The Saint Zita Society (10 page)

M
ontserrat awoke to a sense of foreboding that had nothing to do with its being 5 November. It was hard to say what it was to do with for the feeling was fairly familiar and even she had to admit that mostly it meant nothing. Perhaps
it referred only to its being Friday, one of the days Zinnia didn’t come till the afternoon and she was supposed to prepare and carry up Lucy’s breakfast. She lay in bed half an hour longer, heard Beacon bring the Audi round to the front door and Mr Still’s voice saying good morning to him. Montserrat thought Mr Still was probably the only person left in London to say good morning and not hi or how are you.

The starfruit yogurt and plate of ruby grapefruit (covered in cling film) had been left ready in the fridge, the single slice of wholegrain bread was actually in the toaster waiting to be toasted and the coffee machine had only to be switched on. The tray was set with cutlery and pot of blueberry conserve – Lucy ate conserve, not jam – and Montserrat had only to wait five minutes. She poured herself the first cup of coffee, then set off with the tray.

Lucy was sitting up in bed, swathed in a lace shawl. ‘I thought you’d forgotten me.’

In no mood to be rebuked, Montserrat said, ‘Your clock is five minutes fast.’

Her eyes alighted on something that shouldn’t have been on Lucy’s dressing table: Mr Still’s bunch of keys. Standing between Lucy and the dressing table, Montserrat scooped up the keys and put them in the pocket of her trousers. She couldn’t have said why, only that it seemed safer.

‘I’m expecting Rad tonight.’ When Lucy gave this notification, sometimes twice a week, sometimes only once, she put on a sexy drawl and even slightly changed her posture, reclining and raising one arm and letting the hand drop negligently. ‘About seven. I thought we might have champers. Would you like to bring up a bottle from the fridge at six thirty-ish?’

Considering the gesture very unsophisticated, Montserrat said she would. There was no reason why the able-bodied
Lucy, toned by frequent jogging and gym visits, shouldn’t have fetched the champage herself but she never did anything. Once Montserrat had seen her drop a pound coin on the floor and ask Zinnia to pick it up for her. She went back to the basement with a second cup of coffee, avoiding the loose banister. Rabia’s cousin Mohammed was coming tomorrow to fix it. Montserrat supposed she would be expected to stay in all day to let him in. Unless, maybe, she could persuade Rabia to do that …

First there was the problem of Mr Still’s keys. If she did nothing, Beacon would bring Mr Still home at between ten and ten thirty and Mr Still would ring the front doorbell. Very likely but not inevitably. He was usually late on a Friday except when the family was going down to Gallowmill Hall next day. Were they? She didn’t know. No one had said but they didn’t always say. Montserrat decided to call Beacon and find out if Mr Still had mentioned forgetting his keys. The difficulty was that Beacon was such a moralistic pig of a man, like a vicar or something. She had once asked him on a day Rad was coming if he would let her know when Mr Still was leaving his office and he had asked, very suspiciously, what business it was of hers.

‘A wife should be at home waiting for her husband to return from breadwinning.’

‘That’s a bit outdated, isn’t it?’

‘If everyone behaved themselves like what you call outdated,’ said Beacon, ‘the world would be a better place.’

Nevertheless, she tried again.

‘Mr Still’s keys are his own business.’

‘I was only trying to be helpful,’ said Montserrat.

‘The best help you can give is to open Mr Still’s front door when he rings
his
bell. If he’s forgotten
his
keys which I personally doubt.’

Lunch in a pub with Ciaran, which ended in a row because Montserrat told him he couldn’t come that evening, was followed by a walk round the shops in Sloane Street with Rabia and Thomas and a visit to Harrods to buy Thomas a tracksuit.

‘Does she give you an American Express card?’

‘Just to buy clothes for Thomas and pay for his haircuts.’

‘I expect you buy bits for yourself as well, don’t you? She’d never notice.’

‘She trusts me,’ said Rabia, shocked. ‘I would never do that.’

‘Pity Beacon’s married. You and him were made for each other.’

They bought Thomas a pale blue fleecy tracksuit with a white rabbit appliquéd on the breast pocket.

‘Could you be at home to let your cousin in when he comes tomorrow?’

‘If you like,’ said Rabia. ‘A chat with Mohammed would be good. He’s my favourite cousin. I shall introduce him to Thomas, he loves children.’

As if the child were her own, thought Montserrat.

‘Y
ou won’t mind,’ said June, ‘if Her Highness and me watch our recording of
Avalon Clinic
, series one, episode one, while you’re here, will you?’

Rad made a face, pretending to be shy, but June knew he was secretly delighted. She looked critically at him, wondering why women found men with long hair attractive. Her own tastes in that area had been fixed in the 1950s when a man would only have worn his hair in a ponytail if he had been acting in a film about the French Revolution. She operated the remote with swift skill in a way the Princess had never learned, and the
Avalon
’s nationwide introductory music blasted into the room, vying with the fireworks which were
now well under way. Both women were rather deaf. The Princess sighed her appreciation as handsome Rad in his white coat, bristling with stethoscopes, a sphygmomanometer dangling from one hand, strode into the room. The real live Rad was sitting next to her on the sofa. She reached for his real live hand and squeezed it.

‘Let’s have a bottle of TDTINW,’ she said to June.

June recognised these initial letters as The Drink That Is Never Wrong and fetched a bottle of champagne, thus missing a vital part of the plot. Rad wasn’t going to open it, not he, so he sat tight, periodically squeezing the Princess’s hand in turn, while June filled the glasses.

‘Going to see Montserrat, are you?’

She asked because she knew that for some reason he disliked being asked. It was such a comedown for him after that model and that socialite divorcee.

‘Not tonight,’ he said.

June couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not. The commercial break she didn’t know how to cut out of the recording came to an end and they all watched till it finished just before seven.

‘Have another one before you go,’ said the Princess.

Rad said he wouldn’t but gave her a kiss which was more than he was inclined to do to June. Neither woman watched him go. His association with Montserrat, if indeed it existed, lacked glamour. Next door in the area of number 8 Miss Grieves had come out of the basement door to shoo the urban fox away. A chicken carcass in its jaws, it scooted up the steps with Miss Grieves in pursuit. Not hot pursuit but a cold, slower variety, a clumsy plodding which succeeded in getting to the top in the end, by which time the fox and the chicken had disappeared. A brilliant flare burst in the front garden of number 5, illuminating the whole front as well as the area of
number 7. The fox was revealed tucking into the chicken in the front garden and Rad Sothern in his hidey-hole, just in fact stepping out of it, as Montserrat opened the basement door. Miss Grieves turned away and lumbered back down the stairs.

Montserrat had also run downstairs, the basement stairs, avoiding the faulty banister. She let Rad in and said a not very cordial ‘Hi’. Having his hair tied back like that made his face look very thin. He wasn’t as tall as Ciaran and his front teeth needed crowning. That must be why he smiled so seldom in his role as Mr Fortescue. She stepped back for him to pass along the passage.

‘Look out for the loose banister,’ she said.

He took no notice, cursed when it wobbled in his hand. She didn’t knock on Lucy’s door but opened it, pushed Rad inside and then ran upstairs to Rabia. Hero and Matilda had eaten their dinner in the nursery kitchen and were now playing computer games in their shared bedroom. Having completely changed his sleeping habits as small children will, Thomas was fast asleep and Rabia was ironing the white blouses and navy-blue pleated skirts the girls would wear for school on Monday.

‘Why aren’t they out at someone’s bonfire party?’

‘Mr Still says it’s dangerous,’ said Rabia.

‘Lucy’s got company this evening,’ said Montserrat, ‘so keep the girls up here, will you?’

Rabia said she didn’t want to hear and put her fingers in her ears.

T
he fireworks reached a zenith of explosive noise at about eight. The flashes of light, zigzags and branches, the pyrotechnic displays of feathers and banners and fountains, red, white, emerald green and sapphire blue, achieved their
maximum brilliance on the far side of the river half an hour later and then gradually began to subside. By nine, when Beacon drew up in the Audi outside number 7 Hexam Place, the occasional rocket still split the sky but most of the celebrations were over, to begin again the following night with equal force.

Beacon got out of the car to open the nearside rear door for Mr Still. It was his habit to stand there courteously until his employer had let himself in by the front door. Mr Still mounted the first four steps before he started feeling in his pockets. A puzzled frown on his face, he came down the steps again, said, ‘I didn’t drop my keys on the back seat, did I, Beacon?’

‘Can’t see them, sir. Let me look.’

Preston Still also looked. No keys.

‘Montserrat will be there to let you in, sir.’

‘No, no, not necessary. I’ve got my key to the area gate and the one to the basement door.’

The gate in the area railings was never locked, as far as Beacon knew. He watched Mr Still descend the stairs, cast his eyes up to watch a rocket explode above the roof of number 4 and caught sight of Montserrat’s face at a window on the ground floor. Time to go home, with luck getting there just as
Avalon Clinic
started.

From the window it was impossible for anyone to see more than the six lowest steps. Montserrat could no longer see Mr Still but she guessed that he must be climbing the remaining stairs to the front door where he would ring the bell. He was earlier than she expected and she had no time to waste. She called Lucy on her mobile, then ran up to the first floor where Rad Sothern was just coming out of Lucy’s room. ‘He’s on the doorstep,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll ring the bell any minute.’

‘Oh God.’

‘It’ll be OK. Come with me and you can wait in my flat while I let him in.’

This was never to happen but a lot of others things did. Montserrat led Rad down the staircase from the first floor and along the passage towards the basement stairs. A light was on in the passage but not at the foot of the stairs. As Rad with Montserrat behind him was within a yard or so, Preston Still appeared at the top of the basement stairs, first his head, then his chest, the whole of him quite rapidly emerging. Montserrat had never before noticed what a big man he was, very tall, broad and heavy. She gave a sort of hoarse gasp. Rad said, ‘Oh God,’ for the second time and stopped.

Mr Still advanced towards him, said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ and then, ‘I’ve seen you before.’

Considering that the whole country had seen Rad before, that half of them were watching him on their screens at that moment, it was a remark that meant very little. Montserrat could see it had a different meaning for Preston Still who was seldom at home in time to watch television. ‘At the Princess’s party,’ he said, ‘making unwelcome advances to my wife.’

It apparently dawned on him before the words were out that the advances had been anything but unwelcome, and as Rad tried to push past him and reach the stairs, he seized him from behind, gripping him by the shoulders. Things happened fast after that. Montserrat would never have believed Preston Still capable of such athletic feats. He slammed his foot into the small of Rad’s back and, lurching forward with a grunt, shoved with all his force. It was a kicking downstairs, the classic violent way of expelling a man from a house.

Rad might have slithered forward, bumping down the stairs, if he hadn’t clutched at the faulty banister. It came away in his hand with a grinding crunch of splintered wood and he toppled over, shouting out, plunging head first down the dark well of the staircase to land on his head on the tiled floor. It was like a dive into water that wasn’t there. The crash the impact made was drowned by the noisiest explosion of the evening, a firework let off in Eaton Square.

T
he fireworks were over and no sound came from the children’s rooms on the second floor. It seemed from her silence that Lucy had heard nothing. Montserrat stood listening to that silence before following Preston Still down the stairs. Rad Sothern’s head lay in a pool of blood that was spreading across the black-and-white tiles. If anyone had told Montserrat that she would react to such a scene as this not with horror and fear but with mounting excitement she would not have believed them. But so it was. Whatever happened next, she wanted to be involved in it. Everything would come out now, Lucy’s affair with a TV personality, a celebrity, the part she, Montserrat, played and was forced into in order to keep her job and her accommodation, Preston Still, insurance magnate in the City, millionaire, driven to madness by his wife’s infidelity …

He was kneeling by Rad. He said in a small thin voice, quite unlike his own, ‘I think he’s dead.’

‘He can’t be,’ she said, and again. ‘He can’t be.’

‘He’s not breathing, he’s got no pulse.’

In creating her scenario, she hadn’t thought for moment Rad Sothern could be dead. People don’t die from falling downstairs. The excitement was still there but mixed now with awe. ‘What shall we do?’

‘Get the police, of course.’

She said inconsequentially, ‘He doesn’t look very heavy.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘We could wrap him up in something and pull him into my flat. We can’t leave him here.’

‘My God,’ said Preston Still, ‘I can’t believe he’s dead. I feel as if I’m asleep, I’m going to wake up in a minute.’