He began his examination of the room, in readiness for the dutiful admiration, but stopped at the wall-spanning music assembly. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘It was Warwick’s.’
‘Warwick’s?’
‘Surely you remember jazz was his hobby?’
‘Yes. Of course,’ said Bickerstone quickly. He went closer, as if to study the dials and adjustments and levels. ‘There are lights on.’
‘They’re on all the time,’ said Claudine easily. ‘I only just understand enough to play music. I had an expert install it.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Bickerstone, abruptly reaching out to twist dials and flick switches up and down.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Claudine, not moving from where she stood in the centre of the room. ‘I told you I don’t turn it off.’
‘Can you record on this?’
Not any more, thought Claudine: two of the operating lights had gone out. She said: ‘Probably. I don’t know.’
He turned, smiling. ‘I couldn’t work it either. I didn’t get any music.’
‘Do you want music?’ If it hadn’t been so serious - and if he hadn’t been so blatantly obvious - it would have been farcical.
The smile widened and Claudine thought that was sleek, too. He said: ‘No. Silly thing to have done. I just wanted to play with it.’ He came closer, studying her fully. ‘Claudine. Claudine!’ he said, as if he were making a discovery. ‘It’s so good to see you again … so very, very good. You look wonderful … beautiful …’
‘It has been a long time,’ she said.
‘I’ll never forgive myself. Ever.’
‘Water under the bridge.’ She gestured him towards an easy chair close to the window and sat down opposite, with the champagne on the table between them.
‘I should have asked you to choose,’ he announced, confusing her momentarily. ‘As it is I took a guide book recommendation and had a table booked at the Royal.’
‘It’s very good.’
‘There’s no hurry, though. Hours yet.’
Will I be equal to you, Paul Bickerstone? she wondered. Then she realized she had to be more than equal. She had to be better. ‘Business finished in Paris?’
‘End of a deal. Just signing papers.’
‘Is that why you were early?’
Briefly he appeared not to understand. ‘Oh, yes. I got away sooner than I expected.’
‘Flying back tonight?’ She hoped it didn’t sound like an invitation.
‘I might. The plane’s in Amsterdam. If I change my mind I’ve taken rooms at somewhere called the Hotel des Indes.’
‘All the diplomats use it,’ said Claudine. She’d bat the small talk back and forth as long as he wanted: as he’d said, they had hours yet. And she wasn’t going to risk anything until she was surer of herself than she felt at that moment.
‘You involved in this murder thing? Europol’s got a lot of press in the UK.’
‘A lot of people are, one way and the other,’ Claudine said, curious at the question but unwilling to let the conversation drift too far, no matter how much time they had.
‘Not missing London, then?’
Here we come, she thought hopefully. ‘Too many bad memories.’
Bickerstone shook his head: not a hair moved. ‘I just can’t stop putting my foot in it, can I?’
‘That’s all right.’ Snatching the chance, she said: ‘I was shocked about Gerald.’
‘I still haven’t got over it.’
‘Were you very close?’ It was his lead, so why shouldn’t she follow it?
‘Very.’ The man looked down into his drink, as if in reverie.
‘Warwick always thought of him as a good friend … his best friend,’ Claudine ventured.
‘I know. That’s what Gerald told me. That’s how I thought of him, too.’
‘Warwick? Or Gerald?’
‘Gerald.’ Bickerstone raised his hands in a halting gesture. ‘Of course Warwick was my friend, too; always was. But after your marriage I spent more time with Gerald.’
‘We did seem to drift apart, didn’t we? I don’t think we saw him more than twice, afterwards. Like we didn’t see you.’
Bickerstone gave an apologetic shrug, leaning forward to offer more champagne. There was hardly room in her glass but Bickerstone refilled his own. ‘These things happen. Sad.’ He smiled. ‘I’m embarrassed to ask but do you mind if I use the bathroom?’
‘Not at all. It’s at the end of the corridor.’ She stood to direct him and called out ‘That’s a bedroom’ at his first mistake and ‘That’s the other’ when he opened the second wrong door. Then she said: ‘Try the one on the right. The door to the left leads out to the fire escape.’
Bickerstone returned very quickly.
‘You were telling me about Gerald,’ prompted Claudine. As clumsy as playing with the music system but just as effective, she thought.
‘Not a lot to tell, really. We were both at King’s with Warwick. Both enjoyed rugby. Regulars at Twickenham. I’ve got a country place in Sussex. He used to come down for weekends. Didn’t I invite you and Warwick down a couple of times?’
‘I don’t remember it. Gerald wasn’t married, was he?’
‘No. He envied Warwick, being with you. Often said so.’
‘To Warwick?’
Bickerstone frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I must have misunderstood something you said on the telephone,’ said Claudine, hoping she hadn’t tried to steer the conversation too obviously. ‘I travelled a great deal when I was in London. I thought the three of you met?’
Bickerstone’s reaction was quite different from anything Claudine expected. He thrust forward in his chair and said: ‘Did Warwick tell you that?’
What was the right answer? wondered Claudine desperately. ‘I don’t really remember. I know he got together with Gerald from time to time.’
‘Warwick told you about that?’
Bickerstone was taking a direction she couldn’t follow. ‘Told me what?’ she said, needing to become the questioner.
Bickerstone covered the hesitation by offering more wine. There was still very little room in Claudine’s glass. ‘What he and Gerald talked about?’
‘Not in any detail,’ floundered Claudine. She was close although she didn’t know to what and if she didn’t get it right in the next few minutes - the next few seconds - she was going to end up the bloody idiot that Hugo had accused her of being.
‘What did he say?’ persisted Bickerstone, his refilled glass forgotten. Claudine was conscious for the first time of the hardness the man had to possess to have achieved all he apparently had.
Claudine could think of only one way to keep the conversation on this uncertain, blind course. She was reluctant to take it although she thought - hoped - that psychologically it might work. But on an ordinary person, she qualified. With private yachts and private planes Bickerstone was hardly an ordinary person. Certainly not one accustomed - or willing — to surrender control. She wasn’t working from just one agenda, she reminded herself: she knew more than he suspected. Strengthening her voice, Claudine said: ‘I’m very good, at what I do.’
It confused him, as she wanted it to. He blinked and said: ‘I’m sure you are.’
‘So you don’t think I’m a fool?’
‘Of course I don’t think you’re a fool.’
‘So why, when I haven’t seen you or heard from you for more than two years, have you suddenly emerged from nowhere and flown all the way from London with champagne and flowers? What is it you want me to tell you, Paul?’
Bickerstone’s face mirrored a variety of emotions. Anger was the most obvious, at being spoken to in a manner to which he wasn’t accustomed, but she thought she detected uncertainty as well as a lot of other attitudes she couldn’t identify. ‘I want you to tell me what you know.’
She’d done it! thought Claudine. She was still fumbling but he didn’t know that becaus
e he was in her territory - territory in which he wasn’t trained and didn’t know how to operate - not in a boardroom or a finance house or a trading pen, where words were figures without nuance or inflexion. She shook her head, outwardly more positive than she inwardly felt, and said: ‘I’m waiting.’
The head went down again over the champagne glass and for several moments - several lifetimes — Bickerstone remained silent. Claudine steeled herself against speaking, either, knowing it would be wrong. At last the man said: ‘He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have to kill himself.’
Surely not? thought Claudine, in no doubt about whom the man was talking. Surely it wasn’t so simple? She even had facts to support the possibility confronting her, facts that Toomey had possessed but misread, as he’d misread Gerald Lorimer’s note and she, in turn, had doubted Warwick. She said: ‘Gerald didn’t envy Warwick being married, did he?’
‘No.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Happily?’
‘Enough.’
‘I’m still waiting for you to tell me, Paul.’
‘Letters. Some photographs.’
‘Why should Warwick have had them? Why wouldn’t Gerald have kept them himself? They were his: special to both of you.’
Bickerstone gulped at his champagne, the brash ruler-of the-world ebullience totally gone. ‘There wasn’t anything among his things. I had my people check with the police. Warwick’s the only person I can think of. Was there anything?’
Claudine had her own questions to be answered first. ‘Did Warwick know about you and Gerald?’
‘Yes. He never told you?’
Claudine shook her head instead of replying, not wanting the roles to change. ‘How did Warwick feel about it?’
‘He never criticized, if that’s what you mean. It was our business, Gerald’s and mine.’
‘No,’ said Claudine. ‘That wasn’t what I meant but it doesn’t matter, only to me. But there’s nothing, Paul. I obviously went through all Warwick’s things. There was nothing involving you or Gerald. No letters. No photographs.’
‘There must be something,’ pleaded the man. ‘I’m not ashamed … no reason to be … but I’m frightened of blackmail … of Juliet finding out … the children … isn’t there anywhere you haven’t looked? Might have overlooked?’
‘Nowhere.’ Claudine took a proper drink for the first time, not totally satisfied but believing there was no more to be gained at this stage: unsure if there were any further stages in which she needed to be involved.
‘Do you despise me?’
Claudine came forward in her own chair. ‘What a ridiculous question! Why should I despise you?’
‘I despise myself.’
‘That’s equally ridiculous. And self-pitying; I despise self pity. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘I’m very frightened.’
‘Haven’t you done your own investigation?’
‘Of course.’
‘If there were going to be threats from anyone they would have come by now, wouldn’t they?’
‘Did Warwick have a lawyer? Someone with whom he might have deposited some papers?’
‘Paul! You’re talking about love letters, from you to Gerald. Intimate photographs. Why would Warwick deposit things like that with a lawyer? Why would Gerald have even shown them to Warwick? They were yours and Gerald’s, no one else’s.’
‘I’m desperate, Claudine!’
‘Too desperate. Warwick and I only had one lawyer. I’ve been through the will … everything … with him. That’s all there was. The will and some insurance policies.’
The man pulled the champagne bottle from the cooler but it was empty.
Claudine said: ‘You don’t want to take me out to dinner, do you?’
‘I invited you.’
‘For a reason. Which we’ve gone through. The flowers were lovely. The champagne, too.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
Bickerstone made a listless shoulder movement. ‘I don’t know. Just sorry. You wouldn’t bother to contact me when you came to London, if I asked you to, would you?’
‘Probably not.’
‘You’ve got the number if you change your mind?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sure about dinner?’
‘Go home to Juliet and the children.’
‘You do understand, don’t you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Thank you.’
He did come forward to kiss her as he left and Claudine offered her cheek. Bickerstone remained momentarily on the threshold, his mouth working but forming no words, and then abruptly he turned and went towards the elevators without saying anything. Claudine closed the door while he was still waiting for a lift to arrive.
Hugo Rosetti answered on the second ring. ‘I didn’t expect you for hours.’
‘Dinner was cancelled.’ She was warmed by his voice.
‘Well?’
‘Come and hear for yourself.’
She offered him, unasked, a glass of the Chardonnay she’d been drinking before Bickerstone arrived, which Rosetti accepted without comment. Claudine said: ‘It was impressive, like all the James Bond movies you’ve ever seen. He pretended to be interested in the music system and played with all the dials and knobs and switches sufficiently to bugger any recording. Then he pretended he wanted to pee so he could check every room in the place. And never once looked embarrassed.’
‘So the great plan didn’t work,’ accused an unamused Rosetti. ‘You didn’t get any admissions on tape?’
‘Oh, I did,’ smiled Claudine. ‘I got it all.’ She gestured sideways. ‘All that nonsense against the wall is too obvious, isn’t it? It was a great distraction, though, from the recorder I had running behind the window curtain. It was the one I had at the Sorbonne, to take down my lectures.’
‘You cunning bitch!’
‘I become a witch at full moon.’
The bottle of Chardonnay was empty by the time the tape ended but Claudine didn’t feel any effect, despite her comparative newness to alcohol. Adrenalin must compensate, she decided.
Well aware of what was most important to her, Rosetti said: ‘So Warwick wasn’t gay?’
‘Not according to that.’
Rosetti stopped with the glass he was about to empty raised halfway to his mouth. ‘What?’
‘I think Paul Bickerstone is the best actor I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. And I love the theatre.’
‘Don’t you believe him?’
‘I think I believe him about Warwick. But then I want to, don’t I? And I think he and Lorimer were lovers. But it’s more than just letters and photographs.’
‘What?’
She shrugged lightly. ‘I’ve no idea. And couldn’t care less. It’s not my problem. I don’t have to worry about Peter Toomey any more,’
There was little discussion and certainly no argument about who cooked what Claudine had available. Rosetti flared the garlic-scattered steaks in the newly installed brandy and opened another bottle of wine, a Gevrey Chambertin, although they didn’t finish it. Even so, towards the end of the meal, Rosetti lifted his glass and said: ‘You seem to be making up for all the years of abstinence.’
‘Getting rid of a lot of pretensions.’
‘That’s good.’
A response occurred at once but Claudine didn’t say it: their relationship wasn’t that strong, not yet.
Almost immediately after the meal he said: ‘It’s late and we’ve both got planes to catch early tomorrow.’
Claudine didn’t speak then, either.
‘Goodnight.’
Claudine remained silent.
Although the notaire had been the family lawyer for as long as Claudine could remember he still treated both her and her mother as strangers. His name was Pierre Forge and he was as dry and desiccated as the legal tomes among which he sat, like a black-suited spider: his fingers we
re extraordinarily long and thin and the way he frequently flexed them actually reminded Claudine of spiders’ legs. She didn’t like spiders.
Claudine was concerned the arrangement - completing the new will in the morning before the afternoon’s wedding - would be too tiring for her mother but the older woman insisted Claudine never knew when she might be summoned back to The Hague, which was more important than anything involving her. Claudine didn’t bother to argue: the schedule was already fixed anyway. Certainly her mother showed no sign of strain. She’d definitely put on weight and her natural colouring, far healthier than she’d looked for a long time, made rouge unnecessary. She wore formal black for the encounter with the lawyer but had shown Claudine her wedding outfit, a pale cream suit with contrasting beige hat, gloves and handbag, before they’d left the rue Grenette. She’d done so with a young girl’s excitement and Claudine couldn’t recall her mother ever being so obviously happy, not even at the Sorbonne graduation.
She was conscious of her mother’s chair-grating impatience, beside her in Forge’s office, half expecting an outspoken protest at the painstaking formality. Forge insisted upon going pedantically through every available document, starting with her mother’s certificate of marriage to William Carter and proceeding through Claudine’s birth certificate - taking a statement witnessed by his chief clerk that there had been no other offspring, either inside or outside the union - before recording by hand the details of William Carter’s death certificate and even the plot number of his grave. The property and effects - predominantly the restaurant, the apartment above and an adjoining block of four apartments which Claudine was unaware her mother owned - were already listed in the will that was being superseded. Forge nevertheless went through them, item by item, to Monique’s visible impatience. Everything took three hours to complete, concluding with a mass signing of papers which Monique said she didn’t have time to read.
As he shook her hand Forge said to Claudine: ‘You are a very rich young lady.’
Outside, her mother said: ‘Whether you’re rich or not is none of the old bastard’s business. And he doesn’t know about the cash.’
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