Murder most fancy, p.4
Murder Most Fancy, page 4
‘Which one of Florence’s staff found the poor soul?’ she asked, pulling me away and checking me, as if I might have been harmed bodily somewhere. ‘They’re all fairly stoic having worked for her I suppose.’ She smiled. ‘Still, awful.’
‘I found him,’ I told her. ‘Bettina and I were, uh, chatting over the hedge, and I accidentally … I found him.’
‘That must have been hours ago! Andrew said the alarm in Florence’s main salon went off before lunch,’ she said, gently patting my hair.
My vision blurred and I swallowed hard. ‘The alarm?’
‘Yes, your grandmother and her absurd electronics. The sensor in the main salon has a silent alarm. Loraine and Andrew are each other’s emergency contacts for the security company when one or the other is away on business.’
Loraine was Loraine Bitsmark, Grandmother’s long-time PA. Loraine was flawlessly organised, immaculately groomed and disturbingly stealthy. She had the sharpest, dead-straight, angled blonde bob I had ever seen. It had sat silky and smooth, parted in the same spot above her left eye, for decades.
‘Florence is in London buying something or other,’ Dame Elizabeth continued, giving me one last inspection and, satisfied I had not been injured by finding the body or tripping the alarm in Grandmother’s salon, stepped back.
I knew the answer but hoped against hope and asked anyway. ‘The alarm doesn’t trigger the cameras, does it?’
‘I assume so,’ she said with little interest in the subject. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, stopping suddenly. ‘Is that?’
Bailly was directing the removal of the navy blue body bag which unfortunately involved it being moved in our direction.
I nodded. ‘Yes. The police think it was a homeless person.’
‘Homeless,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘How tragic.’
The detectives had finally managed to find the secret latch that opened the hedge door and made their way towards Bailly and the blue bag.
‘Any chance we can call it natural causes, Dr Bailly?’ Rope said, attempting to sound like the man in charge. ‘I’d like to let the men on the doors and by the tape go.’
I looked around; at least half the police standing guard were female.
Bailly directed two people also covered in Tyvek to continue removing the body while she paused to answer Rope.
‘That’s not something I can tell you until an autopsy is performed, Detective Rope. Have you found his family? I would prefer to get their consent before I begin.’
‘No, sorry,’ Winters responded for Rope, ‘no ID on him. No hits on the prints you pulled. We’ll check the missing person’s database, ask around the usual spots, soup kitchens, shelters. Try to ID him. Try to find relatives.’ He shrugged. ‘Never know. Might get lucky.’
‘Might not get lucky too,’ Rope chipped in. ‘Might never find next of kin. Sometimes they don’t ID them on purpose. Don’t wanna own them. Funerals aren’t cheap. You know how it is.’
‘I’ll begin as soon as possible then. Fresh is best.’
‘What if you cannot find any family?’ Dame Elizabeth asked. ‘What will happen to him?’
‘We’ll keep him,’ Bailly said flatly. ‘In the deep freeze.’
‘Permanently?’ Dame Elizabeth asked in astonishment. ‘In the freezer?’
Bailly paused to consider her answer. ‘Yes. He will stay permanently in the deep freezer.’
Dame Elizabeth’s eyes widened in shock. She was clearly taken aback that this man could be frozen for life. Or afterlife. ‘Surely we can do better than that? I am more than happy to pay for his funeral if that is acceptable.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘We shall give him a full burial. Something lovely. Something dignified.’
‘No,’ Bailly said. ‘It is not acceptable.’
As modest and kind as Dame Elizabeth was, she was not accustomed to hearing ‘no’.
‘Pardon?’ she said, as if Bailly had genuinely made a mistake.
‘No, it is not acceptable because you cannot pay for a funeral or give him a funeral because I cannot release the body to you.’
‘I do not understand,’ Dame Elizabeth said. ‘Surely if he has no family, there can be no objection to our taking care of him.’
‘I have no personal objection to your providing him with a funeral,’ Bailly said. ‘It seems like a civilised act of kindness. However, it would be against the law for me to release an unidentified body.’
Dame Elizabeth looked to me. I shrugged. How on earth would I know?
Detective Rope appeared very much like a man who was about to be asked a legal question to which he should have known the answer but was a little fuzzy on. He immediately set off to speak to the policewoman on guard at the cordon tape before the inevitable happened.
‘Is that correct?’ Dame Elizabeth asked Winters.
He nodded sadly. ‘I’m afraid so. No ID, no release. I’ll do my best to find out who he was, if he had family, but I can’t make any promises. As my partner said to Dr Bailly, it does happen that we’re sometimes unable to ID people. The homeless can be tough. I’m sorry.’
Dame Elizabeth rearranged her face from displeased and disappointed into placated.
‘That is sad news. I appreciate your efforts, Detective Winters. Can I assume you will release Indigo to me? I am sure it has been a difficult morning for her.’
‘Sure, that’s fine.’ And to me he said, ‘We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions. We have your contact details.’
‘You haven’t asked me about cause of death,’ Bailly said to Winters. ‘Detective Rope always asks me to tell him cause of death at the scene.’
‘Do you have cause of death?’ Winters asked, surprised.
‘No. I won’t have a definitive cause of death until I’ve completed a full autopsy,’ she said. There was no inflection of sarcasm in her tone.
‘Then why’d you bring it up?’
‘Because you didn’t ask,’ Bailly explained. ‘And Detective Rope always asks.’
Winters gave her a gentle smile. ‘Duly noted, Dr Bailly.’
‘He does have a laceration on the back of the head,’ she added, as what seemed like a less pertinent thought.
‘Size and location?’ prompted Winters.
‘It’s the size of a turtle egg, and above the hat line,’ she said tellingly.
I glanced around. I didn’t see a hat. Had he been wearing a hat?
Winters raised an eyebrow. ‘Above the hat line?’
‘Yes. The blunt force injury has caused the skin to split. It feels like a stellate on the scalp. I would say the impact was broad.’
‘What’s a stellate?’ I asked, refraining from asking about the missing hat, which I had a premonition was not an actual hat.
‘A stellate is a star-shaped bone fracture in which fracture lines radiate from the central point of impact,’ she explained.
‘Okay,’ Winters said, quickly shutting the conversation down. ‘Dame Elizabeth, a real honour to meet you. Why don’t you take Ms Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg inside?’
Dame Elizabeth wasted no time in accepting his suggestion, ushering me up the garden path towards the orchid palace.
I put my head down, ignored my nagging inner-Grandmother and glued my eyes to the path. I was not going to trip over anything else. My feet and I followed Dame Elizabeth past the orchids, into the scullery Esmerelda had so casually strolled out of just hours before and towards the butler’s pantry. I guessed Dame Elizabeth avoided the formal back entry because of the police tape. There was no such tape on the servants’ entrance.
We entered the butler’s pantry, its vast walls lined with glass-fronted, whitewashed Tasmanian oak cupboards containing all the magical ingredients and shiny appliances that made Mary Moore’s baking so legendary. The benches below the cabinets were topped with Nero Marquina marble, as was the vast centre island Mary used as a worktable: all were polished to a hypnotically flawless sable. There was not a single stain or speck of dust, flour or sugar in sight.
The door between the scullery and the butler’s pantry closed firmly behind me. I was faintly aware of the sound of the double swinging doors between the butler’s pantry and the main kitchen in front of me opening. A waft of caramelising brown sugar hit me and beneath it, the smell of something else, something familiar. Something warm and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. There was only one treat in the world that smelt that good. I was suddenly hungry.
‘Dame Elizabeth Holly,’ I heard him say. ‘My condolences on this tragedy occurring so close to home. I’m Detective Sergeant David Searing.’
‘Oh well, of course you are,’ Dame Elizabeth said with a tint of girlish delight in her refined voice. Seeing all six foot two of Detective Sergeant Searing did tend to bring out one’s delight. ‘Mrs Hasluck-Royce senior has told me not nearly enough about you.’
Searing and his perpetually peeved partner Detective Sergeant Nicole Burns had tried quite hard to arrest me for Richard’s and Crystal’s murders.
Searing was a problem, and not because he had thought I was a murderer. The problem was Searing was hot—which was undoubtedly why he pronounced his last name Sea-ring instead of Searing. He was built like an Olympic swimmer two weeks after the Olympics: firm but supple in all the right places. His dark, thick, wavy hair sat artfully on the top, and just past his ears on the sides. His eyes in contrast were the lightest golden brown. On more than one occasion, I had lost my train of thought looking into them. It felt like falling somewhere lovely. And he smelt good too.
Yes, yes, I was undoubtably a shoddy widow. But my Bran Muffin husband had been more fibber than fibre. For a start, Richard had a secret Irish family of origin, the Smiths (he’d told me he was an English orphan with no siblings). James Smith, Richard’s mysterious brother, was also a problem. He was a physically, socially and charismatically advanced model of Richard: five foot ten, built like 007, dark blond hair and a perfectly toasted tan. His eyes were royal blue and they held an intensity that frightened me. He was almost certainly not the humble Irish train driver he claimed to be, and he gave me feelings that were not okay for one’s brother-in-law.
Yes, yes, again, inappropriate widow. But again, uber-fibbing dead husband.
As well as being plastic surgeon to the stars, I was ninety-five per cent sure Richard was also giving extreme full body reconstructive and plastic surgery makeovers to international fugitives and criminals. He’d left me a secret USB containing a folder labelled Mediterranean Men’s Club. The folder was chock-full of before and after photographs and dossiers of said criminals.
In an unauthorised misstep, Esmerelda gave the Mediterranean Men’s Club USB to Searing, who promptly ran it through the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and INTERPOL’s databases, creating an inerasable electronic trail.
I was not pleased.
I did not want to be connected to any police investigation, federal, international or otherwise. I did, however, want to know what Richard had been up to, so, Searing and I struck a deal—I would be a mute (the USB speaking for me), unnamed, confidential informant (CI) and in return he would ensure I received regular updates on the investigation. However, apart from one brief phone call in which Searing said he was about to go to work on a joint NSW Police and AFP taskforce, presumably to chase down all the Mediterranean Men’s Club criminals, I had heard nothing. I was not sure what was more offensive: that Searing had only called once after we’d kissed or that he lied about keeping me in the loop.
Yes, I kissed Searing. To be fair to both of us, the kissing only happened after I had been completely cleared of both murders. And only once.
I looked up at Searing. He was wearing a tailored dark blue suit with a crisp white shirt, no tie. The suit could easily have passed as Dior. Searing could easily have been cast in the Dior ad as the gorgeous guy who sells the suit. His hair was immaculately tousled and his golden eyes were weary, but still full of sparkle.
‘Thank you,’ he said to Dame Elizabeth, although I was unsure if his response was a question or a statement. ‘I wonder if I could speak with Ms Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg,’ he caught my eye and held it, ‘just briefly? Alone.’
Dame Elizabeth appraised me, unsure. ‘Now might not be the most opportune moment.’
It was one thing to have an unexpected encounter with the gorgeous man who had undoubtably been the subject of much gossip in spas and at galas. It was clearly another matter to hand a single, unchaperoned young woman over to him. Especially when that young woman was your best friend’s granddaughter. And especially when that granddaughter had just spent the afternoon with a corpse.
The sad truth was the body didn’t bother me as much as the boredom of spending the afternoon with Detective Rope. And the boredom was low rent compared with the pain of being ignored by a man you had exposed yourself to. Emotionally speaking.
How much did Grandmother know? How much had she shared with Dame Elizabeth? Evidently, Grandmother had said something about Searing.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I assured her.
She shook her head, not convinced, and said to Searing, ‘Perhaps another time.’
‘Really, Aunt Lizzy,’ I said, somewhat manoeuvring her. ‘I’m sure Detective Searing will be very brief.’
She paused, assessing. ‘Perhaps just a few minutes then,’ she said.
Dame Elizabeth moved with slow, deliberate steps to the swinging doors that separated the butler’s pantry from the main kitchen. She stopped, turned, assessed Searing again and said to me, ‘I shall find Mary and have her bring something to revive you.’ She delivered one last furtive glance, gave a sigh tinted with a tiny smile and said under her breath as she walked through the door, ‘Young love.’
I got in first before he could speak. I wanted to say, ‘How dare you ambush me like this! You promised to keep me in the loop about the Mediterranean Men’s Club investigation! You fibbed! You only called once! Once! You devious scrumptious men, you’re all the same!’
But I did not do that.
Instead, I closed the space between us in a few quick paces and grabbed him by his perfectly pressed suit lapels. I put my elbows into his firm, but not overly sculpted abdomen and walked him backwards, his rear end landing on the protruding Spanish marble benchtop, seating him. I dragged his face down to mine and kissed him with months of compounded, unspoken anger and frustration. He kissed me back without hesitation, stroking my face and hair with a tenderness that was as gentle and joyful as my grip on him was fierce and angry.
I was only able to pull back when I found I had climbed up him, my right knee bumping into the recessed glass-fronted cabinets. I feared I might smash a pane. Kissing Searing was truly excellent but destroying the sacred place Mary Moore’s baking originated from was an affront to the deity of a different kind of deliciousness. I was not willing to risk it. I still had good eating years ahead of me.
I had lost all track of time. It might have been sixty seconds. It might have been an hour. Searing did that to me.
I unpeeled myself and slid off the bench. My head was spinning. I turned and grabbed a hold of the island to catch my breath and stop myself from falling.
And then I said, ‘How dare you ambush me like this! You promised to keep me in the loop about the Mediterranean Men’s Club investigation! You fibbed! You only called once! Once!’
I left the part about devious scrumptious men out. I didn’t think I could say it out loud.
He was attempting to tuck his shirt in and straighten his tie and seemed dumbfounded to have been groped then yelled at.
‘Hang on, Indigo, just give me a minute,’ he said, buttoning the wrong button into his shirt buttonhole. ‘I need to talk to you, but my brain needs a second to start functioning again. There’s absolutely no blood circulating in the top half of my body.’ He unbuttoned it and then, yet again, buttoned it into the wrong buttonhole.
I was certain that my soft curls so deliberately crafted by Franny, my loyal and ever-patient stylist/hair and make-up guru, who was coincidentally Anna Del Rico’s cousin, were in complete disarray. I was making a vague attempt to pat them down when the door from the main kitchen swung open and Dame Elizabeth strode in with Mary Moore following close behind.
Dame Elizabeth smiled at Searing and said kindly, ‘You are finished with your brief word here, Detective?’
‘I haven’t had the opportunity to get too many words out, Dame Elizabeth,’ he said, finally matching his buttons with his holes.
‘Yes,’ I said, briskly smiling at her. ‘We’re done.’
‘No,’ he said sternly. ‘We aren’t.’
‘Wonderful,’ Dame Elizabeth said, stepping over to me, looping her arm kindly around my waist and walking me back towards the main kitchen. ‘Mary has a lovely pot of tea and a fresh batch of cinnamon scrolls set up for you in Florence’s drawing room. I must get back to my darling Bettina. Poor dove, she’s not like you, my love. She must be completely distraught.’
Dame Elizabeth walked me out of the room, leaving Searing in her wake. Mary Moore used her gorgeous roundness and the pretence of reaching for ingredients that happened to be in the cupboards closest to the door to prevent his attempt to follow us.
Dame Elizabeth fluffed my cushions and fussed over me while I seated myself on a carved mahogany baroque armchair with creamy velvet upholstery and buttoned tufts in Grandmother’s private drawing room. After reassuring her several times that I was quite alright, she glanced about, clearly in a hurry to get back to Bettina.
She sat quickly. ‘Are you really fine?’ she asked, seemly more curious than concerned.
‘Yes,’ I said honestly.
I had vented my frustrations on Searing and that felt rather good. He seemed flustered, so that was satisfying. Esmerelda had escaped unnoticed with my borrowed artwork and I was confident she could easily relieve Dylan of his phone at the airport, deleting the video Bettina claimed to have sent him. Providing she could find him. Bettina was far, far away from me and I was unlikely to see or hear from her for years to come. The man in the lilies was unfortunate, but he was old and the forensic pathologist seemed, well, she seemed odd, but capable of taking excellent care of him. And Grandmother would be cantankerous with or without my having borrowed a Monet. Overall, these were good outcomes for me.
