'I told it, yes, most of it. But I am a businessman. I do not tell them about the tears of Lady Lionnel. That is private to Sir Richard. Besides they are not interested in her, only in him. And the fact that he is here from twelve-forty-five to two-thirty. To that I swear and so do Nicky and Spyros.' He indicated two further melancholy men, younger and thinner, but in somewhat the same mould as Stavros. 'Sir Richard Lionnel, he too is a businessman. It is a pleasure to see him here. He know what he wants - we give it to him. The other lady - please forgive me, Miss Shore - your guest. What does she want?' Jemima left hastily, before she should be drawn into discussing the political-gastronomic ideals of Isabelle Mancini. She also paid the bill in cash: despite Stavros' evident desire to make that another present 'for a lovely lady'.
Jemima remained thoughtful on her journey to see Chloe's daily woman. She was haunted by a feeling that she had received an odd and valuable piece of information in the course of her visit to 'The Little Athens'. It was as though an insignificant chip in a jig-saw had been handed to her; if she could only place it correctly, the whole pattern might become clearer.
Jemima enlivened the walk to Tottenham Court Road tube station by re-running her conversations with both Isabelle and Stavros through her mind like a tape.
As she came to Stavros' revelations, she realized that the striking piece of information she had received concerned the precipitate departure of Lady Lionnel - the Medea of Parrot Park - from 'The Little Athens' at about 1.30 - back to the station. An item of information as yet unknown to the police, who had contented themselves with establishing Sir Richard Lionnel's alibi - lunch with his wife - with the aid of Stavros and his waiters.
That needed further quiet thought. Lady Lionnel? It was odd to think that this Medea who unquestionably had a motive for wishing Chloe removed from her husband's path, had also been vouchsafed an opportunity to effect this removal.
Something else - less obvious perhaps - some remark of Isabelle or Stavros - continued to haunt her.
She was still re-running the scene in her mind when she reached Tottenham Court Road station and bought a copy of the London Evening Post. A recent photograph showed Kevin John's face, anguished, pop-eyed, slightly reproachful, staring out at her from the front page. His huge eyes with their improbably starry eyelashes, seemed to be imploring her help.
Jemima shivered and turned down the steps to the moving staircase. The text accompanying the report was short: there was after all very little to be said. There was however a short interview with one Miss Kim Lee Ho, who described herself as the 'steady girl-friend' of the accused, and was also temporarily lodging with Kevin John's artistic patron, Crispin Creed, the owner of the Aiglon Gallery.
A joint photograph was provided. Inspecting it with interest, Jemima could see a dark pretty Oriental-looking girl; her small figure was almost masked by the robust presence of Creed, a man whose affectionate nickname of Creeping Croesus had been earned by a combination of inherited wealth and commercial perception. This then was the submissive girl of Eastern origin to whom Chloe had so casually referred. Jemima was vaguely pleased that Kevin John had some feminine support. It made her feel less guilty in the face of those reproachful eyes. Kim Lee Ho, who give or take her Oriental ancestry, had a certain disquieting resemblance to Chloe herself, was described in the evening paper as a model - whether artist's model or fashion model was unspecified. Chloe, despite her photogenic looks, had always rejected the fashion offers which had come her way, even when poor and out of work after Cambridge. 'I'm a model nothing,' she used to say.
She had not, it seemed, been a model employer. Mrs Rosina Cavalieri received a rather hot and fussed Jemima in a small depressing street north of Tottenham Court Road, a neighbourhood with little else to commend it except the convenience of the tube for working in Bloomsbury. Rosina was indeed as Chloe had pointed out and Pompey confirmed, a compulsive talker; her son, Enrico, no more charming than Chloe had predicted, clung to his mother's skirts and regarded Jemima with enormous baleful eyes set in a full white face.
Enrico's distinctly plump figure, however, was immaculately dressed notwithstanding the heat in a white silk shirt which buttoned on to grey silk trousers, white socks and black patent shoes. Despite his tender years, Enrico had an excellent sense of when the conversation was taking an interesting turn, and at this juncture infallibly grabbed his mother, demanding a biscuit, some other comestible, or orange juice. Thanks to these interruptions, it took Jemima longer than she had anticipated to elicit Rosina's impressions of life with Chloe Fontaine.
First, as Pompey had indicated, Rosina was most impressed by 'the grand Sir' - Sir Richard Lionnel. Second, she was not impressed, rather the reverse, by the fact that Chloe had apparently shared her favours with others during the same period. This kind of disloyalty, Rosina made it clear, was unthinkable in the particular society in which Rosina moved. At one point she even clutched the sulkily acquiescent Enrico to her breast, sticky chocolate biscuit and all, to emphasize the point.
With flashing eyes and heaving bosom - indeed, in more ways than her emphasis on loyalty, Rosina bore a general Mediterranean resemblance to Isabelle Mancini - she enquired how such matters as 'bambine' could be managed with ladies of such wayward tendencies. If her language was not quite so high flown as that of Isabelle, her English accent was an improvement. It was clear what Rosina meant especially as she appealed from time to time to the example of little Enrico, the son indubitably of his father, big Enrico, who would kill anyone, and she, Rosina, would also kill anyone if they suggested . . . This dramatic monologue on the subject of marital fidelity was broken only by the protests of Enrico, who, biscuit finished, struggled free from his mother's arms and demanded 'Orange! orange!'
But Rosina had not expounded in vain. Jemima derived the very definite impression that Rosina, by some means or other - a doctor's letter left carelessly about, a telephone call overheard - had suspected Chloe was pregnant. It was true that Rosina had denied all knowledge of such a distasteful subject to the police - but then Miss Jemima Shore was so very different, wasn't she, to the young male detective who had interviewed Rosina. Handsome as Pompey's protege - the dashing Gary Harwood - might be, he was no substitute for a real-life television star. Miss Shore was so very friendly, so very famous ... There was an enormous television set in pride of place in the tiny sitting room which presently Enrico insisted on having switched on for his own delectation. Miss Shore, Rosina declared, was like someone she had known all her life, her own sister, for example.
More than prepared to accept this helpful hypothesis, Jemima narrowed her questions to Chloe's other callers, especially those prominent in the period when Chloe had first moved into Adelaide Square, which had coincided with Rosina's arrival to work for her. Since Chloe had been roughly three months pregnant when she died in the first week of August, the father of her child must have been someone she knew long before the move to Adelaide Square towards the end of June; conception had to have taken place at the beginning of May.
Rosina, predictably, was gracious about the 'poor lord', meaning Valentine Brighton, whose sudden death had been brilliantly brought to her attention by Enrico when he recognized Valentine's face on the television news with a shriek. The 'poor lord' had helped Chloe with her move into. Adelaide Square, putting his Rolls at her disposal.
No, Rosina was full of approval for the poor dead Lord Brighton: 'Che gentile! Che simpatico!’ and so on. At any point Jemima expected her to join Isabelle in her cry of 'Swee-e-et boy'. It was an approval which did not however extend to someone she termed the 'studente’ Jemima, despite herself, felt her heart give a little jolt.
'Studente, there was a studente’ she probed hoping that Enrico would not choose this moment - there was a commercial break - to demand another orange. She need not have worried: advertisements as well as programmes held Enrico entranced.
'Ahdum,' Rosina pronounced the name with scorn. 'Ah-dum Ahdum: he was a studente. A foolish name.
' She implied that his youthful status was no excuse.
'Not then, Rosina, surely.' Jemima knew that she sounded agitated.
'Not in June. Not when she first came to Adelaide Square. It was later, wasn't it, a week or so before she died that she met the student?'
'But no! It was the end of June like I tell you.' Rosina's indignation rose. 'It was the day after the birthday of Big Enrico, June twenty-six. It was then I tell you. The studente. In the empty flat with her, that first day, no furniture, no bed even. They were in the bedroom, all the same. I knew. She just called out: "I'm resting. Come back in an hour!" And later when I do come back, all those stairs again, I pass him. The studente, with his little red beard, his barb a, you understand? She was running down the stairs and calling: "Ahdum! Ahdum!" Then she saw me and stopped. She said: "Mrs Cavalieri, this is Ahdum, a friend of mine from Fulham. He's been helping me with the move." But the room, it was still empty.'
'What did he say?'
'Ah, he spoke in a funny voice, funny words. He was young, too young for her. He said he liked it here, better than in Fulham, and he might come and live here himself if she asked him. He laughed. They both laughed.'
At this point Enrico, maybe in a jealous rage at the thought of the laughter of others, let out a prolonged and angry bawl. 'Ma-aama!'
'He is tired with our talking,' said Rosina apologetically. 'And the television is tiring - when they are young,' she added hastily in case she seemed to denigrate Jemima's profession. 'Perhaps you will come another day, Miss Shore. I would like to ask my neighbour to tea, Mrs Pollonari, she likes television very much.'
Jemima was left to wend her way home by tube in the Friday rush-hour, missing for the first time in a week the easy passage her Citroen gave her through weary London.
She pondered a world in which not only Kevin John Athlone had lied to the police about his lunchtime movements but Adam Adamson had also lied - if not to the police at least by implication to Jemima Shore. He had definitely allowed her to believe that he had met Chloe for the first time a few days prior to her death. Now it emerged that they had been friends - no, more than that, lovers, long before Chloe moved to Adelaide Square. They had been lovers in Fulham, Fulham where Chloe's child had been conceived.
'I suppose the bastard killed her,' Sir Richard had said of the unknown father of Chloe's child. With a heavy heart, Jemima acknowledged that it was a possibility at least worth exploring: and Kevin John's large imploring eyes gazing out at her from the folded front page of the evening paper, called on her mutely to proceed.
15
A white petticoat
Jemima planned to move out of Adelaide Square over the weekend. On Friday evening Miss Katy Aaronson telephoned with the offer of a furnished flat - another penthouse - in Montagu Square. Under the circumstances Jemima decided to take it. She felt she had had enough of Bloomsbury; nor did she particularly wish to approach her own American tenant with a view to shortening the let by a couple of weeks. That way lay the possibility of an unwelcome intimacy with the need to ask a favour. Anonymity in Montagu Square, near Marble Arch, an area without associations, away from friends and strangers alike, if not quite the holiday she had planned, was at least the most dignified way of ending it.
Shortly afterwards a Lionnel chauffeur came round with the keys of the Montagu Square apartment. Miss Katy Aaronson had very politely excused herself from a Saturday rendezvous. She liked to spend the day with her parents in Highgate, starting with a Friday eve-of-the-Sabbath supper.
'And since Sir Richard is generally at Parrot Park on Friday nights -although house guests are invited in time for Saturday lunch, but in any case the housekeeper is at the disposal of Lady Lionnel for those arrangements - and Sir Richard's personal assistant, Mr Judah Turpin, has the flat in the old stables, should business matters arise—'
Jemima was happy to cut short this catalogue of undoubtedly admirable arrangements and arrange to arrive at Montagu Square at leisure, at a time of her own choosing, and under her own terms. She rejected the offer of a Lionnel car to convey her. The anonymity of a taxi was another personal choice. Making it clear that at Montagu Square, for the next week, her privacy was to be regarded as sacrosanct,
Jemima arranged to leave behind her own keys to the Adelaide Square office suite. The efficient Miss Aaronson possessing several spare sets, would arrange their collection.
It was a pity that Tiger would have to make two moves in rapid succession - for Tiger would be coming back with Jemima to Holland Park Mansions. It was as though he had been pre-ordained to replace Colette. No one else showed the slightest interest in the fierce golden cat. Mr Stover, on being consulted on the telephone, had revealed the existence of a rival Stover pet, Nipper, a terrier of great age and uncertain health—' although where cats are concerned, he's still pretty much on the ball, I can tell you that'. Mr Stover obviously regarded the possible incursion of Tiger into his dog's declining years—' mind you, he's not called Nipper for nothing' - as symbolic of the whole catastrophic confusion wrought in his own existence by the death of Chloe. Jemima was left to reflect that Mr Stover and Nipper were no exception to the oft-quoted rule that over the years pets and their masters grew to resemble each other.
Jemima did not flatter herself that she had in any sense won Tiger's affections - Colette had been from the first a far more domesticated animal - but she recognized their alliance as inevitable. And that kind of recognition was often more binding than a sentimental attachment.
Fortunately Tiger had already shown himself to be a survivor where moves were concerned. He had adapted himself to Bloomsbury after Fulham; carefully treated he would survive the short-term stay in Montagu Square, the final move to Holland Park.
Fulham and Tiger: Jemima caught her breath suddenly at the memory of Adam Adamson and Tiger on that day of their first acquaintance. Had she not sensed something strange even then about Tiger's eager disappearance into the third-floor flat? It was obviously explained by the fact that to Tiger Adam was a familiar figure. Adam had not exactly lied to Jemima in this respect: indeed, throughout their conversations he had shown a remarkable, Jesuitical regard for avoiding the direct lie, while not telling the whole truth.
He had not actually denied knowing Tiger, only: 'Nice cat ... it wanted to come in' - followed by compliments about her own appearance. No wonder Tiger, accidentally excluded from the upper flat, had peregrinated towards the least hostile terrain.
Jemima however still believed that Adam had been genuinely puzzled over Chloe's true identity. Was it possible that he could have been fooled by the pose of Dollie Stover? On consideration it was: Chloe, the mistress of deceit, had presumably conducted her carnal encounters with Adam elsewhere than in her Fulham house - in his own former dwelling, whatever kind of revivified pad that might have been. Adam's menacing comment about Chloe and her deception—' I hate being lied to' - was, she would swear, genuine.
Perhaps their carnal encounters within Adelaide Square itself had taken place on the third floor? And literally so, in view of its lack of furniture, Jemima reflected wryly; her slight sense of crossness was almost proprietary, but since all proprietary feelings about Adam Adamson were so clearly a mistake, she dismissed the whole train of thought as unworthy of her. Back to the question of Adam and the penthouse: by keeping him ignorant of her lease of the top floor, Chloe would have run no danger of him ferreting out the incriminating copies of her own works, those exquisite tell-tale photographs on the back.
Besides, now that Jemima - far too late - was coining to some new understanding of Chloe's character, she had an intuition that the encounters in the empty flat, with her own immaculate penthouse above, and Sir Richard's secure opulence below, would have given Chloe exactly that rich spice of danger she sought.
As Jemima waited for Pompey to bring her back the keys to Chloe's flat, in order that she might pack up her remaining belongings over the weekend, she continued to ponder on the subject of Adam. Adam -'my former ang
el' - Adam, presumably the father of the unsought child, Adam with his fertile youth and impetuosity giving Chloe the child which she had either avoided receiving or refused to accept from two husbands and at least one steady - ridiculous word in the context -lover in the shape of Kevin John. There had been at least one abortion, possibly two, in Chloe's past, hadn't there?
Jemima was a little hazy about the details: Chloe's marriage to Lance breaking up, impossible to bring a child into the world under such circumstances, Chloe desperately writing her second novel, trying to support herself financially as a meagre-selling novelist, impossible to take on the burden of single parenthood. Jemima, not closely involved herself, knew that Chloe had always had plenty of excuses to offer - and goodness knows Jemima herself did not believe dogmatically in unwanted children coming into the world, having investigated too many of the resultant miseries. At the same time Jemima had always suspected that Chloe's deep-seated reason for avoiding motherhood was her unwillingness to tolerate the arrival of a child in her life while she herself remained in so many respects wilfully childish and irresponsible.
That left open the question of the carelessness . .. the lethal carelessness which had lead to at least two, possibly three pregnancies. What precautions had Chloe taken? One had to assume that she had not been on the Pill, or at least not regularly. It was certainly true that there were plenty of medical reasons to be quoted against the continuous long-term use of the Pill for any woman. Jemima herself had quoted them - as ever giving both sides of the question - in that programme about the Pill, to which Pompey had alluded. Yet Jemima wondered once again at the surprising contrasts evinced by Chloe's character; the neatness and domesticity of her surroundings, the meticulous care of her writing, versus the dangerous abandon of her private life, carried surely to excess in her reckless attitudes to the question of her own fertility.