Gilded Edge, The (16 page)

He drove Isabel to his own private club: Gino’s Café in Pimlico. It was an Italianate greasy spoon that did a good line in mama’s homemade cooking, the meatballs with red wine sauce being the pick of the menu. Red plastic gingham-style tablecloths covered Formica tables that were screwed to the floor. Framed pastoral scenes from the old country covered the burgundy-glossed walls. Vince tucked into the meatballs with ravioli.

Isabel smoked and glanced listlessly at some slices of Welsh rarebit that seeped rust-coloured globules of grease on to her white plate. Both had fresh coffee in front of them.

‘So, what did Aspers have to say?’

‘Asprey? He thinks you did it,’ answered Vince, looking squarely at her as he did so. Her head dipped and she let out a dispirited and deflating sigh, like the jury had just delivered the final verdict. Vince could see that, without the fuel of booze, which had given her the ability to stare down an entire room, she was far from insensitive to the opinions of others.

‘Don’t look so upset. What did you expect Asprey to say? And I imagine the rest of Johnny’s friends will follow suit.’

‘Nicky won’t,’ she said, with a vigorous shake of her head. ‘He’s a true friend.’

‘If he killed Johnny, he will.’

She sat up straight and hoisted her black eyebrows to breaking point, as though this was the most outrageous thing she’d ever heard.

‘Well, if you didn’t do it, someone did.’

‘Meaning you don’t think . . . I did it?’

‘I don’t even think you really think you did it,’ said Vince, eyeing the small gold crucifix hung around her long neck. ‘And you’re likely to be your own worst witness for the persecution.’ She looked confused, so Vince corrected himself. ‘Witness for the
prosecution.
If you genuinely thought you were guilty, you’d be tucked up in bed now, instead of pitching up at Jezebel’s dressed to the nines and drinking gimlets like Boudicca.’

She laughed, as if this was the second most outrageous thing she’d ever heard. ‘Boudicca . . . with gimlets?’

Vince picked up on the ridiculousness of the image, and laughed too. Their laughter went on far longer than either of them intended. It gathered momentum and quickly turned into a fit of giggles that just got worse every time they looked at each other and tried to subdue it. It became infectious as heads turned. Even the three stern-faced old cabbies, who looked as if they’d been around the block a few times, and were silently fuelling up on steaming copper-coloured tea and meatball sarnies, cracked smiles that soon turned into chuckles. Breathless and flushed, Isabel finally took control of the situation and excused herself to powder her nose. When she returned, she found Vince soberly sipping his black coffee.

‘Thank you for that,’ she said. ‘For making me laugh, I mean. It’s been a while. For a moment there, I almost forgot about everything. But you’re not going to let me do that, are you?’

Vince looked apologetic for about three and a half seconds, then it was back to business. ‘Asprey and the others, did any of them have a beef, a problem, with Johnny – no matter how seemingly small, how seemingly slight.’

‘They’ve known each other since school days. They were his best friends.’

Vince threw her a look over his coffee cup that killed off the last of such naivety, and in case it hadn’t he backed it up with: ‘Then they probably
all
had motives to kill him. I’m looking for rifts, I’m looking for falling-outs and arguments . . . I’m looking for
anything.
Let’s start with James Asprey.’

‘He’s your classic misanthrope, prefers the company of monkeys to most men outside his close circle of friends, and he thinks women have their place purely for breeding purposes. Believes they should drop the H bomb at least three more times, because a good culling is what the world needs. Thinks dictatorships are the only way to run things. Stalin had it right, but he was a red. And Adolf Hitler is preferable to Harold Wilson. I’ve heard all this being said without any hint of irony.’

‘Me, too, some of it. Would he include Johnny Beresford in that cull?’

‘They all fell out with one another at one time or another, but they always made up. Simon Goldsachs was the most recent, but I don’t know what it was about. Johnny claimed it was nothing, just a silly spat. Before that he wasn’t talking to Guy Ruley for a while, because of a business deal gone wrong. But they seemed to put it all behind them. As for Lucky—’

‘Lucky?’

‘Lord
Lucky
Lucan. A nickname, and deeply ironic to everyone but Lucky himself. Even as he watched his money drift away from him in hand after hand of chemmy or each throw of the dice, he still didn’t get the joke. Johnny never fell out with him, because he was too busy beating him at the tables.’ Vince’s eyes flashed with interest. Isabel must have noticed this, because she quickly added, ‘Lucky wouldn’t kill him. He wouldn’t have the brains to.’

‘You don’t have to have brains to kill people, you just need them to get away with it. And no one’s got away with anything yet. But go on, tell me about Nicky DeVane.’

At this she gave a short derisive laugh. ‘Impossible. Nicky wouldn’t fall out with any of them. And they wouldn’t fall out with him. He’s impossible to fall out with.’

‘He’s more a friend of yours than of Johnny’s, you’d say?’

‘I’ve known him for years. Our families were neighbours when we were children. He and Johnny met at Eton. But I know that Nicky wouldn’t hear a word against me. Johnny told me that Nicky was intensely loyal to me.’

‘He sent you the flowers, a dozen red roses. That could be construed as a statement of more than just friendship.’

‘I like roses, and Nicky knows that. Johnny always preferred lilies, had them all over his house.’ At the memory of this, her eyes squeezed shut for a moment. But Vince could see it was a moment intensely felt, and she wasn’t savouring the recollection, instead was trying to rid herself of it. ‘I can smell them now, pungent and cloying. The drifting pollen used to catch on my clothes and leave an orange stain. They’re the flower of death, did you know that?’

Vince knew it and nodded, but he was preoccupied with an idea that was slowly but surely sliding into place. ‘You’ve not been to Eaton Square since, have you?’

‘No, of course not.’

She circumspectly picked up a slice of her Welsh rarebit. Vince took it out of her hand and said, ‘Your biggest problem is your blacking out there. I know a little about blackout drunks.’Vince watched as her head dipped, and a shadow of shame passed over her face. But, heartbreaking as it was, he’d had enough of humouring her and pressed on. ‘Blackout drunks are capable of anything. Jails are full of men who went for one drink after work and woke up the next morning with their wife lying dead next to them, and themselves holding the knife that did it. Yet they didn’t have a clue how it happened. And saying you blacked out and can’t remember anything is not a defence. From going around to Eaton Square and getting drunk, from fighting and clocking him with the champagne bottle, you’re missing about six hours. If you want to prove you’re innocent before a court of law, we have to find those hours.’

‘But where? I
can’t
remember.’

‘Trust me?’

Isabel searched Vince’s eyes. ‘Why do you care about me, Detective Treadwell?’

‘I don’t, not especially,’ he said, none too convincingly. ‘Johnny may have killed himself. Maybe not. If not, which is my bet, then I want to find out who did. So, Miss Saxmore-Blaine, do you trust me?’

She nodded, and asked: ‘What are we going to do?’

‘We’re going to wake up and smell the flowers.’

It was around midnight when Vince drew up in Eaton Square. Isabel pulled out a cigarette and began searching her patent-leather clutch bag for a light. Vince opened the glove compartment and pulled out a book of matches, the same one Isabel had given him to dispose of when he’d seen her in the private hospital. The cardboard match sparked and fizzed into life, illuminating the car when its light caught the glint of the gold-coloured match book.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked, examining what was embossed on the gold cover of the match book before dropping it on to the dash. She took a deep drag on her cigarette and plumed out a cylinder of smoke that, filtered through her fragrant lipstick, smelled better than any fancy-schmancy perfume he cared to mention.

She gave Vince an assured nod.

The plan was simple: to place Isabel back at the scene of the crime and have her retrace her footsteps on the night of the murder, and thus try and dismantle the fugue state she was now in. To throw light on what had happened that night: illuminate the blackout she’d fallen into and unlock the
thing
hidden in her subconscious. Just like the malodorous scent of the lilies had unlocked memories of Johnny Beresford. Vince had warned her of the dangers; it could prove her guilt just as easily as prove her innocence. There were obviously other risks involved in this ‘experiment’. But seeing as Isabel had fallen off the wagon by her own doing that night, he felt those risks were calculated. Because, to make it work, Vince needed her to replicate as closely as possible her state of mind at the time the murder was committed: the setting, the mood and, naturally, her level of intoxication. They’d bought a couple of bottles of champagne, and the plan also meant Vince making a trip up to Notting Hill.

There he had collared Vivian Chalcott inside his haunt, the Finches pub on Portobello Road. It was a gentle collar, a soft collar, a velvet collar. Vince collected him from the bar and sat him down in one of the pummelled red booths, where he scored a couple of joints off him. With a sly smile, Vivian said that he was always happy to ‘turn on’ members of the constabulary, and this wasn’t the first time he had done so. Vivian was about to disclose who Vince’s fellow policing potheads were when Vince raised a halting hand and explained firmly that they weren’t for him, but for ‘a work-related experiment’. Vivian nodded sagaciously, then winked and nudged, and remarked that even the great detective Sherlock Holmes had got high from time to time. Vince then warned Vivian that if he ever started peddling the stuff that Sherlock Holmes shot up with, relations between the two of them would get decidedly frosty. Vivian gave him the ready-rolled reefers for nothing, whereupon Vince said he owed him one, and knew that, somewhere down the line, he’d end up paying him back.

Isabel looked at the two rolled joints nestling in her cigarette pack and said, ‘I can’t imagine this sort of activity being standard police practice. How did you get to know about it?’

‘I read it in a book. And now you’re stalling. If we’re going to do it, we have to do it right away.’

On entering the house, they went straight into the main drawing room. As a crime scene, it had been done and dusted. The place had been thoroughly swept for prints, and photographed, and all the evidence they might need from the house had been collected and bagged and recorded. So there was nothing here to disturb. He watched as Isabel walked slowly around the big room, breathing it in, eating it up with her eyes, a room she’d been in a hundred times before that was suffused with memories and meaning – and hopefully, clues. The lilies in the room were overripe and ready to die, and their pollen was pungently rich.

She went over to the drinks cabinet, a converted black boulle-worked commode, and took out two tall stemmed and fluted glasses.

‘Will you be joining me?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Scared I’ll kill you too?’

‘There’s no nice way of putting this, but if the scientist got in the cage with the rats every time he did an experiment, where would we be?’

‘You’re right, there was no nice way of putting it – but you could have tried a little harder.’

Vince popped the first champagne bottle, and poured some of the fizzy amber liquid into her glass. It wasn’t the same quality as the champagne drunk on the crucial night, and he had wondered if she needed the exact same brand to relive the true sensation. But she had assured him that she’d be okay with what they had. It seemed Isabel knew all about booze, not just from the perspective of knowing the right wine to order with the right food in good restaurants, but from the perspective of a drunk, or a lush, to use the feminine designation. And no matter how hard the average booze hound or bottomed-out alcoholic professes to be a connoisseur of the grape or the grain, it’s the ethanol alcohol they crave, be it in a bottle of Bollinger or a tin of silver polish. Both will eventually take them to the same place. You drink it and you drink it, until one day it decides to retaliate and drink you. Isabel knew this all too well as she put her lips to the glass and took the first sip: the first one that triggers the phenomenal craving, and the compulsion to drink more and more of the stuff until it spiralled her down into the black pit, the blackout, the big nowhere.

She took the bottle of champagne from Vince, holding it firmly by the neck in one hand. In the other she held her glass of fizzing champagne, as she sat down in a blue velvet and gilt-framed chaise longue. Vince sat down opposite her.

‘You want me to put on some music?’

‘Why?’

‘Because you were listening to music that night.’

She said not yet, and drank thirstily. It was the booze that had her attention now. In no time she’d drained the glass and poured another. And another. And another. She took the pack of cigarettes out of her bag and fished out a joint, lit it, and drew the earthy smoke deep into her lungs. She held it there without a cough or a splutter, then finally released it wrapped around a resigned sigh. Vince watched her with a scientific eye as she went about getting wasted in an almost workmanlike fashion. She drank deeply, she smoked heavily, and didn’t seem to be enjoying any of it.

‘I turned Johnny on to this,’ she said, raising the joint between forefinger and thumb. ‘I first smoked it at college.’

‘They smoke a lot of pot in Poughkeepsie?’

‘Oh, Detective Vincent Treadwell, you would not believe what they get up to in
Poughkeepsie
.’

She leaned back into the sofa, her lips curling into a lazily lascivious smile. Her dark lustrous eyes now held a glint, and it was a glint aimed right at Vince. It was an inviting glint, one that wanted him to join her on the blue velvet chaise longue. But, flattering and exciting as it was to have Isabel Saxmore-Blaine looking at him like this now, he didn’t want her to be in the
now;
he wanted her to be in the
then.