Death in Disguise (31 page)

The couple were talking about death. Suhami in the driven, irritable manner of one who is drawn to reinvestigate an unhealed wound. Christopher, who was also getting irritable, with great reluctance.

‘It's impossible, isn't it?' she was saying. ‘to imagine what it's like to be dead. You picture yourself looking down at your funeral. People weeping, all the flowers. But you have to be alive to do the imagining.'

‘I suppose. Can't we talk about something else?' When she did not reply he hefted the case on to a hard-backed chair. ‘We could get your father's things sorted.'

‘What is there to sort? It's only clothes. Next time someone goes into Causton they can take them to a charity shop.'

‘There's this envelope as well.'

‘I know, I know. I signed for them didn't I?'

‘Calm down.' He shook out the contents. Guy's wallet, his keys, handkerchief, cigar-cutter and lighter. An empty brown glass bottle. A small card, crumpled as if someone had clutched it tight, holding an engraved message from Ian and Fiona (Props). Christopher turned the card over. An elf in curly toed shoes pointed a little wand at a line of italicised prose:
Our true intent is all for your delight. Wm Shakespeare
. There was something else in the envelope. Right at the bottom.

Christopher slid in his hand and removed the watch. It lay on his palm, dazzlingly splendid; nothing but jewels and facets of light. He gasped (he couldn't help it) and knew she had turned round. When he looked up, Suhami was watching him, the expression on her face unreadable. He lay the watch down and it blazed like a star against the dusty rose-brown wood. When he felt that he could speak without avarice shining through he said, ‘What do you think? Should we give these things to your mother?'

‘Hardly.' Suhami came over. ‘The last thing she needs is that sort of reminder. It's because of him she's in the state she is.'

‘This bottle's empty.'

‘Heart pills.'

‘He had time to take them, then.'

‘So it seems.'

‘There's something stuffed in this wallet.' Silvery cream and fawn alligator scales, it bulged slightly on one side. Christopher placed his finger into the aperture and a cloud of confetti-like stuff flittered out. He caught some pieces in his hand. ‘It's money.'

‘How grotesque.' Suhami stared down at the scattered fragments. She felt irrationally frightened. ‘He would never do that. Unless…' Briefly she entertained a vision of Guy
in extremis
finally apprehending the useless futility of his massive wealth and symbolically ripping apart a high-denomination bank note. Almost immediately she rejected this sentimental indulgence for the nonsense that it was.

‘Unless what?'

‘I don't know. He was very…strung out. Emotional. When we talked in the afternoon, I felt quite sorry for him. Not that I let him see.'

‘Why ever not?'

‘He despised any show of kindness. He just thought it meant you were weak.'

‘He sounds a bit sad.'

‘Don't waste your finer feelings,' said Suhami. ‘That's when he took the knife don't forget. Oh—put the bloody things back. No—wait…' She picked up the watch and with one quick movement thrust it towards him. ‘Here—have it.'

‘What?'

‘Take it.' He stared, incredulous. ‘Go on.'

Christopher swallowed. His eyes turned slowly to the watch as if pulled by a silken thread. ‘You can't mean it.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. It's so incredibly…so…' He knew the longing was vivid on his face but couldn't help himself. ‘Who does it belong to?'

‘Me. He always said he'd leave me everything.'

‘But you can't just…' The same thread now lifted his arm, uncurled his fingers, stretched out his hand.

‘Of course I can.' She made a sort of dart towards him, dropped the watch in his palm and withdrew.

‘Are you sure?'

‘Quite sure.' She had already moved quite away. ‘Sell it if you like. Buy yourself what the agents call a nice des res. But please don't wear it if you're anywhere near me.'

Christopher slipped the watch into his pocket. It weighed nothing. He was excited by the magnitude of the gift but also faintly aggravated by the casual manner in which it had been offered. Almost dangled under his nose. He then got the notion that the whole business was some sort of test which, by accepting the watch, he had failed. He was certainly aware of a tension emanating from her that he didn't understand. Then it struck him that it might be some sort of consolation prize and that she had already decided to go her own way without him. This perception made him angry and not only because of the humiliating ‘pay off' connotations. He would rather have Suhami than any timepiece, no matter how magnificent.

It was gone three by the time Barnaby and Troy drove up to the Manor House and May greeted them. She was looking wondrously flamboyant in a multicoloured striped djellaba with a beaten copper belt.

‘Ah—there you are.' As if they had been personally summoned. ‘I'm so glad. I've something to tell you.'

‘Oh yes, Miss Cuttle?' Barnaby followed her into the hall. The house seemed still and quiet but for the faint clatter of crockery. He noted and commented on the marvellous spillage of painterly light from the lantern.

‘We bathe in it, Chief Inspector. We saturate our psyches. At least once a day. Never underestimate the healing power of colour. Perhaps you would care…?'

‘Another time, perhaps. What did you wish—?'

‘Not here.' She walked speedily off, beckoning as she went. This was accomplished by holding her arm straight up above her head and swivelling her hand back and forth. Barnaby was reminded of a submarine's conning tower.

Her hair was piled on top of her head today. A shapely coronet of loops, waves, sausage-like curls and a frilly fringe which, on a women less formidably Rubenesque, might have been described as saucy. They followed her without difficulty. Indeed such was the magnetic pull of her flowing draperies that it seemed impossible to do otherwise. She ushered them into a room, glanced intently up and down the corridor, then closed the door.

After these urgent preliminaries, Barnaby expected an immediate flood of informative speech, but she waited—wrinkling her splendid Romanish nose and delicate nostrils. Eventually she said, ‘There are some extremely negative, not to say thorny vibrations here.' Her gaze swivelled sternly between the two men. ‘I rather think it's you.' Troy raised his eyebrows, Joe Cool. ‘I must ask for a few moments' grace to re-establish positive ions and restore my vitality index.'

She sat down at a small round table covered by an orange bobble-fringed chenille cloth, rested her elbows against the edge and closed her eyes. A minute ambled slowly by, followed, as is the way of things, by several more.

Is there anybody there? wondered Troy. He hoped it wasn't his Aunty Doris. He'd owed her fifty quid when she'd got knocked down by a Ford Sierra and she'd an edge to her tongue like a buzz saw.

Oh! Buoyant rays!
Float in me restoring quantum peace
Effloresce and harmonise in Vesta’s all-seeing eye
Ida and Pingala—cross my nodes.

At the first declarative boom, Troy nearly jumped from his skin. Barnaby studied his shoes, refusing to catch his sergeant's eye. He noticed another larger table in the far corner holding many bottles of bright liquid. Nostra for the credulous no doubt. May inhaled and exhaled deeply a few more times, looked around and gave a calm and welcoming smile.

‘There. Isn't that better? Are you quite comfortable?' Barnaby nodded. Troy continued to stare thornily out of the window.

‘I did not sleep last night as I'm sure you can appreciate but, resting briefly before luncheon, I fell into a slight doze during which I was visited by the green Master Rakowkzy. He gives advice on legal matters, as I expect you know, and he said I ought to talk to you.'

‘I see,' lied the chief inspector, rather stymied by this ‘hey presto!' introduction.

‘It isn't anything to do with the Master's elevation but another matter entirely. I'd been worried for some time and had just decided to talk to Christopher about it when the meteor fell and that put it right out of my head. We didn't realise at the time it was a portent.' Mistaking the controlled blankness of Barnaby's expression for incomprehension, she added kindly, ‘That means omen, you know.'

‘Yes,' said the chief inspector.

May glanced over to the window where Troy was pressing his head hard against the pane. ‘I say—is your sergeant all right?'

‘He's fine.'

‘I'm afraid,' said May, ‘I can no longer play the dromedary with my head in the sand. There is definitely something going on.'

Dear God, thought Barnaby, up to our oxters in murder and there's something going on.

‘It all started after Jim Carter left us.'

‘I don't recall the name, Miss Cuttle.'

‘No. He died before you met him.'

Barnaby didn't even try on that one. ‘And who was he?'

‘Oh, a dear person. One of our longest-serving members. He had an accident—a fatal fall. I'm surprised you don't know about it.'

‘Not our pigeon—accidental death.'

‘There was an inquest.' May regarded Barnaby in a rather judgemental manner as if he'd been caught smoking in the bike shed. ‘It was a day or two after his death when I was on my way to the laundry that I overheard the argument. Or a bit of it. The door was ajar in the Master's sanctum. Someone said: “What have you done? If they decide on a post mor—” Then they were shushed and the door was closed.'

‘Did you see who it was?'

‘There was a screen in the way.'

‘Was it Mr Craigie speaking, do you think?' Barnaby leaned forwards as he spoke. Troy stopped massaging the window and turned into the room, his eyes wide and sharp. The air tightened.

‘I don't know. The voice was so knotted up. But when the inquest came and there was a proper coroner's report and everything seemed to be all right, I thought I was probably reading too much into it. Then, a couple of weeks later, I was woken by a noise in the middle of the night. Soft bumps as if furniture was being carefully moved about and slidy sounds like the opening and closing of drawers.'

‘Where was this?' asked Troy.

‘Next door—Jim's room. It was never locked so why do all this creeping about? Why not just go openly in the daytime?'

‘Perhaps a break-in,' suggested Barnaby.

‘Not at all,' said May and explained about the person running down the side of the house.

‘Didn't you think of contacting the police?'

‘Well, you know, we don't do that sort of thing here.' May gave Troy a smile with a consoling pat in it. ‘I'm sure you're very good but it might have caused real psychological damage.'

‘Do you think he—or she—when running away could have heard your window open? I assume they would know your room was adjacent.'

‘I suppose that's possible.' She glanced up at him with clear bright eyes. ‘Is it important?'

Troy took in the question with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Here was a woman who drove a car, handled the company finance, dealt with banking matters and looked after sometimes quite large numbers of visitors. All these accomplishments existing alongside a shining belief in archangels, extra-terrestrial domestic and legal help, plus an astrally spot-on blade artist who'd despatched the head gaffer, no messing. He watched her giving the chief, who was looking excessively pained, a gentle touch on the arm.

‘Are you feeling quite well, Inspector Barnaby?' Barnaby cleared his throat, a dryish scrape. May appeared concerned. ‘A tense larynx can conceal grave kidney problems.' This formidable diagnosis having being received calmly, she added: ‘I can get my passionflower inhaler in a twinkling.' Barnaby went into a constrained but unequivocal retreat.

Doesn't want that at his time of life, observed Troy. Randy old devil. Should be slowing down.

Barnaby sensed that May was disappointed. She shook her head a little sorrowfully but her opulent assurance remained undimmed. It was plain she was one of those people who must always be helping others. He had no doubt that she was genuinely kind, but suspected that the kindness would manifest itself in a rather narrow application of her own principles to the problem in hand, rather than a real attempt to seek out the supplicant's needs.

‘Perhaps we could have a look at Mr Carter's room?'

‘There's nothing there. All his things have gone.'

‘Even so…'

‘A tip, Inspector,' she set off still talking, ‘which you should find very useful. Pull up an amaranth by the root—Friday of the full moon otherwise it doesn't work—fold in a clean white cloth, which must be linen, and wear next to the skin. This will make you bullet-proof.'