A Banquet of Consequences (57 page)

“Caroline? Not Francis?” And when she nodded, “What kind of abuse? Physical? Emotional?”

“Any kind of abuse.”

“What did you tell her?”

Sumalee’s appetite seemed to leave her. She replaced what remained of her triangle of sandwich into its bag. She took four grapes and rested them in her smooth, small palm. She said, “I told her that Will had always been troubled, from the time I have known Francis and—according to Francis—from long before that time. He would come to us on occasion, along with Charlie, and it seemed to me that he could never separate from Caroline completely although he did seem to try. But she didn’t want a separation from him.”

“What about from Charlie?”

“It was different with Charlie. He managed to get some distance from her. But Will . . . ? No. The way most young men want to be off on their own, establishing themselves and their own identity? Will couldn’t quite be talked into it until he met Lily Foster. Perhaps he was afraid to venture forth before that, but the feeling I had was that there was something else at the heart of his relationship with his mother. It made me uneasy.”

Her eyes were lowered, but Lynley could see that her gaze moved to take in his proximity to her. He could see a faint pulse in her temple. His thought was that she wanted to say more but was hesitant to do so.

He said, “Mrs. Goldacre, if you know something that might help
us get to the bottom of Clare Abbott’s death, if this is somehow related . . . Let me put it this way. Did you tell her anything that might have come out later in a conversation she had with Caroline? Something that, when spoken, could have set Caroline on a path to harm her?” Or, Lynley added to himself, something that, when written and later discovered by Caroline, could have done the same thing.

Sumalee was quiet for a moment, as if considering this. Then, barely perceptible, came the nod. “I’ve never told Francis,” she said. “I could see no point and it did seem that it would only make matters worse if I said anything. I told Clare, though. I probably should not have, and had Will not already been dead, I would have held my tongue.”

“So it was about Will?”

“For a time I told myself that he might have been lying to me. Indeed, I even told myself that it could be something among you English that I don’t understand. Every culture has its own . . . rituals, I suppose.”

A burst of laughter came from the women at the picnic table, along with “He didn’t!” and “He bloody well did!” Sumalee gazed at them. She took a moment, it seemed, to gather her thoughts before going on.

“Will was visiting us as he sometimes did. He was perhaps fourteen years old. I came upon him in his bedroom. I had some laundry—tee-shirts and jeans of his—to put away and I opened the door, not knowing he was there. He was . . . well, he was standing at the side of his bed with his trousers lowered and there were pictures of women . . . ? From magazines, these were, the sorts of pictures . . . nude and some of them quite explicit. He was seeing to himself, just staring at them, and it was the moment of his orgasm that I entered. The spray of it across the bed and on the pictures and it all happened so quickly that I gasped. It was the surprise and I suppose the shock, and I left the room quickly.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke and had she been of a different complexion, he reckoned that she might have been blushing but perhaps not. She didn’t tell the tale as if she was embarrassed but rather as if she felt some regret.

She went on. “Afterwards, I thought he might feel embarrassed or, perhaps, he would act as if nothing had happened. Or perhaps he would
say something about my not telling his father what I had seen although Francis would not have been shocked, I think. I apologised to him for entering his room without knocking upon the door and what he said . . . He said, ‘No matter, Suma. I’m used to being watched.’”

Lynley felt a chill go through him. “Did he elaborate?”

Sumalee glanced at him, her fine eyebrows drawn together as she said, “He told me she taught him, Inspector.”

Lynley’s thought was that a boy hardly needed to be taught, so he wondered at this and the wonder must have shown on his face because Sumalee said, “What I mean is that when he was ten years old, she did this—she taught him to do it—to control the words. He had an affliction with language. Did you know this?”

“My sergeant has told me something about the problem.”

“It was something he couldn’t control. It didn’t happen often, but when it did . . . He told me that when the words came on badly, this was something he could do to stop them. Of course, he also said that often he just did it because he enjoyed it. But there were times, he said, when she watched to make sure he did it . . . I suppose
properly
is the word.”

“How long did this go on? Do you know?”

She shook her head. “When he grew older, I don’t know what might have happened between them, but when he fell apart in London and had to leave to stay with her and his stepfather in Dorset . . . ? He was in a very bad way and not coping well at all and I suppose anything, really, is possible. But at that point—in his twenties—what young man would ever admit to his mother watching while he gives himself pleasure? If, of course, this happened at all.”

“This is what you told Clare Abbott?” Lynley asked.

Sumalee nodded. “She wanted to record me, but I would not allow that. Nor would I allow her to take notes. I didn’t know what she was going to do with the information she was gathering, but since she was gathering it, I wanted her to have the truth.”

“Will could have been lying to you because you’d walked in on him,” Lynley pointed out. “The admission that he was used to being watched . . . that his mother taught him to masturbate? Could he have said that merely to shock you?”

“Certainly. And yet, what young man would lie about such a thing, Inspector? His mother teaching him . . . watching him . . . ? I do not think he was lying.”

“Would he have told anyone else?”

She smiled thinly. “Inspector, would you?” She smoothed the front of her trousers. Finally she took one of the grapes she held and she ate it, chewing thoughtfully. He asked her if she knew what Clare had intended to do with the information she had given her, and Sumalee said that she did not. Clare had been, however, clearly fascinated by what Sumalee had revealed to her. There had been no mistaking that.

Lynley nodded. He reckoned, however, that far more than mere fascination had been involved. He couldn’t believe that, given this explosive information, Clare Abbott wouldn’t have made immediate note of it somehow. She had to have written about her interview with Sumalee. And whatever she’d written and wherever she’d hidden the information, Caroline Goldacre must have found it.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

Alastair found himself wielding the mop with more energy than usual at the end of the baking morning. His assistant had just departed, having cleaned the machinery and used the antiseptic spray on all of the surfaces where the dough was shaped into cobs and bloomers and cottage loaves and where the confections were made. Caro had been after him for years to employ a cleaning crew to see to the bakery when the breads and the cakes had been loaded into the delivery vans, but Alastair liked to do most of it himself. That way, he reckoned, the job would be seen to properly. Had he the time, he would have done the antiseptic part of the cleaning as well. As it was, he was the broom-and-mop man.

This morning, he found, the employment suited him more than usual, especially the requirements involved in the physical part of it. Indeed, he was building up something of a sweat with all the scrubbing he was doing. Good, he thought. Perhaps he could rid himself of the thoughts that were tormenting him.

Charlie had phoned to tell him that Caro was returning home and that he himself was driving her to Dorset. Of course, Alastair had known at heart that she would return eventually. But he’d allowed himself a nonsensical fantasy in which she somehow conveniently disappeared off the face of the earth.

He’d spent the last two days with Sharon. He’d asked her to come to him, to be in the house with him, even though he expected that she would refuse, which of course she had. She also confessed that finally she’d broken down and told her daughter about him, and she said she’d got quite a lecture from her Jenny about “mixing it up with a married man, Mummy. What’re you
thinking
? Not that he’s going to leave his wife for you. They never do.”

She hadn’t told her daughter who the man was because, knowing Jenny, she’d’ve rung Alastair straightaway and she’d’ve given him a piece of her mind. As it was, Sharon confessed to him, Jenny had rung her brother instead, and hadn’t
he
then rung his mum to tell her she was worth more than “sneaking round the county with a married bloke who’s going to drop you the first time his wife says the word
divorce
. Just you wait and see.”

Sharon laughed gently, telling Alastair that they wanted her to start Internet dating, didn’t they, for there were piles of sites where she could look for a mate, they said. And hadn’t Jenny emailed her a dozen sites just to prove this to her. Then over the phone from San Francisco, hadn’t she walked her mother through how to access a site and how to mount her picture on it, and what to say about herself? And hadn’t Jenny refused to ring off till she’d made certain her mum had done as she was told? Not that she would
ever
consent to meeting a man that way should one actually contact her, Sharon assured him, but there was no saying no to Jenny when she got her dander up about something. Children have their ways of being insistent about these things, haven’t they, and sometimes wasn’t it easier just to go along with them?

Alastair had nodded. What else could he do? He said to her, “But Shar . . . the thought of you and some bloke off the Internet . . . Let me ring your kids. I’ll make ’em understand that you an’ me have a real future if I c’n only . . .”

She’d looked alarmed. “See here, my dear,” she said, “you’re not to think I’ll abandon you.”

But Alastair knew he could not hold her to that. The temptation of men wanting to meet her was going to be far too strong for Sharon to resist. And this was what he was thinking as he furiously mopped the floor right up to the shadow that fell across the cement from the open doorway. He looked up. It was the policewoman who’d been there before.

“That floor’s wet there,” he told her. “Mind you don’t—”

“I don’t,” she said. “Mind, that is.” And the maddening woman stepped right inside.

For the second bloody time, he couldn’t remember her name. This irritated him as much as her tramping on his clean floor. He said, “I just told you, didn’t I, that the floor was wet. I expect you c’n see I’m working at cleaning, and I’d be that grateful if you didn’t muck round leaving dirt everywhere.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “Thought you were worried I’d slip and break my head. Sorry. Look, can I have a word?” She looked round the mixing room, which was where he and she were at present. She’d come in quietly from the out-of-doors, and he’d been so deep into his thoughts that he’d not heard either her car or her entrance. He knew he had to pull himself together because if she’d come to call upon him, it couldn’t be a good thing.

He said, “What sort ’f word? You got my fingerprints off me. What more d’you want? And Caro’s not here any more ’n she was here last time you called.”

The woman—God, what was her bloody name?—dropped her shoulder bag on one of his newly and antiseptically cleaned work surfaces. She opened it up and rustled through it, shoving her bits and bobs round till she finally excavated a tattered notebook. She brought this forth along with a stub of a pencil that didn’t look good for anything, much less for writing. She flipped the notebook open and she flashed him a smile.

He was startled. Odd, he thought, how someone so plain—not to mention so unappealing of body—could be transformed by a smile. It was the same for Sharon, but then in her case it was also the soul of
her that shone through like sun through sheer curtains. She became an angel when she smiled, did Sharon, whereas this woman merely became just a little less like a barrel on legs with porcupine hair.

When she had the notebook in hand, she said, “Turns out your dabs weren’t necessary after all, Mr. MacKerron. But your wife’s? That’s another matter.”

He put his mop into the bucket and rested its handle against the spotless wall. The policewoman—Havers, that was it! Sergeant Havers. Odd how things dropped into one’s mind like that—looked round with a bright and interested expression on her face. She said, “This is where the magic happens, eh?” and she set about having a look at this and at that: thrusting her head into the adjoining rooms and having a go with the mixing machines as if she expected a finished loaf to appear at the bottom of one of the enormous vats. “I always reckoned bread grew inside of plastic packages in the grocery.” She returned to where he was, and she fingered a row of utensils hanging from the wall. “How d’you keep the unwanted creepy crawlies out of your ingredients? I expect that’s a chore. Weevils and all that. They’re dead mad for flour, aren’t they?”

He said to her, “Every bag of flour opened gets used up each day. Same for the salt and sugar and yeast. Nothing left loose for them to get into.”

“Mind showing me round?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why? And you been looking round already, far as I c’n see. Can’t tell me you’ve come to learn how to bake bread. And wha’s this ’bout Caro anyway?”

“What’s what?” She leaned her bulk against one of the worktables where the clean baking trays were stacked, waiting for tomorrow’s work. She cocked her head and looked at him pleasantly, but he didn’t miss the fact that her gaze was darting all over the bakery, like the woman expected a plague-carrying rat to come running across the large sacks of flour stacked on pallets in the room beyond where he and she were standing.

“Caro,” he said. “You said her prints were another matter.”

“Oh, that. My colleague went to fetch her dabs up in London and hit a bull’s-eye with them. We were looking for a third set and there
they were, sitting at the end of her fingers. So what it means is that there’s a very strong possibility that she whacked Clare Abbott. ’Course, there’re other ways to look at the matter, but just now we’re liking Caroline for the job.” The sergeant paused. She pushed herself off the worktable and said, “D’you mind if I have a peek through here?” She didn’t wait for his reply. “Are these the ovens? Always on, are they? Sort of a Hansel-and-Gretel thing you’ve got going on? Should I have brought breadcrumbs? Bloody hell, they’re huge, they are.”