Blood Will Out (26 page)

“Hey Ed, nearly forgot. Billie the Bus Bum had a message for someone called Perkins. Copper, he said.”

“Where to find Meg? Tell him not to worry. We found her.”

“I'll tell him. Only he wants to know, because someone else is looking for her, and he'll get a reward if he knows. A gent, he says. Mind you, you never know with Billie, do you?”

“No,” said Moretti. Back in the Triumph he texted Al Brown.

“Among the hermit's books, was there one called ‘Invective against the Sect of the Waldensians'?”

The miasma returned, as if it had never left.

T
he
run-through with Jenemie had taken Liz Falla's mind off things, and she had got back to her flat on the Esplanade to find Dwight sitting on the doorstep. Normally the sight of his smiling face would be reason for celebration, but Ed Moretti's two messages had put her mind right back on things temporarily forgotten.

Falla, there's a car in your aunt's driveway I think belongs to Aaron Gaskell. Jaguar. Did you take details when you helped him with his parking problems?

She had, and it was.

She had dismissed Dwight, to his disappointment and her own, phoned her aunt, to Elodie's annoyance, and her own discomfort.

“Are you all right, El?”

“I
was
. I was asleep. Why, what's wrong?”

“Nothing, just checking.”

“At this hour?”

“You had a visitor and we wondered …”

“We? Oh.”

Click, as the line went dead.

Well, at least Elodie wasn't.

It was so long since Liz visited her great-aunt that she had to check municipal records to make sure of the address, and she still got lost in the winding maze of lanes that ran between Le Gouffre and Le Havre de Bon Repos on the south coast, most of them ending up close to the cliff edge with nowhere further to go. Unless you were a goat, that is, and not driving a Figaro. There were few houses in this area, some crumbling Napoleonic battery sites and watch towers, and, with most of the tourists gone, the only visitors were the flocks of gulls and other seabirds wheeling and screaming overhead. It had been a wet and windy night, and the damp coolness in the air added to the chill Liz felt about this whole expedition.

Just as she was about to give up and make her way back to the main Forest-l'Erée road, she saw a sign on the roadside and turned the Figaro in the direction of the arrow beneath the words, “Planchette, Tarot, Palms Read. Goat's Milk and Cheese.”

Auntie Becky, who else.

The cottage had been part of a sixteenth-century farmhouse on the cliffs, probably the cattle byre, and was now all that remained. Built in island granite, it had a wide entrance with double doors, and only one window, beneath a steeply sloping roof on the upper floor facing the road. There was a sturdily constructed picket fence around the cottage to protect the wise woman's fruit and veggies from any marauding goat, and the rest of the land was open, because Becky tried to keep her goats tethered, much as Guernsey cows were. At some point, Liz's Uncle Vern had put in a couple of skylights in the sloping roof and updated the plumbing. That is, he had installed a bathroom. As far as Liz knew, there was still no electricity.

As she pulled the Figaro up close to the front door, Aunt Becky appeared.

“It's you,” she called out as Liz opened the car door. “I thought you were my ten o'clock.”

Not second sight, then.

“I should be gone by then, Aunt Becky. It's only 9:30.”

Rebecca Falla was dressed in black from head to toe, which showed off her wonderfully thick silver-white hair. She always wore it in a beautiful smooth coil around her head, and if there was anything Liz wouldn't mind inheriting from this so-called Becquet ancestor of hers it was that magnificent mane. At this moment in her life, her own was too short to judge. Her aunt had the tall genes of the Falla and Ashton families, her deeply wrinkled face tanned year-round by sun, wind and rain. As befitted a witch, her eyes were green and not brown, and beneath two strong, dark eyebrows they were fixed on her niece with what looked like melancholy.

“Come in,” she said. “I am in mourning.”

Without waiting to explain, she disappeared back into the house and Liz followed her.

Inside, the cottage was dark, lit only by two oil-lamps in the main space that served as siting-room, consulting room and séance room. The planchette wheel was on a circular central table covered by a crocheted cloth with astrological symbols embroidered in black and silver, and her aunt's crystal ball glowed beneath the light of one of the oil lamps on a spectacularly carved sideboard in a dark wood of some kind.

“Why are you in mourning?”

Her aunt turned back and said, “It's the subsidence.”

She had retained into old age the mellifluous voice used to great effect in her métier, but her explanation was as woolly and unclear as many of her divinations, as Liz remembered them. They usually covered a range of possibilities.

“Come. I'll show you.”

Liz followed her through into the small kitchen at the back of the cottage. There was a pleasant and un-otherworldly aroma of fresh baking in the air, and cups, saucers and small plates were set on the red-and-white gingham tablecloth over the kitchen table. It looked as if Aunt Becky's ten o'clock was going to have some cake with the clairvoyance. Her aunt opened the back door of the kitchen, and Liz followed her onto the stretch of land behind the cottage, the wind hitting her face with salt spray. It was dotted with tethered goats of various colours chewing away at the rough grass. They looked up, some more interested in their arrival than others.

“There. Take a look. I won't come with you.”

Her aunt was pointing at the edge of the cliff, and Liz walked over, moving cautiously between the tethered animals. At some point in her childhood she had been butted by one of her aunt's goats, and it had hurt both her backside and her feelings. The drop was vertiginous, the cliffs high and steep at this point, the sea below churning around rocky outcrops, whipped up by the strong wind. There was always subsidence here, caused by the collapse of one or more of the numerous caves that honeycombed the coastline — many of which could only be reached at low tide, some only by boat.

Then she saw what she had been sent to see. Way below, caught on an outcrop of rock was a large chunk of grass-covered soil, and on it lay the remains of a goat, almost obscured by the clouds of gulls and other seabirds doing what scavengers do. She turned back and looked at her aunt, who was crying.

“I'm so sorry.”

“My precious Delilah. Toggenburg-Saanen cross she was. Lovely milker. The earth broke away. I tried to save her, but when I looked over I saw she was dead, strangled by the rope. Hung by the neck until she was dead. Then the earth dropped down the cliff.”

“I'm sorry,” said Liz, again.

Not entirely devoid of sentimentality, Elodie,
Liz thought.

Her aunt moved back into the cottage, and Liz followed her. Sitting at the table in the warm, cosy kitchen was a very thin, very old woman, eating a large slice of cake, and Liz did not have to be clairvoyant to know she was looking at Meg the gypsy.

When she saw Liz come through the door, Meg got up from her chair in distress, still clutching her piece of cake. Becky went over and touched her shoulder.

“This is my niece, Liz. Not to worry, Margie.”

“Carrot cake,” said Margie to Liz. “My favourite,” and went back to the matter in hand.

“How did you know?”

They were now in the front room. Aunt Becky sighed, more irritated now than grieving.

“I didn't, though with your attitude I don't know why I should be honest about that. She comes here, she always has, and there's none that knows it, though with that fancy car of yours outside I'll have to worry about
that
now.”

“Becky, did you know Gus Dorey? Elodie says you did.”

“Margie's friend. 'course I knew him. I saw it all, in the cards.” She indicated the Tarot pack near the planchette wheel. “It's all there, the hermit, the hanged man. Death.”

Here we go
, thought Liz.

“And the Lovers.”

Liz started to pay attention.

“What do you know about that?”

Aunt Becky pulled out a chair and sat down, indicating that Liz should do the same.

“That was long ago, but that is why he died,” she said. “That's what Margie says.”

“Does she? Who was it that he loved?”

Her aunt stroked the pack of cards and smiled.

“If Margie knows that, she's not saying. But from what I remember at the time, there was talk that he reached above himself, and the girl had to be taken away to the mainland. Most of them come back — after — but this one left here forever.”

“Could it have been one of the
messux
?”

“More likely than not.”

Confirmation
, thought Liz.
But I need more
.

“You say she often comes here, but this time she has a reason. Who is Margie running away from, Becky?”

Becky picked up the Tarot pack, shuffled through them and extracted two cards. She held one out to Liz, who took it.

“The Magician. Is that all she calls him? The Magician? See if you can get a name out of her.”

Becky looked doubtful. “I'll try.”

There was a knock at the door and Liz stood up.

“That'll be your ten o'clock. Let me know if she says anything, anything at all. I know Uncle Vern gave you a mobile. Do you know how to use it?”

Becky laughed scornfully.

“Yes, but it's no good to me, now it's lost its powers.” She grinned, wickedly. “You'll just have to come round again.”

As Liz turned to leave, Becky held out the other card.

“There's not just the Magician, she says. This one's with him, sometimes.”

Liz took the card.

“The Fool. Is that what she calls him?”

Becky nodded. “I saw it all, you know, in the cards. The Hermit, the hanging. Death.”

Just as Liz was toying with saying, “Maybe what you saw was poor little Delilah, hanging over the cliff edge,” her aunt added, “Sometimes she calls the Magician this card.”

She was holding out the Devil. He was carrying a spear or lance of some kind, and, incongruously, was mounted on a white horse.

“And Margie doesn't call the Fool a ‘him.' She calls the Fool a ‘her.'”

G
ord
Martel lived in St. Sampson, where Moretti kept his Centaur. He had agreed to meet Moretti in the pub on the Bridge, an area close to the harbour, because he said the neighbours would talk if a policeman came to the door, and his wife would be upset, and plainclothes or not, they'd know, sooner or later.

If there was any area on the island that could be called industrial, it was St. Sampson, and the pub near the Bridge had no fancy trappings to provide atmosphere for tourists. At this hour on a Saturday morning, there were only one or two customers getting started on their day's drinking, and their well-worn clothes and unshaven faces matched the décor — or lack of it. The barmaid was engrossed in a horrific account of child abuse on the overhead TV by the bar, and barely paid any attention as Moretti came in. He sat by the only attractive feature on the premises, a finely etched glass window overlooking the harbour, and waited for Gord Martel, who came in a few minutes later, greeting the barmaid by name.

“'morning, Avril. My usual, please, and one for my friend.”

The postman's usual turned out to be a surprisingly good cup of coffee.

“Well,” he said, “let's get on with it, Inspector. I promised the wife I'd lay tiles today and I really don't know what else I can tell you.”

“Good coffee,” said Moretti, putting down his cup. “It's not so much about that day, Mr. Martel, but about the days before, the days when you and Gus Dorey talked, anything he might have said to you that might help us.”

“About what?” Gord Martel looked agitated. “The poor old bugger killed himself.”

Shock tactics
, thought Moretti.

“No easy way to tell you this, Mr. Martel, but your friend did not kill himself. He was murdered, and can you think of anything he might have said to help us catch his killer.”

After a brandy, fetched from the bar and paid for by Moretti, Gord Martel pulled himself together.

“Oh my Lord, Inspector, what a bombshell. Who would do such a thing. Let me think.” The postman closed his eyes a moment, then said, “There was the time he said he couldn't lay his hands on stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yes. Books, he meant. He thought it was his eyes, but I could see he wasn't sure. Mind you, how he would know there was anything missing, I don't know, because he had so many.”

“So you wondered if someone was stealing his books?”

“I didn't. He did. I thought he'd just mislaid them. But now you've said this, I wonder.”

Moretti thought back to the books around the hermit's body, scattered as if someone was hunting for something. Because books of value hadn't been touched, he had jumped to the conclusion that the hermit's private library was complete.

Moretti brought the interview to a swift end and left the pub. Once back in the Triumph, he checked his messages. There were three.

The first, from Maud Cole, was worrying.

Meg's been gone twenty-four hours.

The second was from Al Brown.

Man of mystery, Aaron Gaskell. Re. book, no, not a title to forget. Can we meet?

The third was from Falla, and it was baffling.

Magician, Fool — two of them?

As he started the car, his mobile rang. It was Falla.

“Don't want to say too much, Guv, but Maud's neighbour is safe as houses. See you at Hospital Lane?”

“My place. I'll text Al and say you'll give him a lift here.”

Moretti finished the call and contacted Aloisio Brown.

“Take-away pizza, not from Emidio's, but not bad. I'm going to make coffee.”

They settled around the large, circular kitchen table, pizza in the middle, notebooks in hand, plus Al's iPad. The coffee mugs were china, as were the plates.

“Nice.” Al traced the Greek key design on his plate.

“Yes.” Moretti cleared a space for his large notepad, turned to a blank page.

“You first, Falla. The Jag — Gaskell's?”

“Yes, but more than that I don't know because El hung up on me.” Moretti said nothing, so Liz went crisply through her visit to Rebecca Ashton, omitting such details as Delilah's demise and the arrival of her aunt's ten o'clock, who turned out to be an august member of the States of Guernsey, the island parliament, and not thrilled at crossing paths with her.

“So, two people. A Magician who is also the Devil, and a woman who is a Fool. Al, I think you met the Devil. Or almost.” Moretti got up and refilled his mug. Outside the cottage window it looked as if there was a storm brewing. The wind was rising, the sky darkening. He put on the overhead light. “The Devil is good at getting people to do his bidding if there's something in it for them, and I have always thought there were two motivations here. Any ideas about who the Fool might be?”

Liz spoke first. “My money's on Ginny Gastineau,” she said.

Moretti nodded. “Mine too.” He turned to Liz. “At the party, your godmother said Priestley was looking at someone and he was scared, and she didn't think it was Gaskell. It was probably Ginnie Gastineau, but how she put him up to it we have yet to find out.”

“That makes three votes for Ginnie.” Al Brown scrolled through his iPad. “And for the Devil I nominate Aaron Gaskell. Before I went to his office today, I talked to Bernie, who's been doing some digging. He's had trouble checking Gaskell's background. He's worked for the same private bank for years, but as for finding any kind of address for him, personal details — nothing. Or virtually nothing. Looks like he's lived in hotels, that kind of accommodation, and he has enough money to do that. He's still working on it, but he hasn't yet found a birth certificate that matches up. Bernie's done this kind of checking a hundred times, and he says it looks like a deliberate attempt to hide. He found no involvement with any acting group of any kind, and all he
has
found is a membership in a book club — not one where you all sit around and read books the members choose, but one where you buy certain books, many of them very pricey, according to Bernie.”

“Ah,” said Moretti. “Which leads us to the Waldensians and my own cock-up, Al. Someone was looking for just one particular book, and they found it.”

When Moretti had finished going through the interview with Hugo Shawcross, Al leaned back in his chair and gave a low whistle.

“The hermit was killed for one book?”

“Looks like it, but that doesn't explain the nonsense with Marla Maxwell, and the threats against Tanya Gastineau. Gandalf was being scared off, but why scare him off
after
the book was stolen?”

“Because he was just what you thought he was, Guv. A red herring.”

“Maybe.” Moretti turned to Al Brown who was, he noticed, wearing a diamond stud in his ear. Well, it was Saturday, wasn't it. “What do the cleaning staff have to say?”

Al grinned. “I saw you taking in my ear decoration, Guv, and the ladies loved it. They became quite chatty. They say he asks a lot of questions about island people, particularly the old families. His secretary, who's related to one of the cleaning staff, told her it's like — and I quote — working for a zombie. When I asked her what they thought she meant, they said it's like he's not all there, a piece missing, and they don't mean thick as two short planks. To quote again.”

“Interesting.” Moretti got up and walked over to the window. The first rain drops had started to bead against the glass. “They rehearse tonight, don't they? I think we should make an appearance at some point in the evening.”

Liz closed her notepad and looked across the kitchen at Moretti. He was stroking a small sculpture of a black cat on the windowsill, and both the gesture and the carving seemed out of character and out of place. It was more the kind of decoration favoured by her great-aunt.

“A bit dramatic, Guv, don't you think? Mightn't it start something?”

“It might.” Her Guvnor seemed angry. “What other option is there? We take Ginnie in for questioning, because a madwoman has identified a Fool involved, from the Tarot, and we think it's her? And we pick up Aaron Gaskell and tell him he is the Magician? God, Falla, I'd look and sound like something out of a bloody board game.”

Al Brown still sat in his chair, watching the two of them with interest. Liz did not appear in the least put out. She was smiling as she picked up her bag and slung it across her shoulders.

“And they'd be Miss Scarlett and Professor Plum, right? Want me to phone Elodie, Guv, and ask her about last night's visit from the chief suspect?”

Moretti was picking up his notepad from the table in which he had taken notes while Liz and Al talked, and Al couldn't see his face.

“If Elodie Ashton wants to live dangerously, she has made it very clear there's nothing we can do. Leave it, Falla.”

Liz was still smiling. “When and where shall we three meet again, Guv?”

“Hospital Lane, at seven.”

Al Brown was silent in the car, and it was Liz who spoke first.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

She heard him laugh in the darkness.

“About what they're worth. Can I buy you a drink?”

“No, but I've got a nice red at my place.”

Liz parked the car in the small garage she rented on the road behind the Esplanade, and they walked in the now steady rain to her second-floor flat facing the islands of Herm and Jethou, across the waters of the bay.

“Nice.”

Al looked around appreciatively at the little sitting room's cosy, eclectic mix of furnishings, the attractive rug on the floor. Interesting choice — it looked like a Turkoman.

“I like it.” Liz poured them both a glass of wine, handed one to Al, who was looking at her collection of CDs. They sat down, facing each other, and there was a moment of awkward silence. Again, it was Liz who bridged the gap.

“So, has coming here solved any problems, Al?”

Al gave the laugh Liz had heard in the car. It was not a happy laugh.

“You guessed, huh? Not one.” He took a sip of wine, then said, “No, that's not accurate. I now know I don't want to be a policeman.”

“Ouch!” Liz was genuinely taken aback. “Is that the effect we've had on you?”

“Yes.” Al drank some wine, and added, “If I don't like working with you and Moretti, I will never like it. I am thinking of going back to school, going into psychology, something like that. It is the only part of this that interests me.”

Liz put down her glass of wine. “So, let's psychoanalyze a bit. We all agreed about the Fool. But how about the Magician? See, there's something about Aaron Gaskell that doesn't quite fit to me, and yet there's something nagging me about him, and I don't know what it is.” She laughed. “Maybe what I need is hypnosis, not psychoanalysis.”

Al got up, and started to walk around the room, stopping to look at a picture on the wall of a woman in a long white dress, walking alone in a forest.

“Douanier Rousseau. Not one I know — is that how you see yourself, Liz? No, don't answer that. About Gaskell. When I met him, I thought of something I read about in one of my courses. The French call it ‘
la belle indifférence.
' It describes a beautiful, exterior calm that hides an ugly interior of hysteria, hatred, rage. Gaskell fits the bill perfectly.”

“Yes, Al, but why?” Liz was now up and pacing. She put her wine glass back on the kitchen counter under the window overlooking the bay, where she had watched a white heron, and worried about Elodie. “Means, yes — anyone can make a garrotte — opportunity, yes. But
why
? What's his motive?”

“Maybe he's mad — no reason. And maybe it's all about the book, after all.”

Liz looked sceptical. “Maybe. But I don't think the Guvnor is entirely sold on Gaskell as the Devil, or I think he'd be more concerned about Elodie.”

“You think so?” Al smiled at Liz and finished the last of the wine in his glass. “Moretti's a difficult man to read, but I don't think he wants to go in that direction.” He got up from the chair and took his empty glass over to the kitchen counter. “I think he'd rather your luscious aunt took up with a good-looking zombie with mucho cash, and a perfect profile.”

“Perfect profile.
Perfect profile.
Oh my God, oh my God.”

Liz ran across the room and grabbed Al by the shoulders, so hard he staggered. “You've shaken it loose. Remember the mortuary, seeing the hermit's body?”

“And you said he reminded you of someone, but you couldn't place it. Peculiar, you said. I remember.”

“I'd just had to deal with a parking problem, and it was fresh in my mind, but not fresh enough.”

“Aaron Gaskell.”

They spoke in unison.

Just as Liz picked up her mobile to call Moretti, it rang.

“Guv, I was just going to call you.”

Moretti interrupted her.

“Al with you? Get out to the Gastineau place in Forest. I'm on my way there now. Dr. Edwards is already there.”

“Another attack?”

Al was picking up her coat and car keys for her as she walked towards the door.

“Two. One dead, one alive.”