Blood Will Out (18 page)

Liz flipped to an earlier page in her notebook. “Douglas and Lana Lorrimer, Raymond Morris, Aaron Gaskell. Oh, and Charles Priestley. The beautiful boy. According to my aunt, central casting for an
homme fatale
.”

Moretti was humming to himself, and Liz caught the melody.

You do something to me
.

But his words were sombre.

“A fatal man, or a fatal woman. Take care. Remember, whoever this is — bites.” Then he added, “‘
His biting is immortal; those that do die of it seldom or never recover.'
Or her, perhaps, in this case.”

“Wordsworth again?” said Liz, raising an eyebrow, and Moretti laughed.

“
Anthony and Cleopatra
. Remember what you found on that scrap of paper, Falla. It is the rhyme and the reason for all of this.”

“
My darling
,” she said.

T
he
address for Ginnie Purvis prised out of a reluctant school secretary was on Candie Road, near the Priaulx Library and the Candie Gardens. Liz Falla had to call the school because the old phone number was now out of service. The school secretary had informed Liz she could not hand out a new number, but would pass on the message.

“How soon will you be able to do that?”

“Ms. Purvis is now in class and cannot be disturbed unless this is a family emergency.”

Liz asked when Ms. Purvis took her lunch hour, then said, “Tell Ms. Purvis we will meet her at her house at that time.”

“But Ms. Purvis will not be happy if she is late for the afternoon classes. She has two.”

“Ms. Purvis will not be happy if we turn up at school to interview her, I am sure.”

“Very well,” was the response, although it was clear that it was not very well.

“I wonder if Ms. Purvis gets special treatment, as a Gastineau?”

“Probably, but I doubt the kids she teaches care one way or another. They'll only care if she's magic.”

“Magic, Guv?”

They were in the Skoda, heading up towards Candie Road from Hospital Lane, with Liz watching out the car window for the address they had been given. This time, the Skoda was the car of choice, because Moretti knew they would have to leave it on the road, parked up on the pavement in the area in which Ginnie Purvis was living.

“I believe she teaches English, and I had the good fortune to have an English teacher who was magic. Even if he had committed murder, I would still remember him as magic. You never forget.”

“Lucky you. This is it, Guv.”

They were outside a terrace of simple, semi-detached two-storey houses in varying degrees of upkeep, alteration and renovation. Each one was enclosed by a stone wall around a small patch of ground at the front, and Ginnie Purvis's house had an additional hedge somewhat higher than the wall. The house on one side of her was immaculate, with a professionally landscaped small front garden of topiaried little trees and a mini-fountain amidst colour-coordinated flowers. The house attached to hers was in the throes of renovation. An old bathtub stood on a pile of rubble in front of it, and inside the open front door two men in overalls were hammering away at a wall.

“What is a Gastineau doing here, Guv? No way I could afford one of these, even if it was one of the grotty ones, but still.”

“Great minds, Falla. Just what I'm thinking — and here she comes. A Gastineau peddling like merry hell, approaching from the south.”

Ginnie Purvis on a bicycle was making her way towards them, skidding up on to the pavement and screeching to a halt. As Moretti and Falla got out of the car, she too was screeching, and puffing in between.

“Is this really necessary? In the middle of a school day? Mrs. Bonner said some very bossy young lady simply would not take no for an answer.”

Various responses came to mind, but Moretti decided to keep his mouth shut. He gave a warning look to the bossy young lady, who appeared to be on the verge of opening hers.

“Perhaps we could take this inside?”

Ginnie Purvis opened a rickety iron gate and wheeled her bike through into the front garden and propped it against a wall. She removed her helmet, took a lunch bag from the carrier on the bicycle, and unlocked the front door.

“Come in.”

They were in a narrow hallway that led directly into a front room, with a wall, and an archway in place of a door. Most of the furniture in the room was huddled towards the centre, making the space seem even smaller. There was a strong smell of paint and turpentine in the air. Liz Falla sneezed.

“Sorry.”

She sneezed again.

“Careful. Don't touch anything. I'm having it all repainted, and then I'll decide what I'm doing about further renovation.”

Moretti introduced himself and his sergeant, both of them showing their police badges.

“Obviously you have just moved in, Ms. Purvis. It was necessary to make the phone call, because the only phone number we have for you was out of service.”

“Yes. Do you mind if we do this in the kitchen? This is, after all, my
lunch
hour.”

The kitchen, which overlooked a tiny back garden in a state of neglect, looked like it had not yet been touched. A depressing dun colour dominated the space, highlighted by dark brown cupboards above tatty countertops, with a similarly coloured floor underfoot. Ginnie Purvis gestured towards two chairs and a table. All three were of elegant design, possibly Italian, and certainly had cost a Euro or two.

“Sit down, and let's get on with this.”

Moretti sat down, and Liz moved over to the window. Ginnie Purvis opened a top-of-the-line stainless steel fridge and removed a bottle of juice of some kind. Then she unpacked the lunch bag she had put on the counter and removed a sandwich. The thickly cut bread smelled good, and Falla heard her stomach growl in response.

Ginnie Purvis removed her heavy anorak, revealing a well-fed and sturdy body in a lime-green sweater and trousers of a colour not unlike the kitchen walls, sat herself down opposite Moretti, took a large bite of her sandwich and said through her mouthful, “Let's get on with it. This year's Upper Three are trouble enough if I'm on time, not that I'm ever late. What was so urgent you had to drag me out of school?”

“The attempted murder of Hugo Shawcross after returning from the play-reading at the Maxwells' house. You have, I am sure, heard about it.”

At the window, Liz Falla watched Ginnie Purvis's reaction. She put down her sandwich and exclaimed in exasperation, as if someone in Upper Three had mislaid her textbook, “Good
grief
. Of course I've heard about it. I'm sorry, Detective Inspector, but for this you took me out of school? Not that I'm not horrified, but I really don't see how I can help.”

“We are speaking to everyone who was at the reading, Ms. Purvis. Where were you after the meeting? Did you come straight back here?”

“Yes.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“You mean, do I have an alibi?” Ginnie Purvis picked up her sandwich again and took another hearty bite out of it. She demolished part of her mouthful and said, “Not unless one of my neighbours saw me come back, no. Sometimes one of the group gives me a lift, but this place is so close to the Grange I took my bicycle last night. That is one convenience of being here, as opposed to where I was living before, and it's also close to the school. So much easier when the girls want me to participate in one of their clubs, or we are putting on a play, or something.”

The sandwich now gone, Ginnie Purvis got up to fetch a glass from the counter, and poured herself some juice.

As she returned to the table, Moretti said, “Always nice for children when they have a teacher who plays a role in their lives outside the classroom.”

The heavy features of the middle Gastineau, so like her older brother's face, lightened into something approaching comeliness.

“So important. To them and to me. Yes.”

A burst of hammering came through the wall and the momentary transformation disappeared, returning Ginnie Purvis's face to exasperation.

“Thank God I'm out during the day. I've had to speak to them about weekends, and they promise me it'll all be over well before the Christmas holidays. Now I'm in town, I am hoping to have the Sixth Form's Christmas party here, when my own renovations will be close to complete.” She brightened again at the thought, finished her glass of juice, and looked at her watch.

“I've got to go. Unless there's anything else?”

As Moretti and Ginnie Purvis stood up, Liz Falla put away her notebook in which she had written virtually nothing, and picked up a paper bookmark from the windowsill.

“Did you get this from the station, Ms. Purvis?”

Ginnie Purvis pulled her right arm through the anorak sleeve and took the bookmark in her hand.

“Yes. I keep a few of them handy in the staff room. It's not enough to teach the wonders of Shakespeare and the wit of Shaw. The wherewithal to be at a private school does not protect some of my girls, or their mothers, from hard home lives. They need to know there is help.” She turned the bookmark over in her hand, and looked at Falla, not Moretti. “You know the most important thing on the good side, Detective Sergeant? The last one on the list:
Accepts me as I am
. When that happens, everything else falls into place.”

“And on the bad side?”

Ginnie Purvis turned the small scrap of paper over, and paused a moment. Then she said, “There are a few on this side, but I'd have to say,
Always blames me
. Right up there with
Embarrasses me in front of others
. Yes, I know what that's like.”

Moretti's chic Italian-designed chair made a scraping noise on the floor as he put it back, and Ginnie Purvis seemed to return to the present. She put the juice bottle back in the fridge and, as she turned to face him, Moretti asked, “Where were you living before the move to Candie Road, Ms. Purvis?”

“I'm surprised you don't know, Detective Inspector, since you were in Forest yesterday, interviewing the happy couple. Did you also meet Roddy the Body?”

It was said with heavy sarcasm.

“Roddy the — do you mean the gentleman who takes care of Mrs. Gastineau's horse? The groom?”

Moretti felt, rather than saw, the expression in Falla's eyes behind him, and he knew she would be remembering that first impression of hers. He had already decided to say nothing about Gus Dorey, and only had a second in which to decide to say nothing about the threats against Tanya Gastineau. For the first time since they had arrived, there was real anger in Ginnie Purvis's face and voice, a depth of emotion unstirred by the attempted garrotting of Hugo Shawcross.

“‘Gentleman' seems particularly inappropriate, and it all depends what you mean by ‘groom,' but that's who I mean. There is a nice little cottage on the grounds that I used to call my own, and I was turfed out when Roddy the Body arrived. My brother Rory is a complete and utter fool.”

“For marrying? Surely he had waited long enough?”

They had all reached the front door at the end of the narrow hallway. Ginnie Purvis turned back to them and, to Moretti's surprise, started to laugh. It reminded him of the way men laugh when insulting each other in pubs or at football matches. He could almost see her lip curl in mock derision.

“Not for marrying, Detective Inspector. But for marrying the kind of little floosie who is usually seen jumping out of a
cake
!”

“Well, well, well. Enough hatred there for poison-pen letters, or texts. Or phone calls.”

“Whatever else she's hiding, I don't think Tanya would have kept quiet if she'd recognized Ginnie Purvis's voice, Guv.”

Falla's voice was sombre, but her expression was hidden from Moretti as she checked the intersection.

“The bookmarks. Tell me about them.”

“One side depicts a good relationship, the other an abusive one. What was really interesting to me was what she chose from each side. Compared with some of the other stuff, Guv, being blamed or embarrassed was pretty harmless.”

“Other stuff?”

“Bullying, hitting, violence — that other stuff.”

“And the good side? Being accepted, if I remember rightly, for what you are.”

“Yes.” Falla turned the Skoda into the Hospital Lane car park beneath the ancient gateway from the old Maison de Charité, with the stone depiction of a pelican feeding its young from the blood dropping from her breast. She pulled in alongside the other police cars and switched off the engine. “Sometimes life is very unfair to women.”

Moretti looked at his detective sergeant, surprised.

“Why do I have the feeling you are not talking about abuse, or glass ceilings, or doing all the housework?”

“I am, and I'm not. I'm talking about something really petty and trivial and frivolous. The luck of the draw, the sheer bloody luck of being born — a
babe
.”

Nothing clever or trivial or frivolous to say about cakes or babes came to mind, so Moretti got out of the car, and waited for Falla to do the same.

“Come on, Falla. That sandwich made me hungry. We'll get one of our own, some decent coffee, and go talk to Aaron Gaskell,” he said.

“I'm not surprised to see you.”

Aaron Gaskell got up, shook hands with Moretti and Falla, and indicated the two seats by his desk. Tall, good-looking, dressed in an understated and expensive way, he was the perfect accessory for the understated and expensive offshore company in St. Peter Port for which he worked.

He turned a charming smile in Liz Falla's direction. “I think our paths crossed, did they not, a few weeks ago?”

“That's right, sir. I'd forgotten.” Falla turned to Moretti. “Mr. Gaskell had a problem with where he was allowed to park close to his office. We got it sorted out.”

“Most satisfactorily.” The charming smile again. “But I'm not sure how I can help you, in any practical or constructive way, because I am so new to the island,” he said.

“It's quite straightforward, sir,” said Moretti. “Where were you when Mr. Shawcross was attacked? I imagine you know when that was.”

“I was actually here, for my sins. Only the cleaning staff were in, and I can get them to confirm that, because they were not thrilled at being denied access to my office.”

“Falla will take the names from you, sir, and we'll check.”

A few notes taken down by Falla, a shrug of the shoulders and a shake of the head from Aaron Gaskell as to why anyone would have attacked Hugo Shawcross, and then the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, saying, “I apologize, Detective Inspector, but I really should answer this.”

“Of course.”