Daggers and Men's Smiles (14 page)

“Well, I want to keep that to ourselves for a bit. There's a family aspect to all this we've not got a handle on yet — sorry, bad pun. Signora Albarosa showed us that coat of arms of her own accord, and then, suddenly became — or, was it suddenly?”

“She changed her mind, didn't she? Wished she hadn't.”

“Yes. When I asked her what her mother was doing here when she's so proud of her roots. Roots — hold on. I've just thought of something. We can drop the car off at Hospital Lane, and walk down to Blondel's.”

“The grocer's, Guv?”

“We'll pick up a bottle of olive oil from the Vannoni estates. I know Blondel's carry the Vannoni olive oil.”

Blondel's Grocers were the top such establishment in town, catering to the carriage trade. They stocked most of the luxury products the island uppercrust might require, including a superb range of vintage wines and fine spirits and cigars in their off-licence. Over the years the business had expanded into a couple of supermarkets and more than one joint project with leading banks, such as Barings, but the family had retained the original store between a jewellers and a bookshop on a small street called the Pollett near La Plaiderie.

Moretti and Liz Falla walked down the hill past what had once been the townhome of the De Saumarez family, and was now Moore's, one of St. Peter Port's most central hotels. Moretti caught his partner's wistful glance up the narrow steps that led to Moore's patisserie.

“Hungry, DC Falla? Me too. We'll take a break after this.”

“We're in luck, Guv.” Liz Falla pointed at the window of Blondel's which was just across the narrow street. “I think there's a Vannoni bottle in the display.”

The window's theme was labelled “Harvest Riches.” There were bunches of convincingly realistic plastic grapes, their fabric vine leaves entwined around bottles of wine and various exotic vinegars, and jars of black and green olives, some with the contents spilled out across the space. Among the olives were bottles of olive oil, some of them gigantic, their colour varying from yellow through lime to almost-green.

“There it is, the Vannoni bottle — we're looking at the shield, right?” said Liz Falla, pointing at one of the more modestly sized bottles.

“Right. There's one on every bottle — I use their brand. I've noticed that much but, like most things one sees everyday, I've never really taken a good look at it.”

“From here,” said Liz, her nose almost touching the glass, “it looks just like the one we saw at the manor.”

“From here. But I think not. Let's take a closer look”

Inside the shop, the warm, complex smell of cheeses, fruit preserves, chocolate, and coffee, mixed with the hospitable fragrance of wines and spirits, reminded both of them they were hungry.

“There you are, Guv. There's one on the counter.” Liz picked it up. “Looks the same to me. Crown on top, grapes and olives and — just a second, that's not a snake, is it?”

“No. A dagger.”

“Brilliant, Guv,” said his partner. “Fancy you remembering that.”

“I didn't, not really, but the quarters up at the manor seemed different to me. Sometimes these heraldic symbols are far from clear — take the balls on the Medici coat of arms, for instance. The French in the sixteenth century spread the rumour they represented poison pills, but nobody really knows what they are.”

Liz Falla nodded sagely. “How come the bottles are different from the shield up at the manor?”

“Remember what Anna Albarosa said about the addition of another coat of arms, when the woman brings her name and fortune into the family? This is what happened here — this shield we're looking at now is almost certainly the Vannoni coat of arms without the Albarosa addition. And remember what I said about how, like most things you see every day, I'd never really examined it. That, I think, is why Anna Albarosa made the mistake of drawing our attention to the family crest, and then why she got cold feet.”

“Right.” Liz Falla waved across at a well-fed white-coated lady slicing off thickly cut chunks from a succulent roast of pork for an equally well-endowed customer. “Where does this get us? I mean, we have to work out, don't we, what all this has to do with the attempt on Mr. Ensor, a rack of damaged costumes, and a dead location manager? Sorry, Guv, perhaps you already have.”

“I wish! But we now know for sure that the dagger is not just idiosyncratic or purely decorative. It's significant. And, second of all — I don't know. I haven't yet worked it out. Hello, Mike.”

Mike Le Page, the manager of Blondel's, was approaching with the look of someone anxious to please, while at the same time hoping to keep any unpleasantness at bay, or at least away from public scrutiny. He was a middle-aged man with the dark hair and eyes that marked his Norman ancestry and, in the midst of constant temptation to overindulge, had managed to keep impressively slim.

“Can I help? Is there a problem? Hello, Liz.”

“None,” Moretti reassured him. “We needed to take a good look at one of the Vannoni olive oil bottles.”

“Terrible business.” Mike Le Page said, shaking his head. “The kitchen staff up there told my delivery man all about it. But why are you looking here?”

Moretti waved a vague hand in the air. “We look into all angles at this stage of the investigation. I imagine you sell the Vannoni brand as much because it's good as because the marchesa is on the island?”

“Oh yes. We have no dealings with her, but we've had some with her niece. She came in and put on a tasting for us once — first time I've had as many males as females for a sampling, once word got around. She's a fine-looking lady, that one. Only, if the stories I hear are true, they were wasting their time. The lads, I mean.”

Mike Le Page gave a knowing laugh.

As Moretti was paying for the bottle of olive oil Mike Le Page said, “Tell you what, Ed, there's someone who knows more than I do about that lot up at Ste. Madeleine. Dan Mahy. His wife was employed by the family right after they bought the manor. He worked here for years — goes back to the days when we did deliveries by bicycle — but he's been retired a while now. He lives out at Torteval. Hang on, I'll get his address for you. We still ask him to our staff get-togethers, although he doesn't come any longer. But they tell me he still puts in an appearance from time to time at the manor — course, it's much closer to where he lives than we are. They give him a bite to eat and send him on his way”

Out in the street, Liz Falla said, “Dan Mahy might be a waste of time, Guv. Nutty as a fruitcake, my mother says. Never got over the death of his wife.”

“Talking of fruitcakes, DC Falla, I think we should get some lunch.”

On the other side of the street, a Labrador retriever with his leash fastened around a lamppost began to bark at an approaching collie.

“Dogs, dogs,” said Moretti. “Why didn't the dog bark in the night?”

“Sorry, Guv, I'm not with you.”

“You know — Sherlock Holmes,” said Moretti, leading the way up the steps past the huge mural painted on the wall of the house adjoining the patisserie. They each ordered a prawn salad and coffee in the restaurant and made their way back outside on to the wide terrace that looked down on a cluster of financial buildings and their closed-circuit cameras.

“Sherlock Holmes, Guv?” asked Liz Falla, pulling in her chair under the shade of the green and white table umbrella advertising Grolsch beer. The cerulean background of the mural behind her nicely complimented the darker blue of her suit.
Gamine
, thought Moretti, looking at her short dark hair, cut in wisps around her face.
Yes, I suppose she is
.

“Sherlock Holmes, DC Falla. This afternoon, I want you to go back to the manor and check with the security people if there was any unusual behaviour from any of the guard dogs on the night of the murder. Also, get someone to check our records, and see if there has been any sort of complaint or report of trouble from the Vannoni family in the past few months, however trivial it may seem.”

The salads and coffee arrived, served by a cheerful red-aproned waitress with an Australian accent.

“What are you expecting to find, Guv?” asked Liz Falla, after the server had left.

“That's just it. I don't know, and I want you to stay open to anything, even the apparently inconsequential.”
The coffee is excellent, almost as good as my own
, thought Moretti. “Now, about those two women. Apart from your feeling the marchesa can't stand her husband, was there anything else that struck you?”

His partner inspected a large prawn impaled on the tines of her fork as though it pleased her mightily.

“Yes, but it's difficult to put into words — ones that make much sense, that is. There's something going on, but I have the feeling that neither of those ladies are entirely sure themselves what it is — see,” said Liz Falla, examining the crustacean as though it had the answer to the mystery, “I got the weirdest feeling from them — that they both know something, but they're neither of them sure if the something they know is the something that caused the murder and the other stuff, and they're darned if they're going to say anything in case they let slip something that may have nothing to do with the murder but they don't want to be public knowledge.”

Moretti watched her silently for a moment as she demolished her plateful of prawns.

“Believe it or not, DC Falla, I understood every word you said.”

Her laughter startled a nearby sparrow, waiting hopefully on the back of an empty chair.

“Thanks, Guv. And thanks for asking my opinion. I never said, but I'm really grateful for the chance to work with you. I've felt at a bit of a loss up to now, but your asking me my impressions really helped.”

“Good.”
I'm feeling less at a loss myself
, thought Moretti — about the partnership at least, if not the case.

A drop of rain splattered on to the umbrella above the table.

“One other thing, Guv.” DC Falla speared a last piece of radicchio. “I get to call you ‘Guv,' but you have this mouthful to say every time. DC Falla, or Detective Constable Falla —”

“I can't say your first name,” said Moretti. Had a small joke and a moment of laughter led to distressing personal requests, unprofessional familiarity? She was giving him that look of hers again.

“And I wouldn't dream of it, Guv. That's all we need, gossip among the lads.”

“What then, DC Falla?”

“How about just ‘Falla,' Guv.”

“Very well, if that's what you'd like.”

“I would. And I'll tell you something else I'd like —” His partner stood up and attracted the attention of the waitress. “If we've got the time, I'd like a piece of their Dobos Torte. I'll burn it off in the pool at the Beau Sejour Centre tonight before I have my rehearsal.”

“Rehearsal?” Moretti didn't know why he should feel surprised. After all, he knew nothing about Detective Constable Liz Falla. “Are you a member of the Island Players like your uncle?”

“God, no!” Falla seemed to find this funny. “I'm a member of a group. We call ourselves ‘Jenemie.' A Guernsey word, but don't ask me what it means. We just liked the sound of it.”

“Group? You mean you're a musician, Falla?”

“Not like you, Guv. I play some guitar — acoustic — but mostly I'm a singer.”

“I didn't know.”

There was the old-fashioned look again. “Why would you, Guv? I don't go around Hospital Lane singing my little folkie heart out.”

“So you're a folk singer.”

“More like — do you know Enya's music? A New Age folkie singer. Sort of like that. My real heroine's a Canadian called Loreena McKennit.”

“Interesting,” said Moretti. It was his favourite fallback word. This time he meant it, although whenever anyone said “New Age” he usually ran fast in the opposite direction. “I think I will go to Torteval after all, have a word with Dan Mahy. Oh, and Falla, next time you're in touch with Benedetti, perhaps you could ask him to see what he can find out about this person. No rush.” Taking out his notepad, Moretti wrote down the name “Sophia Maria Catellani,” added a couple of details, tore out the page, and handed it to Liz Falla.

“Okay, Guv.” His partner looked at the paper, but she asked no questions. He liked that.

“Rain's starting,” said Moretti, standing up and putting the notebook back in his pocket. “They said it would by afternoon. You enjoy your cake, and I'll see you at the manor.”

No need to tell Liz Falla he was making a stop on the way to see if his overnight guest had left his bed.

Rastrellamento.
It's all in there somewhere
, Moretti thought.
I've got to talk to Gilbert Ensor again
. Rain was now pattering steadily against the windshield of the Triumph.