‘Remember, if the police really thought what you say, they would be here already.’
She looked up at me and shook her head. ‘They’ve rung this morning. They want to come to see me at two o’clock, after the court hearing. I’ve told Sebastian. He’s coming at around 1.30. I’m terrified, Peter.’
‘Don’t be. They’re probably only trying to tie up some of the loose ends. From what I gather, the French police knew more or less who was and wasn’t involved in the drugs operation. They had an inside informant.’
‘You really think so?’
I lied a little. ‘I really think so.’
I felt a tear dampen the top of my hand. I got out my red spotted handkerchief (one of Arabella’s Christmas presents), and wiped away some others which were thinking of following suit. We did not say anything more for a minute or two. We let the sniffs work through. Then she asked softly, ‘I’m sorry, Peter, I should have asked how you have got on. Anything?’
‘Not much, I’m afraid. It’s early days. But I’ve seen your lawyer because Inspector Whetstone wouldn’t let me see Adam. I like Mr Lynch. We’ll get on well together. From him I learnt about that phone call.’
Lana-Lee looked up, and I waited for a comment that didn’t come. ‘The phone call,’ I continued, ‘which Adam says he received that evening. From a lady whose voice he said he didn’t recognise. Telling him there was some trouble with your husband down on the beach. He says that’s why he went. Didn’t he tell you before he was arrested?’
She nodded but didn’t look at me.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.’
‘I know. I should have. But somehow, I found it hard to...’
‘...believe?’ I suggested. She nodded again.
‘I know Adam is not a liar, but it all sounded so goddamned far-fetched. That some unknown woman would entice him to the beach, to what — frame him?’
I looked her in the eye, with the severest expression I could muster. ‘He might have been lying about a bit of it, mightn’t he?’
Her big beautiful eyes hunted around for a motive behind my question. I came to her aid.
‘The bit about not recognising the voice.’
‘Why should he do that?’ Her naïvety seemed genuine enough. Anyway, she didn’t rise to my bait.
‘Because he didn’t want to incriminate or involve someone he knew, or maybe was fond of.’
‘I can’t think who you can mean.’ She hesitated, then went on, ‘But then, I haven’t really known Adam all that long.’ I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what I was getting towards, so I changed the subject.
‘The terrible thing for Adam is that everyone seems to have an alibi except him. That, I guess, is where I have to begin.’
‘Well, don’t begin with mine.’ She smiled weakly. ‘It’s hardly cast iron.’
‘You’d taken an early night, I gather from Sebastian Lynch.’
‘Yes, I was very tired. Ben had gone out somewhere. I never asked him where he was going. I didn’t really care any more. I tried to watch some television but there was nothing much on except Sleuth, and I’d seen that before. So I went up around ten, and was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.’
‘And your butler and housekeeper?’
‘The butler lives this side of Weymouth and goes home each night. He had gone by then. And Mrs Eames, my housekeeper, always goes up to her room after the evening dishes are done. She is over in the west wing, miles from my room. She watched Sleuth apparently, then went to sleep. Tara-Lee had been asleep for hours by then.’
‘I see what you mean about your alibi hardly being concrete.’
‘Yes. Mrs Eames would not have heard me if I had gone out — unless, perhaps, I’d taken the other car. Ben had the Cadillac. Inspector Whetstone queried me endlessly about the hours between ten and midnight, but, in the end, seemed to take my word for it, I guess because...’
‘...because Adam’s alibi was non-existent, and his car was seen at the beach. It’s not hard to see Whetstone’s reasoning.’
Lana-Lee suddenly rose and went over to the window. I wondered why until I heard the crackle in her voice. ‘Oh Peter, what a mess I’ve made of my life. It would never have happened if...’ She could continue no longer, as tears started to drown her words. But I was too intrigued by her last comment to let it go there.
‘If what?’ I asked softly. There was a moment’s pause, then she turned to me, dabbing her beautiful, blue eyes with a ridiculously small handkerchief.
‘If — er — I hadn’t married Ben, that’s all. Hadn’t married Ben years ago.’ She cleared her throat, and squashed her handkerchief up into a ball in her hand.
‘Oh,’ I said, pretty certain that the hiatus had changed what she had actually been going to say.
‘And it wouldn’t have happened,’ I commented, ‘if you had not let him return.’ She looked at me and there was a sudden flash of fear in those red-rimmed eyes. I wondered why, and reminded my sponge to absorb its passing. But she wouldn’t rise to my hint, so I let it drop.
‘What you need is to leave as much of the worrying as you can to me and Sebastian. You’re going to get ill if you don’t, and that’s not fair on Tara-Lee.’
She turned to the settee, and sat next to me once more. ‘I know. She’s getting very tense. She shouted at Mrs Eames this morning about just nothing at all.’
‘Look, a great friend of mine, Gus Tribble — he’s a retired fisherman — thought you and Tara-Lee might like to go out in his boat this weekend. Saturday afternoon, in fact. He’s looking after my toy shop in the morning, but would love to take you two out in the afternoon. Fresh air would do you both good.’
She thought for a second, then asked, ‘What will you be doing?’
‘Oh, ferreting around. Catching up with things.’
‘And Arabella? Could she come with us?’
‘Would you like her to?’
She nodded, and then, without warning, collapsed forward into my arms, and burst into floods of tears. We sat that way for I don’t know how long, and I did not leave until I was certain she was, as they say, as well as could be expected in the circumstances. As I walked to my Beetle, I caught sight of the soaking wet patch on the front of my sweater. I shrugged my shoulders. It was a side of being a sponge to which I guessed I’d have to grow accustomed. I just hoped Lavinia would not turn on the tap too. I was not sure how shrink-proof I, or my sweater, was.
*
Luckily for me, Lavinia was still too shell-shocked to cry to any extent and too tired to rant or rave. But, unfortunately, she wasn’t too shocked or tired to remember she was a woman. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not particularly averse to vaguely attractive ladies (or even wildly attractive ones) practising their wiles on me, but I don’t go for it when sex is just used as a stand-in for desperation. And Lavinia was desperate — for which condition I was truly sorry.
It began badly. She threw her arms around my neck directly I arrived. I had disentangled myself sufficiently by the time we’d reached the sitting-room to be able to commence and maintain for a while some kind of platonic conversation. But I could see by the look in her eyes that Plato would be lucky if he was given very long. I decided to race through my repertoire of questions before the bell rang for round one. I started with, ‘Did you know your husband was involved with Ben in drugs smuggling?’
‘No.’ She wouldn’t look at me. Just sat there, her slim legs drawn up in her chair to let the slit in her skirt pay for its keep.
‘Are you sure?’ I leaned forward to try to catch her eyes. For a flicker, I got them, a flicker that didn’t exactly agree with her answer.
‘I promise you, Peter, I didn’t know. If I had, I would have tried to stop him.’
‘Why?’ I said unkindly. ‘Because he might get caught?’ I was expecting a ‘No. I hate drugs. Society’s poison.’ — all that bit. But I was wrong. Lavinia was more honest than I had reckoned.
She nodded.
‘It may be hard for you to understand, Peter, but we have the perfect marriage. I love him. And I think he loves me. My odd affair did not mean anything. He knows that. We are just more honest with each other than other married couples. Trading in drugs would have got him arrested at some point or other. Any fool could have seen that. John isn’t cut out to be a criminal.’
I noted she only mentioned her affairs. I wondered if John had been as honest with her as she claimed to have been with him.
‘Did you know about the air hostess?’ I asked. She looked up, and the slight curl of her mouth gave me the answer.
‘Of course,’ she lied. ‘I knew of all his little dalliances.’
I tried harder. ‘Did you know he had flown back to England a night early?’
‘Yes. Of course I...’ She looked at me, but couldn’t keep it up.
‘Lavinia. I came here to see if I can be of any help in all this mess. If you don’t tell me everything, I might as well leave.’ I wished I hadn’t said that, as it triggered her to move across and kneel in front of me, like an overgrown child pleading for forgiveness — or something.
‘Peter, I’m sorry. Please don’t go. I’m so alone.’ She rested her head on my knee, and I felt a single tear wet the denim of my trousers. Just the one, luckily, my sweater still wasn’t dry.
‘You didn’t know he had come back, did you?’
‘No,’ she admitted, then quickly added, ‘But I knew about the girl.’
‘Okay,’ I said quietly, but was certain I’d got the picture right in my mind — that she hated her husband having affairs, whatever she said to the contrary. She would have liked to have been the only one eating the cake. A hand joined her head on my knees. I spun through my mental cassette of questions until I came to the next key one.
‘Lavinia, tell me. You were very friendly with Adam Longhurst at one time, I believe, before your marriage.’
She nodded on my knees — a most curious sensation. I kept up the questioning. ‘Did you have an affair with him?’
‘Yes. We saw a lot of each other on his leaves from the army.’ She sat up and rested an elbow on my thigh. ‘He was a great lover, if you want to know. Impulsive. Never knew what he would suggest next.’
My imagination worked overtime. ‘Who broke it off?’
‘We — er — sort of both did.’ I guessed that meant he did. ‘Then I met and married John.’
‘Seen Adam since your marriage?’
She hesitated, then smiled. ‘Seen him — screwed him, you mean?’
This time I nodded.
‘Very occasionally.’ Then she added by way of excuse. ‘He’s hard to resist. He likes married women even better. There’s less risk of it getting serious, I suppose.’ She bit an over-red lip. ‘But it all stopped when he met little Miss Movie Star. She must pack some tricks in those pants of hers to keep a stud like Adam from straying.’
I sighed to myself. Lavinia was missing a lot in life imagining love starts and stops in the groin.
‘Maybe he really loves her.’
‘Adam loves his prick, Peter, and don’t you believe anything else.’
I moved uncomfortably in my chair, but her elbow didn’t take the hint. Quite the reverse. Her arms took to wandering up my thighs.
‘Look, Lavinia, I came here because you were in trouble, to see if I could help.’
One hand moved across to my zip. ‘You can. You can,’ she breathed. ‘I need you to make love to me. I can’t go on not being loved.’
I tried to get out of the chair, but she held on to my legs. ‘All right, Peter, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. But I’m so afraid...’ Her hand moved away, and I relaxed a little.
‘What are you afraid of? That John will go to prison?’
‘Yes.’
‘It may not be an over-long sentence, if he can prove that Maxwell was the mastermind.’ But even as I said it, I sort of knew that wasn’t really what was worrying her. She rose to her feet, and smoothed the rumples out of her skirt.
‘But what do you serve for murder, Peter?’ Suddenly she was now totally calm and collected. The metamorphosis was amazing.
‘But last time, you theorised to me that if it wasn’t Adam, you thought it might be Lana-Lee.’
‘So it could have been. It’s not what I think. It’s what the police might put together.’
‘That your husband killed Maxwell? I don’t think so. Inspector Whetstone has Adam Longhurst in court this morning. He is being formally charged with Maxwell’s murder.’
Before she had a chance to react, we both heard a car draw up outside the house. She went immediately to the window, then turned to me.
‘I’ve been expecting them. They asked me to stay in.’
I crossed over to the window myself. There it was, a shiny white Granada with a red stripe, out of which two plain clothed men (very plain) I’d never seen before were emerging.
She took my hand and drew me back from the window. ‘Pray for me, Peter.’ She suddenly hugged me, and her cheek obviously alighted on the damp patch. She looked up enquiringly.
‘I got rained on.’ I smiled. ‘Do you want me to stay?’
She looked puzzled, but disentangled herself, and led me to the front door.
‘No, but thanks. They’re bound to want to interview me on my own.’ She held her face up to be kissed. I obliged out of genuine sorrow. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get used to dealing with life on my own now, haven’t I?’ she added.
‘Let me know what happens,’ I said, then let myself out of the front door — quite literally into the surprised arms of the law. The taller one of the two missed his footing and slipped off the front step and into a rose bush. I muttered, ‘Hello. Hello,’ then made my way swiftly past them to my Beetle, leaving the shorter one to pull out any thorns.
9
By the time I got back to my old Toy Emporium, the sun (still out, surprisingly) was over the yard-arm, so I wandered down to Gus’s cottage to see if he would like to join me in a ploughman’s at the local hostelry, but, more importantly, to join me in some brewing on the Maxwell affair. But, curses, I couldn’t raise him at his house, nor in his briar patch. I assumed he was out somewhere in his boat, or attending to some middle-aged lady’s shelves or whatever (probably whatever), so I ambled over alone to the pub, kicking small stones all the while.
I hadn’t breathed second-hand beer fumes for more than a few seconds, when I saw him. He’d beaten me to it, and was standing over in the corner telling what looked like another of his ‘fish that got away’ stories to a regular old soak we both normally tried to avoid, on religious grounds — he’d never been known to buy a round.
I didn’t want to get involved, so, as the barman drew my pint, I asked him to catch Gus’s eye. I grabbed the nearest window seat and waited. But not for long.
‘Been looking for you, old son.’ Gus sat down beside me with a huge sigh, as if he had been on his feet for at least a couple of days. ‘Came around to the shop but you weren’t in.’
‘I went to your place. Same thing.’ I raised my glass.
‘Anyway, bloody relief you came when you did. Got caught with the president of the “Hook and Eye” club, I did.’
(Gus and I call any spongers in a pub members of the ‘Hook and Eye’ club. Its derivation is simple: it’s ‘who can I’ get a drink off tonight?)
‘I came round to say she has accepted your kind offer, Gus.’
‘The boat trip, you mean?’ Gus raised his eyebrows with delight. Always fascinated me. They look too heavy to go up.
‘Yes. She and Tara-Lee. And Arabella if you’ll have her.’
‘She’s welcome too.’ Gus rubbed his huge hands with anticipation, then suddenly sobered up. ‘Better give the old barge the once over. Not everyday I have glamorous ladies and film stars aboard, is it?’
I had to agree with that. ‘Doing anything this afternoon?’ he smiled mischievously.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied h
onestly. ‘Depends on a lady coming down to earth.’
Gus thought for a minute, then shattered me by getting my allusion.
‘I got it. That air hostess. The one you told me Saunders claimed he was servicing that night.’
‘I’m going to ring her after we’ve downed the dreaded ploughman’s. If she’s in, I’ll motor up this afternoon. If she isn’t, I’ll...’
‘...be happy to help me.’ Gus raised his pint glass that looked quite puny in his hands. ‘Well, cheers. Thanks for the offer, old dear. Can’t think of a better afternoon for it, can you?’
I didn’t like to disillusion him.
*
Three hours later, and I knew why men had been press-ganged into serving with the navy. It wasn’t the sea they disliked, it was the drudgery of the boats. And the merciless captains, like Gus, who kept them scrubbing and spitting and polishing until the sea-cows came home. Oh yes, Gus proved to be quite a Captain Bligh that afternoon. I’m not saying he didn’t do his bit. But, somehow, I always ended up doing twice his bit, while he worked out exactly which of the million other chores we would tackle next, as Gus’s boat was never the cleanest in Studland Bay. It couldn’t be — it was just about the dirtiest. And yet he hadn’t had it very long, for it was under two years since his other dirty boat had been blown apart by a bomb during the Treasure case. I came to the conclusion that Gus must attract grime like a magnet. Either that or he caught extremely dirty fish.
However, housemaid’s knee or not, my turns of duty with the scrubbing brush and assorted oil rags did enable Gus and me, rather breathlessly, to mull over the Maxwell business. By quarter to five, I had taken him through every theory of mine, and a few of other people’s, and refused to be lashed back to work until he’d given me a few of his own.
‘Bit difficult, old son,’ he said laughing. ‘There can’t be many left.’ He leaned back against the cabin roof. ‘Now let me recount. Number one suspect: Adam Longhurst. No alibi. Perfect bloody motive — Lana-Lee. Car seen near beach. Only excuse, rubbishy story about lady on the phone. Right?’
‘Right, unfortunately.’
Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery) Page 13
