Daggers and Men's Smiles. Jill Downie
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bloody Peter Pan,” and the policeman who was the grown-up. Not so simple. Having watched his father dwindle and diminish after his mother’s death, he wondered if he’d ever risk an emotional involvement that brought so much pain.
You’re terrified of commitment, shit-scared of it, aren’t you?
The first thing he did when he went into the cottage was put a disk on the record player. Oscar Peterson.
How did the man do it? The marvellous internal rhythm that could sing without benefit of percussion or bass, creating melody and miracles of harmony, fireworks and lyricism and tenderness. Like the perfect love affair. Only, unlike love affairs, the mood created was constant, the same perfection when played for the umpteenth time. Now, that was commitment. And it was a commitment devoutly to be wished, of which he was not afraid.
Oh lady, be good to me.
The music continued to play in his head, long after he had gone to bed. Finally, sleep came.
* * *
It was barely light when Moretti was awakened by the persistent ringing of his bedside phone. It was the desk-sergeant from Hospital Lane.
“Sorry to wake you at this hour sir —”
“What hour is it?” Moretti surfaced groggily through the layers of sleep.
“Six-thirty. But it’s the film people out at Ste. Madeleine Manor and you’re down on my sheet as the one to call. There’s been some sort of accident. Nasty business.”
“Was it a human target this time?”
“Oh yes.” Moretti could hear the surprise in the officer’s voice. “It’s the location manager. Albarosa. Italian.” And, feeling it necessary to make the message even clearer to Moretti’s sleep-addled brain, he added, “He’s dead, Guv.”
September 16th
The limousine wound its way through the quiet early morning lanes southwest of the capital, St. Peter Port, making its way to the parish of St. Andrew’s. Even before Guernsey was divided into parishes, the island was separated into fiefs, holdovers from the ancient feudal system, in which tenants owed allegiance to the local seigneur. Many of the old customs were long gone, as were the ancient fiefdoms, of which the Manoir Ste. Madeleine had been one.
On an island the size of Guernsey the past and present were often juxtaposed with almost jolting speed. The driver made his way past one of the smaller former fiefdoms, the Manor of Ste. Hélène, now in private hands like the Manoir Ste. Madeleine, and on past St. Andrew’s Church, carefully restored to its twelfth-century self. Hardly past the squat spire and castellations of the old church, then they were crossing the Candie Road, close to the site of the vast German underground hospital.
“The underground hospital’s over in that direction,” said the driver, Tom Dorey, a local assigned to transport the Ensors. Before Sydney could make any response, Gilbert surfaced from a fitful doze for his usual grumble.
“Getting up at this hour is insanity. If they weren’t paying me big bucks I wouldn’t be doing this, and the way I feel I will never repeat the experience.”
“The way you feel now has nothing to do with the hour. It’s the booze, honey.”
“Bullshit. My body and my inspiration purr along beatifically when they’re well-oiled with Guinness and Glenfiddich. They grind to a sickening halt when confronted with the fucking light of dawn.”
Impassively, Tom Dorey negotiated the sharp bend that preceded the gates of the manor. He had by now got used to his passenger’s tongue, and could restrain the audible intake of breath that had been his original reaction.
“You don’t have to do this too often, do you?” observed Sydney. “You only have to be in early today because Monty Lord asked for a script meeting.”
“Jesus wept — or he would have done if he was the writer on this movie. It’s not as if I were responsible for most of the script — Monty put his Hollywood hotshots onto that — but now he’s farting about with the bloody plot line.”
“Well, they do that, movie people, don’t they? What is he changing?”
“Don’t know the details yet, but it seems he wants to add another strand to the story, which’ll completely alter the balance of the plot — and Bianchi’s going along with it. He’s building up one of the minor characters — the countess.”
“Is the actress who’s playing the countess his mistress?”
“Now that I could understand. But no. Word is he’s got the hots for the Marchesa Vannoni herself. Shoots high, our Monty.”
“My, my,” marvelled Sydney. “She must be all of — what, fifty, fifty-five?”
“She’s in good nick — built like a brick olive press. Still, she’s not your typical Hollywood producer bait, I grant you. Ah, at bloody last.”
They had arrived at the main entrance to the manor, which stood open. On each of the lofty stone pillars that supported the gate stood the heraldic beast that had once been part of the crest of the old island family who had lived in the house — a greyhound-like creature with impossibly long legs. To the right, a short distance away from the gate, was what looked like the gatekeeper’s lodge — a two-storey building of unusual construction, with a pointed roof and an upper storey jutting out over the lower. The car continued up the drive toward the manor, which hove into view, giving the first-time visitor a shock — of pleasure, amusement, or aesthetic anguish, depending on the arrival’s sensibilities.
The original structure of the Manoir Ste. Madeleine dated from the seventeenth century, to which had been added an elegant Georgian extension. The crowning eccentricity was the new entrance hall, built around the middle of the eighteenth century by a seigneur who had obviously paid a visit to the châteaux of the Loire valley and come back enamoured of towers and turrets. On each side of the central doorway the turrets hung out over the main walls like stone torpedoes, with a slender tower just visible behind the pointed roof. It was surrounded by well-maintained parkland, presently covered with the trailers of the film people, with a coach house close to the main building.
“Thank God we’re here. I’ve got to take a leak.”
They had come to a halt in the courtyard behind the manor alongside a vintage Mercedes, a Bugatti, and a handful of army vehicles of various kinds dating from the 1940s.
“Where is everyone?” wondered Sydney, as she got out of the car. “It’s like the Marie Celeste.”
The usually busy courtyard was deserted. There was a complete absence of drivers, film people of every stripe, even the security guards who generally milled and shouted around the area, which was not being used for the film.
“Shut up, woman,” enjoined her superstitious husband, hustling for one of the portable toilets set up in a discreet corner of the yard. “They’re probably all on the other side of the building. You go on — I’m making a pit stop.”
Sydney made her way around the side of the manor house. To one side of her she could just see the grass-covered hump near the ornamental lake that concealed the entrance to the command bunker. One of the senior German officers had lived in the manor during the occupation, and it was on his orders that work had started on what was intended to be an elaborate complex of underground rooms and tunnels. The only sound was the squawking of the ducks that lived on the lake and the crowing of a rooster somewhere. There was still no sign of life, and the sensation of separation from reality she had experienced since their arrival hit her so powerfully that she felt vertiginous.
Gil had roared with laughter when he first saw the Manoir Ste. Madeleine.
“Dear God, it’s pure kitsch — if kitsch can be pure. Any moment now and Sneezy, Grumpy, and Doc will come waddling round that corner, singing their corny little hearts out.”
It was not how she saw it. Pure Castle of Otranto more like. More Transylvania