Gilded Edge, The (12 page)

At this question, her face registered that she thought it was if not impertinent, then certainly a distasteful one. ‘Why do you ask?’

Vince matter-of-factly responded, ‘The life you described, it goes with the territory.’

She gave a conceding sigh, then said, ‘One would assume so, but I don’t know any names in particular. For Johnny and his friends it was not just perfectly acceptable to have a mistress; it was deemed dreadfully
un
acceptable not to have one.’

‘You weren’t married.’

‘Correct. Not that it makes it any better. In fact, that makes it slightly worse – right, Detective?’

Vince got on to safer territory. ‘What was Mr Beresford doing with a gun in the house?’

‘Johnny loved guns and hunting almost as much as gambling. Almost, but not quite.’

‘Was that the other woman? I’ve known a few gambling widows in my time. He was a member of the Montcler Club, I believe?’

‘A
member
is an understatement. A devotee and an exalted one of the brethren, I’d say, but yes, Detective, you’re right. Very perceptive of you. That place has been responsible for creating more lonely widows than a reasonably large and very disastrous war. And yes, Johnny’s gambling had been a point of issue between us. Not that he lost that much. On the contrary, he seemed to win rather a lot. But it was the amount of time he spent at the club. I had sort of resigned myself to it, because that’s what he was, a gambler. He’d been doing it long before he met me – as he pointed out – so I knew the score, or the
deal
I should say.’

‘So tell me about Mr Beresford and guns.’

‘I won’t say they held a fetishistic obsession for him, but sometimes Johnny would carry one when he went out at night – going to the Montcler Club to play cards, or to a party, or a business meeting. It amused him; maybe it turned him on in some way. Can you see that, Detective?’

Vince indeed could see it: something forbidden and deadly lurking within the polite society. ‘Did he keep it tucked in his cummerbund?’

‘I’m assuming that remark was humorous, Detective, but it’s also pretty well spot on. A macho affectation, a childish accessory and, yes, completely ridiculous.’

‘Did he actually fire the gun at you that night?’

At this she recoiled, as though it was the most ridiculous thing she’d heard in the world. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Don’t look so shocked Miss Saxmore-Blaine. You said you were both drunk. You said he was acting erratically and you’d never seen him like that before. Then you hit him over the head with a champagne bottle and he ended up with a bullet in him. Considering how things panned out that night, and his penchant for macho affectations, it’s not such an outrageous question.’

She immediately ceded the point and looked shamefaced at the litany of behaviour laid before her.

Vince continued. ‘Okay, the gun . . . you say you blacked out and woke up to find him dead in the chair, the gun lying at his feet?’ She nodded. ‘Had you passed out in the basement study?’

She put the fingertips of each hand to her temples, as if trying to focus her mind. Then, after a meditative pause, she lowered them and shook her head in failed resignation. ‘I don’t know what I was doing down there. The last thing I remember was being in the living room. I remember hitting him . . . hitting him with the bottle . . . and then I blacked out. Next I was down in the study. I had the gun in my hand, and there was blood on it. I must have gone looking for him, and picked it up . . .’

‘Why didn’t you call the police, instead of picking up the gun and running out of the house?’

‘Maybe because . . . because I knew I was going to kill myself?’

‘Because you’d killed him?’

He saw the anxiety and uncertainty gathering on her face, almost reaching the tipping point into tears.

‘I don’t know . . . To say anything else would be a lie. Because I swear to God, I just don’t know.’

‘Well, unless we can find out more than you’ve revealed, it’s looking cut and dried, Miss Saxmore-Blaine. You killed Johnny Beresford with his own gun, then ran out of there.’

She stood up quickly and strode back over to the window. Vince stood up, but didn’t go over to join her. She wasn’t running away from his questions, and she wasn’t denying that she had killed Beresford. She just wanted confirmation of the fact, either way.

With her back to him, Vince watched as she straightened up and inhaled some strenuous breaths. Gazing out at the winter sun breaking through the clouds that hung portentously in the London sky, she said with a certain cheerful resignation, ‘That’s it then. I did it. I killed him.’ She turned round sharply, her chin up, defiant. Her eyes weren’t even moist. She was determined not to cry, as if she didn’t want such emotion to cloud his judgement of her.

Vince reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo of Johnny Beresford seated at the gaming table with five other players, and handed it to her.

‘Could you tell me something about these gentlemen?’

She didn’t need to study the characters, she’d seen the line-up a thousand times before and knew them all well enough. And as she considered them, her stoic expression soured into aversion.

‘I’m sure I could tell you lots, Detective Treadwell, but in the interests of objectivity I’ll stick with the facts. First up, top of the table is James Asprey, known to all his chums as Aspers. He owns the Montcler Club. Like most professional gamblers I’ve met, he can be an incredibly cold-hearted bastard when he wants to be. The trouble with Aspers is that he wants to be that way most of the time. He’s a monkey-loving misanthrope who likes animals more than people. So much so that he’s even building himself a private zoo. I would describe Aspers as the leader of the pack.

‘The fellow to the right of him is Simon Goldsachs. Born in Paris to an English father, who was a politician and later a millionaire hotelier, and a French mother. The Goldsachs family, much like their relatives the Rothchilds, were merchant bankers dating back to the sixteenth century. The only reason I know all this about him is because he insisted on telling me all this about him over a game of chess one day, whilst he was trying to seduce me.’

Vince raised an eyebrow at this. She lowered it with: ‘Don’t read too much into that, Detective, Simon tries to seduce everyone; it’s almost a reflex action. I surrendered my King to him, but not my virtue, and made my escape. Simon Goldsachs is a greedy, arrogant, vengeful philanderer, and a completely magnetic charmer to boot. He’s also by far the richest man sitting at that table. Next up is Dickie Bingham, or – to give him his full title – the seventh Earl of Lucan. He’s never done a day’s work in his life and probably wouldn’t be good at anything anyway because, as the joke goes, he’s not so much an idiot-savant as an idiot with servants.

‘This fellow next to Lucan is Guy Ruley. I always thought Guy was somewhat in awe of Johnny, used to want to be like him. He’s something in the city, and also something of a bore. The only interesting thing about him is that his father was a scrap-metal dealer or something like that, who struck it rich and could afford to send his son off to Eton. And that fact’s not really about him so, no, nothing interesting at all.’

As Isabel reached the last member of the Montcler set gathered around the table, her robotic rat-tat-tat of dismissive commentary stopped, and a warm smile arrived on her face.

‘And that’s the lovely Nicky DeVane – the very talented photographer and one of my oldest friends.’ She gestured towards the dozen roses in a vase on the bedside table. ‘He sent me those. Of course I’ve not heard from any of the others. They’ve closed ranks, as usual.’

‘They were Mr Beresford’s friends but not yours?’

‘Apart from Nicky DeVane, no. I think they view me with suspicion. You see, Detective, I was neither a wife nor a mistress, and those men have both. I was in the hinterland, and they never quite knew what to say to me. They were forever getting on to Johnny to do something about it: either marry me and get himself a mistress, or marry someone else and have me as the mistress. Or, preferably, marry someone else and get another mistress. They don’t feel comfortable around educated women with opinions of their own.’

‘Why didn’t you two get married?’

She stuck her hands in the pockets of the robe, her hand scrunching around the dead packet of cigarettes, obviously wishing there was a fresh one in there. She shrugged and went over to the sofa. ‘I think that ship had already sailed for us,’ she said, sitting down. ‘It’s strange, but we’d reached a stage where we’d become pals more than anything. I loved him, and the attraction to him was as strong as ever – and his towards me, I believe. But too much bad behaviour had passed between us. We’d seen each other at our worst too many times. We needed to start anew. Does that make sense, Detective?’

Vince joined her on the sofa. ‘So you went around to Eaton Square intending to finish it with him?’

‘Unfortunate choice of words, but yes. I was planning on leaving London for good, and going back to New York.’

‘And what did he say to that?’

‘I don’t know, as we never actually got around to the subject. Avoiding mature life decisions was a forte of his. No, that’s unfair – it was both our fortes.’

‘So what did you talk about?’

‘The past. The good times. Of which there were many, I have to say.’

‘Yeah, I saw the photos of you two together at your apartment.’

A slight smile positioned itself hesitantly on her lips; it was one of those oblique smiles that the rest of her face wasn’t that convinced about, therefore didn’t join in with.

‘Johnny and I did holidays very well.’ At the mere mention of his name, the tentative little smile slipped away. ‘We both knew it was over. That’s probably why we got drunk, because it was all too painful to face sober. And then, after we got drunk, it got even more painful. Turned nasty, with recriminations. Then . . . well, you know the rest.’

Vince looked at the photo one more time before he slipped it back into his pocket. Nicky DeVane’s gesture of sending a dozen red roses struck him as a strange choice, considering the circumstances. Vince had heard of DeVane, and knew him to be a celebrity snapper. Photographers seemed to be the new thing, and they were cropping up everywhere and making it into the fashion and society pages almost as much as their subjects. But his name was famous for more than just that.

‘DeVane? He wouldn’t be related to
the
DeVanes, would he?’

‘Yes, he would.’

Vince pulled an expression that passed for impressed, or at least intrigued. The DeVanes had been a political force in the country since the Roundheads and Cavaliers. He couldn’t remember which side they’d been on; both probably at one time or another, if their longevity and political savvy were anything to go by. The DeVanes had produced two foreign secretaries, four home secretaries, two chancellors of the exchequer, and a strong candidate for prime minister – until Spanish flu claimed him in 1919. Nothing much since then, but still a power in the upper house.

Vince continued: ‘Outside of the problems you two were having, did Mr Beresford have anything else he seemed worried about?’

‘Such as?’

‘The usual. Money worries? Business worries?’

She looked genuinely confused, then she gave an ironic little smile at the thought. Vince understood straight away: Beresford didn’t suffer the slings and arrows experienced by mere mortals: the fear of the brown envelope dropping doomsday-like through the letter box, the HP payments on the new three-piece suite not being kept up.

‘Obviously I’ve been to his house,’ he said, ‘and seen the lifestyle, but appearances can be deceiving. The big money deal gone wrong. The outstanding tax bill accruing interest. Death duties in the family. Big money brings its own set of problems, I imagine.’

‘If there were any, he wouldn’t have told me, because he wasn’t the type to complain. Why do you ask?’

‘Our people in forensics believe that Mr Beresford fired the weapon himself that night. We’ve searched the house thoroughly and haven’t found a bullet hole, and you yourself say you didn’t see him fire the gun.’ There was a sudden spark of renewed attention on her face. ‘His type of wound, a shot to the temple, is most commonly found with suicides.’ She seemed genuinely shocked and very confused by this revelation, and was still shaking her head in disbelief as Vince continued, ‘Like I said, Miss Saxmore-Blaine, it’s just a possibility, like so many found in a murder investigation – and we have to look into all of them.’

Sounding firm and confident, she said, ‘No. He wouldn’t do such a thing.’

‘If I were you, Miss Saxmore-Blaine, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. But, if I may say, I would certainly jump all over that one. I know your lawyers will.’

At this, she sat up and stiffened, indignation bristling through her and seeming to make her taller even sitting down, certainly tall enough to be able to look down her finely shaped nose at him.

‘From what I’ve read in the papers,’ continued Vince, ‘your lawyers are already doing their job. It’s common practice for law firms to put out stories – or leak facts as they call it – that will benefit their clients.’

‘To what are you referring?’

‘I take it you haven’t read the papers?’

‘No, they’ve been kept from me. And I can’t say that I mind.’

‘The story that you were both drunk and he got violent has made the society columns And, of course, there’re other anonymous sources who have come forward with pithy little quotes to back that up.’

‘Who’s said this?

‘That’s the trouble with anonymous quotes, they can’t be held to account. That’s why such stuff gets dumped into the society pages: it’s gossip, it’s hearsay, it’s scandalous, but it’s good copy and sells newspapers. And that’s why the society and gossip pages are getting fatter, and the factual ones are getting thinner. No one wants boring facts; they want salacious fiction.’

‘Thank you, Detective, but I’m not in need of a lecture. I do have some experience with the journalistic profession.’

Now it was Vince’s turn to bristle, for it was all said in the tone of the lady of the house rebuking a tradesman. ‘Then don’t look so outraged, Mis Saxmore-Blaine, when I tell you that the idea of suicide will appeal to your lawyers. They, and all the people on your bench, are just trying to do the best for you. I’ve seen cases like this get pretty dirty, and for things to be good for you they will have to be bad for Mr Beresford.’