Careless In Red (71 page)

“What do you think? You could just walk out? No one would care? No one would worry? No one would want to intervene? Do you actually think you could disappear, that you mean so little to—”

“All right, all right!” Bea said. “Retire to your corners. My God. Enough.” She took a steadying breath. “This stops here. And now. All right? You”—to Havers—“are on loan to me. Not to him. I can see there were ulterior motives involved in the offer to send you to assist, but whatever those motives were you’re going to have to deal with them on your own time, not on mine. And you”—to Lynley—“will from this moment be straightforward with what you’re doing and what you know. Am I being clear?”

“You are,” Lynley said. Havers nodded, but Lynley could see that she was hot under the collar and wanting to say more. Not to Hannaford, but to him.

“Fine. Excellent. Now let’s take Daidre Trahair from the start and this time let’s not hold anything back. Am I also being clear on that?”

“You are.”

“Lovely. Regale me with details.”

Lynley knew there was nothing more for it. “There appears to be no Dairdre Trahair prior to her enrollment at her secondary comprehensive at thirteen years of age,” he said. “And although she says she was born at home in Falmouth, there’s also no record of her birth. Additionally, parts of her story about her job in Bristol don’t match up with the facts.”

“Which parts?”

“There’s a Daidre Trahair who’s a vet on staff, but the person she identified to me as her friend Paul—he’s supposedly the primate keeper—doesn’t exist.”

“You didn’t tell me that part,” Havers said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lynley sighed. “She just doesn’t seem…I can’t honestly see her as a murderer. I didn’t want to make things more difficult for her.”

“More difficult than what?” Hannaford asked.

“I don’t know. It seems…I admit there’s something going on with her. I just don’t think it has anything to do with the murder.”

“And are you supposing you’re in any condition to make that sort of judgement?” Hannaford said.

“I’m not blind,” he replied. “I haven’t lost my wits.”

“You’ve lost your wife,” Hannaford said. “How do you expect to think straight, see straight, or do anything else straight after what’s happened to you?”

Lynley backed away, one step only. He wanted an end to the conversation and this seemed as good a start to that conclusion as any he could come up with. He made no reply. Havers, he saw, was watching him. He knew he had to make an answer of some sort or she’d answer for him, which he would find unbearable.

He said, “I wasn’t hiding facts from you, Inspector. I wanted time.”

“For what?”

“For something like this, I suppose.” He’d been carrying a manila envelope and from it he brought out the photo he’d taken away from Lark Cottage in Boscastle. He handed it over.

Hannaford studied it. “Who are these people?”

“They’re a family called Parsons. Their son—the boy in the picture—died in a sea cave in Pengelly Cove some thirty years ago. This picture was taken round that time, perhaps a year or two earlier. Niamh the mum, Jonathan the dad. The boy is Jamie and the girls are his younger sisters. I’d like to do an age progression on the picture. Do we have someone who could do it for us quickly?”

“An age progression on who?” DI Hannaford asked.

“On everyone,” Lynley replied.

DAIDRE HAD PARKED ON Lansdown Road. She knew her proximity to the police station didn’t look good, but she had to see and, in equal measure, she needed a sign that would tell her what she was meant to do next. Truth meant trust and a leap of faith, but that leap could land her directly in the deadly mire of betrayal, and she’d had quite enough of betrayal at this point in her life.

In the rearview mirror, she saw them come out of the police station. Had Lynley been alone, she might have approached him for the conversation they needed to have, but as he was with both Sergeant Havers and Inspector Hannaford, Daidre used this as a sign that the time wasn’t right. She was parked some way up the street, and when the three police officers paused in the station’s car park for a few words together, she started her car and pulled away from the kerb. Intent upon their conversation, none of them looked in her direction. Daidre took that as a sign as well. There were those, she knew, who would call her a coward for running just then. There were others, however, who would congratulate her on having sound instincts towards self-preservation.

She drove out of Casvelyn. She headed inland, first towards Stratton and then across the countryside. She got out of her car at long last at the cider farm in the fast-fading daylight.

Circumstances, she decided, were asking her to forgive. But forgiveness ran in both directions, in every direction if it came down to it. She needed to ask as well as to give, and both of these activities were going to require practise.

Stamos the orchard pig was snuffling round his pen in the centre of the courtyard. Daidre went past him and round the corner of the jam kitchen, where inside and under bright lights two of the jam cooks were cleaning their huge copper pots for the day. She opened the gate beneath the arbour and entered the private part of the grounds. As before, she could hear guitar music. But this time more than one guitar was playing.

She assumed a record and knocked on the door. The music ceased. When Aldara answered, Daidre saw the other woman was not alone. A swarthy man in the vicinity of thirty-five was placing a guitar onto a stand. Aldara had hers tucked under her arm. She and the man had been playing, obviously. He was very good and, of course, so was she.

“Daidre,” Aldara said, neutrally. “What a surprise. Narno was giving me a lesson.” Narno Rojas, she added, from Launceston. She went on to complete the introduction as the Spaniard rose to his feet and bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement. Daidre said hello and asked should she come back? “If you’re in the middle of a lesson…,” she added. What she thought was, Leave it to Aldara to have found a male teacher of delectable appearance. He had the large dark eyes and thick eyelashes of a Disney cartoon hero.

“No, no. We’ve finished,” Aldara said. “We were at the point of merely entertaining ourselves. Did you hear? Don’t you think we’re very good together?”

“I thought it was a recording,” Daidre admitted.

“You see?” Aldara cried. “Narno, we should play together. I’m much better with you than I am alone.” And to Daidre, “He’s been lovely about giving me lessons. I made him an offer he could not refuse, and here we are. Isn’t that the case, Narno?”

“It is,” he said. “But you’ve much more the gift. For me, it is practise continual. For you…you merely need encouragement.”

“That’s flattery. But if you choose to believe it, I won’t argue. Anyway, that’s the part you play. You’re my encouragement, and I adore how you encourage me.”

He chuckled, raised her hand, and kissed her fingers. He wore a wide gold wedding band.

He packed his guitar into its case and bade them both farewell. Aldara saw him to the door and stepped outside with him. They murmured together. She returned to Daidre.

She looked, Daidre thought, like a cat who’d come upon an endless supply of cream. Daidre said, “I can guess what the offer was.”

Aldara returned her own guitar to its case. “What offer do you mean, my dear?”

“The one he couldn’t refuse.”

“Ah.” Aldara laughed. “Well. What will be will be. I have a few things to do, Daidre. We can chat while I do them. Come along, if you like.”

She led the way to a narrow set of stairs whose handrail was a thick velvet cord. She climbed and took Daidre up to the bedroom, where she set about changing the sheets on a large bed that took up most of the space.

“You think the worst of me, don’t you?” Aldara said.

“Does it matter what I think?”

“Of course, it does not. How wise you are. But sometimes what you think isn’t what is.” She flung the duvet to the floor and whipped the sheets off the mattress, folding them neatly rather than balling them up as another person might have done. She went to an airing cupboard in the tiny landing at the top of the stairs and brought out crisp linens, expensive by the look of them and fragrant as well. “Our arrangement isn’t a sexual one, Daidre,” Aldara said.

“I wasn’t thinking—”

“Of course you were. And who could blame you? You know me, after all. Here. Help me with this, won’t you?”

Daidre went to assist her. Aldara’s movements were deft. She smoothed the sheets with affection for them. “Aren’t they lovely?” she asked. “Italian. I’ve found a very good private laundress in Morwenstow. It’s a bit of a drive to take them to her, but she does wonders with them, and I wouldn’t trust my sheets to just anyone. They’re too important, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t want to. To Daidre sheets were sheets, although she could tell these likely cost more than she made in a month. Aldara was a woman who didn’t deny herself life’s little luxuries.

“He has a restaurant in Launceston. I was there for dinner. When he wasn’t greeting guests, he was playing his guitar. I thought, How much I could learn from this man. So I spoke with him and we came to an agreement. Narno will not take money, but he has a need to place members of his family—and he has a very large family—in more employment than he can provide at his restaurant.”

“So they work for you here?”

“I have no need. But Stamos has a continual need for workers round the hotel in St. Ives, and I find a former husband’s guilt is a useful tool.”

“I didn’t know you still speak to Stamos.”

“Only when it is helpful to me. Otherwise, he could disappear off the face of the earth and, believe me, I wouldn’t bother to wave good-bye. Could you tuck that in properly, darling? I can’t abide rucked sheets.”

She moved to Daidre’s position and demonstrated deftly how she wanted the sheets seen to. She said, “Nice and fresh and ready,” when she was done. Then she looked at Daidre fondly. The light in the room was greatly subdued, and in it Aldara shed twenty years. She said, “This isn’t to say we won’t, eventually. Narno will, I think, make a most energetic lover, which is how I like them.”

“I see.”

“I know you do. The police were here, Daidre.”

“That’s why I’ve come.”

“So you were the one. I suspected as much.”

“I’m sorry, Aldara, but I had no choice. They assumed it was me. They thought Santo and I—”

“And you had to safeguard your reputation?”

“It isn’t that. It wasn’t that. They need to get to the bottom of what happened to him, and they aren’t going to get there if people don’t start telling the truth.”

“Yes. I do see what you mean. But how often the truth is…well, rather inconvenient. If one person’s truth is an unbearable blow to another person and simultaneously unnecessary for him to know, need one speak it?”

“That’s hardly the issue here.”

“But it does seem that no one is quite telling the police everything there is to tell, wouldn’t you say? Certainly, if they came to you at first instead of to me, it would be because little Madlyn did not tell them everything.”

“Perhaps she was too humiliated, Aldara. Finding her boyfriend in bed with her employer…That might have been more than she wanted to say.”

“I suppose.” Aldara handed over a pillow and its accompanying case for Daidre to sort out while she herself did the same with another. “It’s of no account now, though. They know it all. I myself told them about Max. Well, I had to, hadn’t I? They were going to uncover his name eventually. My relationship with Max was not a secret. So I can hardly be cross with you, can I, when I also named someone to the police?”

“Did Max know…?” Daidre saw from Aldara’s expression that he did. “Madlyn?” she asked.

“Santo,” Aldara said. “Stupid boy. He was wonderful in bed. Such energy he had. Between his legs, heaven. But between his ears…” Aldara gave an elaborate shrug. “Some men—no matter their age—do not operate with the sense God gave them.” She placed the pillow on the bed, and straightened the edge of its case, which was lace. She took the other from Daidre and did the same, going on to turn down the rest of the linen in a welcoming fashion. On the bedside table, a votive candle was nestled in a crystal holder. She lit this and stood back to admire the effect. “Lovely,” she said. “Rather welcoming, wouldn’t you say?”

Daidre felt as if cotton were stuffed into her head. The situation was so much not what she believed it should be. She said, “You don’t actually regret his death, do you? D’you know how that makes you look?”

“Don’t be foolish. Of course, I regret it. I would not have had Santo Kerne die as he did. But as I wasn’t the one to kill him—”

“You’re very likely the reason he died, for God’s sake.”

“I very seriously doubt that. Certainly Max has too much pride to kill an adolescent rival and anyway Santo wasn’t his rival, a simple fact that I could not make Max see. Santo was just…Santo.”

“A boytoy.”

“A boy, yes. A toy, rather. But that makes it sound cold and calculating and believe me it was neither. We enjoyed each other and that’s what it was between us, only. Enjoyment. Excitement. On both parts, not just on mine. Oh, you know all this, Daidre. You cannot plead ignorance. And you quite understand. You would not have lent your cottage had you not.”

“You feel no guilt.”

Aldara waved her hand towards the door, to indicate they were to leave the room and go below once more. As they descended the stairs, she said, “Guilt implies I am somehow involved in this situation, which I am not. We were lovers, full stop. We were bodies meeting in a bed for a few hours. That’s what it was, and if you really think that the mere act of intercourse led to—”

A knock came on the door. Aldara glanced at her watch. Then she looked at Daidre. Her expression was resigned, which told Daidre later that she should have anticipated what would come next. But, rather stupidly, she had not.

Aldara opened the door. A man stepped into the room. His eyes only for Aldara, he didn’t see Daidre. He kissed Aldara with the familiarity of a lover: a greeting kiss that became a coaxing kiss, which Aldara did nothing to terminate prematurely. When it did end, she said against his mouth, “You smell all of the sea.”