Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 (10 page)

Janey stared at me, an olive still in her hand. “You
what
?” Then she looked again at my face and said, “Oh, no you don’t. You think Derek killed him.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I just don’t want to think about it again, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re going to have to shut Coco’s mouth for him tonight then, dear, aren’t you?” said Janey. “And what about your precious letter?”

I didn’t want to know any more about the letter or about why Janey’s father hadn’t gone to Barcelona: for all I knew he was the nightclub queen of Majorca. I said, “I think, honestly, if anything had been wrong, the authorities would have found out before now. I was a bit steamed up over it all, and it’s not awfully fair, in a way, digging out the old man’s lurid past. If you could put up with me to the end of the week, I’ll potter off on Monday to Kensington W and forget it.”

Three more days would be fair, I felt, to concentrate on my personal life. Austin, for example, had said something about seeing Seville. And Clem was to be at the party tonight. I looked at the clock.

“You can stay as long as you like,” said Janey. Afterward, I realized how absently she had spoken. At the time, I just dragged the bowl of olives away from her fingers and started chopping the bacon. I had to wash my hair, yet, and I didn’t bother to look when the Maserati tuned up and rolled down the driveway a few minutes later.

She was back before dinner, which was just as well, as I was sliding in and out of the kitchen in housecoat and rollers, nursing the veal, and doing last-minute things, like slicing and bedding the avocados in lettuce. Anne-Marie was off, but Helmuth did the last stages, which let me do my eyes and get into this thing I bought in Hung on You, which was made of kind of white moiré silk with polythene bands in between, which rather showed off my suntan.

Daddy would have hit the absolute roof, and I rather thought Mr. Lloyd might wince a trifle. But it was also jolly smart. If I couldn’t frighten Gil, I could shock him. And I could glue Austin, I hoped, to my side, for most of Coco’s ominous party. On Clem, I knew, it would make no impression at all. At parties Clem was a model of boyish high spirits: he got sloshed on beer and told a number of rather good, dirty masculine jokes. Flo always said that if Clem ever really fell for a girl, he would fall awfully hard, and I always felt that someday he would meet her: someone jolly, who could live inexpensively off his overdraft. But he made a fabulous bodyguard.

The funny thing was, I had no premonitions at all. And when I looked back in the papers, it said Capricorn was going to have a hell of a time.

They were right.

MRS. VAN COSTA’S HOUSE, the Casa Mimosa, hired, Anne-Marie said, from the star of an American TV soap opera, lay in a garden not far from the airport and was landscaped with every soap-opera cliché known to man. Spinning along through the warm night in the Cooper S, the first sight of it, long and white and floodlit among the palm trees, was a bit like finding a cruise liner at night in your bathtub: it was all plate glass and wrought iron and creepers and great wax flowers that dangled into the car as we growled round the drive. There was a fancy lake in the front, surrounded by cacti, small palms, lilies, and white marble seats, and floodlit like an old Korda film. Also, hosts of little strips of tinfoil and plastic hung on threads in the air, slung between all the date palms. On each strip, single words had been written in beautiful script. Walking toward the house, the sequence I saw declared,
loving is summer and hell is an electric light bulb
. But as Gilmore pointed out, if you approached the house another way, it read
loving an electric light bulb is hell
. There was a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Mark III flying the Soviet flag drawn up before the front door.

Gilmore and I came to a complete halt, and Austin cannoned into us and then listened while we consulted. The concrete poetry party, it was clear, had not yet got off the ground: apart from the Rolls, there were no cars at all to be seen except our own Cooper S and Coco’s battered Alfa Romeo, parked rather askew at the side of the drive. ‘The Russian Trade Mission, clearly, were still being entertained to dinner by Mrs. van Costa. Whether Mrs. van Costa also knew of Coco’s proposed party and had vetoed it, or whether (as Gil was convinced) she didn’t know and Coco was choosing his moment, remained to be seen.

Austin, who had sold a couple of ikons to Mr. Lloyd and felt on home ground, obviously, as soon as he took in the poetry, said, “Now why would Coco Fairley do a thing like that, Gilmore? After all, he’s a guest in Mrs. van Costa’s house.” Americans are the most formal people on earth, maybe after the Swedes.

“It’s a happening to celebrate the fact that Coco’s being thrown out on his neck,” Gilmore said. “I told him not to stop working. The trouble is, as soon as he finds a new billet, he hits the charlie again.”

Austin hesitated. I’d expected him to be turned out in white tux, all Washington style, but he was wearing a cream wool-jersey suit by Virgul of Paris, with a strawberry cashmere polo-necked sweater. I saw the label.

He said, “If you want to go in, I guess we might do it without embarrassing Mrs. van Costa too much. I met the Mission when Janey brought them round to the gallery, and they invited me to take a glass of wine with them afterward. That is, if we’re not too informally dressed.” Gil was wearing a loose silk shirt hand-woven in Siam over beautiful trousers, and I had on my polythene. Austin wasn’t looking at me.

“Come on,” said Gil.

Mrs. van Costa had brought her own butler. He opened the door in a white jacket, American as a Yellow Cab driver and about as generally welcoming. We asked after Coco and were taken sourly, into a large study lined with stamped Cordoban leather and the finest collection of banned books I’ve ever seen outside St. Tizzy’s, all bound in morocco. Gilmore and I took one each and sat down and got on with it while Austin, who had more inhibitions, prowled round inspecting the bric-à-brac. He came back grining and mentioned that there were more brics than bracs. Then Coco came in, formally dressed, with his long golden sideburns glittering and his face full of early warning signals, and said that Mrs. van Costa had heard we had arrived and would we care to join her in the drawing room. The butler was just behind him. We trooped upstairs, Coco staring at Gilmore. I heard him hiss, dramatically, “What the hell are you playing at? You’re too bloody early!” but I didn’t hear what Gilmore replied. My polythene crackled.

The TV soap-opera star’s drawing room was done in Hollywood Regency, with a fiber-glass Adam chimneypiece and Venetian chandeliers and crimson satin Knole suites. The floor was parquet, with a carpet made of a whole flock of goats sewn together: the air had that strong, randy smell billy goats have. The Russian Trade Mission sat dotted about, drinking vodka.

I had seen them before, of course, at Mr. Lloyd’s luncheon. They still looked burly, sweaty and amiable, sitting in their neat cloth suits, grinning at Mrs. van Costa.

Mrs. van Costa was sitting in one of the armchairs with her legs up on a pouffe, her face without makeup, her short, gray hair sculpture-cut by Mr. Kenneth—who else—and wearing a high-necked, navy crepe trouser suit with a long chiffon scarf that showed every elegant bone in her long, angular body. She was smoking a cheroot in a long ebony holder.

It was Mummy.

I think I mentioned she was an actress. There was the polythene peep-dress, of course, and then I had my hair all done up in loops and plaited through with ribbon, with three Littlewoods’ Asian hairpieces added in for good measure. My face was the last thing she looked at. Even then, she only swung her feet down from the stool, and getting up said, “What a pretty little girl. I don’t think we’ve met before. Coco, introduce us.”

Her neck was stringy and her features were bony, and she hadn’t the pink hair any longer, but she still had the huge saucer eyes I remembered, with false eyelashes and then spikes drawn in under the lashes. She wore no other paint. I had the passing thought that Janey would find her common, and then I thought that Janey probably wouldn’t. Whatever else she hadn’t got, Mummy had always had style. I walked forward, and I could read her expression as if she had spoken. “I’m sorry, honey. But we can’t let it be known that poor old Forsey’s wife and her boyfriend were living only a stone’s throw from where he was killed.” I wondered if Coco knew, and then I saw his face and realized why I’d been brought here, and why the whining back there on the stairs hadn’t seemed to ring true. And just who the mystery woman was with whom Daddy had had his assignation that Saturday night.

I said something, I suppose, and sat down with my knees trembling while the general chitchat began. The Russian who had sat down beside me was asking me in a smiling way what I thought of Ibiza and how I liked swinging London. I must have answered him, because he kept getting nearer, but my brain was pinking like the old Morris.

Whether Daddy had come to the Lloyds’ by sheer chance or whether he had followed Mummy to Ibiza, there was no way of knowing. What did seem certain was that somehow they had come together. And that they had been meeting each other here, in secrecy, or at any rate without it being known they were husband and wife. Except, it was apparent, by Coco.

When had he found out? Recently, I suspected. Or perhaps his jealousy hadn’t become sufficient earlier to make it worth his while telling the police. Or maybe he didn’t give a hoot either way until Mummy showed signs of finding him tedious, and he thought he’d take his revenge by springing her secret on me.

In any case, that let Derek out. No doubt Coco’s silence would have to be bought off by somebody, but for Mummy’s sake, not Derek’s. And I didn’t give a damn about Mummy. The trade attaché moved a bit nearer and Mummy’s voice said, “Coco honey, will you do the honors? There’s something I just must have your little friend look at. Sarah, will you come here with me?”

Voice from the past.
Sarah, you know that your father and I are just not too good at getting along
?
Sarah, there are schools in America just as good as St. Tizzy’s. Sarah honey, I’m afraid if I had money to buy you a fur coat, I’d have one myself
. I followed her into her bedroom, and she shut the door and said, “Hallo,” without moving, with that still, smiling stare that Daddy used to call Bemused Duse. Then she subsided in front of her mirror, without taking her eyes off my face, and said, “How are you, She-she? Are you well? Who’s the act for?” Her mouth got wider, and she gave a sort of cluck of amusement. “I don’t think I’ve seen so much of you since you were about five.”

I said, “Why van Costa? Have you married again?”

“In a month? Poor, darling Forsey,” said Mummy. “It’s my incognito, honey. I’ve had it for ages. Did I give you the most terrible shock?”

I sat on the bed, crackling. “Terrible. Did you know I was around?”

“Of course, darling, but I could hardly step out of character now. I’d even had a cable sent from New York saying I was too ill to go to the poor old thing’s funeral… I don’t know how he died,” she added quickly and, turning round, took another small black cheroot from a box on her table and started to fit it into her holder. “I don’t know why or how or anything. I’m just sorry it happened that way, and I’m going to remember him the way he was, when we first married.”

“It was just coincidence that you were here when he came?” I said. “Or did he come first?”

“How old are you, She-she?” said Mummy. She knows damn well how old I am: she bloody well ought to. She’d got her black cheroot lit. “Twenty, yes. And not married and with no regular boyfriend.” She was silent, smoking, and as I didn’t contradict her, she took the holder out of her mouth and said gently, “You organize, honey. You mustn’t organize. Men just don’t like it.”

“Women don’t like it much, either,” I said. Somehow, whatever I did, I ended up being insulting to Mummy. “Did you meet Daddy before he was found dead? Did he come here?”

She got up and roved around smoking. Her bottom was little and angular, like a twenty-five-year-old gym mistress we once had. God is bloody unfair. Then, “Of course,” she said softly. “We talked. We were thinking of living together again.” She stared at me, smiling. “But that’s not why he went off and killed himself, She-she. I don’t know why he did that.”

I said, “Derek thinks he was a spy.”

She dropped her holder. I’ve never known her make an unpremeditated move in her life but this was, I swear it, although she merely stood, thoughtfully watching it roll, and said, “Don’t move, for God’s sake honey, or your nice dress will melt… Thank you, darling.” She took it from me and sat down, laying the whole thing back on the table. “I didn’t know Derek was so romantically minded. Was this at the funeral?”

“No, this morning,” I said. I didn’t know whether my brother had ever heard of Mrs. van Costa, or if he had, if he knew who she was. But I wasn’t going to let on I didn’t know. I added, “You remember, he was over here just before Daddy died as well, and saw quite a bit of him.”

She stared at me, and a silence developed again: at least a kind of a silence. The house was no longer as quiet as it had been. I wondered how Coco was managing to entertain the Trade Mission in Mummy’s absence, and it occurred to me that if it were to lose none of its dewy happiness, the Trade Mission ought to be got out of the villa pretty damn quick. But there were one or two things I had to find out first. Mummy said, “So far as I know, Derek doesn’t know that I’m here. I’d rather he didn’t know, really. What has he come back for? I thought his test tubes caught cold if he left them.”

“I sent for him,” I said, and then slid it on the line. “I thought Derek killed Daddy.”

The stare was enormous. I think she had had an injection as well. “And did he?” Mummy said. She was sitting quite still.

“I thought Coco knew,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Coco is a traitor to his art,” said Mummy beautifully. “And will have to be dealt with. Come, She-she.” And she got up and walked firmly out of the room.

Coco’s was a paper-bag party. They had them in New York in the twenties, and they were just reaching London when I left it that spring. Flo had been to one and her paper bag split: always inefficient. A paper bag is all you wear. On your head.

Not that Coco had mentioned this when inviting Gilmore and Austin and myself to his party. And not, of course, that he had told Mummy, who wasn’t expecting a party at all.

I was running after her as she swept out of the bedroom to tell her, but she had opened the drawing-room door before I could catch her, and then she stopped and just stood. I looked over her shoulder. Coco had disappeared. The four red squares were still there, and so were Austin and Gilmore, and I never saw six men so plastered in the whole of my life. If he had been pouring vodka into them with a siphon since the moment Mummy and I left, he could hardly have got a more positive effect. They were singing. I think it was “Auld Lang Syne,” but the melodic line was a bit out of the true, and Gil thought he was singing in harmony. Mummy said, “What the hell,” very slowly, but they didn’t even unwind their arms from each other’s necks. She looked round at me.

“Coco’s planned a wild party,” I said. “For tonight. We were all supposed to be his first guests. We didn’t know you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” said Mummy. “What kind of party?”

It was then that one of the guests came wandering along the corridor behind us, clearly in search of a loo. It was a girl, in a Heal’s carrier bag, and she had pink sequins everywhere. When she saw Mummy she stopped rigid, but Mummy just said gently, “It’s third on the left, Madeleine,” and went on smoking. The girl disappeared. Then another door opened and Clement Sainsbury came out, his arms full of vodka. He was fully dressed.

“Hallo, Cassells,” he said. “Mrs. van Costa? You have a problem.”

“This is Clem Sainsbury, Flo Salisbury’s cousin,” I said. “He’s helping on one of the yachts in Ibiza. He holds the track record for helping.”

“I hope I’m helping right now,” said Clem. He seemed anxious to accommodate his language to Mrs. van Costa’s. “There’s a rather extreme sort of…”

“We know all about that,” said my mother. “And the slug among the delphiniums. Where is he?”

“Running the party, down in the playroom. They all came in the side entrance. They’ve got your Spanish dancers as well, I’m afraid, Mrs. van Costa.”

“Good heavens above,” said my mother. “In paper bags?”

“Not yet. But since the Trade Mission were still on the premises, and it seemed very likely that Mr. Fairley would try and involve them…”

“You got them plastered,” said Mummy. She stared at him, with her eyes very wide, and he blushed down to the neck of his dinner suit. “You have the makings,” she said, “of a genius. Put those bottles down. Sarah, ring for Dilling, will you, while I put a disk on the radiogram?”