Put on by Cunning (17 page)

In the morning, when he tried her number again, she told him her ex-husband was in London. He had been in London for two months, researching for a television series about American girls who had married into the English aristocracy. Wexford realized he would just have to trace Natalie on what he had. They drove off at lunchtime and stopped for the night at a motel in Santa Maria. it was on the tip of Wexford’s tongue to grumble to Dora that there was nothing to do in Santa Maria, miles from the coast and with Route 101 passing through it. But then it occurred to him that a visitor might say exactly that about Kingsmarkham. Perhaps there was only ever something obvious to do in the centre of cities or by the sea. Elsewhere there was ample to do if you lived there and nothing if you didn’t. He would have occupation soon enough and then his guilt about Dora would come back.

Over dinner he confided his theory to her.

‘If you look at the facts you’ll see that there was a distinct change of personality in 1976. The woman who went away with Ilbert had a different character from the woman who came back to Los Angeles. Think about it for a minute. Camargue’s daughter had led a very sheltered, cared-for sort of life, she’s never been out in the world on her own. First there was a secure home with her parents, then elopement with and marriage to Arno, and when Arno died, Ilbert. She was always under the protection of some man. But what of the woman who appears
after
the summer of ’76? She lets off rooms in her house to bring in an income. She doesn’t form long steady relationships but has casual love affairs – with the Swiss Fassbender, with the Englishman who was deported, with Zoffany. She can’t sell the house Ilbert bought for her so she lets it out and comes to England. Not to creep under her father’s wing as Natalie Camargue might have done, but to shift for herself in a place of her own.’

‘But surely it was a terrible risk to go to Natalie’s own house and live there as Natalie? The neighbours would have known at once, and then there’d be her friends . . .’

‘Good fences make good neighbours,’ said Wexford. ‘There’s a lot of space between those houses, it’s a shifting population, and if my idea is right Natalie Camargue was a shy, reserved sort of woman. Her neighbours never saw much of her. As to friends – if a friend of Natalie’s phoned she had only to say Natalie was still away. If a friend comes to the house she has only to say that she herself is a friend who happens to be staying there for the time being. Mrs Ilbert says Ilbert never saw her after she came back. Now if the real Natalie came back it’s almost impossible Ilbert never saw her. Never saw alone with her maybe, never touched her, but never saw her? No, it was the impostor who fobbed him off every time he called with excuses, with apologies, and at last with direct refusals, allegedly on the part of the real Natalie, ever to see him again.’

‘But, Reg, how could the impostor know so much about the real Natalie’s past?’

He took her up quickly. ‘You spent most of last evening talking to Mrs Lewis. How much do you know about her from, say, two hours’ conversation?’

Dora giggled. ‘Well, she lives in a flat, not a house. She’s a widow. She’s got two sons and a daughter. One of the sons is a realtor, I don’t know what that is.’

‘Estate agent.’

‘Estate agent, and the other’s a vet. Her daughter’s called Janette and she’s married to a doctor and they’ve got twin girls and they live in a place called Bismarck. Mrs Lewis has got a four-wheel drive Chevrolet for the mountain roads and a holiday house, a log cabin, in the Rockies and . . .’

‘Enough! You found all that out in two hours and you’re saying the new Natalie couldn’t have formed a complete dossier of the old Natalie in– what? Five or six weeks? And when she came to England she had a second mentor in Mary Woodhouse.’

‘All right, perhaps she could have.’ Dora hesitated. He had had a feeling for some hours that she wanted to impart – or even break – something to him. ‘Darling,’ she said suddenly, ‘You won’t mind, will you? I told Rex and Nonie we’d be staying at the Redwood Hotel in Carmel and it so happens, I mean, it’s a complete coincidence, that they’ll be staying with Nonie’s daughter in Monterey at the same time. If we had lunch with them once or twice – or I did – well, you won’t mind, will you?’

‘I think it’s a wonderful idea.’

‘Only you didn’t used to like Rex, and I can’t honestly say he’s changed.’

‘It’s such a stupid name,’Wexford said unreasonably. ‘Stupid for a man, I mean. It’s all right for a dog.’

Dora couldn’t help laughing. ‘Oh, come. It only just misses being the same as yours.’

‘A miss is as good as a mile. What d’you think of my theory then?’

‘Well – what became of the old Natalie?’

‘I think it’s probable she murdered her.’

The road came back to the sea again after San Luis Obispo. It was like Cornwall, Wexford thought, the Cornish coast gigantically magnified both in size and in extent. Each time you came to a bend in the road another bay opened before you, vaster, grander, more majestically beautiful than the last. At San Simeon Dora wanted to see Hearst Castle, so Wexford drove her up there and left her to take the guided tour. He went down on the beach where shade was provided by eucalyptus trees. Low down over the water he saw a pelican in ponderous yet graceful flight. The sun shone with an arrogant, assured permanence, fitting for the finest climate on earth.

There wasn’t much to San Simeon, a car park, a restaurant, a few houses. And if Mrs Lewis was to be believed, the population would be even sparser as he drove north. The Hearst Castle tour lasted a long time and they made no more progress that day, but as they set off next morning Wexford began to feel something like dismay. It was true that if you were used to living in densely peopled areas you might find the coast here sparsely populated, but it wasn’t by any means
un
populated. Little clusters of houses – you could hardly call them villages – with a motel or two, a store, a petrol station, a restaurant, occurred more often then he had been led to believe. And when they came to Big Sur and the road wandered inland through the redwood forest, there were habitations and places to stay almost in plenty.

They reached the Redwood Hotel at about eight that night. Simply driving through Carmel had been enough to lower Wexford’s spirits. It looked a lively place, a considerable seaside resort, and it was full of hotels. Another phone call to Davina Ilbert elicited only that she had no idea of Ilbert’s London address. Wexford realized that there was nothing for it but to try all the hotels in Carmel, armed with his photograph of Natalie.

All he derived from that was the discovery that Americans are more inclined to be helpful than English people, and if this is because they are a nation of salesmen just as the English are a nation of small shopkeepers, it does little to detract from the overall pleasant impression. Hotel receptionists exhorted him on his departure to have a good day, and then when he was still at it after sundown, to have a nice evening. By that time he had been inside every hotel, motel and lobby of apartments-for-rent in Carmel, Carmel Highlands, Carmel Woods and Carmel Point, and he had been inside them in vain.

Rex Newton and his American wife were sitting in the hotel bar with Dora when he got back. Newton’s skin had gone very brown and his hair very white, but otherwise he was much the same. His wife, in Wexford’s opiniom, looked twenty years older than Dora, though she was in fact younger. It appeared that the Newtons were to dine with them, and Newton walked into the dining room with one arm round his wife’s waist and the other round Dora’s. Dora had given them to understand he was there on official police business – what else could she have said? – and Newton spent most of his time at the table holding forth on the American legal system, American police, the geography and geology of California and the rival merits of various hotels. His wife was a meek quiet little woman. They were going to take Dora to Muir Woods, the redwood forest north of San Francisco, on the following day.

‘If he knows so much,’ Wexford grumbled later, ‘he might have warned you there are more hotels up here than in the West End of London.’

‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t ask him; He does rather talk the hind leg off a donkey, doesn’t he?’

Wexford didn’t know why he suddenly liked Rex Newton very much and felt even happier that Dora was having such a good time with him.

For his own part, he spent the next day and the next making excursions down the coast the way they had come, visiting every possible place to stay. In each he got the same response – or worse, that the motel had changed hands or changed management and that there were no records for1976 available. He was learning that in California change is a very important aspect of life and that Californians, like the Athenians of old, are attracted by any new thing.

Nonie Newton was confined to bed in her daughter’s house with a migraine. Wexford cut short his inquiries in Monterey to get back to Dora, who would have been deserted by her friends. The least he could do for her was take her on the beach for the afternoon. He asked himself if he hadn’t mismanaged everything. The trip wasn’t succeeding either as an investigation of as a holiday. Dora was out when he got back, there was no note for him, and he spent the rest of the day missing his wife and reproaching himself. Rex Newton brought her back at ten and, in spite of Nonie’s illness, sat in the bar for half an hour, holding forth on the climate of California, seismology and the San Andreas Fault. Wexford couldn’t wait for him to be gone to unburden his soul to Dora.

‘You could always phone Sheila,’ she said when they were alone.

‘Sure I could,’ he said. ‘I could phone Sylvia and talk to the kids. I could phone your sister and my nephew Howard and old Mike. It would cost a great deal of money and they’d all no doubt say hard cheese very kindly, but where would it get me?’

‘To Ilbert,’ she said simply.

He looked at her.

‘Rolf Ilbert. You said he does part of the script for
Runway
. He’s in London. Even if he’s not working on
Runway
now, even if she’s never met him, Sheila’s in a position to find out where he is, she could easily do it.’

‘So she could,’ he said slowly. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

It was eleven o’clock on the Pacific coast but seven in London, and he was lucky to find her up. Her voice sounded as if she were in the next room. He knew exactly what her voice in the next room would sound like because his hotel neighbours had had
Runway
on for the past half-hour.

‘I don’t know him, Pop darling, but I’m sure I can find him. Nothing easier. I’ll shop around some likely agents. Where shall I ring you back?’

‘Don’t call us,’ said her father. ‘We’ll call you. God know where we’ll be.’

‘How’s Mother?’

‘Carrying on alarmingly with her old flame.’

He would have laughed as he said that if Dora had shown the least sign of laughing.

Because it wasn’t his nature to wait about and do nothing he spent all the next day covering what remained of the Monterey Peninsula. Something in him wanted to say, forget it, make a holiday of the rest of it, but it was too late for that. Instead of relaxing, he would only have tormented himself with that constantly recurring question, where had she stayed? It was awkward phoning Sheila because of the time difference. All the lines were occupied when he tried at eight in the morning, tea time for her, and again at noon, her early evening. When at last he heard the ringing there was no answer. Next day, or the day after at the latest, they would have to start south and leave behind all the possible places where Natalie Arno might have changed her identity. They had only had a fortnight and eleven days of it were gone.

As he was making another attempt to phone Sheila from the hotel lobby, Rex Newton walked in with Dora. He sat down, drank a glass of Chablis, and held forth on Californian vineyards, migraine, the fever few diet and the gluten-free diet. After half an hour he went, kissing Dora – on the cheek but very near the mouth – and reminding her of a promise to spend their last night in America staying at the Newtons’ house. And also their last day.

‘I suppose I’m included in that,’ Wexford said in a rather nasty tone. Newton was still not quite out of earshot.

She was cool. ‘Of course, darling.’

His investigation was over, failed, fruitless. He had rather hoped to have the last two days alone with his wife. But what a nerve he had and how he was punished for it!

‘I’m hoist with my own petard, aren’t I?’ he said and went off to bed.

The Newtons were flying back that morning. It would be a long weary drive for Wexford. He and Dora set off at nine.

The first of the
Danaus
butterflies to float across the windscreen made them both gasp. Dora had seen one only once before, Wexford never. The Milkweed, the Great American Butterfly, the Monarch, is a rare visitor to the cold British Isles. They watched that one specimen drift out over the sea, seeming to lose itself in the blue meeting the blue, and then a cloud of its fellow were upon them, thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa. And like leaves too, scarlet leaves veined in black, they floated rather than flew across the span of California One, down from the cliffs of daisies, out to the ocean. The air was red with them. All the way down from Big Sur they came, wings of cinnabar velvet, butterflies in flocks like birds made of petals.

‘The Spanish for butterfly is
mariposa
,’ said Dora. ‘Rex told me. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful name?’

Wexford said nothing. Even if he managed to get hold of Sheila now, even if she had an address or a phone number for him, would he have time to drive back perhaps a hundred miles along this route? Not when he had to be in Burbank or wherever those Newtons lived by nightfall. A red butterfly came to grief on his windscreen, smashed, fluttered, died.