A Banquet of Consequences (34 page)

“The father was paying to support a child she no longer had?”

“No. She tells me very openly when I ask her: She is making him pay so that she does not tell his wife.”

“Blackmail,” Lynley said.

“She does not think of it that way. She says it is what she is owed for letting him do what he wanted on her. This I must stop, so I go to speak to this man. He denies everything—baby, blackmail, all of it—and I do not know what the truth really is, so what can I do? There are tests,
sí
, and I can force him to have them, but the baby, she is with a new family, and Carolina cannot be trusted to hold to the same story from one day to the next. I think it is best to put it all behind us.”

“D’you know what happened to the baby?”

“The child is gone, the adoption is finished, and I pray she grows up well and is not afflicted like her mother with this lying thing.”
Mercedes smiled, an infinitely sad expression. She said, “I tell you this, Inspector. Had I not three other children to prove to myself I am not so evil a mother to have produced such a child as Carolina, I would have long ago strangled myself in my own bed.”

Caroline’s child, Lynley learned, had gone to a Catholic charity for placement, and the records had been sealed. But many aspects of adoption had been altered by law, so it was no longer impossible to find one’s biological parents or one’s lost offspring. He wondered if Caroline Goldacre had done so or if the lost child had done so and if either was the case, what that might have to do—if anything—with Clare Abbott’s death.

What remained was the name of the putative father of Caroline Goldacre’s lost child. Mercedes was reluctant to give it, and as the man had denied everything anyway, there wasn’t much point to having it unless the child herself could be found and the appropriate DNA tests could be given. And even then . . . Lynley simply wasn’t sure what a man’s identity and the whereabouts of an adult daughter had to do with anything, unless, of course, Caroline Goldacre was now interacting with them both or with one of them for some reason. So while Mercedes finally gave him the name of the putative father of the child—one Adam Sheridan—Lynley put him low on the list of people to speak with.

Outside, the grey sky had cleared and a milky blue had taken its place. Work was going on in the allotments across the street: several gardeners trundled wheelbarrows down the rows of autumn vegetables, collecting the heaped-up and rotting remains of the summer harvest.

His mobile rang. He answered with his name, as usual.

A voice he did not recognise said, “Inspector? Got something for you here.”

SO7, as things turned out, was reporting in at last.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

Despite her displeasure about being denied access to whatever of her belongings were squirreled away in Clare Abbott’s house, Caroline Goldacre seemed only too happy to give Barbara chapter and verse on Lily Foster. In very short order, Barbara learned that Lily Foster was not only the erstwhile partner of Caroline’s deceased son Will, but also a resident of Shaftesbury who’d come to live there after Will’s death, according to Caroline, in order to make the life of the young man’s mother hell. The truth of this lay in the ASBO that was now attached to Lily Foster’s presence in the town. The police—and Barbara did not need Caroline to inform her of this although the woman did so at some tedious length—did not hand out ASBOs unless there was a very good reason for them to do so. In the case of Lily Foster, there were apparently a half a score of reasons having to do with the young woman’s persistent tormenting of Will Goldacre’s mother. What lay beneath these behaviours was her apparent belief that Caroline was responsible for the young man’s death.

On the other hand, Caroline declared Lily the responsible party since she’d called an end to her relationship with Will, casting him into a black depression from which only a removal from London and several months under the care of his mother and stepfather had saved him. “But then back she came like a yearly visitation of influenza,” Caroline asserted. “And then Will . . . He couldn’t get over her. He
wouldn’t
get over her. He was loyal and true while she . . .” She clenched her fist at her side, either to do metaphorical violence or to keep herself under control. Then she added, “I did tell you what happened to my son.”

“Clare knew all this, did she?”

“What does Clare have to do with it?”

“Don’t know, especially,” Barbara told her. “But when someone dies unnaturally . . .” She let the rest hang there.

“Are you saying
Lily
might have . . . ? Why won’t you tell me what actually
happened
to give Clare this heart thing, for the love of God?”

“Sorry but I’ve not been authorised.” Barbara brought forth Clare’s
engagement diary and asked Caroline to have a look at it. Could she identify anyone with whom Clare had an appointment? They had first names, initials, place names, and surnames on various dates. Anything she could tell them would be extremely helpful.

Barbara was at Clare’s desk, and she slid the engagement diary across it. Caroline, as Barbara had hoped, made short work of the matter. Radley was Clare’s dentist, she told her. He was here in town and . . . She paused and an expression of startled understanding flickered on her face. Did Sergeant Havers think that perhaps a tooth filling had been cleverly designed to hold something until, after a time of chewing, it finally broke through to a substance that caused the victim to have a heart attack? Very imaginative was what Barbara thought. What she said was that everything was being looked into. After all, when people were done away with by poisonous injection through means of an umbrella in the streets of London, anything could happen, eh? As to the rest of the names . . . ?

Jenkins was her GP in London, Caroline revealed. Hermione, Linne, and Wallis were all power brokers in the Women’s League in Shaftesbury, a group who met and listened to guest speakers and took up good causes and mentored young girls in need of positive role models and raised money for charities. The Women’s League was, in fact, how Caroline and Clare had met not long after William’s death when Clare came to the group as a speaker.

“I can’t think why she had appointments with them,” Caroline said in reference to Hermione, Linne, and Wallis. “Perhaps they’d taken up the task of persuading her to join, as she lived here in town. She wouldn’t have done, of course. Clare wasn’t a joiner. But to have her in the league would have meant a big fish to that lot”— with a nod at the diary—“and ready money for them as well.”

“As individuals?”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“I mean her money. Would they have been after that for themselves or for the group?”

“I expect you’ll have to ask them. But when someone has money, don’t you find that someone else is generally intent upon having some of it?”

That, Barbara thought, was an intriguing point with possibilities pointing to Caroline herself if it came down to it. She asked her about the entries in the diary that were indicated by initials only: MG, LF, FG. Did Caroline have any idea what these were about? She watched the other woman closely. Caroline surprised her with, “Oddly enough, M and G are my mum’s initials. L and F . . . ? Well, she did know about Lily Foster as I’d told her when Lily made her occasional nasty appearances in my life. This would be before the ASBO. But why Clare would want to meet with her . . . unless it was to have herself tattooed . . . ? As to the other . . . It’s odd that she used only initials, isn’t it? . . . Could it be she was in a rush? Or . . . well, I expect she must’ve known these people well else she would have completely forgotten what she was meant to do with them or where she was meant to go.”

Barbara didn’t miss the fact that FG—obviously the initials of her former husband—had been avoided or dismissed by the other woman. She said to her, “What about the name Globus? Any clue there?”

“None whatsoever, I’m afraid.”

“And the place names?”

“Same thing. Sorry.”

Barbara studied her. Aside from the FG matter, she did seem to be forthright. Perhaps she was utterly clueless as to Clare Abbott’s incursions into her personal world. But she also seemed like someone who could be an excellent liar, just as her former husband had told Lynley.

Considering what she’d seen in Rory Statham’s flat as well as the questionnaires for Bob T and John S, Barbara asked Caroline about Clare’s current writing project. Had she herself met either of the blokes whom Clare had interviewed for her next book?

“Next book? There was no book,” Caroline replied. “Clare was working on nothing.”

“Anonymous adultery?” Barbara tried.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Knee tremblers between consenting adults with no questions asked and no strings attached? Sound familiar? She appears to have been interviewing blokes on this topic and there was something that looked like a book proposal for it in Rory Statham’s desk.”

Caroline shrugged. “There may have been a proposal but I know nothing of that. And there’s certainly no book. But if there
was
a proposal, it explains why Rory and I disagreed.”

Barbara frowned. “Disagreed?”

“I tried to tell her there was no book being written. She’d brought up hiring someone to finish what Clare had started and I advised her not to bother as Clare wasn’t writing anything. For all I know, Clare was reporting herself slaving away at a massive project she’d agreed to write, but if she was . . .” Caroline gestured round the room. “Have a look round and see if you can find it.”

“So was Clare lying to Rory? Why?”

“I’m not sure. I do know she was under contract. I know she’d taken an advance for the next book. Perhaps she just didn’t want to return the money. Would you?”

“Barb . . .” It was Winston at the door to Clare’s study, her laptop in his hands. Caroline bristled at the sight of him, and her expression said that she hadn’t forgotten his attempts to keep her out of the house. “Found summat in’eresting here,” he went on. “Could be you need to have a look.”

FULHAM

LONDON

The elderly woman said, “You’ve had a terrible time of it, darling, but you’re on the mend,” and her voice was kind. There was a tenderness to it that suggested Rory ought to know her, but the difficulty was that Rory did not. Nor did she know where she was or why she was in this place. There was a word for it—this place where she lay in bed with small tubes shooting what seemed to be oxygen into her nostrils and a clip on her index finger that was connected to a flex of some sort that itself led to a blipping monitor to one side of the bed—but Rory could not come up with that word.

The woman bent over her and smoothed her hair from her forehead with a shaking hand. Palsy? Rory wondered. Fear? Parkinson’s? She said, “You gave us a terrible fright. When the police came round . . . We
thought at first that one of the neighbours had complained about our music, about that African drumming, especially. But they told us that you’d been brought to hospital and then—”

That was the word, Rory thought. Hospital. She was in hospital. Her chest was heavy and sore, her throat was so dry that she couldn’t swallow, her vision was slightly blurred. Were these the reasons she’d been brought to this place?

“Here, Rory.” Another woman came into Rory’s field of vision. She was younger—perhaps somewhere in her forties?—and in her hand was a plastic lidded tumbler with a straw emerging from it. She held it to Rory’s lips which, Rory could feel, were badly chapped and ached as if in places they had entirely split open. “Have some water,” the younger woman said. “You must still be parched.”

Still
suggested to Rory that she’d been conscious before this moment although she had no memory of it. Indeed, she had no memory of anything at all after arriving home from Shaftesbury and taking Arlo for his nightly stroll round the neighbourhood in order to—

Arlo! Rory heard nothing more. If she was here in this hospital bed, where was Arlo?

She struggled and failed to sit up. She said, “Arlo!” although the word was little more than a croak as she tried to throw the thin blanket off her body.

The older woman said, “Rory, you mustn’t . . . She wants the dog, Heather. We must find out what happened to the dog.”

Heather. Rory had a sister called Heather and this younger woman was she. Which meant that the older woman . . . “Mum,” she said. “Mummy. Arlo.”

A third woman entered the room. Her clothing identified her as a nurse. Heather said to her, “She’s wanting her dog. What’s happened to her dog?”

“We don’t allow dogs in here,” the nurse said sharply and then to Rory, “Ms. Statham, you must settle. You’re quite ill and we can’t have you—”

“I understand you can’t have dogs here,” Heather cut in. “But he’s an assistance dog. She has paperwork for him. He’s . . . Mum, can you remember his breed? Cuban? Cubanese? That can’t be right.”

“Havana,” Rory murmured.

“What’s she going on about?” This from the nurse.

“Havanese,” Heather said. “He’s a Havanese. He would have been brought in with her. He’s been trained not to leave her, so he’ll be in some distress. Please, can you ask someone about him at once? She’s not going to settle if—”

“I certainly cannot. A dog would have been sent immediately to Battersea.”

Rory began to gasp. She made an attempt to swing her legs out of the bed. The nurse said something about ringing for the doctor, about Rory’s mother and sister needing to leave the room at once, about many other things that Rory didn’t catch because it was all coming back to her now. Clare was dead. She herself had fallen ill. She’d been dizzy and then not able to breathe and then nauseated and stumbling stumbling stumbling and Arlo was barking—

The door opened. It was not a white-coated doctor who came in, but a tall blond man in the company of Rory’s returning mother, with her sister Heather following close on their heels.

The nurse snapped, “Get that man out of here. You as well. I’ve
told
you to leave.”

“He knows about the dog,” Rory’s mother said. “And if you think she’s going to settle without knowing what happened to her dog, you’re wrong.”