Caroline Graham - Death in Disguise

Foolishly she picked up the frame and slid further into ruinous introspection. As she stared into the wide hazel eyes the face seemed to dissolve, regressing in a flowing series of images into babyhood. Sylvie’s first clumsy efforts at ballet class, her bewildered tears at being sent away to school and terrible anguish when Kezzie, her adored pony, died. Felicity slammed the photograph down, splintering the glass and thought, Christ I need a drink.

A drink and a couple of Feelgoods. The brown bombers. They should do the trick. Strictly for emergencies the clinic had said, but if being alone and in despair at nine on a terrible bright sunridden morning in deepest Belgravia wasn’t an emergency what the fuck was? And a bath. That should help jolly things along. Felicity wrenched at the delicate golden taps and scented water gushed out.

She drew on her cigarette and saw her mirrored cheeks cave into corpse-like hollows. A web of fine lines spun out from the corner of her eyes. So much for the embryonic serum for which so many unborn lambs had given up any chance of skipping about the greensward. She stubbed out her cigarette in the honey-coloured gel. A hundred and fifty, and for what? A web of fine lines. She traced the network with the tips of her index fingers then suddenly thrust the nails hard into the delicate skin, leaving cruel half moons. Then she picked up the tranquillisers and returned to the bedroom.

Taking out a half bottle of champagne from the tortoiseshell and ebony armoire which Guy had had converted to an ice-cool receptacle for his bed-time tipple, she put the tranquillisers on her tongue and tipped back the sparkle, letting it run all over her face and throat. In the bathroom the perfumed water overflowed, soaking the carpet, oozing outwards to the door.

Felicity, having drunk two more bottles, curled up, shrinking and dry-mouthed on a low brocaded chair. She was trying to avoid touching the fabric which had taken on the aspect of a mysterious landscape: spiked trellises; dissolving lovers’ knots running into crimson lakes; clouds like blue-bunched fists. It was all sinisterly vivacious and filled her with foreboding.

The encroaching tide, the slap-slap at the edge of the bath, finally attracted her attention. She tried to stand up. Her limbs were heavy and her head ached. She blinked at the water which seemed to be vigorously on the move. Feeling bereft and frightened she started to cry.

Outside in the street a pneumatic drill started up. Drrrrrrrrr r. r. r. ... Felicity rammed her fingers in her ears but the sound continued, splitting open her skull. Drrrrrrrr ...

She lurched over to the window, flung it up and screamed, her voice cracking like a wet sheet in the wind, ‘Shut up you bastards ... Shut up! ’

The drill stopped independently of her intervention. She was about to withdraw when a voice directly beneath her said: ‘Mrs Gamelin?’

Felicity craned out further. Standing on the black and white steps, looking up at the house with an expression of covetous respect, was a perfectly strange young man. She ran down and opened the poppy-red door. The young man jumped back no doubt recalling the manic shrieks from the upstairs window. Behind him, parked at the curb, was a van inscribed ‘Au Printemps: Luxury Dry Cleaning & Invisible Repairs.’ He produced a piece of paper.

‘From the desk of Mr Gamelin, Mrs Gamelin.’

Felicity gave a hawk of laughter at such pomposity but she took the paper, which listed various items of clothing and read them out. ‘One navy pinstripe suit, one grey chalk-stripe, one cream linen dinner-jacket. To be collected.’ And a signature: ‘Gina Lombardi’.

‘Wait.’ She left him on the step knowing he’d be in the hall the moment she was out of sight, and climbed back upstairs. In Guy’s dressing room she pulled out the clothes noticing, as no doubt she was meant to do, the lipstick on the tuxedo lapel. An unnecessary directive. As far as Felicity was concerned Gina could have him not only mounted but stuffed.

She walked to the landing and looked down. The front man for Au Printemps was examining his zitzy complexion in the Mexican sunburst. Felicity shouted ‘Catch’ and threw down the clothes, watching their ballooning descent.

The young man flushed. He moved quietly into the hall where he knelt and folded each item with ostentatious neatness. Felicity was sorry for her rudeness. She had been brought up always to be polite to inferiors which, her parents had led her to understand, included everyone but the Queen, the heir apparent and, on Sundays, Almighty God.

He did not reply. He was checking the pockets, pulling the linings out, tucking them back. He was not really put out by her behaviour. Everyone knew that the rich, like the very old, did and said just what they damn well liked. And for the same reason. Nothing to lose. This one was well away. He could always smell champagne. It would be something to tell Hazel when he got back. They always said in the office he was a proper little Nigel Dempster. Whilst half hoping for a further tasty burst of obscenity to round the story off, his hand came into contact with a pale green envelope. He took it out and placed it carefully on the hall table. She made a sound of inquiry.

‘We’re trained to check all the pockets, madame.’

‘I say,’ said Felicity, hanging over the banisters. ‘Is it a long course?’

When he had gone, slamming the door behind him, she went back down and picked up the envelope. It was not like Guy to be careless. He had a shredder in his study at home as well as in the office. True he had been very distracted the last couple of days, but even so ...

The envelope was recycled. She turned it over. It was addressed to them both. Strangely this perfidious concealment evoked a response far stronger than any sexual or social infidelity might have done. Her fingers trembled as she drew out the paper. What a bloody cheek! Her letter, her letter . She read the note several times, at first shaking with anger, not really taking it in. When she had fully absorbed the information she sat for a long time as if in a trance. Then she went into the sitting room, picked up the telephone and started punching.

‘Danton? You must come over - right away ... No - Now! This minute. Something incredible has happened.’

The loudest sound in the Corniche convertible now inching its way round Ludgate Circus was the bump lurch stagger bump of Guy Gamelin’s heart.

The calming technique of deep breathing suggested by his man in Harley Street had been impatiently and sketchily resorted to as had the muscle-relaxant drill. Neither had much effect. Guy performed both routines with a deep grudging resentment and then only because he could not bear the thought of paying for advice and not taking it. The fact was he refused to admit that such protective exercises were at all necessary. He was as vigorous now as he had ever been. At forty-five, still shaking hands with youth.

There was a flutter in his chest. An extremely delicate oscillation like a vibrating feather. Guy rested his fingers against his inside breast pocket feeling the outline of a brown glass bottle without which he had been told never to travel; not even from the bedroom to the loo. He swung out the walnut drinks cabinet, poured a dangerously generous ice-cold Tom Collins and placed a tablet on his tongue. Soon the fluttering ceased and although Guy didn’t relax - he never relaxed - he sat a little more easily on the puffy upholstery. Then he disconnected the phone and let his mind go. Immediately it started to write anticipatory scenarios for the evening’s confrontation, now only hours away.

Normally when riding out to face an adversary, Guy’s blood would be fizzing with exhilaration. For, more than anything else, he loved a fight. Embattlement was his normal state of mind. He woke each morning from dreams of bloody conquest ready to charge through city boardrooms leaving a trail of wounded enterprises in his wake. Caparisoned by Savile Row, laved and barbered by Trumpers, he saw himself as a twentieth-century merchant prince. In truth he was a robber baron although his lawyers would have crucified the first man bold enough to say so.