Authors: Cassandra Chan
Trick of the Mind (12 page)
James had leaned back and was drinking his coffee while looking a touch bemused. Letting witnesses reminisce randomly was clearly not his usual interview technique, but having allowed Bethancourt to introduce it, he was apparently content to let it continue and see what came of it.
“A moot point indeed,” he murmured, half to himself, and then, “What, exactly, was moot?”
“Well, how we would have felt if we hadn’t come,” explained Coleman.
“Ah.”
“Why did you, by the way?” asked Bethancourt.
Coleman looked a little surprised. “Why, Aunt Miranda asked us to. She sent a letter. I hadn’t any idea I was her heir before that—I mean, it’s really quite a distant relationship, for all I call her my aunt.”
“But you knew, of course, about the jewelry collection?” asked James.
“Oh, yes.” Coleman grinned. “It’s quite legendary in my family. My grandmother only ever referred to it as ‘the wages of sin.’”
“Then presumably she wouldn’t have wished to inherit it,” said James dryly.
“Heavens, no. But I’m not so pure-minded as my grandmother.” Coleman grinned again.
“Mr. Bethancourt was asking about Rose’s death, Rob,” prompted his wife softly.
“Right. Well, the poor old girl just keeled over one day, carrying a tray up the stairs. Aunt Miranda’s early tea, it was. It made a frightful clatter that even Aunt Miranda could hear, and she rang for an ambulance, but it was too late. The doctor said Rose was probably dead before she hit the bottom of the stairs. A massive coronary, you see.”
“I think her death rather shook Miranda,” said Lia in her quiet way. “I don’t think she had ever imagined she would outlast Rose. She seemed—much less herself, after that.”
Coleman gave his wife a sympathetic look. “You always rather liked her, didn’t you?”
“I did. She was interesting, I thought, for all she could be difficult.”
“She was certainly difficult after Rose died,” said Coleman glumly. “You have to understand,” he said to his guests, “she couldn’t really look after herself anymore. Rose had been doing all the cooking and housework, and making sure Aunt Miranda didn’t fall down in the bath or anything. But Aunt Miranda wouldn’t have anyone else in, and she wouldn’t hear of moving. Lia and I were at our wits’ ends. We arranged for a home health aide, but Miranda sent the first three packing in as many days. The last one seemed all right, but of course she only came in a few hours a day. Lia and I were just deciding we had better move in—even though, mind, we hadn’t yet decided to settle in England—when Aunt Miranda’s health took a turn for the worse and she had to go into hospital.” He turned his palms up in an empty gesture. “She never came out again.”
“Speaking of which,” said James, “have you decided what you’re going to do now?”
“Not really.” Coleman shrugged and exchanged glances with his wife. “We were thinking we’d stay on here for a bit, but that was before we discovered what a mess Aunt Miranda’s estate was in. On the other hand, it would be nice to find out what happened to the jewels before we leave, and you say that may take some time.”
“It may,” agreed James. “Although we’re certainly trying to hurry it along.”
“We appreciate it,” said Coleman earnestly. He gave a little laugh.
“You can’t know what it’s like, thinking that quite soon you’ll be the owners of a fabulous collection of jewels, only to find out the next day that you’ll never even get to see them.”
“You can’t know what it’s like, thinking that quite soon you’ll be the owners of a fabulous collection of jewels, only to find out the next day that you’ll never even get to see them.”
James smiled sympathetically. “Very frustrating, I’m sure,” he said, rather perfunctorily. “Well, thank you very much for your time, Mr. Coleman, Mrs. Coleman. We must be getting on—lots to do, you know. Do ring me if you have any further thoughts on the matter. I’ll be in touch.”
And with this little speech, James maneuvered them out of the sitting-room area and over to the door. He shook hands cordially with Coleman, complimented Lia on the coffee, and then whisked Bethancourt into the lift.
His genial smile faded as soon as the lift doors closed and his gray eyes turned coldly shrewd.
“And so what did you think of our heirs?” he asked.
Bethancourt was already considering this question. “If Rob Coleman was English,” he said, “I’d say he was a dreadful bounder.”
James laughed heartily. “So would I,” he agreed. “But of course he’s not English, or even British. He’s Ukrainian, which makes him unique in my experience.”
“Mine, too,” admitted Bethancourt. “I’ve known a few Eastern Europeans, and even one or two Russians, but never a Ukrainian.”
“Which means he may not be a bounder at all,” said James with a sigh.
“Even if he is,” pointed out Bethancourt as the doors slid open and they emerged into the lobby, “it doesn’t mean he’s a jewel thief or a murderer.”
“Alas, no. If it did, my job would be much easier and I would be a richer man than I am. Oh, dear, it’s raining again.”
James paused for a moment to regard the cold drizzle outside sourly.
“Well,” he said, recovering his aplomb and pulling out his mobile, “we needed a taxi in any case. I’m going to have another look at the Haverford place,” he added to Bethancourt as he scrolled through his contacts. “You’re welcome to come if you think the scene of the crime would interest you.”
“I’d like to see it,” said Bethancourt. “It’s very good of you to offer.”
James waved this away as he dialed and lifted the phone to his ear.
Carmichael surveyed the door of Gibbons’s flat carefully before he stepped forward to insert the key in the lock. So far as he could see, it showed no signs of having been forced or otherwise tampered with.
The key turned smoothly, and let him into a pleasant sitting room with double windows that let in the afternoon light. It was not a large room, but it was arranged comfortably enough, with a pair of overstuffed chairs, which needed new upholstery, a stout oaken coffee table, and a brightly colored rug. There was a drop-leaf table against the wall by the windows, with two straight-backed chairs set by it. Everything was quite neat and clean, with the exception of a coffee mug on the coffee table, and a jumble of loose change, various receipts, and a couple of CDs without their cases that were all piled on the tiny table by the door which held the phone and answer machine.
To the right was the narrow kitchen, and beyond that the doors to the bedroom and bath, both of which were ajar.
Carmichael stood just within the front door, contemplating the room before him. Gibbons had not been gone long enough for the flat to have a disused air, and the only sign that all was not business as usual was the coffee mug, in which the dregs of Tuesday morning’s coffee had dehydrated into a thick black coating at the bottom of the mug.
Carmichael had never been here before; sergeants did not commonly invite detective chief inspectors to their homes, especially not when the home in question was a bachelor flat with little in the way of amenities. But the place spoke to him of Gibbons, and he felt an intruder into his subordinate’s private life. He did not like to venture farther in without invitation.
But he knew his job. He drew a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, pulled them on, and moved to the drop-leaf table where Gibbons’s laptop lay. This would be the sergeant’s personal machine, and
it was with great reluctance that Carmichael started it up. He stood while it booted up, dreading what he might find once it was running.
it was with great reluctance that Carmichael started it up. He stood while it booted up, dreading what he might find once it was running.
It was not that he suspected Gibbons of any criminal activity; it was only that he hated probing into what was none of his business. He did not want to know what, if any, political sites his sergeant had been visiting on the Internet. He did not want to read Gibbons’s private e-mails. He liked their relationship very well the way it was, and he would greatly prefer not to know things Gibbons had chosen not to share with him.
On the other hand, better he than anyone else. He at least had Gibbons’s best interests at heart, and if he found things today that troubled him, he would take care to bury them deep, as deeply as he could, even if he could not rid himself entirely of their memory.
The computer was on. With a sigh, Carmichael brought up the browser and checked the history. The most recently visited site was the
Guardian
’s on Tuesday, probably a morning ritual as Carmichael saw no sign of a physical newspaper. The next lot of sites were gathered under Monday’s date, and there were a great many of them. Running his eye down the list, Carmichael smiled. They were all, every last one, sites dealing with gemstones and heritage jewelry. Gibbons had simply been doing his homework.
Guardian
’s on Tuesday, probably a morning ritual as Carmichael saw no sign of a physical newspaper. The next lot of sites were gathered under Monday’s date, and there were a great many of them. Running his eye down the list, Carmichael smiled. They were all, every last one, sites dealing with gemstones and heritage jewelry. Gibbons had simply been doing his homework.
Further back, there were other sites visited, but Carmichael was relieved not to find anything to be embarrassed about. Probably buried somewhere in the computer’s bowels was something he did not want to know, but it looked very much as if he would not have to dig it out, and that was a great relief.
Gibbons’s e-mail was password protected, which made it quite beyond Carmichael’s ability to open. He bit his lip at that, but there was no help for it: some anonymous scientist in forensics would see the correspondence before Carmichael could vet it. He could only hope Gibbons’s e-mail was as innocuous as his Internet habits.
He wasn’t much looking forward to inspecting the bedroom, either, but here again he found nothing to distress him. Gibbons apparently had not had time to make his bed on Tuesday morning, and he had read himself to sleep on Monday night with Ian Mc-Ewan’s latest novel. His clothes hamper was nearly full, and he did
keep a supply of condoms in his bedside table drawer, but that was only to be expected in a young, single man. A chair held some discarded clothing, and on the top of the bureau was a collection of things from Gibbons’s pockets. Carmichael went through the drawers perfunctorily, finding only what one might expect.
keep a supply of condoms in his bedside table drawer, but that was only to be expected in a young, single man. A chair held some discarded clothing, and on the top of the bureau was a collection of things from Gibbons’s pockets. Carmichael went through the drawers perfunctorily, finding only what one might expect.
In the closet he did find a collection of used notebooks, but they all referenced past cases.
And that was really the only thing in the flat that had anything to do with Gibbons’s work. Carmichael had rather expected it to be so; he knew from his own experience that detectives spent so much time at work that many of their personal effects ended up at the Yard, rather than Yard business at the home. Still, he had had to make sure.
There was in the end only the computer to be taken back to forensics. With a better heart, Carmichael took extra care to make sure he had left as little trace of his presence as possible before wrapping the computer in a polythene bag and tucking it under his arm. He locked the door behind him and sought out the stairs, thinking to himself that he should have known Gibbons would not let him down, not even in this.
The House in Southgate
T
his is it,” said James.
his is it,” said James.
The taxi made the turn down what in summer would be a green, leafy street but which in November was merely a wilderness of stark, bare limbs. On James’s instructions the taxi rolled to a stop in front of a pleasant house, set back from the street and partially obscured by a large plane tree in the front garden. It was a big building, but very well proportioned, and unaltered from early Victorian times.
James asked the taxi to wait and then led the way through the rain into the porch and the front door.
“Most of the land is at the back, of course,” he said, patting his pockets in search of the key. “These places are all like that. A nice bit of property, though, if you ask me.”
Bethancourt merely nodded agreement; he had taken his glasses off and was drying the lenses with his handkerchief while he squinted about him. A slight frown appeared between his brows and once he had returned the horn-rims to his nose, he observed, “It’s not very well kept up, though, is it?”
“No, the old lady had let things go of late years,” agreed James, at last uncovering the key in his pocketbook and inserting it into the
lock. “Everyone thought, of course, that it had merely become too much for her in her old age, but in fact she had pretty much run out of money. The property is heavily mortgaged.”
lock. “Everyone thought, of course, that it had merely become too much for her in her old age, but in fact she had pretty much run out of money. The property is heavily mortgaged.”
Bethancourt looked startled at this bit of information. “She can’t have been that hard up,” he said. “She had a jewelry collection worth a million pounds.”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t actually produce income, does it?” said James.
“Perhaps not,” admitted Bethancourt. “But if she was in difficulties over money, a single auction would have netted her a small fortune. Or she might have sold off just a few pieces and invested the proceeds.”
“But if she didn’t choose to sell it,” said James, holding open the door and ushering Bethancourt in, “the jewelry actually cost her money rather than making it. I mean, there were the insurance fees and things.”
Bethancourt looked blank. “But why wouldn’t she have sold it?” he asked. “It’s not as if she ever wore it, or was holding it in trust for a beloved daughter or something. In fact, she barely knew her heir.”
James paused, his hand on the doorknob, and looked upward at the cracked lintel. “I think it was pride,” he said, “though of course I don’t really know. Why did she keep this house? She couldn’t afford it and she didn’t need anything nearly this big, but she refused to sell. I think it was because it was her family home, her birthright, and she wasn’t going to admit that she couldn’t afford it any more than she would admit that, unlike her forebears, she had to sell her gems.”
This was a new take on the woman whose jewelry had brought them here, and Bethancourt was thoughtful as he looked about the foyer, which badly needed new wallpaper.
James punched in a code on the alarm and closed the door before joining him. “Faugh,” he said with an energetic snort. “It’s amazing how quickly a closed-up house becomes fusty, isn’t it? The study’s at the back—down the hall this way.”
Bethancourt obediently fell into step beside him.
“The alarm wasn’t triggered on the night of the robbery?” he asked.
“Not a bit of it—these chaps knew their business,” replied James. “They also knew their parsimonious old ladies—the windows above the ground floor aren’t wired. How she got that by the insurance company I can’t imagine, especially in this house with convenient porch roofs jutting out all over the place. It was child’s play for the thieves to climb up, break a window, and let themselves in. Here’s the study—we shall ignore the police tape if you don’t mind.”
Bethancourt obligingly ducked beneath the tape to enter the study. James followed him and then produced latex gloves from his coat pocket.
“Here,” he said, offering a pair to Bethancourt. “We don’t want to leave any fingerprints for the police forensics department. A long and varied life has taught me that they are picky about such things—though in this case, I very much doubt whether they’ll be back.”
“Still, you never can tell,” said Bethancourt, putting on the gloves.
“Exactly.” James paused to look around and take stock. “I was only here the once,” he said. “On the Monday, when I met your Sergeant Gibbons. The place was crawling with forensics and policemen of every possible stripe then. There was so much bustle it was impossible to think, much less investigate.”
Taking this as a cue to keep quiet and out of the way, Bethancourt only nodded and turned his attention to the room, more in search of hints to Miranda Haverford’s personality than in the hope of finding any actual clues. He knew his limitations and much preferred to leave clues to the professionals.
The study was a large room with windows looking out over the back garden, a somewhat overgrown expanse of lawn and large trees with bare patches that in summer would no doubt hold flowers.
It was a lived-in room, with a leather sofa and armchair arranged to look out at the garden and two oak filing cabinets standing in for end tables. The safe stood in the darkest corner of the room, a squat, weighty thing with its door hanging open to reveal an empty interior.
Set against the opposite wall was a large cabinet desk. It was ornate and heavy, a late Victorian creation with its finish much worn beneath a liberal smearing of black fingerprint powder, and its pigeon holes
crammed with bits of paper. It bore very little resemblance to its elegant cousin in James’s office. James stood in front of it with fierce concentration, hands on hips, as though he might be communing with the desk, drawing its secrets out of it psychically.
crammed with bits of paper. It bore very little resemblance to its elegant cousin in James’s office. James stood in front of it with fierce concentration, hands on hips, as though he might be communing with the desk, drawing its secrets out of it psychically.
Along the back wall of the room were bookshelves, and after a moment Bethancourt strolled over to inspect them, drawn by several rows of ledgerlike volumes. They were ranged along the bottom shelves, below a leather-bound collection of the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. The Cooper books were not in the best condition, and were not first editions, but they were a nice set from the turn of the century, and Bethancourt thought they should be worth a bit. Which led him to wonder whether they, too, were a treasured family inheritance, or whether Miranda Haverford had simply not realized their value. They had certainly not been kept for their own sakes; the one volume he selected at random had several uncut pages.
The ledgers were a different matter. They were as old as they had looked from across the room, their tops liberally bestowed with dust, and were apparently the household accounts from the period when Evony St. Michel and her button manufacturer had lived here. Bethancourt, who liked that sort of thing, settled himself on the ottoman, opening one of the volumes on his lap, and began to pore over the references, in faded ink, to “three cords of firewood—1 pound, 4 shillings, & sixpence” sitting just above the entry “silk shawl embroidered with roses, from Paris—25 guineas.”
James meanwhile had seated himself at the desk and, with a delicacy of touch unexpected in a big man, begun to carefully go through each pigeonhole’s contents.
The silence, broken only by the rustling of paper and the steady drone of the rain outside, continued for some time. James, having dealt with the pigeonholes, moved on to the desk drawers, while Bethancourt slowly began to build a picture of a marriage. Haverford had apparently realized that even jewelry from the best shops in London could not compete with the jewels previously bestowed on his wife by dukes and kings; there were virtually no entries in the ledger for payments to jewelers. A few years into the marriage there was one large expenditure for copies to be made of some of Evony’s
jewelry, and there was another on the couple’s tenth anniversary for a ruby ring, but apart from that the only jewelry purchases were of inexpensive items, like an enameled brooch.
jewelry, and there was another on the couple’s tenth anniversary for a ruby ring, but apart from that the only jewelry purchases were of inexpensive items, like an enameled brooch.
Evony’s dressmaker’s bills, on the other hand, were large and frequent, dwarfing the salary of her lady’s maid. In fact, Bethancourt noted, none of the servants’ wages came anything close to the amount he was accustomed to pay his charwoman. All in all, the household expenses, though certainly well above the norm, were quite reasonable for a wealthy Victorian household.
The ledgers were all meticulously kept in a neat hand, and Bethancourt wondered if they had been penned by Haverford himself. There was no record of a bookkeeper being paid, but Haverford might have had someone in from his office to do the household accounts.
“What the devil are you reading there?” demanded James, interrupting this reverie. “It’s not the damned Fenimore Cooper, is it?”
“No,” answered Bethancourt with a grin. “It’s the household ledgers—from Evony’s time. Rather interesting, really.”
James raised an eyebrow. “Read history at University, did you?”
“Close,” answered Bethancourt. “I took a degree in classics.”
“Did you, indeed?” James was slightly surprised. He absorbed this information for a moment, eyeing Bethancourt the while, and then a slow smile spread over his face. “And got a first, I’m betting.”
Bethancourt inclined his head modestly.
James gave a bark of laughter. “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” he declared. “I had quite put you down as a dilettante. But I should have known—I knew Sergeant Gibbons had a first from Oxford. Is that where you met, by the way?”
“Initially,” said Bethancourt. “We were in different colleges, and didn’t really become friends until after we had come down.” He grinned. “We ran across each other in a pub in Bayswater one night and the rest is history.”
“Drowning your woes together, eh?” said James, amused. “Well, great friendships have been founded on less. Anyway, I’ve found our combination—look here.”
He exhibited his find, a small black leather-bound notebook, holding it carefully by the edges with his gloved fingertips.
“It’s one of those little address books they used back in the forties and fifties,” he said. “The kind of thing a woman would slip into her purse or a man into his breast pocket, before we all had mobile phones and BlackBerrys and PDAs. It doesn’t seem to have been used much—there’s only a few addresses in it—but here in the back where one’s supposed to write down birthdays or what have you, there’s a list of names and dates. And then, at the bottom, there’s a series of numbers written in fresh ink.”
He held the page open for Bethancourt’s examination.
“How odd,” said Bethancourt, adjusting his glasses and peering down at it. “The numbers she used for the combination are the same as this chap’s birthday.”
“Which chap?” asked James, turning the little book back so he could read it. “Ah, this one at the top—Andrew Kerrigan. I didn’t notice that. I wonder who he was.”
“A lost love perhaps?” suggested Bethancourt.
James snorted. “You young people are all obsessed with romance,” he said. “He was probably her milkman. Well, I think we’ll pass this along to Scotland Yard forensics, for all the good it will do.”
“You don’t think the thief left his fingerprints?”
“Do you?” retorted James. “No, I expect them to find this little gem wiped clean. However, if it’s not …” He tapped his chin thoughtfully with one finger.
“Then it will mean the thief already knew the combination,” supplied Bethancourt.
“Yes,” affirmed James. “And that would be a pretty little twist, but it’s very unlikely.” He stood silent for a moment, his eyes passing over the room and its contents. “The thief knew the safe was here,” he said musingly. “Nothing else in any of the other rooms was touched. Not, mind you, that there was much worth stealing in any of them apart from a bit of sterling in the dining room.”
“And the Fenimore Cooper,” added Bethancourt with a jerk of his head.
“Good grief, what thief in his right mind would steal those?” said James. “No, he knew about the safe, right enough. The question is: did he know what was in it?”
“In other words,” said Bethancourt, following this logic, “was it a crime of opportunity, or was he specifically after the jewels?”
“Exactly,” said James. “The jewelry was mentioned in the obituary naturally enough, but one wouldn’t necessarily expect to find it on the premises. Most people,” he added with a scowl, “keep their valuables in a safe deposit box.”
“But anybody who owned a fortune in antique jewels might be presumed to have other things worth stealing,” said Bethancourt.
“So one would have thought,” agreed James dryly. “I certainly did.”
“So did I,” agreed Bethancourt. He looked about him at the worn spots on the leather sofa, and the spoilt finish of the tops of the oak filing cabinets, at the damp spot on the wall in one corner, and said, “I hope to God that I’ll have the sense to sell my grandmother’s jewelry if I end up penniless at the end of my life.”
James looked interested. “Does your grandmother have particularly nice jewelry?” he asked, and Bethancourt laughed.
“It’s all earmarked for my sister in any case,” he said. “Everything but the engagement ring and wedding pearls.”
“Then you’ll have to steal it first,” said James. “I do hope they’re not insured through one of my companies.”
Both men grinned at this jest as they left the study, ducking under the police tape again and carefully closing the door behind them.
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