Embrace Me (14 page)

‘You’ve always been the most generous of us, Angelica.’ After kissing her affectionately on the cheek, Marguerite turned to her guests and said, ‘Harry, ever since Olivia vanished from our lives and you and your team arrived in Sefton Under Edge, things around us have been spinning round out of control. The tragic turn of events in Olivia’s life, and you and your team prying into ours, questioning our lifestyle, have made us understand that something fundamental is changing for us. I invited you and
your colleagues here to dinner because, instead of all floundering around, I thought we should put our mutual concern for Olivia out in the open. Let’s all play the truth game rather than a guessing game that keeps going off at tangents. That’s no help to you or to us, and certainly does an injustice to Olivia. So let’s examine every detail of your murder case and finally put it to rest.’

Harry’s first reaction to Marguerite’s taking control of an ongoing case was of anger. The arrogance of Marguerite Chen! The sheer audacity of the woman and her suggestion. His second reaction was to realise what a formidable woman Marguerite was with her determination, her intelligence, those fine-boned and sensuous good looks. The dramatic aura she presented with that mass of silken black hair, provocative disposition and fiery nature, demanded she be a part of the intriguing mystery surrounding Lady Olivia Cinders.

Jenny Sullivan was not so forbearing. Angrily she got to her feet and declared: ‘Is everything a game to you, Miss Chen? The sick and brutal murder of a man, an escaped murderess – just a game! Do you turn everything into something to play with so you don’t have to face the unpalatable reality of it? You of all people, so admired, so intelligent when standing on your soapbox. Stop playing with this tragedy as if it is a game. It was a cruel, sick, depraved murder. Don’t you read the newspapers?’

Harry went to Jenny and touched her arm. ‘Come over here and sit with me. You too, Joe. I think it appropriate that we do as our hostess suggests and play her truth game.’

‘Detective Constable Sullivan, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. But I do believe that life unto death is a game one must play and win. Of
course
I play with life and do what I must to win. You’re young and take things and situations too seriously. One can make life a game and achieve wonders. Has no one ever told you that? Shame on you, Harry.’

The little contretemps between Jenny and Marguerite had made an impression on Joe. He felt as if someone had slapped his face. Everything had changed and he was aware as he had never been before. He saw exactly what Marguerite Chen meant. How incredibly easy life, work, love, were when you played them
like a game, and always to win. He was astounded that he had never realised before that that was what he most admired in his superior, Harry Graves-Jones. The vintage car, the Savile Row suits, the truly unorthodox way in which he worked … all of it a game that Harry always won. He never resorted to self-indulgent seriousness to feed his ego. He did not feed his own vanity by seeing his role as that of Nemesis. He was careful, methodical, creative in his thinking. Knew how to play with his work – and win.

James gazed around the room to catch the eye of those he loved. Only Olivia was missing. He had the greatest admiration for Marguerite. In bed he teased her as, ‘My sexual reprobate, my feminist goddess of the land of erotica.’ Sex with her was thrilling and imaginative, but never more so as when they were joined by Olivia or September and Angelica. These people genuinely loved each other unconditionally. For years James and his sisters had made love to each other. Naked, they would lie down together, kissing and fondling each other’s young flesh. It was affection, passion for a loved one of the highest order, but they never had intercourse. That seemed an unnatural act to them whereas kissing and amorousness for each other’s flesh, heart and soul were not.

He studied Marguerite. Never had he seen her so animated, so beautiful. Her intelligence was shining like a star this evening. She looked every inch the special lady that she was but there was a new softness to her. She was in love with Neville as she had never been in love with James. Love between them had petered out years before though the sex had lingered on. No longer. Looking at her now he saw that even the sex had run its course.

James’s eyes now sought out Harry. He liked Harry Graves-Jones but was concerned to find him in charge of the investigation. If anyone were to find Olivia it would be this man. James wondered, as he had a hundred times since Olivia had run away, if she was still alive. The nightmare to end all nightmares for James would be her death. In the last few days he had come to terms with never seeing her again. So long as she was alive and making a new life for herself somewhere, anywhere, that would have to be enough for him.

He rose from his chair and, taking the cognac bottle from the table, walked among his friends, serving them generously. Marguerite watched him. He had been so very good to her. For a few months they had loved each other deeply and thought they could make it work forever. She knew now they would always be friends. Her ties to the Buchanans and Olivia were indissoluble. She placed an arm around Neville. He understood the erotic attachment the group felt for one another. Not only had he accepted it but appreciated the freedom of their sexual lives and joined them. The group embodied love and devotion on a grand scale, ignoring all social and sexual rules. They might try to find another way to live but he had no doubt they could never fully abandon this way of life, their ideals. They had lived with each other too long to be parted. That was why Olivia’s disappearance, vanishing as if in mid-air from their lives, was such a trauma to them all.

Marguerite turned to Harry and said, ‘In my truth game there are no restrictions on what one can ask, but the answer must always be the truth. Are you ready, Harry?’

‘Shall I kick off?’ enquired Joe.

‘Excuse me, but may I see you alone for a moment, sir?’ Jenny intervened.

Once alone in the kitchen with Harry she came straight to the point. ‘I’m confused, sir. This is highly unorthodox. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when these people are obviously obstructing justice.’

‘You don’t like them, do you?’

‘No, I certainly don’t!’

‘Then, for Christ’s sake, stop whingeing and go for them! That’s what I intend to do, and
I
like them,’ retorted Harry.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I should have worked that out for myself.’

Harry started for the door to the dining-room. ‘Yes, you should have.’

Chapter 14

Ever since the tabloids had announced that Olivia had murdered the prince and vanished without trace, Marguerite had been trying to put the pieces of the mystery together. Since the detectives had arrived in Sefton Under Edge and interviewed everyone in the village and the Park, she had not been able to put Olivia out of her mind. She had taken notes, gone over what evidence she could gather, and felt that if she could reach a solution she might help allay the anxiety that she and Olivia’s closest friends were experiencing. The guilt each of them felt for not having the chance to help her in this, the worst time of her life, weighed heavily on them all. The people closest to Olivia were now in her drawing-room and as Marguerite scanned it she knew that she had done the right thing by instigating this evening.

The detectives returned and took their seats. Marguerite began, ‘Detective Constable Sixsmith, you had a question?’

‘Many questions, Miss Chen. But let me begin by asking you if you aided Lady Olivia’s escape from justice?’

‘No, I did not,’ she replied.

Joe continued around the room with the same question to every person there except Jenny and Harry. Every answer was the same as Marguerite’s.

‘I have a question,’ James put in. ‘Harry, how can you be so sure Olivia was responsible for the prince’s death? How can you possibly know what happened that evening? Surely all you really know is that she was seen running away from the house, and some prurient details about the sexual games they enjoyed playing together. Olivia has become fodder for the gutter press,
is being tried by them. They’re no better than a kangaroo court.’

Harry recognised the passion in his voice. He was reminded that James, September, Angelica, Marguerite, Miss Plumm, these people who had known Olivia for most of her life, had loved her beyond reason because she lived at the very top of her life, as if every day might be her last. She had beauty and grace, a love of life, a generous, one might even say, opulent heart. She had passion and a love for the erotic that knew no bounds. She dazzled her lovers and her friends with her boundless energy and ability to live high, wide and handsome. How many times had they also seen the dark side of her and never acknowledged it as such?

‘I have to agree with you, James, about the press. Marguerite, I am indebted to you for bringing us all together in this way. But if we do manage to put the pieces together, are you all sure you will like the picture we might make?’

‘We must know the truth. Whatever it is, we’ll have to accept it but I’m sure that not one of us in this room will abandon her. We will remain loyal to Olivia. We are, after all, the closest thing to a real family that she has,’ September told him.

‘Will you all give your word that you will not aid and abet her? I don’t think so,’ said Jenny bitterly.

The group remained silent. Harry could not be angry with Jenny. It was a good question though asked too soon. ‘That’s an interesting point. I would like you all to consider it but not to answer just yet. Take your time,’ he instructed them.

Jenny felt angry and frustrated when Harry gave the group time to work out their answers. The frustration lingered on but her anger with Harry was short-lived. The moment she’d opened her mouth she had realised she was jumping too far ahead of events but been unable to stop. She’d wanted to catch them off guard, point up their questionable morals. She was a good enough detective to see that they were vulnerable and took some delight in seeing the group squirm now. At least she had made them uncomfortable, having to work out how to be loyal and an informer at the same time.

Marguerite took the floor again when she proposed, ‘Let’s begin at the beginning, the night of the so-called murder.’

‘Not “so-called”, just plain murder, Miss Chen,’ Jenny insisted.

‘Then why don’t you tell me what you saw when you arrived at the scene of the crime that night?’ asked Marguerite.

Jenny flushed pink and remained silent.

‘Oh, I see, you did not visit the crime scene that evening,’ deduced Marguerite.

‘Talk about kangaroo courts! Do sit down, Marguerite,’ said Neville. ‘Were you and Sixsmith there, Harry? And is it necessary for us to hear what happened that evening?’

‘Yes. Sixsmith and I were there less than an hour after the crime had been committed. And, yes, I think you should all know the truth about that evening, not what the tabloids are telling you, nor what you want to believe because you are all intimately involved with Olivia.

‘Marguerite, the two girls working in the kitchen … may I suggest you send them home. I want nothing said in this room overheard and becoming village gossip. We have kept the journalists at bay so far and I hope, for your sake, I can continue to lay other trails for them to follow and leave you all in peace. The last thing we need is a leak from this village.’

‘I see your point,’ said Marguerite, leaving the room.

While she was gone the men lit cigars and the women talked among themselves. Banal, stultifyingly boring chat about the village fête that not one of them would ever indulge in under other circumstances. The relief on their faces when Marguerite returned was obvious.

‘They’re gone, happy as sandboys to be off without doing all the chores.’

Harry began, ‘We will start with the evening of the murder. The first thing I heard was that a woman was being chased through the streets of Mayfair by a man claiming to be the murder victim’s brother. He identified the woman as Lady Olivia Cinders and kept shouting her name and that she had murdered his brother. A neighbour saw Olivia as she shot out of the front door of the prince’s house. The neighbour identified the woman on the run as Lady Olivia. Several people joined in the chase but lost her.

‘Once I’d had a call to go to the scene of the murder and had heard about the chase, I ordered every man available to comb the streets. If she were still on foot, she could not escape the ring we had around her, or so I believed. Sullivan was not at the scene of the crime because she was organising the hunt. We had Lady Olivia trapped, we thought.’

‘She must have been frightened out of her wits,’ said Angelica.

‘Or drugged out of her head
and
frightened out of her wits, otherwise she would never have run,’ offered September.

‘That’s an assumption and we’re dealing with fact and truth here tonight,’ corrected Joe Sixsmith.

‘I find this all very painful. It’s so out of character for Olivia to lose control of her life by committing such a deed and running away. It had to be a moment of insanity,’ observed Miss Plumm.

‘But is it true that her behaviour that evening
was
out of character? What if it were not? What if she had exercised the dark side of her nature before, possibly not in murder but in other more subtle ways which she took great pains to cover up so as not to shock you? You were after all family of a sort and one does not want to alienate those one loves or lose those who love you beyond reason. Just a hint of her naughtiness to make you all aware what she was capable of and because she was not one to hide? Up front honesty was all part of her charm. She was incredibly honest with you all and with herself, gave you hints as to who she was and what she was capable of. But you forgave her everything and never questioned that streak of blackness she carried in her soul.’

The silence in the room was deafening. It fell to Jenny to break it. Her superior was going hard on the group. She realised Harry intended the people in this room to validate his theory.

‘You wanted this truth game so let’s play it out. Is the Chief Inspector correct? Put any feelings of guilt aside and answer truthfully,’ Jenny told them.

Marguerite spoke up. ‘I think that is a pretty good assessment. I’ll answer for all of us unless anyone thinks it incorrect. If so, speak up.’

No one said a word. ‘Well, at last we all accept that Lady
Olivia was capable of murder,’ said Harry, looking at September who had become anxious and pale and was twisting a handkerchief in her hands.

‘I have a question,’ said Neville. ‘Did you find any tangible evidence at the scene of the crime that Olivia had in fact been there? I know she was seen running from the house but that doesn’t put her in the prince’s bedroom?’

‘These are the facts. By the time Sixsmith and I arrived at the house, there were dozens of uniforms and plain clothes around it seeing that nothing was disturbed. The prince’s servants were assembled in the entrance hall, hysterical with grief. His brother was in the library on the telephone to the family. He put the phone down as soon as he saw us and made outrageous demands about our turning Lady Olivia over to him so she could be tried for murder in his country’s courts.

‘I walked from the library, telling him to calm down. I said I would return to talk with him after I had viewed the bedroom and his brother’s body. He was still ranting and raving against Lady Olivia in French, English and Arabic as I closed the library door. He called her a whore, a killer, claimed she was common as dirt and that she had cast a spell on his brother. He was crazed with grief. The house was very beautiful, serenely so, in marked contrast to the ugliness of murder and mayhem upstairs.

‘Two policemen were guarding the door to the bedroom. The officers stepped aside. On entering the room, which comprised the entire second floor, I was overwhelmed by an acrid scent masked by perfume. Patchouli. It was sickeningly sweet. It was an eerie scene, that magnificent room, and the gory, pitiful spectacle of a man with a peach-coloured chiffon scarf trailing from his mouth, tied to the headboard of his bed by wrists that had been slashed. Blood had pooled on the bed to either side of him.’

‘The papers said a sex game gone wrong?’ said Miss Plumm.

‘The papers were wrong. I was wrong. My first impression was that this had been an accidental death when a sex game had gone wrong. Snuff sex! Sex to the death, that was what Lady Olivia wanted us to believe. But it was premeditated murder. She planned it brilliantly and her escape was even more clever and
original. She tossed out one red herring after another for us to follow while she got away.’

‘Those are assumptions, not facts,’ put in Marguerite who looked as shocked as the rest of the group.

‘I’m afraid not. Those are facts based on evidence I was unable to pull together until this afternoon. Please believe me when I tell you I would rather it had been accidental death. I had become smitten with Lady Olivia, learned to admire her as you do. But having come to Sefton Under Edge and learned all about her from the interviews we conducted here, a picture emerged that I had not expected. I believe she might never have committed murder if she had broken up with the prince. But I digress. Back to the night of the murder and the bedroom. Sixsmith, you take it from here: forensics report.’

Joe Sixsmith paced the floor as he spoke. ‘Lady Olivia and the prince had had intercourse several times during the afternoon and evening. There was evidence to show the prince had been tied up a while before his wrists were slashed. He was high as a kite on cocaine and alcohol.

‘We know the time Lady Olivia was discovered by the prince’s brother and fled the house. An autopsy showed the prince was already dead then. Which means that the time between Lady Olivia’s inflicting those wounds on him and fleeing the house was considerable. We know that she slit his wrists because she left the knife she’d used on the bed. It had no fingerprints on it but hers.

‘She stuffed her scarf in his mouth, sat there and watched him die. Now why would she take pleasure in watching his life ebb away? Did she reap a sexual thrill from it? Did he, expecting Lady Olivia to save him in the nick of time? Was she as drugged as he was? I doubt that somehow? Lady Olivia gave up the idyllic life she had going for her, for the pleasure of seeing him die. It took hours for his life to ebb away. She could have left before the end came but she didn’t. She had to see him dead. What possessed her to kill him? If there were mitigating circumstances, we should know about them. That might be to her advantage.’

Harry walked around the room, examining the faces of those assembled. His heart went out to September. He was causing her
so much pain that when their eyes met she had to look away. Angelica was white with distress. James had his head bowed and the palms of his hands covering his face. Marguerite, chin high, was given away by the deadness in her eyes, the tears she was struggling to hold back.

‘How were you able to deduce it was a premeditated killing, Harry?’ she asked.

‘I had not the slightest suspicion that it had been a premeditated act of violence until I interviewed her friends in this place she loved so much. I came to know her through the people who loved her and would remain loyal to her, no matter what. Finally I could step into her skin and work out why she never went to them for help. I had come to believe that every one of you who told me that you had not seen or heard from her was telling the truth. The question then arose: why wouldn’t Lady Olivia go to her friends for help?’

Marguerite jumped up from her chair. ‘Because she didn’t need any! She had it all worked out: the killing, the sex game gone wrong, the escape!’

‘Very good, Marguerite.’

‘But something unexpected happened. The prince’s brother walked in on the scene. She’d never expected to be caught in the house. But it was only a small hitch in her plans. She was so organised she had only to get out of Mayfair as quickly as possible,’ Marguerite deduced.

‘That seems to me to be right,’ said Jenny, grudgingly.

‘James, why would Lady Olivia go to such lengths to kill the prince? What would have driven her to murder him in such a bizarre fashion and enjoy his pain and suffering? She had to know that she would be the obvious suspect, that she would have to go on the run for the remainder of her life, change her identity, if she hoped to escape being convicted?’ asked Harry.

‘I can’t answer that, I simply don’t know. She had a love-hate relationship with the prince. He was possessive and jealous and pushed his drugging and sexual proclivities over the edge of sanity or pleasure. He dragged Olivia into that world too and brought out in her passions she could not resist exploiting to the point of no return. I don’t just mean sexually. He had a power
over her that she would both enjoy and resist. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to bring him pleasure. But he was the same with her,’ said James.