Careless In Red (10 page)

He replaced the phone on the dressing table. He turned from the table and, because there was no help for it, he looked at the room, the bed, the tiny washbasin in the corner. He found that his defences had fallen—his mother’s conversation had done it to him—and there was her voice, with him suddenly. Not his mother’s voice this time, but Helen’s voice. It is a bit monastic in here, isn’t it, Tommy? I feel absolutely nunlike. Determined to be chaste but faced with such horrific temptation to be very very naughty indeed.

He heard her so clearly. The Helen-ness of her. The nonsense that drew him out of himself when he most needed to be drawn. She’d been intuitive that way. One look at his face in the evening and she’d known exactly what was required. It had been her gift: a talent for observation and insight. Sometimes it was the touch of her hand on his cheek and the three words Tell me, darling. Other times it was the superficial frivolity that dissipated his tension and brought forth his laughter.

He said into the silence, “Helen,” but that was all that he said, and certainly the extent to which he could—at the moment—acknowledge what he’d lost.

DAIDRE DIDN’T RETURN TO the cottage when she left Thomas Lynley at the Salthouse Inn. Instead, she drove east. The route she took twisted like a discarded spool of ribbon through the misty countryside. It passed through several hamlets where lamps shone at windows in the dusk, then dipped through two woodlands. It divided one farmhouse from its outbuildings, and ultimately it came out on the A388. She took this road south and veered off on a secondary road that tracked east through pastureland where sheep and dairy cows grazed. She turned off where a sign pointed to CORNISH GOLD with VISITORS WELCOME printed beneath the name of the place.

Cornish Gold was half a mile down a very narrow lane, a farm comprising vast apple orchards circumscribed by stands of plum trees, these last planted years ago as a windbreak. The orchards began at the crest of a hill and spread down the other side in an impressive fan of acreage. Before them, in stair-step fashion, stood two old stone barns, and across from these, a cider factory formed one side of a cobbled courtyard. In the centre of this, an animal pen traced a perfect square and within that square, snuffled and snorted the ostensible reason for Daidre’s visit to this place, should anyone other than the farm’s owner ask her. This reason was an orchard pig, a huge and decidedly unfriendly Gloucester Old Spot that had been instrumental in Daidre’s meeting the owner of the cider farm soon after the woman’s arrival in this part of the world, a journey she’d made over thirty years from Greece to London to St. Ives to the farm.

At the side of the pen, Daidre found the pig waiting. He was named Stamos, after his owner’s former husband. The porcine Stamos, never a fool and always an optimist, had anticipated the reason for Daidre’s visit and had lumbered to the rail fence cooperatively once Daidre came into the courtyard. She had nothing for him this time, however. Packing peeled oranges into her bag while still at her cottage had seemed a questionable activity while the police were hanging about, intent upon watching and noting everyone’s movements.

She said, “Sorry, Stamos. But let’s have a look at the ear all the same. Yes, yes. It’s all form. You’re quite recovered, and you know it. You’re too clever for your own good, aren’t you?”

The pig was known to bite, so she took care. She also looked round the courtyard to see who might be watching because, if nothing else, one had to be diligent. But no one was there, and that was reasonable. For it was late in the day, and all employees of the farm would have long gone home.

She said, “Looking perfect now,” to the pig and then she crossed the remainder of the courtyard where an arch led to a small rain-sodden vegetable garden. Here she followed a brick path—uneven, overgrown, and pooled with rainwater—to a neat white cottage from which the sound of classical guitar came in fits and starts. Aldara would be practising. That was good, as it likely meant she was alone.

The playing stopped instantly when Daidre knocked on the door. Steps hurriedly approached across the hardwood floor inside.

“Daidre! What on earth…?” Aldara Pappas was backlit from within the cottage, so Daidre couldn’t see her face. But she knew the great dark eyes would hold speculation and not surprise, despite her tone of voice. Aldara stepped back from the door, saying, “Come in. You are so very welcome. What a lovely surprise that you should come to break the tedium of my evening. Why didn’t you phone me from Bristol? Are you down for long?”

“It was a sudden decision.”

Inside the cottage it was quite warm, the way Aldara liked it. Every wall was washed in white, and each one of them displayed highly-coloured paintings of rugged landscapes, arid and possessing habitations of white—small buildings with tile on their roofs and their window boxes bursting with flowers, with donkeys standing placidly against their walls and dark-haired children playing in the dirt before their front doors. Aldara’s furniture was simple and sparse. The pieces were brightly upholstered in blue and yellow, however, and a red rug covered part of the floor. Only the geckos were missing, their little bodies curving against the surface of whatever their tiny suctioned feet could cling to.

A coffee table in front of the sofa held a bowl of fruit and a plate of roasted peppers, Greek olives, and cheese: feta, undoubtedly. A bottle of red wine was still to be opened. Two wineglasses, two napkins, two plates, and two forks were neatly positioned. These gave the lie to Aldara’s words. Daidre looked at her. She raised an eyebrow.

“It was a small social lie only.” Aldara was, as ever, completely unembarrassed to have been caught out. “Had you walked in and seen this, you would have felt less than welcome, no? And you are always welcome in my home.”

“As is someone else, apparently, tonight.”

“You are far more important than someone else.” As if to emphasise this, Aldara went to the fireplace, where a fire was laid and matches remained only to be used. She struck one on the underside of the mantel and put it to the crumpled paper beneath the wood. Apple wood, this was, dried and kept for burning when the orchard trees were pruned.

Aldara’s movements were sensuous, but they were not studied. In the time Daidre had known the other woman, she’d come to realise that Aldara was sensual as a result of simply being Aldara. She would laugh and say, “It’s in my blood,” as if being Greek meant being seductive. But it was more than blood that made her compelling. It was confidence, intelligence, and complete lack of fear. Daidre admired this final quality most in the other woman, aside from her beauty. For she was forty-five and looked ten years younger. Daidre was thirty-one and, without the olive skin of the other woman, knew she would not be so lucky in fourteen years’ time.

Having lit the fire, Aldara went to the wine and uncorked it, as if underscoring her declaration that Daidre was as valued and important a guest as whomever Aldara was actually expecting. She poured, saying, “It’s going to have a bite. None of that smooth French business. As you know, I like wine that challenges the palate. So have some cheese with it, or it’s likely to take the enamel from your teeth.”

She handed over a glass and scooped up a chunk of cheese, which she popped into her mouth. She licked her fingers slowly, then she winked at Daidre, mocking herself. “Delicious,” she said. “Mama sent it from London.”

“How is she?”

“Still looking for someone to kill Stamos, of course. Sixty-seven years old and no one holds a grudge like Mama. She says to me, ‘Figs. I shall send that devil figs. Will he eat them, Aldara? I’ll stuff them with arsenic. What d’you think?’ I tell her to dismiss him from her thoughts. I have, I tell her. ‘Do not waste energy on that man,’ I tell her. ‘It’s been nine years, Mama, and that is sufficient time to wish someone ill.’ She says, as if I had not spoken, ‘I’ll send your brothers to kill him.’ And then she curses him in Greek at some length, all of which I’m paying for, naturally, as I’m the one who makes the phone calls, four times a week, like the dutiful daughter I have always been. When she’s finished, I tell her at least to send Nikko if she truly intends to kill Stamos because Nikko’s the only one of my brothers who’s actually good with a knife and a decent shot with a gun. And then she laughs. She launches into a story about one of Nikko’s children and that is that.”

Daidre smiled. Aldara dropped onto the sofa, kicking off her shoes and tucking her legs beneath her. She was wearing a dress the colour of mahogany, its hem like a handkerchief, its neckline V-ing towards her breasts. It had no sleeves and was fashioned from material more suitable to summer on Crete than spring in Cornwall. Little wonder that the room was so warm.

Daidre took some cheese and wine as instructed. Aldara was right. The wine was rough.

“I think they aged it fifteen minutes,” Aldara told her. “You know the Greeks.”

“You’re the only Greek I do know,” Daidre said.

“This is sad. But Greek women are much more interesting than Greek men, so you have the best of the lot with me. You’ve not come about Stamos, have you? I mean Stamos the lowercase pig, of course. Not Stamos the uppercase Pig.”

“I stopped to look at him. His ears are clear.”

“They would be. I did follow your instructions. He’s right as rain. He’s asking for a girlfriend as well, although the last thing I want is a dozen orchard piglets round my ankles. You didn’t answer me, by the way.”

“Did I not?”

“You did not. I’m delighted to see you, as always, but there’s something in your face that tells me you’ve come for a reason.” She took another piece of cheese.

“Who’re you expecting?” Daidre asked her.

Aldara’s hand, lifting the cheese to her mouth, paused. She cocked her head and regarded Daidre. “That sort of question is completely unlike you,” she pointed out.

“Sorry. But…”

“What?”

Daidre felt flustered, and she hated that feeling. Her life experience—not to mention her sexual and emotional experience—placed in opposition to Aldara’s experience left her seriously wanting and even more seriously out of her depth. She shifted gears. She did it baldly, as baldness was the only weapon she possessed. “Aldara, Santo Kerne’s been killed.”

Aldara said, “What did you say?”

“Are you asking that because you didn’t hear me or because you want to think you didn’t hear me?”

“What happened to him?” Aldara said, and Daidre was gratified to watch her replace her bit of cheese on the plate, uneaten.

“He was apparently climbing.”

“Where?”

“The cliff in Polcare Cove. He fell and was killed. A man out walking the coastal path was the one to find him. He came to the cottage.”

“You were there when this happened?”

“No. I drove down from Bristol this afternoon. When I got to the cottage, the man was inside. He was looking for a phone. I came in on him.”

“You came in on a man inside your cottage? My God. How frightening. How did he…? Did he find the extra key?”

“He broke a window to get in. He told me there was a body on the rocks and I went down to it with him. I said I was a doctor—”

“Well, you are a doctor. You might have been able to—”

“No. It’s not that. Well, it is in a way because I could have done something, I suppose.”

“You must more than suppose, Daidre. You’ve been educated well. You’ve qualified. You’ve managed to acquire a job of enormous responsibility and you cannot say—”

“Aldara. Yes. All right. I know. But it was more than wanting to help. I wanted to see. I had a feeling.”

Aldara said nothing. Sap crackled in one of the logs and the sound of it drew her attention to the fire. She looked at it long, as if checking to see that the logs remained where she had originally placed them. She finally said, “You thought it might be Santo Kerne? Why?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Why is it obvious?”

“Aldara. You know.”

“I don’t. You must tell me.”

“Must I?”

“Please.”

“You’re being—”

“I’m being nothing. Tell me what you want to tell me about why things are so obvious to you, Daidre.”

“Because even when one thinks everything has been seen to, even when one thinks every i has been dotted, every t has been crossed, even when one thinks every sentence has a full stop at the end—”

“You’re becoming tedious,” Aldara pointed out.

Daidre took a sharp breath. “Someone is dead. How can you talk like that?”

“All right. Tedious was a poor choice of words. Hysterical would have been better.”

“This is a human being we’re talking about. This is a teenage boy. Not nineteen years old. Dead on the rocks.”

“Now you are hysterical.”

“How can you be like this? Santo Kerne is dead.”

“And I’m sorry about that. I don’t want to think of a boy that young falling from a cliff and—”

“If he fell, Aldara.”

Aldara reached for her wineglass. Daidre noted—as she sometimes did—that the Greek woman’s hands were the only part of her that was not lovely. Aldara herself called them a peasant’s hands, made for pounding clothes against rocks in a stream, for kneading bread, for working the soil. With strong, thick fingers and wide palms, they were not hands made for delicate employment. “Why ‘if he fell’?” she asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“But you said he was climbing. You can’t think someone…”

“Not someone, Aldara. Santo Kerne? Polcare Cove? It’s not difficult to work out who might have harmed him.”

“You’re talking nonsense. You go to the cinema far too often. Films make one start believing that people act like they’re playing parts devised in Hollywood. The fact that Santo fell while he was climbing—”

“And isn’t that a bit odd? Whyever would he climb in this weather?”

“You ask the question as if you expect me to know the answer.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Aldara—”

“Enough.” Aldara firmly set her wineglass down. “I am not you, Daidre. I’ve never had this…this…oh, what shall I call it…this awe of men that you have, this feeling that they are somehow more significant than they actually are, that they are necessary in life, essential to a woman’s completion. I’m terribly sorry that the boy is dead, but it’s nothing to do with me.”