'But?'
'There was no but. I was a cleaner, I became a receptionist, then his PA, and then a director of the company. I was a director, but I still manned the front desk, I was the first point of contact for everyone who walked through our doors. From the day he put me there, business increased twenty-five per cent. We worked very well together. Dr Yeschenkov is a wonderful, talented man, and we fell in love.'
'You had an affair?'
'Yes.'
Dr Yes had bent forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands covering his face. His solicitor sat stiffly beside him, glaring at Pearl.
'So at what point did the waxman cometh?'
'Excuse me?'
'Why did you start ripping him off over the wax portraits?'
'I didn't.'
'So he knew about them?'
'No. But there are a lot of things he doesn't know about. Dr Yeschenkov is a remarkable surgeon, he likes to make love, he likes to play golf, he likes the finer things in life, but he is not interested in the day- to-day running of the clinic. I developed a number of services that to this day he is hardly aware of, but they all make money, and it all goes directly into the company. You can check the books.'
'As an accountant, you could fix them.'
'We have independent accountants.'
'Pearl, how did Arabella die?'
'Is she dead? You only have Buddy's word for it, a homosexual gambling addict and self-confessed murderer. His work has been going downhill for several months. I rejected his portrait of Arabella and he has obviously gone off the rails, whether it's his debts or the death of his pal. In his madness he took Arabella to their favourite spot and melted her down and got rid of anything that was left somewhere in that forest before concocting this entire story. He's trying to blackmail us.'
'Buddy is?'
'Yes. Isn't it obvious?'
Buddy sat shaking his head. He went to say something, but I held up my hand. 'You forget there's another witness.' I pointed. 'You. With the tattoo.'
Spider-web was trying to look small and insignificant, which was a pity, because he was large and significant. People around him shuffled sideways.
He said, 'What?'
'You helped remove Arabella's body from the Forum.'
'Nope. Not me.'
'You did it with your friend Rolo.'
'Nope. Not me.'
'So what are you doing here today?'
He shrugged. 'Just passin'.'
'You were Rolo's partner in crime; you came into this shop and roughed me up, you were with him when he killed Augustine and Liam.'
'I duffed you up right enough, mostly because you're a spaz. But I don't know anything about the other two. August who or what?'
He had probably sat in police stations a hundred times and pulled the same innocent face.
'You haven't a clue what you're doing, have you?' It was Pearl. She looked triumphant. 'You masquerade as a private detective, but it's all a big joke. You fumble around thinking you know something because you've read all these books, but actually it's all crap, it's all an act, it's all pretend. You've brought us here to face some kind of kangaroo court, and now you're falling flat on your face. You have no evidence, you have no credible witness, you're making wild accusations about anyone who happens to come into your line of sight. Why don't you admit it, say you're sorry and let us all get on with the business of suing you? Because I'm telling you, by the end of the week we're going to be knocking down that creepy old house of yours for apartments.'
As soon as she said it she knew it was a mistake.
My audience was confused. They were anxious to see my reaction to Pearl's tirade, but a smile was definitely not what they expected.
I had her on the house, and now I would slam the advantage home. I had a surprise up my sleeve. Two, in fact.
I said, 'You're right, of course. I mean, why would I put myself through this unless I was absolutely sure of the outcome? Yes, I can see how Buddy might be an unreliable witness. I can understand how a busy man like Dr Yes might not be aware of every detail of his business. But you're wrong on one point. These books, all around us, they're not crap, as you so crudely put it. They are important in a way that you will never understand. They not only teach me how to solve crimes, they show me how to do it in a dramatic fashion. For example, right now, just when you are thinking you are on top, and this wonderful jury might think that I've thrown the case away, these books tell me that it's always important to hold something back, always vital to save some crucial piece of evidence right for the very end, or perhaps some previously unheralded witness or expert in a particular field who can blow the whole thing wide open. Well, that's just exactly what I'm going to do, Pearl, and let's see how confident you are after they're finished with you.'
'Pathetic,' said Pearl.
'Alison,' I said.
She looked towards the door, thinking I meant her to fetch in these surprise witnesses.
'Alison, will you please take the stand.'
* * *
Chapter 41
Alison climbed into the witness box. She whispered under her breath, 'I hope you know what you're doing. I know nothing about anything.'
I smiled reassuringly. At least it was meant to be reassuring. She might have thought I was grinning like an idiot. I knew what I was after, and it was very simple. I nodded at Jeff. All heads craned upwards again as the photograph of Arabella with Dr Yeschenkov at the Xianth gallery reappeared on the ceiling.
I said, 'We don't at this point know if this is actually Arabella with Dr Yeschenkov, or her wax double. But if it is her wax double, then she is dressed in Arabella's clothes, has hair like Arabella, earrings of Arabella . . . are we all agreed?'
I looked at Dr Yes, who indicated neither yay nor nay, and Pearl, who nodded slightly.
'Alison, will you tell the . . . shop . . . what you do for a living?'
'I work in a jeweller's.'
'You are a jeweller.'
'I work in a . . .'
'You are a jewellery expert.'
'Well I wouldn't
'Compared to everyone here, you are, without doubt, an expert in jewellery?'
'If you insist.'
'Okay then. I want you to study the photograph on the ceiling. And tell us what jewellery you can see.'
'There's quite a lot on Dr Yeschenkov. High-end stuff from the look of it, even though we don't see much in the way of high-end stuff in our little—
'Just Arabella, please.'
'Okay. Well, if she's wearing earrings, they're hidden by her hair, nothing on her neck, and only one arm in shot. There's a watch; I can't really . . .'
'Perhaps if I enhance the picture?'
Clearly I already had this worked out. I clicked to the next one. The watch was now much larger, big enough to make out the detail.
'Yep, that's more like it.'
'So what can you tell us about this watch?'
'It's a ladies' stainless-steel Citizen watch, uhm, expansion wristband, luminescent hands and hour marks outlined in black. It would be water-resistant to a hundred and fifty feet - I mean, it says that, but whoever goes to a hundred and fifty feet? Retails for about a hundred and twenty quid, though seeing as I know you I can probably do you a deal.'
She smiled. The audience tittered. I did not.
'What about the design on the face?'
'The snake?'
'Yes, the snake. Does it have any significance?'
'Yes, it does. We sell quite a lot of them. It's the signature of a company called Medic Alert. It provides a life- saving identification system for people with hidden medical conditions and allergies. The back of the watch would have been engraved with whatever medical condition Arabella happened to be suffering from.'
'Thank you, Alison, that will be all.'
She was clearly relieved to be out of the spotlight. I gave her the thumbs-up as she passed and switched it instead to Dr Yeschenkov.
I said, 'Doctor, you are
aware of this system?'
'Yes, of course.'
'Are you also aware that Arabella was allergic to penicillin?'
'Yes, I was aware. I wrote it into her notes.'
'And who has access to those notes?'
'All of my medical staff, everyone who was involved in her procedures, doctors and nurses.'
'And if by some chance they failed to read the notes properly, they would be trained enough to look for the Medic Alert watch or locket or bracelet?'
'Yes, always.'
'And what would happen to someone like Arabella if she was inadvertently given penicillin?'
'Many people are allergic to it, but their reactions are relatively minor: a rash, perhaps, swollen lips or itchy eyes. Arabella suffered from a more serious form of allergy, and would have had an anaphylactic response, which would have been life-threatening - most notably causing a contraction of the airways. Blood pressure might also drop to a dangerous level. Either of these might render the patient unconscious. Her speech would have been slurred, her lips and nail beds would have turned blue. She would have thrown up. This, however, sir, is irrelevant. I was well aware of Arabella's allergy, and she was most certainly not given penicillin.'
I turned as quickly as my hips would allow and pointed.
'Is that right, Pearl?'
Her eyes were cold, her stare withering.
But before she could say anything, I pressed the button again and the next picture appeared on the ceiling.
Two prescription notes, side by side.
Both for penicillin.
Both issued by the Yeschenkov Clinic.
Both signed by Dr Yeschenkov.
But the two signatures quite clearly different.
'May I now introduce my handwriting expert?'
I looked to the door. All eyes looked where I looked.
He stood there with his side-swept hair and porcine cheeks, in his tweed jacket, and flannel trousers, and cream loafers, and with an unlit pipe in his mouth, smiling around it.
'May I present Professor Lowenbrau?'
He came into the shop. He gave a short, clipped bow, and nodded around the audience. In fact he wasn't a professor. In fact he wasn't called Lowenbrau. In fact he knew damn all about handwriting. His real name was Brendan Coyle. He was an, acclaimed author of literary fiction, a much-despised part-time crime writer, an aesthete, an intellectual, a pain in the hole, and a friend of sorts.
Pearl had a very salient point, and one that I was already aware of. No Alibis wasn't a court of law, nobody was on trial or had taken an oath, so there was no responsibility on my part to adhere to those aspects of court procedure that one might normally take as sacrosanct. Everything I was doing was designed to wring a confession from the guilty, and if I had to perform a sleight of hand to get it, then I was quite happy too. The result was all-important. Others would have to prove it later; for the moment, all I wanted was the murderer cornered.
And so Professor Lowenbrau stood there, a pompous windbag if ever there was one, but he had the look of someone whose pomposity was based on the knowledge that he was the leader in his field. I was expecting Brendan Coyle to rise to the occasion, to perform, to bullshit mightily. He would point out the differences in the signatures, and produce samples of Pearl's own signature I had unearthed in the documents supplied by the clinic to Augustine's solicitor following Arabella's disappearance, and show the similarities in style, and hint at the fingerprint analysis that would shortly be carried out by one of his imaginary colleagues that would prove that Pearl had become so powerful within the clinic that she thought she knew enough to issue and sign prescriptions on Dr Yeschenkov's behalf, that she had decided herself what was wrong with Arabella and made the fatal mistake of not examining her medical records and failed to recognise the importance of her wristwatch before administering the penicillin that had killed her. These simple errors had precipitated everything that had followed, right up to the murder of Rolo in Tollymore Forest.
But in the event, the good professor uttered not a single word.
Pearl let out a sigh, and as the air issued from her she seemed to collapse in on herself. She came off her chair and on to her knees and bent over, and buried her head in her hands. Her shoulders heaved. Everyone stared at her, mesmerised. In the end it took a man of standing and authority to take hold of her, to pull her hands away from her face and say, 'Why?'
That, obviously, wasn't me, for I was as gobsmacked by her sudden collapse as everyone else.
It was Dr Yes peeling her hands away, revealing her make-up-run face, with one set of false eyelashes hanging down.
'Why?' she cried. 'I did it for you!'
'But that. . . doesn't make sense, Pearl. . . You wrote a prescription . . .'
'I wrote it for you! I was taking the weight off your shoulders!'
'But you can't do that
'It was a simple mistake! And I knew if you found out you wouldn't stand by me, because the clinic and its reputation means more to you than I do, so I had to cover it up, I had to. I couldn't tell you! What hope would there be for us then? You would never leave her, never leave that fat frump after this . . .!'
Pearl looked daggers at the woman I, and everyone else, had presumed merely to be his legal aid.
Pearl shook her head in despair. 'How could you, how could you choose her over me?'
Dr Yeschenkov finally let go of her hands and stood up. He shook his head sadly. 'Pearl, I created you . . . you were an experiment, a project, you were my Eliza . . . I fell, I fell in lust with you. But I did something wrong, I went too far. You weren't my Pygmalion, you were my . . . Frankenstein's monster. I could see it in you, but this ... I never suspected you would go this far. I'm sorry, Pearl, I'm so sorry.' And then he looked at me. 'I'm truly sorry.'
I said, 'I always knew you couldn't judge a book by its cover.'
Alison stepped up beside me and hooked her arm through mine. 'And I always knew you couldn't polish a turd.' And then she whispered lovingly in my ear, 'Although I'm doing my best.'
* * *
Chapter 42
When someone dies, all sorts of parasites emerge to feed on the mouldering corpse. It's disgusting. I was obviously only interested in securing Augustine's legacy, but once word got out about the murders, and Pearl's arrest, and Spider-web's arrest, and Brian Wailer's arrest, and Dr Yeschenkov being taken in for questioning, suddenly there were nephews, cousins and second cousins crawling all over Augustine's oeuvre and claiming rights. The prospect of No Alibis ever republishing his Barbed-Wire Love trilogy receded with each solicitor's letter. As for his fabled fourth book in the series, there was no evidence that it had ever existed. It was, it appeared, truly Augustine's final work of fiction.
Spring turned into a lengthy summer, with the sun high in the skies, and customers rarer than hen's teeth. I tried to spend as little time as possible with Alison, because she had grown from being just unpleasantly plump to the size of a Zeppelin. She said she understood, that she was happy with her few hours in the jewellery shop across the road, and with spending more time on her comic-book art, and I mean that in the disparaging sense, even though it was, literally, comic-book art. Jeff was on a ridiculously long break from college and had chosen to go travelling rather than help out in the shop, while Mother was now permanently back home and behaving, up to a point. I tried to get her to cover the till for me while I did essential stock-taking and reading, but ultimately I had to sack her from all duties in No Alibis. It wasn't just her insistence on continuing to smoke in the shop. It was her habit of using Augustine's urn as an ashtray. She had to mount stepladders and unscrew a lid in order to hide the evidence of her guilty habit, and was only discovered when she accidently knocked the urn off its shelf and spilled the contents over the floor. This, unhappily - or happily, depending on your point of view - coincided with the front door opening and one of those hen's teeth entering, bringing with him a draught of polluted summer breeze, which wafted essence of Augusti
ne all over the shop, where it settled on books and shelves. One might look on it as the last macabre act of the Case of the Pearl Necklace, an ironic climax of fate, with Augustine moving from being Exhibit No. 1 to becoming part of the very fabric of No Alibis. I was naturally furious. One should never have to hoover up one of one's favourite authors.
On a late August morning, about five minutes after I opened up, Alison called and said, 'Guess what?'
'No,' I said.
'Waters broke. Driving to hospital.'
'Oh,' I said.
I didn't like the way I was suddenly feeling.
Clammy.
I am allergic to hospitals. They are breeding grounds for everything.
'Well?'
At that moment the shop door opened and DI Robinson entered. I hadn't seen him in months. Not even my two per cent off summer sale had tempted him through my doors.
I said, 'I'm going to have to put you on hold.'
I put her on it before she could respond. I nodded at Robinson. He nodded back.
'How's business?' he asked.
'Slow,' I said.
'Thought you'd want to know, we found Arabella Wogan's body. Pretty bad state. Lenny McNulty led us to it, eventually.'
'Lenny ...?’
'The fella with the tattoo on his hand?'
'Oh yeah. So. What about Pearl?'
'She's changed her tune. Apparently the murders were all Rolo's idea. They were lovers. He was blackmailing her. She has a different version every week. But we'll nail her eventually.' 'And what about Buddy?'
'Buddy will be fine. Outside chance of a manslaughter charge, but I'm fighting it.'
'Well,' I said, 'everything turned out okay in the end.'
'Once again. You know, you're very lucky.'
'It's not luck.'
'You have your day in the sun, and you don't have to worry about the paperwork.'
'It's the way I like it.'
'Well I'm just telling you, you are very lucky, but one day your luck is going to run out. If I were you, I'd quit while you were ahead. You have a baby on the way, don't you?'
Dr. Yes Page 24
