A Game For All The Family (31 page)

“No. Alex wouldn’t have a tag made for Figgy and put it on his collar without showing me and Ellen. No way.” I turn in a slow circle, fixing my eyes on one cluster of trees after another. Figgy’s been in and out of every one since I brought him home. Many are dense enough to conceal a person.

“Well, some fool’s put the wrong address on this tag,” says Olwen. She moves out of the way so that I can take her place. I cover my mouth with my hand as I read the engraved words. On one side it says, “Little Dog.” On the other: “Want to keep me safe? Then take me home: 19 Lassington Road, Muswell Hill, London, N10.”

“It’s our old address,” I say.

“I suppose it’s an easy mistake to make if you’re on autopilot,” Olwen says doubtfully.

“It’s not a mistake.” I pick Figgy up and wrap my arms around him. He’s shaking, poor thing. Then I realize he only is because I am. “It’s a threat,” I tell Olwen. “From Lisette Ingrey, aka Anne Donbavand.”

It’s five
A
.
M
., I’ve failed to fall asleep, and what I must do now is obvious: email “prefect parent” Stephen Donbavand again, except more deviously this time.

When I wrote to him before, I was honest about who I was and what I wanted. Was he tempted? Did Anne forbid it? Is he in agreement with her, or is his compliance based purely on fear?

I need to find out more about him. Hopefully he’ll agree to meet me—or rather, the person I’m going to pretend to be in my email.

“Dear Stephen Donbavand,” I type, with the end of Figgy’s leash clamped between my knees. Once she understood about the writing on the medallion and what it meant, Olwen pleaded with me to let her take Figgy back with her—only temporarily—for his own safety.

I should have agreed. It made sense, but I couldn’t do it. The idea was unbearable. I promised Olwen that Alex and I would keep Figgy with us and on the leash whenever we were outside. I’ve taken it even further: here I am in the library with him on the leash in case . . .

Don’t even think it.

When I went up to say goodnight to Ellen earlier, I pulled open the small mint-green door beside her bed, praying I wouldn’t see feet walking quickly away. “What are you looking for?” she asked me.

“I thought I heard Dad there,” I lied.

I was looking for Lisette Ingrey.

The silver tag with “Little Dog” on one side and Anne Donbavand’s threat on the other is in my pocket, ready to be dropped onto the desk of DC Euan Luce tomorrow.

Concentrate, Justine.

I delete “Dear Stephen Donbavand” and type “Dear Dr. Donbavand” instead.

“I know you must be extremely busy, but I wonder if you might spare ten minutes or so, at your earliest convenience, to discuss with me the possibility of becoming my PhD supervisor. I’m thinking of applying to do my doctorate at Exeter, and my chief research interest is similar to research you have done that I’ve found interesting. I’m leaning toward working on microeconomic analysis of competition in online markets, but would love to discuss this further. Are you by any chance able to meet me in the next few days? As soon as possible would be great for me. I’m staying near Exeter at the moment, with relatives. I look forward to hearing from you. Very best wishes, Julia Vowles.” I use my stepmother’s first name and the surname of a detective from a TV drama I put a lot of effort into that never got commissioned.

I press “send.” Then, still not ready to go to sleep, I Google all the names I’ve already Googled more than once. Unsurprisingly, all the same results come up. I swear under my breath. I’m not being imaginative enough, that’s my problem. I should try something different.

I try “Ingrey anagrams,” “Perrine Ingrey anagram,” “Anne Donbavand formerly called.” Nothing. “Little dog” yields plenty, but none of it’s relevant.

On a whim, I type “
Tide Glider
” into the search box and press “return.” I click on the first result that comes up because it contains the word “Totnes,” though I’m not holding out much hope. When the page opens, I suck in a breath, not daring to let my thoughts flow until I’ve enlarged the picture.

Oh my God. The resemblance is unmistakable. I clutch the side of the desk as Figgy’s leash slips from between my knees. He stays where he is, and looks up at me in a point-proving way: “See? I can be trusted to stay here of my own volition.”

I’m looking at a 2011 article from the
Totnes Times
about a local artist, Sarah Parsons, whose painting
Anne, Tide Glider
won a local art prize. It’s a portrait of a woman of about my age. The text beneath the photograph says that Sarah cares more about this painting than any of her others because of its sentimental value; she is delighted and moved that it has won this prestigious prize. The woman depicted is her estranged sister Anne. There’s no explanation of the “
Tide Glider
” part.

Those features: the wide forehead, large blue-gray eyes with irises like hollow cylinders . . . The woman in the portrait has George Donbavand’s face.

Get out of my house, bitch.
I slam the computer’s lid shut to banish her, and find myself staring at the library’s wood-paneled wall. She could be behind one of the panels. Hiding.

I have to get out, get some fresh air.

I pick up Figgy’s leash and give it a gentle tug toward the door. “Come on, Figgs. You must need the loo. Well, not the loo—the grass.” He seems to agree and runs ahead to the front door.

I unlock and open it as quietly as I can and step out into the cold air that smells of deepest night. “Isn’t this—” I start to say to Figgy, but straightaway I’m falling, leaving my words stranded up in the air as I hit hard blackness.

Chapter 10

You Know What? You Know What? You Know What? I Don’t Care

The following morning, the gates to the grounds of Speedwell House were opened and left standing open for the first time in absolutely ages. Guests were expected: the police, the Dodds, the Sennitt-Sasses, the Carelesses, Jack Kirbyshire’s wife and children, and David Butcher’s parents.

Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey had laid out a big breakfast spread: toast and jam, steamed prawn dumplings, fresh fruit, Parma ham and thin slices of Dutch cheese. To drink there was tea, coffee or freshly squeezed orange juice. Bascom was exhausted. He had been up all night squeezing oranges. (Sorrel had been asleep. One of her principles that she never broke was that she had to get nine hours’ sleep every single night.)

The feast laid out in the kitchen seemed unnecessarily elaborate to Lisette and Allisande. “Why is this happening?” they kept saying. “Today isn’t someone’s birthday party. It’s a horrible day. The food is too nice.”

“We’ll all need to eat,” Sorrel explained. “You can’t invite people to your house so early in the morning and not provide breakfast, and it might as well be a nice breakfast. Now go and sit in the drawing room, girls—you’re getting in the way.”

Lisette and Allisande went to the drawing room and Bascom brought them each a plate of breakfast while Sorrel clattered and swore in the kitchen. She hated the stress and the bother of entertaining.

Each of the guests grabbed a drink and a plate of food and congregated in the drawing room. (On the way to the drawing room, however, there was much to-ing and fro-ing in the wide Georgian hallway, much wandering into other rooms to have a peek at the famously locked-up house that was eagerly wondered about by all those who lived near it. For at least half an hour, people bumbled about and explored and roamed freely. I’m telling you this because it will become important later on.)

Eventually, everyone had quenched their nosiness for the time being, and they all ended up in the drawing room (apart from the police officers who had come to remove David Butcher’s body from the library—they had gone). Only the police and the Ingreys knew what was about to happen. It was clear from the faces of the Dodds and the Kirbyshires that they were puzzled to be at Speedwell House, and wondered what they were doing there.

Once everyone had finished eating and boosted their energy levels for the ordeal ahead, Sorrel stood up and spoke to the crowd. “Thank you all so much for coming. These gentlemen here are policemen. In a moment, they will go upstairs and arrest my youngest daughter, Perrine, for three murders: the murders of Malachy Dodd, Jack Kirbyshire and David Butcher.”

Gasps and exclamations exploded all over the room. “About time!” said Mrs. Dodd venomously.

Sorrel went on: “We, Perrine’s family, have always suspected that she was a killer, though she vigorously denied it. But a mother knows when there’s something askew in the mind or heart of her child, and I have always known this about Perrine, even before she murdered Malachy Dodd. When he died, and when Jack Kirbyshire died, I knew Perrine was guilty, but I couldn’t prove it. It was only when I saw her stab David Butcher that I finally had proof.”

“We all witnessed this stabbing,” Bascom added. “Me, Lisette and Allisande too.”

“We could have called the police straightaway,” said Sorrel, “but we wanted you all to be here. We’re aware that you see us as Perrine’s protectors, and, yes, we have been. We’ve imprisoned ourselves in order to keep her safe. It’s a natural impulse, to want to protect one’s family.”

“Bit late for some of us to do that, isn’t it?” muttered Mrs. Dodd bitterly.

“Will you pipe down?” David Butcher’s mother turned on her, surprising everybody. “I think we’ve heard just about enough from you. Do you
know
who my son was?”

“Leave it, dear,” muttered her husband.

But Mrs. Butcher did not wish to leave it. “He was a former organ scholar of King’s College, Cambridge!” she blurted out. “He had a glowing future ahead of him!”

“And so what?” said Mrs. Dodd, her voice trembling. “Are you saying that means my Malachy’s life doesn’t matter?”

“Let’s not do this,” said Jack Kirbyshire’s widow. “Please. Let’s not play hierarchical victim games.”

When someone says a word like “hierarchical” in an everyday setting, it often has the result that everyone immediately assumes that person must be right about everything, because they know a long word. This was what happened here. The Dodds and the Butchers piped down.

“What’s going to happen next?” asked Henrietta Sennitt-Sasse, rubbing her hands together in excitement. “Is Perrine going to be arrested while we watch? Will she go to prison forever?”

“
Pas devant les enfants!
” cried out Henrietta’s mother, but to no avail.

You might think from Henrietta’s remark that she was mean and relished the idea of long, endless prison sentences for others, but you’d be wrong. Henrietta had simply been starved of grown-up gossip all her life. This was the first interesting adult conversation she had ever been party to.

One of the policemen stood up and said, “It is overwhelmingly probable that Perrine will receive a custodial sentence, yes. But it’s unlikely she’ll go to prison forever. Remember, she’s still only a child, and the law likes to try to rehabilitate such young criminals wherever possible.”

“May I ask a question?” Jack Kirbyshire’s widow rose to her feet. “Perrine seems to have committed three murders, but only one was witnessed. Does that mean she might be convicted of only one murder, the murder of David Butcher?”

Mrs. Dodd leapt to her feet again. “That can’t happen! It would be an outrage! I want her to do time for Malachy, not just for some other murder!”

“There’s a good chance she will, if the information I’ve been given by Mrs. Ingrey here is correct,” said the policeman. “If there is no feasible way that Malachy could have fallen out of the window by accident—”

“There isn’t,” Sorrel Ingrey chipped in. “I’ve said this since the day he died. Malachy’s center of gravity was too low for him to have fallen out of that window. It just wouldn’t happen.”

“And it didn’t happen!” snapped Mrs. Dodd, red in the face.

Mrs. Butcher muttered something under her breath.

“What was that, you snide cow?” Mrs. Dodd demanded.

Mrs. Butcher shook her head. She had decided against saying what was on her mind, but then she couldn’t resist. “Do you have any shame at all?” she asked Mrs. Dodd. “Are you even a
tiny
bit embarrassed about how much airtime you’re taking up today?”

Mrs. Dodd replied with a sequence of obscenities so shocking that most people in the room turned red, and Mrs. Sennitt-Sasse screeched, “
PAS DEVANT LES ENFANTS!
” louder than ever before.

“Ladies, please,” said the policeman. “These arguments are not helping anything. To answer your question, Mrs. Kirbyshire”—he paused to smile in a noticeable way, to reward Mrs. Kirbyshire for being better behaved than Mrs. Dodd and Mrs. Butcher—“I’m very sorry to tell you this, but if we have difficulty making any of these murder accusations stick, it’s most likely to be your Jack’s murder that Perrine gets away with. He was standing on some scaffolding when she pushed him off, and so it really is possible that he could have fallen—even though we all know he didn’t.”

“As long as that evil little monster serves some years specifically for Malachy,” said Mrs. Dodd determinedly. “Special Malachy years. Lots of them.”

Lisette Ingrey at this point rose to her feet and cleared her throat.

“Wait,” she said. “This isn’t right. We’re all talking as if we know she’s guilty.”

“But you do!” said the policeman with a puzzled frown. “You saw her stab David Butcher to death, didn’t you?”

Lisette realized at that moment that she should not have agreed to lie. Her parents and Allisande were all glaring at her, scared that she was going to say, “Actually, no, I didn’t see my sister stab David Butcher. I just made that up.”

She couldn’t do that to them. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I witnessed the stabbing of David Butcher by my sister Perrine. I know, for certain, that she is guilty of that one murder. About the deaths of Malachy Dodd and Jack Kirbyshire, however, I can’t be certain. All I can say is that I strongly suspect Perrine killed them both. That’s all anyone can say.” She turned to the policeman. “You can’t claim to know that Jack Kirbyshire didn’t fall,” she said. “You’re supposed to be an impartial officer of the law.”