The Saint Zita Society (17 page)

‘I hope you are buying that paper, Miss Montsy.’ Mr Choudhuri had been standing just inside the door, watching her. ‘Not just having a free look.’

‘Yes. Sure I am. And the
Sunday Times
.’

‘If that is for Mr Still there is no need. Already he has been here and bought his.’ Mr Choudhuri looked at his watch. ‘It is, after all, ten minutes to midday.’

As if it was any business of his what time she got up or came for the paper. The story, which she began to read as soon as she got back, was just like all stories of bodies being found in woodland and open spaces. Foul play was suspected. There would be an inquest. The difference was that most of the other bodies had not been those of celebrities as familiar to the nation’s television viewers as their own family members. On an inside page was a photograph of Rad Sothern wearing a white coat with a stethoscope hanging round his neck, although the body had not yet been confirmed as his.

Across the street at number 8 Damian and Roland sat having a pre-lunch sherry and reading about the discovery of the body, the former with the
Sunday Times
, the latter with the
Sunday Telegraph
. Thea had brought them the newspapers and was about to go out with Jimmy in the Lexus.

‘Have you ever seen this sitcom or whatever it is this guy Sothern is in?’ said Damian to Roland.

‘Good heavens, no.’

‘I may have seen
him
. In the flesh, I mean. He seems to be a family connection or “loved one”, as we are supposed
to say these days, of someone round here. However, if there’s any sort of police inquiry I shall deny it.’

‘Better to keep entirely out of anything like that,’ said Roland. ‘And you should too, Thea. Don’t let that friend of yours, Manzanilla or whatever she’s called, draw you into it.’

‘Montserrat,’ said Thea. ‘Manzanilla is the sherry.’

‘So it is. Shall we have another glass?’

Simon Jefferson’s musical horn sounded in the street below, a cadence rather like the Last Post. She ran downstairs to Jimmy. No, he hadn’t seen a Sunday paper, he never read papers. Why bother when you had the telly? Thea was realising how different a person can turn out to be from what you thought he was when first you tried to fall in love with him. Should she tell him about those teenagers in Regent Street last night? If she was going to get engaged to him she ought to be able to confide in him, tell him about things that worried her.

‘It was because I’ve got red hair,’ she said.

His advice disappointed her. ‘Just ignore it, sweetheart.’

The front page of Friday’s
Evening Standard
, greasy from Thai takeaway, had floated over the railings during the night and come to rest on top of the bin in the area of number 8. Miss Grieves saw it from her front window and read the headline but waited until the butter-coloured Lexus had gone before putting on her dressing gown and coming out to retrieve it. Missing persons always interested her, especially in the unlikely but possible event of their being celebrities. Newspapers were not among her regular purchases but she intended to buy one now. It took her, as always, a long time to dress and put on the beaver lamb coat which had been her mother’s and the Ugg boots she had got Thea to buy for her the previous winter. These boots, reduced in the sales on account of their being pink in colour, she had practically
lived in during February and March and was now returning to with relief.

With no Thea to help her up the steps, she had to manage on her own. It was ten years since she had been to the paper shop and when she got there – it took her a quarter of an hour – she found that it was no longer run by Mr and Mrs Davis but had been taken over by an Indian man. She would have found things less bewildering if the shop had been hung with Indian streamers and mass-produced statuettes of many-armed gods but it was full of Christmas decorations, cards and wrapping paper and artificial coniferous trees. However, the man called her madam which she liked and fetched the paper of her choice, the
Sunday Telegraph
. The price appalled her but she said nothing. The cost of everything had rocketed since she had been out of the world.

Back at home she read the story, using a magnifying glass as well as her glasses. The photograph of Rad Sothern left her in no doubt. Their saying his identity hadn’t been confirmed meant nothing to her. That was who it was, the same man as she had seen on her television and also seen sneaking into the basement of number 7.

T
here was nothing on the television to say whether the body was that of Rad Sothern. June sat by the phone with Gussie on her lap, waiting for the police to call her, probably Detective Sergeant Freud, to ask her to come down to this or that police station or mortuary and make an identification. They were bound to ask her as Rad’s great-aunt. The Princess was spending the evening watching a rerun of the second series of
Avalon Clinic
, the steamy episodes where Mr Fortescue got very sexual with Staff Nurse Debbie Wilson.
When it got to nine and they hadn’t phoned June went back to the drawing room with two stiff gins. She took off Gussie’s coat for the night and the Princess said, ‘There’s no point in doing that. You’ll only have to put it on again to take him out.’

June sighed. She had decided it was too cold to go out but the Princess said a dog had to have his walk no matter what the weather. ‘I don’t know why you thought the police would phone you when that girl Rocksana is obviously his next of kin.’

‘I wouldn’t call it next of kin,’ said June. ‘That’s what I am.’

Round the corner in St Barnabas Mews she met Montserrat putting her car away.

‘I’m ever so sorry, June.’

‘What about?’

‘It was on the news just now. It
was
your grandson.’

‘My great-nephew.’

‘Comes to the same thing really, doesn’t it?

‘We shall have the police round here in droves tomorrow,’ said June. ‘You needn’t worry. I shan’t tell them anything about you and him.’

‘Me and him? I only spoke to him once.’

‘That’s the best angle to take, my dear. What I think is it’s best for everyone not to know a thing. It’s different for me and the Princess of course. We were his
friends
. We’re very close to Miss Castelli, as a matter of fact.’

June said goodnight and walked back, tugged by the now shivering Gussie. A figure descending the area steps at number 7 gave her a bit of a shock. It was like seeing a ghost, only in black robes, not white. But the features that turned to her, peeping out of a dark cloth, were not a skull but the pretty face of Rabia returning from her weekend off. The Stills’ nanny raised one hand in a polite gesture of greeting, dipped
her head and passed on down the steps to let herself in by the basement door.

On the other side of that door, Montserrat waited for Preston. Would he just arrive again without warning? Would the identification of the body as Rad’s make any difference? Just before eleven he phoned. He would like to talk to her on a matter of business. Now? said Montserrat. Yes, now. She had taken her clothes off but she put them on again, leggings – funny how they’d come right back into fashion – and a tight dark red sweater. Waiting for him, she asked herself what he could possibly mean by business but came up with no answer. This time he tapped on the door.

He looked pale and worried. Business or not, she had been sure he would bring a bottle of wine with him but he was empty-handed. Montserrat was sitting on the bed.

‘Lucy’s in a dreadful state,’ he said. ‘screaming and crying over that man.’

‘You mean she’s screaming and crying at you?’

He sat down on the one chair in the room. ‘Who else has she got? But I didn’t come down to tell you that. They know it’s Rad Sothern now, as I expect you know. Now you and I won’t say a word if the police question us. We didn’t know him, never saw him, and that’s all it amounts to. But what about Lucy?’

‘She’s not going to tell them he was shagging her.’

‘Oh, please. Must you use that word? No, she’s not going to say they were having some kind of – well, relationship, but she’s afraid
he
may have told someone about
her
. After all, she’s a well-known socialite. She had her picture in the
Evening Standard
only a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know what you think you’re laughing at.’

Montserrat composed her features. ‘Do men do that? I mean, tell their mates?’

‘Don’t ask me. I don’t do that sort of thing.’

This time she did laugh and heartily. ‘Come on. What were you up to here last night or were you sleepwalking?’

He blushed, the way she had never seen a man of forty blush before. His whole face and neck became the colour of her sweater. She shook her head, smiling at him. ‘Now listen. You haven’t been so crazy as to tell Lucy anything about us taking Rad out to Essex and all that, have you? No? Sure?’

‘Of course I haven’t.’

‘Well, don’t. If the police come here to talk to any of us we just say we didn’t know him, we never met him. June at number 6, she was his great-aunt or his grandma, I don’t know, but she says she won’t say she saw him speak to me, she wants to keep it looking like he was faithful to that Rocksana woman. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘There’s no one else saw anything. You’re not getting back with Lucy, are you?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that. I can never forgive her.’

‘What’s she doing now?’

‘Gone to sleep. I gave her a sleeping pill.

‘Then why don’t you go and find a bottle of wine somewhere and come back here for the night?’

C
oming out of Tesco with shopping for Miss Grieves, her regular Monday-morning task before she had her first class at eleven thirty, Thea almost bumped into Henry coming out of Homebase. Henry had been buying a bolt, or rather two bolts, for his room (or studio flat as his employer called it) at number 11. He smiled, said hi and it was a lovely day but nothing about the bolts. Convinced that it was a good idea to have the means to make his door secure, he was
worried just the same that if Lord Studley found out he might make a fuss about damage to the woodwork. All the doors on the upper floors of number 11 were made of beautiful tropical hardwoods and even those in the basement similarly panelled, painted ivory and with brass fingerplates. But for his peace of mind he could no longer risk Huguette coming to his room or, come to that, her mother coming to his room while she was there, without adequate safety measures being taken.

It would do no harm for Thea to know, but still, better safe than sorry was an excellent maxim. He had walked to the shops from Hexam Place, leaving the Beemer on the residents’ parking. Another thing Lord Studley made a fuss about was his car being used for anything but fetching and carrying himself and his family. He was no Simon Jefferson, Henry often thought ruefully. He might just as well use the few hours before returning to pick up His Lordship from the Peers’ Entrance in putting the new bolts on his door. Then, later on, there was yet another extraordinary general meeting of the Saint Zita Society.

Its purpose, Thea was recalling as she banged hard on the basement door, was to discuss what was to be done about the exclusion of the ‘staff’ from Damian and Roland’s guest list. Miss Grieves came, shuffling along in the Ugg boots she wouldn’t take off again till the spring, maybe not even at night, Thea thought. She handed over the lighter bag of shopping and brought the other in herself.

As was often the case, Miss Grieves was ready with a question expecting the answer no. ‘You don’t want a cup of tea, do you?’

The state of the cups, chipped, cracked and when the home help had paid a rare visit stained with dark crimson lipstick, always ensured Thea’s refusal. She sat down briefly
on the edge of a chair. ‘Didn’t you once tell me you’d been in service, Miss Grieves?’

‘Nothing wrong in that, I hope. They’re a bunch of bloody snobs round here.’

‘Nothing wrong at all. Quite the reverse. I thought I’d propose you for the Saint Zita Society.’ Thea explained, describing it as a kind of combination of a union and social club. Miss Grieves said she didn’t mind, her usual rejoinder when she liked the idea of something very much. Then she said, ‘How d’you get hold of the police? I want to complain about the bloody foxes.’

Thea knew she was lying. ‘Look in the phone book,’ she said because she couldn’t exactly not answer. She even fetched the directory for Miss Grieves, rooting it out from under a stack of old magazines. The date on the top one was April 1947.

T
he conspiracy in Hexam Place that none of the ‘staff’ would say a word about seeing Rad Sothern make his secret way into number 7 gave Montserrat confidence. If there were no untoward developments, if no police interest was shown in the Still household, Preston would go ahead with the divorce, not as speedily of course as if there were no children, but helped on its way by his being a very rich man. Money always expedited these things. It would be a no-fault divorce so that Rad’s name need not be brought into it.

It would be best for Preston to move out and into that flat he had talked about. She didn’t quite trust him so near to Lucy. While he had said last night that he could never forgive Lucy, he had shown signs of sympathy for her. Montserrat had decided that she would marry him. She didn’t love him or even like him very much. He was too hairy to be attractive to her and too pompous as well, too stuffy with his long words and his
Macbeth
quotes. But she would marry him. He must be grateful to her, she had saved his life or saved him from years of jail. Lucy was thought beautiful by a lot of people but she was beginning to look worn. Besides, she was thirty-six and she, Montserrat, was twenty-two.

Lucy had money of her own from her rich father so Preston
wouldn’t have to give her so much. She would get the children, a good idea as far as Montserrat was concerned. She’d let Preston see them whenever he liked. It was best to look facts in the face and this marriage she contemplated would hardly last long. She might even fix a period of time for it – say four years. She would still only be twenty-six and be as beautiful as Lucy by that time what with all the cosmetic surgery and facials and body toning and designer clothes she’d have paid for with Preston’s money.