False Step (7 page)

Sylvester blew his nose again, folding his handkerchief over and over. ‘We'd arranged that we'd meet up every couple of months, his place or mine, sink a pint, have a good gossip. I'm going to miss him something chronic.'

‘He wasn't a smoker, was he?' Bea remembered the trail of cigarette ash under the visitor's chair in Matt's house.

‘Never. Said it would damage his lungs. He was always on at me about it. Poor old Matt. I never thought to outlive him. I'll come to the funeral, and there'll be a memorial service, of course. I'll pass the word around. A lot of his old friends will want to attend.'

‘I'll tell Damaris when I see her, but I must warn you, she's hoping her father's—'

‘Stepfather's.'

‘—demise will pass unnoticed by the press. She's embarrassed by the way he earned his living.'

‘Tcha!' He invested the sound with so much disgust that she had to laugh. Walking back to her car, he took her arm, and she noted with a thrill of sorrow that his gait was unsteady and his breathing far too loud.

With downcast eyes, she adopted her creamiest, most innocent tone of voice. ‘I wonder how many more people ought to be told about Matt's death. His wives? The press, maybe?'

Sylvester began to laugh, which turned into a cough. Spluttering, he produced his handkerchief again. Leaning on the car, he whooped and coughed, eyes streaming.

Bea was alarmed. ‘Sylvester, are you all right? Silly question. Of course you're not. Is there anything I can do?'

His breathing slowed to a grumble. ‘You do me good, Bea. When I saw you last – at my retirement party, wasn't it? – I thought to myself that you were far too quiet. I wondered if you'd ever get back to your old self after, you know, Hamilton, rest his soul. Now, you just keep on poking us into action, do you hear? I'm pretty well done for as you can see, but I liked Matt and I don't like to hear of his daughter trying to wipe out the memory of a great gentleman. Yes, I'll contact his ex-wives, both of them. Goldie will be easy to find. The teacher …? I think she kept his name after the divorce. She shouldn't be hard to locate. And yes, I'll get the press involved, too.' He began to laugh, his stomach wobbling. ‘I'm looking forward to this. One last ploy for Sylvester!'

‘Now you've got me worried. Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything.'

‘Yes, you should. Let's go out with a bang, right? All I need from you is the date of the funeral. Leave the rest to me. Now take me home. I'd better rest up a while before the grandkids come for their tea. My son and daughter-in-law think they're doing me a favour by bringing them over on Sunday afternoons, but to be frank, although I love them dearly, after ten minutes I'm wishing them gone.'

‘Just don't die before you've rearranged Matt's funeral.'

‘Trust me for that. And when it comes to my turn, you can read a poem at my memorial service. You've got a beautiful voice. Did you never think of radio?'

Bea was laughing as she inserted him into her car, and clipped his seat belt on. ‘Shut up, Sylvester. Let's get you home in one piece.'

Bea parked the car outside her house but instead of going in, she walked down to the bus stop and made her way to the National Portrait Gallery. Tomorrow morning she had an appointment to meet Damaris Frasier, and she was not easy in her mind about it. Was Matthew Kent the good friend and employer she'd heard about, or was he a cross-dressing man with grubby tendencies, as Damaris had hinted and as Bea's own view of his body had indicated?

Yes, his portrait was still there, as were a couple of other portraits painted by Piers over the years. Nowadays Piers charged such high prices that only the most important or wealthiest people could afford him. The portrait of a prime minister from the previous decade, for instance, was so justly acclaimed that it defined people's memory of him.

Matthew Kent's portrait was, as he'd said, a composite one. A slender man in his late fifties, wearing jeans and a grey silk shirt, sat in front of a mirror framed in theatrical light bulbs. He had turned his head so that he was three-quarters on to the viewer. A nice-looking man, with cornflower-blue eyes, and a high forehead from which fair but greying hair was receding.

Piers had an uncanny knack of presenting his sitters on two different levels; the surface might, for instance, show a man of wealth but if you looked hard enough, you could catch a glimpse of the inner person, greedy, sensual, or cruel.

This man wasn't greedy, or sensual, or cruel. He looked … Bea sought for the right word … sad? Thoughtful? There was humour in the twist of the lips, the slant of the eyebrow. A knowledge of human nature in the lines about eyes and mouth. He looked … again, she had to seek for a word … trustworthy. A man of inner strength.

That made her frown. Trustworthy? Humorous? Strong?

Then what of the image in the mirror? Ah, but there was not one image, but several to be seen.

The first was that of Matthew Kent transformed into a beautiful woman, not young, but luscious; the twist of the lips and slant of the eyebrow indicated a quizzical turn of mind. The make-up was only slightly over the top, the bronze wig not too obvious. The high-cut dress was also in grey silk, matching the grey of the man's shirt, but slightly less strong in colour. In fact, the image of the woman was altogether less colourful than Bea had thought it would be. And behind her were more women, each one wearing a different wig, make-up and clothes, and each one less distinct than the one in front. It was as if Piers were saying, ‘The man is real; the women he plays are not.'

As Piers had admitted to her before now, he didn't always know what he had revealed about a sitter in his paintings, even when he'd finished.

Bea tried to overlay what she was seeing in the picture with her memory of the body on the bed and still couldn't make sense of it. Why had he made up his face in such grotesque fashion, when he used a subtle make-up for his nightclub appearances? Why had he chosen that pantomime dame dress, which was so unlike his usual taste? Or was it? Perhaps Piers had failed to read the man correctly? Was that extraordinary deathbed appearance a deliberate slap in the face for everyone who'd known him in life?

Bea didn't think she had enough pieces of the jigsaw to complete the puzzle. But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the man had been an enigma in life, and remained so in death.

Perhaps she'd find out more on the morrow. She turned for home, acknowledging that she'd made excuses to stay out all day rather than talk to her son. She also acknowledged that she hoped he'd have gone out for the evening by the time she got back. A spat with his wife over her younger sister … surely that wasn't grounds for divorce, was it?

Well, her inner voice said, it might be, if the younger sister wanted to take Nicole's place as the wife of an MP. And if the parents backed the younger against the older sister, there might well be difficulties for Max, whichever way he jumped.

The two women heaved the last of the black plastic sacks into the elderly car, and got in. The driver said, ‘I'll be glad when we can get shot of this old wreck. Buy something new. Now remember, the paperwork has all got to be shredded, not just put out for the dustbin men to take.'

‘It's going to take time. You know I have to let the machine cool down every few minutes. Have you put the advert in for his car?'

‘Done. It can't be far away. Tomorrow I'll get the agency started on the clothes, bag them up, dispose of them.'

‘I wonder if they're worth anything.'

‘Shouldn't think so. I gave you the details for the funeral, didn't I? Private. No flowers. Just the usual crematorium minister to take the service, canned music, press the button and away we go. Then on to the reading of the will.'

‘Divided two ways. I have your word on that?'

‘You do, indeed.'

Max had gone from the house by the time Bea returned from the Portrait Gallery, and he only returned after midnight. There was no sign of him at breakfast, and the workmen were due to arrive before nine, so over her second cup of coffee Bea briefed her assistants in peace and quiet.

‘Maggie, I don't know how long Max will be staying, but I don't suppose he'll need much feeding. Can you cope?'

Both Maggie and Oliver were obviously dying to hear why Max had moved into the guest room. Their eyes were wide with questions but Bea was not about to enlighten them.

‘Now,' she said, ‘on the Kent front, things have been happening. Let me tell you what I did yesterday …' She told them everything that had happened, after which both looked thoughtful. ‘And no, Oliver, it's not a murder case and it's none of our business.'

‘Fraud? A dicey will?'

‘What an imagination you have, Oliver. I haven't the slightest reason to think either of those things.' She struggled with herself and lost. ‘All right, I admit to being curious about the manner of his death. So, would you go on the Internet – he's got a website – see what you can find out about Matthew Kent? Presumably he owned his house; you can check that, too. I could also bear to have some information about his marriages; one wife died early on, and the other two marriages ended in divorce.'

‘Have we any names for the divorcees?'

‘They were all Gs. Gail Kent, who was – or maybe still is – a teacher. Goldie, née Gladys, subsequently married a magician whose name is something like The Great Daley. Don't ring Sylvester; I've got him on the trail already.'

‘If it really isn't murder, then who's our client?'

Bea pulled a face. ‘Damaris Frasier wants me to meet her at ten to discuss clearing out the house prior to selling it. I'll make sure she understands our terms.'

‘You could send me to meet her,' suggested Maggie, licking the honey spoon before popping it into the dishwasher. ‘I'm not bad at that sort of thing.'

‘She says she's the sole heir and I've no reason to believe she's lying. The fact that I took against her is … no, I really must not prejudge the woman. She may be perfectly straightforward for all I know. And before Oliver reminds me, I know we can't right all the wrongs in the world.'

Oliver was interested. ‘But you do think there's been a wrong done? To whom?'

Bea shrugged. ‘Wish I knew that, too.' Well, she did have a niggling fear that she'd overstepped the mark yesterday, prodding Sylvester into action. Did she feel guilty about that? Er, yes. She did. She was perfectly aware that she wanted to discover something dicey about the daughter to justify her action.

She looked down at the cream silk shirt and designer trousers that she was wearing. Maggie often borrowed Bea's clothes. Perhaps it was time to return the compliment? ‘Maggie, I need to borrow the white shirt you bought off a market stall, the one with the badly fitting collar.'

Maggie gaped. ‘What on earth for? You hated it.'

‘I'm not going in disguise but I'd like to appear not exactly badly dressed, but as if I didn't know where to buy good clothes.'

Oliver guffawed. ‘Isn't that disguise? Misrepresenting yourself?'

Bea grinned. ‘Possibly. I want Damaris Frasier to underestimate me.'

Maggie was looking serious. ‘Mrs Abbot, you understand people and what makes them tick, better than anyone. If you think there's something wrong—'

‘I've absolutely no reason to think so.'

‘But you feel it?'

Bea nodded. ‘So let's hedge our bets, shall we? Oliver, you know what to do. Maggie, apart from keeping the workmen up to scratch, I want you to try to contact Florrie and Kasia, get them in to talk to me again. I tried phoning both last night, and neither got back to me. Florrie said she was thinking of taking the camper out on the road. She wouldn't tell me where she was going, but she's probably briefed her second-in-command, Yvonne. If you can't get Florrie, see what you can get out of Yvonne. I think Kasia's scared of getting involved, but if we offered her another job? We can always find something for her to do, can't we? And we do need to regularize the jobs that Florrie gave her.'

Maggie swilled round the sink, and hung the dishcloth up to dry. ‘This Damaris sounds really narrow-minded, trying to pretend her father—'

‘Stepfather.'

‘Whatever, didn't dress up for work. Why is she so ashamed of him? Would she feel the same if he'd been a Shakespearean actor?'

Bea said, ‘To be fair, he does seem to have made fun of his ex-wife after the divorce. That might well make the daughter feel sour.'

Oliver said, ‘Odd that she should inherit everything, if she felt like that about him.'

As usual, Oliver had put his finger on a sore point.

The first of the workmen rang the bell as Bea checked over the contents of her handbag, ready to depart. Oliver was already glued to his computer screen. He had the tenacity of a bull terrier and she'd no doubt that if there were any information to be found on Matthew Kent through a computer, he'd find it.

Max still hadn't surfaced.

Matthew's house looked just the same as she turned in to his road. She wondered which of the cars parked there might be his. There was only one car nearby which didn't have a residents' parking permit on it. Would that belong to Damaris? It was an elderly family car with nothing much to recommend it. Red in colour, not particularly clean, with a dent in one back wing.

Bea rang the bell, checking her watch. One minute late.

‘You're late,' observed the woman who opened the door. ‘I'm a busy woman, you know. I really can't afford to hang around waiting for people. Oh, don't dilly-dally on the doorstep. There's a cold wind, and I'm not putting the central heating on, wasting money. You know your way, I take it? And if that's dog poo on your shoe, will you kindly ensure it doesn't stain the carpet.'