Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

Paolo didn’t answer her question. His eyes were fixed-they were absolutely paralysed, Bella thought-upon the handbag. He said, “That’s Jemima’s.”

“Interesting that you know,” was her reply. “I myself had to look inside.” And then she repeated her question. “What are you doing here?”

His reply of, “I live here,” did not amuse. He then said, as if she hadn’t already told him, “Have you looked inside?”

“I just told you I looked inside.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Is there…Was there anything?”

“What sort of question is that?” she asked him. “And why aren’t you at work, where you’re supposed to be?”

“Where did you find it? What are you going to do with it?”

This was the limit. She began to say, “I have no intention-” when he cut in with, “Who else knows about it? Have you phoned the police? Why are you holding it that way?”

“What way? How am I supposed to be holding it?”

He fished in his pocket and brought forth a handkerchief. “Here. You must give it to me.”

That sent the alarm bells absolutely clanging. All at once Bella’s mind was filled with details, and rising to the top of them was that pregnancy test. That fact floated there with others equally damning: all of Paolo di Fazio’s engagements to be married, that argument Bella had heard between him and Jemima, Paolo’s being the one to bring Jemima to her house in the first place…And there were probably more if she could gather her wits and not be put off her mental stride by the expression on his face. She’d never seen Paolo look so intense.

She said, “You put it there, didn’t you? With everything for Oxfam. You play the innocent now with all these questions, but you can’t fool me, Paolo.”

“I?” he said. “You must be mad. Why would I put Jemima’s bag in the Oxfam bin?”

“We both know the answer to that. It’s the perfect place to stow the handbag. Right here on the property.” She could, indeed, see how the plan would have worked. No one would look for the bag so far from the place where Jemima had been killed, and if someone found it by chance-as she herself had done-then it could easily be explained away: Jemima herself had discarded it, never bloody mind the fact that it held her essential belongings! But if no one found it prior to its being carted off to Oxfam, all the better. When the bin was emptied, it would doubtless be months after her death. The contents would be taken away and perhaps the bag would be opened wherever things were gone through for distribution to the shops. By that time no one would know where it had come from or, perhaps, even remember the death in Stoke Newington. No one would think the bag had anything to do with murder. Oh, it was all so clever of him, wasn’t it?

“You think I hurt Jemima?” Paolo asked. “You think I killed her?” He ran his hand over his head in a movement she knew she was meant to take for agitation. “Pazza donna! Why would I hurt Jemima?”

She narrowed her eyes. He sounded so convincing, didn’t he? And wouldn’t he just, him with his five or fifteen or fifty engagements to women who always threw him over and why, why, why? Just what was wrong with Mr. di Fazio? What did he do to them? What did he want from them? Or better yet, what did they come to know about him?

He took a step closer, saying, “Mrs. McHaggis, at least let’s-”

“Don’t!” She backed away. “You stay right there! Don’t come an inch closer or I’ll scream my head off. I know your sort.”

“My ‘sort’? What sort is that?”

“Don’t you play the innocent with me.”

He sighed. “Then we have a problem.”

“How? Why? Oh, don’t you try to be clever.”

“I need to get into the house,” he said. “This I cannot do if you won’t let me approach you and pass you.” He returned his handkerchief to his pocket. He’d been holding it all along-and she knew he’d meant to use it to wipe fingerprints from the bag because one thing he wasn’t was a bloody fool and neither was she-but obviously he could see that she knew what he intended and he’d given it up. “I have left in my room a postal order that I wish to send to Sicily. I must fetch this, Mrs. McHaggis.”

“I don’t believe you. You could have sent it straightaway, directly you bought it.”

“Yes. I could have. But I wished to write a card as well. Would you like to see it? Mrs. McHaggis, you’re being silly.”

“Don’t use that ruse on me, young man.”

“Please think things through because what you’ve concluded makes no sense. If Jemima’s killer lives in this house, as you seem to think, there are far, far better places to have put her bag than in the front garden. Don’t you agree?”

Bella said nothing. He was trying to confuse her. That was what killers always did when they were backed into a corner.

He said, “To be honest, I’d thought Frazer was probably responsible for what’s happened, but this bag tells me-”

“Don’t you dare blame Frazer!” Because that was what they did as well. They tried to blame others, they tried to divert suspicion. Oh, he was bloody clever, indeed.

“-that it makes no sense to think he’s guilty either. For why would Frazer kill her, bring her bag here, and put it in the rubbish in front of the house where he lives?”

“It’s not rubbish,” she said inanely. “It’s for recycling. I won’t have you call the recycling rubbish. It’s because people think that that they won’t recycle goods in the first place. And if people would simply begin recycling, we might save the planet. Don’t you understand?”

He raised his eyes skyward. It came to Bella that he looked, for a moment, exactly like one of those pictures of martyred saints. This was due to the fact that he was darkish skinned because he was Italian and most of the martyred saints were Italian. Weren’t they? If it came to it, was he really Italian? Perhaps he was merely pretending to be. Lord, what was happening to her brain? Was this what abject terror did to people? Except, she realised, perhaps she wasn’t as terrified as she’d earlier been or as she was supposed to be.

“Mrs. McHaggis,” Paolo said quietly, “please consider that someone else might have put Jemima’s bag in that bin.”

“Ridiculous. Why would anyone else-?”

“And if someone else put the bag there, who might that person be? Is there someone who might want to make one of us look guilty?”

“There’s only one person looking guilty, my lad, and that person is you.”

“It isn’t. Don’t you see? That bag’s presence makes you look bad as well, doesn’t it? Just as it makes me look bad-at least in your eyes-and it makes Frazer look bad.”

“You’re shifting blame! I told you not to. I told you…” And suddenly the penny dropped: the vague mutterings about black, night, sun, and ooze; the prayers and the smoking green cigar. “Oh dear Lord,” Bella murmured.

She turned from Paolo and fumbled for the door to get into the house. If he followed her inside at this point, she knew it did not matter.

“I THINK YOUR BEST COURSE IS GOING TO BE TO GET SOMEONE from Christie’s to look at it,” St. James said. “Or, failing that, someone at the BM. You can check it out from the evidence officer, can’t you?”

“I’m not exactly in a position to take that decision,” Lynley said.

“Ah. The new superintendent. How does it go?”

“A bit unevenly, I’m afraid.” Lynley glanced around. He and St. James were speaking via phone. References to Isabelle Ardery had to be circumspect, of necessity. Besides, he felt for the acting superintendent’s position. He didn’t envy her, having to cope with Stephenson Deacon and the Directorate of Public Affairs so soon into her employment at the Yard. Once the press came howling into the picture in an investigation, the pressure for a result mounted. With someone now in hospital, Ardery was going to feel that pressure from every quarter.