A Banquet of Consequences (44 page)

“He has,” India told her.

“How very civilised.” Caroline handed round the wine. India had no intention of drinking hers, but Nat was willing. He took a sip and studied the wine as if to admire the ruby colour. He was, India reckoned, probably trying to sort out what to make of all this. Caroline went on. “You seem to have a lovely family Christmas every year, Nat, if your telephone message is anything to go by. I happened to hear it earlier. That and one from India’s father. It was about you. You’ll be happy to know that the Honourable Martin Elliott is encouraging his daughter on your behalf. I can’t say that I’m doing the same. Charlie is, after all, my surviving son.” She took a swig of her wine.

India said, “Caroline . . . Mum . . .”

Caroline held up her hand. “I’ve said too much. I always do. Let
me make myself scarce so the two of you can do whatever it is that you wish to do. I ought to check in with Charlie anyway. He’ll want to know how I’m coping.” She sent a fond glance in India’s direction. “It was good of India to take me in. Charlie asked her to do it, you know.”

She left them at that, taking her wine and the bottle with her. India knew that her face was colouring, for she felt the heat rising from her chest. She started to say, “I’m so—”

Simultaneously Nat said, “
Did
they cancel?”

She looked at him blankly. He was gazing at her, both of his hands cupping his wineglass now. He seemed to realise he was still holding it without wanting to hold it, for he set it on the table as she tried to work out what he meant. She said, “Did who cancel?”

“I see. Listen, I’m not bothered by your lying to me, India, considering the circumstances. But I
am
bothered by the fact that you thought you had to.”

Then she twigged: the clients who she claimed had cancelled their appointments. She said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what you’d think. I could hardly say no to Charlie when he asked me. He meets his clients in our flat. He couldn’t have them and his mum there at the same time. It would have been impossible.”

His gaze was level, his dark eyes serious. “‘Our flat,’” he said.

“What?”

“You just said, ‘He meets his clients in our flat.’”

“It’s a turn of phrase. It doesn’t mean anything. Just that I owe him at least the amount of kindness that it takes to give his mother a place to stay for a night or two.”

“And are you sure that’s all?”

“I can’t think it’ll be longer. She’s going to want to get back to Dorset. Her husband’s there—Charlie’s stepfather—”

“I meant the kindness bit, not how long his mum will be staying.”

She sighed. “Oh, Nat. Really . . .” She turned from him and went back to the sink where the washing-up had been interrupted. But she didn’t do more than merely stand there and look through the night-blackened window to the tangled mess of a garden that she couldn’t see.

Behind her, he said, “Never mind. That was . . .” He paused as if
seeking a way to describe what he was feeling, and he settled on saying, “All of a sudden I felt myself doing a werewolf thing. Only there’s no full moon and I don’t suppose I mean a werewolf anyway.”

She turned from the window. “Whatever are you talking about?” she asked with a smile.

“Sorry. I think I meant caveman. I grab you by the hair and drag you into my lair. I don’t think werewolves do that.”

“Did cavemen have lairs?”

“They had to have something else they wouldn’t be called cavemen. It’s quite odd, though, isn’t it? The primitive is always there, just beneath the surface of our civility, all those carefully cultivated social mores. One still wants to lay claim, and the claim comes down to possession. My fire, my hearth, my . . . whatever.”

“My woman,” she finished for him. “But I don’t want to be anyone’s woman.”

“I understand. And the truth is that I wouldn’t want you to want to be someone’s woman, even mine. It’s just that moments come when what I really want is to make definite something that can never
be
definite. Because, of course, nothing ever is.”

She returned the gaze he was directing at her. She felt such a swelling within her, a real movement towards him although she wasn’t herself moving at all. She wondered at it, asking herself if this particular sort of feeling was what she’d always been meant to experience with and for a man. But she didn’t know because she had to admit to herself that part of what she felt was the desire for Nat to sweep into her life and make all of her decisions for her.

Nat roused himself. With a nod at the photo, which Caroline had deposited on the table, he said, “This is what you’d have to look forward to, by the way. I’ll go on to tempt you with the menu for Christmas lunch later. It’s always spectacular. And of course the great gathering of the clan to hear the Speech in the afternoon. That’s always accompanied by plum pudding with massive amounts of cream.”

She returned to him and to the table, where she picked up the photo and looked at his achingly young adolescent face. She said, “May I keep this? Somehow, the sight of your teenage self—complete with a few spots, I see—makes you seem . . . I don’t know the word.”

“Less like a caveman? Although a caveman would have had hair, not spots, I expect.”

She looked from the picture to him. “You’ve a lovely history behind you, don’t you? Family, love, traditions, security.”

“For my sins,” he admitted. “I’m embarrassed to tell you that I allow my brothers’ and sisters’ children to crawl all over me. There are—God forbid—ten of them now. And counting, as my youngest sister is pregnant again.”

“That’s very compelling.”

“Her pregnancy?”

“All of it.” She put the picture down and slid her arms up and around his neck. When they kissed, she let go of everything else that was eating at her mind: Caroline, Charlie, loyalty, love, guilt, and fear. Instead she allowed herself the pull of her desire for him. His arms encircled her and drew her close, and she saw his desire was a match for her own.

The doorbell rang. As if with guilt, they jumped apart. They stared at each other, and India knew they shared the same thought: Charlie.

Caroline was down the stairs in an instant, before India could make a move. She scurried into the sitting room where she did her bit with the curtains, calling back to them, “
Another
man? Goodness, aren’t you the sly one, India.”

CAMBERWELL

SOUTH LONDON

Lynley had left Arlo in the car this time. It had been a long and invigorating day for the dog—at least that was how Lynley liked to think about it—and he was happy to snooze in the passenger seat of the Healey Elliott, which Lynley left just outside the house where Charlie Goldacre’s wife India apparently now lived.

When he rang the bell, he had to do so twice. He was surprised when it was opened not by a woman who might have been married to Charlie Goldacre but rather by a man. He was tall and dark of hair, eyes, and eyebrows, and his skin suggested the need to shave more
than once a day. He was wearing a suit that fitted him very well in the manner of something not off the peg, and his shirt was white and crisp, even with his tie removed and his collar unbuttoned. Physically, he was completely different from Charlie Goldacre.

His expression was somewhere between wary and confused. Behind him stood a young woman whom Lynley recognised from the photo in her estranged husband’s flat. Behind
her
and just emerging from what was apparently a sitting room to the left of the entry was an older woman: far too heavy, double-chinned, a great deal of spectacular eye shadow, showy gold earrings, two necklaces, swirls of brightly designed silk fashioned into some sort of garment meant to disguise her body’s shortcomings, leggings stretched beneath. Presumably, this was Charlie’s mother.

Lynley removed his police identification from his jacket. He introduced himself. He saw Caroline Goldacre fall back, as if with the hope of going unnoticed, which was hardly likely. He said he was there to speak with her. “I understand from Charlie that you’re in town for a few days,” he said. “If you might give me five or ten minutes?”

Caroline said, “What’s this about?” as India said, “Of course. Come in, Inspector. I’m India Elliott. This is Nathaniel Thompson.”

Thompson said to her, “Shall I . . . ?” and indicated the street outside with an inclination of his head.

“No. Please stay,” India said.

He stepped back from the door, admitting Lynley to the house as Caroline Goldacre protested with, “I’ve already spoken to the police. I don’t see what more I can possibly have to say to anyone.”

Lynley made no reply to this. Inside the house, he saw that the sitting room wasn’t actually a sitting room but rather something of a medical suite. It contained an examining table of sorts, along with a blocked fireplace, a cabinet, and shelving being used to store equipment and filing folders. He’d seen the sign on the front window advertising acupuncture. This, then, must be where India met her patients.

She said to him, “I’m afraid we’ll have to go to the kitchen if you don’t mind. Would you like a coffee?”

Caroline said sharply, “India,” in a way that suggested how unacceptable to her was the other woman’s hospitality. India ignored this and led the way to the kitchen. Everyone followed.

Lynley saw that the washing up from dinner was in progress, some crockery languishing on the draining board and some pots piled in the sink with a washing-up brush tilted down among them. It wasn’t a large room, and four people crowded it. India offered to leave him with her mother-in-law but Caroline protested. She wanted a witness, she insisted.

Lynley wondered what she thought was going to happen, but he let it go. He had the mobile fingerprinting kit with him, and he set this on the table, saying that India’s presence or absence from the scene was no matter as he wouldn’t be there long. He told Caroline Goldacre that he’d been in Spitalfields at her son’s flat in order to—

“How did you know I’d gone to Charlie?” Caroline demanded.

“My colleague Barbara Havers,” he said. “She went to speak to you another time in Dorset, only to be told by your husband that you’d come up to town.”

“Why did she want to speak to me?” Caroline had not sat at the table. Neither had anyone else. India stood near the sink and the unwashed pots, Thompson leaned against the fridge, and Caroline herself remained in the doorway, ready to fly at the least provocation, Lynley reckoned. She continued when he didn’t immediately answer, “I told you. I’ve already spoken to her. More than once. And with you as well. That
was
you on the phone, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“I’d only gone to Clare’s to fetch the rest of what’s mine, you know,” she said. “I tried to tell her that. I don’t understand why you lot need to have my personal belongings. They are, after all, mine. A letter opener, an antique toast rack that I used for the post, a Sellotape dispenser that I bought because Clare couldn’t be bothered, my coffee mug, a lunch kit I’d forgotten was there. None of this can be relevant.”

“It’s all procedure,” Lynley told her pleasantly. “Another way of clearing the deck of suspects.”

He saw India and Thompson exchange a glance as Caroline’s voice rose on, “And
what
am I a suspect of?”

“It’s awkward, of course,” Lynley said, “considering you were the last person to be with Clare Abbott before she died.”

“Aside from whoever killed her,” Caroline pointed out. “
If
she was
murdered at all because this whole business of something supposedly
causing
her heart attack . . . Your sergeant told me, by the way. And what, may I ask you, is meant to do that?”

She spoke, Lynley thought, as if it was a personal affront to her that Clare had died. He said, “That’s why I’ve come, actually. I’m going to need your fingerprints to rule you out as a suspect. The source of the substance that caused Clare Abbott’s heart arrhythmia, seizure, and death had three sets of fingerprints on it. We’re in the process of identifying all of them.”

“And you believe one set of them is mine.”

“This is all normal procedure, Ms. Goldacre,” Lynley told her another time.

“Oh please. Of
course
that’s what you’d say. But do you actually believe I had a reason to kill
anyone
?”

“The substance in question—the poison—was found in toothpaste. We’ve learned only today that this toothpaste belonged to Clare. Since you were traveling with her when she died—”

It was Caroline’s expression that stopped him. From pinched and annoyed, her face had altered to unmistakable shock or a very good imitation of it. He said, “What is it?”

“Mine.” Her tone of alarm seemed genuine enough.

“The toothpaste?”

“Yes. Oh God.” She swayed. India moved to her. She drew out a chair from the table and told her to “Sit, Mum. Here.”

Caroline did so. She spoke with her eyes fixed on the mobile fingerprinting device on the table. “Clare had forgotten hers. We had words. Yes, I
admit
we did have words because I was exhausted and she’d sworn to me that the evening wouldn’t go on past ten, but it had. Earlier, before we argued, she’d realised she’d forgotten to bring her toothpaste along to Cambridge, so I gave her mine. To borrow, not to keep. But we had a . . . a discussion and things got heated, and I left her. I locked the door between our rooms as I didn’t want to have anything more to do with her that night. She could be so overbearing and full of herself and . . . You do see what happened, don’t you? I realised later that I had no toothpaste, so I phoned down to reception for a resident’s kit or whatever they’re called. But there
wasn’t one, so I went without.” She placed her hand over her ample left breast as if to pledge to the truth of what she was saying, but instead of making that pledge she said, “I feel unwell. India, dear . . . Is there water?”

India brought her a glass of mineral water that she took from the fridge. Before drinking, Caroline examined the glass’s contents and then India’s face as if with suspicion that her daughter-in-law was about to do her in directly in front of New Scotland Yard. But she drank and said, “My heart is absolutely
pounding
. Give me a moment please.”