‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m still trying to make sense of it. Paula has two step-sisters, Nadia and Verity, and one step-brother, Robert. Also one half-sister, Karen.’
‘Just so. That is, if the scuttlebutt is right.’
‘Scuttlebutt?’
‘You’re hopeless.’ She got up and walked over to where I was sitting. She took the notebook and pen from me and sketched in a family tree, pairing Phillip Wilberforce up with his wives. She drew a straight line to Paula and a wavy one to Karen. ‘It was said by certain malicious tongues that Phillip was the father of Karen although Selina was married to someone else at the time. Not a long marriage, I might add. Possibly of convenience, hmm?’
‘Go on.’
Roberta dropped the notebook into my lap and went back to her chair. ‘Do you know, darling,’ she said. ‘I get the distinct feeling that you’ve lost the thread. I thought you wanted all the goss. And there’s lots more, believe me. Phillip is a most interesting man. Have you noticed how interesting people tend to attract interesting people around them? Natural, I suppose.’
‘Roberta’s notoriously weak head has been the saving of her face, figure and brain cells. She was towards the bottom of a single stiffish gin and she was well away. She waved her glass jauntily. ‘You, for example. How’s the delicious Helen Broadway?’
The name, with all the old pleasurable and painful associations it carried, jerked me out of my daze. ‘I haven’t seen her for a couple of years.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Who is it now?’
‘A policewoman.’
‘Cliff, I’m disappointed. But I must meet her. Does she have flat feet and a flat chest?’ Roberta giggled and pushed out her own shapely, high-slung bosom.
I felt myself responding to what Roberta was putting out-a highly-charged essence of need and desire. We had never touched except in a stylised, play-acting kind of way-she the gushing socialite; me, the strong, silent pleb. I dropped my notebook and stood. She stretched in the leather chair, a slim, lithe figure. Her black trousers were tight across her flat belly and crotch. I bent over her and she hooked an arm up around my neck. We kissed and I could taste the gin and smell her perfume and the other womanly smells that are a part of it. Her hot tongue pushed into my mouth. I sucked on it and closed my hand around the hard mound of her right breast. She thrust up at me, giving me her mouth and her breast and wanting me to take everything else. I wanted to take it.
I pulled her to her feet. One of her shoes fell off and she propped up awkwardly balanced, pressing into me. I was gasping for breath and so was she. We broke the kiss and our hands moved urgently. Then she brought her hands down sharply in fists, knocking my hands away from her body. She stepped back.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Roberta. I…’
‘We’re friends.’
I reached for her. ‘We can still be friends.’
The banality of what I said cut through the lust and confusion. We both laughed. I struggled to recapture the moment. I got close to her and cupped my hands around her firm buttocks, pulling her towards me. She was rigid with resistance. Her legs were locked together. I released her and moved back.
‘Cliff, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said. I cleared my throat, fighting to get out of the rutting mood, fighting off disappointment and anger. ‘You’re probably right.’
She flopped down into her seat. She looked as exhausted as I felt. ‘Did you ever go to bed with that lodger of yours, Hildegarde?’
‘No.’
‘Isn’t she still a friend?’
‘She’s married to Frank Parker. They have a son named Cliff.’
We sat in our respective chairs, both silent. A snatch of doggerel ran through my head:
Higamons bogamotis, women are monogamous,
Hogamons, bigamous, men are polygamous
Right, I thought. Women are smarter. Like a lot of men, maybe most, I’d dreamed of attaining a perfect polygamy, a different woman for different situations and moods. Experience had taught me that it was a difficult condition to organise and an impossible one to sustain. Most of the women I’d had anything to do with seemed to know that instinctively. Even Helen Broadway, who’d let it run to the sixth tackle, had known in her heart that it couldn’t work.
‘Cliff?’
I’d left her adrift in her own thoughts, memories and regrets. I forced a grin and picked up my notebook. ‘Tell me everything you can about Paula Wilberforce.’
Roberta’s finely sculptured face lost its bruised look and its tension. ‘Dogs,’ she said. ‘Mad about dogs. Can’t understand it myself, darling. I was terribly keen on horses.’
13
The woman who opened the door of Phillip Wilberforce’s house was about the same age as Roberta Landy-Drake, but she hadn’t made a career out of looking younger. She was of medium height and plump. She wore her grey hair short and very little make-up. Her dress was a plain blue worn with a heavy white cardigan. A pair of spectacles hung on a light cord around her neck. She looked intelligent and capable.
‘My name’s Hardy,’ I said.
‘I’m Pamela Darcy. Please come in, Mr Hardy. He’s expecting you.’
That got us off on the right foot as far as I was concerned. I was relieved that she hadn’t said, ‘Sir Phillip…’ the way some people working for titled employers do when they want some of the gilt to rub off on them.
‘How is he, Mrs Darcy?’
‘Not strong, but fighting. He’s got a touch of lung trouble which is worrying at his age. I’d ask you not to tire him and so on, but I know it’d be a waste of time.’
We were climbing the stairs. ‘How’s that?’ I said.
‘He’ll do exactly as he pleases.’
We stopped outside the master bedroom. Mrs Darcy knocked firmly and walked straight in. I got the impression that an interesting battle of two strong wills was going on here. The old man was sitting up in the big bed propped on a heap of pillows. His tan had faded to a sallowness and his hair lay flat on his skull. He looked like an old China hand who’d spent so long in the east he’d taken on an oriental appearance. This was emphasised by the embroidered silk dressing-gown he wore over a black pyjama top. Gold-framed half-glasses balanced on his nose.
‘A decent pause before entering is customary, Mrs Darcy,’ Wilberforce growled. ‘What if I’d been doing something you wouldn’t like to see?’
‘It’s hardly appropriate for you to invoke what is customary,’ Mrs Darcy said. ‘Have you taken your medicine?’
‘Damn you, yes.’
‘Damn you, too. Would you like a drink, Mr Hardy?’
‘Of course he would,’ Wilberforce said. ‘And get one for me while you’re at it. Scotch, Hardy?’
‘That’d be fine.’
I sat down in a chair that, as I recalled, had served for Wilberforce to throw clothes over. Now the room was tidy but not fussy. A coat hung on the back of the door, there were books and magazines on the bed and bedside table and the several bottles of pills, glass and water jug hadn’t been neatly arranged.
Wilberforce snorted as he saw me taking in the details. ‘She wanted to put flowers in here but I wouldn’t allow it. I told her flowers remind me of death.’
‘I prefer them outside, myself,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, how’s she treating you?’
