‘Bloke thinks he’s a god,’ Bobby Maiden said, unlocking the truck.
‘Well, you know,’ climbing in, Grayle hid a small smile, ‘he undoubtedly has — to use Mesmer’s own term — a certain animal magnetism.’
Bobby switched on the lights, pulled away from the parking area into the centre of Cheltenham. ‘I’m not entirely sure about you going to this seance.’
‘Oh, you’re not, huh? The little defenceless female walking into the dark castle?’
‘We don’t know that he hasn’t realized who you really are. That he wasn’t bluffing.’
‘Oh, he wasn’t bluffing, Bobby. Women can tell this kind of thing.’
Smiling into the darkness.
Bobby said nothing.
‘It’s a real shame they won’t allow photographers in, but you can understand that — all those flashes.’
She decided not to bring up the question of whether they should doorstep Seward — she had no idea where he lived, guessed Bobby did but that he’d had enough for tonight.
They headed out of town through sparse traffic.
‘Curious Callard never mentioned Kurt.’
‘Why should she?’
‘No reason, I guess. Unless there’s still something between them.’
‘Blokes try to use her’, Bobby said, ‘in all kinds of ways.’
‘Aw, poor kid,’ Grayle said.
They approached the roundabout in the area known as the Rotunda, where Chatterton Mansions was.
‘You worked it all out yet about the apartment, Bobby?’
What with talking to the removal guys and getting to look around the place, then dashing directly over to Kurt Campbell’s hotel, they hadn’t had much opportunity to discuss what they’d found out at Chatterton Mansions.
‘If it wasn’t even his flat,’ Bobby said, ‘it’s just further proof that Seward was using Barber as a respectable front to get Seffi to do the seance.’
‘We established that. But why not use Barber’s own apartment if it’s in the same building?’
‘Probably because he didn’t want all those people — people like
‘But if Seward was in a position to put the bite on Barber, was Barber in a position to argue over details?’
‘What other reason could there be?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grayle said. ‘Hey, you get a whiff of the dope in that bedroom?’
‘Tart’s boudoir,’ Bobby said. ‘Wardrobe full of handcuffs and rubberwear.’
‘You looked?’
‘I’m guessing, Grayle.’
‘What did those guys call the apartment?’
‘A show flat.’
‘Like, an example of what you could expect if you bought an apartment in the block?’
‘It’s bollocks, isn’t it? But why are they moving the furniture?’
‘Somebody actually bought the place?’
‘One room only?’
‘You’re right,’ Grayle said. ‘That doesn’t add up. It’s like they were getting rid of all the stuff in there on account of it was messed up or something.’
‘Tainted by bad vibes,’ Bobby said.
‘You’re spending too much time with Cindy.’ She leaned back, watching the lights of the town receding in the wing mirror. ‘I guess we’re no further forward, Bobby. We’re just collecting more questions. Maybe some of it’ll hang together with whatever Cindy and Marcus discovered at Overcross.’
When they got back to St Mary’s — around nine p.m., this would be — the wind was up again and a branch had snapped from one of the old trees which clashed like antlers over the mountain road.
The heater in the truck didn’t work. Grayle had on her raincoat, and it was too damn thin.
She thought Kurt Campbell was slick and arrogant and, for all his mastery of the techniques of hypnotism and his knowledge of the history of spiritualism, probably dangerously superficial. She wanted to go to this expensive Victorian seance tomorrow night about as much as she wanted to revisit the place where Ersula’s body had been found.
And there was the problem of Callard. She’d need to get in fast with the Alice D. Thornborough if they came face to face. Be kind of interesting, she supposed, to see how Callard reacted to Kurt’s guest.
For reasons of perversity, Grayle had allowed Bobby to go on thinking she’d found Campbell intriguing, attractive, magnetic, all of that.
They drove through the castle gate. Cindy’s Honda was parked in the yard. She was relieved they’d gotten back.
Then she spotted Cindy himself waiting under the bulkhead light with Malcolm the dog.
Cindy looked bedraggled in his twinset and tweed skirt, truly the maiden aunt fallen on hard times. The truck’s headlights threw his face into hard relief: deep lines and no make-up, the mauve hair blown on end by the wind.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Bobby said.
XLIII
You could see Overcross Castle from a distance of maybe a mile, across countryside which would be lush in summer. Signs told of cider farms and a vineyard a few hundred yards and at least a whole season away. The light-green glaze of new growth on the trees looked like an illusion in the scrabbling wind.
‘I just knew it was gonna be like this.’ Inside the heaterless truck, Grayle rummaged in her bag for her long, woollen scarf.
The house had towers and turrets and battlements and all those other
Billionaires in California had erected mock castles like this, and she’d marvelled at a couple when she was a kid and her father was lecturing out west.
But California was California and didn’t have the weather for it. Jesus, the first day of spring tomorrow, the vernal equinox, and was that
‘Bobby, is that snow?’
‘It’s not volcanic dust,’ Bobby Maiden said. He looked unhappy and unsure about everything.
As Grayle supposed they both were, since Cindy gave them the news about Marcus.
MARCH 20–25
And then a gatehouse. There was a cop on duty behind a barrier. Except, when he came over, Grayle saw he wasn’t a cop, although the uniform was damn close; Bobby thought so too, muttering something about take away the red armband and you could have him for impersonation. Bobby wound down the window and Grayle handed him the press passes she’d been given by Francine, Kurt Campbell’s haughty PA.
‘We also have a stall,’ she told the almost-cop, leaning across from the passenger side. ‘Stall thirty- eight?’
‘Hang on a moment.’ He studied the passes before pushing them back. He was a big young guy with an
