Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (13 page)

I’ve seen shot people before, for real and in photographs. The forensic people at Glasgow are used to the likes of me ringing up for advice about a burn or a bit of hatchet work or a drowning. I did a decomposition once with mortician’s wax and fuse wire and Kleenex. Drownings are worst.

He was dead.

Seen from the front, a bullet wound in the temple is no trouble. For a fresh one, corn syrup and colouring will give a nice sheen, and of course you don’t see the back of the head, which won’t be there anyway.

He was dead.

For older wounds, you use browner colouring, and you can get the powder marks for a suicide by striking matches and working the black round the wound.

There was black all round the entry hole in Kim-Jim’s temple, but it wasn’t made by matches.

I got into the study because Natalie couldn’t hold me any longer and there he was. Neat, in his bespoke open-necked shirt and granny glasses, leaning a little sideways in the wing of his usual deep-buttoned chair by the fireplace. Swung round to face the telly.

Beside his chair was a table with an empty glass on it, and the control pad for the telly. And on the carpet beside one of his nice clean American sneakers was the small gun he always packed, American-style. He’d told me about it, long ago, and not been narked when I thought it was funny. He never got narked.

He was dead.

The leather arm of his chair was warm. I hung on to it, kneeling. Someone — the lawyer — said, ‘Better not touch him.’ Natalie spoke from the door, and he went out.

Natalie’s voice went on talking, in short bursts, very much higher than usual, but inside the study it was quiet. The quartz clock ticked. From the corner where the perch was, you could hear Cone’s chain as he picked his way sideways and back, stopping to frill out his feathers.

From the wall where the telly stood came a very faint whine, and when you looked, you could see the red light was still on, though the set was off .

‘He switched it off from the control pad,’ someone said.

Johnson, standing still by the big desk, so quietly I hadn’t seen he was still in the room.

Kim-Jim’s mouth was open, just a little. Sometimes, in makeup, you gave them just a trickle of blood from the corner, as if they’d bitten their tongue.

As for colour, there is a nice greyed base I have used. But it depends.

In heat like this, of course, the skin keeps its colour. Looks quite natural, really.

A voice – Johnson’s – now at the door was saying, ‘Give her a moment.’ And then, after a pause, ‘Should somebody break the news to the service people, and make some phone calls from the kitchen?’

There was some talk, then Natalie’s voice and the lawyer’s faded away. There was a breath of air as the door opened a little wider and someone came in again. Johnson said, ‘Rita. We’ll have to leave him.’

For a big man, Kim-Jim had a childish, soft sort of nose. His eyes were quite shut, with the short sandy lashes making shadows over his cheeks. His hair had a lot of grey in it, when you looked close, and was dull.

American hair is usually bouncy, and has lots of gloss. Maybe when you were dead, your hair got dull.

A hand took me under one arm and drew me up on my feet. Johnson said, ‘You don’t want to be here when the police and the doctor and everyone come.’

I didn’t.

I walked with him to the door, and waited while he took the key from the inside and locked it on the outside, using his handkerchief.

Kim-Jim always carried two clean handkerchiefs as well.

The bastard. The bastard said that he’d kill him.

A thick whooping voice and a giggling voice, from the terrace. Ferdy, with his St Laurent frills and cummerbund wet as a dishrag staggering in from the pool and standing on the sitting-room rug saying, ‘What’s up? What’s up, my British hearties?’

Maggie, also soaked, with her necklace glittering and her straps hanging down from her brown skin, was on all fours on the carpet. From the door, the lawyer said, ‘I think you should dry yourselves. The
guardia
will be here soon. Mr Curtis has shot himself.’

‘He didn’t,’ I said.

‘
What
?’ said Ferdy, not loudly at all. He took hold of the back of a chair.

The lawyer said, ‘Mrs Sheridan is sending for help. Aurelio will bring us some coffee. I suggest you take your friend upstairs and dry yourselves. There are bathrobes, Mrs Sheridan says.’

The Hon. Maggie had stopped giggling. Her eyes, as she looked up, were streaked with eye-liner dissolved by the pool, but her Vidal haircut looked great. If she had been aiming at
Cabaret
, she had hit it.

She said, ‘Ferdy? It’s a gas?’

Natalie’s voice said, ‘It isn’t a joke. He’s lying there with a gun. He’s dead. There’s no note, but he killed himself.’

She came in from the service wing and crossed to take cigarettes out of the silver box on one of the sitting-room tables. Her hair was perfect, just as I’d put it up that afternoon, and there was hardly a crease in the Ricci green organza that I’d matched her eyeshadow to.

I remembered watching Kim-Jim study her, and then smile at me on his way down to the study. Smile approvingly.

I said, ‘He didn’t kill himself.’

Natalie’s cigarette wouldn’t light. Her lawyer took the lighter out of her hand and held the flame for her. Even his hand was shaking a little.

Natalie let out a lot of smoke and said, ‘Suppose we sit down. Rita, I know it’s hard, but you must listen. He died by his own hand.’

Someone’s hand eased me down into a chair, and Johnson sat on the arm of it. The lawyer offered him a cigarette from Natalie’s box, and when he refused, took one himself and sat down by Natalie.

Ferdy stood where he was, and you could see the drink draining out of him. The Hon. Maggie looked up at him, gasping, and when he jerked his head at the stairs, she collected her straps and ran across the carpet and up them. The service door banged and Dodo tramped out, looked across at Natalie and then followed Maggie up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms. I could hear her thudding about, collecting towels and coping with the start of wisteria.

Ferdy said, ‘In there?’ and walking over, pressed the study door handle.

Johnson said, ‘We locked it until the
guardia
come. But it’s pretty clear, I’m afraid. Gun beside him.’

Aurelio came in with a tray of black coffee. He was greeny-brown, and the tray was rattling. They all looked at him. You would think I wasn’t there. I got up and said to Natalie, ‘You’re covering up for your van Diemen friend. You all are. It wasn’t suicide. It just looks like suicide. We had plans for tomorrow. He had plans for the rest of his life.
He was taping a serial, goddammit
!’

I got choked and broke off . Aurelio, who had been standing staring at me, moved on at a nod from Natalie, and served everyone. Johnson took a cup for me and put it on a table. I said, ‘Someone got in and shot him. I’ll tell the
guardia
.’

Natalie started to speak, and then stopped at a look from her lawyer.

Harvey Kazimierz. A little more silvery than usual behind the rimless glasses and above the bow tie. Stanford and Cambridge, Kim-Jim had said.

He spoke as if he had taken classes. But then all lawyers talk like that. He said, ‘If there was any doubt, of course we should tell the authorities, but there isn’t. No one could have got into the house. The front door and the gates were locked from the time we all left for the party until Miss Geddes came back. Aurelio and Dolores and Mrs Sheridan’s maid were all together in their own sitting-room. After supper, they switched on a television serial, and they heard Mr Curtis do the same in the study. So he was alive then.’

‘Unless it was on a time switch,’ said Ferdy unexpectedly. He crossed the room, dripping, and pausing beside me, gripped my shoulder in one big hand and hugged me briefly, his chin on my hair. Then he walked to the foot of the stairs and stood nursing his coffee and staring at Natalie.

‘I think it was,’ said Johnson. ‘But lots of people use a time switch anyway, just in case they forget to switch the tape on when the programme starts. What does it matter anyway? Mr Kazimierz is right. The house was locked up. I don’t see how anyone could have broken in. And even if they did, Mr Curtis would hardly have allowed them to walk up to his chair and stick a gun in his face without some sort of resistance.’

‘What about an upstairs window?’ I said. ‘Has anyone been round the house checking? What about someone with a key? What about someone Kim-Jim knew, who could get right up to him before he even pulled out a gun? Your bloody pal threatened he’d kill Kim-Jim if he didn’t get out, and Kim-Jim is dead, and you’re all pretending it was
suicide
?’ I was shaking.

It was Natalie this time who put down her cigarette and said quietly, ‘Rita. Come here and sit down.’

After a moment I went and took the chair beside her. Now the shock was getting less, her colour was coming back to normal. The Hon. Maggie, appearing suddenly on the stairs in a yellow bathrobe, with another over her arm, came down to where Ferdy stood and took his coffee while he put the robe on over his wet things, still looking at Natalie. He was quite sober now, and so was Maggie.

Behind them both, Dodo also came down the stairs and went and stood beside Natalie with her mouth clamped over her teeth. I could feel the blame pouring all over me.

Johnson, who had settled down in the chair I had left, was the only one who still looked a bit queer, but then he was, and had looked like that anyway after holding that stupid party.

If he hadn’t held that party, I should have spent the evening here, and Kim-Jim would be alive.

Whether he had held the party or not, I should have spent the evening here.

A glass of something appeared under my nose. Brandy. Natalie said, ‘Drink it, and listen.’

I took it from her.

She said, ‘Everything you say is true. You and Kim-Jim were both threatened. The man who threatened you is not in Madeira any longer. And even if he were, he’s a fool, but not stupid, any more than Kim-Jim was. If Roger van Diemen had gone into that study, do you think Kim-Jim would have sat in that chair waiting for him? Or for any stranger who came instead?’

‘No one came into this house anyways, after you’d gone, Miz Sheridan,’ Dodo said without warning over my head. She was looking at me. ‘No one, that is, except Miss Geddes. And Mr Curtis was all right then. The phone rang, and he answered it.’

It was true. I had forgotten. As I went out into the garden, the phone had rung, and he’d turned down the serial.

As I went into the garden, leaving the terrace windows open behind me.

The bifocal glasses were watching me. Johnson said, ‘Did you hear that, Miss Geddes?’

I nodded, looking at him. The brandy had done me no good at all.

He said, ‘And did you hear him turn the programme up again?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was at the bottom of the garden. But I left the terrace doors open. Anyone could have got in.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Dodo again. She stood like a minnyloth, six feet tall against the light, with shoulders to match. She said, ‘No one came in from the garden after you went out, because Aurelio locked the doors again behind you. Miz Sheridan has valuable things in this house. I thought she would have told you.’

She paused and added, ‘And no one came out of the study after you went into the garden neither. Dolores left the service door open near the end of the serial so’s we could see when Mr Curtis came out. He liked to eat late, Mr Curtis, and he was going to pick up a snack in the kitchen.’

The Hon. Maggie, with the make-up now wiped off her face, crossed to the drinks table and poured herself a large tumbler of something, the glass chinking. The robe would have showed off her new suntan, but she clutched it about her like a blanket. She crept back to Ferdy.

Ferdy said, ‘Then you could tell when he did it. If he switched off the tape.’

Kim-Jim always switched off the tape at the end of a programme. He liked to edit it while it was running as well. He would never use an automatic switch-off . Johnson said doubtfully, ‘I suppose we could check,’ and he and Ferdy went off to the study, Johnson taking the wrapped key out of his pocket. After a moment, the lawyer got up and went out too.

Natalie said, ‘Rita. You say Kim-Jim was making plans.’

I tried to make her see sense. I said, ‘He did a lot for you. He really did. It’s the least anyone can do, to find out what happened. And punish them.’

She ignored it. She said, ‘Rita. You know why he was retiring?’

I saw what she was trying to do. I said, ‘His eyes were going. Yes, of course I knew. But he was prepared for it. He was getting a special screen, and tapes and everything. And there were things he was going to do for me. He wouldn’t have taped that programme. Why would you bother with a bloody programme if you were going to kill yourself?’

The lawyer’s voice said, ‘The tape wasn’t switched off . It went on recording until the end of transmission, and ran itself out. So he must have… It must have happened while Miss Geddes was in the garden.’

They had all come back. Johnson sat down again right away, but Harvey Kazimierz and Ferdy stood together. The lawyer said in a quiet voice, ‘You didn’t hear a shot then, Miss Geddes? How long were you out?’

‘No. I fell asleep. Until everyone came back,’ I said.

Johnson said, ‘Would anyone hear a shot from the service wing? With the door open?’

Dodo stared at me while she was thinking. ‘I guess,’ she said, ‘that the television would drown out that sort of sound. And that parrot, he copies gunfire and barking and every other darned thing, so it wouldn’t prove nothing if we did. But we didn’t.’

There was a silence. Through it, there came the sound of wheels on the drive in front of the house, and two or three voices. A car door slammed.

Johnson said, ‘Excuse me, Mrs Sheridan. You were saying something just now about Mr Curtis retiring?’

Natalie said, ‘They’re coming,’ and stood up. She looked at me, and then at Johnson. She said, ‘It’s no way to say this, but of course, it’s why it must be suicide. Rita is here because Kim-Jim was about to retire. He told Rita it was because he was losing his sight, as he didn’t want to distress her. She says he was making all sorts of plans, I suppose for the same reason.’