Sarah excused herself when the doorbell rang leaving Freddie and Jemima alone in the kitchen. Freddie looked thoughtful for a moment and then said,
“Your sister seems to have lost her perspective. I am sure you are aware of her fascination with the brother’s Sanderson and William Bacchus. Her continued paranoia over what should now be seen as ancient history is beginning to worry me. What are your thoughts?”
Jemima hadn’t been expecting that. She had assumed that lunch was going to be an opportunity to catch up with Freddie, who she hadn’t seen for months. Gossip with Sarah and then home for an evening with Ben.
“I’m not the best person to ask about anything concerning my sister at the moment. Also unless I’m mistaken she’ll be walking through that door in, five, four, three, two …”
“Freddie, Jemima how nice to see you both. I was just telling Sarah how Jemima insisted I join you for lunch, isn’t that so Jemima?”
Wearing a strained smile, she looked at Felicity, nodded and said,
“I would rather have bowel surgery performed with a sharpened stick, without the benefit of anaesthetic than lunch with Felicity.” Turning away from Felicity to look at Freddie she added, giving him a cryptic look and said,
“Delusional too?” Ignoring her sister she said to Sarah,
“Can I help you with anything for lunch? Setting tables that sort of thing?” Without waiting for an answer, she picked up a saltcellar and walked out of the kitchen in the direction of the dining room. Freddie nodded at Sarah indicating he wanted her to follow Jemima, saying,
“Oil on troubled waters I think. Thank you Sarah.”
When he was alone with Felicity he rebuked her.
“What are you doing here? You asked me to talk to Jemima. Why did you imagine I’d need help?”
Felicity was lost for words and then said with an apologetic look,
“Alexander was indiscrete about other areas of our business. Jemima had a hissy fit and I told her I’d join her here for lunch in an effort to smooth her ruffled feathers before she becomes a problem that might need to be dealt with. Neither of us wants that do we?” Felicity arched an eyebrow at Freddie and then continued,
“My presence seems to be antagonising her, so I think it best if I head back to town. I’ll call you this evening and we can decide if we need to speak with her.”
Freddie gave Felicity a hard look and then nodded without a word and followed Sarah and Jemima out of the kitchen.
Lunch was relaxed. Once Felicity had left, the atmosphere lightened. The food was delicious and the conversation was irreverent for the home of a bishop, but no one seemed to notice. As Sarah cleared the desert plates and went to put the coffee machine on Jemima sat wondering what the ulterior motive for this lunch had been. Freddie cleared his throat and looked at Jemima for a moment before saying,
“I asked you about Felicity when you first arrived and I’m still interested in your answer.”
“Felicity is egotistical, manipulative and I believe unstable. Since Charles’s death, she sees herself and as a one-woman boardroom and is unable to accept or process advice from anyone else. Her life is run on fear, in both her personal and professional live. She is dangerous.”
Freddie sat looking at his niece in amazement,
“I had no idea your antipathy was so deep seated. I agree with a lot of the points you make, to a degree, but she does seem to be making good progress with the company and has expanded certain aspects.”
Jemima wasn’t sure if Freddie was signalling her that he knew about the cocaine as this was the only area that she knew of that had been expanded since Charles had died. She waited to see if Freddie was going to expand on areas of company expansion. Saying nothing he gave her a half smile and walked over to the French windows leading out to the rose garden at the rear of the South Canonry. He gazed out, in silence not expanding his point. The silence continued until finally Freddie continued.
“Felicity has a difficult job to do. She is a woman in a man’s world, so has to be better, work harder and be more successful to be considered an equal. CHC is one of the top five alternative fuel companies in the world and is subject to constant harassment from its competitors. A lot of these companies are run by men from countries who’s culture encourage a view of women that is mediaeval. There to cook, breed and fawn over the man of the house. Everything else is man’s work. She’s pushing back against this ridiculous misogynistic bigotry and that takes courage. It is also both mentally and physically demanding. She’s making progress, but the toll it is taking is immense.” Freddie stopped talking abruptly when Sarah returned with the coffee tray and set it down on the sideboard. Sensing by the tense, strained atmosphere in the room that a difficult, private conversation was taking place, she said,
“I hope you can forgive me for not joining you for coffee, but dinner for the Bishop of Cali this evening won’t organise itself.” Freddie smiled and nodded his acquiescence to her request. When Sarah had left the room after pouring coffee for them both Freddie continued.
“Jemima may I be frank with you?” Jemima sipped her coffee and then nodded with reluctance. She had a feeling she knew what was coming and wasn’t sure how she could respond.
“Your years of ‘working,’” Freddie mimed inverted commas around the word.
“For your sister has been generous charity. You have not been required to do more than a couple of hours a month and in return you have been paid a six-figure salary and received luxury cars and state of the art technology as part of your remuneration. I need you to take a more active role to assist your sister. She needs your help. Can you bury your animosity and help Felicity with the Bacchus and Sanderson, problem. Mr Sanderson apparently has been a thorn in her side for many years and I know she is concerned that William will follow in Sanderson’s footsteps. I know William well and I am sure that she is mistaken. I would consider it a personal favour to me if you could show her that she is mistaken.”
Jemima smiled with relief. She had imagined Freddie knew all of the family business and wanted to involve her in areas she couldn’t agree to. Freddie didn’t need to know that she had decided to disentangle herself from Felicity and the other immoral elements of her family.
“Of course. I’m in Sherborne at the moment trying to unravel that mess for Felicity. Hopefully soon I can show her what she needs to know.”
***
William passed the waiter his credit card enjoying the feeling of allowable decadence. Until his inheritance, two hundred pound lunch bills would never have happened. To be able to hand over his credit card with almost no grimacing, felt liberating. Financial freedom was taking less getting used to than he had expected.
“I’ve never understood celebrity chefs and expected their restaurants to be silly and overpriced. I stand corrected. Delicious, though still expensive. Anyway to business again I’m afraid. How goes it with the diaries of the enigmatic Jonas?”
Annabel shook her head in frustration as she had been puzzling over them for day’s and didn’t feel she had achieved anything.
“He was either a genius in code construction as well as in everything else or plain bonkers. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’ve looked at his time at CHC up to his death, and now I’m going to backtrack and read his entries for his early years. He began his diary at the age of eight when he went to prep school and continued until he died. Most years I manage a couple of weeks of recording shopping lists and favourite books before I forget. I’ve abandoned the coded part of the diary and given it to Ben to have a play with and see if his computers can offer any solutions. Then I’ll start looking at Ernest’s diaries. He has written thirty-seven volumes, one per year, beginning in nineteen seventy-three. The first entry was written one week after his brother’s death and the final one on the day of his own death. He mentions the code in Jonas’s diary, but seems as puzzled by it as I am. He mentions letting various friends and colleagues look at small sections of it to see if they had any useful thoughts
, but nothing.”
“Perhaps your faith in Ben’s technical abilities will be proven.”
Annabel looked thoughtful for a moment before saying,
“If I drive, can you contact Ernest and Juanita? We need to ask him about his brother’s diary.”
***
Annabel eased the Audi through the town centre traffic towards Shepton Mallet. William had opted to sit in the back seat as he didn’t want the presence of a full sized ghost distracting Annabel. William closed his eyes and concentrated. He focused on what he wanted to happen, in this case for Ernest and Juanita to arrive. He always wondered how he was supposed to know they had arrived. The voice that he heard next to him answered that question.
“Ok, you can open your eyes, we’ve arrived.” Said Ernest with an unexpected flourish.
Annabel, peering into the rear view mirror to see if she could see anything, missed an oncoming motorbike by inches which earned her a rare rebuke from Juanita.
“You can’t see us, I thought it safer to exclude you this time so we didn’t crash. You can hear everything we say, so chip in if you want to.”
Annabel looked embarrassed and stared ahead concentrating on the road.
Continuing Juanita said to William,
“We have company, nasty violent company. An imitative guide, Helena, is watching all we do. I had hoped never to see her again, now she is back with Charles Cortez and is very interested in you William. To work. William how can we help? What can Ernest assist with? Or do you just want an update?”
William stared at the diminutive ghost sitting next to his father on the back seat in wonder. How, he thought, can she talk with such speed and not trip over the constant stream of words bursting from her?
“We’ve hit problem,” William said, “Jonas’s diaries are boring and uninformative. Annabel’s read all of the sections that relate to his time at CHC and is going to backtrack and look at the earlier sections tomorrow. He has encoded anything that might indicate that he discovered information about CHC. If we can break the code then we might get a better feeling about CHC in the seventies and what he was working on. We might even discern what he did that prompted Charles Cortez to kill him.”
Ernest shook his head.
“I puzzled over the coded parts for years but had little success. I showed small sections to friends and colleagues to try and establish what type of code it was. The consensus was that it was a two part code that would have involved solving the numerical stage to gain access to the second part that may be linked to perhaps a single book. The only person who might be able to help you is Penny Morton, Jonas’s fiancée. I doubt she will.”
Annabel asked,
“Why do you think she wouldn’t want to discover why her fiancée was killed?”
“I approached her about five years after Jonas died and again two years ago. Both times she refused even to speak to me.”
“Odd.” William said, “Perhaps we ought to try and arrange a meeting with her. Annabel, a woman’s touch might break down her barriers. Can you give her a call in the morning?”
Ernest nodded in agreement and then said,
"Juanita, you can guess by her name, is fluent in Spanish. By chance, we overheard part of a telephone conversation Felicity was having with a gentleman called Pablo. The conversation was circumspect, but mentioned a delivery and family business. We can’t be sure, but it seemed they were planning a big delivery of cocaine. William, you, Annabel and Ben need to prove Felicity is involved in the cocaine importation business and stop her.”
Chapter 30
Charles Cortez glared at his guide Helena as they watched William, Annabel and Ben in the bookshop office. Charles realised he should have killed Ernest Sanderson years before. Too late now. William Bacchus, his trusty vicar and the cripple had taken the proffered baton of responsibility and where proving more adept than Ernest.
“A situation out of control, not under control. Won’t interfere with our plans? Are you deaf as well as stupid? Can you hear them? Felicity is going to be in deep shit if they put many more pieces of this jigsaw together. I blame myself for the half-arsed killing of Sanderson junior. We should have laid his soul bare before he went to his ancestors. If that diary is as perceptive as I think it might be, when they do work out how to decode it, they are going to know everything he knew, everything we killed him for. We need to distract them. Ideas?”
Helena looked at Charles and smiled at the opening Charles had given her. Charles was newly dead, less than a year and struggling to adjust to life after death.
“You are right to blame yourself, it was stupid. The diary is trickier.” She thought for a moment, before appearing in front of him with a gleam in her eyes.
“We know where the diary is, could it not disappear?” She clicked the fingers on both hands to indicate something vanishing into thin air and cocked her head to one side.
“No diary, no information. No information, no threat. Neutralisation. Circumspect neutralisation is preferable to evisceration, this time.”
Charles continued to glare waving his hands in irritation.
“Neutralisation, circumspection. Brave words, heroic thoughts, but the daring deeds? Who, how, when? Felicity they know. Jemima is consorting with the enemy. Alexander is too high profile for burglary, blackmailing Home Secretaries is challenging from the Scrubs. That leaves us with?”
“Us.” Helena pauses for effect and then added,
“Time we started direct action. I need to increase our permissions and then we can help Felicity in a more practical manner.”
Charles looked at her, surprise on his face. A more experienced demon would have had some of the tools; Charles was good enough to get all of the tools, in time.
“Increase our permissions? Who increases them and what can we do with these ‘increased permissions’?”
Helena grinned and said,
“The man himself, of course. What can we do? Everything, anything, all of it.”
***
“Dr Penny Morton?” Ben asked, “What’s she got to offer on Jonas’s codes? Is she a professor of cryptography? If she is, maybe I’d be better coming with you rather than Annabel.”
William looked over Ben’s head at Annabel who grimaced and shrugged.
“Penny Morton was Jonas’s fiancée. I’m taking Annabel to see her for two reasons. First, she is the one I tasked to work on Jonas’s diary and even though she has had little success so far, I want her to be involved at each stage. Second, I don’t know Penny Morton. I’ve no idea how she will react to discussing Jonas. It’s along time ago, but she has never married or had another relationship with a man since Jonas. I want Annabel to add a female perspective and be there to defuse any male orientated problems. I need you to keep looking at CHC and also to have a look at the number strings in Jonas’s diary and see if there is anything obvious that has been missed so far.”
Ben nodded and said,
“Good point. I have been making progress with the CHC angle and have a number of lines of enquiry. Can I see you both later when you get back from the hospital and I should have something to tell you?”
“Of course come around to the house after seven and I’ll get some wine and I’ll even cook my speciality risotto alla pescatora.”
Ben squeezed out from his chair at the desk and slipped past William to stand next to Annabel. He picked up the photocopied sheets in front of her and flicked through them idly before putting them in the document feed of the industrial sized copier William had installed and ran another copy off. The two hundred and fifty sheets ran through in under five minutes giving Ben a chance to explain why he needed his own copy of Ernest’s diary.
“I have kept asking myself why we have dad’s diary as well as Uncle Jonas’.” Turning to Annabel he gestured at the growing pile on the copier and said,
“Haven’t you wondered? Have you read it yet?”
Annabel shook her head and said,
“I decide to work bac
kward, expecting anything useful to be closer to his death date than in the dim and distant past. Brilliant man he may have been, but a dreadful diarist. I don’t think it was ever meant to be for anything other than as an aide memoir for his personal use.”
Ben paced around the cramped floor space of the office.
“So on that basis, there must be something in there that we will find useful or will point us to something that will. Red herring’s weren’t his style. If you don’t mind, I thought I’d read it in my spare time and see if I can glean anything from it. I knew Dad better than anyone and might be able to pick up any nuances or clues that you might miss. If we could ask him what he left it for it would be far easier.”
William smiled and patted his arm. Keeping Ernest’s presence in limbo secret was becoming awkward. William wanted to share Ernest’s existence with Ben. He thought they would both benefit from meeting again. How was he going to offer a logical and cogent argument to Ernest that would allow him to share his secret with Ben?
“As you said maybe you’ll see something. I’ll ask him in my prayers and see if we get an answer. I’m going to the hospital for a check up and I’ll also see if I can persuade anyone to tell me a little more about Ernest’s death. Annabel you can escort me to the door as I have a little something for you to do. See you this evening Ben.”
They walked in silence down the stairs, out into the bookshop and then into the sunshine on Long Street. Taking Annabel’s hand William steered her across the road. They continued to walk in silence to the car park where William had parked the Audi. When they arrived at the car William stood and looked at her for a moment and then came to a decision.
“How do you feel about contacting Ernest and Juanita?”
“I’m sorry?” she said, stunned. “Say that again.”
“We need to know why we have Ernest’s diary. Was it mixed up with the other papers he was working on when he died? Are we supposed to have it for reference? What’s in it that we need? I can’t speak to him today because of hospital and then dinner with Ben this evening. You know how it’s done. Explain that I’m busy and we need to know ASAP as things have started to move apace. Ok?”
Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) Page 22
