The waterfall, p.24
The Waterfall, page 24
It was as wonderful a day as ever. And the picnic was just as lovely, with fresh bread and cheese dipped in honey. Erwan had a glint in his eye all the while, and it wasn’t long before I worked out why. My golly, the French smooch like no one else.
Afterwards, he popped into a shop to buy us some cool drinks, and I hunted through my purse for something to tie my hair back. I couldn’t find anything, so opened the glove compartment and felt about. Well, dear reader, I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did find something else. A lipstick in deep red. And I had seen that shade before, on the mouth of Deliah Grieves.
Oh, Pips, I told myself. Not again. You are a fathead.
So I sadly hauled myself out and stared after him. Then I opened the bonnet, drained out all the coolant and advanced the ignition timing, so that the next time Erwan gunned the motor to impress a girl, there would be an almighty bang and no more engine.
Buck up, old girl, I said to myself as I walked home. Mr Right’s out there somewhere. You only need to bump into him once.
Chapter 13
Honora took one look at me as I walked in.
‘Ah, you realized,’ she said, a little quieter than usual.
‘Yes.’ I sighed.
‘The lipstick?’
‘You knew about that? I just found it in the glove box.’
‘Glove box? No, I saw it on his shirt. He had washed it, but the stain was obvious.’
‘You could have told me.’
‘I did my best to keep you away from him. And I’ve always tried to tell you, Pips: it’s better to see for oneself than have others tell us what they see. Now, come on, there’s no point crying over spilt milk. We need to speak to Aldrich.’
‘To Aldrich?’
‘Well, how else are we going to get his side of the story?’
I didn’t even ask which story we were getting his side of.
We sauntered out and took Aldrich’s motor launch to the little town at the north end of the island. We found him in the tiny café where he’d had his thick coffee the first day we’d arrived.
‘However did you know I’d be here?’ he asked, with a little jammy pastry in his hand.
‘We have your boat, so you can’t have left the Lido. And when we jumped off the vaporetto that first day, you were here looking utterly in your element. And the café owner called you “Signor Batley”. So I presumed this is your usual haunt when you want to get away from Penelope.’
He looked cheekily sheepish. ‘Other end of the island entirely.’ And he dipped his pastry in his coffee. ‘She says my waistline is expanding. Well, it is, and I don’t care!’
‘A blood feud.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Penelope said that in Italy, if there’s a dispute between two parties, it’s either blood money or a blood feud. Was that what happened when the Glenns bought the house you had set your hearts on?’
‘Good Lord, no! Are you suggesting—’
‘I never suggest. If I want to suggest, I come out and say it.’ She did, that was true. ‘Now, what happened with the house? The Glenns offered more money?’
That sheepish look again. ‘Not exactly. It was… Look, will any of this get back to Penelope?’
‘Not a word unless it is a criminal matter. Then things are out of my hands.’
‘Oh, no, no, no. Not a criminal matter. It’s just that… well, I didn’t want to live there. Did you know it was a plague island in the sixteenth century? The Black Death. Whoever wants to live among those ghosts? But Penelope was set on it. Quite set on it.’ He looked to the left and right. ‘So I quietly told the lawyers that we’d changed our minds and didn’t want it after all. William Glenn swooped in, and I informed Penelope that he must have outbid us. Now everyone’s happy.’ He plopped the pastry in his mouth and winked at me. I had to laugh. Honora rolled her eyes in that way that you can hear.
* * *
‘We have two more calls to make,’ she said as she led me back to the motor launch.
‘Where to?’ I asked with a bit of a sigh.
‘First, to the main island.’
Well, any excuse to pop over and mingle with all those hotsy-totsy young things parading around. So it wasn’t long before I was opening up the throttle to send us flying between gondolas and a big ocean liner with people lining the rail and taking photographs.
‘Riva degli Schiavoni!’ Honora yelled at a surprised gondolier close to St Mark’s Square. Poor darling didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Riva degli Schiavoni! Where?’ she tried again, miming looking about her. He pointed to the southern side of the island. So off we tootled, up a couple of small canals, docking outside an old palazzo with a sign that read Questura di Venezia. It was obviously the main police station, because there were cop launches coming and going. Honora marched us in and insisted on seeing Commissario Ricci.
A minute later, the Commissario came out to meet us, carrying a glass of steaming coffee. I could see him sigh inwardly when he saw who was asking for him.
‘Have you identified the woman who stabbed Dr Wetherby?’ she barked at him across the reception desk.
‘Not yet.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me one bit. Consider Wetherby’s morphine. The morphine, Sergeant!’ And with that, she did an about-turn and marched away.
‘Commissario,’ he muttered.
‘What’s next?’ I asked as we jumped into the motor launch.
‘That book. We know Fred could have easily picked up a copy in a number of shops, so what was special about the one he stole? We need to find that copy. So we’re heading over to the Glenns’ island, Lazzaretto Vecchio.’
* * *
A few minutes later, we were back skipping over the waves in Aldrich’s boat towards the lump of rock in the lagoon that held the Glenns’ house.
It was an attractive white modern building, sprawling a bit here and there, with big expanses of steel-framed windows. We tied up on a little jetty and climbed a few stone steps to the house. William Glenn came out to meet us. He danced about a bit in the funny nervous way he had.
‘I’m sorry, was I expecting you?’ he asked. ‘Only I’ve been a bit distracted lately.’
‘Of course you have, Mr Glenn,’ I said. ‘You’ve been through a lot.’
‘Yes. It’s been… Oh,’ he said, losing his train of thought. ‘Did you want something?’
‘We would like to see Fred’s room,’ Honora said. ‘There’s something of his that we are looking for, and it could be very important.’
‘In his room? I don’t know.’ He gazed back at the house. ‘It’s his room. It’s not mine.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it is. But we must look into it. In order to find out the truth. About everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘There’s a lot here that doesn’t meet the eye. I intend to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Oh, I see.’ His hands wrapped around each other. ‘Then yes, come in.’
He led us in. It was very modern and sleek inside, like a motor showroom. Glenn showed us to Fred’s room but didn’t enter.
‘Mr Glenn, we need to take a look around. You might prefer to leave us to it.’
He looked unhappy for a moment, his feet tapping on the parquet floor. Then he wandered away, back downstairs. ‘Right, get everything out of there for a start,’ Honora said, pointing to a round black desk.
I did as I was told. There wasn’t much there. A cheque book, a few keepsakes, a notebook (unused) and stationery. She looked elsewhere as I hunted.
‘Well, that wasn’t hard,’ she said with triumph, holding up the book that we had been looking for. ‘Hidden behind the wardrobe.’ She flicked through it a bit, then sat thoughtfully for a while. ‘Oho, yes, I see. Well now, isn’t that a thing?’
‘Honora?’
‘Not yet, Pips. But I’ll tell you one thing: that idea of Penelope’s that it all had something to do with characters in the book being based on real people was poppycock from beginning to end. Now, off we trot.’ We found Mr Glenn outside, seemingly unsure if he was allowed in his own house, gazing at a clump of low trees fifty-odd yards away. ‘Thank you, Mr Glenn. We have what we need.’ She shaded her eyes, gazing where he had been looking. Among the trees was a row of three stone tablets on the ground. Honora lowered her voice. ‘Is that where your wife and servants are buried?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice cracking a little.
‘Six years ago, you said. And at Christmas, too. So very, very cruel.’ He bit his lower lip. ‘I am sorry. Would you be so good as to come to Villa Batley tonight at seven? I think we would all benefit from your presence.’
‘If you wish.’
Honora was quiet as we climbed into the little launch. ‘History is full of cruel echoes, isn’t it?’ she said eventually.
‘Is it?’
‘Yes, it is. Just look at how William Glenn’s island was a quarantine site for the Plague, and a modern pestilence took his wife from him. So very cruel, history.’
Chapter 14
Seven o’clock in the drawing room at Villa Batley, and everyone had arrived. Aldrich and Penelope were in evening dress handing out cocktails, enjoying themselves; Gabriel and Alice Wetherby were on the sofa – him looking bored, her looking nervy. Their father, Dr Wetherby, newly discharged from hospital, was in an upright chair. He walked stiffly, but otherwise he was recovering well. William Glenn was fidgeting, of course, looking first at us, then at the bookshelves – those that his son had ransacked – then out of the window in a mad sort of dance routine. Deliah Grieves had sat herself at the back of the room – so she could watch us all like a hawk, if you ask me. Commissario Ricci, who had turned up and not said a word, was irritably checking his watch, though his constable beside the door looked a bit more intrigued.
In the centre of it all, there was a little lectern, the type you would get in school so the schoolmaster could read to you from some dry old text. Only this one had a book that we all suddenly cared about a good deal: the copy of The Waterfall that Fred had stolen from Penelope and Aldrich and stashed in his room. Everyone had been instructed not to touch the book: it was to be left looming over them like the bally Sword of Damocles.
‘I expected to be here on holiday,’ Honora said, striding into the room from the hallway. ‘I expected Venice to be a serene location. Historical. Cultured.’
‘I have work to do.’ It was Deliah Grieves.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that you can stand around gossiping like this, but I’ve got work to do. The monthly accounts need balancing.’
‘Oh, Miss Grieves, the accounts will be balanced tonight. You mark my words.’ And Honora allowed herself a little smile. She doesn’t often do that. Only when she’s very pleased with what she has said.
‘Honora, really, I’m on tenterhooks,’ Penelope said, actually raising her hand like she was in class. ‘Could we…’
‘For most of us, the whole affair began the night of the party at Dr Wetherby’s,’ Honora continued, ignoring her. ‘A fire, started deliberately so that a thief could break into the doctor’s safe. Which was made rather easy by the fact that he’d left the key in his desk.’
‘I’m a fool for it,’ Dr Wetherby said.
‘Yes. And the fact that the thief was your junior partner in the practice soon became evident. What was it that he was after so urgently and secretly? What couldn’t he wait, even until the next day, to procure?’
‘Drugs?’ Penelope volunteered.
‘But there weren’t any in there. Were there, Miss Grieves?’
‘They’re locked in the dispensary,’ she confirmed.
‘Which often leaves you high and dry, doesn’t it, Gabriel?’
‘What?’ he said, looking shocked. Then his face melted back into nonchalance. ‘Oh, if you will. Yes, I need certain chemicals to keep going these days. Nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t hurt anyone but myself.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Honora replied.
‘What do you mean by—’
‘And then, of course, Fred was tragically killed, his body found in his boat. Such a fine-looking young man and a faithful lover, wasn’t he, Alice?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And yet, you broke off your engagement because you’d met someone else. That’s what you told Pips?’
‘Yes, I met someone else.’
‘You’re lying.’
Gabriel stood up. ‘Don’t bully her at this time. She has a right—’
‘Oh, sit down,’ Honora snapped at him. He looked to Alice, and she gently pulled him back into his seat. ‘There was no one else. There never has been. You made that up to disguise the real reason that you ended it, didn’t you?’
Her eyes became the size of saucers. ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied. ‘I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone.’
‘No, you couldn’t, could you? Because you never wanted to end things, you had to. Something had come between you and Fred. Something quite monstrous.’
Alice turned and buried her face in her brother’s shoulder. ‘Get on with it!’ he ordered Honora. ‘This is causing her pain, and I think you’re enjoying it.’
‘I am enjoying nothing of this.’
‘Neither am I now,’ Penelope muttered.
‘No? Penelope, you and Aldrich had – what was it you called it, a blood feud? – with the Glenn family, all over ownership of their island home, which you thought was rightfully yours.’
‘Oh, now,’ Aldrich yelped out. ‘Come, come!’
‘A “blighter”, you called William Glenn, didn’t you?’
‘In the heat of the moment! That’s all.’
‘The heat of the moment. That is true. Though a lot can happen in the heat of the moment. But it is his son’s death we are here to examine, not his.’ Aldrich settled down, though Penelope looked shaken. ‘Gabriel, I can assure you that I am not enjoying causing anyone pain. Because this whole affair has been one unfortunate victim after another.’ She paused. ‘And Fred wasn’t the first.’
‘Wasn’t the first?’ Glenn asked, confusion written all over his face. ‘Fred wasn’t the first?’
I could see the confusion spreading. And I didn’t understand, either. There had been another victim that we hadn’t known about?
‘The first, Mr Glenn, was your wife.’ At that, Alice sobbed hard. ‘Isn’t that right, Alice?’
The girl struggled to control herself but managed to whisper an answer. ‘Yes.’
‘Dorothy?’ Glenn stood, seemingly unable to understand anything around him.
‘The reason that Alice broke things off with Fred was that she knew the secret behind your wife’s – his mother’s – death.’
‘Tell me,’ Glenn said, amazed.
‘But you couldn’t tell him, could you?’ Honora continued to Alice.
‘No. No.’ The poor girl was being tortured, but I didn’t understand how.
‘Better to end things entirely than live with a man, a man you loved, but keep such a terrible secret from him.’
‘What secret? What happened?’ Glenn insisted.
‘Your wife died in a local outbreak of typhoid, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes. Dorothy, our cook and our gardener.’
‘In a sense, though you may not feel it, it was lucky that you live so remotely. The quarantine was easy – after all, your island had functioned that way during the Plague.’
‘I suppose so. Matthew arranged for food to be sent over.’
‘That’s right, I did,’ Dr Wetherby confirmed.
‘But you had to bury those poor people yourself. You spent Christmas of 1925 digging graves for your beloved wife and your two servants.’
Glenn went to the window, looked out and wiped his hands over the top of his head. ‘It was horrible. Horrible.’
‘But you yourself survived, despite being exposed to it. Because typhoid doesn’t affect everyone. Some people are naturally immune, some are carriers but have only mild symptoms. Is that correct, Dr Wetherby?’
‘Yes, quite correct,’ he confirmed, watching her hard.
‘It was never established how your wife came to be infected at Christmas 1925, was it, Mr Glenn?’
‘Oh, what did it matter? She was dead,’ he replied, throwing up his hands.
‘Yes, of course.’ Honora went to the lectern and picked up the copy of the book that we had found in Fred’s room. The Waterfall. ‘A story within a story. Is there a term for that sort of book?’
‘The term is mise en abyme,’ Dr Wetherby said.
‘Mise en abyme. And what does it mean?’
‘It means “placed in the abyss.” ’
‘Placed in the abyss. An abyss of stories. Yes, that seems appropriate. There’s a lot about disease in this book of yours, too.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘This book. This little book. All this tragedy flowed from the existence of this book.’
‘What? How?’ Dr Wetherby asked.
‘Yes, how?’ Commissario Ricci added, annoyed. ‘I read it from cover to cover. Every word. Nothing in it I could see.’
‘No, you didn’t read every word. You read every printed word,’ said Honora. ‘The secret is in those that weren’t printed. The secret is in those that were written in this single copy by hand.’
And she opened the cover of the book to show the first page, with an inscription written by Dr Matthew Wetherby.
To Penelope and Aldrich, for your years of friendship.
Matthew Wetherby, 10 December 1925
‘Oh God,’ said Aldrich, standing up. His glass fell from his fingers. It hit the marble floor and broke into a thousand bits. He stared at the doctor.
‘What is it?’ Penelope said, staring at him.
‘He understands,’ Honora told her.
‘Understands what?’
‘At the party, you said Dr Wetherby signed this book to you when he came over to your house to treat you for a bout of gastric illness, what you called “Delhi Belly”, after you had come back from a trip to India.’
‘Oh!’ she gasped. It was dawning on her too.
