The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (9) (29 page)

She moved away from the postbox. It was too late: the stone had been thrown into the
pond and all she could do was to return home and wait for the ripples to break—if
there were to be any. As Isabel walked back down the road, the seagulls’ cries were
now a Greek chorus, or so it seemed to her. She looked up at them as they circled
overhead. Their earlier dispute resolved, their mewing was now less strident, but
some, at least, appeared to be directed at her.
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns …
And then there were the lilies to be considered; they neither spun nor weaved and
yet Solomon in all his glory … She stopped herself. The
wisdom of Solomon. Would he have written such a letter? Possibly, she thought. Possibly.

JAMIE WAS TEACHING
that afternoon and returned in a bad mood. This was unusual for him, and Isabel knew
that it would not last; Jamie’s temper was equable, and although he might manage a
few minutes of silence, he seemed incapable of sustained grumpiness. Cat was the past
master at that: she could sustain a huff for days on end, sometimes to the extent
of forgetting—Isabel suspected—the original cause of her annoyance. Isabel had often
thought that much the same thing happened in those puzzling animosities between whole
nations: although there might be fresh aggravations to keep relations on edge, the
original
casus belli
of many of the great historical dislikes were shrouded. The Greeks and Turks disliked
one another, and each could provide chapter and verse for why this was so, but behind
many such recited wrongs there lay ancient animosities based on incidents that really
were forgotten.
Greeks and Turks
 … she remembered now. When she was six, or thereabouts, there had been a boy who
lived in the next street whose parents had been friendly with hers. This boy, David,
was brought by his mother to play with her and spent long afternoons in her company.
His favourite game, which she tended to tire of well before he did, was one of his
own invention, or so she believed, and it had been called “Greeks and Turks.” The
memory of this game always brought a smile to Isabel’s lips, as the rules had been
so simple. One person was the Greek and the other was the Turk. The Greek chased the
Turk and then, on catching him or her, became the Turk, to be chased in turn by the
Greek. There were no further implications to the game—it
continued until either the Greek or the Turk fell over and grazed a knee, as sometimes
happened, or decided that endless running around in pursuit of another was of waning
interest. That conclusion was more frequently and more quickly reached by Isabel than
by David, and reflected what the young Isabel was to discover as she became older:
that boys and men were content to chase things while girls and women saw no point
in such behaviour.

Jamie’s bad mood, such as it was, had been caused by one of his pupils.

“I don’t like that boy,” he said as he came into Isabel’s study. Charlie was having
a nap, and Isabel was in the middle of a rare tidying session. There was so much paper,
so many piles of books, that had she thought about it she too might well have decided
to indulge herself in a bad mood. But in general, in the average marriage there is
room for only one bad mood at a time and on that afternoon Jamie was there first.

She shifted a pile of papers from one surface to another; the guilt that a pile of
papers may induce can be so easily dissipated by a small move, she decided. “What
boy? Thomas?”

Thomas was a pupil of whom Jamie had spoken more than once—a boy, he complained, who
persistently came to his music lesson without some important part of his bassoon—usually
the crook, but often the reed or the sling. Jamie would always have a spare crook
that he could lend him, but he disliked providing reeds, which had to be placed in
the mouth. He had told Isabel about how he had tackled the subject with Thomas, telling
him that one’s saliva was, as a general rule, best kept to oneself. Thomas had stared
at him uncomprehendingly and had forgotten to bring his reed to the following lesson
as well.

“No,” said Jamie, flopping down in the armchair beside Isabel’s desk, “not Thomas.
Barry.”

Isabel picked up an unopened letter that had somehow escaped her attention and examined
the postmark. “Barry?” The letter was postmarked two weeks earlier, and she winced.

“He’s fourteen,” said Jamie. “And he has the most ghastly mother. He’s ghastly himself,
but his mother is really seriously ghastly. And the father’s ghastly too. They’re
nouveaux riches and wear really flashy clothes. Barry had this sort of shiny shirt
on today and a belt made out of some endangered species. His father came to collect
him and he was wearing sunglasses—very designer—and endangered shoes.”

Isabel smiled. “They probably weren’t actually endangered. Some of these things are
imitation crocodile, or lizard, or whatever it is. They’re just plastic.”

Jamie was having none of this. “No, they’re not. Not in this case. You could tell
that the father goes for the real thing. He probably shot his shoes himself.”

Isabel raised an eyebrow. Jamie was usually tolerant in his views, and rarely vituperative.
And surely it could not just be Barry to set him off like this. “Anything else happened?”
she asked casually.

He was silent.

“Nothing?” she asked.

Jamie sighed. “There was a letter. It had been delivered to the flat. I told them—I
told them two or three times that my mail was to come here, but these people are hopeless,
just hopeless. You may as well save your breath.”

Isabel said nothing. It was clearly nothing to do with Barry or his father’s shoes;
it was the letter.

“What was it?” she asked gently.

Jamie spat the word out. “Tax.”

“Ah.”

“They said that I underpaid last year. They said it was my mistake.”

Isabel was about to say “It usually is” but realised that this might not be the moment.
So she said instead, “They’re
ghastly
 …” It was, she realised, a curious echo of Jamie’s complaint about the unfortunate
Barry and his family; a word, as often happens, can be like a musical worm in the
mind and invite repetition. But it slipped out. Tax inspectors were not ghastly, she
thought; they were simply doing their job, and they did it, she imagined, fairly well—for
the most part. They had to contend with all sorts of dishonesty and rudeness on the
part of taxpayers, who were, no doubt, quite capable of being particularly ghastly
in their dealings with tax officials, and so …

“You can say that again,” said Jamie. “Why do they have to wait until now to tell
me? Why didn’t they sort this out earlier? Six months ago?”

Isabel shrugged. “They have a lot of tax to collect. And the public itself can be
ghas—” She stopped the word in its tracks. And holding her unopened letter, she was
hardly in a position to bemoan the inefficiency of others.

“How much?” she asked.

Jamie closed his eyes. “Eight hundred and fifty pounds.”

Isabel looked out of the window. She would have to handle this carefully. “Are you
all right for that?” she asked. “I could …”

He looked up at her. “I’m all right. It’s just that … well, I don’t want to pay.”

“No,” she said. “That’s understandable.”

He sighed. “Oh well.”

She could see that the bad mood was already wearing off.

“I’ve had an interesting day,” she volunteered.

“Really?” His tone was almost normal now; the memories of Barry and the tax demand
were clearly fading.

“Yes. I had an idea. A rather interesting one, as it happens.”

He got to his feet. “I must have a shower. But what was this idea of yours?”

“You have your shower,” she said. “I could talk to you about it later on. We could
go out for dinner.”

Her suggestion was well received. “Yes, why not?”

“No reason,” said Isabel. “I’ll book that place at Holy Corner. The something-or-other
bistro. And I’ll ask Grace to babysit. She offered earlier today. I think she wants
to read to Charlie.”

“Not teach him mathematics?”

Isabel laughed. “No, I don’t think so.”

Jamie nodded. “Good.”

Isabel returned to her task of tidying. Jamie’s birthday was coming up. She would
put a cheque for eight hundred and fifty pounds in an envelope and seal it with a
kiss. He would accept it, she felt, because it was his birthday and such things were
permitted on birthdays even if pride, however unreasonably, prevented them on other
occasions. She would give him anything, she felt. Everything she possessed. But at
least eight hundred and fifty pounds was a start.

JAMIE STARED AT HER
over the dinner table in the Bistro Bia. “So,” he said, “you wrote to all three of
them and told them that you had worked out …”

“Discovered,” interjected Isabel.

“Discovered what had happened. And yet you say that this isn’t strictly true?” His
intonation rose sharply at the end of the sentence, underlining his doubt.

“Not strictly,” said Isabel. “Of course I don’t want to rely on pedantry, but I could
argue that the forming in my mind of a
theory
as to what happened amounts to a discovery. So that means I wasn’t really telling
a lie.”

Jamie looked at her uncertainly. “You don’t really mean that, do you?” he said.

Isabel gave a sheepish grin. She had not convinced herself; she had not even tried.
“Maybe not. But the point is this—this letter of mine might just flush out the guilty
party.”

“If one of them
is
the guilty party,” said Jamie. “And frankly, it doesn’t seem all that likely.”

“Maybe not to you,” said Isabel. “But if you look at the evidence. One of the men
holding the painting called Duncan by the name Alex and Patrick use …”

“And the name millions of other people use for their father,” said Jamie. He saw her
face fall, and he immediately added, almost apologetically, “But carry on anyway.”

“Motive,” said Isabel.

“Motives aren’t evidence.”

She bit her lip. “Do you want me to tell you what I think, or not?”

He was placatory now. “I’m trying to play the role that Peter plays when he quizzes
you about something.” Peter was Peter Stevenson, a friend who often acted as a critical
sounding board for Isabel and whose advice she valued.

“But you’re not Peter,” she blurted out. “You aren’t here to test everything I say
like … like a judge. You asked me what I
think and I started to tell you and …” She did not finish. Jamie had reached across
the table and placed his hand gently on hers.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She forgave him.

“All right,” she said. “Motive: Alex needs money, or rather, her fiancé does. Same
thing really. She loves the Poussin. She doesn’t want it to be given away. There’s
also that very odd thing, not motive, I suppose, but back to evidence: the fact that
she got me involved and then tried to shift suspicion on to her brother. Patrick may
need money—we’re not sure. Disagrees with his father on politics and farming and all
sorts of things, I imagine, and there’s no love lost between him and his sister.”
She paused. “I suppose his motive is probably the weakest—or at least it’s the one
we’re least sure about. But then …”

“Yes? But then?”

“Then there’s Duncan himself.”

Jamie looked doubtful. “Surely not.”

“What if he has financial problems?” asked Isabel.

“He could sell a painting. The Poussin could go down to Christie’s and that would
be it. Financial problems solved.”

Isabel considered this. “Except that he might not feel able to sell something that
he has promised to give to the nation.” She looked at him enquiringly. “Would you?
Would you sell something that you had promised to give to somebody in the future?”

Jamie took a sip from his glass of water. “I might—if I needed to.”

“But you’re not Duncan Munrowe. Remember, he’s old-fashioned. He has his reputation
to consider.”

Jamie smiled. “But you’re still suggesting that he might try to defraud an insurance
company?”

Isabel shook her head. “No, you’re right. I don’t really think that he’s behind this.
It wouldn’t be in character, and, for the most part, people act in character, don’t
they?”

“Almost always,” said Jamie.

Isabel thought for a moment about her proposition that people acted in character.
It was probably true, but if you were to use character as a means of predicting what
people would do, you had to know their character very well. And that was the problem:
most people had aspects to their character that they concealed—weaknesses, vices,
and so on; not most people, she thought—everybody. Everybody had
some
flaws and these flaws could prompt them to do surprising things.

She looked at Jamie and thought: Was Jamie capable of surprising her? Was he capable
of doing something low or mean—something that she would think completely out of character?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

She looked away quickly. “Was I?”

“Yes,” he said. “You were looking at me in a very strange way.” He seemed amused rather
than unsettled.

“I was wondering whether you could ever do anything that would shock me. I suppose
that’s what I was thinking.”

He gave her an injured look—but he made it clear that he was not serious. “Don’t you
trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. I was just thinking of cases where wives discover that their
husband has been doing something shocking. It was mentioning character that made me
think about that sort of thing.” She paused. “I don’t believe you would ever shock
me, though. I really don’t believe that.”

As she spoke, she thought of all the women who discovered that their husbands were
having an affair. It was a very common story—banal really, so frequently did it happen.
But it was not
those cases that involved the real shock: it was when the woman discovered something
utterly out of the ordinary; for instance, that their husband had committed a serious
crime. What would she do if she found out that Jamie had robbed a bank, or was a secret
blackmailer, or had planted a bomb in a public place, or something like that? Isabel
wondered. The men who did those things went back, she assumed, to their wives or girlfriends
at night. Mafiosi had their families—they tucked their children into bed at night
and exhorted them to do well at school. People who plotted the deaths of others bought
their wives birthday presents and walked the dog and took the car to the garage. And
they had their little tiffs and make-ups and went out for dinner in restaurants just
like this one and talked about day-to-day things.