“We were, well, surprised, Detective Chief Inspector. In his fifties, Sir Adrian had had the typical midlife crisis. Undesirable types of women friends, very young women-you know the kind of thing I mean. We had survived all of that somehow. Violet came as a surprise. Not a welcome surprise exactly, but-oh, I’m saying this so badly…”
“But it could have been worse?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding gratefully. “That’s it exactly, Detective Chief Inspector. It could have been far worse, I suppose.”
Sergeant Fear noted that she used St. Just’s full title at every opportunity. Probably a question of status; she seemed the type to like titles.
“Did your husband express any particular worries? Apart from this wedding news?”
“Not really. Except… my husband was not in excellent health, but I wouldn’t call that a great worry. He’d had surgery recently for his heart, but the doctors assured him he’d live to see 100 if he took proper care. He took the warning frightfully seriously. Oat bran and vitamins. Started going to the gym again, that sort of thing. Quite tiresome, really, arranging the menus around oat bran. And now, it’s all for nothing.” She sighed. “Anyway, Sir Adrian came to see him in hospital. Quite nice of him, really, given that his own health is poor.”
“The visit was out of character?”
She considered.
“Rather. But Ruthven is-was-his favorite. Really, Sir Adrian seemed quite agitated, until he’d talked with the doctors himself.”
“I see. Well, just to prepare you: We’ll have a team looking through your husband’s things, and taking some of his belongings away for analysis, I would imagine. Did he happen to travel with a computer?”
She nodded, already appearing to lose interest in the conversation.
“It would be best if you made arrangements to stay in another part of the house for now. We will need you to remain nearby in case there are further questions that arise.”
This didn’t please her. The green eyes narrowed beneath the penciled brows.
“That’s quite out of the question. I have obligations in London.”
Involving menu arrangements, no doubt, thought St. Just.
“You’re to go nowhere without my permission, Mrs. Beauclerk-Fisk. I hope I am making my position clear.”
“Well, I don’t know… and I suppose now there’s the funeral to think of, too.”
Either the woman was innocent or completely stupid. He found himself inclined toward the latter view.
“The remains won’t be released for some time. I am requiring that you stay available to us. We are likely to have additional questions once I’ve had the chance to speak with the rest of the family. Good day to you.”
She wasn’t used to being dismissed, either.
More gently, he added, “Again, I am sorry for your loss.”
He would have sworn she was going to ask, “What loss?”
Once she had carried herself off, he turned to Sergeant Fear.
“Make sure the I.T. people have a go at downloading the contents of the victim’s computer, and right away. When you get back, we’ll have a look at the rest of the family. By the way, what was that infernal noise just now?”
“Emma got hold of my mobile and reprogrammed the ring, Sir. I can’t figure out how to change it back.”
Emma was Fear’s four-year-old.
“She’s jealous of the new one on the way,” Fear went on, again madly pushing buttons, which seemed only to stir the instrument to new musical heights. “Says she ‘don’t want no stinkin’ sibling.’”
“Then get the I.T. department to look at it, too, for God’s sake. Now, hop to it. We’ve got to make damn sure, Sergeant, they’re not all out there trading alibis.”
12. MY BROTHER’S KEEPER
“HE HAS NOT DIED. He is, at this moment, struggling to slip the bounds into another state of being.”
Sarah, George, Albert and Natasha had all gathered by unspoken agreement in the library, where Sarah sat stoking the fire to dangerous reaches as she expounded her theories on Ruthven’s whereabouts.
Paulo had been the one to bring them the news, waking them from their beds-and not without a certain satisfaction at seeing them all up and about at his own usual hour.
“I wonder if they organize redundancies in the afterlife? That would be Ruthven’s idea of heaven, I imagine,” said George. “Frankly, I prefer to think of him as dead and gone, Sarah. If you would mind not prattling on right now I’d be grateful.”
“He hasn’t yet passed; I feel that strongly,” she said. “The chains that bound him to earth were too strong. He has issues.”
Albert fought to suppress a smile, in spite of the appalling situation in which they found themselves. Sarah must have gleaned the “issues” word from her reading of self-help books, which always seemed to be American in origin, the British not having yet gotten around to writing Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip on Your Inner Child.
“Whatever,” said George, patiently, for him. “Sarah, please, I beg of you. My head is throbbing.”
“I know just the thing for headache,” said Sarah. “You make a paste of ground cloves and almonds and then apply it to your forehead.”
“Really? And you walk around all day like that, do you?” said George. “I think plain aspirin would be fine.”
Albert was starting to marvel at George’s self-control. Normally, that kind of remark from Sarah would have rated at least a sneer. He suddenly realized that for the first time in memory, he himself was without a hangover and not in need of aspirin. It was disconcerting, like walking from a dark room into daylight, and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it.
Natasha rose.
“I’ll go and fetch some for you.”
They made sure she was gone before they resumed speaking.
“I suppose I should offer belated congratulations,” said Albert. “She seems an extraordinary woman.”
“Like you would know. What do you think happens to the will now? With Ruthven gone?”
Albert shrugged. The question didn’t surprise him, considering the source. “Father will have to write another. Nothing’s changed, has it, really? He’ll just start to play the old shell game again, only with fewer peas.”
“Except my slice of the pie just got bigger, didn’t it?” said George.
“Did it? Well, if you want to pursue food metaphors, it’s not as if the pie were ever evenly divided. And we still don’t know what provisions he’s made for Herself.”
“Violet, you mean. Yes, of course. Still…”
But Albert was no more in the mood for speculation about money and inheritance than George was prepared to discuss Natasha and the impending, suspiciously convenient, birth.
“You do realize, George, don’t you, that Ruthven was murdered. Here, in this house. Possibly by one of us here, in this house?”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say, “in this room,” but that was certainly what had him preoccupied.
“One of us? Don’t be silly. An intruder-”
“An intruder wouldn’t be much of an improvement on the situation, would he? What if this intruder comes back?”
“Do you really think so, Albert?” said Sarah. “That he might come back?” She shivered, rubbing her hands before the fire. “It’s awful, isn’t it? Poor Ruthven. He must have been terrified.”
“I refuse to feel sorry for him,” said George. “When did he ever feel sorry for me?”
Albert felt the “for me” was rather typical. Ruthven had been dreadful to all of them.
Sarah might have been thinking along similar lines.
“It’s not always all about you, George.”
George seemed honestly baffled by this comment.
“Who else would it be about?”
Sarah sighed.
“Really, George. I must say, your self-absorption is quite… complete at times.”
“Self-absorption? That’s a nice way of putting it,” said Albert. In
a portentous voice, he said: “Send not to ask for whom the world turns: It turns for thee, George.”
“And just look who’s talking.”
“Not now,” said Sarah. “I won’t be able to stand it if we all start fighting now. If ever there were a time to close ranks-”
She was interrupted by the arrival of law and order, in the person of Sergeant Fear. Having been listening outside the door in an attitude reminiscent of Paulo the night before, Fear had been trying to decide which of them sounded sufficiently strung out to be ripe for questioning. None of them sounded serene. But if Fear understood the situation correctly, this George person was now the eldest and next in line for the throne, his brother having conveniently been painted out of the picture.
One thing St. Just had drilled into him was first to ask, “Who profits?” Judging from the look of George (once he had settled on which of the two men he was-there was not much choice between the handsome blonde one and the handsome dark-blonde one), they might be able to wrap this one up by lunchtime.
Snotty little upper-class twit, was Sergeant Fear’s summing up-the kind he used to revel in pulling over for speeding before he’d been elevated to the detective ranks. Not that he didn’t still enjoy doing that from time to time, but he had less time in his schedule for it now. Priorities.
“Mr. George Beauclerk-Fisk,” he said, with elaborate, and deceptive, politeness. “If you would be so kind, DCI St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary would like a word.”
George looked as though he might like to claim a prior engagement, but could think of none. Languidly, he unfolded himself from the sofa and followed Fear out of the room.
Albert leaned over to say something to Sarah, but just then his eye caught a movement in the doorway. No sooner had Fear left his listening post than he had been replaced by a young constable, who stood fidgeting there uncertainly, trying and failing to become invisible. Clearly he had his marching orders: Keep an eye on this lot.
St. Just found George, as he slouched into the conservatory in his male-model way, no more inspiring than Sergeant Fear had done. As much as he tried to quell the natural tendency, St. Just’s own experience was that fleeting first impressions-positive or negative-were often perfectly correct. While outwardly George was the image of the hip young man about town beloved of sports car manufacturers, St. Just was more strongly reminded of the lads he’d had to pull in for questioning when he first joined the force. That haunted look around the eyes meant drugs, in those cases, nearly always. Drugs in this case, also?
He motioned George to the cheetah-patterned chair opposite and quickly ran through the preliminaries-name, address, occupation. The beginning of an investigation seldom allowed time for in-depth questioning, although St. Just had a feeling George would have a lot more to contribute as the inquiry progressed. For the moment, St. Just was simply flying without instruments, using visual cues as his guide. Frequently, it was not what people told him that was of value-so often people took forever to get to the kernel of what they knew-but how they behaved during the telling. At times, he found just asking questions to which he knew the answers perfectly well to be a useful technique.
“Now, Mr. Beauclerk-Fisk: What was your relationship with your brother?”
“Quite civil,” George replied evenly. “Of course, we saw little of each other, which helped.”
“No sibling rivalry to speak of?”
“Not beyond the usual.” George began to study his manicure with riveted interest.
“Ruthven was the eldest?”
“Yes. I was second eldest, followed by Albert and Sarah. We came along at quite regular intervals; in fact, we all have nearly the same birthday, in April. We concluded from this that the mating season for my father was every August, when my parents took their annual holiday in Torquay. They never seemed to get along the rest of the year. These were all in the line of miracle births, Inspector.”
“Your parents are divorced, I take it?”
“Yes,” George said flatly.
“I see. Now, about your movements last night…”
“You would have to ask Natasha. My, er, fiancée. I would have said my movements were quite spectacular-even better than usual.”
It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in.
“I take it from that you claim to have been in bed. Together.”
“You take it correctly. And, not asleep, either. Well, at least, not until the small hours.” He smiled complacently, his pale eyes unfathomable, ice on a winter lake.
Sergeant Fear wrote down George’s alibi, putting a little star by it, meaning “Check out this statement.” He had developed his own five-star system over the years, much like a travel guide or a restaurant critic. One star meant: Probably True, for Sergeant Fear trusted no one completely. Five stars meant: Certainly a Lie. After some hesitation, he gave George three stars-somewhat the benefit of the doubt, for Fear, who struggled to be fair with suspects, did not like George. He hadn’t cared for the comment about the mating season; the delivery had shown disrespect, in his view. Moreover, Sergeant Fear, who wore his blue collar on-well, on his neck, rather than his sleeve-could see that George was the kind of blue blood born to be Fear’s natural enemy.
***
Sarah sat down in a swirl of billowing fabric, looking like an unsorted pile of hemp atop the cheetah chair. Her large eyes in her pretty, round face regarded St. Just anxiously.
“Your brother George tells me you are all quite close in age,” said the detective.
“Yes. All of us are Taureans, too. My father, as well. That didn’t half cause some friction among the five of us.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Taurus,” she explained, taken aback by his ignorance. “The Bull. Stubborn, you know. Oh, our external personalities are quite different, but at basic core we are similar. Very. I, Inspector, write cookbooks. If you don’t think that requires a stubborn, bulldog nature… Just because the cake falls doesn’t mean you give up. No, it’s try, try again. Now, Capricorns, on the other hand-”
St. Just felt it was time to divert the astrology lecture into more useful channels.
“And your brother, Ruthven? Stubborn, would you say?”
“Ha! I would indeed. But, again, our personalities revealed themselves in different ways, shaded by our experiences.” She began worrying at one of the folds of her tent-like garment as she talked. “Ruthven as the eldest was the hyper-achiever-the responsible one, if you like. Made lists, set goals, achieved them-quite, quite driven. The rest of us-George and Albert and I-well, no. Not to that degree. No.”
“You say he was responsible. He looked after all of you?”
“He looked after himself.”
There seemed to be no rancor behind her words. She was simply stating a fact. Quietly, Sergeant Fear gave her comment one star.
“But, who would want to kill Ruthven?” she said. Then, realizing that the answer to her question, as with Lillian, might be, “Everyone,” she added, “I mean, really kill him?”
“Not just think about killing him, you mean?”
“I suppose that is what I do mean. He was horrid, my brother. Anyone who ever worked for him or with him, I suppose, would wish him ill. But to actually-oh, you must know what I mean! It’s… it’s horrible, what’s happened.”
St. Just nodded. As conversant as he was with murder and all the motives for murder, it was never less than horrible. Seeing her agitation, he changed his approach slightly.
“Were you surprised at George’s news?”
“About the baby, you mean? I was gobsmacked, as Watters would say. We all were.”
“A baby on the way is not that rare an event, in the grand scheme of things, though, is it?”
“It is if you knew George’s track record. I think his longest relationship lasted three months. I doubt Natasha’s been around that long, in fact. And…”
“And?”
“It’s hard to put into words, but she i
s entirely the wrong type for George. I mean, the right type, but not the type he’d ever had the sense to become involved with before. Completely different from his usual run of girl. Not a girl, for a start, but a young woman. Bright, well-educated. A classy brunette rather than a trashy blonde. No, not at all George’s usual sort.”
“I see,” said St. Just. “Perhaps he’s just maturing, your brother.”
“I doubt it.”
As the point didn’t seem worth debating, St. Just changed tack again. “Now, your mother left Sir Adrian when all of you were quite small, I gather.”
“Yes.” Her mouth closed shut like a gate on the word. No need to ask how she felt about that.
“Must have been hard on you,” St. Just said mildly. “On all of you.”
“I don’t suppose we noticed, really. I was two.”
“Did she never explain why she left?”
“You’d have to ask her yourself.”
St. Just said nothing. Fear shifted restlessly, feeling the entire line of conversation was irrelevant. He never understood St. Just’s patience in drawing out witnesses, although he had to admit it paid dividends more often than not.
St. Just continued to wait, apparently absorbed in watching a spider knit her web across a nearby jade plant. Sarah struck him as the anxiously polite type of woman who would rush to fill a void of silence. He hadn’t long to wait.
“I understood her leaving,” Sarah said then, softly. “If I’d been old enough to walk I would have been right behind her. But I didn’t understand her leaving all of us. She never gave an explanation for that that made sense to me. Maybe you can get it out of her. I’d love to know.”
St. Just imagined this was a conversation she had held inside her own head many times, for having started on it, it seemed now she couldn’t resist the opportunity to run it by an audience, brought here especially for the occasion by her brother’s murder.
“Ruthven was her favorite-he kept in touch with her more than the rest of us. Because he was the eldest, I suppose. I always heard that the baby of the family was supposed to be the favorite, the spoiled one. That’s what all the experts say.”
Death of a Cozy Writer Page 12
