A Splash of Red (27 page)

There was nothing for it but the balcony. Kevin John did not move as she stepped onto it. She was grateful for that. If she had to cry for help - with all the possible public consequences - she would prefer not to be accompanied by a drunken artist out on bail for murder.

Inspection of the scaffolding provided a happy surprise. Jemima had imagined that Kevin John's successive scalings of it had been an example of exaggerated intrepidity possibly due to inebriation. Now she saw that anyone even moderately athletic, with a head for heights (or the self-discipline not to look downwards), could have achieved this feat. The scaffolding was stoutly built, a credit to the Lionnel Estates. Even Kevin John's ability to elude public notice during his climbs was now more explicable. The scaffolding was quite deep as well as securely slung together. A man could well have worked there, in the shadow of the building, and not been spotted by a random passer-by.

Right. Where a drunken Kevin John Athlone could ascend, a sober Jemima Shore could descend. Slipping off her golden thonged sandals, which laced up her legs, Jemima tested her toes against the metal. Her dress remained a problem. Was a Jean Muir silk jersey dress, with all its virtues, really the right apparel in which to shin down scaffolding? It was tempting to strip to her bra and pants - but the arguments against reaching the ground in her underclothes, like those of crying for help accompanied by a man on a murder charge, were conclusive. Jean Muir it would have to be.

With brilliant improvisation, or so it struck her at the time, Jemima belted the flowing dress twice round her narrow waist with the gold thongs from her sandals. Barefoot, she embarked.

The journey was not so much long as, in spite of the solidity of the scaffolding, nerve-wracking. With relief, Jemima flopped down onto the staging-post of the concrete third-floor balcony. It was fortunate that she did not suffer from vertigo; she felt she might do so in future.

She was immediately aware - with another spasm of relief - of the presence of Tiger. Sleekly, he rolled onto his back at her feet, revealing the pale yellow fur of his tummy, and began to purr. This unprecedented friendliness was no doubt to be explained by the presence of a large bowl of milk in the corner of the balcony, and another bowl of something chopped, white enough to be chicken. There was a smaller saucer of water.

All in all, Jemima was not totally surprised - but once more relieved - to find the balcony window slightly ajar. At least she would be saved further perilous descent.

She peered through the smoked glass without being able to discern anything very clear except the confused swirl of that subterranean blue and something which looked like low modern furniture on the floor, cushions perhaps, which had not been there before. She inched the window open.

Then and only then the confused shapes of the cushions separated themselves and became white or rather pale; they also became two shapes. A Laocoon-like figure, writhing legs and arms, on the floor, resolved itself into Adam Adamson, naked; some unknown figure, equally naked except for a string of gold chains, rose hastily but gracefully from the floor, like some greyhound starting, gave a much less elegant squawk of dismay, and vanished in the direction of the subterranean bathroom.

Adam Adamson, undismayed, lolled back on his elbow.

'Pallas Athena,' he said. 'What strange moments goddesses choose to call. I was just tangling with the goddess Artemis, as you may have noticed.' He gazed at her.

His body had that confidence of nakedness associated with statues of the gods.

He went on: 'Yes, in that strange tunic effect and bare feet you really do look like a goddess. Why don't I imitate you and slip into something similar?' He rose, strolled into the bathroom in his turn and re-emerged with a towel knotted round his waist. Only the ugly geometric design, in keeping with the rest of the flat's aggressively modern decor, disturbed the picture.

Behind him, at least an inch taller, and clad in a bright green cat-suit, lurked a young woman with a highly sulky expression. From her small head, disdainfully carried on the long neck, and excessively long legs and narrow flanks, she might have been a model.

'The goddess Athena, the goddess Artemis,' Adam waved his hand.

'Miss Shore and I have met,' said the goddess Artemis; her accent was more gracious than her expression. Extending her hand, whose long fingers were serrated in gold rings, in a parody of a bountiful greeting, the girl in the green catsuit said: 'I'm Laura Barrymore, Isabelle Mancini's assistant.'

Had they ever met? Jemima really did not remember. There were many Laura Barrymores in the world. Nor did she particularly care, for that matter, why and wherefore Laura Barrymore was passing the time of day with Adam Adamson. Her concern was to find her way out of this flat and to a telephone. Then she could raise Stavros, Pompey, even Sir Richard Lionnel himself. The keys to the first
floor, which now seemed like a paradise of a refuge, were still in her pocket.

Baldly, she addressed herself to Adam: 'Get me out of here. I don't care what you're doing here, by the way, just let me out. No questions to you, none to me.'

Adam raised an eyebrow but it was the measure of his unhurried self-confidence that he seemed prepared to do as she asked without further ado. It was Laura Barrymore who disturbed this amity.

'Miss Shore, I am truly aware that you must be wondering,' she began in a rush, 'but on my honour, I swear to you that I first came here with the absolute firm intention of rescuing Isabelle's letters, letters from that dreadful woman, well, of course one doesn't want to speak ill of the dead—' she paused, having evidently lost track of her explanation, then continued more firmly. 'That Saturday morning, you remember, when you telephoned. I thought that if
you
were in Miss Fontaine's flat, we could search together, you're famous for being so warm and understanding about human problems, I could explain to you—'

Jemima shot Laura Barrymore a look which was anything but symptomatic of those warm qualities recently ascribed to her.

Adam, who continued to regard Jemima with a slight smile, threw in: 'It's true you know,' he said. 'Our friend was fairly on the prowl. The trouble was she came to the wrong flat, and then, as they say, one thing led to another. I read her some Petrarch when I discovered what her name was and that seemed to turn her on. I never could resist goddesses you know. That coldness, that aloof air—'

'She was here - a week ago—' exclaimed Jemima incredulously.

'Oh yes, for a couple of happy hours. She went back and found her friend - shall we call her the goddess Hera, another jealous type - had arrived back unexpectedly from Paris, was there waiting for her.'

Jemima addressed herself directly to the girl.

'Is that true?'

But by this time Laura Barrymore, who had been knotting her long streaky blonde hair the while and pinning it on top of her head, had fully recovered her poise.

'And if it is,' she enquired coldly, 'what the fuck is it to do with you?' The refinement of her voice, from which all the mid-atlantic was now missing, made the obscenity sound far worse than it might have done, for example, on the vigorous lips of Kevin John Athlone.

'The police knew. I told them,' contributed Adam in a tone of mock helpfulness. 'You particularly" instructed me to tell them everything.'

Yes, thought Jemima, not the killing type indeed; although there might be something to be said about Adam Adamson along the lines of not loving wisely but too often. And too precipitately. Still, as Miss Barrymore had so aptly observed, it was nothing to do with her. Adam's alibi, in its full irony, was now revealed; and the future of Isabelle Mancini and Laura Barrymore was even less her concern than that of Adam and Laura.

For her, another chase was on. The fox was Sir Richard Lionnel.

Adam Adamson went to the door, and towel-clad as he was, swept it open with style.

At this point Jemima observed with some surprise that the third-floor flat, the dark-blue subterranean cave, bore more rather than fewer signs of occupation than when she was last inside it. The image of the writhing white furniture had not been totally illusory. There were two new white plastic shapes on the dark floor; pushed together they might serve as some form of armchair or even sofa. Recently, however, they had been pushed widely apart; Jemima had a mental image that this had been effected by the athletic coupling of Adam and Laura.

There were other new traces of domesticity including a small table and some lamps. Yet by any reasonable calculations Adam should have given the place a wide berth once he had made his statement to the police. That had taken place on Sunday morning. A week ago. Even the most ardent revivifier might have twitched his cloak and passed on to fresh squares and buildings new after an experience like that.

Disregarding Laura Barrymore, who was now coldly buffing a long and glittering pearlized nail, Jemima said abruptly to Adam: 'You come and go as you please. Revivifying - squatting - whatever you call it. That's not quite the picture I get. You
live
here. That furniture wasn't here before. Explain if only to satisfy my curiosity. Then we'll both go out of each other's lives.'

'Why shouldn't he be here?' Laura Barrymore had glided to the position she seemed to prefer, which was just behind Adam's shoulder, her small snake's head clearly visible above it. 'It's his flat, isn't it?'

'Oh come now,' Jemima spoke coldly - the interjections of this grass-green Lamia were beginning to irritate her. 'To call it actually his - isn't that carrying revivification rather too far? Does Isabelle plan an article on the subject in
Taffeta
^?
.
"Back to Adam - modern style" with photographs?' These remarks, Jemima realized the moment she had uttered them, were not exactly those of the all-wise goddess she wished at this moment to personify. Adam clearly shared her opinion.

'I realize now to the full the difficulties presented by life upon Olympus,' he remarked plaintively.

Jemima smiled, her own sense of the absurd restored. 'How do you cast yourself then?' she could not resist asking. 'Please don't suggest Dionysus. No one I assure you is going to tear
you
into pieces
...'

'Something in disguise,' he said gently. 'A minor god in a minor disguise. Perhaps I should reintroduce myself. We are all sons of Adam, as I told you, but I am also the son of Aaron. Adam Adamson by choice, preferring the old Adam to the old Aaron, but Adam Aaronson by birth.'

'Ah!' A short pause. 'Adam, brother of Katy. The brilliant one who dropped out from Cambridge.'

'Where he was studying architectu
re. The same.' 'How much of the
rest of it was lies?'

'It depends on one's attitude to the truth. I first had the idea of revivifying this building from listening to my sister. She's an admirable girl, but no lover of the arts, to be frank. Listening to her endless disquisitions on the subject of Sir Richard Lionnel - she's madly in love with him of course - she and Francesca Lionnel have an unspoken alliance to fend off the rest - and thinking him only slightly less monstrous than his own building, I started to demonstrate. Katy didn't like it: she never really likes anything I do, ever since I got a scholarship to Cambridge and then dropped out, the scholarship she wasn't allowed to take. But she loves me all the same - in spite of everything -
Adam, the baby brother, the only son, the boy. There's family life for you. You have a family?'

Jemima shook her head.

'How wise. To return to the sad story of this benighted building: at which point my late and lightsome friend, Miss Dollie Stover as was, quite coincidentally persuaded me to move in. From the street to the third floor. One of her reckless gestures, I suppose. Slipped me a key. She also seemed to dislike both the decor of the third floor - good thinking - and the woman who was responsible for it. A woman with a ridiculous name. Bunny something or other. I was her secret vengeance on this Bunny.'

'Binnie,' murmured Jemima.

'Nothing loath, I took the hint. I didn't reveal my connections. Nor for that matter did she reveal hers. We both as it were pulled the thickly woven expensive wool carpet of fantasy over each other's eyes. She, the mistress of the tycoon, posing as the skittish little-girl-loose; me, the brother of the tycoon's assistant posing as the squatter-in-danger-of-the-law.' At this point Laura Barrymore attempted to put one long
serpentine arm round Adam's neck. Laura
entière à sa proie attaché
e,
thought Jemima. But Adam disengaged himself with a brisk movement and said: 'Not round the neck, I can't bear being strangled by women.'

It did not sound as if he was altogether joking. Then he went on: 'After I spoke to the police, Katy fixed it for me. Made it legitimate. That's her secret aim in life,
1
suppose, and this time I let her have her way. This is my flat now. The Lion's Den is now Adam's Garden of Eden: you see, Sir Richard did not care for the decor for some odd reason.'