This Body of Death (33 page)

“Dominique didn’t know Jemima,” he told them, with a nod at the woman. “She’d have nothing to add.”

But she knew di Fazio, Isabelle reckoned, and she might come in useful down the line. She said, “We’ll keep our voices down, if that’s what worries you, Mr. di Fazio.”

“She will want to concentrate on her work.”

“I daresay we won’t prevent her from doing so.”

Behind his gold-framed spectacles, the sculptor’s eyes narrowed. It was just a fractional movement, but Isabelle did not miss it. She said, “This actually won’t take long. It’s about your argument with Jemima. And about an at-home pregnancy test.”

Di Fazio gave no reaction to the remark. He looked briefly from Isabelle to Lynley as if evaluating the nature of their relationship. Then he said, “I had no argument with Jemima that I remember.”

“You were overheard. It would have taken place in your lodgings in Putney, and chances are very good it might have had to do with that pregnancy test, which was, by the way, found among your belongings.”

“You have no warrant—”

“As it happens, we aren’t the ones who found it.”

“Then it’s not evidence, is it. I know how these things work. There’s a procedure that must be followed. And this
was
not followed, so this pregnancy test or whatever it is cannot be evidence against me.”

“I applaud your knowledge of the law.”

“I’ve read enough of injustice in this country, madam. I’ve read how the British police work. People who have been unjustly accused and unjustly convicted. The Birmingham gentlemen. The Guildford group.”

“You may have done.” Lynley was the one to speak, and Isabelle noted that he didn’t bother to lower his voice to prevent Dominique from hearing. “So you’ll also know that in building a case against a suspect in a murder investigation, some things go down as background information and some as evidence. The fact that you had an argument with a woman who turned up dead may be neither here nor there, but if it
is
neither here nor there, it seems the wiser course to clear things up about it.”

“Which is another way of saying,” Isabelle noted, “that you have some explaining to do. You indicated that you and Jemima ultimately stopped having relations when she took up lodgings with Mrs. McHaggis.”

“That was the truth.” Di Fazio cast a look in Dominique’s direction. Isabelle wondered if the other artist had taken Jemima’s place.

“Had she become pregnant during the time when you and she were still lovers?”

“She had not.” Another look in Dominique’s direction. “Can we not have this conversation elsewhere?” he asked. “Dominique and I…We hope to marry this winter. She doesn’t need to hear—”

“Do you indeed? And this would be your sixth engagement, wouldn’t it?”

His face grew stormy, but he mastered this. He said, “Dominique doesn’t need to hear facts about Jemima. Jemima was done with.”

“That’s an interesting choice of words,” Lynley noted.

“I didn’t hurt Jemima. I didn’t touch Jemima. I wasn’t there.”

“Then you won’t mind telling us everything you’ve so far failed to tell us about her,” Isabelle said. “You also won’t mind providing us with an alibi for the time of Jemima’s death.”

“Not here. Please.”

“All right. Then at the local nick.”

Di Fazio’s face went completely rigid. “Unless you place me under arrest, I do
not
have to take a step out of this studio in your company, and this I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve read about my rights.”

“That being the case,” Isabelle said, “you’ll also know that the sooner you clear up this matter of you, Jemima, the pregnancy test, the argument, and your alibi, the better off you’ll be.”

Di Fazio cast another look in Dominique’s direction. She seemed intent upon her work, Isabelle thought, but who could really tell. They appeared to be at the point of impasse when Lynley made the move that resolved the situation: He went to Dominique’s area to examine her work, saying, “May I have a look? I’ve always thought that the lost-wax process …” and on he went till Dominique was fully engaged.

“So?” Isabelle said to di Fazio.

He turned his back on Lynley and Dominique, the better to prevent his intended bride’s reading of his lips, Isabelle reckoned. He said, “It was before Dominique. It was Jemima’s test, in the rubbish in the toilet. She’d told me there was no one else in her life. She’d said she wanted a break from men altogether. But when I saw the test, I knew that she’d lied. There was someone new. So I spoke with her. And it was hot, this conversation, yes. Because she would not be with me but I
knew
that she would be with him.”

“Who?”

“Who else? Frazer. She wouldn’t risk it with me. But with him … ? If she lost her place in the lodging as a result of Frazer, it didn’t matter.”

“She
told
you it was Frazer Chaplin?”

He looked impatient. “She didn’t need to tell me. This is Frazer’s way. Have you seen him? Have you spoken to him? There’s no woman that he wouldn’t try to take because that’s who he is. Who else would it be?”

“He wasn’t the only man in her life.”

“She went to the ice rink. For lessons, she said, but I knew better. And sometimes she went to Duke’s Hotel as well. She wanted to see what Frazer was up to. And he was up to finding ladies.”

Isabelle said, “Perhaps. But there are other men whose lives touched hers. At her own place of employment, at the ice rink—”

“What? You suppose she was …what? With Abbott Langer? With Jayson Druther? She went to work, she went to the ice rink, she went to Duke’s Hotel, she went home. Trust me. She did nothing else.”

“If that’s the case,” Isabelle said, “you do see how this gives you a motive for murdering her, don’t you?”

Colour rushed into his face, and he grabbed up one of his tools and used it to gesture with. “Me? It’s
Frazer
who would want her dead. Frazer Chaplin. He would want to shake her away from him. Because she wouldn’t give him the freedom he required to do what he does.”

“Which is?”

“He fucks the ladies. All the ladies. And the ladies like it. And he makes them want it. And
when
they want it, they seek him out. So this is what she was doing.”

“You seem to know quite a lot about him.”

“I’ve
seen
him. I’ve watched them. Frazer and women.”

“Some might say he’s merely had better luck with women, Mr. di Fazio. What do you make of that?”

“I know what you’re trying to say. Don’t think I’m foolish. I’m telling you how it is with him. So I ask you this: If Frazer Chaplin wasn’t the man she’d taken as her lover, then who was it?”

It was an interesting question, Isabelle thought. But far more interesting at the moment was the fact that di Fazio had seemed to know what Jemima Hastings’ every movement had been.

T
WO OF THEM
hovered. Their form was different. One rose from an ashtray on a table, a cloud of grey that became a cloud of light from which he had to turn his head even as he heard the booming cry of
The eighth choir stands before God.

He tried to block the words.

They are the messengers between man and man’s Deity
.

The cries were loud, louder than they had ever been and even as he filled his ears with music, another cry came from another direction, saying
Battlers of those who themselves were born of the bearer of light. Distort God’s plan and be thrown into the jaws of damnation
.

Although he tried not to seek the source of this second shrieking, he found it anyway because a chair swept into the air before him and it began to take shape and it began to approach him. He shrank away.

What he knew was that they came in disguises. They were travelers, they were healers of the sick, they were inhabitants of the pool of Probatica at whose shores the infirm lay awaiting the movement of the water. They were the builders, the slave masters of demons.

He who healed was also present. He spoke from within the cloud of grey and he became flame and the flame burned emerald. He called not for righteous anger but for a flood of music to issue forth in praise.

But the other fought him. He who was destruction itself, known by Sodom, called Hero of God. But he was Mercy as well, and he claimed to sit at the left hand of God, unlike the other. Incarnation, conception, birth, dreams. These were his offerings.
Come with me
. But a price would be paid.

I am Raphael and it is you who are called
.

I am Gabriel and it is you who are chosen.

Then there was a chorus of them, a veritable flood of voices, and they were everywhere. He worked against being taken by them. He worked and he worked till the sweat poured from him and still they came on. They descended till there was one mighty being above all, and he approached. He would not be denied. He would overcome. And to this there was no other answer that might be given so he had to escape he had to run he had to find a place of safety.

He himself gave the cry against the multitude that he now knew was indeed the Eighth Choir. There was a stairway that emerged from the light and he made for this, for wherever it headed. To the light, to God, to some other Deity, it didn’t matter. He began to climb. He began to run.

“Yukio!” came the cry from behind him.

“S
O
I
HAVE
the impression the engagement is all in Paolo di Fazio’s head,” Lynley said. “Dominique did a bit of eye rolling when I offered her my congratulations.”

“Now that’s an interesting bit,” Isabelle Ardery said. “Well, I did think six times engaged was rather pushing the envelope in the human relationship area. I mean, I’ve heard of six times married—well, perhaps only with American film stars in the days when they actually
did
get married—but it’s rather odd that with all the engagements, he’s never made it to the altar. It does make one wonder about him. How much is real and how much is imagined.”

“He may have done.”

“What?” Ardery turned to him. They’d stopped at the delicatessen, which occupied one of the railway arches. She was making a purchase of olives and meats. She’d already bought a bottle of wine at the wine cellar.

Lynley reckoned these would likely stand in place of her dinner. He knew the signs, having worked for so many years with Barbara Havers and having thus become accustomed to the single policewoman’s eating habits. He considered extending an invitation to the superintendent: dinner at his home in Eaton Terrace? He rejected the idea, as he couldn’t imagine as yet sharing his dining table with anyone.

“He may have made it to the altar,” he said. “Married. Philip Hale will be able to tell us. Or perhaps John Stewart. We’re developing a rather long list for the background checks. John can help out there if you’ve a mind to move him.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d adore that assignment.” The superintendent took her bag of goods, said thanks to the shop girl, and headed for her car. The day was heating up. Surrounded by and composed of bricks, concrete, and macadam, possessing all the possible charms that overfull wheelie bins and rubbish on the street could provide, the area immediately round the railway arches was like a wrestler’s armpit: steaming and malodorous.

They got into the car before Isabelle Ardery said more. She cranked down the window, cursed that she did not have air-conditioning, pardoned herself for cursing, and then said, “What d’you make of him, then?”

“Isn’t there a song about it?” Lynley said. “Looking for love in all the wrong places?” He wound down his window as well. They headed off. His mobile rang. He looked at the number and felt an unaccustomed moment of dread. Assistant Commissioner Hillier was phoning, or at least his office was.

Where was the inspector and could he come to the AC’s office? Hillier’s secretary wanted to know. And welcome back to New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector. This is an unofficial meeting, by the way. No need to mention it to anyone.

Code for don’t mention this meeting to Isabelle Ardery, and why, accordingly, didn’t you let the assistant commissioner know you would be returning to work? Lynley didn’t much like the inference that could be drawn from it all. He said that he was out at the moment but he would come in to see the assistant commissioner as soon as he could. He included the words
assistant commissioner
with a slow deliberation. He felt Ardery glance in his direction.

He said to her as he ended the call, “Hillier. Wanting a word.”

She drove on, her gaze on the road. She said, “Thank you, Thomas. Are you always so decent?”

“Virtually never.”

She smiled. “I meant John Stewart, by the way.”

“Pardon?”

“When I asked what you make of him.”

“Ah. Right. Well. He and Barbara have nearly come to blows over the years, if that’s any help.”

“Women in general, then? Or women coppers?”

“That’s something I’ve never been able to work out. He was married once. It ended badly.”

“Ha. I expect we know who wanted to end it.” Isabelle said nothing more till they’d crossed over the river again. And then, “I’m going to want a warrant, Thomas.”

“Hmm. Yes. I expect that’s the only course. And he knows his rights rather too well, doesn’t he. Hillier would call it an unfortunate sign of the times.”

It came to Lynley as he spoke that he’d followed Ardery’s line of thought with ease. They’d gone smoothly from John Stewart to Paolo di Fazio without the need for clarification and without the further need for Ardery to explain why a search warrant was required: They were going to want to gather up the artist’s sculpting tools. Indeed, they were going to need the tools of every one of the artists with whom Paolo di Fazio shared space. Forensic examinations would have to be done on everything.