Barbara Cleverly - Strange Images of Death

‘Conveniently stuffing the unsmoked half away in his pocket? I don’t think we’re dealing with that kind of careless mind. No, what we’ve got is someone calculating, evil and yet … I search about and come up with the unsatisfactory word-playful. No, it’s not as straightforward as it might appear,’ Joe said thoughtfully. ‘If he’s gone to all that trouble staging the scene in the chapel, he’s not going, casually, to leave his disguise on the back of his own bedroom door. For the English copper to find. They all knew I had permission to roam about poking my nose into drawers and pockets. And besides-on display like something you’d find in the lingerie department at the Printemps store, there was another little item … rather surreal …’

‘Surreal? Can’t say I’m an habitué of the department you mention but I’d have said depraved,’ was Jacquemin’s response to Joe’s account of the contents of the gown’s pocket. ‘Ballet tights doing an entrechat? What’s his point?’

‘I don’t think Petrovsky was making a point. I think the whole little display was put on for my benefit. The man who really wore the cloak knew he’d been seen by Estelle and that he could no longer make use of the garment. So he abandons it, flamboyantly.’

‘Hoping for what? To incriminate Petrovsky?’

‘Yes, giving us the hint in case we hadn’t already twigged: here’s a man you wouldn’t want anywhere near your daughters, he’s saying. If we’d nabbed Petrovsky on various charges, I’m sure that would have been a very acceptable outcome-he clearly dislikes the chap-but I flatter myself he has more respect for my detective abilities!’ Joe shrugged. ‘He was surrendering the garment. No further use for it. And, almost as a joke, he left it where it would furnish evidence pointing the finger at our Russian friend. If I wasn’t taken in by that here’s another try-a very distinctive cigar end. A double bluff! The bloke who smoked that may be involved, he’s suggesting. Another poor sod it entertains him to throw suspicion on? When we know the name of the smoker of the best Havanas we can put it down, second on the list of our perpetrator’s denouncements. He’s laughing at me or he’s time-wasting.’

‘And where is the cloak now?’

‘It was impossible to make off with it at the time, under the scrutiny of Orlando Joliffe and his lordship, as I was! And I’m perfectly sure it will have been removed and destroyed many hours ago.’

Martineau entered smiling. ‘Found him, sir. Yes, de Pacy knows who smokes those things. The chap leaves the stubs about all over the place in ashtrays. And, wouldn’t you guess-it’s Lord Silmont.’

‘No surprise!’ said Jacquemin. ‘Second on our stool-pigeon’s list, are you thinking?’

‘And his first mistake,’ said Joe. ‘If we go haring off, following the second false trail laid by the cigar end, and arrest Lord Silmont, we’re going to run into what I suspect is a cast-iron alibi. The villain we’re dealing with could not have known that the lord was about to take the whole day off and spend it with his friends some ten miles away. It was an arrangement made just that morning. So our informant has chosen to set in the frame for murder an innocent chap who was playing cards ten miles away at the time.’

‘Which indicates that he can’t be in the inner circle, so to speak. Not privy to the lord’s confidences and diary entries.’ Jacquemin was thinking aloud. ‘Someone recently arrived? Or on the fringes of the Silmont social scene?’

‘Unless there’s something wrong with the lord’s alibi,’ was Martineau’s tentative offering. ‘He’s a clever bloke. That history lesson he gave us in the chapel! And all that guff about a horse going lame … how often do you hear about that happening these days?’

‘Particularly to horses of the quality of those I saw in his stable,’ said Joe. ‘You could have ridden any one of them thirty miles before it laboured. The very best animals, in peak condition and several attentive grooms to check the state of their hooves and limbs before they set out … hmm … We have no sighting of his lordship between my own-when he appeared in riding gear and outlining his plans for the day … rather carefully, I now come to think … and his reappearance just before eleven this morning in a chauffeured Delage. I wonder what exactly the lord got up to in the last twenty-four hours … Perhaps he arrived late for his bridge appointment? If he arrived at all? It would be interesting to find out …’

Jacquemin replied with the decisiveness Joe was coming to expect from him. ‘Sandilands. Check his alibi. In depth. Take your car.’

Joe smiled to have got his own way. ‘Delighted, Commissaire.’

‘This is a wild-goose chase you’re bringing me on!’ Orlando grumbled as they drove out over the drawbridge. ‘Why did you ask for me?’

‘Because you told me you’d paid a visit. You know the way and your face will gain us entry.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it. And anyway, I ought to be back there giving a hand with the children or assisting with the enquiry, not gallivanting with you about the countryside. Through the village and go left at the fork … I want to do what I can to catch the murdering sod who’s killed Estelle. We all do. She was a wonderful girl and when I get my hands on whoever-’

‘Shove it, Orlando, will you! I know you’re upset but you’ll have to join the queue of people who want to wreak revenge. And, at the moment, you’re way behind me and Guy de Pacy.’

‘And Dorcas,’ Orlando said surprisingly. ‘She’d got fond of her, you know. Estelle was like that-you liked her or loathed her at first sight. Mostly people liked her. Anyway-his days are numbered-the joker who did it. Dorcas has put a gypsy curse on him. And, believe me, you wouldn’t want that! I know the old crone who taught it to her some summers ago in Surrey … The guilty party’s probably shitting worms and spitting scorpions as we speak!’

‘Tell me, Orlando-because I’m an inquisitive so and so, and I’ll beat your brains out if you don’t-about Estelle’s love-life. I have reason to believe you have first-hand experience of it.’

Orlando, the pacifist, visibly struggled to prevent himself from tearing Joe’s head off. He replied in a strangled voice: ‘None of your bloody business! What is this unhealthy fascination with my love-life? I’m not a fellow who talks lightly about the women he’s involved with. If I answer your impertinent question at all it is through gritted teeth and with the slim hope that you will use the evidence to bolster any detective powers that remain to you to bring this hideousness to a conclusion.’

After a little more harrumphing he added: ‘I played a walk-on part only. Well, it was more of a walk-off part, when you come to think of it. Er … once only. Soon after we both arrived here. In June. She was, I would guess, an experienced player in the Ars Amatoria. She was kind enough to pose for me one day and the inevitable happened.’

‘Inevitable?’ Joe was angry enough to interrupt his flow. ‘How can you say that? Do artists have some unchallengeable droit de seigneur over the girls who sit bored out of their brains before them, day in, day out?’ He regretted his outburst instantly but consoled himself with the thought that Orlando would have suffered a much worse tirade from Lydia.

‘No, you’re right,’ said Orlando mildly. ‘You can’t always depend on it. But it’s not the out and out exploitation you suggest, Joe. You’ve never painted a woman, have you? You wouldn’t understand the feeling that develops between artist and model. It’s a very special one. Fraught with difficulties but rather intimate. It’s more than just the clothes that come off. And it’s not all one way! You can talk to each other while the painting’s going on, you know. Pour out your troubles, air your fantasies. You’d pay five guineas an hour for the sympathetic ear of one of those psychiatric chappies in London. And he wouldn’t be so easy on the eye.’ Orlando pursed his lips, sighed and confided: ‘She was a generous girl. Her emotions were not involved. Unless you count pity as an emotion. Is it? Anyway, her urge to compassion fulfilled, I think she quickly found someone else to occupy her time. Yes. I’m pretty sure there was someone else … someone important to her. I can usually tell when a woman’s in love … And Estelle, I would say, was in love.’