Blood Will Out (23 page)

“That's good to know.” She was giving him one of those looks from her dark, expressive eyes that he found totally unfathomable. Then she added, “And that's all I need to know. My personal life and your personal life are off-limits, right?”

It was said as a statement, not a question.

“Right.”

She slung her bag over her shoulder, and added, “Only, sometimes it's easier said than done.”

Moretti felt no need to answer, because he couldn't have agreed more — and that he had just proved by his own childish response to their laughter.

L
iz
Falla was glad Moretti was not with her in the police car, or she would have found herself doing either good cop or bad cop. The good cop would have asked leading questions like, “So Elodie called you when the fight broke out? You took her with you to question Meg? Then you took her back home so she wasn't on her own?” The bad cop would have lost control, blown a gasket with such remarks as, “Elodie isn't one of your one-night stands. Elodie has been hurt in the past.” Or even, “If you hurt Elodie, you'll have me to deal with.” As if she was her godmother's mum.

Both cops would have been disastrous.

She was greeted at the Gastineau front door by a member of the household she had not seen before, but if she had thought about it, must have known existed. A servant. No way Tanya and Rory did the dusting. She was a solidly built middle-aged woman, wearing an overall and carrying a small dog in her arms that looked like a terrier of some sort. Certainly, it didn't seem to have been chosen as a guard dog, because it was delighted to see Liz, its whole body almost wriggling free of its minder.

“Yes?”

The tone was unfriendly, as the household help struggled to hold on.

Liz held out her police badge, decided to give no explanations, but to sound as if she was expected.

“DS Falla, here to interview Mrs. Gastineau.”

“I wasn't told about this.”

From the resigned expression on the woman's bleak face that gave the impression of being carved out of island granite, this was not the first time.

“Oh.” Liz looked at her watch, tutted, then waited.

“You'd better come in. I can't hold this animal much longer.”

Liz crossed the threshold and helpfully closed the door behind her.

“That's quite an armful you've got there. I don't remember seeing him before, or you, Mrs. —?”

“Livingstone. I'm the housekeeper. It's a she, and they just got it. Must have been my day off when you came before. I'll just shut her in the cloakroom and see you through to Mrs. Gastineau. She piddles — the dog, I mean — and she might as well make it the cloakroom as anywhere else. Just a minute.”

The housekeeper deposited her burden behind a door in the hallway, and a pathetic whimpering sound emerged under the edge of the door, followed by snuffling.

“Poor little thing. Perhaps we could take it to Mrs. Gastineau? I don't mind.”

“Mrs. Gastineau would. She just asked me to take her away, because she keeps chewing the tassels on her slippers. Mr. Gastineau got it as a present for her, but they just don't think, do they. She's called it Honeybun, would you believe.”

No comment seemed called-for, or necessary, so Liz followed in the housekeeper's wake.

Tanya Gastineau was lying on a sofa in the room in which she and Moretti had first interviewed her and Rory Gastineau. She was wearing pink from head to toe; a fluffy mohair shawl over what looked like a silk dressing gown and pyjamas, and the puppy-magnet slippers on the floor at her feet. There was a glass of milk on a low table close to her, and a plate of fruit. She looked up as Liz and the housekeeper came in.

“Oh it's you,” she said to Liz. “Rory is — indisposed.” She gave a sound somewhere between a giggle and a gulp, and Liz hoped her internal celebration at this stroke of luck didn't show on her face.

Tanya without her watchdog, and I don't mean the puppy!

“I'm sorry to hear that, so I'll just have a brief word with you, Mrs. Gastineau.”

“Can I get you anything, ma'am?” Mrs. Livingstone managed to sound both curt and deferential.

Tanya sat up and pointed to the table.

“No, but you can take something away. The sight of that milk makes me feel even more like puking.”

“Very well. But Mr. Gastineau wants you to —”

“Mr. Gastineau can drink it himself. Hair of the dog that
didn't
bite him.”

Tanya gave a short, sharp laugh at her joke. Mrs. Livingstone picked up the glass, checked with Liz that she wanted neither tea nor coffee, and left the room. Liz sat down in a plumply upholstered chair opposite Tanya.

“Congratulations. You and your husband must be very happy at the news,” she said.

Tanya swung around and sat up. Her formerly rosy cheeks were now a whitish-yellow, and she had dark circles under her eyes that were partly smudged eyeliner and partly not.

“You'd think, wouldn't you? Rory was over the moon, then last night happens and he's hitting the bottle again.”

A tear made its way through one dark circle and ran down her cheek. Clearly, she had been doing a lot of crying, and this time the super-mascara had not stood up to it.

“Last night happens?”

“Well, that's why you're here, isn't it. Me yelling.”

“You attacked —” Liz took out her notebook and appeared to check the name, “Charles Priestley.”

“
Ooooh
— is that what he calls it? Is he bringing charges?” Tanya now sounded derisive. She pulled a grape off a small bunch on the plate and popped it in her mouth.

“Actually, Mrs. Gastineau, I wondered if
you
might be thinking of charges. Is he the person you suspected of making threatening calls? That's what it sounded like to the witnesses.”

Thankfully, Tanya didn't ask who those supposed witnesses were. Instead, she leaned forwards and said, “I think he was. As soon as I heard his voice that night at the Maxwells', I thought it was. But what could I prove? And any time Rory thinks I know any bloke under the age of seventy, he gets —” Here, Tanya paused. Liz waited, and then jumped in.

“Are you saying that your husband gets suspicious? Violent?”

“Rory, violent?” Tanya found this amusing. “Suspicious is what he gets, but violent? No. He gets weepy. God, I hate weepy, and now look at me.” She took a tissue out of the dressing-gown pocket and blew her nose.

“Mrs. Gastineau — Tanya — If you know why Charles Priestley is doing this, you will be much safer if you tell me. Particularly now you're pregnant. Is it about who inherits? Because that's what it looks like.”

“I wish I knew.” Tanya lowered her voice. “I married Rory for all the wrong reasons. Well, one wrong reason and I'll give you one guess.” It was clearly a rhetorical statement, because Tanya ploughed rapidly on. “I had no idea, not at the time, not all this first-born stuff and show me the wedding-ring and the piece of paper and all that. And then I found out.”

“Found out what?”

“That his family were a bunch of lunatics! They hate me and I hate them.”

“Has any family member threatened you directly?”

“Directly?” Tanya snorted. “Directly is not the way they work, that lot. I'm sure someone put that la-di-da weasel up to it, but it could be any of them. Honest, I'd tell you if I knew. The only fun I was having was with the Island Players crowd, and then somebody went for poor little Hugo.”

Tanya leaned forward again and lowered her voice. “Between you and me, I think that was all about me and not about vampires and such. But what do I know? I'm just a dumb blonde dolly-bird!”

Tanya threw herself back against the sofa, her movement dislodging a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her dressing gown. She hastily pushed them back into the pocket and whispered, “Don't tell Rory,” like a naughty child.

“But he's right, isn't he?” Liz tried to make her remark sound lighthearted rather than judgmental, watched Tanya's expression become petulant, and moved the conversation along. Healthy pregnancy choices were outside her field of enquiry. “You say your only fun was with the Island Players, but last time I was here you were horseback riding. I don't know much about it, but you looked pretty good to me.”

Tanya did not seem cheered by the thought. “Rory says it's now too dangerous and I should stop. It's only an excuse to send Roddy back to Bristol.”

A door opening
. “So you knew your riding companion in Bristol? As an employer, or a friend. Or both?”

Tanya cheered up a bit. “Both. He worked for daddy, and that's how we met. Daddy had a part interest in a steeple-chaser. Roddy actually asked me to marry him, once.”

“And you said ‘no.' Why?”

Tanya gave Liz a look that spoke volumes, and took another grape from the bunch on the table.

“Ah. He's got no money.”

Another woman who'd chosen smoked salmon over sardines on toast.

“Got it in one. I shall really miss him, and not just because of the riding. Someone to talk to. You know.”

Liz looked at the pretty woman sitting opposite her, and wondered. There must have been other choices, other men with enough income to satisfy the needs of this girl-woman who played the baby-doll game so well. Why Rory Gastineau? She went ahead and put her thought into words.

“You must have been beating off men with sticks, Tanya, and surely some of them were well off. Why Mr. Gastineau? What made him a winner?”

Tanya Gastineau looked straight at Liz and said, simply, “Because he was bonkers about me.”

As Liz tried to think of a response, Tanya held out her hand towards her in a gesture almost of supplication.

“You wouldn't think it to look at Rory, but when it comes to words, he's like something out of a chick-flick. Looking at
you
, detective, don't tell me you don't know what it's like to have someone head over heels with you, tell you you're everything, the sun, the moon, the stars.”

Liz stood up. It seemed like a good time to bring the interview to an end.

All, or nothing at all.

Lost in thought, humming to herself, Liz nearly missed the sound of the car horn just outside the Gastineau grounds. In her rear-view mirror she saw a police car leaving just after her. She pulled over and Bob McMullin and Rick Le Marchant pulled in behind her on the verge of the road. Rick Le Marchant got out of the car on the passenger side and came running towards her.

Le Marchant had been involved in Moretti's enquiries before, and was one of the officers who had been ticked off by Liz Falla's rapid promotion. Theirs was a combative relationship and Liz had once asked her Guvnor why he had chosen “a wet-behind-the-ears dimwit” like Le Marchant over other officers.

“For just those reasons. Bernie Mauger looks like a simple country boy, straight off the farm, and isn't. Le Marchant looks like what he is, and has an endearing way of lulling interviewees into a false sense of security.”

Which had, on occasion, proved true. Liz bore that in mind as Le Marchant galloped over the rough turf towards her.

“DS Falla, He's packing up and leaving!”

“Mrs. Gastineau's horseperson?”

“Right. Roddy Bull.”

“That's his last name? Bull?”

“Yep. We told him this was a police investigation, and he'd have to stay, and he said we'd have to sort it out with his employer. When I asked him if he meant ‘the Gastineaus,' he said, ‘Yes, they make the decisions around here, don't they?' Bloody cheek!”

By this time, Bob McMullin had joined Le Marchant, who was breathing heavily and invasively through the car window into Liz's face in his excitement. She got out of the car and turned to Bob McMullin.

“Have you contacted the Guvnor?”

“Yes. He said he'd get back to Hospital Lane as soon as he could, and to warn Bull he could be charged if he left the island. Which we did.”

“What was his reaction?”

“Well, he didn't turn around and start unpacking his suitcases, but I think he got the message.”

“Was he literally packing his suitcases?”

“Yes. He already had a couple by the door.”

“What's he like? Besides cheeky.”

Rick Le Marchant answered first.

“Pretty boy. You know the type.”

Liz bit her tongue on various possible responses and turned to Bob McMullin who replied, “Bit of a smoothie, yes.” Bob McMullin frowned. “But I think he was worried about something. Not just us, but something else.”

“As in —?”

Rick Le Marchant got in first again. “As in he can't stand Mr. Gastineau.” He seemed to find this comical. “Called him a jealous prat, said he couldn't understand why Tanya Riley — that's what he called her — had chosen such a loser.”

“So you got the impression he wasn't at all unhappy to be leaving?”

Bob McMullin looked back at the Gastineau acres.

“I think he couldn't get out of there fast enough. He looked like he was going to bawl when we said he couldn't.”

He seemed baffled by what he had observed, but Rick Le Marchant seemed supremely confident about the reason.

“All he was scared of was us.”

“You?” Liz tried not to sound incredulous.

“Us. Pretty boy,” he repeated. “Got no bal — backbone,” he added, giving Liz Falla a look that suggested an intimate knowledge of the workings of pretty boys' minds.

“Sounds more to me like Roddy Bull got to you, Rick, than you got to Roddy Bull.” Liz responded, unable to resist the opportunity to put him in his place in the pecking order. “But be sure to put all that useful detail in your report — that stuff about a bull without backbone. Or balls.”

On which excellently satisfying exit line, she got back into her car, as her mobile started to ring.