When the children are finally released, Elodie went on, there is to be no shouting, fighting or running. The garden will be formal, with gravel paths, neatly clipped borders and terracotta pots stiff with shrubs. Madame would be seriously displeased if a pot got cracked.
Poor Marc. Helene felt for him, growing up in such a stifling environment. No wonder he’d been so keen to stack up with Ripping Velcro.
She thought back a year, when she had gone up to Southwold for Hilly’s birthday. Lunch in the kitchen, the dragon still living with them as the annex wasn’t finished, a huge pile of builders’ sand at the garden gate and Olly tight-lipped because they’d had to knock his beloved garden shed down to make room for the annex. Helen was in charge of the roast beef and Yorkies, Hilly’s favourite, but quite honestly, her oven was medieval and it was a nightmare cooking in someone else’s kitchen. Especially with Megan, who had opted to dress as the devil, offering to ‘help.’
*
At Angeline’s, Helene went straight to the kitchen. There were three items of correspondence propped on the worktop. Two postcards from Bordeaux. The first, from Angeline’s mother, simply said they had arrived safely. The one from her aunt announced that they had been invited for une coupe at the Chateau Arcadia. They were sending a car. She was going to wear her chartreuse silk suit.
The note from Angeline was dated Saturday and Helene groaned when she read it. The boss wanted the red leather walls cleaned and polished again. It was Helene’s least favourite job. Took ages, and left her no time with A Vous La France.
Just to delay having to start, she poured out a spoonful of the DRAINAGE treatment Elodie had given her, and added water. It tasted foul. Like bilge. What the heck was in it? The label said fennel, celery, ginseng, garlic and caffeine. I can get all that fresh at the market, Helene thought, and make it taste more appetising.
She filled the plastic bucket three-quarters full with warm water, and added a little vinegar. Then she took a white cloth from the neat heap by the sink and went into the sitting-room.
The first thing she was conscious of was the smell. Over the aroma of the vinegar, there was something else, an odd smell which she couldn’t immediately identify. And then, the room. One of the chairs had been knocked over. On the table, Angeline’s lesson books were in disarray. While she took all this in, Helene dipped the cloth into the water, wrung it out and absentmindedly began wiping the wall near the window.
The front door had not been double locked, but this was not unusual. If Angeline was running late, she’d just bang it shut and go, secure that Helene would be arriving shortly.
Helene straightened the fallen chair and went to dip the cloth in the water again. She stared at the white cloth she’d been smoothing over the wall. The cloth wasn’t white any more. It was a browny red. Not the colour of the leather – and anyway, that had never been affected by water before. No, this was more a rusty colour. And that, Helene realised, was the strange smell. Rust.
Helene moved the bucket across the wooden floor, and saw what it had been concealing. She told herself it was spilled red wine. That Angeline had been having a party.
A party? Angeline?
Helene ran. Ran to the bedroom. Flung open the door.
Angeline lay immobile on the bed. She was wearing gold silk ballerina slippers and what remained of a primrose yellow negligee. It had been viciously slashed. Both the negligee and the slippers were stained with blood. She was, quite clearly, dead.
Helene steadied herself. You can have hysterics later, she told herself. Not now. Not yet. There was a mobile phone lying on the floor. Helene went to pick it up. Stopped herself. In her legal job she had lost count of the times a domestic dispute action had come unstuck because someone had tried to tidy up after an incident. Do not touch the crime scene. Rule one.
Above the phone in the hall Angeline had written precise instructions for what – presumably the students – were to do in an emergency. SAMU (Ambulance) dial 15. They will contact the Police (17). OR phone the fire brigade (18). They are trained in First Aid.
Don’t finger her phone. Use your mobile.
Realising it was too late for the fire brigade’s First Aid, Helene shakily jabbed one five. An operator answered immediately and when, as Helene gave the address, they realised she was English, the operator spoke in English, urging her to stay calm.
Calm! There’s a murdered woman in there. Covered in blood. The whole apartment seems to be covered in blood.
In the kitchen, Helene poured Elodie’s drainage liquid down the sink and made some coffee. Strong. Okay, scene of crime, but this was Paris, this was terrifying and she had no one to support her. She daren’t ring Marc. He was probably doing something to help his mother. Elodie, on her day off, had gone to spy on a rival salon. Odile would be clearing up and telling guests for the thousandth time how to get to the Louvre.
Helene sat at the window, and waited. It was like the long, lonely wait she’d had when her father had left and she was alone at home.
Angeline’s apartment seemed to throb with terror. What in hell’s name had happened here? And when? And why, and who?
Hadn’t anyone seen? The concierge. Oh, forget it. Out on the streets most like, demonstrating against some slight to a train driver.
People in the flat opposite? But that was an office, she realised. They weren’t in yet. There was a geranium on one of the desks. Helene remembered, when she was temping and filling in for someone, the girl had left a note on the desk: Don’t spit on my geranium!
Ludicrous, Helene thought, what goes through your mind at a time like this. And where on earth was that ambulance, and the police?
*
The SAMU team came surging up the stairs twenty minutes later. They were desolés for the delay. There was a student protest. Another one. They were blocking the road. It was a scandal.
The police followed immediately. Helene shook hands with all the men and waited while the three SAMU shook hands with the four police. The police captain introduced her to the police doctor, the forensic expert and his sidekick. She led the way to the bedroom, and left them to it.
The captain came back, asking for Angeline’s details, and Helene’s. She told him briefly what had happened.
‘So you found the body?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you touch it?’
‘No.’ She felt sick.
The forensic guy said, ‘Have you touched anything in the apartment?’
‘I’m the femme de menage. I cleared up the kitchen, then I picked up a chair that had fallen over, and then I started to wipe down the walls in here and -–‘ She pointed to the blood-stained cloth she had dropped on the floor.
The rest of the morning Helene spent at the police station, being fingerprinted and giving a fuller statement. She felt she could manage in French, but even so, they sent in a woman interpreter. Half way through Helene’s interview, the police officer was handed a note. Helene had always found it a useful skill to be able to read upside down. The police doctor was saying he estimated the time of death between 20.00 and 21.00 hours on Saturday.
The officer looked at Helene. ‘Madame, where were you on Saturday night?’
‘I was at home.’
‘Alone?’
‘No. With a friend.’
She had to give him Alexis’s address, phone and email.
‘What time did Monsieur Tate arrive?’
‘Just before half past seven.’
‘And what time did he leave?’
‘About the same time the next morning.’
The woman interpreter smiled.
‘Did you go out?’
‘No. Yes. I went to get some tomato juice.’
‘And Monsieur Tate. What was he doing while you were out?’
Helene was tempted to say, ‘wanking’, but of course she told him about Alexis putting his new phone number into her laptop.
When she got back from the police, she tried to call Alexis, but
he still wasn’t answering. Marc too was on message in Chantilly. She wasn’t expecting him back until six tomorrow evening. She just left a message saying Angeline had had a terrible accident and if she wasn’t in when he got back, it would be because she was delayed at the police station. About Alexis Helene said nothing at all.
As requested, she was back at the police station prompt at 2.00 on Tuesday. The officer took her all through her statement again. When she got to the bit about Alexis, she said, ‘My laptop will have recorded the date and time he made the entry. I could bring it in…’
*
‘Thank you, Madame. That will not be necessary. In fact, we have all the information we need.’
He told her she could go. As she stood up, he said, ‘Your friend, Monsieur Tate. Were you aware that he and Mademoiselle Ardoise were – acquainted?’
‘Oh yes,’ Helene’s tone was brisk. She was anxious to get home, to Marc. ‘Monsieur Tate was her student. She was teaching him French.’
The policeman’s face remained stony. The female interpreter’s did not.
The glimmer of what Helene saw there sent her flying along Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Now it was her turn to bang on Alexis’s door.
‘Let me in! Let me IN.’
He opened up. She pushed past him.
‘Have you been screwing Angeline?’
He grinned. ‘You’re jealous!’
‘I am not jealous. I just feel I’m in a play and everyone else knows their lines and who they are and no-one’s bothered to tell me. So you fucking tell me, what the fuck’s been going on!’
He let out a huge, exhausted breath. ‘Give me a break, Helene. I’ve been with the cops all morning, answering the same question, fifty times over.’
She swept his trainers and some grungy T-shirts off the sofa onto the floor. ‘But where? Not her place. I would have known. Don’t tell me you brought her here?’
He shook his head. ‘We used Odile’s.’
Helene was beginning to wonder if there was any local pie Odile didn’t have a finger in.
‘Angeline was right pissed off when you kept turning up in the snug. One time, we had to get out down the fire escape.’
‘So you brought her here once and she was so offended by the state of the place, after that you trysted,’ Helene rather liked the word, ‘you trysted at Odile’s.’
Alexis was suddenly busy making heaps. He piled up a stack of CD’s and tried, and failed, to make a heap out of four empty crisp packets.
Something was going on here and Helene was determined to find out what. Alexis had the basic survival instinct of a coward. He might fudge it, make life up as he went along, but when cornered, he would front up.
She pressed on, ‘When did you last see Angeline?’
‘For Christ’s sake! I had all this from the cops this morning.’
‘Why did you come to see me Saturday night? I hadn’t heard from you for weeks.’
He fetched a couple of beers. ‘Okay. I’ll tell you what happened. It was Malveen.’
Oh, surprise, surprise. Helene had never seen a flying fish but she imagined Malveen was just like one, flipping this way and that and gearing up to sock you in the eye.
After the wedding, Alexis explained, they had a few glasses of champagne at a quiet little hotel and then the happy pair left.
‘I came home,’ Alexis said. ‘At five o’clock, so did Malveen.’
‘You mean she’d forgotten something?’ Brain, perhaps?
‘No. She’d run away. Her wedding day. Her honeymoon. I know, I know. But the thing was, it was Harry. What he did.’
Alexis was blinking rapidly.
‘If you remember, none of us ever knew where Harry lived.’
That’s right. The lapdance girls were endlessly speculating. Gymslip was convinced he inhabited a sewer.
‘Malveen didn’t know where he lived. Never been there. Turned out to be the rue Saint Denis.’
Jean-Paul had warned her off this district. ‘Not for you, chérie.’
Helene said, ‘It’s one of the areas the hookers hang out. Odile told me.’
‘Malveen reckons Harry was renting his apartment from one of the girls, then letting out his second bedroom back to her as a dungeon.’
Helene wondered if he’d had to go into all this with the police officer. No wonder the interpreter had looked privileged to have a front row seat. ‘Did Malveen say – what exactly a dungeon is like?’
Yes, Malveen had described it pretty graphically since she wasn’t invited anywhere else in the apartment. And once Harry had undressed her, he was quite chatty about it all.
A dungeon, Helene learned, does not boast a bed. Harry’s contained a black leather chair, like the one at the dentist, fitted with stirrups and leather restraints. There was also a wooden cross, ready for action, hung about with chains, gags and blindfolds. Harry was rather proud of the cross. Specially made, he said. ‘Craftsmanship. That’s what it is.’
Malveen, Helene knew, was no specialist in irony. She would not have lasered back, ‘Craftsmanship? Absolutely! They don’t make crosses like that any more.’
‘It’s mobile, see’ Harry had enthused. ‘Look, it’s got little wheels. So the dominatrix can tie the jerk up, whip him across the goolies, then while he’s still screaming, wheel him into the other room while she sets to on another punter. It’s all go.’
On the wall, Malveen reported, were whips, tawses and canes, all neatly arranged like a sex shop. Another wall displayed bondage gear and a selection of women’s skirts and dresses. Malveen was very taken with these as Harry said the transvestites – trannies - were fond of them.
*
Helene knew a bit about trannies from Noel. ‘Such a problem finding them shoes for the Rubber Ball. The darlings wanted to wear killer heels, but some of them have got size sixteen feet.’
Alexis said, ‘She put on a flouncy frock and pranced around, still thinking it was all a laugh and a joke. There wasn’t much room for all this prancing as most of the room was taken up with this steel cage. Then Harry shoved her into the cage and padlocked it. She couldn’t stand up. Had to crawl. Harry was laughing fit to bust. Gotcha, Mustang!’
Characteristically, Malveen had not attempted to negotiate or sweet-talk her way out of the cage. Malveen had screamed blue murder. Helene would have been worried about the woman upstairs, but since she now understood that Harry’s upstairs neighbour spent her time potty-training senior members of the judiciary …
‘He said her tattoos were so yesterday. He said the smart set, they were all getting branded. Then he put on this terrifying music. Real boom and doom. Malveen said it was all dark red, the music, but maybe that was the lighting. She was in a bit of a state by the time she got here.’
‘But how did she escape?’
Alexis drained his can of beer and did his irritating thing of finishing hers.
‘On the floor of the cage there was bowl of water and a bowl of dog food. Revolting dog food. Harry must have planned it all before the wedding.’
Because she was done up like a dog’s dinner, Helene thought unkindly.
‘Harry said if she ate it, he’d let her out. ‘Course, she told him to eff off. So he sat in the black chair and read the paper.’
Helene, thirsty at the thought of all this, fetched two more beers.
‘In the end, she did it. No choice. She’d worked it all out, but guessed she’d be a bit stiff after having to crawl about for two hours. So as he let her out and she stood up and he started to crow, she spat a mouthful of dog food into his face. Then she bolted. Drank us out of vodka and went out.’
Helene filled in her part of the jigsaw, telling Alexis about her Sunday morning sighting of Malveen stealing the newspaper van.
She sighed. ‘Poor Angeline. Oh God. Poor woman. But what was the motive? A student would hardly start a stabbing frenzy because she’d marked him down in a test.’
Alexis rubbed his eyes. He really did look as if a migraine w
as threatening.
Helene desperately wanted to go home. Instead, she said, ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘Well. Okay. When Malveen got back from Harry’s, Angeline was just leaving. Ange had never been here before. I knew how she’d be. The mess, the smell, etcetera, etcetera. But she begged me to let her come. After the fire escape incident, she’d gone off Odile’s.
‘And how did she react to your little palace?’
‘Badly. Cereal bowl found in bed. Coco Pops.’
Helene burst out laughing.
‘It wasn’t me! It was what Malveen wanted for breakfast. Before she got married.’
Helene couldn’t resist it. ‘Tell me. What was Angeline like in bed?’
‘Look! The woman got murdered. I can’t –‘
‘Oh come on. I only met Angeline once, remember. Alive.’
Alexis fetched more beers. He muttered, ‘Screwing Angeline was like screwing a Jerusalem artichoke. She, she just wasn’t as good as she thought she was. Anyway, Ange had gone, and Malveen was hurtling round the place accusing me of fucking her. Don’t be daft, I said, she’s just my French teacher. Then Malveen found the bed was still warm. She went berserk.’
More transference, Helene recognised. Getting angry at Alexis because of what Harry had done to her.
‘She threw down the rest of our vodka. Got changed. Snatched up that silver bag.’
The one with the knife in it.
‘Then she slammed out, saying she was going to find that bastard Harry. I tried to ring VTR. Harry wasn’t there. It was a bit early, just before seven and Harry, well, of course he wasn’t there. He was supposed to be on his honeymoon.’
This didn’t add up. Why would Malveen want any more to do with Harry? Today it had been game, set and match to him, despite getting a faceful of Doggo dinner. Malveen was the type who’d pick the fight, rather than lurking down a dark alley plotting a vendetta. A vendetta required long-term planning and intelligence, qualities not exactly evident in Malveen.
Besides, Alexis’s little-boy look was betraying him.
‘You’re lying, Alexis. You realised she’d found Angeline’s address on your laptop. Didn’t you try to ring Angeline? Warn her?’
The Price of Love Page 18
