Long Time Coming (29 page)

‘Oh yes?’

‘For a flight to Brussels. I heard about Ardal Quilligan’s murder late last night. You know something about it, do you?’

‘You could say so, yes.’

‘I guess that’s why you’re in Belgium. So, what do you know about the people they have in custody? The Belgian police haven’t revealed their names yet.’

‘I’m one of them.’ I heard her gasp at the other end of the line. ‘Well, I
was
. They let me go yesterday. They’re still holding my girlfriend, Rachel Banner.’ It was strange to hear myself describe Rachel as that. But it was true, of course – a truth I was desperate to cling on to.

‘Does Quilligan’s murder have something to do with your uncle, Stephen?’

‘Oh yes. Everything, really.’

‘We should meet.’

‘I agree.’

‘The police are holding a press conference in Bruges this afternoon. I plan to attend. Could you meet me there?’

Pushing myself back under the noses of the police, not to mention encountering the media, sounded like a bad idea. And it sounded even worse to van Briel. When I said, ‘Me, come to Bruges?’ he flapped his hand frantically and mouthed, ‘
No, no, no
.’ ‘I can’t do that,’ I went on. He sighed with relief then and gave me a thumbs-up.

‘Why not?’

‘We should meet here, Moira. In Antwerp. It’ll be worth the journey, I promise.’

She thought for a moment, before agreeing. ‘All right. I was planning to stay overnight in Bruges. But we’ll make it Antwerp instead. I’m not sure when I’ll get in. Can I reach you on that number this evening – some time after six?’

‘Yes,’ I said decisively.

‘I’ll call you, then. You will be there, won’t you?’

‘Without fail.’

Van Briel didn’t ask me much about Moira Henchy. I had the impression he’d decided the less he knew about what steps I was taking to find Eldritch the better. He showered and dressed and was gone within the hour, his Porsche growling away along the street. Within another hour, I’d set off for Zonnestralen.

Watery sunlight revealed the faded delicacy of the building, albeit obscured by layers of dust and grime. I stood before the paired front doors of numbers 84 and 86, wondering if anything at all had changed since Eldritch’s time there. Soon enough, I noticed one thing that certainly had. A small brass plaque declared that someone called Wyckx now lived at 86. By implication, only 84 was still a Meridor preserve.

The bell was answered by a plump, round-faced woman of sixty or so, dressed in a floral housecoat. ‘
Bonjour, monsieur
,’ she said, refracted light from the sunburst panel in the door imparting a gleam to her dark eyes that contrasted with the weariness of her features.

‘Good morning. Is Joey Banner in? Or his grandmother, perhaps?’

She said nothing for a moment, but stared at me in growing amazement. ‘
Mon Dieu
,’ she murmured.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘You’re Stephen Swan.’

‘Yes. I am. How did you know?’

‘You look like your uncle when he was your age.’ She shook her head. ‘So like him.’

‘You knew Eldritch?’

‘
Mais oui.
I knew him.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘
Oui, oui.
Come in.’ She stepped back and I entered the light-filled hall. The door closed behind me just as a tram rattled by. The sound was instantly muffled, the present day shut out. I heard a clock ticking, saw heavy-framed family portraits hung between candelabra, smelt camphor and furniture polish, sensed all the years since Isaac Meridor had bought this house compressed into an unchanging moment. Zonnestralen was the end of its own rainbow.

‘I believe my lawyer, Bart van Briel, spoke to Joey yesterday.’

‘Yes. We have heard about Rachel.’ She went on staring at me, as if deeply moved by my resemblance to Eldritch.

‘Can I … see Joey?’

‘Ah, no. He is out. He goes to the Zoo every morning.’

‘The
Zoo
?’

She shrugged. ‘He likes to be with the snakes.’

Pottering off to the zoo after being told your sister was under arrest for murder didn’t strike me as even close to normal behaviour. The housekeeper must have seen how dismayed I was. But it wasn’t her fault, of course. ‘Is Mrs Meridor in?’

‘Yes. She is in. She is always in. But …’ She lowered her voice. ‘Madame Meridor … is very old and … very confused.’

‘She knows about Rachel?’

‘We told her.’ The
we
implied her role in the household went well beyond that of a servant. ‘But she may have … forgotten.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘If you wish. This way, please.’

She led the way into a rear drawing-room. It was thickly curtained, stiflingly heated by a vast, hissing radiator and loaded with enough bric-à-brac to stock a market stall. There the lady of the house awaited me.

Isaac Meridor’s widow was dressed as if she was still in mourning, layered in black and propped up in a brocaded armchair, dozing over a newspaper while a cup of coffee went cold on a table beside her. She was white-haired and hollow-featured, her skin paper-thin and deathly pale, bangles bunched at her wrists, fat-stoned rings trapped on her fingers by swollen knuckles.

The presence of a stranger roused her sharply but shallowly from her reverie. She said something in Dutch that included the name Marie-Louise. The housekeeper replied in French. Mrs Meridor cast a rheumy, unfocused glance at me, then spoke in heavily accented English. ‘You are … Eldritch Swan’s son?’

‘Nephew,’ I corrected her, to no obvious effect.

‘You dare to come here? My husband … would not like this.’

‘I’m here about your granddaughter. Rachel.’

‘The girl? She keeps me awake with her crying. That is why I sleep in the day. That is why … I finish nothing.’ She suddenly noticed her coffee and pointed a shaky forefinger at it. ‘
Koud
, Marie-Louise.
Koud
.’ Then she looked back at me. ‘My husband has Jean-Jacques to look after him. I have only this …’ Words to describe Marie-Louise’s inadequacy failed her. ‘You cannot be here,
meneer
. It is … an insult.’ She directed a volley of Dutch at Marie-Louise, or perhaps the figmental Jean-Jacques. Only her meaning was clear. I was to be shown out. I was to leave. I was
persona non grata
on account of the dreaded name Swan. There were some things she never forgot.

Marie-Louise rolled her eyes at me as we left. Closing the drawing-room door behind us, she signalled for silence with a finger across her lips. She walked down the hall to the front door and opened it, then closed it again, heavily enough to rattle the letterbox. As far as Mrs Meridor was to know, I’d gone. But I hadn’t. And Marie-Louise clearly didn’t want me to.

She opened the narrow door beneath the staircase and beckoned me to follow her down to the basement. I trod softly on the stone steps. We came to a large kitchen, with an equally large scullery beyond, where a washing machine was working away. Marie-Louise moved to the range and set about making coffee. I whispered, ‘Yes,’ when she asked me if I wanted some.

At that she smiled, transformingly, pleasure bursting through drudgery. ‘She can’t hear us now, Stephen.’ My first name seemed to have come to her quite naturally. ‘And she hasn’t been down here for years and years.’

‘She doesn’t seem to have registered what’s happened to Rachel.’

‘
Non
. That is how she is. The past like crystal. The present … a fog. But Madame Banner, Rachel’s mother, will be here soon. She will know what to do. I called her last night.’

‘You? Not Joey?’

‘He and his grandmother, they are a little alike. They … live somewhere else … in their minds.’

‘Where does Joey live?’

‘Vietnam, I think. That is where he got to like snakes.’

‘Rachel didn’t do what the police say she did. You understand that, don’t you, Marie-Louise?’

‘Of course. She wouldn’t kill anyone. Certainly not poor Monsieur Quilligan.’

‘You speak as if you knew him.’

‘But I did. He has visited here several times. And he came again … on Sunday.’

‘
Ardal Quilligan was here? On Sunday?
’

‘Hush.’ She looked up, listening anxiously. ‘She will hear you if you shout.’

‘Sorry.’ The truth was I hadn’t realized I was shouting. ‘But what you said …’

‘
Oui, Oui
. It is strange, I know. And I will tell you about it. First I must take madame her hot coffee for her to let go cold like the one before. Then we will talk.’ She poured the coffee. ‘Then we
must
talk.’

Marie-Louise began with questions about Eldritch, or
Eldrish
, as she pronounced his name. She’d believed, like the Meridor-Banner family, that he’d shared in Cardale’s profit from his fraud and vanished to some sunny clime. When I told her he’d spent the past thirty-six years in an Irish prison, she was incredulous and transparently moved. ‘Ireland? In prison? He would not like to be … locked in.’

‘You knew him well?’ I asked, though the answer was obvious.

‘Oh yes. Very well. When I was young. And he was young.’

‘How long have you worked here?’

‘Since when I was fifteen.’ She smiled. ‘More than forty years. I stayed on through the War, when German officers lived here, and after, when nobody did for a while, except me and Bernard and Ilse, who are both dead now. Madame Meridor came back after Esther married. She had builders to fill in the wall between the two houses. Since then we have lived only on this side. Madame Meridor used to be a strong woman. It is disappointment, I think, that has … made her like she is. The Picasso fraud. The lawsuit. Joey’s … condition. They have worn her down.’

She pressed me to tell her more about Eldritch. As much for her sake as his, I didn’t dwell on the effects of age and imprisonment she’d no doubt have been dismayed by if she’d met him. It was clear she was in some way consoled to know he hadn’t willingly stayed away so long, though whether he’d have returned if he’d been able
to was quite another matter. They’d been more than mere colleagues in the Meridor household. That was obvious. But what it had amounted to, from Eldritch’s point of view, was far from obvious. He hadn’t mentioned her to me. And he hadn’t contacted her since his release.

‘Perhaps he thinks I am dead,’ she said, with pitiful generosity.

I described our efforts to find proof that Desmond Quilligan had forged the Picassos. Marie-Louise was cheered to hear of them, proving as they did to her that Eldritch was trying to do the right thing by the family. I couldn’t find it in myself to explain that he’d only embarked on the exercise in the hope of funding a comfortable dotage on the French Riviera. As for Ardal Quilligan, the discovery that his brother was the forger accounted to her mind for a great deal.

‘He came here, not long after madame returned from New York. He offered to help her, with money, with … whatever she needed. I wasn’t supposed to know, but I … listened to them talking together. He told her Cardale felt sorry for her. Cardale wouldn’t admit stealing the Picassos, but he didn’t want his old friend’s widow to live poorly, so he sent Mr Quilligan, a lawyer, to … do things for her. There was a condition. Madame must never tell the rest of the family. She agreed. Well, of course she agreed. She needed help. The times were hard. Mr Quilligan came every few years to check on her, to … arrange matters for her. I don’t know what, exactly. And madame couldn’t tell you now even if she wanted to. So, she’ll never know Mr Quilligan lied to her. He wasn’t acting for Cardale, was he? He was acting for himself. He was the one with the guilty conscience. And that conscience is what got him killed, I suppose.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘He was a nice man. Polite. Considerate. He always asked me how I was.’

‘And he came here on Sunday?’

‘Yes. He was in the house when I came home from church at about midday. He left soon after. He’d been talking to Joey. It was the first time they’d met. I was surprised to see him. He was …
friendly as usual, but … flustered. In a hurry, I think. Worried … about something.’

‘What had he and Joey been discussing?’

‘Joey said Mr Quilligan was shocked by how bad madame was. She’d understood him during his last visit, some years ago. But now, of course … she didn’t even recognize him. So, maybe he wanted to tell her something, but realized he couldn’t.
Alors
, his visit was for nothing. Joey wouldn’t have asked him many questions. It’s not his way.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘Who killed Mr Quilligan, Stephen?’

‘People who don’t want the truth to get out.’

‘Ah yes.’ Marie-Louise nodded solemnly, as if this confirmed a lesson of her less than idyllic life. ‘There are always such people.’

‘It’s possible Eldritch has the proof Quilligan was carrying.’

Her face lifted. ‘You think so?’

‘You knew him well. He can’t leave Belgium. Where would he hide?’

‘Here. Antwerp. It’s the city he knows.’

‘And where … in Antwerp?’

She chewed her lip for a moment, then said, ‘He could be anywhere. If Eldritch wants to hide, he will be … difficult to find.’

‘Difficult or not, I have to find him.’

She frowned thoughtfully. ‘When did they release him from prison?’

‘January.’

She nodded, satisfied on a point. ‘It wasn’t him, then.’

‘What wasn’t him?’

‘Last autumn, October or November, someone broke into the other house: number eighty-six. The Wyckxes were away. They didn’t find out until they came home. The burglar had forced open a window at the back. He hadn’t taken anything, though. Nothing belonging to the Wyckxes, anyway. But there was soot in one of the grates.’

‘Soot?’

‘I think the burglar took something that was hidden in the chimney, Stephen. From before the Wyckxes’ time.’

‘Who were the previous occupants?’

‘Professor Driessens. A bachelor. He died there.’

‘And before him?’

‘It was all one house.’

‘Well, whoever it was, it can’t have been Eldritch. What did the Wyckxes think?’

‘That maybe the burglar was disturbed and just … went away. And the soot was … because of a bird.’