Weycombe

by G. M. Malliet

  Back in the locker room, peeling Spandex away from my Jockey bikini no-shows, I stopped, one leg hovering in midair. My mind had lighted on the image of Anna as she lay dead, and on that glimpse of lace peeking out of her running shorts. For some reason that old Cole Porter “Anything Goes” song came to mind. Something about stockings …

  And I realized what had bothered me about that flash of frilly lace at the time.

  Who runs in expensive lace undies?

  Where was she running to?

  I got showered and changed and left the gym. As soon as I was outside and out of earshot of the late arrivals for the Zumba class (divorcees going through the spin cycle; you can always tell), I rang the person I most wanted to see right then, the one person I called “friend” in Weycombe. A woman trustworthy, reliable, and always up for a chat over tea or coffee and, with any luck, pastry. Rashima Khan.

  7

  The Great Book Club Schism began with Stephen Hawking’s history of time. Or maybe it was a book by a British politician. Whatever. It ended on a night months later with everyone storming out in a strop. No one had the will to go on with it after that, so it was said. And no one was ever quite sure what had gone wrong, with the possible exception of Anna. And Macy Rideout.

  The essential quarrel was not over the book itself but over whether we should all be forced to read it, a fight that shifted into a wide-ranging argument about freedom of speech. There was a camp that wanted to read something “nice,” like the newest woman-in-jeopardy story, and a camp that was done with nice (“Where Are the Editors? ” had been my quip, and “What’s nice about that?” had, presciently, been Anna’s) and had wanted to read a debate over the loopholes in the Magna Carta. Most of us, at the end of a long day, could not give a fuck about the Magna Carta. I think it was Macy, aka Racy Macy, who held out for a James Patterson.

  I maintain that Hilary Mantel, a compromise choice, was the one who did us in. Not her, but the theme of high-stakes infidelity that ran throughout her tale of divorce. Her book ended the Weycombe Court Book Club—pow, just like that, a club that had been going for years—and looking back, I realized what I had only suspected at the time: the choice of book was a pretext, a way not to discuss the deeper, darker things scurrying beneath the placid surface of Weycombe. Things that lurked and wouldn’t quite come into view, like those ghostlike ruins in the duck pond. These women—at least two of them—loathed one another and were in a never-ending struggle for supremacy over houses, cars, wardrobes, and most of all the men who provided them these things.

  The final scuffle began almost immediately after the Rideouts’ wedding announcements went out and reached a climax when Barry and Macy Rideout moved into their palace overlooking the Wey. Before, there had been very few problems. Half the books we read for club were crap but no one had minded much. We were there for the food and wine, anyway. Now suddenly we had ladies going to the mat over the selections, and, quite noticeably, the suggestions for upcoming choices were becoming very intellectual. Higher than Booker Prize highbrow. When Thomas Hardy and George Eliot were invoked, it did occur to me this might be a ploy to drive Macy out of the club, with Anna, her former champion, heading up the committee to oust her. Neither woman was a towering intellect—none of us were, really—but the choice of what to read next wasn’t the point. The point likely was that Anna had reigned supreme for so long, and Macy had only just arrived, and she looked amazing, and she had snagged a millionaire on her looks alone, as if that were something new. And for some reason the force of her personality made the other women fall before her like bowling pins, a situation Anna could no longer tolerate. It may have been especially galling for Anna since she was the one who had invited Macy to join us, never dreaming.

  Never dreaming.

  Anna used to pair up with Macy for a morning run, but this was before Macy and her solicitor fiancé moved to their restored manor house in North Cliff. Both women had worn black spandex on those occasions, Macy looking like a black spider with boobs and Anna like a chunky house burglar. As the weather grew colder, Anna added a bright orange trackie to her wardrobe, an unfortunate choice as Halloween grew near. I’m sure she bought it intending to have lost fifteen pounds before she became a living reminder of the season. When she died, it was in a new blue outfit I didn’t recognize, the maker’s logo a shiny silver to match her shoes.

  Not that this was one of those times when what you wore really mattered, but the blue had been a big improvement.

  Anne did all her running and Pilates training in the morning, the only free time in her busy day. By ten thirty she’d be at her desk, or meeting potential prospects at a house that was on the market, or attending a meeting at a solicitor’s office for the final conveyance of a property. But by the time she got herself murdered, she had long since parted ways with Macy, her running mate.

  I couldn’t pretend it was a big loss when Macy moved away. I’d gotten to know her and Barry only superficially before they left the Court for their even more impressive digs. I’d invited them to one of my summer cookouts, where I’d done my best to replicate the foods of my native land. What had started as a housewarming party became an annual event, but try finding anything like a hot dog bun in Waitrose; the closest I could come up with were baps cut in half. Hamburgers translated well, although the Brits did this weird thing of wanting “salad cream” on theirs, a sort of gelatinous faux mayonnaise. Dijon mustard was another of their innovations but I decided it was an improvement. The Court Cookout with its endless pours of wine went over well and became a yearly nod to Britain’s brief summer.

  In calling on Rashima Khan I was killing several birds with one stone. Not only had she been in the book club, but she’d known Anna for at least a decade. She also had a sharp eye for detail and an ear for nuance. Maybe she knew something that could direct the police to a theory of who had killed Anna, and why. The why was always so important.

  I also just felt like a chat. The whole Anna business had left me feeling at a loose end. Will, of course, was useless for restoring my spirits. But I could usually count on Rashima. The ability to calm people, to put things into perspective, was her gift. She would sometimes comment on how together she thought I was, but that was just Rashima being loyal, another of her gifts.

  Will did not really approve of my friendship with her. I felt it was some vestige of British Empire chauvinism, some bullshit like that, although he’d rather die than admit it. So going to see her always felt like a tiny, harmless, but liberating break for freedom.

  The Khans’ house was directly across the crescent from Anna’s, and apart from the fact Anna had more of a mock Tudor vibe going with her front window panes, the houses were mirror images. Rashima’s kitchen faced directly into the Monroes’, and her master bedroom into their master bedroom. Rashima told me more than once she wished Anna would remember to draw the curtains.

  “Good curtains make good neighbors,” she’d say. “And I don’t need to know every blow-by-blow in that marriage.”

  I took this to mean Anna and Alfie weren’t getting along, which would now be grist for Milo’s mill. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him unless for some reason it became necessary. I liked Alfie and wanted to protect him; he was already under suspicion just by dint of being the husband.

  I pounded the lion’s-head knocker on the Khans’ door. Rashima would generally be working on her blog this time of day so she’d be wearing headphones, listening to the sounds of ocean waves or coffee shop noises or whatever gave her focus. But I guessed she would welcome the interruption. Rashima was tenderhearted—probably in mourning for Anna and not getting a lot of work done.

  Work for Rashima was writing an online beauty blog. It was supported one hundred percent by advertising and in an ocean of such offerings, hers had risen near the top. Her stand against wasteful eye shadow quads, for example, was the stuff of legend.

  Still, the Huffing
ton Post had little to worry about. Rashima told me once that as sole proprietor she cleared about forty thousand pounds a year, after taxes, “but that doesn’t include labor, which is nearly every waking hour.” She was one of those who inspired me to go and do likewise but I could not for the life of me think what I was an expert on, enough to convince advertisers to support me or, better yet, buy me out within a month. And I was not really interested in working “nearly every waking hour.” Sometimes I thought it might be difficult to say what I was interested in enough to work that hard. I was a skilled videographer, a talent honed at the BBC, but I had come to regard that as more of a pastime. I wanted to write—but what, I didn’t yet know. Anna’s death gave me the glimmerings of an idea.

  Rashima and her husband, Dhir, a psychiatrist, were the only people of color living in Weycombe Court, and practically the only people of color anywhere near the village not in council flats. The depressing estate that housed those needing government assistance was hidden from yuppie gaze beyond a hill, far from the River Wey.

  The Khans were in an arranged marriage that spoke volumes for the wisdom of the old system. Rashima had trusted her parents to find her a suitable mate, and they had done so. It was the same story from his side, presumably. They were compatible because it was in their natures, possibly, or because shrinks like Dhir always had happy marriages (a less-likely theory), or just because the fates had smiled on them both. I envied her the lack of strife and miscommunication in her courtship story, those staples of the romance novel, and what appeared, on the surface at least, to be the promise of a lifetime of emotional and financial security. God only knows what my father would have chosen for me as a mate. Someone who would have sold me into white slavery, at a guess. Anything to get me out of his sight. My mother would have chosen more from the heart. And isn’t that as bad as one’s choosing for oneself?

  Dhir was a hulk of a man working in what seemed to be a very profitable profession. Apparently there were a lot of disturbed but wealthy people in the world. I am judging by the fact the Khans’ house sat on the largest lot in Weycombe Court, complete with a small swimming pool in the back. The Khans were well liked on their own merits as friendly, self-possessed neighbors, but people would spoil it by liking them in obsequious, toadying, politically correct ways. To be fair, centuries of discrimination needed to be made up for, and madly overcompensating seemed the least people could do.

  Rashima had been a beauty editor at the Globe. Anticipating that her job would be outsourced to a syndicate, she had slipped easily into her new career at home. Some people are like that: cats who always land on their feet while the rest of us are stuffed in sacks to be drowned. Because she got a ton of free samples from manufacturers, her bathroom always looked like the cosmetics counter at Harrods. That she gave these samples away to anyone who asked made her very popular in the neighborhood. She had introduced me to Estée Lauder’s “Madness” line, for which I’m still grateful. She made videos on how to apply makeup; I helped her light and edit them on occasion.

  “People think beauty product reviews are a joke but people care about this stuff,” she’d say. “And if readers even suspect I’m promoting a product only to get more freebies, I’m done. If a mascara brand smudges, it smudges, and I’ve a sworn duty to tell people the truth about it so they don’t waste their money.”

  “I wish politicians had your integrity,” I would say solemnly. Even though red lipstick and protection from search and seizure weren’t comparable, she had a point. We all live downstream.

  I picked up a tube of mascara and reared back when I saw the price sticker. “Holy crap.”

  “Yeah, I know. About the right price for an experimental cancer treatment. For a mascara, not so much.”

  “You’re not kidding.”

  “From talking with Heather, I’ve been inspired to do a few posts on beauty solves you can find in your own kitchen. Using lemon as a clarifier and coconut oil to remove makeup are no-brainers, right?”

  “If Heather has anything to do with it, I’d say that’s a given.”

  Heather lived next door to the Khans. “Inspired” and “Heather” were not words often used in the same sentence. Heather had also been invited into the book club on her arrival in Weycombe Court, a kindness one and all had come to regret. She tended to plump for how-to books on how to build a compost heap.

  This was the usual witless chitchat Rashima and I went in for. I’d sit at ease in the colorful, plush surroundings of her living room and feel time and care slip away as the aroma of spices and baked goods wafted from her kitchen.

  But on this day we sat grimly across from each other at her breakfast bar, Rashima preoccupied like all of Weycombe with Anna’s death. We dove into the sort of mournful speculation that would become a staple of village conversations in the days to come.

  “Dhir doesn’t think it was a random killing,” Rashima finally said. “A crazed killer on the loose or anything like that.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “He thinks he would know if there was someone like that living around here. They’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

  Dhir was pretty bright, so that was reassuring. “That’s not to say it wasn’t some crazy passing through,” I said.

  “I know. I suppose we’ll all be looking over our shoulders now. The world is just so changed.”

  “I’m not going to get any sleep for a long time,” I said.

  “Me neither. By the way, did you see that person Dhir recommended? About the insomnia?”

  As part of my enticing layoff package, the BBC had offered free counseling and job placement assistance. Dhir had endorsed one of the names on the list they’d provided.

  “A few times, yes. It was helpful.”

  It was not, not really, but I didn’t want to go into it. The gesture of asking had been well intended, but Rashima wasn’t one to pry. She changed the subject.

  8

  So, tell me what happened.” Rashima clicked shut the lid on her laptop and offered me coffee, admitting she wasn’t getting much work done. “Exactly as it happened.”

  I settled in to tell her as much as I could about the murder scene, tossing in a few theories. Finally I faltered, telling her I had no clue. “And I need to know. You know?”

  “You’re trying to find out who did it, aren’t you?” Eyes wide and eyebrows up. This was Rashima’s concerned face. Why would she assume I was snooping around in some amateur-sleuth way? Well, because she knew me pretty well: I had enjoyed my former job rehashing old true crime cases. I’d been good at it.

  I pointed out that given I was the one to discover Anna’s body, I had extra motivation. I didn’t mention that Milo had found my presence on the path that morning to be a concerning coincidence, missing the point that I was always there at about that time of day. If anything, Anna’s workout usually came earlier. I seldom saw her.

  I said as much now to Rashima, adding, “I’ve been out walking every day for ages now and I know the regulars who head out when I do. She was not on her usual schedule. She’d been on this health kick for what—a few months?”

  Rashima gave the question her most solemn consideration, her fingernails, painted white to match her computer, tapping on the computer lid.

  “More,” she said. “Anna had become way more interested in her appearance. She was always a bit like that, though.”

  “Vain,” I supplied.

  “Vain,” she agreed. “Always shopping, with packages from high-end merchants being delivered to her door almost daily. Always in a new outfit with matching everything. And matchy-matchy is so last year.”

  “She was in real estate,” I pointed out. “You can’t show a house in ripped jeans and a T-shirt.”

  “True.” Rashima paused. “Exactly how much did you … ? You know—see?”

  “Of the body? Not a lot. She was mostly hidden by trees
and bushes. Pure chance I saw her at all. Then … I saw enough to see she was dead.”

  “Dead, how?”

  “Strangled, at a guess. The police were not in a confiding mode. Just by the look of … you know. Her eyes. I think she was strangled with that scarf she wore around her hair when she ran. That boho thing.”

  “She must have been so terrified.” Rashima’s slim shoulders moved delicately beneath the shimmering white fabric of her blouse. She was trembling, probably putting herself in Anna’s runners, imagining her fear. That was Rashima all over.

  “Must have been,” I said solemnly. “It’s a very—well, personal way to kill someone. You have to really hate them, I guess.” I picked up another sample from the array scattered near her laptop—a salmon-pink eye shadow—and wondered what member of the human race that color would flatter.

  “There was a certain manic quality to her behavior recently, I thought. Dhir thinks so, too.”

  I put down the eye shadow and looked across at her. “Manic? Manic how?”

  Rashima shrugged. “Like there was something big on her horizon? Something that she wanted very badly? Someone in particular she was trying to impress? I don’t know. Anyway, maybe ‘obsessive’ is a better word. She started talking about plastic surgery and she was years away from needing that.”

  I nodded my agreement. That porcelain skin. It would be a sacrilege to start cutting into that before time.

  “Maybe she had a younger competitor. I don’t mean for Alfie’s attentions—that’s really hard to imagine. He adored her. I mean, a competitor at the office.”

  Rashima settled back into her chair, crossed her arms, and said, “Usually, when a woman is feeling insecure about her looks, she wears too much makeup—the worst thing you can do, of course. It ages you. I saw her one day the other week and it just looked ladled on. I told her to stop by, that I had some new samples she could try. I was trying to steer her toward a look that was less Phantom of the Opera, if you know what I mean.”