Careless In Red (67 page)

“Which was?”

“To separate them. To keep her from destroying the cottage or attacking him.” She leaned on her shovel and looked north, in the direction of the orchards, as if reliving her initial proposal to Santo Kerne and what that proposal had ultimately brought about. She said, as if she’d only just thought of the matter, “It was not supposed to be such a drama. When it became one, I had to rethink my own involvement with Santo.”

“Did you give him the old heave-ho as well?” Havers asked. “Not wanting big drama in your life.”

“I intended to, but—”

“I doubt he would have liked that much,” Havers said. “What bloke would? Finding himself out of two dolly birds in one fell swoop instead of just one. Being reduced to what…wanking in the shower?…when before he was getting it on all sides. I’ll wager he would’ve fought you on that one. Maybe even told you he could make things a bit tough on you, a bit embarrassing, if you tried to break it off.”

“Indeed,” she said, without a pause in her labours. “Had we got to that point, he might have done and said all of that. As it was, we never got to that point. I did have to rethink my involvement with him, and I decided that we could continue as long as he understood the rules.”

“Which were?”

“More caution and a very clear understanding about the present and the future.”

“Meaning?”

“The obvious. About the present, I wasn’t going to change my ways to suit him. About the future, there wasn’t one. And that was perfectly fine with him. Santo lived largely for the moment.”

“What was second of all?” Bea asked.

Aldara looked at her blankly. “Sorry?”

“You said ‘first of all’ before you launched into your lack of concern over what other people think. I’m wondering what ‘second of all’ consisted of?”

“Ah. It consisted of my other lover,” Aldara said. “As I said earlier, the secrecy of an affair with Santo appealed to me. The affair charged things and I like to have them charged. Actually, I need to have them charged. When they aren’t…” She shrugged. “For me, the fire simply goes out. The brain, as perhaps you’ve discovered for yourself, habituates to anything over time. When the brain habituates to a lover, as the brain will do, the lover becomes less a lover and more…” She seemed to consider an appropriate term and she chose, “More an inconvenience. When that occurs, one disposes of him or one thinks of a way to bring the fire back to the sex.”

“I see. Santo Kerne was doing duty as the fire,” Bea said.

“My other lover was a very good man, and I quite enjoyed him. In all respects. His company in and out of bed was good, and I didn’t wish to lose it. But for me to continue to be with him—to please him sexually and to be pleased by him in turn—I needed a second lover, a secret lover. Santo was that.”

“Do all these lovers of yours know about each other?” Havers asked.

“They would hardly be secret if they did.” Aldara moved from the shovel to the rake. Her boots, Bea saw, were becoming encrusted with manure. They looked expensive and would bear the scent of animal faeces for months. She wondered the other woman didn’t care about that. “Santo knew, naturally. He had to know in order to understand the…I suppose I could call them the rules. But the other…No. It was essential that the other never know.”

“Because he wouldn’t have liked it?”

“Oh that, of course. But more than that, because secrecy is the key to excitement and excitement is the key to fire.”

“I notice you’ve been referring to the other bloke in the past tense. Was not is. Why would that be?”

Here Aldara hesitated, as if she realised what her answer was going to connote to the police.

Bea said, “May we assume the past is just that?”

“Finito,” Havers added in case Aldara didn’t get the meaning.

“He and I are having a cooling-off period,” Aldara said. “I suppose that’s what you’d call it.”

“And this began when?”

“Some weeks ago.”

“Instigated by whom?”

Aldara didn’t reply, which was answer enough.

“We’ll need his name,” Bea said.

The Greek woman appeared quite surprised by the request, which seemed a largely disingenuous response, as far as Bea was concerned. “Why? He didn’t…He doesn’t know…” She hesitated. She was thinking it over, considering all the signs, Bea concluded.

“Yes, darling,” Bea said to her. “Indeed. It’s very likely he does.” She told her about Santo’s conversation with Tammy Penrule, about Tammy’s advice to him about being honest. “As it turns out, Santo apparently wasn’t asking about whether he should tell Madlyn because Madlyn found out on her own. So it stands to reason he was asking about telling someone else. I expect it’s your gentleman. Which, as you can well imagine, puts him rather into the hot seat.”

“No. He wouldn’t have…” But she hesitated once again. The fact that she was tossing possibilities round inside her attractive head was obvious. Her eyes grew cloudy. They seemed to communicate all the ways in which she knew he very well could have.

“I’m no expert on the subject, but I expect most men don’t care much for sharing their women,” Bea pointed out.

“It’s a cave dweller sort of thing,” Havers added. “My hearth, my fire, my woolly mammoth, my woman. Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

Bea added, “So Santo goes to him and tells him the truth: ‘We’re both having Aldara Pappas, mate, and that’s how she wants it. I just thought you were owed an explanation of where she is when she isn’t with you.’”

“Absurd. Why would Santo—?”

“Logically, he probably wouldn’t have wanted another scene like the scene with Madlyn, especially if it involved a man who might beat the hell out of him in a confrontation.”

“And he was beaten by someone,” Havers pointed out, speaking helpfully to Bea. “At least he was well punched out.”

“Indeed he was,” Bea returned to Havers and then went on to Aldara with, “Which, as you can perhaps imagine, does make things look iffy for the other bloke.”

Aldara dismissed this. “No. Santo would have informed me. That was the nature of our relationship. He wouldn’t have spoken to Max—” She stopped herself.

“Max?” Bea looked at Havers. “Did you note that, Sergeant?”

“Got it in concrete,” Havers said.

“And his surname?” Bea asked Aldara pleasantly.

“Santo had no reason to tell anyone anything. He knew if he did, I would end our arrangement.”

“Which, naturally, would have devastated him,” Bea noted sardonically, “as it would have done to any man. Right. But perhaps the whole of Santo was more than the sum of the parts you saw.”

“That would be the dangly bits,” Havers muttered.

Aldara shot her a look.

Bea said, “Perhaps Santo actually felt guilty about what you two were up to. Or perhaps after the scene with Madlyn, he wanted more off you than you were giving and he reckoned this was the way to get it. I don’t know although I’d like to find out and the way to find out is by talking to your other lover: former, cooling, or otherwise. So. We’re at the end point here. You can give us his surname or we can talk to your employees and get it from them because if this other bloke wasn’t your secret lover like Santo was, it stands to reason he didn’t have to come to you under cover of darkness and you didn’t have to slither off to meet him in someone’s wheelie bin. So someone here is going to know who he is, and that someone is likely to give us his surname.”

Aldara thought about this for a moment. From out in the courtyard, a whir of machinery started, suggesting that Rod was having success in his efforts with the mill. Aldara said abruptly, “Max Priestley.”

“Thank you. And where might we find Mr. Priestley?”

“He owns the Watchman, but—”

Bea said to Havers, “The town rag. He’s local, then.”

“—if you think he had anything to do with Santo’s death, you’re wrong. He didn’t, and he wouldn’t.”

“We’ll let him tell us that himself.”

“You can, of course, but you’re being foolish. You’re wasting your time. If Max had known…If Santo had told him despite our agreement…I would have known about it. I would have sensed it. I can tell this sort of thing with men. This…this internal disturbance they have. Any woman can tell if she’s attuned.”

Bea observed her steadily before responding. Interesting, she thought. They’d somehow touched on a tender spot in Aldara: a psychic bruise that the woman herself had not expected to be bothered by. There was a tinge of desperation to her words. Worry about Max? Bea wondered. Worry about herself?

She said to Aldara, “Were you in love with this one? Unexpected for you, I wager.”

“I didn’t say—”

“And you do think Santo told him, don’t you? Because…I believe Santo informed you he was going to tell him. Which itself suggests…?”

“That I did something to stop Santo before he could? Don’t be absurd. I didn’t. And Max didn’t harm him. Neither did anyone I know.”

“Of course. Take that down, Sergeant. No one she knows and all the relevant et ceteras you can manage to wring from that.”

Havers nodded. “Got them in bronze this time.”

Bea said to Aldara, “So now that we’re down to it, let me ask you this. Who’s next on the pitch?”

“What?”

“The excitement-and-secrecy-provoking pitch. If you were ‘cooling off ’ with Max but still bonking Santo, you needed someone else, yes? Or you’d have had only one—only Santo—and that wouldn’t do. So who else have you got, when did he climb onboard, and can we assume that he, too, was supposed to know nothing about Santo?”

Aldara drove her shovel into the earth. She did it easily, without anger or dismay. She said, “I believe this conversation is at an end, Inspector Hannaford.”

“Ah. So you did get someone onboard prior to Santo’s death. Someone closer to your age, I’ll wager. You seem the sort who learns quickly, and I expect Santo and Madlyn gave you a very good lesson about what it means to take up with a teenager, no matter how good he is in bed.”

“What you ‘expect’ does not interest me,” Aldara said.

“Right,” Bea said, “as it doesn’t rob you of a single eyelash.” She said to Havers, “I think we have what we need, Sergeant,” and then to Aldara, “save for your fingerprints, madam. And someone will stop by today to rob you of those.”

THEY GOT CAUGHT BEHIND A LUMBERING TOUR COACH, WHICH made their trip from the cider farm back to Casvelyn longer than Bea had expected it would be. At another time, she not only would have been impatient, leaning on the horn in an aggressive display of bad manners, she also likely would have been foolhardy: Little prompting would have urged her to make the attempt to overtake the coach on the narrow lane. As it was, the delay gave her time to think and what she thought about was the unconventional lifestyle of the woman they’d just interviewed. She did more than wonder how that lifestyle related to the case in hand, however. She marveled at it altogether. She also discovered she wasn’t alone in her marveling. DS Havers brought the subject up.

“She’s a piece of work,” Havers said. “I’ll give her that.” The sergeant, Bea saw, was itching for a cigarette after their talk with Aldara Pappas. She’d taken her packet of Players from her shoulder bag and she’d been rolling a fag between her thumb and her fingers as if hoping to absorb the nicotine epidermally. She seemed to know better than to light it, though.

“I rather admire her,” Bea admitted. “Truth to tell? I’d bloody love to be like that.”

“Would you? You’re a deep one, Guv. Got the thing for an eighteen-year-old you’re keeping hidden?”

“It’s the whole bonding issue,” Bea replied. “It’s how she’s managed to avoid it.” She frowned at the coach ahead of them, at the black belch of its exhaust emission. She braked to put some distance between her Land Rover and the other vehicle. “She doesn’t seem to be bothered by bonding. She doesn’t seem to bond at all.”

“To her lovers, you mean?”

“Isn’t that the very devil of being a woman? You attach yourself to a man, you form what you think is a bond with him, and then…wham. He does something to show you that, despite the longings, stirrings, and absurdly romantic beliefs of your sweet little faithful heart, he isn’t the least bonded to you.”

“Personal experience?” Havers asked shrewdly, and Bea felt the other woman studying her.

“Of a sort,” Bea said.

“What sort would that be?”

“The sort that ends in divorce when an unplanned pregnancy disrupts one’s husband’s life plans. Although I’ve always found that oxymoronic.”

“What? Unplanned pregnancy?”

“No. Life plans. What about you, Sergeant?”

“I stay away from it all. Unplanned pregnancies, life plans, bonding. The whole flipping package. The more I see, the more I think a woman’s better off having a deep and loving relationship with a vibrator. And possibly a cat as well, but only possibly. It’s always nice to have something living to come home to, although an aspidistra would probably do in a pinch.”

“There’s wisdom in that,” Bea acknowledged. “It certainly keeps one from the entire male-female dance of misunderstanding and destruction, doesn’t it. But I do think it all comes down to bonding in the end: this problem we seem to have with men. Women bond, and men don’t. It’s to do with biology, and we’d probably all be better off if we could simply cope with living in herds or prides or whatever: one male of the species sniffing up a dozen females with the females accepting this as the course of life.”

“They reproduce, while he…what?…fetches home the dead whatever for breakfast?”

“They’re a sisterhood. He’s window dressing. He services them but they bond to each other.”

“It’s a thought,” Havers said.

“Isn’t it just.” The tour coach signaled to turn, which finally freed the road ahead. Bea increased her speed. “Well, Aldara seems to have taken care of the man-woman problem. No bonding for that girl. And just in case bonding seems likely, let’s bring in another man. Maybe three or four.”

“The herd in reverse.”

“You’ve got to admire her.”

They dwelt on this silently for the rest of the trip, which took them to Princes Street and the offices of the Watchman. There, they held a brief conversation with a receptionist cum secretary called Janna, who said of Bea’s hair, “Brilliant! That’s just the colour my old gran says she wants. What’s it called?” which didn’t endear her much to the DI. On the other hand, the young woman happily revealed that Max Priestley was at that moment on St. Mevan Down with someone called Lily, and if they wanted to speak to him, a brief walk “round the corner and up the hill” would take them to him.