Authors: Derek Farrell
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Have fun, kids!” My dad waved cheerily at us as he turned the cab in an illegal u-turn and sped off into the distance.
Caz unbuttoned her overcoat, undid the top three buttons on her tight and rather sheer silk blouse, and almost absent-mindedly shunted what she often referred to as
the girls
into a far more prominent role than they’d held in my father’s presence, “Your dad does know we’re hunting a murderer, doesn’t he?”
I waved guiltily at the receding cab and turned my attention to Lady Caroline, who had now applied a thick coat of Strumpet Scarlet lippie and was fluffing her blonde locks into what can only be described as a bouffant. “Not really,” I admitted. “Caz: what the fuck are you doing?”
“Puttin’ the goods on show,” she answered, spraying enough Chanel No. 5 to take care of a herd of polar bears and a few miles of the ice caps.
“For Morgan Foster?” I goggled.
Caz sighed, replaced the lipstick in her handbag, withdrew two miniatures of Chivas Regal, handed me one, downed the other (without disturbing so much as a smidgen of her makeup), dumped the two empties back into the bag and fixed me with her most patronising smile.
“Dear boy; how, on earth, have you made it to forty?”
“I’m thirty-five,” I protested through gritted teeth.
“Whatever. How on earth did you ever survive so long with such naiveté intact? It’s a gift, really; one I wish I had. Haven’t you ever read a Mary Higgins Clark? Or seen an episode of
Law & Order
?
Everyone
knows that, when visiting her chief suspect, the girl detective should always slut-it-up so as to put him off guard. Make him think he stands a chance.”
I stared open mouthed at her.
“Do close that, sweetie; I know you have all your chromosomes.”
“Caz!
He’s just lost his wife
! The woman’s not even buried yet.”
“Oh sweetheart; these facts would be heart rending if he hadn’t throttled the old cow with his bare hands.”
“You can’t prove that,” I protested.
“You know,” she said, slinging the bag over one shoulder and hoiking
the girls
back into position, “you’re absolutely right. But with these babies on the case, it’s only a matter of time. So,” she fixed me with her sternest glare, “you good with the backstory?”
“
Backstory
? Christ, what is this?
Hart to Hart
?”
“Danny,” this said in the tone of one of her governesses.
I sighed. “We ask for Jenny and go from there. You sure she’s not going to be in?”
“Positive. She stayed over at Dom’s last night; called me to tell me how awful she feels about Lyra. I told her: guilt is a useless emotion, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Interesting,” I murmured.
“I know. It never fails to amaze me how people can convince themselves that someone they hated in life couldn’t have been all bad; I mean,
nobody’s
all bad, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that whatever you hated about them in life didn’t just evaporate as soon as they were deceased.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I said, but by then we were stood in front of the firmly barred gates, staring up a long driveway at the distant bulk of Lyra’s mansion. I frowned again at the oddity I’d just noticed and was just about to point it out to Caz, when she pressed a button set into the wall, spoke a few words to a tinny-voiced Morgan and the gates swung open.
Morgan was a changed man from the well-groomed one that had been at the Marq less than a week ago. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved since Lyra’s death and was wearing a grubby t-shirt. His jeans hung baggily and he appeared to have lost two stone in the past five days.
He stood blinking out at us and it seemed to take several moments for him to focus on us, and several more before he remembered who we were.
“Caroline,” his face lifted in recognition, though the weak smile seemed like something being faxed in from far away, “how nice. Um,” he turned to me and his eyes hardened slightly before he blinked and replaced the distant smile.
“Morgan,” I held my hand out, “I never got the chance to express my condolences.” He looked at my extended mitt and made no attempt to reach for it.
“We came to see Jenny,” Caz announced, not so subtly shifting her weight so that her barely-secret weapons hoved into view like the coastline of a long awaited paradise isle.
“Jenny?” Morgan frowned and I dropped my hand. “She’s not here.”
“Oh?” Caz moued, “she said she’d meet us here this morning, I’m sure. She wanted to get a tribute for Lyra and I said I’d help her pick something out. Such a tragedy...”
“Yes,” Foster suddenly realised that we were all still standing on the doorstep and, as if waking from a trance, stepped aside, “I suppose you’d better come in. But I was just going out, so you won’t be able to stay long.”
This was clearly a lie; he was barefoot and looked like he hadn’t left the house in days.
“Do the police have any leads?” Caz asked, swishing across the lobby and into a vast kitchen done out in
Edwardian country Lady
style.
I looked around, half expecting a scullery maid with rickets and consumption to shuffle forward with a bucket of coal and a pithy comment about that Mr Lloyd George.
“Well you’d know more than I,” Morgan addressed me flatly. “I mean, didn’t you spend the night under arrest?”
In the corner, a radio played quietly. On the vast oaken table – larger than my mother’s entire kitchen – sat a cafetiere, an overflowing ashtray and a single mug.
Even more interesting
, I thought.
“
Assisting
,” Caz clarified. “Danny was never actually arrested; it’s just that, as landlord, he had to help the police get everything straight, about who was where and how things happened, isn’t that right, Danny?”
“So it had nothing to do with the fact that the last thing he said to me before he went up to Lyra was that he was going to strangle her?” Foster, as though on auto pilot, had crossed to the Belfast sink and was filling a kettle from the tap.
He’d been blunt with me, so I saw no reason to pussy foot around with him, “Why did you let Lyra play the Marq?”
He busied himself putting the kettle on. “Because Caroline asked her to.”
“No,” I shook my head, crossing to the sink and tapped the single used mug sitting on the draining board. “She did it because
you
sold it to her. So why would you have sold her an appearance at the Marq?”
Foster sighed, his shoulders slumping as he crossed the room to the fridge and extracted a carton of milk.
“I was married to Lyra twice; did you know that? Once from ‘79 to ‘84. She could be a cold heartless,
selfish
cow at times. But I married her again – six years ago. Underneath the shiny polished shell of studied
disdain
was a scared little girl and I wanted to protect that.”
He wasn’t answering the question, but I let him carry on as the kettle came to the boil; left alone, he might come out with something useful to me.
“Did you know my wife, Danny? Lyra Day didn’t exist –
couldn’t
exist – like most normal people. Because Lyra Day wasn’t a real person. She was something that Eliza Chapel created.”
“Eliza was my wife. Twice. But I never once called her anything other than Lyra. Not once. Because, even by the time I met her, Eliza had managed to convince herself and the rest of the world that she
was
Lyra Day. Because the alternative – being Eliza Chapel – was too much for her to take. So she killed Eliza and created Lyra. Except, of course, Lyra only existed for one thing: to be a star.”
He poured the water into the mugs, flipped the teabags into the sink and added milk to all three mugs.
“So why the Marq?” I prompted.
“Because Lyra was dying again. After the scandal last year–”
“Any idea what prompted the breakdown?” Caz interjected.
“She thought I was having an affair,” Morgan sighed. “Lyra could have as many of those as she wished and – as you know if you’ve read the Sunday papers – did. But the thought that I might want someone else made her crazy.”
“Were you?” I pressed.
He avoided the question. “All Lyra saw was her own pain. She started hitting the drugs hard again and the result was the meltdown, the scandals in the papers, the end of her career and, ultimately, the Marq.”
“Were there other offers?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She couldn’t get arrested. I wanted this to be the relaunch of Lyra Day, full stop. The fight had gone out of her. She’d slid into depression; didn’t leave the house, wouldn’t let me out of her sight, was becoming obsessive about only letting me, Jenny and Liz into the house. Then Jenny brought Dom around and he mentioned the idea of doing a biography and just talking about herself brought the sparkle back.”
“When Jenny mentioned that Caz had asked if Lyra would do an appearance, I dismissed it immediately. Then I watched her one day, with Dominic, his Dictaphone on the side and she was Lyra again.
Because she had an audience
. And that’s your answer, Danny. It was an audience and I just knew that – despite the fact that she’d whine and bitch about the place – once she stood in front of a room full of people shouting her name, Lyra would be back.”
Caz pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bag. “Mind if I?” she waved them vaguely and he shook his head, nodding at the fag graveyard on the table. She offered him one and he took it, leaning forward as she lit it for him. “So what about the drugs?” Caz asked, pretending not to notice that his gaze, as she lit the cigarette, had settled longer than the average week-old widower’s would on her impressive cleavage. “I mean, if Lyra was back on the wagon and healthy enough to work, why was she demanding vodka and drugs within minutes of arriving?”
He straightened up, inhaled a lung full of smoke, held it and blew it in a thin grey stream into the air. “’Cos Lyra wasn’t quite ready to come back. We were still dealing with Eliza; and Eliza was a frightened little girl, who hid that fear behind a mask of nasty spitefulness and, when that failed, tried to drown herself in drugs and booze.”
“Any idea where she got them from?” I asked, sipping my tea.
“Well not from any of us,” he bristled. “I assume it came from one of your lot. On that subject,” he blew another stream of smoke out, “the – the crime scene – was sealed by the police. All her stuff is still there. Is it safe?”
“Safe?” Suddenly, I felt like Dustin Hoffman.
“That Baker freak and his ilk’ll be in in seconds and some of those dresses cost a fortune.”
“Oh.” I nodded. “It’s safe. I’ll ask the police when the tape’s due to come off the door and let you know.”
Morgan nodded his thanks.
“Actually,” I broached the topic tentatively, “you’ve already got a lot on your plate. Perhaps I should just check in with Ms Britton. Let her know when it’s OK to collect. Have you got her address? I’d like to, you know, offer my condolences.”
“Leave Liz out of this,” Foster stubbed the cigarette out and squinted angrily at me. “She really doesn’t need to be dragged any further into this mess than she already is.”
“Surely she’ll want her makeup box. I mean, what good’s a makeup artiste without their kit?”
“Liz – Ms Britton’s pretty shaken up by this whole thing,” Foster muttered, draining his mug. “I don’t want her upset any more than she needs to be.”
“OK,” I finished my tea, shot a look at Caz, who drained hers and we placed the two empty mugs on the draining board. “But, if you are speaking to her at any point, would you tell her to feel free to call me any time she wants to; to arrange return of her stuff, once the cops have given the all clear.”
“If there’s nothing else,” he suddenly said, “I think it’s time you both left.” Foster straightened up and ushered us out of the kitchen.
We were heading back to the front door, so I figured it was now or never: “Mister Foster; do you have any idea who could have murdered Lyra?”
“
What
?” He stopped dead and glared at me. “
Do I have any idea
? Do you think, if I had a single clue, that I’d be stood here talking to you? I’d be down at the police station. Christ!
Who might have killed Lyra
? You met her: almost anyone who ever met her might have killed Lyra. But nobody – nobody with a soul – could have wanted any harm to come to Eliza.”
“What about Barry Haynes?” I prompted.
He frowned. “Who?”
“Haynes. Lyra’s first manager. Apparently, he once tried to strangle her. Maybe he came back to finish the job.” It was stretching belief, but I wanted to see how Foster would respond.