St. Just barely managed to hide his shock. Fear was drawing a blank, but carefully wrote down the name.
“Yes, I’ve heard of Dr. Crippen, as well. Thank you. Do you know, the others didn’t actually mention anything about that.”
“Not surprising. They know it would antagonize the old man. Lillian especially will be wondering if she’s even in the picture any more, but she won’t want to scuttle her chances.”
“I see. We’ll certainly be following up on that train of thought. But what possible motive could Violet have to kill Ruthven?”
“Do deranged killers need a motive?”
“She struck me as anything but deranged,” said St. Just mildly. “However, to answer your question, they do, without exception, have a motive, these deranged killers. It’s just that it’s not a motive that makes sense to normal people.”
“I can understand why you would look to Ruthven’s near and dear for a motive,” said Albert. “But I can tell you this much: My sister is incapable of this. Absolutely. So am I. My father-I can’t see him having the physical strength. And George doesn’t have the gumption. You’ll need to look elsewhere than the immediate family.”
“Thank you, Sir. We’ll certainly keep that in mind. How did you come to be the one to find the body?”
“I went down to the cellar in the small hours to get a drink.”
“There must have been an easier way to get a drink in this house.”
“Not without provoking comment on how much I drink in general, Inspector. Besides, I wanted a particular kind of brandy.
“I see. You saw no one there, or on your way there?”
“Not a soul. Except… I did think I saw a door closing into the servant’s stairs. I can’t be sure…”
They talked for some minutes more, but Albert did little more than reiterate that no one could possibly have killed Ruthven, while it was patently obvious someone had. At last, St. Just gave Albert the usual warnings of staying within easy reach, to which Albert acquiesced with surprising ease-enthusiasm, even.
“Well, Sergeant, what have we got?”
“Part of the truth, as usual.”
“Yes, as usual. They’re all scared, that’s obvious. But of what?”
“I would venture to say, Sir, that it’s a case of ‘all hands to the pumps’ in the current crisis. That Albert doesn’t want us looking too closely at his sister as a suspect, that’s for certain. He would prefer that we take a close look at Violet. Or one of these supposed mistresses of Ruthven’s.”
“We’ll do both-all.”
Sergeant Fear looked encouragingly at his superior. The sheer physicality of the man should have had witnesses quailing, so Fear had always thought. Instead, it was comforting-walking reassurance that the great British public was safe in his large, capable hands. While St. Just kept some arrows in his quiver for special occasions, overall his demeanor was genial, disarming, and entirely effective in getting witnesses to say more than they intended.
Fear had never known him to fail. Still, it seemed to him the more questions they had asked, the more the motives became blurred. And all of them, especially that actor fellow, he was sure, were keeping something back.
He was about to ask about Violet when his mobile erupted again. Maybe, thought Fear, his wife could talk Emma into reprogramming it back to the way it was. Or at least talk her into helping him find the volume control.
Albert had once been in a play where he carried the part of a drunken polo-playing prat who lied to the police about his involvement in a hit-and-run accident. That had not ended well for the prat, as he recalled. But in many another play, Albert’s character had gotten away with all kinds of things, up to and including murder.
Albert wondered if his moral compass were being constantly reset by the last part he had played, the last movie he had seen. It was a sobering thought that made him reach for the glass of whiskey at his elbow. He sat back, looking at the faded tapestry hanging on his bedroom wall, a depiction of Cain bashing in Abel’s head as a naked Adam and Eve watched, wringing their hands, from a distance. Surely they had learned to clothe themselves by the time the children came along? Albert wasn’t sure if the wall-hanging were yet another example of his father’s macabre sense of humor or his poor taste in decorators. Probably a bit of both. Given the circumstances, something about the portrayal struck him as prophetic. Albert looked away.
He drained his glass and thought some more about his find in the cellar-not Ruthven’s body, but his father’s manuscript. Instinctively, he wanted to know what was in that manuscript-the manuscript he had carefully avoided mentioning to St. Just-before he handed it over to the police and unleashed heaven-knew-what furies on himself, Sarah-on all of them, for that matter. One thing was certain: With Adrian as the author of whatever secrets it might contain, the manuscript could only be a ticking time bomb.
13. TO LONDON, TO LONDON
THE NEXT AFTERNOON ST. Just found himself in Chelsea, his car penned in by Mercedeses, BMWs, limousines, and other necessities of the wealthy. Why did the French call it
The house he was seeking-its address yielded by Ruthven’s laptop-was tucked discreetly away in an enclave overlooking houseboats docked along the Thames. The eighteenth-century structure had at some point been converted into three flats. St. Just didn’t dare estimate what they cost their owners; he would probably be off in his guess by half.
The flat of Chloe Beauclerk-Fisk, as he saw when he had shown his warrant card and been admitted by a diminutive maid with a pronounced dowager’s hump and a flesh-colored hearing aid in each ear, was decorated in a spare, minimalist style with a strong Asian influence. Looking around him as he minced behind the woman leading him through the foyer, shortening his long steps to keep from running her down, St. Just felt that Chloe Beauclerk Fisk, Ruthven’s mother, might be a devotee of-what was it called? Dung Shoe or something like that. Sung Fu? The latest craze where yuppies who had spent their lives acquiring rubbish now couldn’t wait to pay someone to get rid of it.
He decided on short acquaintance with Chloe herself that overall, this minimalist decor might be a good thing, perhaps even prolonging her life, for he gained the strong impression within five minutes in her company that she was half in the bag most of the time. The lack of clutter probably helped prevent her falling on her face all day long.
Seeing him and the maid hovering at the entry to the drawing room, Chloe waved away the old woman with one hand while signaling him to enter with the other, like someone guiding a plane in for landing. A Pekinese teetered over to inspect him-one of those dogs he always felt looked like it came with batteries-and apparently finding nothing amiss, disappeared on unknown canine business.
Still without a word, she indicated that St. Just should sit in an unyielding wooden structure that resembled nothing so much as the executioner’s chairs he had seen in American documentaries on the telly. The chair proved to be lower than he had calculated and he fell into it hard, like a collapsing bridge.
She herself chose to remain standing-rather, weaving, though ramrod-straight-by the fireplace. She was a stout woman, her figure sheathed in unyielding foundation garments, her bosom a shelf-like, impenetrable Latex fortress. Two round earrings the size of walnuts eclipsed the lobes of her ears. Pouches of fat padded her chin and cheeks-perhaps she was hoarding the rest of the nuts. But her face in profile as she turned to gaze out the window was flat, the nose nearly bridgeless. She wore a coral shade of lipstick, carelessly applied-a difficult color for any woman to wear, an impossible one in her case.
He looked around. There was little else in the room on which to rest the eye, excepting a large Japanese
