A Banquet of Consequences (42 page)

A broken water main courtesy of London’s Victorian plumbing made traffic its usual horror, but at least Spitalfields was close to the City and not tucked away somewhere in the far reaches of the suburbs. When Lynley arrived there and found a place to deposit the Healey Elliott where it would be safest from the vicissitudes of life in a megalopolis, he attached Arlo to his lead once again, and they walked a few streets back to a curve-fronted Art Deco building where Charlie Goldacre had his flat. As an elderly woman with a drag-along shopping trolley was just setting out of the place, he didn’t need to ring Caroline Goldacre’s son to ask admittance. He merely held the door open for the woman, graciously accepted her cooing over Arlo—the dog was becoming quite an effective tool, he found—and then stepped inside the vestibule and headed for the stairs. On his way up, he passed a red-eyed woman who was pressing a handful of crumpled tissues to her face and then a sour-faced man a few paces behind her who looked to be the cause of her distress. When he rang the bell at Charlie Goldacre’s flat, tucked into a corner of the first floor of the building, he concluded that these two individuals had been seeing Charlie for some reason, for the young man opened the door, saying, “Did you forget . . .” with his words drifting off when he saw Lynley standing there.

Strangely enough, what he then said was, “I know this dog,” with a nod at Arlo.

“I’m afraid I’m far too soft-hearted to leave him in the car,” Lynley told him. “Charlie Goldacre?” And when Charlie nodded, Lynley reached in his jacket for his identification and said, “Thomas Lynley. New Scotland Yard.”

Charlie looked somewhat taken aback and took half a step into the corridor for a look round, as if expecting someone else to be lurking there. He said, “I thought you were two of my clients. They’d only just left.”

“I believe I saw them on the stairs. Weeping woman and irritated man?”

“Sounds about right.”

“I need a word with your mother, as it happens. I understand she’s come up to town.”

“She’s not here. What’s this about? You must be part of this Clare Abbott situation. Are you? Mum said she’d spoken to Scotland Yard detectives, but this was in Dorset. Are you one of them? Come in.”

He appeared nervous as he stepped back and held the door open wide, but it seemed to Lynley that it could be merely the nervousness of surprise. He reckoned that the psychotherapist—for such Charlie Goldacre was, apparently—did not open his door to detectives from the Metropolitan Police on a regular basis.

“Two of my colleagues are still in Shaftesbury,” Lynley told him. “One of them went to speak to your mother a second time, only to learn from her husband that she’d come to you in London.”

“It’s yes and no,” Charlie told him. He led the way down a short corridor and into a sitting room. Here the Art Deco period of the building showed itself in decorative crown mouldings, in the fireplace surround, in the bookshelves, and in the style of the windows. The place was decorated to suit the period as well. Someone, Lynley thought, had exceptional taste. Arlo certainly seemed to think so. He looked round, sighed, and curled comfortably beneath a glass-topped side table next to the sofa. “Mum did come to me, and she was here last night, but I’m afraid I’ve passed her on to my wife.”

Lynley glanced round the room. There was, he saw, no real indication of a wifely presence. The place was neat, Chinese in its style, and devoid of what he liked to think of as feminine touches although—put to the rack—he wouldn’t have been able to say what those feminine touches were supposed to be. There
was
an attractive photograph of Charlie Goldacre and a woman, presumably the wife. Smallish, it stood on the table at one end of a pale green sofa.

Charlie Goldacre seemed to read Lynley’s confusion. He said, “I should say my estranged wife. She’s across the river. In Camberwell.” He went on to explain that as he met his clients here in the flat, he’d asked his wife if she’d take in his mother for the duration of her stay in London which, he reckoned, would not be long. “I think she’s come to escape Alastair—that’s Mum’s husband, my stepfather—rather than hide from the police.”

“Really? How does he fit in?” Lynley asked.

“It’s rather a mess between them.” Charlie went on with a charming but—considering his listener—curious honesty. “Alastair’s taken a lover, a woman who works for him. Mum found out some time ago and you can probably work out the rest. I’ve tried to make peace between them, but I’m afraid I haven’t got very far. Alastair gave Sharon up once, but according to Mum, they’re back at it, with things having apparently gone too far for the giving-up-Sharon business. I’m sorry for Mum’s sake, but to be honest, she has a way about her . . . I don’t know how to describe it.” He shrugged. “I was about to make myself a martini. Will you join me?”

Lynley said that he would. “A twist, if you have it,” he told Charlie, “rather than olives.”

Charlie said, “In a tick. Do sit,” and he took himself through a small dining area and into the kitchen, where the sound of refrigerator and cupboards opening commenced.

Lynley didn’t sit at once but rather looked round the room as Arlo raised his head momentarily—perhaps with the hope of dinner—and gazed at him with trusting eyes. Lynley said, “Later,” and went first to the photo on the table, putting on his specs for a better look. A younger Charlie, a smiling wife, love in bloom. He felt a stab of the occasional sadness that continued to pierce him these seventeen months since Helen’s murder. She came to him as she sometimes did and probably always would, and he knew if he concentrated he would hear her voice—
Tommy darling, it’s not been a very good day for you, has it? Do tell me, won’t you?
—and even feel the touch of her fingers as she smoothed back his hair.

He set the photo onto the table and went to the bookshelves that rose to the ceiling gracefully on either side of the fireplace. They contained art books and works of nonfiction of a type that told the tale of men and women overcoming disasters. Interspersed here and there was the occasional novel as well as objets d’art in keeping with the Chinese theme. And on the lowest shelves, books related to Charlie’s work and indicative of his background in psychology. Some of these were quite tattered and with their titles missing from their spines; some of them looked like well-thumbed old journals. Everything, however, was neatly arranged. Not a speck of dust rested anywhere.

He turned back to the sofa as Charlie came from the kitchen bearing a tray with their drinks, along with a plate of cheese straws. He set this on a coffee table in front of the sofa with a “Here we are, then,” and removed a stack of manila folders, a box of tissues, a carafe of water, and three glasses. These he put on the dining table, returning to switch on a table lamp and switch off the overhead lights. The room transformed to a home and not a professional meeting place for client and psychotherapist.

While in the kitchen, he’d written an address and two phone numbers on the back of a card. He handed this to Lynley. It was his own card—Charles Goldacre: marriage, family, and individual counseling—and as he gave it to Lynley, he said, “My wife’s details.”

Lynley tucked the card into the breast pocket of his jacket along with his glasses, saying, “I’m surprised your mother’s husband didn’t ring you to tell you the police had come by to speak with her again. It’s actually her fingerprints we’re after. We’ve two sets identified on something of Clare’s but we’ve also a third that’s gone unidentified.”

“You’re thinking the third set are Mum’s?”

“We need to rule her out. It’s all procedure unless, of course, she had a reason to do away with Clare Abbott. She was poisoned, if you haven’t been told. The fingerprints are on the vehicle that delivered the poison.”

“I see.” He was quiet for a moment. Then, “You said there are two other sets of prints.”

“One belonging to Clare and the other to Rory Statham.”

Charlie took a sip of his martini. Lynley did likewise. It was very cold and very good. “You’re not suggesting that Rory did something.”

“We’re working every angle at the moment,” Lynley told him, “both here and in Shaftesbury.”

“Still and all, they’d worked together for years, hadn’t they? Clare and Rory?”

“They had. What about your mother?”

“Admittedly, she’s a handful and God knows she had her issues with Clare—frankly, she has her issues with just about everyone—but I don’t think it’s likely  . . . I know her, probably better than most sons know their mums.”

“You’re quite close to her, then.”

“We both are. Were. My brother Will as well, although he was probably closer to her than I am as he lived with her longer. She was shattered when he died. It changed her. But not into a killer, Inspector.”

“Changed her how?”

Charlie looked regretful for an instant, perhaps feeling a twinge of conscience at having spoken disloyally. But he said, “She’s eaten herself into borderline obesity, although she wouldn’t admit that. She’d be far likelier to call it . . . I don’t know . . . a sudden problem with her metabolism? A thyroid malfunction? She’s on edge a fair amount of the time as well. Close to snapping, experiencing anxiety. Distrustful of people whom she at one time trusted. I expect part of it is down to Alastair, though. His affair and all of that.”

“The name Lily Foster has come up several times,” Lynley told him.

“Are you taking Lily’s fingerprints as well?”

“Should we?”

Charlie set his martini on the coffee table, maintaining his position of leaning towards Lynley but looking at the rim of the glass. He’d drunk a fair amount in the few moments that they’d been speaking. His face was flushed. “Lily was my brother’s partner,” he said. “She was present when . . . Do you know about Will?” He glanced at Lynley as if wishing him to complete the sentence about Lily, and when Lynley did not do so, he explained, adding further details to what Lynley had already gathered: He spoke of Lily’s presence when Will Goldacre jumped to his death, her disappearance from the lives of everyone associated with Will, her subsequent reappearance some time later in Shaftesbury, her haunting of Caroline Goldacre’s home and the bakery in which Alastair MacKerron made the goods for his many Dorset shops. Charlie concluded with, “I presume she’s still in Shaftesbury. She was when Will’s memorial was dedicated. Clare did that for Mum, by the way. She arranged for the memorial. That would be another reason—if you’re looking for one—that it’s not likely Mum would want her dead. She was touched by it all. She was very grateful.”

“As for Lily Foster?”

“She had no relationship to Clare at all, as far as I know,” Charlie told him. “I saw her lurking about at the dedication for my brother’s memorial. I spoke to her as well. But I think she’s gone too far round
the bend to plan something like a killing. She blames Mum for Will’s death and Mum blames her but, frankly, I see them as mutually harmless.” Charlie finished off his martini and placed the glass on one of the cocktail napkins he’d provided for both of them. He said, “Mum’s a bit . . . Look, you must talk to her yourself. She’s always been dramatic about things, overwrought and all that, but I honestly don’t see her ever lifting a finger to hurt anyone.”

Lynley said, “I’ve spoken to your father, by the way.”

Charlie’s face was, for a moment, motionless. Then he said with what seemed like a deliberate lack of concern, “I expect that’s part of what you have to do.” Interestingly, he didn’t ask why Lynley had met with Francis.

“I’ve spoken to your grandmother as well.”

“Have you indeed? What’re you after?”

“Clare Abbott went to see them both shortly before her death. We’re after why.”

“May I ask if you found an answer?”

“Not exactly. They both did indicate that your mother is something of a pathological liar, however, and Clare appears to have been on the trail of that for some reason we can’t work out. Do you experience your mother that way?”

“I experience her as over-the-top when it comes to personal drama. I experience her as frequently manipulative as well. She’s sometimes delusional and rather grandiose, but as far as I know she’s never been an out-and-out liar.”

“What about someone who lies by omission?”

“Have you an example of that?”

“According to your grandmother, your mother had a child out of wedlock at fifteen years of age. Has she told you this?”

“Gran told me. And before you point out that this is a very good example of a lie of omission, I have to say that Mum never told me about it because there was actually no reason to do so and that when Gran told me, it was owing to some sort of row she and Mum had had. Gran likes to take her revenge when she can and the revelation about Mum’s adolescent pregnancy . . . ? That was the way. The baby she had—and by the way, I know it was a daughter—wasn’t part of
our lives. She wasn’t posing as a cousin or a friend of the family. There was no reason for Mum to bring her up, and she probably wanted to forget about ever having her anyway. It was years ago. She was very young. It wasn’t our business, and there’s an end to it.”

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

Barbara felt rather proud of what she’d managed to accomplish while waiting for Winston to return from his out-and-about. While she’d gone in Clare’s car for Caroline Goldacre’s fingerprints, he’d headed out in search of Hermione, Linne, and Wallis: the women whose names had been in Clare Abbott’s diary. Since Barbara had finished up first, she’d decided she owed Nkata a meal. He, after all, had been doing the honours with breakfast and lunch. Applying herself to dinner didn’t seem like something that would tax her knowledge.

There was a supermarket in the centre of Shaftesbury, where she stopped before returning to Clare Abbott’s house. She grabbed a shopping trolley and sauntered in the direction of whatever was tinned. There was a limit, admittedly, to her culinary skills.

Of course, Winston didn’t need to
know
that tins were involved. How difficult could it actually be to pull the wool over his eyes? All she needed to do was get back to the house in advance of his arrival. She could heat up whatever she happened to come upon that looked decent in the market, and she could also hide the tins. A quick trip up and down four aisles did the trick. She grabbed up tinned beef goulash and tinned beetroot, and then went in search of something that would do for a starter. She settled on savoury biscuits with orange marmalade accompanied by tuna-and-mayo paste, and she then made her selection of pudding by scoring a frozen toffee-pecan Dream Pie. After that, all she needed was drink, which was simplicity itself. Three cans of white wine would do for her, and three bottles of Fanta Lemon would satisfy Winston. It was time he broadened his horizons anyway. One could not possibly stay hydrated over a lifetime on skim milk and water alone.