Heavenly Pleasures (18 page)

‘Did you believe a word of that happy ending?’ asked Daniel.

‘No. You?’

‘No,’ he said, putting an arm around my shoulders and drawing me into the apartment.

‘If they have found what they want, they’ll come back and kill him,’ I said slowly.

‘And if they haven’t, they’ll come back and torture him to find it,’ said Daniel.

‘Nothing to be done about it tonight,’ I said. He kissed me with his satiny mouth. We watched more Buffy, and then we went to bed.

Ah, Saturday. Not only did I get to go back to sleep, but I had Daniel. He slept very neatly, mouth closed, eyelashes like a sooty fringe-line on his smooth cheek. He woke while I was watching him.

‘Hey,’ he said, gathering me into his embrace. I like being gathered. I snuggled like Nox had into the Professor’s hands. Outside the storm was raging. I drowsed, warm and cosy and safe.

When I woke to the scent of coffee it was ten in the morning and time to be up and doing with a heart for any fate. I did not feel like being up and doing, but I got up anyway. Horatio had deserted me for the kitchen, where there might, if he played his cards right, be food. I padded down to the bakery to feed the Mouse Police and put my washed clothes into the dryer. All seemed calm down there. No water had come into the bakery, though it was still blowing a gale outside. I wandered up again and found that there were croissants as well as coffee and sat down to enjoy them in warm silence. Bliss.

By eleven we were talking again. Daniel fed another one of the silent surveillance videos into the machine and watched it on fast forward, making pencil marks on his notes. I did some light cleaning. Then I sat down with him to watch.

‘These are the customers who come in at least once a week,’ he said, showing me a list. There were more than twenty names on it. ‘None of them, as far as I have found, have any reason to ruin the sisters. It has to be one of these possibilities. A random madman, someone trying to use the shop as a distraction or a prelude to poisoning, an extortion attempt, or an inside job.’

‘There isn’t a lot we can do about a random madman,’ I commented. ‘There never is. If it was an extortion attempt, we would have expected a ransom demand by now, and they all swear there hasn’t been one. Someone who was intending to frame Heavenly Pleasures for poisoning their spouse would have done it by now.’ I had not wasted that time spent reading true crime, no matter what my teachers said.

‘Explain,’ he demanded.

‘Well, assume you want to poison someone. You somehow get into Heavenly Pleasures and inject some of their chocolates, then you put them back into stock. Then you send a box of Heavenly Pleasures chocolates to your victim. Meanwhile the shop innocently sells some poisoned ones to totally unrelated people. Your poisoning looks random and the only person blamed is Heavenly Pleasures.’

‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘This actually has happened?’

‘Twice. Once in America and once in England. Cordelia Botkin and Christianna Edmunds. Both ladies decided that the way to demonstrate to their lover that he should leave his wife and marry them was to remove the wife. They hit on a remarkably similar method. They bought chocolates from a shop, then took them home and doctored them. Then they took them back and exchanged them. An additional wrinkle, in the case of Miss Edmunds, was to get a street kid to return them. She would then give him a chocolate or a penny and thus she had never even appeared in the chocolate shop.’

‘Clever,’ he said.

‘But elaborate. Elaborate schemes usually come undone in one way or another. Both ladies sent the poisoned chocolates to their victims. But, of course, this long-distance murder is prone to error. They got a few visitors and the maid, but not, as it happens, the wife. Several other innocent bystanders were poisoned by the chocolates they had planted in the shops. And when the chocolate shop was suspected, they wrote indignant letters about public healths standards to the police.’

‘How, then, did they get caught?’ asked Daniel. There is nothing sexier than a man happy to listen to a lecture.

‘Miss Botkin, because she drew attention to herself, and a shrewd policeman began to ask questions about sweet consumption in her household. In Miss Edmunds’ case, the last street kid whom she had sent on her errand was cheated of his reward. She didn’t have a penny on her and wouldn’t give him sixpence. He was so angry that he followed her home. Then, when a reward was offered, he could lead the police to her house and expose the whole scheme. Little ratbag cleaned up,’ I commented admiringly.

‘In crime, it is good to be generous,’ he said.

‘When driving a stolen car to a bank robbery, fasten your safety belt and do not exceed the speed limit,’ I said solemnly. ‘That’s good advice, that is.’

‘So it is,’ he agreed.

‘But the Christianna Edmunds method couldn’t work in Heavenly Pleasures,’ I said. ‘No one would put returned chocolates back into stock these days. It’s illegal under the Health Act. I’m amazed they did it in the old days.’

‘Well, I’ve done some technological things to the boxes and the packing—UV light sensitive markings,’ said Daniel. ‘That ought to show us how the chocolates are getting back into Heavenly Pleasures, if it is an outsider doing a modified Christianna. But let us now consider the insiders.’

‘Viv, Juliette and George?’

‘And Selima. And probably Uncle Max. Isn’t he the definitive Uncle Max? I had an Uncle Max like that.’

‘Half your luck,’ I said.

‘He used to arrive in just such a coat with an astrakhan collar, I swear, pockets full of chocolates. There must be a factory somewhere, turning out affable elderly gentlemen with beautiful smiles and rich voices.’

‘They probably moonlight as Father Christmases,’ I agreed.

‘Just so,’ said Daniel. ‘Now, what do we know about the personnel?’

‘Juliette and Vivienne are orphans, and Uncle Max is their only relative. They own Heavenly Pleasures fifty/fifty. They get on all right—would you say all right?’

‘Viv is sensitive to Juliette’s beauty, and envious. But she is the chocolate maker, so she has status. Juliette can’t help being beautiful, doesn’t flaunt it in Viv’s face, and actually runs the shop, does the accounts and the ordering; Viv needs her. They, in fact, need each other. They get on as well as such sisters usually do. Now, think about George.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I said.

‘I know. Detectives have to be brave. According to what he revealed to us of his own rat-infested little mind, he has designs on Vivienne. But she doesn’t seem to like him, certainly does not seem to be attracted to him.’

‘Whereas he flirts with Juliette, we’ve seen him. But in that sort of boy, flirting would be a reflex, something he does without thinking.’

‘I don’t think George does anything without thinking,’ said Daniel.

‘All right, but perhaps Viv is just keeping him as her own secret. Treating him like a dog in the shop and kissing his feet afterwards—erk, I wish I hadn’t said that. But it is possible, no?’

‘A horribly compelling idea,’ agreed Daniel. ‘What could upset this arrangement would be if either sister had a boyfriend. Does anyone know? You hear all the gossip.’

‘Nothing,’ I confessed. ‘They don’t have a lot of time away from the shop.’

‘But Selima found a lover while working there,’ Daniel said, ‘Just by looking through the window.’

This was true. We watched the strange jerky images in silence for a while. ‘There is also the inheritance.’ I had an idea. ‘What if one sister tried to edge out the other? Viv, say, decides that she doesn’t need Juliette anymore?’

‘I suppose they have left their halves of the shop to each other,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ll find out. I’ve located an old friend of Viv’s who wants to talk to me. But not today. Today we are relaxing and theorising. I’m too prone to go off like an overloaded firework and you could do with some rest.’

‘That’s true. What do we consider next?’

‘We look at who benefits from the crime. The shop is flourishing. The sisters must be making a fortune. There is the shop and the fittings,’ said Daniel.

‘But their ingredients are very costly,’ I objected. ‘One slab of that seventy per cent cocoa butter couverture costs a king’s ransom. Vivienne told me they only use the best and it’s very pricey. One of Jason’s superlative chocolate muffins, for instance, costs a dollar fifty to make. Compared to sixty cents for an ordinary one, which I sell for two dollars. They would be managing well, but not making obscene profits. The fittings might be very valuable. Some of those chocolate moulds are antiques. Collectors pay a lot for stuff like that. But the shop’s on a lease. I don’t think they have a huge capital.’

‘Someone said something about the lease …’ Daniel concentrated. ‘Yes. It was renegotiated. Who owns the building?’

‘Some consortium. It’s very rare, these days, for a single person to own a building. That one has a lot of offices above and the shops below; they might have different owners. I could find out.’

‘Find out,’ he requested. ‘Knowledge is power.’

‘So I am told.’ I leaned against him. Horatio leaned against me. There was a lot of leaning going on.

‘What we have is a lack of knowledge. We don’t know how, we don’t know who, and we don’t know why,’ said Daniel.

‘That about sums it up.’ I was about to untangle myself and go and investigate possibilities for lunch when the doorbell rang. Daniel opened the door. There was Cherie Holliday, holding a mobile phone.

C
_HA
PTER FIFTEEN

‘Selima?’ I asked, taking the phone. Cherie nodded. Daniel came inside. I grabbed the opportunity to talk to the lost girl.

‘Hello,’ I said into the phone. ‘How are you?’ The voice was trembling. She said, ‘Please come and get me! Cherie says you’re kind and clever. Please.’ Then she gave me an address. As I was about to tell her we were coming, the phone went dead. My idea bloomed in my head. If only it worked. It had to work. I gave the phone back to Cherie.

‘We need to go and get Selima,’ I said. ‘Can you come?’

‘I’ll just tell Dad and put some shoes on,’ she said.

‘You, too?’ asked Daniel. I found my backpack and my shoes and stood up. Daniel looked grim. I must have matched him.

‘Coats,’ I said. ‘And you might bring a blanket and a thermos, Daniel. And the address of her sister’s house.’

‘Bad?’ he asked.

‘Not good,’ I told him, as he shrugged into his leather coat and helped me into my guaranteed-against-all-conditions
including-blizzard lumberjack’s jacket. I had, of course, always

213

wanted to be a lumberjack. Actually I had bought it because it was big enough for me and a couple of jumpers. And a small family, including dog, to be truthful. ‘Call your taxi,’ I told Daniel, ‘and then I need the phone again.’

Shortly, Cherie came back in a waterproof coat and shoes and we went out to meet Daniel’s taxi. It was driven by an old mate of his called Timbo, a young man of such extreme reticence that I had only found out his name after about three journeys. He was agreeably plump on the Coltrane model, with a head of rich curly brown hair and gentle brown eyes like a cow. He was a very good driver. And at least he didn’t want me to agree to some lunatic political theory in order to get me to my destination alive. I have agreed, in my time, to some very odd statements from taxi drivers. My favourite was probably the one which posited that Phillip Ruddock had been kidnapped by aliens, who had left an android in his place. Can’t argue with that. Later contemplation had informed me that by the Asimov Three Laws of Robotics, it couldn’t have been an android. They are not allowed to harm humans.

I was talking urgently on the mobile phone as we got in— Cherie and me in the back seat and Daniel next to the driver, standard distribution—and Timbo took off gently. He treated the car as though it was a loved domestic pet, never stomping hard on its pedals or wrenching it around corners. But before I had folded the phone and looked up, we had passed Footscray and somehow found ourselves on the Geelong Road. We were heading out of town.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Daniel.

‘Werribee,’ I said.

‘Which is where Selima is?’ asked Cherie.

‘Yes. Damn this rain! It all depends on him getting there in time.’

‘Are you going to explain?’ Daniel asked a little acidly.

‘After I make another call,’ I said, flipping open the phone.

Cherie and Daniel exchanged a glance. I had better start explaining soon. The rain swept the road, blurring headlights, greasing the surface until even the obliging Timbo had to slow to avoid sliding off the road altogether. People behave oddly in rain. Especially Melburnians, who ought to be used to it. They speed up in order to get home faster because driving in the rain is dangerous. This means that some of them, of course, never get home at all. Several of these had come to grief. We crept past a Turner painting of disaster; throbbing red and blue lights, angled cars, the woop-woop-woop of the ambulance sirens, all blurred and drowned in rain.

‘Not far now,’ I said.

‘Where are we going again?’ he asked.

‘To a wedding,’ I said. Fortunately—since he could have reached over the seat to strangle me—I began to explain. ‘Selima was very shocked when first Brian’s mother and then her own cousins rejected her. She could have gone back to the hostel, but she felt so worthless and badly used that she was easy prey for the old men when they found her. They explained that now she had been out of her father’s house for a night, she was tainted and no one would believe that she had not been with a lover. They said that she would be an outcast. They would have told her that the only way to retrieve her own and her family’s honour was to go on with the marriage her father had arranged for her.’

‘But the husband is in Turkey,’ Cherie objected.

‘Here she can marry by proxy,’ I said. ‘Then they can send her to Turkey to complete the bargain. It’s a good deal for them. Turkish women in Turkey are considerably more advanced now and not many of them would allow an arranged marriage like this one—not educated girls in a secular state. They can’t be forced to marry anymore.’

‘So he’d be getting an educated young woman at half the price?’ Cherie asked, disgusted.

‘Exactly. Remnant migrant populations can stagnate, hanging on to the ways of the old country, even after the old country has moved on; just like their language goes out of date. There wouldn’t be a lot of old Turkish patriarchs left in Turkey as strict as this one.’

‘Which is why all his children left him,’ I said. ‘One by one.’

‘He’ll die alone,’ said Daniel. ‘And then, with any luck, his breed will be extinct. He’s a tragic figure, in a way.’

‘Hah,’ said Cherie, which rather summed up my view as well.

‘So what have you arranged, puppet-master?’ he asked, using
Blake’s 7
slang for a psy-corps expert. I grinned at him as Timbo negotiated a sweeping turn and we began to edge down a side road, just before we got to Werribee.

‘Is anyone following us?’ I asked.

Cherie and Daniel peered into the downpour.

‘Can’t see anyone. But not likely to, unless he’s driving a tank with fog lights.’

‘Never mind. On we go. Timbo, keep the engine running. We might have to leave in a hurry. I think—yes, that must be the house.’

It was a large brick house on an unfenced block with a paved yard behind and a carport big enough to take three or four cars. In this a marriage feast was being held. We stopped in the street, just able to see that at the back door a pavilion had been set up, decked with fine cloth and glittery with Christmas tree lights sputtering out in the drifting rain. A band was tootling and banging. The party was all male. I wondered where all the women of the house were. A beast of some sort twirled slowly on a spit. The scene looked innocent and charming, if you didn’t know that it included another sort of sacrifice apart from that poor mammal.

I stared past the festivities. An old man sat on a decorated chair next to the house. There was another chair beside him, which was empty. Timbo eased the car forward a little and I could see into the side window. There I saw a girl in beautiful garments, red and gold, with a red veil over her black hair. She stared straight ahead, seemingly in a trance, or perhaps drugged. Two old women were tending her, tweaking the veil into place, painting her hands with henna, attaching heavy earrings to her ears and a tinkling chain of coins across her brow.

Selima looked out into the rainy darkness with a blank expression which caught at my heart. Daniel had his hand on the door handle when I said ‘Wait a moment, Daniel.’

‘Give me a good reason,’ he said angrily.

‘If we take her away now she will be shamed. She has agreed to this. Whatever unfair tactics were employed to make her agree, she has agreed. While there is a chance of solving this another way and letting her make her own choice, I want to leave it to her.’

‘All right,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I trust you.’

He gave me his beautiful smile and took my hand.

The music skirled and hooted. Elderly gentlemen danced creakily in the rain. They, at least, were having a good time. No one challenged us as we sat silently in the car on the edge of the road. The rain rained. The party went on. I tried to get a good look at the proxy groom, but he was too heavily bearded to see much of his face. Inside, the old women assisted the bride to her feet. Something was about to happen.

Cherie Holliday was silent, absorbed in the scene. We were simultaneously cut off from it and inside it, both part of the picture and observing it from the outside. We could hear the band and smell the scent of roasting meat, but we were not members of the wedding party. Just when my nerve was about to crack, the two old women led the bride out of view, and a moment later she appeared at the back door. She moved like a sleepwalker. The proxy groom stood up and held out his hand. The girl flinched and tried to run back into the house but the old women restrained her and turned her to face the man again. This was horrible. I wondered if either of the women was Selima’s mother and how she could do such a thing to her daughter. But I suppose it had been done to her in her turn, when she was a nervous seventeen year old, given to an older man. He held out his hand again and this time, Selima took it.

There was a roar of engines from behind and, with a swoosh of mud, a big red motorbike slid into the backyard, demolish
ing several strings of lights. The rider was dressed in black leathers, his full-face helmet visor down. He skidded to a halt, engine running, and waited, one booted foot on the ground. He was a figure full of threat and mystery, utterly unexpected, an intrusion from another time or planet.

There was a moment when everyone held their breath. The old men stopped dead in their tracks. The music died. Nothing happened except the rain rained and the spit turned. Cherie Holliday grabbed my hand so hard that her nails cut into my palm and I didn’t care. The rider raised his visor and turned his face to the wedding.

Then, in a jingle of ornaments, Selima gave a cry of glad recognition and relief, ran to the bike, leapt on the back and put both her arms around the rider’s waist. And with a swoosh and a roar, they were gone.

And so were we. I had just enough time to see a strange little picture of the two elderly women, arms around each other, laughing until they cried, as Timbo turned the car and we were out onto the highway again.

‘Young Lochinvar is come out of the west,’ I said to Daniel, with great relief.

‘You are a genius. Pure genius, Corinna. Marriage by capture is part of that culture which those old men were exploiting,’ he said. ‘In the old days it would have been a horse but this was more efficient.

‘Here we are,’ I said. ‘Get that blanket, Cherie, she will be freezing.’

The medieval pair were waiting in the shelter of a closed petrol station. Brian had taken off his helmet and Selima was kissing him and laughing and weeping. Her thin silks were clinging to her beautiful plump body and she was shivering with cold and tension. Her crimson veil was wrapped around the black leather of his jacket, making a hotly erotic, terribly touching picture. His gloved hands clutched her bare shoulders. She was slick with rain and oil and flushed with the wind of her escape.

‘Meet you in Essendon,’ I told him, as I wrapped the blanket around Selima and started to lead her to the car. She leaned out of the wrapping to kiss Brian again, full on the mouth, then allowed herself to be conducted into the warmth of the back seat between Cherie and me. Brian looked dazed and elated. Daniel gave him a hug and came back to the taxi, and Timbo slid us gently into gear.

‘He’ll meet us at your sister’s place,’ I said. ‘You can’t ride all that way in those clothes—and without a helmet.’

‘Did you do this?’ demanded Selima fiercely. I nodded. Selima reached out, grabbed me, and kissed me hard. Then she kissed Cherie and Daniel. She was wet and bare and scented with a heavy, flowery, musky oil, very erotic in that enclosed space. Cherie and I wrapped her up in the blanket again and produced a thermos of chicken soup. That should dampen the atmosphere a little, I thought. Nothing less sexy than chicken soup.

Selima drank soup and slowly stopped shivering, losing her manic edge. ‘I thought I was lost,’ she said wonderingly. ‘I thought there was no way out.’

‘Ah, but you had right on your side,’ I told her. ‘With right, there is always a way out. Have some more soup.’

‘I haven’t been eating,’ Selima commented. ‘But that only made me more a proper trembling virgin. Those old women prepared me like a … like a chicken trussed for baking. They never took their eyes off me. But luckily they didn’t know about mobile phones and I managed to ring Cherie from the loo. Is this legal?’ she demanded of me.

‘Oh, yes, you are now married by custom,’ I said. ‘But not by law. See how things with Brian work out,’ I said gently. ‘Then you can decide if you want to be married for real. But your father can’t do anything to you now.’

‘He’ll be so angry,’ said Selima.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Remember, you behaved properly. It isn’t your fault that you got captured. They treated you like a possession. The possession isn’t at fault if someone steals it. I doubt your father will even have to return the presents.’

‘It wasn’t presents,’ said Selima. ‘It was money. Quite a lot of money.’ Then she asked, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Your sister Mirri,’ I told her. ‘Unless there is somewhere else you want to go?’

‘Oh, no, Mirri is a darling, I just couldn’t get her involved. I’m in enough trouble as it is. I’ll probably be arrested soon.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

Selima put down the cup and sighed.

‘No reason not to tell you, you rescued me. I was stealing from the shop.’

‘You were? How?’

‘I’d slip a fifty dollar note out of the till when we were making up the bank deposit slip every day,’ she said. ‘It was easy enough to do. The money never got onto the docket so no one knew it was missing.’

‘And why were you doing this?’ I asked.

‘George,’ she said with infinite distaste. ‘I gave it to George. It was his idea.’

‘What did George have over you?’ I asked.

‘Brian. He knew about Brian and he said he would tell my father. Which would mean that I would lose my job because Dad would never let me leave the house again. And I would have to run away, which would bring disgrace on my family.’

‘George,’ said Cherie with disgust. ‘Why did he make you do that? Can’t just be for the money.’