An Accidental Shroud Read online

  Everyone else had gone home on that floor, and Mayo saw her light shining through the opaque glass panels that separated her office from the corridor as he too left for home. He popped his head in.

  'Still here, Abigail?' She jumped a mile, as guilty as if she hadn't been working thirteen hours with scarcely a break. 'Time you went home,' he said with a smile. But he sat down in the chair opposite, stretched his legs out and leaned back with his hands in his pockets.

  'Matthew Wilding,' he said after a moment or two. 'It's bothering me. 1 don't see any reason for disbelieving him about knocking the house down – nobody would make up a daft story like that as an alibi, not Matthew, anyway – and if he did, and if that's what he was doing, and if Lindsay Hammond is telling the truth, it puts him out of the frame for the murder, but ...'

  'You still think he saw somebody?'

  'I know he did. And I think it was probably his father – which is why he won't say. Understandable. He's told us the truth about the rest of what happened, which couldn't have been easy for him, and he's guilty as hell about his dad – guilty, or scared stiff.'

  'Or it could be he's frightened because he saw someone he mistook for his father in the dark. Someone who looks like him.'

  'Someone like Joss Graham, for instance?' Mayo rubbed his chin.

  And then Abigail told him what she had thought after their meeting with Joss Graham on the building site, and later, after seeing Naomi Graham. He sat thinking it over for a while, then stood up. 'Tom Callaghan next, then. Well, tomorrow'll do, he won't be going anywhere. Time I was off home now. You, too.'

  'I was just on my way.'

  Abigail closed the Fontenoy file, shuffled together a pile of reports, left for yet another day the pile of official bumf she'd sworn to get through, and went home. Bed, and sleep, seemed infinitely attractive.

  Home was the cold ashes of the previous night's fire, breakfast dishes in the sink, a film of dust on the furniture, a hastily constructed sandwich eaten before the electric fire. Her mother would not have been proud of her.

  Eyes closing of their own volition in the warmth of the fire, she decided that domesticity wasn't her forte and wondered vaguely, yawning her way upstairs, whether she was even suited to living alone, recalling the casual orderliness of Ben Appleyard's flat the one time she'd been there, its purposefulness and self-sufficiency, its shelves and shelves of books – and the stack of papers beside the word processor.

  Bed was a cold shiver because she'd forgotten to switch the electric blanket on. Later, when the duvet she'd wrapped tightly around herself made her too hot, she woke up sweating and couldn't get to sleep again, chasing insubstantial shadows. Apart from what she'd just been discussing with Mayo – what she was sure Naomi had been going to tell her – during that visit she knew she'd seen something else she'd subconsciously registered as important, though what it was remained as stubbornly elusive as the sleep that continued to evade her.

  Callaghan was located by telephone the next morning, without too much difficulty, at the TV centre.

  'No, no, don't you come here,' he replied hastily when this was suggested to him. 'I'll come over to you – or better still, why don't we meet halfway – at the golf club, say, where I'm a member? I'm sure you're as pushed for time as I am.'

  He wasn't the man to neglect the opportunity of being seen, but in the circumstances Mayo thought it surprising that he'd suggested such a public meeting place, unless it was to demonstrate that he had nothing to fear from being seen in such suspect company.

  He was waiting for them at the entrance to the clubhouse when they drew up, and came forward with hand outstretched, expansive as if they were welcome guests at his country house rather than police officers who might be there to give him a decidedly unpleasant half hour. He ordered coffee at the bar and then took them to a quiet corner by the picture windows where three armchairs were ranged round a low table, shielded from the rest of the room by a bank of climbing plants and overlooking a fairway and thickly wooded countryside beyond.

  He talked pleasantries which Mayo let him carry on with until the coffee had been brought and poured and the waitress had disappeared. 'Mr Callaghan, we're not here on a social visit. Certain information has come to light since the last time we spoke to you that we need to talk to you about.'

  With a practised gesture, Callaghan signalled him to go on, at ease in his chair with his famous smile pinned on, wearing a dark navy shirt buttoned to the neck, no tie, a light jacket almost the same silver as his blow-dried hair, beautifully cut navy slacks and pale grey moccasins.

  When Mayo, well aware he was being brutal, but seeing no way out of it, brought up the subject of Callaghan's daughter, the smile barely slipped, but his face froze, as if the smile were painted on to a mask. 'I don't see,' he replied through stiff lips, 'what that has to do with Nigel Fontenoy's murder.'

  'Let's not prevaricate, Mr Callaghan. I'm sorry to have to broach this subject, believe me. I've no wish to open old wounds, but I think you're aware that when your daughter died there was a certain amount of talk that she'd been involved with an older man.'

  'If there was, nobody passed it on to me.'

  Mayo said patiently, 'I suggest we shall finish with this much quicker if you're honest with us. Nigel Fontenoy was the name mentioned ... and I've reason to believe you were well aware of this. If not at the time, as you say, then it's certainly something you've learned about during the last few weeks.'

  'I find this exceedingly distasteful.'

  'I'm sorry. But do you deny you met and talked with Sharon Wallace a few weeks ago? And that she gave you a bracelet which had belonged to your daughter? Which may have been given to her by Fontenoy?'

  Two golfers came into view, looking like outsize children in their primary-coloured gear, dragging golfing trolleys behind them. Callaghan watched them walk the length of the fairway before he answered. Finally, he said, 'You've obviously talked to Sharon Wallace. Yes, she gave me the bracelet, and told me what Judy had said, that she'd asked her to keep it so that I wouldn't see it. I had to believe it was Nigel who gave it to her. Well, are you implying that I killed him, simply because of that?'

  'No, I've no reason at this point to believe you had anything to do with his death.'

  'I'm glad to hear it. Because in no way did I kill him. Not that I didn't think about it. Not that I haven't wished him dead every minute of my waking life since learning about him and Judy, but that's a very different thing from actually having the moral courage to make it happen. He took from me the one person who made my life worth living, after smirching a young and beautiful life, and I'm not ashamed to say I rejoice that he's dead. But I wasn't the instrument of his death, more's the pity.'

  There was a silence after this. Mayo could find nothing to say because, though he couldn't condone, as a father he could find it in his heart to sympathize.

  'I kept the bracelet Sharon gave me,' Callaghan went on. 'My first idea was to confront Nigel with it and then find some way of making him pay, perhaps kill him, who knows? But I couldn't do it, I was afraid that I mightn't have the guts when it came down to it. After I heard he was dead, I threw the bracelet in the river and that was the end of it.' He put his head in his hands, struggling for composure. He looked old and weary, his eyes empty, when he eventually raised his head. 'If you don't think I killed Nigel, what is it you want to talk about?'

  'We need to know more about his background. You knew him since you were at school together. You and Nigel Fontenoy and Jake Wilding.'

  'Oh yes, we go back a long way, the three of us.'

  'What do you know of Naomi Graham?' Mayo asked abruptly, and was rewarded by seeing a spark of sudden interest warming those cold eyes.

  'Naomi? Jake's ex? I haven't seen her for nearly twenty years. Not since she left Jake in the lurch with young Matthew.'

  'Did you know she was back in Lavenstock? With an older son she claims is Jake Wilding's?'

  'That's what she's claiming, i
s it? Well, it's possible, but not true. If you've spoken to Naomi, you don't need me to tell you that she's apt to confuse fact with fiction. She says what suits her at the time. And yes, the child could've been Jake's, I'll grant you that. But he wasn't.'

  'He's very like him.'

  'Is he? Well, I haven't seen him, so I wouldn't know. But Jake's very like his Uncle George, come to that, yet that doesn't make George his father.'

  It was true, Abigail thought, you could never predict when a family likeness would appear, or when it was likely to skip a generation. Nigel Fontenoy hadn't looked much like his father, George – the requisite genes seemed to have bypassed him and yet had been passed on through him to his son. Joss bore a passing similarity to Jake Wilding, yes, but Abigail had also glimpsed a fleeting yet far stronger resemblance to someone else – to a face, stiffened in death, but recognizably of the same cast of feature as Joss Graham's. 'It was Nigel Fontenoy who was Joss's father, wasn't it?'

  'Yes, Inspector Moon, it was Nigel. Definitely. He told me so himself, at the time. To do him justice, he wanted to marry her, there was nothing he wanted more than a child, but she'd have none of it. Apparently, they'd quarrelled over something or other and presumably that was how she took her revenge.'

  'Do you know what their quarrel was about?'

  'No, but it was more than just a tiff. When I let Nigel know she was back in town he went quite pale. And before you ask, yes, I enjoyed telling him that, quite deliberately, hoping she'd make trouble for the bastard. I live in the knowledge that I might have succeeded.'

  Mayo stood up. 'Thank you, Mr Callaghan, you've been very helpful.' His voice was without expression. Abigail slipped her notebook into her bag and also stood up.

  'You're welcome,' Callaghan said bleakly.

  23

  When they returned from the golf club, Abigail found a note on her desk to say that Jermyn's had telephoned and she rang them back immediately.

  Alec Macaudle's first words were an apology for the length of time it had taken him to return her call. He had been out of the country and had only just returned, he told her in a prissy, Morningside accent. He was deeply shocked at the news about Mr Fontenoy and was more than willing to help, insofar as he was able.

  'Yes, indeed,' he answered her first question, 'I do recall my last meeting with him, poor man – very well. We lunched together and had a very fruitful discussion.' He was deeply regretful that all the long negotiations had come to naught. He had been looking forward to a long and pleasant association, he said, well launched into what Abigail feared was going to turn into a long-winded lament. 'Perhaps his heirs and assigns –' he intimated.

  Imagining Mr Macaudle as a pink little man with well-brushed grey hair and a pursy mouth, Abigail assured him that any inquiries the police were making would not interfere with any approaches Mr Macaudle might wish to make to Fontenoy's about their business deal, and then asked her second question, fully expecting to be met with further pomposity: had Mr Fontenoy, when they met, any other business to discuss with him? Such as, she suggested, requesting a second opinion on a valuable piece he had brought with him?

  'Oh, you mean the Fabergé!'

  Macaudle's response was immediate and unequivocal, going straight to the point, causing Abigail to revise her opinion of his digressiveness, while at the same time the name Fabergé set a small, urgent bell ringing somewhere at the back of her mind.

  'What a find!' he went on. 'Well, Mr Fontenoy himself had a good idea what it might be worth and that it was genuine, but he needed expert attribution, and knowing that I was an acknowledged authority on the subject,' he asserted modestly, 'he came to me before making a decision about it. I felt privileged to be able to help, and to say that in my opinion, the piece was genuine. You realize, of course, that many imitations of Fabergé objects have found their way on to the market during the course of the years, countless copies have been made. But this was the real thing. They're very rare, you know, these flowers, and with the wonderful provenance which he said existed –'

  'Would you mind, Mr Macaudle,' Abigail intervened, 'describing this er – flower – to me?'

  'When I say flower, you mustn't underestimate it, Inspector. I'm talking about a very fine work of art. But have you not seen it?' There was a pause. 'Oh dear, you're not saying that it's been – stolen?'

  'I don't know. But it's not where it's supposed to be. That's why I should like a description of it, please.'

  'Och,' Mr Macaudle said faintly, 'what times we live in!' Then, quickly recovering, he proceeded briskly, and with total recall, to describe the piece for her in minute detail. 'Well, a catalogue description might go something like this: "A sprig of honeysuckle in gold, three flowers and berries, the flowers enamelled, with white gold filament stamens. The leaves carved in dark green nephrite, the entwined stems in red gold, the berries in rhodonite. On one flower is poised a bee in black enamel, diamonds and rubies, on another an enamelled tortoiseshell butterfly. The spray is set in a columnar-shaped vase in green gold, engraved to represent tree bark, with a foliate border round the base in red gold studded with rose diamonds. " '

  'Goodness!'

  'Yes, indeed, but even that gives no real indication of what it's really like. You'd have to see it to appreciate the inspired engraving, the tender pink and cream shading of the enamel on the petals, the way the stems twine down and around the vase – well, what I can only call the sheer artistry of the composition.' Slightly overcome by his own lyricism, the jeweller coughed and added prosaically, 'What's more, it actually bears the initials of the workmaster, the man who created it, which is unusual. H.W. Henrik Wigstrom.'

  'Any indication of its worth?'

  The lengthy silence at the other end made Abigail feel she'd unknowingly transgressed some code of ethics. Finally, Macaudle said severely, 'A hitherto unknown Fabergé piece? How can that possibly be evaluated? There are things of more importance than money.' Relenting, he added, 'All I can tell you is that these flowers are extremely rare, certainly one of this quality, and that if sold I would confidently expect it to reach well into six large figures. Especially, I may say, with the very special provenance this one has.'

  'Which was?'

  Another weighty pause. 'Well, of course, I didn't see it, but I understood from Mr Fontenoy that there exists a document – a letter, written in Russian – proving beyond doubt the piece was commissioned from Fabergé and intended as a twenty-first birthday gift in June, 1918 for the Grand Duchess Tatiana Romanov from her father, the Tsar of Russia. I'm afraid the poor young lady was destined never to receive it, since by then the whole family were prisoners in Ekaterinburg, where they were later shot by the revolutionaries.'

  After a moment for this to sink in, Abigail asked, 'And how did the piece come to be in Mr Fontenoy's possession?'

  'Never ask an antique dealer that! I certainly didn't. Many of these things came out of Russia after the terrible events of the revolution, by various means.'

  'You mean they were stolen?'

  'Oh, undoubtedly some of them were, with all the looting and so on that went on, but as far as this one goes, who can tell?'

  'It was in some sort of box, I understand?'

  After the minutely detailed description of the jewelled honeysuckle spray, she wasn't surprised to receive a similarly detailed one of its fitted case, of white polished holly wood, with the name of Fabergé, in the Russian alphabet, stamped on the satin lining of the lid.

  'I must tell you,' Macaudle said before their conversation was ended, 'that I had reservations – not about the authenticity of the piece, to be sure, but about this letter Mr Fontenoy spoke of. One would need to see it and have it expertly assessed, but I understand there was some slight difficulty over that.'

  'What sort of difficulty?'

  'I believe it wasn't actually in his possession at the moment, but held by someone else.'

  'I don't suppose he said who that was?'

  'I fear not, though he seeme
d confident of producing it. Without it, needless to say, the flower would be worth considerably less.'

  After Mayo had been acquainted with this latest development, looking somewhat deep in thought, he followed Abigail down to the incident room to put the rest of the team in the picture, or those who were not out of the office. Coffee cups were filled, cigarettes lit to add to the already thick fug of tobacco smoke in the room. Mayo perched on the table in front of the blackboard. 'Go ahead, Inspector Moon.'

  They heard her out, and she saw their faces registering varying degrees of incredulity, amusement, suspicion. With some justification, she had to allow. Cases involving jewelled birthday presents from the Tsar of Russia to his daughter had not hitherto featured very prominently among the day to day break-ins, rapings, muggings, drunk and disorderlies and domestic violence that formed the rich pattern of ordinary life at Milford Road nick.

  'No kidding!' said Deeley, when she'd eventually finished.

  'You'd better believe it, Pete. It's true as I stand here.'

  Later, after the buzz of excitement had died down and the room had gradually cleared to leave only Atkins and

  Carmody – apart from one or two uniformed staff dealing with telephones and word processors – with Abigail and Mayo, Mayo said, 'At risk of stating the obvious, this establishes two things – that this Fabergé object was almost certainly connected to Fontenoy's murder, and that what Fontenoy wanted from Naomi Graham, via Jake Wilding, was the letter of provenance.'

  From Atkins's pocket had come his familiar pouch and his pipe, which he now proceeded to fill and tamp down. Having finished packing it, he struck a match on the sole of his shoe, put flame to tobacco and from behind the ensuing pall of smoke, remarked, 'Using Wilding's gratitude for this alleged favour he owed him as a lever?'

  Mayo walked to the window, threw it open and sat on the sill, arms folded. 'Right, George. Wilding hasn't seen fit to tell us what this favour was, but it must've been a sizeable one. One he isn't anxious to talk about, either.'