The Saint Zita Society (11 page)

‘People always feel like that when something horrendous happens.’

Montserrat went into her flat and came out with a blanket. She knelt down and began easing Rad Sothern’s body onto the blanket and gradually to roll him over.

‘How can you?’ Preston Still’s voice rose an octave. ‘Stop it. Stop doing that. You’re never supposed to move someone who’s been – well, who’s met a violent death. We have to get the police.’

The idea of that frightened her more than the fact that Rad was dead. ‘You want to be arrested, do you? They’ll say it’s murder.’

‘For God’s sake, I only gave him a push. It was that banister that was responsible for his death.’

‘Help me get him through that door,’ said Montserrat.

She could tell that Mr Still, whom she was already in her thoughts calling Preston, was far more squeamish than she was. He had to look away as she pushed and he pulled Rad Sothern’s body into her flat. He would have closed the door if she hadn’t said, ‘We can’t leave that blood there like that.’

‘It has to be left there for the police.’

She said nothing but cast up her eyes. Probably he’d never in his life mopped a floor, he wouldn’t know how to do it. He was a man. Montserrat was no housewife but she hadn’t reached the age of twenty-two without, at any rate once, washing a tiled floor. There was a bucket in the cupboard
under the sink. It had never been used as far as she knew but it was capable of holding water and it had a handle. With a sponge from the bathroom and a bottle of washing-up liquid, she set to work. When Preston saw the red water, itself like foaming blood, he shuddered and once more turned away.

‘I think I’ve got it all up. It wouldn’t do for a real police examination, tests and all that, but we aren’t going to have that, are we? We’re not getting the police.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You haven’t got any blood on you, have you?’

‘You’re like Lady Macbeth,’ he said in a slow level voice like a zombie. ‘Wash your hands, put on your nightgown –’

‘Come on now. Get yourself together. I’m going to get us a drink. There’s some whisky in the drawing room.’

They hadn’t really done anything, she thought, as she went upstairs to fetch the whisky. All Preston had done was give that TV guy a hard push. Rad would be alive now if the people she’d called to mend the banister had come immediately. Try telling the police that, though. The trouble with Preston was that, big insurance tycoon he might be, he’d led a sheltered life. Didn’t know he was born, as her father might say. His natural solution to anything that smacked of the illegal was to call the police. Never mind that they’d take it for granted he’d killed Rad because Rad was his wife’s lover. No question. Of course Preston was so naive that he still didn’t realise this. She would tell him, she had to. He was sitting in one of the two armchairs when she went into the flat, lying back with his hands hanging, staring into space.

She had already had a swig of whisky from the bottle. She handed him a glass, set her own down on the coffee table. He spoke without looking at her. ‘I suppose that man had been visiting Lucy.’ She nodded, took a gulp of the whisky. ‘Where did you come into it?’

‘We weren’t a threesome if that’s what you’re thinking. I
always let him in by the basement door and took him along to her room.’

Now he turned his eyes on her and she saw anger there. She also saw that he was quite good-looking and his voice was beautiful.

‘You were the psychopomp,’ he said.

‘The what?’

‘A conductor of souls to hell.’

Montserrat, who was rather superstitious, found herself shuddering. She touched the body in its concealing blanket with the tip of her toe. ‘What are we going to do with him?’

‘Oh, well, nothing. He’s in here now and you obviously won’t want to sleep here yourself. You take one of the spare rooms for the night and in the morning I’ll call the police. After all, it was an accident. All that forensic stuff won’t be necessary. Once they’ve heard what I have to say and you have to say and they’ve seen the broken banister everything will be cleared up.’

‘Don’t forget they’ll have to know Lucy was in a relationship with Rad Sothern. That’s what makes all the difference. And he’s famous,
was
famous. Whoever’s boyfriend he was it’d still be enormous in the media. Don’t you see?’

It was the word ‘boyfriend’ that brought a dark flush to Preston’s face. ‘It was an accident,’ he said.

‘I know that and you know that but they won’t.’

Did she know it? Did he? He had pushed the man downstairs about as hard as anyone could. She felt like saying that he lived out of the world in a land of figures and statistics, stocks and shares and markets, while
she
knew very well what the media were and how they would react. Her earlier excitement returned when she thought of the pictures in the papers, the excerpts from
Avalon Clinic
on Sky News, the pictures of number 7 Hexam Place and of Lucy with her children, of Preston getting into his car, Beacon holding the
door open – and that was only if Rad had vanished, nothing to what it would be if he was found dead. ‘Best if he disappears, even better if he’s never found.’

‘We can’t do that, Montserrat.’ It was the first time – the first time ever? – he had used her given name.

‘We have to do that. It’s the only way. Think about it. Think what happens to Lucy and your children and your business and everything connected with you if you tell the police you pushed Rad Sothern down the stairs. They’ll arrest you and the media will eat you alive.’

There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘You really are Lady Macbeth. Give me some more of that Scotch, will you?’

She refilled his glass. ‘That’s enough. You’ve got to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.’

‘What does that mean?’

A recollection of the only time she had seen
Macbeth
came back to her. On TV it had been. It was all about a woman telling her weak husband how to behave when he’d murdered someone, wasn’t it? Appropriate. ‘You go to bed. Lucy’ll be asleep. It’s Saturday tomorrow. Tell her you’ve got to work all day. I’ve known you do that, she won’t wonder –’

‘I don’t give a shit if she does!’ he said violently.

‘I’ll sleep here – with that.’ She waved her hand in the direction of Rad’s body. ‘You come back here and we’ll put the body into something and take it away.’ Her glance fell on the car-roof box. ‘Into that thing. I got it to carry my skis on holiday but we can use it.’

‘Take it where?’

‘You’ve got a place in the country, haven’t you? Not far?’

‘In Essex. I can’t take the Audi. Beacon will have put it away for the weekend. We usually rent a car to go to Gallowmill Hall but that’s obviously not possible … Look, Montserrat, the whole thing’s not possible.’

‘We can go in my car,’ she said.

‘It’s best if I call the police first thing in the morning. I won’t mention you. I’ll bring the body out again and lay it on the floor and tell them I was coming in the basement door when I saw – what’s his name? Rad Something? – come to the top of the basement stairs and fall when he grabbed hold of the banister. I’ll say I came that way because I mislaid my keys – which is true – and you were out so couldn’t let me in. I’ll say I had no idea who this Rad person was and he was dead before I could find out. It all hangs together.’

‘That’s the most hopeless scenario I’ve ever heard,’ said Montserrat. ‘Talk about “hangs together”. If there was still capital punishment, it’s you who’d hang. We may as well put the body into the case now, get it over with and we can leave in the morning when Lucy’s gone to the gym. Don’t you say a word to Lucy, mind.’

T
homas woke up crying, his right cheek bright red and wet with tears. Rabia gave him slightly warmed orange juice (freshly squeezed) to drink and an ivory teething ring (freshly sterilised) to bite on. It had been hers when she was a baby and giving it to Thomas made her feel that he was really her child, using his mother’s infant things as small children often do. It made her happy that he liked the ring and smiled at her and said his new word ‘sweetheart’.

‘Love Rab.’

‘And Rab loves you lots, Thomas.’

‘Say sweetheart,’ said Thomas.

So Rabia did and changed his nappy and kissed him and laid him tenderly back in his new grown-up bed.

Along the street in the basement of number 11, Henry
and the Honourable Huguette slept in each other’s arms or had done so until they got too hot and rolled apart. It was the first time Huguette had shared his bed in her father’s house and delightful as it was in many ways, especially not to have to leave her flat for the cold night outside, he was nervous and his sleep was fitful. It would have been better if there had been a key to his door but there wasn’t, only a keyhole. Henry thought perhaps he might buy a bolt for the door which would provide them with great privacy. As it was, every creak, tap and squeak in the house made him fear someone was approaching down the basement stairs.

A few houses along, at number 3, Jimmy was sleeping in for a change. Dr Jefferson had no idea how to manage servants. Jimmy was well aware of this and instead of despising him for it, rather liked him. Of course he could detect from Dr Jefferson’s accent, superficially refined – an inner London comprehensive before Oxford – his working-class origins. That was why he wouldn’t let Jimmy call him sir or open the car door for him, and although Jimmy didn’t ‘officially’ live in, a nice bedroom in the basement of number 3 was at his disposal. This was where he was sleeping on Bonfire Night, and in spite of being newly in love, was sleeping alone. There was no night bus to where he lived and although Dr Jefferson wouldn’t have objected for a moment to his driving home in the Lexus to his flat in Kennington, Jimmy had been drinking with Thea and drinking far too much to drive anything anywhere.

For it was Thea that he was in love with. It was extraordinary. She was over thirty and not or not particularly good-looking and he had known her for years. Nor had he been aware of liking her much. But the evening before in the Dugong, sitting next to June on one side and Richard on the other, he looked up from his half of lager and his
eyes met Thea’s across the table. In that moment he had the curious sensation of his heart tilting, stopping still and then righting itself. He thought, I love you, Thea. Then he wanted to shout it aloud. I’m in love with you, I’m in love with you. Their eyes held each other’s and she smiled at him, a wonderful radiant smile that transformed her rather ordinary little face into a raving beauty’s.

He said nothing, did nothing, but went again to the Dugong the following night. She was there, as he knew she would be, sitting at the same table alone. Was any hair colour lovelier on a woman than that natural red? Nasturtium red, conker red. It was too early for any of the others to be there. Half the night and most of the day he had been thinking about what had happened to him and he wasn’t going to waste time on small talk now. He went up to Ted Goldsworth at the bar and asked for two glasses of champagne, aware that Thea’s eyes were on him.

As he set the glasses down she said, ‘Hello, Jimmy,’ in a voice that seemed to him full of meaning, and he said, ‘Hello, Thea.’ All he had wanted to say the evening before and during the night and all day while he was driving Dr Jefferson, he now said. ‘I’ve fallen in love with you. I know it’s mad but I think you feel the same.’

No one had ever spoken to Thea like that before. Lonely and fretful, she was overcome by Jimmy’s declaration. ‘I do,’ she said as if they were getting married.

‘Then let’s drink this and go on somewhere else, just you and me.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to us.’

‘To us,’ she said and she gave an incredulous laugh.

They had not really drunk too much, just too much for Jimmy to think of driving. The evening passed in a wine bar in Ranelagh Grove to the rumble of fireworks and the hiss of rockets. A sign of love, Jimmy had heard, is that it deprives you of appetite
and they ate very little. She laid her hand on the table and he laid his over it. The kiss he would postpone till their parting later on, for he had no idea of their spending the night together, not yet, not for a while. A feeling he half knew to be ridiculous was that there was a holiness about their love it would be wrong to ‘spoil’ at this early stage. The consummation would come, though, and both of them accepted it with peace and joy and a smiling taking for granted.

They walked back to Hexam Place, hand in hand, it wasn’t far. A light was still on in Damian and Roland’s drawing room but Miss Grieves’s flat was in darkness and out of the range of Roland and Damian’s light and the light from the street lamp, Jimmy kissed Thea. Thea held him in her arms a long time, asking herself what she was doing.

‘Phone me in the morning,’ she said.

‘Of course. That’s a matter of course. I shall want to hear your voice.’

Inside her own bedroom, in the silence, Thea wondered what she had meant by that ‘I do’. Had she only said it to please him, not to hurt his feelings? Was it that she was flattered or again just a case of her trying to please someone but this time landing herself in a great deal of trouble? No one had ever before said he was in love with her. She had never been in such a romantic situation. Perhaps she could teach herself to love him by telling herself how handsome he was and how kind.

As Jimmy let himself into number 3 and that bedroom he was at last making use of, the lights in houses gradually went out until the whole street was in darkness.

M
ontserrat was wakened in the night by Preston tapping on the door and hissing at the keyhole, ‘Open the door, Montserrat. We have to talk.’

If anyone heard him, she thought, they’d think he and she were lovers. That might do very well one day but not yet. She opened the door. ‘There’s nothing to talk about. We’ve said it all. All we have to do now is find a way to get that case thing on top of the car without anyone suspecting what’s inside it. Where are you sleeping?’

‘I was in her room,’ he said. ‘I can’t go back there, it’s horrible.’

‘Oh, well, there are four spare bedrooms in the house. You find one of them and come back here about seven.’