Daggers and Men's Smiles (31 page)

“Well,” he said, looking across the table at Liz Falla, “I think we can safely say we now know where the murder weapon in the bunker came from.”

“Can we?” His partner waved her hand over the motley collection in front of them. “There's nothing nearly as valuable in this lot, is there?”

“No, but Dan Mahy told me he had a windfall in his
pied-du-cauche.
”

“You think he sold it to the killer.”

“Who then killed him when we appeared to be getting closer. Why
is
Ms. Tremaine at your place, Falla?”

Liz Falla shot a meaningful look in the direction of Jimmy Le Poidevin, who was standing in the cottage doorway oozing impatience and hostility. “I'll tell you on the way back to the station, Guv,” she said.

September 21st

It was only twenty-four hours since Moretti had left, and the Alderney alibi was beginning to sprout as many holes as her uncle Jack's old wreck of a tub that he kept in St. Sampson harbour and refused to get rid of, although Liz Falla's aunt Doreen called it the bottomless bucket. By the evening of the first full day after Moretti's departure, she had parried questions from Detective Superintendent Hathaway, who was in charge in Chief Officer Hanley's absence, bitten her tongue and ignored insinuations of incompetence from Jimmy Le Poidevin, and fobbed off the heavy-handed witticisms of some of her colleagues about the disappearance of Ed Moretti after only eight days of partnership with her.

Eight days
, she thought, as she drove herself home in the early evening.
It seems more like eight weeks, and that has nothing to with Moretti.
If there was one plus in the whole sticky situation, it was that she liked working with the guy.
Now there is a surprise
, she reflected, as she brought the Mercedes to a halt alongside the seawall opposite her flat on the Esplanade. And the biggest surprise of all was the presence of Sydney Tremaine in the Guv's cottage. Still waters run deep, as her grandmother always said.

As she went into her sitting room she saw that the light on her answer-phone was flashing. Given the current state of her love life it was either a member of the Jenemie group, her mother, that bloody DS Hathaway again —
oh please
, she thought,
not him
,
please
— or Moretti's glamorous guest. She pressed the “play messages” button.

The first message was from Nick Le Page, Jenemie's keyboard player.

“Liz, it's Nick. We've got a gig at the weekend — the Petit Moulin. Rehearsal tonight at my place.”

Liz Falla grinned. So like Nick to assume she could make it, not being a nine-to-five man himself —
correction
, she thought,
not being an in-any-way-employed man himself.
An aging and charming flower-child who had survived the excesses of the sixties, he still did not believe in toiling and spinning, if he could possibly help it. He left that to his schoolteacher wife.

The second message was from Sydney Tremaine. Liz had checked in with her already a couple of times, and both times she had sounded fine when she picked up the phone after hearing Liz's voice on the answer-phone. This time was different.

“Liz — please call. There's something — I'm scared. Liz — please call.”

There was panic in her voice, and she sounded close to tears. Liz picked up the phone, waiting impatiently for Moretti's voice on the tape to say, “I'm not here. Leave a message at the beep.”

“Ms. Tremaine — it's Liz Falla. What's up?”

She had barely completed the final word before the phone was picked up and she heard Sydney Tremaine.

“Thank God — it's going to be dark soon and I don't want to spend another night here. I'm leaving.” Her voice was ragged with tension.

“Don't go anywhere. I'm coming right over. It'll only take me about five minutes — promise me, don't move till I get there. Then, I promise, I'll get you out of there.”

Liz Falla hung up without waiting for Sydney Tremaine to reply.

Sydney Tremaine was not normally a nervous woman. Life in the performing arts had given her nerves of steel — she did not count stage fright as evidence of emotional weakness — and the slings and arrows of an outrageous husband prone to frequent temper tantrums and with unsavoury sexual proclivities had further hardened her.

His murder had changed all that. She was rattled. She was prepared to believe that her imagination might well be working overtime in the circumstances, but she simply could not endure another night on her own at Ed's place.

At first it had been fun. Shamelessly, she had poked around, examining all Moretti's records and the truly antediluvian player he used. She checked every book in his bookcases and came to the conclusion that anyone who shelved Robert Ludlum and Ovid's Metamorphoses in the original Latin cheek by jowl was much too clever for her. She had not gone through the contents of the wonderful old keyhole desk, but she
had
taken a peek at a letter or two left on the writing surface. Well, more than a peek.

One was from someone at Scotland Yard, who had some interest also in jazz, and was about to retire. He spoke of his first meeting with Ed Moretti: “This skinny young law student who sat down at the piano and played himself into a part-time job with the rest of us pick-up players. I still have feelings of guilt, Ed, that it wasn't the music that seduced you, but my métier. Has it been worth it? From the defence of innocence or the prosecution of evil to a profession that has been called the blind eye of history?”

The other was from a woman called Valerie. Sydney read only the opening sentence: “The house is sold, finally. I can't wait to shake you and the dreck of yesteryear from the soles of my Mephistos.”

Holy Hanna
, she thought, putting it down.
What happened, Ed?

Most of the videos were old black-and-white movies —
Casablanca
, some Greta Garbo, some European stuff with which she was not familiar. She played his records, watched some of the movies, read an early Iris Murdoch, and drank too much wine. Then the noises started.

Swish-swish-swish. They seemed to come from above her, on a level with the upper floor. At first she was not particularly bothered. When she arrived she noticed that the high walls on each side were thick with plants and growths of various kinds, and she assumed it was the wind blowing them around, or the ivy that grew on the cottage walls. But even through the haze of too much soave she realized they were strangely rhythmic, systematic, almost. Just as she was beginning to feel jumpy, they stopped. It started to get dark, and she went into the kitchen to get herself something to eat.

As she came through the doorway she was aware of a movement outside the kitchen window that looked onto the lane at the back of the property. Shaken, she stood a moment in the doorway, then pulled herself together.
Come on
, she told herself —
it's probably nosey small
ragazzi. She crossed the room and looked out. She could see nothing, only the heads of the fuschia nodding on the walls around the little courtyard, and the lane stretching away into the dusk. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the sound of a motor, and the sound reminded her of what she had heard outside the Héritage Hotel after the dagger was thrown at Gil.

Baloney
, Sydney told herself —
since when have you been able to tell the difference between the noise of one engine and another?
She drew the curtains firmly over the windows and started to prepare her meal.

Later, much later, the noise outside started again. Like someone, or something, shuffling through a thicket. She put on the television very loudly and watched a couple of sitcoms and a talk show. She drank more soave and then some gorgeously ripe Burgundy, and the resultant headache sent her to bed early. When she woke up in the small hours and thought she heard the sound of someone laughing — high up — she was able to convince herself it was overindulgence and overimagination.

But by five o'clock the next day, as the wind got stronger and the sun sank beyond the walls of the cottage, her nerve failed her. She phoned Liz Falla. Her relief at hearing the sound of the policewoman's strong voice was only surpassed by the relief she felt when she saw the police Mercedes finally come into sight, stop in the courtyard, and Liz Falla step out.

“Ms. Tremaine —”

“Sydney, please. How long does it take to be on first-name terms in Guernsey? Takes forever in Britain.”

“Takes a while here too,” said Liz Falla cheerfully, closing the cottage door behind her. “You sounded —”

“— spooked. I'm hearing things. D'you want some coffee? Something stronger?”

“Better not. I'm off to a rehearsal. What are you hearing?”

“I'll tell you in the car. I'm coming with you — yes I am, honey, or I'm taking off back to the hotel.”

So Liz Falla found herself driving to Nick Le Page's in Vale with Sydney Tremaine alongside her.

* * *

Vale is a parish in the north and northwest corner of the island, sliced in two by a pie-shaped wedge of St. Sampson. It has a church that was once cut off from the mainland, and whose parishioners rowed to worship at high tide, the ruins of a castle alleged to have been built by the father of William the Conqueror, whose barracks have served as public housing, the remnants of many disused quarries, and some fine megalithic dolmens.

Nick Le Page lived in a modest bungalow chosen by his wife so that she could be close to the school where she taught. He was always careful to stress this to first-time visitors, who might otherwise have been bemused by the discrepancy between the fifties architecture and decor and its John Lennon look-alike occupant.

“Nick can play virtually anything you hand him,” said Liz to her passenger. Sydney Tremaine, clad in grey sweats, asked, “Such as?”

“Anything with a keyboard, for instance — organ, piano, accordion, even. And he plays a balalaika pretty well too. Here we are.”

Liz Falla brought the car to a halt outside a modest bungalow of off-white stucco. Beyond a low wall the small front garden consisted of gravel and coloured pebbles, a more effective ground cover than grass against the salt-sea air. It was topped by a row of pots under the bay window of the bungalow containing some sparsely flowering pelargonium in subdued colours.

They were let into the house by Brenda Le Page, who was on her way out to visit her sister, as she usually did when invaded by Jenemie. A woman of as subdued appearance as her pelargonium and of few words, the appearance of Sydney Tremaine shook whole sentences loose.

“I saw you as Anna Pavlova! Oh, you made me cry — are you here to do some singing with them?”

“Perhaps. If I'm asked.”

They sang together most of the evening — Sydney, a dazzled Nick, singer and guitar player Stewart Newton, still a teenager, whose parents hoped that performing with Jenemie would get “it” out of his system — as Liz told Sydney in the car, whereupon they both laughed — and Liz.

“Greensleeves,” “Plaisirs d'amour,” some Celtic music that was new to Sydney, Irish and Scottish folk songs. Liz Falla's true, resonant voice floated above the cut moquette sofa and the wall-to-wall carpeting, out beyond the stuccoed walls and the gravel ground cover, drifting across the marshy fields and the old saltwater ponds, carried on the wind like her Becquet ancestors when they flew on their brooms to dance at le Catioroc.

At ten-thirty, Brenda returned home on the dot, as always, and the rehearsal was over. Liz pried Sydney loose from the prolonged goodbyes of Nick and Stewart and ushered her into the car.

“Take me to a hotel, Liz — any hotel, but I'll not go back to Ed's.”

“Okay.” Liz started the engine and eased away from the curb. “But I think we should pick you up some gear, don't you? I'll be there, and I'll come in with you.”

“It won't take long. I've already packed my bag.”

They were not followed to Moretti's place, of that Liz was sure. Behind her, cars and motorbikes approached, and then departed down other roads, turned away down other lanes, and there was nothing behind them as they drove up the lane that led to the cottage. Sydney seemed relaxed, sleepy, talking little, humming under her breath.

So it was odd that, just as she brought the Mercedes to a halt in the courtyard, Liz Falla was engulfed by what she could only describe as a panic attack. Heart jumping, palms sweating, skin crawling, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling against the collar of her jacket —
by the pricking of my thumbs
.

Then she saw the movement. Something was moving along the top of the wall. A cat? Possibly. She reached across Sydney and made sure the door was locked.

“What?” The American woman was wide awake now.

“I'm not sure. Where's that bag of yours?”

“Near the door. I nearly brought it with me. I should have brought it with me. You saw something.”

“Probably a cat. You stay here. Give me Moretti's key. I want to check inside.”

Liz closed the front door behind her, leaving the lights off in the house. It seemed intrusive, impertinent to be in her partner's home without his say-so. All she could hear was the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and a tap-tap-tapping sound coming from upstairs somewhere. Grabbing a heavy walking stick from an umbrella stand by the door, she fumbled her way across the room to the staircase, feeling for the bannister. Please God, let her have done the right thing, leaving Sydney Tremaine outside, please God, whoever it was still preferred daggers to guns.

There was a small landing at the top of the stairs. She stopped, listening. The tapping was coming from behind a closed door to her left. Liz Falla felt her way along the landing, stopped by the door, and shoved it open. It shot back, the moon outside creating a pathway of light along the floor. The window was open, wide, the curtain pull tap-tapping against the window frame. A small chair to the right of the window had been knocked over. But the room was empty.