Birth Marks (24 page)

Welcome home to the old problem. What was Frank's resident cliché? If you can't find the answer then you're not asking the right question. Back to the facts. Even a slipshod pathologist can tell fresh from sea water diatoms, and the contents of her stomach showed only one sort. She had died swallowing water which had not come into contact with the sea. Given that and given how long she'd been in the water she must have gone in somewhere around Kew or Hampton Court. Science doesn't lie. Her stomach proved she'd gone in up river. Her note proved she'd been home first. But as Daniel had said, home was the first place they would go looking for her. And home, was indeed where he had gone. He had arrived at Heathrow at 8.40 p.m. From there, according to him, he had driven straight to her house. Assuming VIP treatment through airport bureaucracy and customs and Saturday night traffic, Heathrow to Kilburn would have taken what—an hour, hour and half. Let's say 10.00 p.m. No, let's say later. Let's say it took longer and that he arrived nearer 10.30 p.m. By which time I was sitting back in my car thawing my hands back to life after the ice of her living-room. And, as I sat, I was watching the figure of a tall man in a trench-coat walk in through the front gate and up to her door. Except he didn't need to ring the bell, or even fiddle the lock. Because he had a key. Of course. How else could they have collected her mail over the last eight months? And then I saw the empty table in her room as it had been half an hour before, illuminated by the brief light of a naked bulb and then the more methodical sweep of my torch beam. And last of all I thought of the suicide note, that sad little litany of words. With the rumble of the river in the background I recited it out loud, the prelude to a final act of contrition. Holy Mary, mother of God, forgive me for I have sinned…‘By the time you read this you will know the truth. I am sorry for all the deceit and the trouble I have caused. Also for all the money which I cannot repay. It seems the only thing I can do is to go. Please, if you can, forgive me.'

…For these and all the sins of my life I am very sorry. But most of all for the sin of stupidity, Hannah. ‘The only thing I can do is go.' But a debt to Miss Patrick isn't the same thing as the money owed to the Belmonts, and the deceit of a concealed pregnancy isn't the same thing as deliberately picking the wrong father for the child. And most of all, leaving France isn't the same as leaving life, although, given the circumstances, you can see how a coroner might just have been fooled into believing it was.

I got down from the bridge and walked slowly back to my car. She had written the note and left it in the summerhouse. Which meant they must have found it after she'd gone. But for Daniel to bring it with him to England they must already have appreciated its ambiguity. Yet facts are still facts and forensics is still a science. According to the pathologist she had died between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. Daniel touched down two hours later. So let's say for the sake of argument that death was the automatic punishment for betrayal in Belmont's post-resistance world. Let's even assume, however much it hurt, that Daniel had the stomach as well as the strength to drown an eight-months pregnant woman just because his uncle asked him to. The question remained—how could he possibly have thrown Carolyn Hamilton into the Thames at a time when he was still on the other side of the Channel? And if it wasn't him then who the hell was it? How many times do I have to tell you, Hannah, it's not the answers but the questions…I tried again. And again. And eventually I got somewhere. This time I drove to Kilburn via Heathrow, just to check the time. It worked. Shame it was too late to thank Frank personally.

 

If it hadn't been for Colin's car I would probably have gone straight back to the airport. It was nearly four when I got to Islington. In the kitchen the only paper I could find had Amy's abstract doodling on one side, but sometimes art has to suffer for the sake of history. It took me the best part of two hours to write the report out twice. By that time Benjamin had decided it was time to get up and Kate didn't have much option but to agree. When she came down to fill up his bottle she looked more weary than I did and I'd been up all night. He on the other hand was radiant, all smiles and top-o'-the-morning-to-you. She slumped in the kitchen chair and plugged him in, while I made a pot of tea. We sat together and chomped our way through a plate of custard creams and chocolate digestives—midnight feasts postponed from childhood.

I think now that most of my childhood had been spent trying to catch up with Kate, trying to narrow that eighteen-month gap that meant she did everything before I did. And even when I'd managed it, had gone more places, done more things, slept with more men, I could still look back and find her in front of me. Three weeks ago I had sat on her staircase, hearing her lecture me about how it couldn't have been suicide, regardless of what any note might have said. If I'd listened to her right from the start, I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.

‘I went to Finsbury Park,' I heard myself say, ‘to see a dancer she used to work with, the father of her child. Then I went to the river. And now I have to go back to France.'

She studied me for a moment, then said, ‘You don't have to tell me, you know. I didn't ask.'

I nodded, then pushed one of the small piles of Amy's drawings across the table towards her. ‘Maybe if you get a moment you could read this before you stash it in the airing cupboard.'

‘What is it—a whodunnit?'

I shook my head. ‘More a how than a who. It's gripping stuff as far as it goes. Unfortunately it doesn't have an ending.'

‘Is that why you're going to France?'

‘Sort of.'

She smiled. ‘What happened? Did you fall for the bad guy?'

Yesterday it would have made me mad. Today I allowed myself to give it some thought. Without the luxury of sleep to fortify my defences it was a little easier. She was right, of course. Something had gone down between us. I could continue to dismiss it as the attraction of dress sense, adrenalin over vocation, or I could look at it for what it was: the break-up of the iceberg, even the first sign of spring. Hannah ‘Self-Sufficient' Wolfe comes out of hibernation to test the air. Admirable stuff if it wasn't for the timing. And the man. Still, it never stopped Humphrey Bogart from shopping Mary Astor. But then she really was one of the bad guys. Whereas Daniel…well, not one of the good guys, certainly, but further than that…

‘I don't know,' I said, after a while. ‘I think that's one of the things I'm going to find out.'

She nodded and shifted Benjamin to her other arm. She looked down at him for a second, then back up at me. ‘You know the first six months after Amy was born I used to have this recurring nightmare. I was locked in this room. I had gone in there voluntarily and closed the door behind me. But then I couldn't get out. There was a tiny window up high. If I climbed up I could just see out of it to a long stretch of road. And there was this figure walking along it, away from me. It was you.' She laughed. ‘Pretty basic stuff, eh? I was so ashamed of its literalism that I could never tell you. Well, that and other reasons. After a while it faded. Amy got bigger, I found I could cope better, found that, as well as loving her so much it scared the wits out of me, I even quite enjoyed it. And now it seems altogether possible that having children doesn't end your life. So now I only envy you some of the time.' She paused. ‘Funny thing is I get the impression you could say the same about me.'

I thought about the witty things I could say to deflect her, about how it was hardly the kind of thing a private investigator could admit to, undermining, as it did, the image. But in the end I didn't say any of it. In fact in the end I didn't speak for a while. I think it took me more by surprise than it did her. Eventually she dug a tissue out of her dressing gown pocket and pushed it across the table. It smelt of baby. I blew my nose. ‘I haven't slept,' I said after a while, maybe by way of an apology.

‘Don't worry. You'll find it good practice.'

I shook my head. ‘I might not want a child, you know. Not every woman does.'

‘I know that,' she said gently. ‘I just think you should give yourself the chance to choose. Isn't that what you would have wished for your little dancer?'

And, of course, she was right. On the wall the kitchen clock read 5.45 a.m. I stood up. ‘I have to go.'

She nodded. ‘So, back to criminal proceedings. Do you want me to leave this thing in the airing cupboard after I've read it or what?'

‘No. Maybe you should duplicate it and send it to Frank under my name.' I screwed up my mouth into my James Cagney impersonation. ‘And if you don't hear from me within twenty-four hours, kid, tell him to open it.'

I
was lucky. At Heathrow the Duty Operations Manager was the same guy who'd been on shift that Saturday night. Of course he didn't want to tell me anything, but a bit like Deep Throat he was willing not to deny it. I caught the 9.00 a.m. flight. No messing this time. I had hired a car from London and it was waiting at Charles de Gaulle. The trip to Villemetrie lasted 34 minutes on the autoroute, but then I wasn't sure of the road and it wasn't the latest model. In a private plane Daniel would have flown out of le Bourget, but he would have been in the BMW and could easily have made up the extra distance in speed. My whole journey took under three hours, or two, discounting British summertime. For Daniel it would have been shorter. I parked fifty yards or so from the main gate, in the entrance to a field. Outside the house two big black cars were waiting. I thought about leaving it until after lunch, but to be honest I couldn't wait. I went in over my favourite piece of wall, on through the forest and parallel to the polluted little river that ran along the edge of the garden. It was six days since I'd been here. Spring had already made a difference. The grass had sprung up and the foliage was denser. I crossed the dirty brown river at the same point, the lake on my right. On the long patio at the back of the house a trestle table was set up covered in a white tablecloth with a few round smaller tables near by, with chairs. Not so much a business lunch as a party: a birthday or celebration of a young/old marriage and a golden position in French society? I made my way across the lawn not bothering to conceal myself. Even if they threw me out now they would have to let me back in again. I was halfway to the house when a figure appeared on the terrace, tall and willowy, dressed in black with that shining cap of fair hair. If I could see her, then she must also be able to see me. I kept on walking. She stood there for a moment, very still, looking towards me, then turned and sat herself at one of the tables. She opened her bag. I caught sight of a red spark and then watched her settle herself in the chair, cigarette gracefully in hand. She made an elegant figure, silhouetted against the rich brickwork and symmetry of windows. Is that what Belmont had seen ten years ago, an aesthetic complement to an architectural folly? It was more convincing than the image of Mathilde as a child-breeder, a torrent of ruddy-faced babies gushing forth from those slender loins.

The last twenty yards was pure theatre, or rather film. The prop girl had placed a chair at right angles to her, the sun slicing on to it. I sat down. She let her head fall back into the warmth of the sun. Close to she looked particularly stunning, the cream skin against soft black crêpe and a single row of pearls around her neck, sheer stockings and shiny black shoes. Six days ago I might have labelled her silence as some kind of damaged eccentricity. Now I was pretty sure it was confidence.

After a while she looked up at me and nodded. ‘Hello, Hannah.'

‘Hello, Mathilde,' I said because I felt I had earned the use of her first name.

‘How long did it take you to get here?'

‘Oh, about five days, I think. But then I wasted some time on dead ends.'

She made a comforting face. ‘Well, anyway, you're here now.'

I looked around at the tables. ‘I'm sorry if this is an inconvenient time.'

‘Not really. In fact in some ways it may even be quite appropriate.' She paused. ‘If Jules were here I'm sure he'd offer you a drink.'

I shook my head and smiled at her. In the end it had been obvious. I mean who else had recourse to the doctor's report and a solicitor, fake or otherwise in London? Come to that who else could afford the fees? Except Daniel, of course, and whatever fantasies I may have harboured in the past, last night had watched them tumble into the river. It was time to be realistic. She smiled back. It was a warm moment, girls together on a ripe spring morning with the prospect of a party to come. I was almost loath to break the spell. From my bag I pulled out a folder. I handed it to her.

‘I think this belongs to you.'

She hesitated just for a second, then took it from me. She held it on her lap, her fingers playing over the cover as if they were reading Braille. Even the physical presence of it seemed to make her uneasy. Wanting to know is not the same as finding out, as I knew only too well. ‘We've never had much of a chance to talk to each other,' she said after a while. ‘Why don't you tell me what it says?'

‘Because I don't know how much you know. I wouldn't want to bore you.'

‘How much? Well, I know that the child was not my husband's and that in some way she died because of that. I also know it wasn't suicide.'

‘He didn't tell you?'

‘No,' she said softly. ‘He didn't tell me.'

‘Why not?' Although I suspected I already knew the answer.

‘As you yourself once said—I wanted a child very much. It was less important to me than to him who the father was.' She paused. ‘I assume he felt he couldn't trust me.'

‘So how did you get hold of the medical report?'

She took a long drag of her cigarette. Interestingly I couldn't remember her smoking before. Even now it seemed more of an affectation than a need. ‘The doctor had kept a copy, just in case he needed to prove it wasn't his fault. So I blackmailed him, told him I would make public his part in the deception unless he gave me it. It was a risk, but it was clear you needed help and it was the only help I could give without entirely giving myself away.' She cast a quick glance behind her, up to the house. Then back at me. ‘We don't have a lot of time, Hannah. I need to know.'

I took a breath. Here it was, the moment every private investigator dreams of—the truth, by Hannah Wolfe. ‘You were right, she didn't kill herself. The so-called suicide note wasn't written in her flat after all, it was written here in the summerhouse before she left. Daniel took it with him to London and planted it there for the police to find. But it wasn't the only luggage he brought from France. There was also a trunk. Full of company reports apparently. Although, of course, no one opened it to check. As you suggested to me that day on the steps, there are some distinct advantages to being Belmont Aviation. Like being able to arrange your own flights at the last minute. Like having preferential treatment coming in and out of airports, knowing you can move fast and that no one will question you. They touched down in the private jet at 8.40 p.m. He arrived in Kilburn at 10.25 p.m.—I know because I was there. In between he had just enough time to get himself and the luggage down to the river.

‘Carolyn died by inhaling fresh river water between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. on that Saturday evening. When the river police found the body two days later they jumped to the obvious conclusion. The PM and the inquest backed them up. The approximate time of death, the contents of the stomach, the suicide note, it all fitted. Given the facts there was no reason to suspect that the fresh water diatoms in her hadn't come from the Thames. Except that at the time of death, of course, she was nowhere near the Thames. She was still here.' I paused, looking out over the grounds to the glisten of water at the edge of the forest.

‘It's a beautiful lake. Very old, I imagine, and fed directly from the river. Not such a clean river, alas, but pollution is a fact of life these days. Still cleaner than the Thames, but luckily the pathologist wasn't checking for levels of pollution. Or for the differences between one river and another. To do that he would have had to call in a marine biologist, and why bother? As I say, everything fitted just as it was.

‘Carolyn wrote her note, waited until dark and then tried to leave. What happened next maybe you would know better than I. Maybe she didn't see the edge of the water, fell in the dark and panicked, thrashed around until she couldn't swim any more then opened her mouth to the water. Or maybe someone helped her in and made sure she stayed there. Whatever the explanation, I think Carolyn Hamilton drowned in your lake somewhere around 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. Then they—probably Daniel with a little help from Maurice—scooped her out, packed her up and flew her, post haste, to London. It was an act of pure bravado. But a clever one. Of course they were lucky to get away with it. A better PM might have gone in search of questions that the body couldn't answer. As it was they found only what they were looking for.'

The ash on her cigarette had grown dangerously long. Her hand trembled slightly and it slipped silently on to her dress. I wondered how she was going to get it off without smudging the divine hot black of the crêpe. Had she paid for me with her husband's money? Rather ironic really, him indirectly financing his own destruction. Even though I had known it for a while I was still somewhat awed by the magnitude of her disloyalty. No wonder traditionally women were absolved from testifying against their husbands. It just meant they had to employ someone else to do it for them. She looked down at the ash and employed a small perfect nail to flick it deftly away. Nevertheless a faint grey shadow remained. She looked up at me and you could see that whatever else she was feeling she was also pleased.

‘I was out that afternoon. Buying nursery furniture,' she said with a hollow little laugh. ‘She had told me about the baby the day she asked Jules to release her from the contract. I told her it wouldn't matter. I assured her that when the time came to test for paternity I would protect her from his anger. I thought that would be enough. Of course what she hadn't told me was how she knew for certain that it wasn't his. Do you think the baby was dead?'

‘Not according to the expert I talked to. I think she was leaving in order to try and save it.'

She shook her head. ‘By the time I got back here it was after seven o'clock. She had already gone.'

‘But Jules was here.'

‘Yes. Jules was here.'

‘How was he?'

‘Beside himself with anxiety. Daniel was already on his way to London. Agnes was flitting around him with a dozen medicine bottles and there was no sign of Maurice. Jules told me he was out looking for her.'

‘Out yes, but not looking. Every executive needs a chauffeur, and someone to help carry the trunk. I think it's called “keeping it in the family”. He's Agnes's son, isn't he?'

She nodded. ‘She's been with Jules since the war. He and his first wife took her in after her parents were killed by the Germans. When she married, her husband came to work for the company. When he died the son took his place. They would do anything for him. All of them. All except Carolyn, of course.'

‘When did you learn about the blood test?'

‘That evening. Jules told me.' She looked down at her hands for a moment. ‘You know there's a story told about Jules during the war. That he uncovered an informer in the resistance group he was leading. It was a woman. She'd been responsible for six people falling into Gestapo hands. Jules took her out on a mission with him to blow up an armaments store. He came back alone. Her body was found in the remains of the warehouse.' She paused. ‘Do you think he killed her?'

I wondered how many times she had asked herself that question since the night Carolyn disappeared. ‘I don't know. Why don't you ask him?'

And for the first time she laughed. ‘You're right, I should have done. The trouble is I don't know if he'd have told me the truth.' Finally the tense registered. Had it been there all along and I been too caught up in my own triumph to notice? ‘You took one too many wrong turnings, Hannah. Jules had another heart attack two days ago. A big one. He died an hour later, never having regained consciousness. What did you think all this was for?' She waved an elegant hand over her dress and beyond, to the sea of white tablecloth. ‘The vultures are gathering to pick over the corpse. I came out to get a little fresh air after the reading of the will.'

I have to say my primary emotion was disappointment. I suppose I had been looking forward to seeing his face. I didn't like the idea of him going to his grave believing he had fooled me. She on the other hand didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, despite her immaculate costume I was having just a little trouble adjusting to Mathilde Belmont as the grieving widow.

‘What will you do with the report?' I said after a while.

‘I don't know.' She looked up. ‘I haven't really thought. I've been a married woman for seven years. I've rather lost the use of my brain. No doubt it'll come back. Tell me, how much of this can you prove?'

‘How much of what?' He must have come out through the open French windows, soft footfalls on hard stone. Or maybe he'd had training, listening outside other people's doors. The black suit was just as striking, but then this time I had done some mental preparation. He walked over and stood between us. A dangerous position to be in. Near to, he looked tired, much more the worse for wear than her. When it was clear she was not going to answer his question he turned his attention to me. I kept my eyes on the floor. ‘Hello, Hannah,' he said quietly. ‘I didn't expect to see you again so soon.'

‘No, well I just couldn't keep away.'

He smiled, then went back to his aunt. Funny, I'd never thought of her like that before. It must have been a little incongruous for both of them. ‘They've gone into the library for an apéritif, Mathilde. I think they're expecting you to join them.'