This Body of Death (72 page)

“We’ve not got time,” Lynley said. “We were hoping to have a word with you, Deb.”

Isabelle heard this with some surprise, as she’d concluded they’d come to Chelsea not to pay a call on Deborah St. James but rather on her husband. Deborah seemed as surprised as Isabelle, but she said, “In here, then. It’s much more hospitable.”

“In here” was a library of sorts, Isabelle reckoned as she and Lynley entered. It was situated where one would normally expect to find a sitting room, with its window overlooking the street. There were masses of books—on shelves, on tables, and upon the floor—along with comfortable chairs, a fireplace, and an ancient desk. There were newspapers as well, piles of them. It looked to Isabelle as if the St. Jameses subscribed to every broadsheet in London. As a woman who liked to travel light and live unencumbered, Isabelle found the place overwhelming. Deborah appeared to note her reaction because she said, “It’s Simon. He’s always been like this, Superintendent. You c’n ask Tommy. They were at school together, and Simon was the despair of their housemaster. He’s not improved in the least since. Please just shove something to the floor and sit. And it’s not usually
this
bad. Well, you know that, Tommy, don’t you?” She glanced at Lynley as she said this last. Then her gaze went back to Isabelle, and she smiled quickly. It was not in amusement or friendliness, Isabelle realised, but to cover something.

Isabelle found a spot that required the least amount of removal. She said, “Please. It’s Isabelle, not superintendent,” and again that quick smile in return from Deborah followed by her glance at Lynley. She was reading something directly off him, Isabelle reckoned. She also reckoned that Deborah St. James knew Thomas far better than her airiness suggested.

“Isabelle, then,” Deborah said. And then to Lynley, “He’s got to have it tidied by next week at any rate. He’s promised.”

“Your mother’s paying a visit, I take it?” Lynley said to St. James.

All of them laughed.

It came to Isabelle once again that the group of them spoke some form of shorthand. She wanted to say, “Yes, well, let’s get
on
with things,” but something held her back and she didn’t like what that
something
told her: either about herself or about her feelings. She didn’t
have
feelings in this matter.

Lynley brought them round to the purpose of their call. He asked Deborah St. James about the National Portrait Gallery show. Might he have another copy of the magazine with pictures taken on the opening night? Barbara Havers had the magazine off him, but he recalled Deborah had another. Deborah said of course and went to one of the stacks of periodicals where she dug down to unearth a magazine. She handed this over. Then she found another—a different one, this—and handed that to Lynley as well. She said, “Really, I didn’t
buy
them all, Tommy. Simon’s brothers and his sister …And then Dad was rather proud …” Her face had coloured.

Lynley said solemnly, “In your position I’d have done exactly the same.”

“She’s claiming her fifteen minutes,” St. James said to Lynley.

“You’re both impossible,” Deborah said, and to Isabelle, “They like to tease me.”

St. James asked, not unreasonably, what Lynley wanted with the magazine. What was happening? he wanted to know. This had to do with the case, hadn’t it?

Indeed, Lynley told him. They had an alibi to break, and he reckoned the photos of the gallery opening were going to be helpful in breaking it.

With the magazines in their possession, they were ready to set out on the next phase of their journey. Isabelle couldn’t see how a set of society photographs were going to be useful, and that was what she told Lynley once they were out on the pavement again. They got into the Healey Elliott before he replied. He handed the magazines to her. He leaned over when she found the photos of the National Portrait Gallery’s opening show, and he pointed to one of them. Frazer Chaplin, he said. The fact that he was at the opening was going to serve as the wedge they needed.

“For what?”

“To separate a lie from the truth.”

She turned to him. He was, of a sudden, disturbingly close. He seemed to know this because he looked as if he was about to say something else or, worse, do something that both of them would come to regret.

She said, “And exactly what truth would that be?”

He moved away. He turned on the ignition. He said, “When I thought about it, the date on his contract didn’t mean anything.”

“What date? What contract?”

“The contract with DragonFly Tonics, Frazer Chaplin’s agreement to use his Vespa to advertise the product. The contract called for a bright colour of paint; it designated the number of transfers required. His signature makes it appear as if he went out directly and had the work done.”

“He didn’t,” she said, understanding now. “Winston’s watching those films for a lime green Vespa with transfers. The house to house is asking about a lime green Vespa with transfers.”

“Something likely to be seen and remembered.”

“When he didn’t use a lime green Vespa with transfers to get up to Stoke Newington at all.”

He nodded. “I rang the paint shop in Shepherd’s Bush after I spoke to Barbara about meeting her snout. Frazer Chaplin went there indeed to have the Vespa painted and the transfers applied. But he did it the day after Jemima died.”

B
ELLA
M
C
H
AGGIS WAS
wrestling a new worm-composting bin from her car when Scotland Yard arrived. Her visitors comprised the two officers she’d spoken to at the Met, on the day when she’d found poor Jemima’s handbag. They parked across the street from Bella’s house in an antique motorcar, which was how she noticed them at first, because of the car itself. The appearance of such a vehicle in Oxford Road—or any road, she reckoned—was going to draw attention. It spoke of indulgence, money by the bucketful, and petrol swallowed down willy-nilly.
Where
was conservation? she wondered. Where was good sense? She couldn’t remember their names, but she nodded a greeting as they came across the street towards her.

The man—he politely reintroduced himself as DI Lynley and his companion as Superintendent Ardery—took over the removal of the composting bin from Bella’s car. He had manners. There was no doubt about it. Somebody had brought him up correctly, which was more than one could say about most people under the age of forty these days.

Obviously, they hadn’t come to Putney to help her with her worm composting, so Bella asked them into the house. The inspector needed to put the bin into the back garden anyway, and since the only way to get there was through the house, once they were inside Bella did the proper thing and offered them a cup of tea.

They demurred, but they did say—this was the woman, Superintendent Ardery—that they’d like a word. Bella said of course, of course, and she added stoutly that she
hoped
they’d come to tell her an arrest had been made in this terrible affair of Jemima’s death.

They were close, DI Lynley said.

They’d come to talk to her about Frazer Chaplin, the superintendent added.

She said it kindly, and the kindness made Bella’s antennae go up. She said, “
Fra
zer? What’s this about Frazer? Haven’t you done
anything
at all about that psychic?”

“Mrs. McHaggis.” It was Lynley now. Bella didn’t half like the way he sounded, which was unaccountably regretful. Less did she like his expression because it suggested to her an element of …Was it
pity
? She felt her spine stiffen.

“What?” she barked. She felt like showing them the door. She wondered how many more times she was going to have to direct these stupid people where they
needed
directing, which was on to Yolanda the Flipping Psychic.

Lynley again. He began an explanation of sorts. It had to do with Jemima’s mobile and calls made to it on the day of her death and calls made to it
after
her death and pinging towers, whatever
they
were. Frazer had rung her within the time frame of her death, it seemed, but he had not rung her afterwards, which, apparently, was suggesting to the coppers that Frazer thus had murdered the poor girl! If there was ever anything more nonsensical than that, Bella McHaggis did not know what it was.

Then the woman copper chimed in. Her explanation had to do with Frazer’s motorbike. She banged on about its colour, the transfers he had put upon it to raise a bit of needed money, and how transporting oneself on a scooter like Frazer’s made getting round town a rather simple thing.

Bella said, “Hang on just a minute,” because she wasn’t as thick as they seemed to think and she suddenly understood where this was heading. She pointed out that if it was scooters they were interested in, had they thought about the fact that the scooter they were yammering about was an
Italian
scooter and
Italian
scooters could be hired for the day and she had an
Italian
living right there in her house, one who’d been thick as you know what with Jemima before Jemima had ended things between them? And didn’t
that
damn well suggest that they ought to be looking at Paolo di Fazio if they were so intent upon pinning this crime on someone in Bella’s house?

“Mrs. McHaggis.” Lynley again. Those soulful eyes. Brown. Why did the man have hair so blond and yet eyes so brown to go with it?

Bella didn’t want to listen and she certainly didn’t want to hear. She reminded them that nothing of what they were saying mattered because Frazer hadn’t been anywhere close to Stoke Newington on the day of Jemima Hastings’ death. He’d been exactly where he always was between his work at the ice rink and his job at Duke’s Hotel. He’d been here in this house, showering and changing. She’d told them that, she’d bloody well told them, how many more times was she going to have to—

“Has he seduced you, Mrs. McHaggis?” It was the woman who asked the question and she asked it baldly. They were all sitting at the kitchen table, and there was a set of condiment containers on it and Bella wanted to hurl them at the woman or perhaps at the wall, but she didn’t do so. She said instead, “How dare you!” which, she realised, was an antique remark that betrayed her age more than anything else she might have said. Young people—people like these two officers—talked about this sort of thing all the time. They didn’t use the word
seduce
either, when they talked about it among themselves, and they thought nothing of what it meant to invade someone’s privacy in such a way—

“It’s what he does, Mrs. McHaggis,” the superintendent said. “We already have confirmation on this from—”

“This house has rules,” Bella told them stiffly. “
And
I’m not that sort of woman. To suggest …even to
think
 …even to
begin
to think …” She was sputtering, and she knew it. She expected this made her seem a perfect fool in their eyes, an old bag who’d somehow fallen victim to a smooth-talking Lothario come to remove her from her money when she
had
no money in the first place so why would he have even bothered with the likes of her? She gathered her wits. She gathered what dignity she had left. She said, “I know my lodgers. I make a habit of knowing my lodgers because I’m sharing a bloody
house
with them, and I’m not very likely to want to share my house with a murderer, am I?” She didn’t wait for them to reply to this question, which was largely rhetorical anyway. She said, “So you listen to me because I’m not going to repeat myself: Frazer Chaplin’s been here in this house from the first week I started letting rooms, and I think I’d have sorted out that he was …
whatever
you seem to think he is …a bloody long time before now, don’t you?”

The two cops exchanged a long look. It was the man who picked up the conversation next. He said, “You’re right. That wasn’t a particularly helpful direction. I think the superintendent merely meant that Frazer’s got something of an appeal for women.”

“What if he does?” she demanded. “It’s hardly his fault.”

“I wouldn’t disagree.” Lynley went on to ask could they just go back over what she’d told them about Frazer’s whereabouts on the day that Jemima Hastings died?

She said she’d
told
them. She’d told them and told them and telling them again was not going to change things. Frazer had done what he always did—

Which turned out to be their point. If one day looked exactly like another in the life of Frazer Chaplin, was there a possibility that she was mistaken, that she was merely telling them what she
thought
he’d done, that he had perhaps done or said something later on to make her believe or assume he’d been home during that time when he was usually home, while the truth of the matter was that he wasn’t at home at all? Did she always see him when he came home to shower and change between his two jobs? Did she always hear him? Was she always, in fact, here at that time? Did she sometimes go to the shops? Putter round the back garden? Meet a friend? Go out for a coffee? Become caught up in a phone conversation or a television programme or a commitment to something that took her out of the house or even to another part of the house, resulting in the possibility that she didn’t actually know, couldn’t swear to, hadn’t seen, couldn’t confirm …

Bella felt dizzy. They were spinning her round and round with all their possibilities. The truth of the matter was that Frazer was a good boy and they couldn’t see this about him because they were cops and she knew about cops, she did. Didn’t they all? Didn’t they
all
know that what cops did best was find a supposed killer and then massage the facts to pin guilt upon him? And hadn’t the newspapers shown that to the public time after time with the Met putting supposed IRA blokes away for years on spurious evidence and God, God, Frazer was
Irish
, God he was Irish and didn’t that make him guilty in their eyes?