G Malliet - Death of a Cozy Writer

“I’ve seen your book in the stores,” he said, pulling up a chair opposite. “You don’t find all of this a bit at odds with Christian beliefs?”

She looked up abstractedly from her task.

“The path to enlightenment is One,” she said. “It is the ancient teachings that carry the most undistorted truth. Ah, the death card.”

She showed it to him-the card depicting a grinning skeleton on horseback-before slapping it down on the table. She sat back, surveying the arrangement.

“Not too surprising, is it?” she said. “It’s all around us.” She sat back more heavily in her chair. “I want to leave this house. We’re all in danger, you know.”

“We’ve men stationed inside and out, not to mention you have the press guarding you. You’re safer here than you would be in London.”

Sarah shook her head.

“Can’t you sense the evil here?”

“As a matter of fact, I can.”

She had been experimenting with makeup, so it appeared, with mixed results. Or perhaps the blue-eyed panda look was the result of frequent swipes at her eyes with the stained handkerchief that lay near her hand on the table. Was she merely eccentric, he wondered- a quality much cherished by the English, after all-or was she barking?

Catching his look, she took up the handkerchief again and began vigorously dabbing the corners of her eyes, making matters rather worse.

“Natasha has been trying to indoctrinate me into what she calls the ‘feminine arts,’” she explained. “It gave us something to do while we’re all stopped here. Trouble is, I think I’m allergic to the stuff.”

Not crying, then, as he had thought. Not a tear for Ruthven or Sir Adrian?

“You’ll never catch who did it,” she was saying now. “Anyway, ‘Justice is mine, saith the Lord,’” quoth Sarah.

“‘Vengeance.’”

“Excuse me?”

“I believe the quotation is ‘Vengeance is mine.’ And quite right, too. I’m looking for justice on behalf of the victims of these crimes.” And trying to prevent another, he wanted to add, but she seemed disturbed enough already. “I’m quite happy to leave vengeance to a higher power, and I wish more people would. It would save the world, not to mention the police, a lot of bother.”

She turned up another card.

“Ah. The Empress. Representing fertility and motherhood.”

“Representing Natasha?”

She seemed to give the matter serious thought.

“I doubt it. But that reminds me: With Christmas coming up, you really can’t hold us here. It is the most important birthday on the calendar, after all. And Albert-he has to earn a living. George, too, I suppose. I saw him this morning and he was quite distraught-although he’d probably just run out of styling gel or something. But I know Albert must be worried; all this may have put his rehearsals in jeopardy. They’ll be looking to replace him; he has financial worries enough without that. You know, it’s quite true that ‘the lack of money is the root of all evil.’”

“Love,” he said automatically. It seemed no one had bothered to tell her that none of them would have financial worries the rest of their lives. Had Sarah not troubled to ask? Or was all the sudden disinterest in money an act?

“Sorry?”

“The saying is that the love of money is the root of all evil. Although, Sarah, I think you may be onto something there.”

George settled himself on his spine, crossed one elegantly shod foot over one knee, being careful to maintain the crease of his silk trousers, and glared insolently at the two detectives. Pointedly, he looked at his Rolex, in unconscious imitation of his father.

“I’m due in London in two hours,” he said.

“That’s too bad, Sir,” said St. Just. “I have several questions for you regarding what went on in this house that may have led to the murder of your brother and your father. I’m certain you’re as anxious as we are to get to the bottom of this. Let’s start again with this family dinner. There was some kind of altercation between you and Albert.”

“Albert? No. Not particularly. That was more a ding-dong between him and Ruthven. He was, as usual, somewhat over-trained, so whatever he said I long ago learned not to mind.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was drunk, Inspector. Three sheets to the wind; lashed up; pissed as a newt-however you wish to say it. One didn’t tend to take him seriously when he was like that. I didn’t.”

“And your father?”

“Didn’t take him seriously either, I would imagine. The dinner was the same as always, not particularly pleasant. Maybe a little worse than usual this time. Look, I’ve been over this with you, with your men. What exactly is it you want to know?”

“I want to know who would have killed your brother, for a start, and why. And your father. Greed? Hatred? I want to know what you think.”

“In Adrian’s case, unless dislike of pretentious bad taste is a motive, I don’t have any theories in particular. My father-Adrian- was a first-class phony. You’ve only got to look around you to see that. Half of this crap”-and here he waved an arm to encompass the room-“is nothing but a load of cheap reproductions. The rest, most of it, is expensive reproductions. Once in awhile he’d get hold of an honest dealer-that commode over there, for example, is genuine Louis XV, or I miss my best guess-but the rest of it is just rubbish. I tried to advise him, warn him-it drove me wild to see him spending money in that way-but he’d have none of it.”

“Surely, it was his money to spend as he wished?” asked St. Just.

The look George shot him was surly: You would think so.

“It was mine. My inheritance. Potentially,” he finished lamely. Realizing he’d just stamped “Suspect” on his own forehead, he hurried on. “Not that I could ever count on that, of course. I was out of the will as often as I was in it.”

“That was true of your siblings as well, of course.”

Oh, them.

“Yes, I suppose so.” It really was as if he had forgotten they existed. “The difference, in my case, is that I’m already well-off, you know. Pots of money of my own. I’d no need of his money. Certainly, not enough to kill him for it. You’ll have to do better than that, Inspector.”

St. Just wondered. If what his sources were telling him they suspected were true, it was a fact that George had pots of money, much of it made from selling a pharmacopoeia of illegal substances. No form, but Vice gossip was seldom wrong. They were anxious to get their mitts on him, but George Beauclerk-Fisk had proved frustratingly elusive.

Could it be George had decided it was time to go straight-and killing his father looked like a way to get the cash influx that would allow him to do so? There was a certain weird logic to it that St.

Just decided he wouldn’t put past George.

“There was also the title-”

That brought a short bark of laughter from George.

“Yes, well, the ‘Bart.’ was hereditary. And it’s mine now. But you don’t seriously think I’d kill anyone over that? Let me tell you just how valuable that title is: It was bought and paid for. You see what I mean? He was a phony, to his fingertips.”

“He bought the title?”

“You can arrange that, you know, if you have the ready cash. Some distant, elderly, impoverished relation-very, on all counts- with no direct heirs, got in touch with father some years ago. Or maybe it was the other way around. But he wanted money for an operation or some such. Father forked over-he must have borrowed the money from someone, because it was before he came into the serious cash-in exchange for being named heir to the title in the old man’s will. There were a few other potential and equally minor claimants in America, so his being British born became the deciding factor. Obligingly, the relation didn’t survive the operation.”