A Grave Waiting. Jill Downie
Читать онлайн книгу.
In appearance she was at the other end of the colour spectrum from her friend, with a porcelain complexion, wavy blond hair cut like a cap around her face, and a pair of deep blue eyes. She too wore jeans, and an emerald-green sweater that reached her knees and looked about four sizes too big for her. She smiled at Moretti, and there were dimples in her cheeks.
“So you are Edward,” she said. “Miss Ferbrache is very fond of you, as she was of your mother.”
“She’s quite a lady,” said Sandra Goldstein. “Come on in.”
Moretti did not remember ever being inside La Veile, so he could not tell what, if anything, its new tenants had added to the décor. But the furniture in the sitting room to the right of the front door, and the armchair to which he was steered near the unlit fireplace, had a generic look about them. The place felt comfortably warm, and he saw a space heater against one wall.
“We don’t light the fire until Ellie has gone to bed,” Julia King explained. “She’s much too fascinated by it. She’s napping at the moment, but she’ll be up again quite soon.”
Accepting the offer of a cup of tea, so as to be around when the child got up, Moretti watched Sandra Goldstein leave the room and turned to Julia King. “I was sorry to hear from Gwen that you had been ill. You are convalescing here, I understand.”
Julia King had taken the chair opposite him, and Moretti watched the colour rise up her neck and flood her face. “Yes, I feel much better than when I arrived. The rest has been good for me.”
“You are an illustrator, so Gwen tells me.”
“Yes.” Julia King relaxed again, her face brightening. “I do illustrations for Sandy’s books, but I do other work too. Would you like to see some?”
“Very much.”
She got up and went over to a desk under the window and switched on the lamp, leaving the slats of the blinds closed, Moretti noticed. “Here we are, some of my other work.”
“These are — exquisite.”
Julia King’s “other work” consisted of pen and ink drawings, some with a wash of colour, of country scenes, townscapes, shells, flowers, animals. None were bigger than postcard size, some tiny miniatures. The detail was painstaking, the control of her medium seemed to Moretti’s untrained eye to be outstanding.
“Thank you. Your island has given me some great new material — see, one of your granite walls, bursting at the seams with flowers. I think they’re just too wonderful.”
From somewhere upstairs came the sound of a child calling out.
“That’s Ellie. Please excuse me while I go get her up.”
As she ran out of the room, Sandra Goldstein returned with a tray. “Julia’s been showing you her work,” she said, handing a mug of tea to Moretti. “She’s very talented, and a terrific illustrator.”
“Nice to have a friend as your illustrator.” Moretti helped himself to milk, and refusing the offer of a biscuit. “Have you known each other long?”
“Since school days. I was originally a journalist, and when I thought up the characters of Warren and Wilma, I knew who I wanted to draw them.”
“Warren and Wilma?”
Sandra Goldstein smiled broadly, lifting the slanting lines of her cheekbones. “Warren and Wilma Woodchuck. Julia and I are now doing our fifth book together.”
There came the sound of a child’s laughter, and a small girl ran into the room. She had curly dark hair, a skin like bronze satin, and huge brown eyes.
“Cookies,” she said to Sandra Goldstein, pointing at the plate on the tray. “Cookies for Ellie. Please?”
Then she saw Moretti. She stopped and turned back to her mother, held out her arms, and started to cry.
From the door of the porch the two women watched Ed Moretti leave. The rain was just starting, and soon Verte Rue would be a nasty, messy, muddy, comfortingly impassable morass.
“Do you think he came because she saw the gun?” Julia King leaned against the taller woman.
“I don’t know. He’s got a difficult face to read. Not a poker face exactly, but you get the feeling he’s looking at one thing and thinking another.”
“It’s an interesting face, isn’t it? Didn’t Miss Ferbrache say his father was Italian and his mother a Guernsey girl?”
“Yes. I was amazed at how quickly Ellie settled down. He must give off good vibes.”
“What do you want to do with this?” Julia looked down at the card she held in her hand.
“Put it in the trash, I guess.”
Sandra took the business card Ed Moretti had left with them, then saw the hand-written number on it. “On second thoughts, let’s hang on to it, honey. Moretti gave us his probably unlisted home phone number. You never know.”
“Then nothing will happen. Like an insurance policy.”
“Right. Then nothing will happen.”
The tail lights of the Triumph disappeared into the gloom. Julia King shivered, and Sandra Goldstein held her tight as she locked the front door.
Chapter Four
Liz Falla parked the police BMW outside the Landsend Restaurant and sat for a moment in the car, looking at the yacht. She could see it quite clearly, even though the floating dock and gangway were out of sight. The area of the pier along which Lady Fellowes had walked, perilously close to the edge, was in plain view, as was the police guard Moretti had ordered. Some of the SOC crew were still on board, and she had stopped off to ask if they had found anything of interest. Nothing, apparently. All the computers had been taken to Hospital Lane, to await the decision as to whether they, like the bullet, should be sent to Chepstow.
Liz had fond memories of the Landsend. In its earlier incarnation it had been little more than a glorified fish-and-chips café, her restaurant of choice when she was a kid. No hot dogs or hamburgers for her. Just lovely white fish in chunky golden batter, with a heap of thick-cut, greasy chips on the side and bottled tartare sauce.
But the Landsend, like Guernsey, had taken on another transformation. When money replaced tourism and tomatoes as the main income earner for the island, the Landsend moved upmarket, changing its menu and its décor. Gone were the wreaths of shiny plastic seaweed, the fishing nets hanging from the ceiling, one with a beautiful plaster-of-Paris mermaid trapped inside, clad in strategically placed seaweed and seashells, smiling seductively at the diners below. Gone was the five-foot-high statue of a cheerful lobster holding the Landsend’s limited menu against his red-checked apron. Now there was a huge glass wall overlooking the harbour, white walls hung with sepia-tinted photographs, white linen tablecloths, single roses in crystal bud vases, fine china, and an ever-changing menu.
Gord Collenette was still the owner, but he had brought in a French chef and an Italian maître d’hôtel, and his carefully trained servers, both male and female, were chosen for their looks. It was certainly the sort of place where Lady Fellowes might well have dined, but it was hard to imagine she had stayed there until one o’clock in the morning.
Liz got out of the car and walked up the narrow tiled pathway between potted palms and hydrangeas to the main entrance. An elegantly dressed man, eyebrows raised, mouth pursed, stood on the other side of the glass doors, and watched her open them, making no move to help her.
“And what can I do for you?” he asked, the Latin lilt doing little to sweeten the tone, eyebrows descending as he scanned her dark suit, dropping to take in her shoes, with a quick flick back up to her wrist to take in her watch, Liz’s only jewellery. Nothing sexual about it, but a rapid and skilled assessment of her potential as a paying customer.
“You can fetch your boss,” said Detective Sergeant Falla, taking her ID out of