by Janet Tanner
Then won’t you help me clear her name? Juliet almost said before she remembered. No more questions. No more probing. Except, perhaps, one visit to one man to try and discover what he and Louis had quarrelled about on the night Louis died …
‘More coffee?’ Deborah enquired. ‘There’s still some left in the pot, I think.’
‘Thanks.’ Juliet passed her cup and swallowed a mouthful of buttery toast. ‘Do you know the Jersey Lily Nightclub?’
For a fleeting second Deborah seemed to freeze. Her eyes widened with what might almost have been shock or fear, the expression caught as if by a camera, then as quickly it was gone and Deborah was her usual calm and smiling self.
‘Why on earth do you want to know that?’
‘Oh, I heard it mentioned somewhere. I thought it sounded interesting,’ Juliet said evasively and thought: Shit, I’m lying again!
Deborah relaxed visibly. ‘ Yes, it does sound glamorous, I agree. It’s quite tame though as nightclubs go – Jersey nightspots always are. We’re very staid here. But I think it puts on some good floor shows – it’s very popular with the summer visitors.’
‘Where is it?’
‘On the outskirts of St Helier. You practically pass it driving into town from here. It’s got an enormous Jersey Lily in neon lights on the side. Appalling taste, but it seems to attract the customers.’
‘It’s no competition to the Langlois empire then?’
‘Heavens no! It’s in a totally different class. Though you may very well have heard that Louis was keen to move into that kind of thing. It was one of the bones of contention between him and the rest of the family.’
She said it very lightly but Juliet could see the wariness still there in her eyes and the tiny tremble in her hand as she set down the coffee jug and knew that she had only made the point about Louis as a defensive measure. She had realised Juliet had been told something about Louis’s connection with the club and had come in quickly to scotch any speculation. But her very defensiveness proved one thing – there was something she wanted to keep hidden.
‘You mean Louis wanted to open up a nightclub?’ Juliet asked.
‘Heaven knows what he wanted!’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Juliet, you are going to have to excuse me. I’m due at the hairdressers in just under an hour.’ She stood up, slim and elegant in a peach silk wrap and matching high heeled mules that might have escaped from a thirties Hollywood movie. ‘Will you have time to look in on your grandma later?’
‘Well of course.’ Juliet felt a momentary irritation. Wasn’t that the reason she had come halfway round the world – to spend some time with her grandmother and the rest of the family? But the flash of annoyance passed as swiftly as it had come. Deborah meant no harm. She shared a special relationship with Sophia and felt responsible for her. It was nice to know that one of her daughters-in-law cared so deeply, nice to know that Deborah and David, at least, had stood by her when she most needed them.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she’s all right,’ Juliet assured her.
‘Good morning, Grandma.’
‘Juliet! Good morning!’ Sophia, like Deborah, had not dressed yet, but her full length housecoat was of rich blue velvet and she was seated at the window in her room sorting through the day’s mail, making notes in a huge leather-bound desk diary and consigning the envelopes to the wastepaper basket. She looked perfectly well now with no sign of the pallor that had followed her ‘heart turn’. ‘We missed you at dinner last night. I’m dreading you going home to Australia, you know.’
‘I shall come back to visit really often,’ Juliet promised. ‘It certainly won’t be another nineteen years. I’ll make sure of that.’
Sophia smiled sadly. ‘It’s easy to say that when you are actually here. When you get home it will be a different matter. You’ll have your job for one thing. And your young man for another. He may have something to say about you jetting off around the world too often.’
‘He won’t mind. We don’t have that kind of a relationship,’ Juliet said but her heart had sunk at the very thought of being tied down by Sean. He wouldn’t run her life, of course, she wouldn’t let him, but the very idea of being with him permanently made her feel claustrophobic.
‘How were Paul and Viv?’ Sophia asked, changing the subject, and as they chatted the age gap, as always, seemed to disappear.
‘Have you any plans for today?’ Sophia asked after a while.
‘I thought I’d drive into St Helier and do some window shopping.’ Juliet hesitated, then added: ‘I have been looking at the names of places. It all sounds so exotic. French and yet not French.’
‘Your island heritage, my dear.’
‘And there are the names that sort of cash in on the island, aren’t there? I’ve seen goodness knows how many Bergerac guest houses and hotels, named after the TV detective Jim or whatever his name is, someone said. And I noticed a Jersey Lily Nightclub the other day. That’s an allusion to Lily Langtry, I presume.’
She was watching Sophia closely as she said it, waiting to see if she got the same sort of reaction from her as she had done from Deborah. Sure enough there it was – a small shadow for a moment in the startling amethyst eyes, a little tightening of the muscles in her cheek – before she said: ‘Lily Langtry. Yes, it could be named after her. But our lovely island flower is also called the Jersey Lily, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Juliet felt guilty, suddenly, for having mentioned it. There was nothing of Deborah’s evasiveness in her grandmother’s reaction, only recognition and sadness, the reaction of a mother whose son had been at the Jersey Lily the night he died.
But her mind was made up. Before she tried to put the whole business to the back of her mind she would certainly visit the Jersey Lily and try to discover just what connection it had with Louis’s death.
The Jersey Lily Nightclub stood on the main road into St Helier, just as Deborah had said. Juliet wondered why she had not noticed it before – because she had been concentrating on her driving, presumably. Now she pulled into the big asphalted car park and looked it over – stuccoed, with blue paintwork and that enormous neon sign – every inch the holidaymakers’ Jersey. No wonder Louis had wanted to emulate it – and no wonder the rest of the conservative Langlois clan, with their penchant for luxury and taste, had been totally against such an idea.
But had Louis wanted to emulate it – or had it been more than that? Had he perhaps wanted to muscle in on his friend’s very profitable enterprise? And had Raife Pearson objected to such a thing – objected so strongly that there had been a terrible falling out between the two men? It was a possibility, very real for all that Dan had dismissed any suggestion that Raife might be implicated in Louis’s death.
Or am I simply thinking on those lines because it suits me to? Juliet wondered. And if Raife was involved in Louis’s murder and Deborah knows it, why has she never spoken out?
She left the car and went towards the club. The main doors, flanked by enormous photographs of the TV stars who were appearing in the nightly floor show, were firmly closed and Juliet walked around the building looking for another entrance. She found one at the rear, a narrow blue-painted door wedged ajar, and went inside.
After the brightness of the late spring morning the passage beyond the narrow door was dim and a smell of stale tobacco smoke hung in the air. A small office to the left was empty – the stage doorkeeper’s domain? – but from somewhere within the building came the intermittent sounds of music. Juliet followed the passage past a number of doors, all closed, whilst the percussion sounds grew louder. Baize covered a doorway to her right; she pushed it aside and found herself in the main bar of the club – a large empty area which obviously served as a stage, tables and chairs covering two thirds of the room and a long, well-stocked bar. The harsh electric lighting gave the place an air of slight seediness. In a corner a young man with shoulder length hair and dark glasses – dark glasses, in here? – was fiddling with a drum kit. Juliet a
pproached him.
‘I’m looking for Raife Pearson.’
‘Raife? Try the office. D’you know where it is? Back the way you’ve come, first on the right.’ From behind the dark glasses he looked her up and down. ‘Are you auditioning?’
‘No.’
‘Oh – right.’ He returned to his drum kit, brushing softly.
Following his instructions Juliet retraced her steps. There was no plate on the door the drummer had described, nothing to make it different to the others, but she tapped at it anyway and after a moment a man’s voice called: ‘Come in.’
She pushed open the door. He was sitting behind a large oak desk, a dark swarthy man with the look of the Mediterranean about him. He was on the telephone; he waved to her to wait with a well-manicured and beringed hand on which the small dark hairs grew thickly from wrist to knuckles.
Juliet looked around the office while she waited. Posters, glamour photographs, a couple of big bound directories, everything exactly as one would imagine the office of a nightclub owner to be.
‘The job’s gone, I’m afraid.’
She jumped. He was looking directly at her, telephone still cradled in his shoulder, hand covering the mouthpiece.
‘Sorry, are you talking to me?’
‘You’ve come about the job, have you? Bar staff?’
‘No. I’m not looking for a job.’
‘Pity.’ He was eyeing her up and down with a professional but not lascivious eye. ‘I could have found you something, I expect …’ He broke off as a voice crackled down the telephone, finishing his conversation before replacing the receiver and swinging his chair up on to its back legs. ‘What can I do for you then?’
‘I wanted to talk to you.’ Juliet was nervous now but determined not to show it.
‘Oh yes. What about?’
‘Louis Langlois.’
The hooded eyes beneath the heavy dark brows narrowed. ‘ Louis Langlois? But he’s been dead for the last twenty years.’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘His mother did time for killing him.’
‘Yes. Look, let me introduce myself. I’m Juliet Langlois, Robin’s daughter. Louis was my uncle.’
Raife Pearson laughed shortly. ‘Robin’s daughter, eh? Who’d have thought it! Didn’t he push off somewhere after Louis was killed? The States, was it?’
‘Australia.’
‘And now you’re back in Jersey. The old girl is pleased, I expect. I must say I’m highly honoured myself. I didn’t know I was on the list for social calls from the Langloises.’ The note of sarcasm in his voice was evident: Juliet guessed there was little love lost on his side either but refused to rise to the bait.
‘You knew Louis, I understand,’ she said.
‘What of it?’
‘He was a friend of yours?’
‘I wouldn’t call him a friend exactly. We were drinking partners. And we would have been business acquaintances if Louis had had his way.’
‘He wanted to go into partnership with you, is that right?’ Juliet asked, backing her earlier hunch.
‘How did you know that? Yes, Louis had some big ideas, too big for Jersey. It’s a staid sort of place, this.’
The words rang bells in Juliet’s head. Someone else had used that word to describe Jersey. Who was it? Deborah, this morning. She too had said Jersey was staid.
‘Of course in those days we were young and optimistic.’ Raife found a half-smoked cigar in the ashtray on his desk and puffed it to life as he spoke. ‘Louis and I wanted to get into casinos. I’d just started the Jersey Lily, he had control of the Langlois hotels – well, more or less. His father had died leaving him and his two brothers equal shares and he could run rings around ’em. Robin, your father, always followed where Louis led and David was too young to argue. We thought, Louis and me, we could make our fortunes if we could turn Jersey into Las Vegas.’
‘But gambling isn’t allowed here is it?’ Juliet said.
‘I told you, we were young and optimistic. We thought we could get that changed and be in at the start of something new and very profitable. It would never have worked, of course, but we had our dreams.’
He smiled at her, but in spite of his apparent frankness there was something shifty in the way his hooded eyes darted and held, and the cigar, still clamped between his teeth, managed to make the smile look more like a grimace.
‘Have I told you what you wanted to know – Juliet, is it?’
‘Juliet, yes. You’ve been helpful but there is one other thing. I understand Louis was here the night that he died.’
She sensed rather than saw the instant withdrawal. His expression did not change but his tone became frosty.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’ve been told you and Louis quarrelled that night. Was it about the casinos?’
Raife had lowered his chair close to the ground; there was something vaguely uncomfortable in his demeanour.
‘How the hell am I supposed to remember twenty years later what we quarrelled about? And why do you want to know anyway?’
‘I am trying to find out the truth about my uncle’s death,’ she said directly. ‘And I can’t believe you’d forget what you quarrelled about. Under the circumstances that is the sort of thing that would stick in your memory.’
Raife scraped back his chair. He was not a tall man but there was something powerful and threatening about the bulk of him and the sheer force of his personality.
‘I suggest, Juliet Langlois, that you go home to Australia and mind your own business.’
Adrenalin was pouring through Juliet’s veins now, making her hands and fingers tingle. There was something here. There had to be.
‘My grandmother served time for my Uncle Louis’s killing, Mr Pearson,’ she said steadily. ‘My family split up as a result of it. So you can see it is my business.’
He laughed suddenly. ‘So you’ve come here to accuse me of shooting Louis, is that it? I’m sorry, my dear, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. I did quarrel with Louis and because of that I was interviewed by the police at the time, even though Sophia had confessed. But there was never any question of me being under suspicion. I was here the whole evening with a club full of witnesses to prove it if necessary. As for motive, I didn’t have one. Louis and I were friends.’
‘You said just now you weren’t friends.’
‘Well we certainly weren’t enemies. As I told you, we had plans for the future. The only reason we quarrelled that night was because we disagreed about how best to make them operational. But if you were looking for someone with a motive I can provide you with the name of someone who had a very good motive indeed. Frank de Val.’
‘Who?’
‘Frank de Val. He was a senator in the States – the Island Parliament. Louis was trying to get him to support us and bring about a change in the law.’
‘The law on gambling?’
‘Of course. Louis thought de Val would be … persuadable, shall we say. Only he was proving difficult.’
Suddenly Juliet was remembering what Dan had told her that the employee had overheard that night, and the pieces of the jigsaw began to fit together. ‘You mean Louis was going to blackmail this Frank de Val?’
Raife nodded. ‘Clever girl. Yes, de Val had been a little unwise at some time. Louis knew about it and wanted to put the pressure on. I thought he was going too far. I said so in very plain terms. So you see, unfortunately for you I really had no reason to kill Louis, as well as no opportunity. I’m afraid you will have to look elsewhere if you want to pin Louis’s death on someone other than your very accommodating grandmother.’ He opened the door and stood waiting for Juliet to leave. ‘It’s been a pleasure but now I do have work to do. Remember, if you want a job … But I suppose that’s a vain hope – that I should have the Langlois heiress working for me.’
Juliet went out into the corridor and the cigar smoke followed her.
‘Juliet Langlois …’ She turned.
He was standing in the doorway watching her go. ‘ Just remember, everyone might not be quite what they seem.’
Something about the way he was looking at her, those strange eyes, the curling mouth beneath the dark grey-streaked moustache, made a sharp dart of fear streak inside her.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
But he only returned his cigar to his mouth, smiled at her through the smoke and went back into his office, closing the door behind him.
Dan was working in his office when he heard the doorbell. The office was cluttered – a huge old civil service desk housed a word processor and wire baskets; newspaper cuttings, scribbled notes and open files littered the floor. The window looked out over the Howard Davis Park, a mass of late spring colour, but it was days since Dan had stopped to notice it. He was too bound up in the story about Louis Langlois’s death to appreciate anything that had no direct bearing on it.
He swore to himself as the doorbell shrilled and glanced at his watch. Dammit, Mrs Ozouf the daily woman would have gone by now. He’d either have to answer it himself or let it ring. Even as the thought crossed his mind the bell shrilled again. Dan pushed back his coffee cup to make a little room on the desk, put down the newspaper cutting he had been studying, and went down to answer it.
‘Juliet!’
After her abrupt departure the previous evening she was the last person he expected to see. She was wearing a gold-buttoned navy blazer over a striped top and narrow-legged white trousers; a navy blue yachting cap sat on her sleek fair hair at a jaunty angle. But Juliet did not look jaunty. Far from it.
‘Dan – thank goodness. I didn’t know if you’d be here or not.’
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘I have to talk to you. Can I come in, please?’
‘Well of course,’ he said, cursing himself for behaving like a dummy. He pushed open the living-room door and followed her in.
‘Have you got anything to drink?’ she asked.
‘Coffee? I expect there’s some in the pot.’
‘No, not coffee. Something stronger. Oh, I know it’s a bit early in the day but I need it.’
