A Banquet of Consequences (19 page)

Rory turned from the view. As there were others in the garden having their own afternoon tea, she walked back to the table and said in a lower voice, “In distress? What do they mean?”

“They mean she was on the floor, Rory,” Caroline said. “They mean the connecting door between our rooms—the door on her side—was open.
They
think that looks damn well suspicious . . . as if I’d hatched some nefarious plan to kill her in the night, God only knows how.”

Charlie extended his hand towards her. “Mum, you’re in a state and that’s not a surprise, considering what’s happened. But perhaps
it’s wiser to go inside—somewhere private?—if we want to talk about this.”

“Of course I’m in a state!” Caroline cried. Other tea takers looked in their direction, interest on their faces. Caroline ignored them as she went on. “And
you
sit there . . . look at him just sitting there staring like I’ve come from Mars.
She
doesn’t get herself into a state, does she? No, no, not our darling Sharon.” She was speaking about Alastair and his lover, Rory knew. She glanced at Charlie. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Rory sat again. Arlo whined. He could tell, of course, that things were heading in the direction of off the rails, but the situation was beyond his instincts for protecting Rory since she herself was angry but not afraid. She said to Caroline, “Didn’t you hear her?”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like a cop! I was asleep. I didn’t hear a damn thing! What was I supposed to hear? If she was having a heart attack or a stroke or
whatever
, she wouldn’t exactly have been making any noise.”

“But if she was well enough to get to the doors between your rooms, why didn’t she fetch you? She’d opened one of the doors, why not the other?”

“Because it was locked, all right?” Caroline cried. “Because I locked it. Because I wanted a little privacy for once. I didn’t even
want
to be here, d’you know that? I came for her sake, but you would think she was the one doing
me
a favour. So at the end of it all, I locked the door and I went to bed and if she needed me in the night, she could have bloody well rung me on the phone.”

A waiter approached the table, with the excuse of a water jug in his hand. He murmured to Alastair that, perhaps, their party might like to move indoors where a private room could be made available to them?

Alastair stood. Charlie did as well, looking enormously relieved that somehow his suggestion to his mother had been anticipated by the hotel staff. He went to the back of Caroline’s chair and said, “Mum, let’s take our conversation—”

“Did she know you locked the door?” Rory cut in.

“Of course she knew it. We’d had a few words and I’d had enough
of her for one night, so I shut the damn door and told her I was locking it.
And
I told her I wanted my own private room henceforth and who can blame me. No more of this adjoining-rooms rubbish.”

“Clare told me about the words you two had,” Rory said. “What she didn’t tell me was what they were about.”

“
Stop
this!” Caroline shouted.

At that, the waiter said, “I really must insist . . .”

“You’re acting as if you think . . . What do you think? That I killed your precious goose? That I stopped her from laying any more gold eggs for you? Why the hell would I do that as, aside from
everything
else, it puts me straight out of a job?”

“What else?” In her peripheral vision, Rory saw a neatly attired man come bustling from the hotel into the garden. He was striding directly towards them, a fixed smile on his face, and she reckoned he was the manager. She felt desperate for information from Caroline and with the other woman’s rising agitation, she felt also certain that she could prise from her details that she might otherwise keep to herself. She said, “What else, Caroline?” and she didn’t care a fig who heard her.

“What?” Caroline snapped.

“You said ‘aside from everything else.’ What else?”

“Is there anything I might help you with?” It was the hotel manager speaking, and he brushed at nonexistent lint on the sleeves of his jacket and attempted to look pleasant. He nodded at a nearby table of camera-laden tourists who were listening, agog with the drama unfolding before them. The waiter took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the matter in the other man’s hands. “Anything at all?” the manager said meaningfully.

“I’m not putting up with this,” Caroline said, ignoring him. But she did at last rise from her chair. Rory did likewise.

The manager, apparently believing he’d effected the desired result of his appearance on the scene, smiled broadly at their party and said, “Yes, yes, if you’ll come this way . . .”

“I
said
I’m not putting up with any of this,” Caroline snapped. “You stand there like a whimpering statue”— this to Alastair – “while she accuses me of God knows what because her
friend
dropped dead in
the night and we all know what you wanted from her, Rory, and how does it feel knowing you aren’t ever going to get it now?”

“Pet, patience,” Alastair murmured.

She swung on him, “Is that what you call
her
as well? Your little two-quid whore. ‘Pet,
pet
’?”

“For God’s sake, Mum,” Charlie said.

She flung herself at him, but it was not to attack. Rather it was to seek the shelter of his filial arms. “Take me home,” she cried out. “Charlie, please. Take me home.”

CAMBERWELL

SOUTH LONDON

India wouldn’t have admitted the fact to most people, but she’d taken largely to getting her news from the Internet. It was in this way, late in the evening, that she learned of Clare Abbott’s sudden death, a piece of unexpected information that appeared in one of those boxes of data that tried to entice the Internet user away from whatever other reason they’d logged on in the first place. In this case, the facts given were limited to “Famed Feminist Dead at 55” with an accompanying picture of Clare. So startled was she to see this that India forgot for a moment what she’d been looking for.

Behind her, Nat said, “Something wrong?” and she recalled what she’d meant to do: to find a romantic inn for them in Norfolk, if such a thing existed. Nat had suggested a weekend away from London and they’d settled on the Broads as the weather was still good and what could be more pleasant than bracing sea air, a tramp among the dunes, and a visit to Horsey Mere? They could stay in the village and set out from there.

India had welcomed the idea and she’d set about finding them a place to stay. Now Nat came to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders. He kissed the top of her head.

“Clare Abbott,” she said and clicked on the story. The information was limited: Cambridge, the River House Hotel, in town for a debate with a conservative female priest. Clare had died sometime during
the night. There was no cause given. “She’s the woman Charlie’s mum works for,” India told Nat. “How dreadful. Nat, she was only fifty-five. This will send Charlie’s mum into a real state.”

India had already told Nat about the dedication of Will Goldacre’s memorial stone, about the appearance of Will’s erstwhile lover on the periphery of the event, about the additional appearance of Francis Goldacre and his young Thai wife. She hadn’t intended to do so, but Nat had rung her twice during her absence that long day and his question of “Have you been out and about today?” was spoken in so friendly a fashion that she’d told him everything, including Charlie’s wanting her to be there in Shaftesbury with him. That had caused a little wobble in their young relationship, but they’d got past it when she explained to Nat that had she not been there to talk to Lily Foster, no one would have believed that Clare had not invited Francis Goldacre to the event with the express purpose of tormenting his former wife. To Nat’s question of why anyone would have thought that, she’d said, “Because that’s how they are. It’s the oddest thing, Nat, but all of this chaos inside Charlie’s family was starting to seem quite normal to me until I finally left them.”

Now Nat nodded at the computer’s screen. “As to our getaway on the Broads . . . ?”

“Definitely,” she said, but she hesitated all the same, staring at Clare Abbott’s face looking out sternly at her, not the best photo in the circumstances. Odd, she thought, how difficult it was actually to capture the spirit of a person in a photograph. One had to have a level of skill that went far beyond—

“You’re concerned,” Nat said. “Is it the woman herself? Clare Abbott?”

“Not quite,” she said and thought about the entire idea of concern. She said, more like a meditation than a declaration, “Perhaps I ought to ring her.”

“Who?” Nat drew an ottoman over to the desk and sat, which put his head lower than hers and slightly in shadow. He watched her, his eyes gone quite dark.

“Caroline,” she said. “I could offer her sympathy. As I was her daughter-in-law for years . . . as I’m still her daughter-in-law technically . . .”

“Hmm. Yes. When are we going to talk about that?” He rubbed
the back of his neck as he said this, making the question appear just a casual thought triggered by the term she’d used:
daughter-in-law
. To her question “About what?,” he said, “India,” in the disappointed voice of a father knowing his child is avoiding a necessary discussion of an infraction committed. “About you and Charlie,” he told her, “and what you’re going to say to him and when you’re going to say it.”

She felt her spine loosen when she sighed. “I’m avoiding, obviously.”

“Obviously. It’s been how many months now?”

“Since you and I . . . ?” She smiled at him fondly. She found that she wanted to take him straight to bed, to prove that he had nothing to worry about when it came to her marriage. “I would expect you to know to the very minute, Nathaniel Thompson.”

“Two months, twenty days, four hours, and—” He glanced at his watch “thirty-seven minutes. No, thirty-eight.”

“You’re joking!” She laughed.

He reached for her hand and kissed her palm. “As to the minutes and hours, yes. But as to the months and days, I do have them down. Have I told you what I first noticed about you on the bus?” And when she shook her head, he went on with, “How intently you read. It was days before you even looked up from your book and gave me a glance.”

“Was it? How odd. I have no memory of a first glance at all.”

“You wouldn’t have.” He laced his fingers with hers. “I expect everything was all too fresh for you then.”

“What?”

“Leaving Charlie. When will you tell him that you’re not going back?”

She drew her hand away from his. She looked back at the computer screen, at Clare Abbott’s intelligent face. Clare, she knew, would have called India’s present life a very good example of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Going from one man to another? After such a brief hiatus? Clare would not have approved, and who could blame her? What did she really know of Nathaniel Thompson, India asked herself. She said, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know when you’re going to tell him or you don’t know whether you’re making this separation from him permanent?”

“Either,” she said.

He rose. They were in the second bedroom of her tiny house, which she used as a sitting room and office since the real sitting room was her weekend acupuncture clinic. The room was tiny, but Nat found enough space to pace its perimeter. He was a tall man, and he seemed to fill the area not only with his presence but also with his feelings. Odd, she thought, that she would end up with another man who lived so openly with his feelings, as Charlie had done prior to Will’s death. What was the attraction? she wondered. Her determination
not
to end up with her father? But why would that be? She’d have been wise to choose a man like her father, diplomat that he long had been.

“So what are we, you and I?” Nat asked her. “Merely a break from your normal routine?”

“You know that isn’t the case.” She turned from the computer to watch him.

“I know that you haven’t said a thing about how you feel. I’ve been forthcoming with you, the whole heart spread out on a boulder for the carrion eaters. What’s stopping you if it isn’t Charlie? What is it about him, India? Since when did neediness become so compelling?”

“Let’s not quarrel. If I haven’t said it, it’s not because I doubt it but because . . .” She hesitated, searching for a way to explain what she herself only imperfectly understood.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Truly, Nat, I don’t. And no, neediness is not compelling. But I don’t want to deal him a death blow.”

“So you’ll do what instead? Keep both of us hanging?”

“I don’t mean to do that.”

He resumed his pacing, but his steps took him only as far as the window which looked down at the street, through her tangle of a front garden barely the size of a steamer trunk. He said to this view rather than to her, “I know he’s not a proper man to you.” He turned then, perhaps to gauge her reaction.

India knew she looked startled, for she’d never said a word. It had seemed too disloyal to Charlie.

Nat said as if in answer to a question she didn’t ask, “It was the way you reacted. And what you said: ‘Such a long time.’”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did, in fact. Before you fell asleep. Just on the edge of asleep and awake. You felt as you hadn’t felt in years. We both know why.”

She felt the wound of his words, although every one of them was the truth. She said again, “Please. Let’s not quarrel.”

He came back to her then. He raised her from her chair and took her into his arms. “So we won’t,” he told her. “Not when it comes to the truth. We won’t quarrel about that.”

HOLLOWAY

LONDON

I
t was an escape from speed dating, of all bloody mad things, that revealed to Barbara Havers twenty-four hours after the fact that Clare Abbott had unexpectedly died. She’d arrived home, thoroughly knackered by what it was taking in the energy department for her to maintain the dispiriting air of panting cooperation personified, all for the pleasure of Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery. Jaw clenching, lip biting, teeth grinding, fingernails digging, and tongue holding were all taking their toll, and Barbara wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold on to this new twist in her personality without the top of her head erupting. Berwick-upon-Tweed was starting to sound like paradise to her. So when she trudged up the driveway of the Edwardian villa behind which she lived—having been forced to park her Mini practically at the top of Haverstock Hill—the last activity she wished to engage in was speed dating.

It was all Dorothea Harriman’s idea, and she’d proved herself unrelenting on the topic. Dee’s outlook on life, unfortunately, had not been adjusted by
Looking for Mr. Darcy
which, it turned out, she’d only glanced at before pressing it upon DI Lynley. After that, having apparently given up on the idea of making Barbara over, she’d decided upon another way to put an end to the sad state of affairs that was Barbara’s
love life. Speed dating, she announced, was going to get Barbara’s feet wet in the stream in which hoards of available men were apparently swimming.

Barbara had attempted protest. She’d never been interested in pulling men.

To this, Dorothea had said, “Everyone is interested in pulling men, Detective Sergeant Havers. So I’m not listening to no. And neither is anyone else.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dorothea had been forced to confess, at that point, that “everyone wants you
back
, Detective Sergeant. We’re rather desperate to have you back, not to put too fine a point on things.”

To Barbara’s hot “I haven’t
gone
any-bloody-where,” Dorothea said, “You know what I mean. This Berwick-upon-Tweed situation? And Detective Superintendent Ardery? And you being extra-extra-special good? You see, while I think it’s terribly heroic for Detective Inspector Lynley to have
tried
to pull the plug on all that—”

“
What?
” Barbara cried. “What did he do?”

“Oh dear. I’m saying too much. I’m getting flustered. Look, let’s just try this, shall we? Let’s call it a new experience, something to tell your mum next time you see her . . . Please? And afterwards . . .” Dorothea paused, apparently to give the afterwards some thought. “Afterwards, I’ll take you to dinner. You name the restaurant. I’ll pay the bill.”

“I’d rather have my toenails pulled out,” Barbara told her.

“No. You’d rather have something on your mind besides Berwick-upon-Tweed. I’m not taking no for an answer, by the way. You can’t reject something you’ve never tried.”

Thus, the evening that lay before her. Dee had found the experience they were about to undergo by browsing through the ads at the back of
Time Out
. There it had been, tucked beneath an offer for Expert Thai Massages Given in Your Hotel Room. The event was scheduled to take place in Holloway, conveniently close—as things turned out—to HM’s prison for women.

Wonderful, Barbara thought as she plodded towards the pub that was going to house the affair. Off-duty screws looking for love. She should fit right in.

Dorothea was waiting just inside the door. To Barbara’s greeting of “Are you half mad, Dee? Do you actually reckon anyone decent is going to turn up
here
?,” Dorothea said, “We’re going to shine, like pearls among the . . . whatever.” And she led the way into the function room before Barbara could point out to her that pearls generally didn’t shine at all.

The function room was decorated . . . just. Twisted crepe paper crisscrossed the ceiling, and above the reception table a clutch of helium balloons floated. Here sat three female greeters, who were collecting money and providing drinks tickets. In front of them,
Hello! I’m
name tags waited to be filled out in black marking pen, and once the arriving singles had accomplished this, they drifted to the sides of the room and milled about, surreptitiously examining the other singles.

Five rows of long tables indicated where the speed daters were supposed to sit. Each held a sign affixed to a metal pole.
25–30
said one.
31–40, 41–50, 51–60
, and
60
+ said the others. Lined along each were chairs for the daters, and in the centre of each table and spaced along its length were slim white vases holding plastic daisies.

A corpulent man with slicked-back black hair of a suspiciously youthful hue began to “set up the rules,” which were simple enough. He said his name was Sunny Jack Domino and he was going “to keep you lot in line, this evening.” Keeping them in line referred to a timer he held up and whose workings he demonstrated by having it sound and then following it with a handheld bell of town crier variety. Their “dates” would be five minutes long, he told them. When they heard the timer, they had thirty seconds to finish up, at which point he would ring the bell. The gents would move to the chair on their right while the ladies remained seated. “You c’n pass your details to whoever you take a fancy to,” he said. “Only rule is to keep moving.”

The mention of details told Barbara she should have brought some business cards on the very remote chance that she actually made a connection with someone. She had a moment of concern about this, but that faded soon enough once Sunny Jack Domino explained the purpose of the signs on the tables. Those, he said, indicated the age groups. Daters were to sit in accordance with their years. “And
no
cheating,” he warned them with a show of his execessivly white teeth.

It was all rather like being in school. The daters headed for their age-appropriate tables, with Sunny Jack chortling about the fun to come. With a “Ready, steady, go!” he set the daters upon each other.

Soon enough Barbara discovered that while the women had taken themselves to the age-appropriate table, few of the men had done so, instead shaving a decade and in one case three off their ages. Thus she found herself conversing with blokes from forty-one to sixty-seven years of age.

She lasted three dates. Her first exposed her to a devotee of a diet that appeared to consist of laying into flapjacks and chip butties, a sort of nutritional Russian roulette that contributed to a girth which oozed over the chair he occupied. He gazed at Barbara and waited, apparently, for her to entertain him, which she was loath to do. Her next encounter proved to be a gentleman who admitted readily that he wasn’t close to being in his thirties—this would be the sixty-seven-year-old—but “I like ’em young an’ bouncy, I do, and I got the stamina of a bull,” he said, with a wink and a meaningful gesture employing the index finger of his right hand and the circled index finger and thumb of his left. Her final meeting had her listening to a man who demanded “what sort ’f music you listen to, eh? ’Cause what I’ve found is that if the music doesn’t fit, nothing else is going to.”

It was at that point, that Barbara rose from the table and headed for the exit. She hadn’t made good her escape before Dorothea was upon her, crying, “Detective Sergeant Havers! You aren’t—”

Barbara saw that only a lie would do. She held up her mobile. “Just got a call, Dee. I’m on rota tonight, and you know how that is . . .” With a wave, she was gone, out onto the pavement.

She sought out a chippy. She’d not had dinner, and after the speed dating folly she reckoned she was owed. She set off down the road. Fittingly, it seemed, it began to rain, not a gentle autumn shower to wash the summer’s grime from the trees but a real downpour. And, of course, she had no umbrella.

She stumbled upon a newsagent within fifty yards, and she went inside to get out of the rain. A meaningful gaze from the hijab-wearing woman behind the counter indicated that Barbara ought to make a purchase, and she was happy to do so. Wrigley’s Spearmint, a
packet of Players, a plastic lighter, and a copy of her favourite light reading material, a tabloid called
The Source.
She handed these over for payment and enquired the location of the nearest chippy. She discovered that it was close to where she was, a mere eight or ten doors farther along the way.

Inside, she placed her order for haddock and chips. There were no tables, only a Formica-topped eating counter that ran round the walls. Stools with greasy-looking vinyl seats stood before this, which made sitting an unappealing prospect, but as eating chips in the rain was less appealing still, Barbara decided to be satisfied with the fact that the counter was wide enough to accommodate her reading material. And really, she reckoned, what more could one ask for on a rainy evening?

So it was that she uncovered the information telling her that well-known feminist author and lecturer Clare Abbott was dead at fifty-five years of age. This wasn’t front-page material, though. Instead the front page was given to the shocking revelation that a footballer previously said to be devoted to his wife—always a dead giveaway, Barbara thought sardonically—had been keeping a mistress on the coast of Spain for the last three years. “I’m faithful to them both,” he was claiming, “which is more than you can say for the rest of this lot.” It didn’t seem to be a problem for him that his wife had recently given birth—she was pictured leaving their house, bundled baby in her arms, weeping inconsolably—and that the mistress was pregnant. “I’m only a human being!” had been his protest at being discovered a perfect lout.

Barbara made the jump to page five, where this sad tale continued. It was on her way to this page that she saw first Clare Abbott’s picture and then the news about her death. Although the exact cause wasn’t given, it appeared to have been a heart attack, she read. That was a pity as she hadn’t been old, Barbara thought. The idea of a heart attack caused her to look a bit askance at her fish and chips, though. She decided to douse them both with another round of malt vinegar. This, she reckoned, could stand in place of the vegetables that she should have been eating.