Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (17 page)

Albert leaned over to say something to Sarah, but just then his eye caught a movement in the doorway. No sooner had Fear left his listening post than he had been replaced by a young constable, who stood fidgeting there uncertainly, trying and failing to become invisible. Clearly he had his marching orders: Keep an eye on this lot.

St. Just found George, as he slouched into the conservatory in his male-model way, no more inspiring than Sergeant Fear had done. As much as he tried to quell the natural tendency, St. Just’s own experience was that fleeting first impressions—positive or negative—were often perfectly correct. While outwardly George was the image of the hip young man about town beloved of sports car manufacturers, St. Just was more strongly reminded of the lads he’d had to pull in for questioning when he first joined the force. That haunted look around the eyes meant drugs, in those cases, nearly always. Drugs in this case, also?

He motioned George to the cheetah-patterned chair opposite and quickly ran through the preliminaries—name, address, occupation. The beginning of an investigation seldom allowed time for in-depth questioning, although St. Just had a feeling George would have a lot more to contribute as the inquiry progressed. For the moment, St. Just was simply flying without instruments, using visual cues as his guide. Frequently, it was not what people told him that was of value—so often people took forever to get to the kernel of what they knew—but how they behaved during the telling. At times, he found just asking questions to which he knew the answers perfectly well to be a useful technique.

“Now, Mr. Beauclerk-Fisk: What was your relationship with your brother?”

“Quite civil,” George replied evenly. “Of course, we saw little of each other, which helped.”

“No sibling rivalry to speak of?”

“Not beyond the usual.” George began to study his manicure with riveted interest.

“Ruthven was the eldest?”

“Yes. I was second eldest, followed by Albert and Sarah. We came along at quite regular intervals; in fact, we all have nearly the same birthday, in April. We concluded from this that the mating season for my father was every August, when my parents took their annual holiday in Torquay. They never seemed to get along the rest of the year. These were all in the line of miracle births, Inspector.”

“Your parents are divorced, I take it?”

“Yes,” George said flatly.

“I see. Now, about your movements last night …”

“You would have to ask Natasha. My, er, fiancée. I would have said my movements were quite spectacular—even better than usual.”

It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in.

“I take it from that you claim to have been in bed. Together.”

“You take it correctly. And, not asleep, either. Well, at least, not until the small hours.” He smiled complacently, his pale eyes unfathomable, ice on a winter lake.

Sergeant Fear wrote down George’s alibi, putting a little star by it, meaning “Check out this statement.” He had developed his own five-star system over the years, much like a travel guide or a restaurant critic. One star meant: Probably True, for Sergeant Fear trusted no one completely. Five stars meant: Certainly a Lie. After some hesitation, he gave George three stars—somewhat the benefit of the doubt, for Fear, who struggled to be fair with suspects, did not like George. He hadn’t cared for the comment about the mating season; the delivery had shown disrespect, in his view. Moreover, Sergeant Fear, who wore his blue collar on—well, on his neck, rather than his sleeve—could see that George was the kind of blue blood born to be Fear’s natural enemy.

Sarah sat down in a swirl of billowing fabric, looking like an unsorted pile of hemp atop the cheetah chair. Her large eyes in her pretty, round face regarded St. Just anxiously.

“Your brother George tells me you are all quite close in age,” said the detective.

“Yes. All of us are Taureans, too. My father, as well. That didn’t half cause some friction among the five of us.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Taurus,” she explained, taken aback by his ignorance. “The Bull. Stubborn, you know. Oh, our external personalities are quite different, but at basic core we are similar. Very. I, Inspector, write cookbooks. If you don’t think that requires a stubborn, bulldog nature … Just because the cake falls doesn’t mean you give up. No, it’s try, try again. Now, Capricorns, on the other hand—”

St. Just felt it was time to divert the astrology lecture into more useful channels.

“And your brother, Ruthven? Stubborn, would you say?”

“Ha! I would indeed. But, again, our personalities revealed themselves in different ways, shaded by our experiences.” She began worrying at one of the folds of her tent-like garment as she talked. “Ruthven as the eldest was the hyper-achiever—the responsible one, if you like. Made lists, set goals, achieved them—quite, quite driven. The rest of us—George and Albert and I—well, no. Not to that degree. No.”

“You say he was responsible. He looked after all of you?”

“He looked after himself.”

There seemed to be no rancor behind her words. She was simply stating a fact. Quietly, Sergeant Fear gave her comment one star.

“But, who would want to kill Ruthven?” she said. Then, realizing that the answer to her question, as with Lillian, might be, “Everyone,” she added, “I mean,
really
kill him?”

“Not just think about killing him, you mean?”

“I suppose that is what I do mean. He was horrid, my brother. Anyone who ever worked for him or with him, I suppose, would wish him ill. But to actually—oh, you must know what I mean! It’s … it’s horrible, what’s happened.”

St. Just nodded. As conversant as he was with murder and all the motives for murder, it was never less than horrible. Seeing her agitation, he changed his approach slightly.

“Were you surprised at George’s news?”

“About the baby, you mean? I was gobsmacked, as Watters would say. We all were.”

“A baby on the way is not that rare an event, in the grand scheme of things, though, is it?”

“It is if you knew George’s track record. I think his longest relationship lasted three months. I doubt Natasha’s been around that long, in fact. And …”

“And?”

“It’s hard to put into words, but she is entirely the wrong type for George. I mean, the right type, but not the type he’d ever had the sense to become involved with before. Completely different from his usual run of girl. Not a girl, for a start, but a young woman. Bright, well-educated. A classy brunette rather than a trashy blonde. No, not at all George’s usual sort.”

“I see,” said St. Just. “Perhaps he’s just maturing, your brother.”

“I doubt it.”

As the point didn’t seem worth debating, St. Just changed tack again. “Now, your mother left Sir Adrian when all of you were quite small, I gather.”

“Yes.” Her mouth closed shut like a gate on the word. No need to ask how she felt about that.

“Must have been hard on you,” St. Just said mildly. “On all of you.”

“I don’t suppose we noticed, really. I was two.”

“Did she never explain why she left?”

“You’d have to ask her yourself.”

St. Just said nothing. Fear shifted restlessly, feeling the entire line of conversation was irrelevant. He never understood St. Just’s patience in drawing out witnesses, although he had to admit it paid dividends more often than not.

St. Just continued to wait, apparently absorbed in watching a spider knit her web across a nearby jade plant. Sarah struck him as the anxiously polite type of woman who would rush to fill a void of silence. He hadn’t long to wait.

“I understood her leaving,” Sarah said then, softly. “If I’d been old enough to walk I would have been right behind her. But I didn’t understand her leaving
all
of us. She never gave an explanation for that that made sense to me. Maybe you can get it out of her. I’d love to know.”

St. Just imagined this was a conversation she had held inside her own head many times, for having started on it, it seemed now she couldn’t resist the opportunity to run it by an audience, brought here especially for the occasion by her brother’s murder.

“Ruthven was her favorite—he kept in touch with her more than the rest of us. Because he was the eldest, I suppose. I always heard that the baby of the family was supposed to be the favorite, the spoiled one. That’s what all the experts say.”

How old was she? Forty-two? Older? Far too old to be thinking of herself as the baby, in any event. St. Just felt irritation rising, but in the next moment, a rush of compassion, remembering the many troubled, abandoned children he’d come across in his years on the force. He didn’t imagine that money filled the void, any more than reaching adulthood automatically effected a cure for that unique brand of loneliness. Part of the problem seemed to be that if at too young an age you lost the voice that taught right from wrong, danger from safety, you never learned to internalize the necessary restrictions.

“Last night—” he began.

“I went to my bedroom straight after that ghastly dinner,” she said quickly. “I came down after a bit to get a book out of the library. But I heard nothing, saw nothing. All night.”

“I see,” said St. Just. “Did you ever wish him dead, your brother— the favorite?”

“‘If wishes were horses,’ Inspector?” She studied her hands. “Honestly, no. No, I don’t think I ever did.”

By bad chance or design, St. Just’s interview with Natasha Wellings followed hard on that with Sarah. The contrast between the two women was painful. St. Just felt he had never seen any human being so extraordinarily flawless. Just managing to keep from staring, seeking out the flaw—there must be one, he reasoned—he began to ask about her background.

“Oh, the usual,” she shrugged, pushing a shiny lock of hair back into line. “I worked as a chalet girl in Switzerland and later as a nanny. Hardly career-builders, so once I caught on to the fact I needed a real job, I returned to England and started a course in interior architecture. Turned out to be the thing I most enjoyed, much to my surprise. I met George when he was looking around for someone to redesign his gallery.”

“I had no idea. Isn’t the whole point of galleries that they just have walls on which to hang paintings?”

“Oh, my, you are behind the times, Inspector. No, the whole idea is to create an ‘experience’ for the viewer, beyond just looking at things hanging on walls. There’s a science to it, as well as a lot of smoke and mirrors. You’d be amazed.”

“I imagine I would. Now, you came down here this weekend with George. How did that come about?”

“I called him, just to chat. He mentioned this … situation … with his father. He seemed to feel he would need moral support. I gather I was also brought along to prove that little Georgie was becoming a grown-up with responsibilities, at last. I was curious to meet the famous author, Sir Adrian. So naturally I said I’d come along. Rather wish I hadn’t, now, of course. I say, are we going to be held here long? George and I were planning to leave Monday.”

“I’d change my plans if I were you.”

“Would you really?”

“Tell me a bit about what’s gone on in this house since you arrived.”

“Until now, nothing. A bit of argy-bargy last night at dinner— George had warned me the family was quarrelsome but I had no idea. Of course, they all had nearly as much to drink as Albert, which didn’t help. I couldn’t get away fast enough and went upstairs as soon as I could.”

“With George?”

“He came up about an hour later.”

“And you were together all night?”

“As far as I know, yes. Excepting the parts where I was asleep, of course.”

“Hear or see anything unusual?”

“Not a thing. Sorry. Wait … wait—I’d nearly forgotten. Ruthven made a telephone call. Or someone rang him. I overheard part of it, on my way toward the stairs—there’s a phone in the hall there. He didn’t sound happy, whoever it was.”

“Did you overhear a name?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. An unusual name … Manda. I don’t recall the exact words, but it was clear he was trying to—extricate himself from something unpleasant. When he saw me walking toward him, he rang off.”