A Splash of Red (8 page)

'Miss Shore, I simply loved
The Unvisited.
It's all true, so true; the artificiality of our geriatric culture
...'

'Thank you so much,' said Jemima hastily, beginning to move away.

'Just one question. It's rather personal I'm afraid; in fact I did think of writing to you—'

Firmly, Jemima filled in SHORE J. on the white book slip, gave the reference number, hoping devoutly she had got it right, and beat a quick retreat, murmuring: 'Yes, why don't you?'

The girl stared after her. Her gaze was both annoyed and vulnerable. Jemima posted her slips, six of them, in the little brown tray at the central desk and settled down in the harbour of
B9
to await her books. One to two hours was said to be the average delivery time: perhaps on a Saturday she would be luckier. B for Beware - yes, indeed, beware of strangers accosting you in the British Library.

But then it seemed that no place was absolutely ideal for Jemima Shore's planned disappearance. The tomb-like weekend quiet of the concrete Bloomsbury block had been disrupted already by one visitor and one squatter - no, revivifier, but the interruption was the same; what was more the revivifier showed no signs of leaving, and the visitor might be lurking anywhere in the district. There had been that cacophony of telephone calls both from the pathetic Stovers and a so-far-unidentified male of presumed Irish extraction.

Only Chloe Fontaine possessed the magic art of disappearance, eluding a persistent ex-lover, worried elderly parents, and her great friend Jemima Shore with equally maddening grace.

Jemima had a book of her own with which to while away the waiting time -
Fallen Child,
which she had begun to reread with pleasure while in the Pizza Perfecta - but the heat and stickiness made her more inclined to put her head in her hands and rest. As for B for Beware, V for Violence and the rest of it, she put that down at Kevin John Athlone's door. The British Library was, if anywhere, a safe refuge from physical violence; no possibility of assault here (except verbally by importunate strangers).

As a resting-place it was also unparalleled, if you could stand the airless atmosphere. The man - or was it a woman - next to her had already given up the struggle for consciousness. The fair head was bowed onto the desk and the pile of delivered books ignored. Jemima recalled other people sleeping on their hands in the Reading Room in the past, on a hot afternoon, but they had been older; retired professors perhaps, turned out by their wives to graze peacefully in these quiet pastures. But there was something different about the attitude of this slumbering flaxen poll. The figure was utterly slumped, giving the impression of total abandon, even despair. It was almost as if its owner were dead rather than asleep, had found his or her last resting-place in the Reading Room, not merely a convenient situation for a quick kip.

'Hamilton? Your books.' A handsome Asian with a cultivated voice deposited five books carefully on the desk beside her, and was whisking out the white slips poked into them. He was wearing a dazzling green
T
-shirt with the single word BOMB on it. The books were about chemistry.

'B for Bomb,' she thought automatically. 'Beware the Bomb. Ban the Bomb. Beware the British Library.' Why were her thoughts so insatiably morbid today? She said aloud:

'No, I'm Shore, J. Shore. These aren't mine.' At that moment the fair head next to her raised itself and a pair of light rather narrow eyes were gazing at her. The long mouth twitched; the lips, like the eyes, were rather narrow but the general effect was not unhandsome in a conventional English fashion.

'Jemima Shore! I do declare!' The Asian glanced at the slips, picked up the books and went away. He seemed unconcerned by the mistake. In that respect the British Library had not changed. Jemima wondered how long it would be before her own books arrived.

'B for Brighton,' said Jemima, wondering how she could have mistaken Valentine Brighton's sleek thick fair hair, even recumbent, for anyone else's - let alone a woman's.

'Naturally it's B for Brighton, my dear. Where else should I sit? You know my obsession for my own initial, expressed in so many fascinating ways, not the least of which is the famous colophon of the Brighthelmet Press. But what good fortune that you too should have chosen to honour this humble row. Welcome to B—'

'But, Valentine, what on earth are
you
doing here? It's a Saturday in August. Even the professors in Minnesota can't have driven you this far.'

Valentine looked at her. For a moment he did not seem to understand the reference. Jemima saw that he was rather pale and there was perspiration on the fine fair skin of his brow.

'Can't you guess?' he said at length in his usual bantering tone. 'Three guesses. You won't need three hundred.'

'Hardly. You're the most unlikely sight here I can assure you.'

'I'm waiting for Chloe.'

'What?
In her amazement, Jemima's voice had risen above the sibylline murmur adopted by Library readers. The woman in the seat next to Valentine looked up crossly and clicked her tongue. 'Where is she, then?' Jemima hissed.

'I am hardly the person to ask, my dear girl, since I have been waiting here, pinioned to row B, for longer than I care to remember. Hence the state of torpor, not to say stupor in which you discovered me on arrival.'

'We must talk. Can you come outside for a moment?'

'That sounds as if you are challenging me to a duel, or are going to knock me down or something. However if the encounter is to be nonviolent, I shall be delighted. What is the time? Can we get a drink or something?'

'It's after two o'clock. No, I don't need - want - a drink. I've just had lunch. Pizza, salad and one glass of white wine. Perfect scholar's meal and as a matter of fact I had it at the aptly named Pizza Perfecta. But as the mystery of Chloe's whereabouts deepens, I can't lose this opportunity of getting one or two things straight.'

They both got up.

'Aren't you going to leave a note?'

'Ah. Good thinking.' Valentine wrote with a flourish in red pentel on one of the white book request slips: 'C. Gone for a good chat with Jemima Shore, Investigator. Hope to iron out your problems to both our satisfaction.' He signed it: 'V. The red writing sprawled across the printed slip, a splash of red.

'V for Violence' floated through Jemima's mind automatically. It was an inappropriate thought. Of all the men she knew, Valentine Brighton was the least redolent of violence; he seemed to lack even the smallest trace of that natural aggression which goes with masculinity, hence his oft-discussed lack of sexuality. Not that Valentine was in any way effeminate. Adam Adamson, with his youth and slightness, was the more girlish looking of the two. Yet it occurred to Jemima that oddly enough, he was also the more attractive. Even the odious Kevin John had a kind of forceful demanding sexuality which she could appreciate, while shuddering away from it. Yes, that was it. It was Valentine's polite lack of demand towards either sex, so far as could be made out, which caused the question mark to be raised. Besides, he really did not look at all well, perhaps the rumours of his heart condition were something more than maternal fussiness.

Jemima walked with Valentine out of the Reading Room in the direction of those cool Egyptian and Assyrian halls, the memory of which had originally tempted her. As they left the Reading Room, Jemima's handbag was searched in case she should have slipped out a rare book or two. Valentine was ignored, like all the other men without briefcases.

'So
why
were you meeting?'

They stood amidst the vast deities, one or two sufficiently markedly feline to remind her of Tiger, now prowling perhaps on the roofs of Bloomsbury.

'I intended to give Chloe some good advice.'

'An odd choice of venue.'

'Not my choice, I can assure you. I needed to catch my wayward author before she set off on her secret trip and this was the only rendezvous she would consider. Don't ask
me
why.'

'But I must ask you why. And for that matter - what secret trip? To the Camargue, I take it.'

'Ah. You knew then. I thought—' For an instant a look akin to surprise or even possibly apprehension marked Valentine's normally bland face. 'I thought she kept it a secret from you,' he finished. It caused her to remark once again on his uncharacteristic pallor.

'In a sense she did. She told me she was going on a solitary mission, researching an article for
Taffeta
and it was only when that turned out to be a fabrication—'

'Taffeta?
This time there was no mistaking the surprise. 'What an extraordinary choice of alibi.' Valentine gave a wry laugh. 'But how absolutely typical of Chloe, for reasons you probably won't appreciate, and if I get my way, never will.'

Jemima reflected that she already had a pretty good idea what those reasons might be, thanks to the ladylike indiscretion of Laura Barrymore, but she felt less interested in boasting of her involuntary detective work than getting to the bottom, once and for all, of Chloe's holiday plans. She also felt no particular need to obtrude on Valentine exactly how her discovery of Chloe's mendacity had come about: the Stovers' vigil was no concern of his. Yet, a vague feeling of hurt possessed her that Chloe had chosen to tell the truth - whatever it might be - to Valentine, a friend of far more recent standing, and concealed it in an elaborate tale about
Taffeta
from her old friend Jemima. It encouraged he
r to press Valentine further. H
er hurt was slowly turning to anger, an anger further fuelled by recollection of the hours of the day already wasted on Chloe's complicated intrigue, to say nothing of Kevin John Athlone's assault.

'Where was she really off to? You'd better let me know. There's been quite enough lying already.'

Valentine considered, or appeared to consider. Jemima suspected that in such a deliberate man, the decision to confide in her had probably already been taken. 'She's off to the Camargue all right, but not until Monday, I gather. She's spending the weekend in London.

Then she's going to the Camargue with her latest lover. You know Chloe. You must have guessed that part of it at least.'

'But she specifically swore she wasn't! "Not my new angel." Why the lie? Why not tell me? Why the need for the cover-up?'

'Dearest Jemima, you're her alibi, don't you see?'

'Yes, I should bloody well think I am her alibi!' Jemima burst out. 'I seem to be her alibi for the whole world this morning. But what's the point of the secrecy to
me?’

'Jemima Shore, Investigator,' said Valentine brightly.

'Investigator nothing. I've been her alibi enough times in the past, I can assure you; all through those two marriages. She could have trusted me. We've been friends for years; nothing about Chloe could shock me now. We're both adults, to put it mildly.'

'She
could have trusted you. It was her lover who couldn't.'

'Did he need to know I was in the secret? It would have made things so much easier for her, as it happens, if she had trusted me.' And the Stovers, Jemima added mentally. 'It's all so unlike Chloe, not the intrigue itself, but the lies surrounding it.'

'This whole affair is all very unlike Chloe,' Valentine commented. 'Besides she - he, if you like - needed your innocence. In case the Press got wind of it. You are Press yourself in a kind of way. You could convince them quite genuinely that you didn't know where she was.'

'Oh, Isis and Osiris!' exclaimed Jemima with a groan. 'I'm going to sit down.' They sat on a stone bench, hard and rather uncomfortable.

'Mind you, I'm still not quite sure you wouldn't have been sufficiently fascinated by her new involvement to investigate it
just
a little,' continued Valentine. 'I could see quite a programme shaping up there. The intricate ways of love: A Woman's Choice, exquisite lady novelist and - well, no, perhaps I had better not tell you.'

'Beware my aroused curiosity,' said Jemima coldly. 'B for Beware, as well as Brighton. Besides I don't work on that kind of romantic and gossipy trash.'

'Beware, beware,' repeated Valentine soulfully. 'How often did I beg Chloe to beware
...
It was so terribly indiscreet, the whole thing, right
there,
under everyone's nose. But I'd better say no more.'

Jemima realized with increasing irritation that not only was he playing a role but he was also enjoying it. 'Valentine, I'm not sure if murder has ever been done in the British Museum, but I am convinced that these sinister Assyrians have seen a thing or two in their time. How cruel their expressions are. Gods crossed with birds. A terrible combination. At least those colossal crouched lions remind me of Tiger. Anyway, unless you tell me who Chloe's lover is, and why she was meeting you in the Reading Room, I shall behave like Ninurta armed with a thunderbolt and drive you, for the demon you are, out of my temple.' She pointed to the label above their heads.