A Grave Waiting (22 page)

With whom did she share the things that were important to her? Some members of her family, maybe. Then, of course, there was her band, Jenemie, but she really only shared a love of music, and playing music, with them.

As they ate their frozen dinners, she and Melissa Machin talked about art and books, and Melissa Machin returned more than once to the impossibly difficult separation from her children, which was, apparently, something set in stone by the class into which she had married.

As they talked, Liz came to the conclusion that she only spoke at any length to whoever was in her bed, and that included Brutus. And Moretti. But that was mostly about work, and for sure not in bed. Her boyfriends were rarely that interested in talking when they shared her bed, so perhaps that was why she had been attracted to Ludo, for all his advanced years. And Moretti had put up barriers between them, barriers that had as much to do with his personality as with their professional relationship.

“The class into which you married? I'd have thought you and your husband came from the same background, Mrs. Machin.”

“Melissa, please!” Melissa Machin finished the last of her meal and put the bowl down on the table. “That was really good curry. Did you make it?”

Liz laughed. “No. And I'm Liz. The drummer in the Fénions makes them. His vindaloo is amazing, could blow up a battleship, but I thought the butter chicken best for tonight.”

“Dwight.” Melissa looked at Liz questioningly. “Are you and he —?”

“Once. Not anymore. Dwight likes to move on, and I was okay with that.”

Liz got up and took the bowls over to the sink. “So, this whole class thing. On this island you've got to get it right, or you tread on the wrong toes.”

“Everywhere, I think. I met Garth when he was playing sax in a Paris club. I was there studying art on a scholarship. My family are all in the arts one way or another, so money is tight. We were crazy about each other, Garth and me, but I think part of the attraction for him was my family's bohemian attitude to life. I didn't meet Garth the financier until after I realized I wanted to spend my life with him, have children with him. The sax player never completely went away, but the money man came out ahead of him. Money is so seductive, Liz.”

Liz thought of her wish list, and her own reluctance to sit behind a desk. “I know. I'm in the police force to put curry on the table, but I would love to play my guitar and sing for a living.”

Melissa Machin looked delighted. “You play that lovely thing? I wondered if it might be purely decorative.”

“Perish the thought!” Liz took a bottle of wine from her small wine rack near the sofa bed that would be her guest's that night. “I don't like drinking wine with curry, but I love it afterward. Let me guess — bohemian family — red?”

“You guessed right.” Melissa was laughing as she got down from her chair and on to the floor, to sit cross-legged on the pretty little tribal rug that Ludo had helped Liz choose in happier days. Just as he had guided her with her wine selection. “Then you'll play and sing for me, Liz?”

“Try and stop me.”

She began with “Plaisir D'Amour,” and watched the tears drift unchecked down Melissa Machin's face.

Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un instant

Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.

Moretti let himself out of Chief Officer Hanley's office with a sigh of relief. The briefing had gone surprisingly well, and he was reminded of his superior officer's best qualities, which came more readily to the fore when Hanley did not have to concern himself with island politics or island personalities. Hanley had listened, allowed him to talk, asked the occasional question, then picked up the phone. By the time he put it down again, Adèle Letourneau was in custody and on her way to Hospital Lane with PC Brouard, who was only too happy to oblige. His feet were hurting, and he was fed up with being sworn at in a language he didn't understand, although the gist was quite clear. What's more, the Letourneau woman came quietly, which was unexpected, an added bonus, and almost as if being in custody overnight was not that unwelcome.

Moretti unlocked the Triumph and drove out of the police car park into Hospital Lane. The throbbing of the bump on his head had now turned into a more general headache radiating in a tight band just above his ears. On an impulse he turned away from his normal route home and drove toward the harbour, to Le Grand Saracen. Maybe he would feel better if he had something to eat, and Deb Duchemin's lasagna travelled well. It was almost as good as his mother's. Emidio's was busy, and he was able to get in, pick up what he wanted, and get out again without having to talk too much. His head was too sore for an exchange of pleasantries, witticisms, or customers enquiring when he was playing again downstairs.

If only,
he thought.
If only.

The image of a witch in black and silver floated through his mind with the music that was always there, as he headed for home. So it was not surprising he thought her a figment of his imagination when he saw her outside his house, sitting on the step, her coat folded up beneath her.

“W
hat
are you doing here? Is something wrong?” Moretti called out the car window, as Sandy Goldstein stood up and came toward him. She was holding a small package in her hand and she was smiling. Under the porch light her teeth shone, incredibly white.

“Waiting for you is what I am doing here, and the only thing wrong is that I am freezing.” She gave a mock shiver. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants, but the coat on his doorstep was scarlet. “And in case you're wondering how I found you, Gwen told me where you lived. I have a gift for you, a thank you for the phone.”

Gwen indeed. Very few called Gwen Ferbrache by her first name.

“That wasn't necessary.”

Charming,
he thought. What an impression I must be making, and why did this delectable woman appear on my doorstep when all I want to do is to crash with the help of an aspirin or two. Or three.

“Very gallant, Detective Inspector.” Sandy Goldstein was laughing.

Moretti climbed out of the Triumph, retrieved the lasagna, picked up the red coat from the step, and unlocked the door.

“Come in.”

As she walked by him into the house, the fragrance she had worn at the club drifted in after her, and he followed in its wake.

“This is a pretty place. Your parents' originally, Gwen tells me.”

She is so at ease in her skin,
he thought, watching her put down her package, walk over to look at the prints and photos on the wall.

“Yes. You have left Julia on her own? In the circumstances, I feel I must ask.”

“Yes. She is so happy and secure here, and this is from her as well. More than from me, as a matter of fact, because it is one of her watercolours. We had it framed in town.”

She sat down and gestured to Moretti to do the same, as if she were in her own place. Inside the package was a rectangular painting in a simple frame.

“Wildflowers. Julia chose the muted tones. We had no idea what your place was like, or your tastes, but Julia felt this was — well, you.”

“She was absolutely right. Thank you.”

Sandy Goldstein came over and stood beside him. “See, she identified them all on the back. Fennel, hogweed, coltsfoot — we are becoming quite experts, Ed — some reeds and a touch of yellow. Ragwort, Julia loves yellow — aah!”

With his frayed nerves, her muted shriek sounded like the harbour siren in his ear, and Moretti jumped violently.

“You've got a helluva bump on your head. What happened, Ed?”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so let's just leave it at that.”

“Oh my God, and you come home and find me on your doorstep. Unasked for and unwanted. What timing. I'm so sorry.”

“How were you to know?” He was thinking much the same thing, only unwanted wasn't on his list. He felt her body against his side, then her lips against his head.

“Oh, Ed, you poor baby,” she said.

How things unfolded from there he could never quite remember afterward, and he put it down to the bump on his head. Loss of memory, loss of judgement, above all, loss of control. He hated losing control, most of the time.

She had a silver stud in her navel with a diamond in it, and around the diamond was a tattooed flower that bore no resemblance to any Guernsey wildflower whatsoever, of coastline or marshland, of wasteland or watermeadow.

Moretti had read somewhere that men had two and a half times the sex drive of women, but clearly Sandy Goldstein had not been one of the female subjects of the study. At some point they had got upstairs to the bedroom, but the lasagna had not got as far as the fridge. Much later on that night he realized he had completely forgotten about his headache and his hunger.

Ah well,
he thought, in one briefly sane moment. She wasn't a witness, or a potential suspect. She wasn't married to anyone else. She had nothing to do with yachts, or gun-running, or MRI machines. Or murder. And it had been such a long, long time.

Day Eight

They were making breakfast and laughing together when the phone rang. It was wonderful to laugh with a woman with whom he had just spent the night.

“Must you answer it?”

“Yes, I must.”

As he picked up the phone, Sandy Goldstein put her arms around him, and kissed his ear.

“Guv? I think your mobile's off.”

It was Liz Falla. A wave of guilt washed over him, followed by anxiety. He should have checked in with her the night before, made sure everything was all right.

“Falla? Are you okay?”

Moretti felt Sandy Goldstein stiffen, then move away from him.

“I'm okay, and Mrs. Machin's okay. But there's been another murder.”

Moretti's anxiety heightened. Christ, he should have moved Garth, but his annoyance with him had clouded his judgement, leaving Garth to take his chances.

“Garth?”

“No. I just checked in with PC Le Marchant, who was on duty overnight, and nothing happened.”

That left one prime target, and Moretti knew who it would be.

“Coralie Fellowes, Guv. Mrs. Evans just arrived and found her.”

“I'll meet you there, Falla.”

Moretti put down the phone and turned to look at Sandy. She was not laughing anymore.

“I know. You gotta go, right?”

“Yes. I'll order you a taxi to take you back to La Veile.”

She was already in the sitting room, picking up her red coat. Moretti noticed it had a hood. Which probably made him the big, bad wolf. Certainly he was being made to feel like it.

On his way to St. Martin, Moretti made another call to Falla.

“Where is Melissa Machin? Still at your place?”

“No, Guv. I thought she was safer now back with her Fort Knox security system and a police guard. Was that right?”

“That was right.”

“Oh, and I think we've got the car they used to go to Fort George, Guv. It was rented at the harbour by the crew members and returned later that afternoon. All above board and no attempt to hide. Said they wanted to take a look at some of the fortifications.”

“They are cool, those two.”

Moretti rang off, phoned Hospital Lane, and arranged for Garth's wife to be taken to the airport and put on a plane to the mainland.

Then he gave some thought to Sandy and her hostility after the phone call. She was the one who had come bearing gifts, not the least of which was herself. Surely she knew he was a policeman, she knew he was on a case, so why the animosity? Could it be it had more to do with Liz Falla than his abrupt departure? And why would that be? After all, they were not “an item.”

Later, Moretti would wonder if he had deliberately blinded himself by thinking only about female rivalry, and not about other, more disturbing possibilities. At the time his only concern was that his night with Sandy might turn into a one-night stand, and that he would not be treated to a repeat performance. A kaleidoscopic vision of a diamond-centred tattoo flowering beneath magnificent breasts whirled dizzily through his tired mind.

“Why did you leave her overnight?”

Mrs. Evans, who had been sobbing uncontrollably, became indignant. She looked up at Moretti from the kitchen chair on which she sat, and fairly spat her answer back up at him. “I've got a home of my own, and a family of my own, and my son was sick of going over to let the dog out and walk him. He really only obeys me, and can be very uppity with other people — the dog, I mean, not my son. Though goodness knows he's been difficult enough — my son, I mean —”

Moretti cut her off in mid-flow. “Of course, Mrs. Evans, perfectly understandable. Now I want you to tell me exactly what happened, from the moment you walked in.”

Mrs. Evans pulled herself together with a rolling forward and backward movement of her plump shoulders, took a sip of water from the glass on the kitchen table, a deep breath, and began. “Well, I walked Rambo and got here about eightish. Lady Fellowes is not an early riser, and I know better than to disturb her, so I got her breakfast together — well, black coffee and some toast, eats like a bird — then I heard it.”

Mrs. Evans gulped, and looked over at the policewoman standing by the kitchen door.

“I could do with a nice cup of tea. Steady my nerves. Tea bags are in the canister by the cooker. Milk and two sugars, love.”

Moretti nodded at the officer, who crossed to the stove and put the kettle on.

“Heard it, Mrs. Evans? Was someone in the house?”

Mrs. Evans shook her head vigorously. “No, they weren't, but I didn't know that, not right then. Oh, I thought, she's got visitors, bless her. She hardly ever has people come to see her, and never at that hour in the morning. Usually I'd take the tray upstairs to the bedroom, but this time I picked up the breakfast tray and went through to the sitting room. And oh my Lord, there she was, and you'll find the tray too, where I dropped it.”

Just as the kettle started to whistle, Mrs. Evans began moaning, and the two sounds crescendoed together in an unearthly harmony.

“Heard what, Mrs. Evans?”

The policewoman handed the cup of tea to the housekeeper, who took a noisy sip and looked up at Moretti. “The music, Inspector. That's what I heard. The music.”

SOC were already there, shrouded in their ghostly working whites, figures of death in the midst of Coralie Fellowes's rose-lit mausoleum. Jimmy Le Poidevin was leaning over Coralie's body, which lay on the chaise. The voluminous fringed shawl that Moretti remembered from his earlier visit was folded around her, exposing her tiny feet in stiletto-heeled shoes. As he came into the room, slipping the shoe covers by the door over his own shoes, the head of SOCO looked up.

“Christ, you look terrible. Worse than the deceased. Thank God you've finally got here. We can switch the frigging music off.”

Moretti stepped over the shards of china and slices of toast from Mrs. Evans's breakfast tray. The spilled black coffee had created a new pattern on the carpet, ebony on rose. He pulled a pair of gloves out of their plastic package, put them on, and went over to the tape player on the ormolu-topped table near the window. How many times had the music of Coralie's heyday played and replayed through the last night of her life? He turned the player off and removed the tape. It must have been made for her, because it had no commercial label. When he came in, it was playing something easily recognizable: Charles Trenet's “La Mer.”

“I'll need to listen to this at some point.”

“Not right now. We could all do without an encore, thanks very much.”

Moretti joined Jimmy Le Poidevin by Coralie's body.

“Looks peaceful, doesn't she?” Jimmy straightened up and groaned, holding his back.

She did. Coralie Chancho looked as if she had lain down for a moment for a nice rest, and had gone to sleep. There was little skin discolouration, and her kohl-rimmed eyes stared back at Moretti with what looked like a touch of amusement. Even in death, her maquillage was perfect, as it had been when he and Falla first interviewed her. So that had no particular significance, because she had not been expecting them, and Mrs. Evans said she had few visitors. The makeup was for her, Coralie Chancho, and her alone.

“Looks like a natural death, but I gather it's not.”

“Nope. She was smothered, probably by that.” Jimmy Le Poidevin indicated an overstuffed silk cushion on the carpet near Coralie's deathbed. “It's red, but you can see the lipstick smear on it.”

“You'll check that, of course.”

“Of course. They sent someone from the hospital when the housekeeper phoned emergency, a new young hotshot who just arrived on staff.”

“He's gone? Wish he could have hung around a bit longer.”

Moretti spoke with mild irritation, and Jimmy Le Poidevin snapped back. “Wish you could have got here sooner. But your DS couldn't get hold of you, and the hospital's understaffed at the moment. Dr. Watt has taken sick leave, apparently. The young hotshot hinted at a nervous breakdown, which seems unlikely in Nichol's case. That giant ego of his usually makes him bulletproof.”

Moretti did not respond to Jimmy's barb. He was right, of course. So, even Nichol had his breaking point, and such a collapse at this precise moment put him squarely back into the frame.

“Does the hotshot have a name, and will he be doing the autopsy?”

“Yes. Dr. Burton, and you'll know more then. But he did say there's something odd about this. She's a frail old bird, and would have died quickly, but he'd still expect to see more signs of resistance, if not a struggle, and I agree. Natural human reaction to fight back when someone is trying to smother you.”

“No signs of a struggle?”

“Nothing.
Nada
.”

“Time of death?”

“Burton thought after midnight, more like the small hours of the morning, rather than earlier.”

“Any signs of a break-in?”

“None that we saw, but you'll double-check that, no doubt.”

“Was the shawl draped over her like that when you first saw her?”

“Yup. Like she'd been laid out by the murderer. The doc moved it a bit to examine her, then replaced it.”

Moretti looked around the room. It seemed exactly as he remembered it, with its plethora of photographs in their gilded frames.

“Wait a minute.”

On a low table by the window, the only photo on it was knocked over, lying on its face. Moretti straightened it up. It was one of the nude portraits, Coralie smiling with a huge feathered fan in her hands, strategically placed over her hips.

“There's one missing.”

“How can you possibly tell? The place is littered with them, like mice droppings.”

“Because I have been in this room before. Definitely one missing.”

“A souvenir, a trophy. Quite common, isn't it?”

“Guv.” Liz Falla had come quietly into the room and joined him by the table. She looked across at Coralie Fellowes' body. “Poor woman.” There was a quaver in her voice. “Not even golden lasses are spared, are they, Guv?”