This Private Plot (17 page)

“Yeah. Geoff, what's your Doctor Peeper password?”

Geoffrey leaned over the keyboard and sheepishly tapped a few keys. “It's for research purposes,” he said.

The screen changed, and an organized menu appeared on the left side of the page, while the remaining space became the frame for a video. Geoffrey clicked over a line of text saying “Most recent” and the blank frame snapped into life. Toby put his book aside and joined them.

They were looking down on a bedroom from a high camera angle, which seemed fixed and unchanging. Most of the picture was the surface of a bed, but a bedside cabinet supporting a lamp and a television set on a low cupboard showed around the edges of the frame.

“That looks like Eric's bedroom,” said Toby, peering over Oliver's shoulder.

As the three men watched, a man and a woman came into the room and climbed onto the bed. Over several minutes, they removed each other's clothes, pausing to pay attention to selected body parts as they were denuded. None of these actions involved looking up toward the ceiling—quite the reverse—and so their faces were never clearly picked up by the camera. But they looked young, the blond man much thinner and spottier than the dark-haired woman, and seemed to be enjoying the encounter. Eventually they were both naked, and in what is known as the missionary position.

“I think that was the bum that Ben recognized,” Oliver said. “So I'm assuming our host here is Eric Mormal himself.”

“Never mind Eric,” said Toby. “Look at the girl.”

The dark-haired woman's face could be clearly seen at last beside the back of Mormal's bobbing head. There was no mistaking Davina Bennet. Oliver stopped the playback.

“Is there an archive?” he asked Geoffrey, an idea dawning. Geoffrey mutely clicked on a link that listed dozens of other available videos, distinguished by their dates, which went back more than two years. Oliver selected one at random. The same overhead picture of Mormal's bedroom came into life. This time, his visitor was blond, although the activities proceeded in much the same order. And this time, she was clearly Clarissa Bennet.

“Cheeky bugger,” said Toby with a bitter laugh. “He's recording every sexual encounter and charging people to watch them. What a world!”

“But do his partners know their most intimate moments are being splashed all over cyberspace?” Oliver asked softly. “There doesn't seem to be any awareness of the camera.”

He stopped the video too late to ever forget what Clarissa's naked body looked like beneath the Lanvin dress—an intrusive knowledge of blemishes and the uneasy truce between breasts and gravity.

“How many girls are there, Geoffrey?” he asked.

“Half a dozen. Ten at the most, maybe. The same ones keep coming back for more. Look, I thought it was a setup,” he continued. “I thought it was a professional series, using established porn actors. Only the gimmick was to act like it was a purely amateur affair, caught on a fixed hidden camera, in order to appeal to the voyeur in all of us. That's why I showed it to Ben a couple of weeks ago, to see if he recognized any of the models.” He swallowed. “I didn't know it was real. It looked too genuine to be real.”

“Ben did say the Bennet girls seemed familiar to him,” Oliver said. “I guess it wasn't from the pages of
Tatler
. Well, we have two Bennets out of five—do we dare complete the set?”

He began to click through the archive methodically, fast-forwarding to the earliest point when the female's face was in view and ending the playback as soon as she could be identified. All the Bennets, apart from the youngest, Lucinda, had given in to Mormal's rough-trade charms, most of them frequently and appreciatively. There were also appearances by other girls, whom Toby recognized as old school-friends or workers on the cooperative farm in Pigsneye that employed Mormal during the day.

“‘And pretty maids all in a row,'” Oliver quoted to himself. His mobile phone rang, displaying Effie's number. He turned off the computer, giving him an abrupt reflection of his own features in the polished screen, flanked too closely by the mesmerized faces of Toby and Geoffrey.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Watching Internet porn with the guys.”

“I wish you'd waited for me. But I never had you pegged for an enthusiast.”

“I'm not. I didn't see my first dirty movie until I was twenty. I was quite enjoying it until someone gave away the ending. But listen, I think I've found—”

“No, you listen,” Effie interrupted. “I'm about to get into the car for the drive back. Sorry, Ollie, but I regret to inform you that your attacker last night was not Sidney Weguelin. The prints don't match.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm afraid so. We don't need to bother with that DNA test. So you'd better take care, my poppet. Because somebody else is out to get you.”

Chapter Twenty

Friday afternoon

Toby was leaving for the Stratford dig when Oliver hauled him into the sitting room.

“Listen, Toblerone,” he whispered, “don't mention what we saw on that website.”

“If you're trying to protect the good name of Les Bennettes, you're shutting the stable door a little late. Not that I'm comparing them to horses. Although…”

“I mean don't tell Eric we know about his foul practice. I don't want him making himself scarce until Effie and I ask him a few questions.”

Toby nodded. “You think Uncle Dennis found out about the girls' being such, uh, good sports?”

“It would explain something Eric said at dinner last week. When I mentioned that letter, he exclaimed, ‘
He
was being blackmailed?' The emphasis sounded as if it contradicted something he already knew—that Dennis was himself a blackmailer.”

“If Scotland Yard knew about you, Olivia, they'd surely snap you up. Oh wait—they do, and they haven't.” Toby shifted the strap of his bulky shoulder bag. “So you want me to suppress all my loyalty to my childhood friend?”

“If it's not too much trouble.”

“Oh, no trouble at all.” Toby grinned. “Serve the puffed and reckless libertine bloody well right. The only risk I can see here is Eric's embarrassment, two words that have never appeared together in an English sentence before. Feigned obliviousness coming right up.”

Not a stretch for you
, Oliver thought with affection. “Why is Eric helping you at the excavation anyway?” he asked. “Didn't you say it was only sifting through the topsoil?”

Toby stepped across to the door and closed it. “Listen, Ollie, can you keep a secret?” he asked.

“No.”

“I'll tell you anyway. We found something unexpected when we started to dig. There's a hidden cellar beneath the foundations of the old house. That was a bit of a surprise, given the seepage problem on a river island. It needed baling out, and because there were only three us on the project at the time, I asked Eric if he could lend a hand. He's stayed with us ever since.”

“Did you find anything down there?”

“No, after all that, it was empty. But the cellar was interesting in itself. There's an odd sort of alcove in the wall, and if the house was older, I'd have said it was a priest hole, but it was only built a couple of centuries ago—certainly not from Shakespeare's time. Probably meant for cold storage, from the days before refrigeration.”

“Why all the secrecy?”

“Because if we'd reported the discovery, the Town would have tossed us out and taken over.”

“And you didn't want others to dig up the past?”

“Not till we've had our turn.”

***

Effie arrived back from Birmingham with Susie half an hour later, spent ten amused minutes surveying Mormal's website over a cup of tea, and then drove Oliver to the Stratford excavation.

“Four of the five Bennet girls are on Doctor Peeper,” he told her, as they sped along the southern approach to the town. “No Lucinda.”

“Perhaps she's the one who got the good taste in men,” Effie suggested. “Having met the Honorable Donald, I know that's hard to believe, but everything's relative.”

“Maybe. But do you remember what you said to Ben after that dinner party?”

“Of course not. I was plastered.”

“You told him off for using the ‘you look familiar' line on the Bennets. But they did. Ben was remembering the time a few weeks earlier when Geoffrey showed him Doctor Peeper.”

“Ben's a portrait photographer. He's probably the only man who'd notice that the girls had faces.”

“Exactly. But here's the thing: He said on Saturday that they
all
looked familiar.”

“Ah, the plot thickens.”

“I called Ben just now, but he wasn't in. However, there's another clue. The website belongs to a company called 740 Ventures, presumably named by Eric. Did you notice at dinner that the girls were wearing fancy initial pins?”

“Covered in diamonds. If you're thinking of buying me anything that crass for Christmas, don't. I'd prefer a book. But not one of yours this year.”

“And that's why I love you, Eff. That and the hair. Well, it's probably a coincidence, but each of the sisters has a name that begins with a Roman numeral: Davina, Catriona, Clarissa, Xanthe, and Lucinda. DCCXL, in birth order. That's—”

“Seven hundred and forty.”

“Exactly. But you need Luce. Without her L for fifty, it would be—”

“Seven hundred and ten,” Effie confirmed, as they drove into the riverside park where the dig was located. “I don't know, Ollie—it sounds too cerebral for Eric Mormal.”

They heard Mormal before they saw him, his voice carrying over the low-frequency chugging of a cabin cruiser in the neighboring lock and the constant static of the downstream weir. He was pushing a wheelbarrow across the plank bridge from the island, yelling back over his shoulder.

“Listen, Giles or Miles or Niles or whatever-your-name-is, you Oxford prats are so bleedin' effete, you think manual labor is a Spanish wine waiter.” He walked on along the path, chuckling to himself.

“Doctor Peeper, I presume,” Oliver said. Mormal looked startled, made an involuntary assessment of who else might be listening, and set down the wheelbarrow. They could see that it contained a few ancient bricks and a sports bag.

“Blimey, Olls, you're a bit bashed about the old phizog,” Mormal said, noticing Oliver's scratches and bruises. His own face was unmarked.

“The website, Eric…” said Effie firmly.

Mormal let his eyes drift down Effie's body, clearly appreciating the skirt she'd put on for Birmingham Tyler. He seemed to reach into his sports bag for something, but his hand was empty when he withdrew it.

“So who told you about Doctor Peeper?” he asked Oliver. “That mate of yours, Geoffrey Angelwine? Or ‘Flackstud,' to use his site ID.”

“Isn't membership anonymous?” Oliver asked.

“Not to the man who collects the credit card payments. How many Geoffrey Angelwines do you think there are? So, Effie, are you here to take down my particulars? I should warn you, my lawyer tells me I'm doing nothing illegal, because I'm shooting my little dramas on my own property.” He winked at her and picked up the wheelbarrow. “Come up and see me sometime, I've got a good part for you.”

He began to trundle the barrow swiftly across the grass, and Oliver and Effie had to hurry after his bony form.

“Do the Bennet girls know they're on the Internet?” Oliver asked, panting.

“Of course not!” Mormal scoffed, without stopping. “You know Davina. She'd die if she found out that an immodest percentage of the male population has studied her tan lines.”

“Then aren't you afraid someone will recognize her?”

“Not really. Most of my members wouldn't know her from Adam. And who looks at the faces, anyway?”

And that's what makes it pornography, thought Oliver: you don't care who owns the body. When you do, it becomes eroticism.

They had reached the parking area where they'd left Effie's Renault. Mormal set down the wheelbarrow behind his van—or more appropriately, the van that belonged to Pigsneye Organic Cooperative Farms. He opened the rear doors and began to throw the bricks into its empty, dirty interior.

“Dennis Breedlove was blackmailing you, wasn't he?” Oliver said.

Mormal paused, feeling the heft of a brick in his palm.

“Don't deny it, Eric,” said Effie.

Mormal remained silent. He let go of the brick, placed his sports bag on the grass, walked around to the driver's side door of the van, and reached inside. After a moment or two, he emerged with another bag, which he handed to Oliver.

“Toby left this in the van,” he said sourly. “He was in such a hurry to piss off to that church that he left it behind. Now I know what the rush was all about. Tell the old mole he'll have to cadge a lift home with one of his poncy friends.” He looked from one to the other of his accusers. “All right, I'll give you five minutes.”

“How long have you been paying Breedlove?” asked Effie.

“A couple of years.”

That ties in flawlessly with the “Mary, Mary” victim, thought Oliver, “pretty maids all in a row.” Three out of five, then, and he was still counting on Sidney Weguelin as Tweedledum. And if we identify the four existing victims, do we need to figure out who that undelivered letter was supposed to go to—to dig up the past?

“So Dennis saw the website and knew it was you?” he ventured.

“Nah, this all began long before the website. He just discovered that I was, shall we say, servicing more than one of the Bennet girls.”

“How did he find out? From one of the girls?”

Mormal was already shaking his head, prodding his sports bag gently with his foot and moving it a few inches away from where he was standing. “I'm afraid it was me, boasting of my gifts that have the power to seduce. A moment of sympathetic bonding with an old man who seemed wistful for his romantic past. He got me. He got me good, that smiling damned villain.” He laughed sharply. “No, I don't think Davvy or Xan or Cat or Clarrie are proud enough of their association with me to fess up to a third party. I do know what I am, Effie: I'm a bit of rough who's prepared to give some man-hungry but plain young ladies secret sex on a weekly basis. I'm the nasty skeleton in their closets, and I make it easy for them to keep its doors closed, especially from each other. That's how it works.”

“Very altruistic of you,” said Effie. “Although with the website, there's clearly more in it for you than a regular supply of fornication.”

“Well, I wouldn't discount the fornication. But then my pleasure grew into my business.”

“Which would never have started if Dennis Breedlove had told the girls they were sharing what, for the sake of this conversation, I'll call a ‘lover,'” Oliver commented. “Isn't that what he threatened?”

Mormal stared at Oliver with amusement. “You don't get it, do you? What's the worst that could have happened? Oh, the girls would get all huffy for a while, but they'd privately crawl back into my bed for that little touch of Eric in the night. Every dog will have his day. If it's Tuesday, it must be Clarissa.” He leaned toward Effie with what he thought was a seductive expression. “I'm hard to get over.”

“So's a yeast infection,” she replied.

“Then why
did
you pay Breedlove?” Oliver inquired, distracted by the continuing hum of the weir, which he thought was too far from the car park to be audible.

“Because of their mother.”

“You think she'd be scandalized?”

“Well, at first I think she'd be jealous.”

Oliver looked about to speak, but Effie placed a hand on his arm.

“No,” she said. “Just don't go there. I don't want to know.”

“You see, Dennis wasn't expecting
me
to pay,” Mormal continued. “I didn't have any money back then. Dennis thought I could get Wendy Bennet to cough up a bob or two, rather than see the tabloid headlines of ‘Shame of f-four debs in the single bed.' But I had my own reasons for keeping Wendy in the dark. In every sense.”

“So you commercialized your sex life in order to pay for his continuing silence,” Oliver said.

Mormal laughed. “You
really
don't get it, Olls. Dennis wasn't blackmailing me, at least not technically. He was my business partner.”

“What?”

“You didn't know, did you? Yeah, that was my stroke of genius. Dirty old Dennis liked to make money out of sin in Synne. So instead of blackmail payments, I offered him fifty percent of the new Doctor Peeper website.”

“Surely Doctor Peeper doesn't pay much?” Effie commented. “When it's the same girls, in the same place, doing largely the same things with the same man, for want of a better word?”

“In the world of cyberporn, Effers, that's a winning formula. The Bennets are popular with the punters, because they're genuinely posh, genuinely amateur, and genuinely unaware of the camera. And they're clearly real sisters, which adds to the piquancy. Horses for courses. All I need is a few hundred obsessive sads around the planet coughing up their monthly £12.95 and we're in clover. I'd give Dennis a hundred quid or so a month in pocket money, as arranged, but there's more than fifty thou in the bank that's rightfully his, and his shares could be worth fifty more.”

“And now he's dead, you get to keep it all for yourself.”
Do we have a motive for murder?
Oliver wondered.

Mormal looked hurt at the insinuation. “That money isn't mine. I've already notified those relatives of the secret part of Dennis's fortune. Not telling them how he earned it, of course.”

“Won't they figure that out?”

“No, the shares are in a holding company, which Dennis insisted on setting up. He called it 740 Ventures—some private joke of his own. He liked private jokes.”

Tell me about it, “Mary, Mary,” thought Oliver. “Do you think the girls would still forgive you if they found out about Doctor Peeper?” he asked.

“No, I don't. But why should they find out?”

“Because somebody's bound to recognize them sooner or later. Ben Motley did. I did. It only takes one slumming
Tatler
reader to spot demure Davina Bennet, her chaste treasure open, in flagrante delicto with a local yahoo. No offense, Eric.”

“Oh, none taken, Foureyes.” He gently nudged his sports bag again. “But let's do a test. Do you want to tell your friends, the Bennets, that you stumbled across them while visiting Internet porn sites, Oliver?”

Oliver was silent.

“Effie,” Mormal continued, “are you going to be the one to tell the girls their private parts are available for public viewing, knowing they'll never recover from the humiliation?”