A Banquet of Consequences (30 page)

Caroline still hadn’t asked them to sit, but Barbara decided not to stand on ceremony. She sought the only chair that bore fewer than three decorative pillows, and into it she plopped. There was little for it but for Alastair and Caroline to do the same. Nkata remained standing, although he moved to the fireplace and set his tea mug on the mantel.

“Can you tell me about Cambridge, Mrs. Goldacre?” Barbara switched on a lamp with a “D’you mind? Bit dark in here, is all.”

“What about Cambridge?” Caroline had taken a spot on the love seat that faced the fireplace. Alastair sat with her. She lifted his hand and linked her hand to it.

“What you were doing there and why you were with Clare Abbott. Let’s start with that.”

“I’d rather hoped you might tell me why you’re here.”

“Procedure,” Barbara said with a dismissive wave. “Dot the t’s and cross the i’s.”

Caroline did not smile. “How did Clare die? The only thing I know is from the papers afterwards. They said her heart . . .”

“A seizure that happened when her heart misfired,” Barbara said. “Then a second autopsy carried things a bit further. So the heart thing and the seizure bit? They were . . . how do I put this? . . . well,
caused.
”

“What’s that mean?” It was Alastair who spoke.

Barbara ignored the questions and repeated her own. As to Cambridge and why Mrs. Goldacre was there . . . ?

Caroline told her briefly about a debate and a book signing. She added a radio broadcast and a lecture meant for the following day. She included an editorial comment about Clare Abbott’s tendency to humiliate people in public forums and indicated that this was what she’d done to the woman priest with whom she’d debated. No one could rein Clare in when she got going, Caroline added. One tried to advise her, one tried to suggest that less sarcasm might make the medicine go down more easily, but Clare tended to go her own way.

“What was your position in her life?” Barbara said. “Sort of a dogsbody, were you?”

Alastair seemed to find it necessary to intervene at this. “Far sight more ’n that. Clare wouldn’t’ve known night from day if Caroline wasn’t there to switch on the lamps.”

“It’s all right, darling,” Caroline said. And then to Barbara she went on to explain that she and Clare had met at the Women’s League in Shaftesbury when Clare had come to speak shortly after moving to the town. They’d struck up a conversation, it had come out that Clare needed a cleaner, and Caroline was up for the job as she quite liked the woman and reckoned mere housework could lead to something far more suited to her talents. The cleaning quickly extended to the cooking and the weekly shop as well. At that point, Caroline had offered to sort out Clare’s home as organising was not one of Clare’s . . . well, let’s say it wasn’t one of her specialities, Caroline explained.

“She’d never got round to it when she bought her house, so I sorted out her kitchen, pantry, linen cupboard . . . that sort of thing. Clare asked could I do the same for her office, and things went on from there. We got on quite well, she asked me to stay on, and over time I took on more responsibility. I was happy to do it although she could be rather prickly at moments.”

“Got a bit prickly in Cambridge, I hear,” Barbara said.

Caroline cocked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. “What d’you mean?”

“You two had a row the night she died. What was that about?”

Caroline stirred on the love seat. She loosened her hand from Alastair’s. “Who told you that?” she asked, not unreasonably. “It’s
Rory, isn’t it? You may as well know that Rory very much dislikes me. She always has done. She wanted Clare to give me the sack. She thinks I don’t know that, but there’re scores of things I know that she’s unaware of and that’s just one of them. Clare and I didn’t argue.”

“Bloke at the hotel overheard you.” Nkata took a sip of tea. He sounded casual enough, just a comment in passing.

Barbara added, “Seems he was collecting your room service trolley and you two were going at it.”

“Really? I certainly don’t remember . . .” Caroline drew her eyebrows together. They were drawn-on-her-face eyebrows, but nicely done in perfect arches. After a moment of reflection she said, “Ah. I expect it was about my wages. We had words about that. For all her success, Clare was tight with her money. I put it down to how she grew up. On a sheep farm in the Shetlands, this was. So when it came to paying me . . . ?” She shrugged. “Even in her will and despite my having worked for her for two years . . . Well, it’s water under the bridge. I wasn’t happy about it, but there you have it. There wasn’t much I could do about it, after all.”

“In’eresting, that.” Nkata flipped back a few pages and read out the words that Lynley had reported to them from his interviews in Cambridge with the hotel’s employees. “‘We’re finished, you an’ I.’ An’ then, ‘Not with what I know about you. We’ll never be finished.’ Doesn’t sound like wages to me, innit.”

“I don’t recall having said that. Or Clare having said it either. Neither one of us would have had a reason.”

“Did you know the terms of her will?” Barbara asked.

“See here,” Alastair MacKerron said hotly. “What sort ’f question—”

“Alastair, it’s fine,” Caroline said.

Barbara added, “She’d have needed a witness to it. Was that you?”

“I was always signing this or that for her,” Caroline said. “But truthfully? I didn’t know Clare even had a will till Rory started waving it about directly after the funeral, telling me to clear out of the house as it was now hers.”

“How well d’you know her?” Nkata asked.

“Rory? Not well. Mostly, I know
about
her.” Caroline was silent for a moment as if waiting for either Barbara or Nkata to take the bait.
When neither of them did, she went on. “She’s Clare’s editor. She’s also a lesbian. Not that I have the least problem with that, but the point is that she was in love with Clare. She tried to hide it but who can hide that sort of thing successfully? Clare, by the way, was heterosexual. ‘Nonpractising heterosexual’ was how she put it. Not the case, of course, but that’s hardly important.”

“Which part?” Nkata took more tea, always managing to imply that his questions were casual.

“What?” Caroline said.

“‘Not the case,’” Nkata quoted. “Which part? The hetero or the nonpractising?”

“The latter. Clare had her lovers, but I doubt she told Rory about them. I daresay she didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

“Sounds out of character, that,” Barbara commented. “Seems like she was fairly direct. When did you last see her? Rory, this is.”

“At the service for Clare. Five days ago, wasn’t it, darling?” She turned to her husband. He nodded and reminded her that afterwards—next day, pet—she’d gone to the house as well. That would be when Rory wouldn’t give her enough time to collect all her things, mind you.

Caroline said, “I think she assumed I’d come to steal the silver. I do have to ask this, Sergeant . . . Havers, yes?” And when Barbara nodded, “You’re not intending to imply that Rory . . . ? Rory was disappointed in love, but we all are occasionally, aren’t we? And we don’t . . . well, cause our love objects to somehow have heart problems and seizures.”

“It’s just the opposite,” Barbara said. “Rory’s in hospital.”

“Someone tried to give her the chop,” Nkata added.

There was a silence at that. During it, the wind whipped a frenzy of rain against the window panes, and Caroline started at the sudden sound. It was chilly in the room and a coal fire was laid in the grate, which would have been pleasant had someone made a move to light it, but no one did. Caroline finally said, “Are you saying that someone tried to
kill
Rory? How is this even possible? And why?”

“That’s the question, all right,” Barbara agreed.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

They decided on a drink afterwards, so they repaired back up to the town, where in its centre they found the Mitre. When they’d taken their ale (Barbara) and their lemonade (Winston) to a table, Nkata was the one to point out what they both had been thinking from the moment they’d left Caroline Goldacre and her husband.

“Poison’s a woman’s weapon, Barb.”

“There’s definitely that,” she agreed. She glanced at her watch. She fished her mobile from her shoulder bag, saying, “Let’s see what the inspector’s got.”

Most of what Lynley had referred to Rory Statham personally, as he had not yet heard anything from SO7 about the source of the sodium azide in her flat. Nor had the technicians sorting through her mobile phone records and her laptop reported back. But as far as Rory herself went, Lynley had spoken at length to her sister and had learned from her that Rory had lost her longtime lover Fiona Rhys to murder some years earlier: a crime along the Costa Brava. Fiona had died of multiple stab wounds and internal injuries.

“They’d taken a small villa for a summer holiday,” Lynley explained. “It was, apparently, just isolated enough for someone to target them.”

“Was the someone caught?” Barbara asked.

“A bloke was tried, convicted, and sentenced. After it all, according to Rory’s sister, she remained at Clare Abbott’s home in Shaftesbury for several months.”

“Caroline Goldacre claims Rory was in love with her.”

“The sister gave no indication of that.
Grateful
and
close friends
were the words she used.”

“So is there a connection among all this?” Barbara said, more to herself than to Lynley.

“One has to wonder,” Lynley replied.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

B
leary-eyed, Barbara staggered down the stairs at Clare Abbott’s house at half past seven. As they had the keys to the place and it was not a crime scene, they’d reckoned that using it as their accommodation would simplify matters when it came to going through Clare’s belongings to assemble usable information in their quest for her killer. So Barbara had taken one of the house’s spare rooms while Winston had settled across the corridor in another, and they’d said their good-nights sometime after one
A
.
M
., having made an initial recce of Clare’s office. Barbara had intended to rise earlier, but the bed had been so comfortable and the sound of the rain so soothing that she’d lost consciousness entirely and had slept without dreams.

She descended the stairs into the scent of bacon and coffee. She found Nkata in the kitchen, standing before the cooker in running clothes: silky shorts, a hooded sweatshirt, trainers, and a towelling band round his head. She noted he had quite lovely legs before she said, “Bloody hell, Winnie. You run, on top of everything else?”

“What’s everything else?” he asked, turning from the cooker, on whose hob bacon was crisping.

“You don’t drink. You don’t smoke. You’re moderately capable of defending yourself with a flick knife. And now I find that you cook.”

“Not so capable with the knife.” He fingered his scar.

“You lived through it, and that’s what counts. Plus whoever he was, he missed your eye. Good dodging on your part, so you’re quick on your feet as well. But what I want to know is what the bloody world’s come to when people begin thinking that ‘staying in shape’—whatever that’s actually s’posed to mean—trumps what’s truly important in life.” She looked round the kitchen, at the neat work tops on which four grocery bags had been unloaded. Good God, the man had done the shop as well although God knew where he’d found a supermarket open so early in the morning. “You didn’t happen to sort me out some Pop-Tarts?” she said.

He shot her a look but said nothing.

“Do not bloody tell me the inspector ordered you to feed me properly, Winston. You’re supposed to keep me on the professional straight and narrow. My diet’s in my own hands. And where’re my fags?” She pointed to the work top. “I left them right here last night.”

“I binned them,” he said.

“You
what
?”

“Table’s laid in the dining room, Barb. Coffee’s ready. Let’s tuck in.”

She excavated for her Players first. True to his word, Nkata had tossed them in the rubbish, where they lay under five eggshells. She rubbed egg ooze from the packet on the hem of her sleeping tee-shirt—
Wake me when the dachshund is house-trained: Rumpelstiltskin
—and she followed Nkata into the dining room.

He’d cooked them a proper English breakfast, probably the sort of meal his mum made for him every day: eggs, rashers of bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, and jam. “Sets you up proper” was how he explained it. She didn’t offer the argument that Pop-Tarts and a fag did much the same.

Not only had he been out running and to the supermarket, Barbara found, but he’d also been once again into Clare’s office. On the table along with their plates and cutlery, he’d placed a laptop, a mobile phone, and Clare’s diary. This latter he handed over to Barbara. He himself took the mobile and switched it on. Like Rory’s, it was a smartphone, so there would be a history of calls, text messages, and potentially photos as well. Meantime, Barbara flipped open the diary
and worked her way back through the dates to see what Clare’s appointments had been.

She quickly discovered that, unsurprisingly, the writer had led a full and busy life, but she had not, unfortunately, spelled it out exactly in her daily planning. Instead, over several months preceding her death, she used first names, surnames, or initials next to the times of her appointments. Most of these appeared to be with women: Hermione, Wallis, and Linne were recent engagements. In addition to these, Barbara found a Radley, a Globus, and a Jenkins as well as three appointments with Rory and eighteen different appointments indicated by Wookey Hole, Lloyds, Gresham, and Yarn Market over a period of five months. The most recent engagements were indicated by initials only. Clare had apparently spent time with MG, FG, and LF.

“Bloody hell” was Barbara’s reaction. From the looks of the diary, it seemed to her that she and Winston might well be spending any number of weeks in Shaftesbury.

She read out the list to Nkata and, pausing in his perusal of the mobile phone, he asked the logical question. “What d’you make ’f the way she listed ’em?”

“Using Christian names, place names, surnames, or initials?” And when he nodded, Barbara thought about the matter. “I expect she knew the Christian-named people well. Mates of hers, p’rhaps? Fellow writers? Other feminists? She sees ‘Hermione’ in her diary and she knows it’s Hermione Whosit. Last names: people she knew less well or p’rhaps not at all? Could be people she meant to interview?”

“Wha’ about the places . . . What was it? Wookey Hole?”

“Meeting places? Or could be spots she was giving lectures, I reckon.”

“Wha’ about the initials?”

Barbara looked at these again. “Those’re interesting, eh? Seems like when someone uses initials like that, she knows she’s going to remember who the appointment is with. She wasn’t about to jot a few initials next to times in her diary and risk looking at it a week later and wondering who the bloody hell FG is. So . . . could be the names’re familiar to her but too long to write out.”

“Could be she was in a hurry so she just jotted them down as initials.”

“Or could be she didn’t want someone with access to this diary—someone besides herself—to know who she was meeting.”

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

Caroline awakened him at half past seven, less than thirty minutes after he’d dropped into bed, the day’s baking completed and the vans filled and on their way to the shops. He’d only just started to dream when his wife came into the room and said his name in a low voice that suggested she was merely testing the waters of his slumber in an effort to see how deep they were. Not deep enough, especially as she made sure this was the case by also touching his shoulder. He was dead spent as the visit from the police on the previous late afternoon had put paid to his usual evening’s kip prior to having to go to work. Now all he wanted was a few hours’ sleep. But when she said his name a second time as she touched his shoulder, Alastair opened his eyes.

Caroline always took care with her appearance, but now she looked as if she hadn’t slept all night. Her face was puffier than usual, and she had a bruised look about the eyes. She was wearing her mac and carrying her handbag, and he thought irritably that she’d awakened him merely to let him know she was going out when a bloody note would have done the job just as well. But her expression said she had information to impart and as he took note that drops of water hung upon her mac, he realised that she was returning to the house from wherever she’d been earlier that morning.

She said, “You’ve not gone to sleep. Thank God. Darling, I hate to ask, but I need you. I can’t cope with doing this alone.”

He tried to process this information. “What’s happened, pet?”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “They’re at Clare’s. I drove by her house and there was a car in the driveway in addition to Clare’s Jetta, and it must be theirs. They can’t have finished up, here in Dorset. They’ll be at her house, and . . . I must go there to collect the rest of my belongings, but I can’t face them alone, Alastair. The police. I know I’m being impossible, but after having them here questioning
me as if I might have actually done something . . . as if it were truly possible . . . Will you take me there?”

“If I c’n have just a few hours’ kip . . . ?”

Her face altered, a wound coming upon it although he couldn’t have named the source of it until she spoke. “Is it that . . . You aren’t thinking that I would have . . . that I could ever have . . . But you
are
starting to doubt me, aren’t you. The police coming all this way from London, with me the person they wish to talk to . . .” She rose from the bed.

He said, “Caro, I think nothing like nothing. I jus’ need an hour or two’s kip and they’re not going anywhere if they’re at Clare’s house, eh? At least not for a while. You got her card, yes? She gave it you, yes? You just ring her and let her know we’ll be by to collect your clobber and you tell her she’s meant to wait there till—”

“You’d do it for her,” she said abruptly. “I understand. Funny thing is, I don’t really blame you. I won’t ask again.” And she left him watching the door that she’d closed behind her.

He lay there staring at the door’s white panels for a good half hour after that, knowing that what Caroline said was true. He would have risen had Sharon been making the request of him. And as things developed, he could have risen for Caroline and accompanied her up to Clare’s house since once she left him he wasn’t able to return to sleep.

What was keeping him awake was more than just the disruption from his wife, though. It was the wondering. His mind was going at fifty miles per, and it headed in one direction, and then another like a vehicle he was trying to control but one that was already self-determined. No matter where it headed and why it headed there, it had a destination called Sharon Halsey.

“I feel trapped” was how he’d explained it to her, speaking gruffly into her soft hair. “It’s that I don’t know
how
I’m ever to—”

She’d shushed him mildly. “Alastair, nothing has to be decided just now. Or even next week or next month. At the moment, just to have this new thing between us, isn’t it enough?”

No, he thought. So he reached for his mobile on the bedside table and he rang her.

She was on her way to the shop in Bridport, she told him. She’d pulled into a lay-by to take his call. The sound of her voice brought a groan to his lips, rising from his groin and escaping him before he could stop it. She asked him what was wrong.

“I’m wanting you,” he replied. “Very blokey of me but there you have it.” He felt the blood coursing down his body, felt the throb of it, tried to stop himself from groaning again.

“You have me,” she said. “There’s no one else I’m seeing. To be honest, I’ve not had a man in that way in a good many years. I’d thought I lost the touch. I’ve not felt beautiful in so long a time, and feeling beautiful makes a woman want to do . . . to please . . .” She laughed. “Good heavens, I can’t believe I’m speaking this way.”

“You, not beautiful?” was his reply. “Look at me if you want to see someone who’s no great shakes in the looks department. There’s a gulf between us, Shar, and you made a bridge right across it.” He slid his hand down to feel his hardness. He closed his fingers, tightened the grip, felt the throbbing. He said, “I want to be free for you.”

“Let’s not talk of that,” she said. “I’m not going to find someone else. I don’t want someone else. No worries, all right? I’ll never hold things over your head.”

“‘Things’?”

“I’ll never say that I’m finished with you ’less you do something to . . .
you
know. I do want us to be together, though. Don’t ever think otherwise. But I c’n see how difficult everything is for you just now. Really, Alastair. I don’t like to say more than that.”

“You’re my angel,” he whispered.

She chuckled. “Hardly that. I just don’t want us chipping away at each other by comparing what we have to anything else. Do you understand what I mean?”

He didn’t, really, because he couldn’t see how one
wouldn’t
compare in his situation. For there was where he was, with whom he was, and how they were together. And then there was the promise of what could be. How could one ever not put those two situations into the balance scale and evaluate them?

He said to her, “I love your voice, Shar.”

“That’s a silly thing to say, but it’s for you, all the same.”

“C’n you talk to me to sleep, then? I can’t have you here, but I c’n have your voice. C’n you talk to me till I drift off? I’d drive to Bridport directly, you know, just to put eyes on you. But now . . . could you talk me to sleep?”

“’Course I can,” Sharon told him.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

“Got a Hermione here, Barb,” Nkata said. “Tha’s one of the names in the diary, innit?”

The washing-up finished, they were back at the dining table, comparing the text messages on Clare Abbott’s phone to her diary. Barbara confirmed that Hermione was one of the names listed, and Nkata read the messages aloud.

From Hermione to Clare:
Need to talk. Another bit from tea with L yesterday. You’ll be interested.

From Clare in return:
Wine 2nite?

From Hermione back:
Mitre. 8:00?
To which Clare agreed.

Barbara noted that the time was different from the time listed for Hermione in her diary, as was the date, as things turned out. So Clare had spoken to the woman more than once.
Another bit
and
you’ll be interested
suggested that Hermione had information for her. Gossip, perhaps? Something more significant?

Barbara went to Clare’s office to get on with things as Nkata continued with the many texts contained on the feminist’s smartphone. They’d agreed not yet to ring anyone whose name they came across. They’d track everyone down physically when the time came as some of them had to be local; the rest they’d hand over to Lynley to see about in London. No sense in giving them advance warning that the police wished to speak with them, they reckoned.

Barbara sat at Clare’s desk. In its centre drawer, she found the kinds of office supplies she expected: pens, pencils, Post-it pads, a stapler, a ruler, a package of Blu Tack. She also found something that was unexpected: ten
packets of condoms. One had been opened and lay spread out inside the drawer as if for some kind of inspection.

She set these to one side and went on to the side drawers of the desk. There were three: two shallow and one deep, of the type suitable for filing folders. The shallow drawers held stationery, business cards, a dead-as-a-doornail digital recorder, wax tapers, a torch, a calculator, a chequebook, a calendar from the National Trust, a box of staples, another of paper clips, and the previous year’s diary. The deeper drawer was locked.