The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 5)

by Paul Charles

  Kennedy hoped there was no going back.

  Chapter 23

  THE FOLLOWING day was Wednesday. Kennedy felt remarkably calm in the early morning stillness, as he walked over Primrose Hill. He’d been here before, three times in fact, with ann rea and once again he found himself feeling good about the fact that it was finally resolved. There was not a trace of remorse in his heart, probably because he’d had a few practise runs at life without ann rea. To be honest, a part of him, a major part of him, was happy. Kennedy felt this was no way for adults to behave. Adults are meant to have this relationship business sussed. But here he and ann rea were, still behaving like teenagers.

  Teenagers, Kennedy felt, had their emotions better sussed – much better than adults. For one thing, they were free of baggage. He remembered Esther Bluewood having sung about having ‘one love, but one love won’t do’. In the same song she claimed that, ‘we have one life and one life won’t do’. ann rea had been the love of Kennedy’s life. It had taken him until his early forties to meet her, but even with all those years of practice he still hadn’t got it right. So why then, did he not feel worse about losing her?

  He kept thinking about Esther’s lines, ‘one love won’t do’ and ‘one life won’t do’. Was the ‘one love won’t do’ an encouragement to him? Did that mean the next love would do? In Esther’s life, one life hadn’t been enough. She’d had a second try after her attempted suicide. But for Esther, her second life hadn’t been enough either. Someone had robbed her of it.

  He heard Esther’s singing voice in his head as he walked over Primrose Hill. It looked so beautiful this morning. The day’s early unused air was clear, clean and sharp, and he found it made his mind remarkably clean and sharp as well. Focused. He found it so easy to focus. Even the early morning dog owners, aiding and abetting their animals to soil this wonderful space, weren’t going to annoy him.

  He spotted two young men in their twenties, both jacketless, with shaven heads, walking in the direction of the lodge near the Zoo zebra crossing. They were walking hand in hand, laughing away, very happy in each other’s company, obviously oblivious to the winter elements. Now if they had been two girls of similar age, walking hand in hand, no one, including Kennedy, would have thought twice about it. Because they were male, though, they obviously had to be gay.

  He smiled to himself, as he spotted a middle-aged lady decked out in designer running gear, gear that would never be run in. She was talking to a disobedient snub-nosed dog. The dog looked like he’d once been trapped between a rock and a double-decker bus. Kennedy couldn’t help thinking, no hoping, that the double-decker bus had travelled the extra fifteen and a half inches before stopping. The lady, with her blonde beehive hair-do protected under the flimsy scarf, persisted in talking to her dog as if it were a young child. Chastising it and reprimanding it, for not obeying her.

  Now Kennedy was quite prepared to accept the fact that the ugly, over-fed mutt – no doubt complete with large pedigree that could be traced back to a Russian poodle crossed with an orangutan – might be able to recognise the tones of its owner’s voice when she screamed ‘Bobbsey’ across the divides of Primrose Hill, disturbing the peace as far away as Chalk Farm. He was, however, equally convinced in his heart and soul that Bobbsey could not decipher the additional directive, ‘Come here immediately. We need to go and get a cappuccino and The Independent and go home do my Jane Fonda exercises’.

  When Kennedy entered North Bridge House, the lady waiting for him in reception looked like a younger version of the fool on the hill. Victoria, ‘my friends call me Tor’, Lucas was over-bred and freckled. She might look brilliant when she reached the age of fifty. What she was trying to carry off now and, Kennedy imagined, had been trying to carry off since she was a teenager, would all sadly fall into place when there wasn’t going to be a lot of her life left.

  ‘I’d like to get this over with as quickly as possible,’ she announced, plum firmly in mouth. ‘I’ve got an appointment with the hairdresser at nine thirty.’

  ‘Well, let’s see if we can help you make that appointment, Miss Lucas. It is miss, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why, yes, of course,’ Tor announced, indignantly unbuttoning her high-collar electric blue coat. She followed Kennedy through to his office.

  ‘Tea?’ Kennedy asked, as he opened the door.

  ‘I’d love some coffee really, but I can’t abide instant, so perhaps mineral water?’

  ‘Oh, let’s see what we can rustle up for you,’ Kennedy said showing her into the office.

  Victoria Lucas, Kennedy thought, gave herself such a hard time. Unnecessarily in all probability. She’d obviously been playing mum since she was young, so young she’d never had an opportunity to enjoy her childhood. Could she have been forced to behave like this because her mother had been permanently absent? Could Tor have been the predominate force in Paul Yeats’ life for so long that his dysfunctionalism with women was due to her? Had his sister warned him off women because of their mother deserting them? Had she done all in her power to prevent her brother from being hurt in the same way her father had been?

  She was wearing a pair of black slacks and electric blue leatherette shoes to match her coat. She wore a white shirt embroidered with little Swiss dancing men. Over this she wore a black woollen waistcoat with a single brown button positioned at waist level. Her hair was brown, and it looked frizzy and brittle from too many coats of lacquer. It was flat at the top and came out at the back and sides, returning in just below the ears. It looked a little like a rugby ball plopped on her head, broadside on. Miss Lucas had a weak and forgettable faces and her eyes were laden down with much too much blue eyeshadow.

  She had the breeding but not the class to carry off what she was trying so hard to achieve; the classic forties look.

  Victoria Lucas fidgeted for a bit as Kennedy made her coffee. She puffed up her hair at the back and sides; she ran her fingers around the back of her collar, separating it from her neck. She kept sticking her chin out, as if to relieve her throat from the tightness of the collar. Kennedy wondered whether all her little mannerisms were because she liked to be in control of situations and, here, on his turf, to answer his questions, she was not in charge.

  Mind you, if Kennedy thought he was going to run the interview freely, he was sadly wrong.

  ‘So, inspector,’ she began, taking her first sip of coffee. She seemed to enjoy it and she used the third finger of her right hand to dab away the liquid at each corner of her mouth, ensuring it wouldn’t ruin her lipstick. She ran her tongue over her lips a few times and then pushed her lips hard together before continuing, ‘I’m here to see what is happening about Paul’s journals.’

  ‘Paul’s journals?’ Kennedy replied, with a ‘forgive me’ smile. ‘But surely you mean Esther’s journals?’

  ‘Sadly Esther is now dead. Paul is the administrator of her estate and as such he is the administrator of all her property. The artistic rights are not in dispute in this case – we are not claiming those at this juncture – but legally the journals are the property of the estate and as such I demand you return them to us immediately.’

  ‘Sorry, no can do,’ Kennedy replied firmly. No trace of the surprise he felt was evident in his voice.

  ‘Our lawyers will be in touch and believe you me…’ Tor started, rising from her chair, clearly preparing to end the conversation and leave.

  ‘Listen, miss,’ Kennedy began, very slowly and calmly, ‘you and your team of expensive legal eagles can huff and puff all you want, but those journals are vital evidence in this case and will remain in our ward until such time as we deem them fit to be passed back to the estate. I should also advise you that until such time as the will is read and we have established exactly who is the executor of the estate, they will be passed to no one.’

  ‘In that case, we have nothing else to say to each other. This meeting is over,’ Tor said, pulling her coat about her shoulders.

  ‘Well, that’s entirel
y up to you, madam. However, I have reason to believe you can help us with our enquiries and, whilst you are certainly free to walk out of here at this moment in time…’ Kennedy paused to check his watch, ‘…I should warn you that we do need to speak to you and, by the time you are sitting down to have your hair done, I’ll have a warrant drawn up and ready for execution. So, if you could just leave me the name and address of your hairdresser, we’ll be along presently to pick you up for questioning.’

  Kennedy stood up and pushed his chair under his desk signifying that, as far as he too was concerned, the interview was over. The next one, he knew, would certainly be more formal, if not a lot more embarrassing for Victoria.

  ‘And how do you feel I can help with your enquiries?’ Victoria announced in a ‘Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-ups’ voice.

  They both returned to their respective chairs.

  ‘If you’re absolutely sure, Miss Lucas?’

  ‘Well,’ Miss Lucas began, demurely puffing up her hair at the back, ‘if it will save both of us time. And…’ she paused again to retrieve her still steaming cup, ‘…this coffee is positively delicious, it would be such a shame to waste it.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to give us your time,’ Kennedy wanted to make sure there was no way that it could be claimed that Miss Lucas was being held against her will. ‘Let’s start with Esther Bluewood, shall we?’

  Tor Lucas nodded her agreement. She crossed her legs and the swish of her tights mixed with the irritating click of her tongue.

  ‘First of all, I’d like to know how you initially met,’ Kennedy said. He took his notebook out of his pocket and cocked his pen in readiness. He had a perfectly good memory without taking notes but the distraction, he felt, might work to his advantage in this interview.

  ‘Well, Paul introduced us, naturally. I knew her and her music long before that, of course. To be honest, I thought, oh God, two artists together, it’s going to be a nightmare. I mean one of them, my brother for instance, can be more than a handful on his own, thank you very much, but two of them in a relationship, ye gods! But Esther wasn’t like most artists. Let me explain what I mean exactly – she was interested in her writing. She was so preoccupied with her writing that she didn’t really have much time for the rest of the razzamatazz that goes with it. I loved her for that. In theory they should have been perfect for each other. They’d have made the perfect duo. Paul loved the press and promotion and found it difficult to apply himself to the hard graft of writing songs; Esther was in heaven when she was writing and happy to take a back seat on the promotional front.’

  Tor took another sip of her coffee and repeated the gesture of dabbing the corners of her mouth with her finger before continuing, ‘I knew what she was going through and I…well, I’ll admit to you here and now that I tried several times to become her manager. Paul had been after me for ages to become his manager. He kept saying that the only people you can trust not to rip you off in the music business are family. I kept pointing out that he wouldn’t be able to support my overhead from his income. However, if we could have made Esther’s songs part of the package, well, that would have been a different matter altogether. I could have made that work.’

  ‘Have you had any managerial experience?’ Kennedy enquired.

  ‘Come on. Please! We’re talking pop music here. You don’t need to be the brain of Britain to work in that industry. All I needed was a phone, a fax and an assistant. The rest would have been a doddle.’ Tor sighed, as if Kennedy was stupid to have thought otherwise.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well,’ Tor began, ‘basically Esther wasn’t interested. I could describe the situation in detail, but that’s the long and short of it – she just wasn’t up for it. I tried to tell Paul that he couldn’t behave the way he did and still expect Esther to get into bed with him, financially speaking, as well.’

  ‘Did you ever discuss the situation with Esther yourself?’

  ‘Ahm,’ Tor began hesitantly, ‘I didn’t have what you would call a dialogue with Esther.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘We didn’t actually communicate with each other.’

  ‘Yet you wanted to be her manager and you expected her to consent to that even though you didn’t talk to her?’ Kennedy asked, his eyebrows rising automatically from his ears having trouble believing what they were hearing.

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t have had to deal with me directly if she hadn’t wanted to. She could have done it all by fax, or through Paul,’ Tor offered by way of explanation.

  ‘But she had separated from Paul. For heaven’s sake, she was about to divorce him,’ Kennedy declared. He couldn’t believe that there were people like Tor still in existence, head buried firmly, not to mention deeply, in the sand.

  ‘So some people say,’ was Tor’s only concession to reality.

  ‘So Esther herself said,’ Kennedy claimed. Tor seemed totally nonplussed at the detective’s disclosure, so he continued. ‘When was the last time you actually spoke to Esther?’

  ‘Oh, that would have been at Holmer’s christening.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Kennedy was rarely shocked and rarer still were the occasions when he displayed his shock. ‘You hadn’t spoken to her for what…six years?’

  ‘Yes, about that,’ Tor agreed, still barely batting either of her blue-painted eyelids.

  ‘And what exactly happened at the christening?’

  ‘Oh, really. Must I go into this? Truth is we’d a bit of a fight.’

  ‘A bit of a fight? It must have been more than a bit of a fight for the fall out to have lasted six years?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it was all a big misunderstanding. What happened was Esther overheard Paul and myself making plans for Holmer. We were talking about which school we’d be sending him to and she just flipped. Started screaming and shouting about Holmer being her child and any decisions about his education would be made by her. I told her, when she’d proved that she was capable of being a fit mother we’d leave her to it. I mean she was hardly the most stable of people. She’d already proved that. And now, after Sunday night, she’s proven me correct. Where is those children’s mother now? Now that they need her.’

  ‘Ah, I think you seem to be under the popular misapprehension that Esther Bluewood committed suicide. I’m here to tell you that she didn’t,’ Kennedy offered, feeling it was important to clear up that vital point before they continued.

  ‘What do you mean, she didn’t commit suicide? Of course she killed herself. She gassed herself. Everyone knows that Esther Bluewood committed suicide by sticking her head in a gas oven.’

  Kennedy leaned over his desk and stared directly at Victoria Lucas. He rested his elbows on the desk and placed his hands together. He pulled his hands slightly apart and tapped his forefingers together, once, twice and three times before he said, ‘All Chinese whispers and all untrue. Esther Bluewood did not take her own life.’

  ‘You mean she was murdered?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Kennedy replied, studying Tor’s face closely.

  ‘You…don’t… You don’t think it was Paul? Of course it wasn’t Paul. You realise of course it wasn’t Paul, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s early days in our investigation. Tell me, Miss Lucas, where were you on Sunday evening?’ Kennedy asked, still gently tapping his fingers. His notebook lay between his elbows, open on a clean page with the weight of his fountain pen resting lifelessly on top.

  Tor Lucas broke into nervous laughter. ‘Oh, this is quite preposterous. This is developing into a farce, Inspector Kennedy. You can’t possibly suspect me. That would just be too ludicrous for words.’

  Kennedy continued to stare without uttering a word, his head tilted slightly to one side, and a hint of a smile forming in his dimples.

  ‘Please! Come on, detective. Oh, very well, then. On Sunday afternoon and evening I was with a friend. We met up at about six and he dropped me off at my house just after midnight.’

  ‘An
d his name?’ Kennedy asked, lifting his pen and unscrewing the top, ready to take down the precious details.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I need to know. If you’ve an alibi, we need to rule you out of our investigation.’

  ‘I’d rather not say, to be honest.’

  Kennedy kept on staring at her, his pen hovering half an inch above the page.

  ‘Please, inspector. A lady has to be discreet. You see, I was out with a married man,’ Tor Lucas said, a red hue gathering on her cheeks, a hue that clashed drastically with her blue eyeshadow.

  ‘Mmmm,’ Kennedy said, staring down at his page in order to avoid eye contact. You dark horse you, he thought. He had to force himself not to smile. ‘I can assure you, Miss Lucas, that we will treat this information with total confidentiality. If you just give me this man’s details, we’ll simply check to see he concurs with your story. If he does, that will be the end of the matter. No one else will ever hear about it.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, inspector,’ Tor replied, forcing a generous smile. ‘If I was going to falsify an alibi don’t you think I would pick a girlfriend or even my mother or brother or anyone other than a married man. Can you imagine the embarrassment for me if anyone should find out? You couldn’t possibly imagine the embarrassment for me, especially if my brother should find out, for heaven’s sake. No. There has to be another way.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Miss Lucas.’

  Tor appeared to slump in her chair. ‘This mustn’t get out. Paul must never hear about this. You must promise me that Paul will never hear about this.’

  ‘As I said, Miss Lucas, I see no reason why this information should need to go outside these four walls.’

  ‘Yeah. You see, there it is. All I need is a gossip in the police force to talk to a friend and the friend knows someone who knows somebody who will undoubtedly relish telling Paul.’