt Becky pulled out a chair and sat down, indicating that Liz should do the same.

  “That was long ago, but that is why he died,” she said. “That’s what Margie says.”

  “Does she? Who was it that he loved?”

  Her aunt stroked the pack of cards and smiled.

  “If Margie knows that, she’s not saying. But from what I remember at the time, there was talk that he reached above himself, and the girl had to be taken away to the mainland. Most of them come back — after — but this one left here forever.”

  “Could it have been one of the messux?”

  “More likely than not.”

  Confirmation, thought Liz. But I need more.

  “You say she often comes here, but this time she has a reason. Who is Margie running away from, Becky?”

  Becky picked up the Tarot pack, shuffled through them and extracted two cards. She held one out to Liz, who took it.

  “The Magician. Is that all she calls him? The Magician? See if you can get a name out of her.”

  Becky looked doubtful. “I’ll try.”

  There was a knock at the door and Liz stood up.

  “That’ll be your ten o’clock. Let me know if she says anything, anything at all. I know Uncle Vern gave you a mobile. Do you know how to use it?”

  Becky laughed scornfully.

  “Yes, but it’s no good to me, now it’s lost its powers.” She grinned, wickedly. “You’ll just have to come round again.”

  As Liz turned to leave, Becky held out the other card.

  “There’s not just the Magician, she says. This one’s with him, sometimes.”

  Liz took the card.

  “The Fool. Is that what she calls him?”

  Becky nodded. “I saw it all, you know, in the cards. The Hermit, the hanging. Death.”

  Just as Liz was toying with saying, “Maybe what you saw was poor little Delilah, hanging over the cliff edge,” her aunt added, “Sometimes she calls the Magician this card.”

  She was holding out the Devil. He was carrying a spear or lance of some kind, and, incongruously, was mounted on a white horse.

  “And Margie doesn’t call the Fool a ‘him.’ She calls the Fool a ‘her.’”

  Chapter Thirty

  Gord Martel lived in St. Sampson, where Moretti kept his Centaur. He had agreed to meet Moretti in the pub on the Bridge, an area close to the harbour, because he said the neighbours would talk if a policeman came to the door, and his wife would be upset, and plainclothes or not, they’d know, sooner or later.

  If there was any area on the island that could be called industrial, it was St. Sampson, and the pub near the Bridge had no fancy trappings to provide atmosphere for tourists. At this hour on a Saturday morning, there were only one or two customers getting started on their day’s drinking, and their well-worn clothes and unshaven faces matched the décor — or lack of it. The barmaid was engrossed in a horrific account of child abuse on the overhead TV by the bar, and barely paid any attention as Moretti came in. He sat by the only attractive feature on the premises, a finely etched glass window overlooking the harbour, and waited for Gord Martel, who came in a few minutes later, greeting the barmaid by name.

  “’morning, Avril. My usual, please, and one for my friend.”

  The postman’s usual turned out to be a surprisingly good cup of coffee.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s get on with it, Inspector. I promised the wife I’d lay tiles today and I really don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “Good coffee,” said Moretti, putting down his cup. “It’s not so much about that day, Mr. Martel, but about the days before, the days when you and Gus Dorey talked, anything he might have said to you that might help us.”

  “About what?” Gord Martel looked agitated. “The poor old bugger killed himself.”

  Shock tactics, thought Moretti.

  “No easy way to tell you this, Mr. Martel, but your friend did not kill himself. He was murdered, and can you think of anything he might have said to help us catch his killer.”

  After a brandy, fetched from the bar and paid for by Moretti, Gord Martel pulled himself together.

  “Oh my Lord, Inspector, what a bombshell. Who would do such a thing. Let me think.” The postman closed his eyes a moment, then said, “There was the time he said he couldn’t lay his hands on stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Yes. Books, he meant. He thought it was his eyes, but I could see he wasn’t sure. Mind you, how he
would know there was anything missing, I don’t know, because he had so many.”

  “So you wondered if someone was stealing his books?”

  “I didn’t. He did. I thought he’d just mislaid them. But now you’ve said this, I wonder.”

  Moretti thought back to the books around the hermit’s body, scattered as if someone was hunting for something. Because books of value hadn’t been touched, he had jumped to the conclusion that the hermit’s private library was complete.

  Moretti brought the interview to a swift end and left the pub. Once back in the Triumph, he checked his messages. There were three.

  The first, from Maud Cole, was worrying.

  Meg’s been gone twenty-four hours.

  The second was from Al Brown.

  Man of mystery, Aaron Gaskell. Re. book, no, not a title to forget. Can we meet?

  The third was from Falla, and it was baffling.

  Magician, Fool — two of them?

  As he started the car, his mobile rang. It was Falla.

  “Don’t want to say too much, Guv, but Maud’s neighbour is safe as houses. See you at Hospital Lane?”

  “My place. I’ll text Al and say you’ll give him a lift here.”

  Moretti finished the call and contacted Aloisio Brown.

  “Take-away pizza, not from Emidio’s, but not bad. I’m going to make coffee.”

  They settled around the large, circular kitchen table, pizza in the middle, notebooks in hand, plus Al’s iPad. The coffee mugs were china, as were the plates.

  “Nice.” Al traced the Greek key design on his plate.

  “Yes.” Moretti cleared a space for his large notepad, turned to a blank page.

  “You first, Falla. The Jag — Gaskell’s?”

  “Yes, but more than that I don’t know because El hung up on me.” Moretti said nothing, so Liz went crisply through her visit to Rebecca Ashton, omitting such details as Delilah’s demise and the arrival of her aunt’s ten o’clock, who turned out to be an august member of the States of Guernsey, the island parliament, and not thrilled at crossing paths with her.