“I suppose I should offer belated congratulations,” said Albert. “She seems an extraordinary woman.”
“Like you would know. What do you think happens to the will now? With Ruthven gone?”
Albert shrugged. The question didn’t surprise him, considering the source. “Father will have to write another. Nothing’s changed, has it, really? He’ll just start to play the old shell game again, only with fewer peas.”
“Except my slice of the pie just got bigger, didn’t it?” said George.
“Did it? Well, if you want to pursue food metaphors, it’s not as if the pie were ever evenly divided. And we still don’t know what provisions he’s made for Herself.”
“Violet, you mean. Yes, of course. Still…”
But Albert was no more in the mood for speculation about money and inheritance than George was prepared to discuss Natasha and the impending, suspiciously convenient, birth.
“You do realize, George, don’t you, that Ruthven was murdered. Here, in this house. Possibly by one of us here, in this house?”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say, “in this room,” but that was certainly what had him preoccupied.
“One of us? Don’t be silly. An intruder-”
“An intruder wouldn’t be much of an improvement on the situation, would he? What if this intruder comes back?”
“Do you really think so, Albert?” said Sarah. “That he might come back?” She shivered, rubbing her hands before the fire. “It’s awful, isn’t it? Poor Ruthven. He must have been terrified.”
“I refuse to feel sorry for him,” said George. “When did he ever feel sorry for me?”
Albert felt the “for me” was rather typical. Ruthven had been dreadful to all of them.
Sarah might have been thinking along similar lines.
“It’s not always all about you, George.”
George seemed honestly baffled by this comment.
“Who else would it be about?”
Sarah sighed.
“Really, George. I must say, your self-absorption is quite… complete at times.”
“Self-absorption? That’s a nice way of putting it,” said Albert. In a portentous voice, he said: “Send not to ask for whom the world turns: It turns for thee, George.”
“And just look who’s talking.”
“Not now,” said Sarah. “I won’t be able to stand it if we all start fighting now. If ever there were a time to close ranks-”
She was interrupted by the arrival of law and order, in the person of Sergeant Fear. Having been listening outside the door in an attitude reminiscent of Paulo the night before, Fear had been trying to decide which of them sounded sufficiently strung out to be ripe for questioning. None of them sounded serene. But if Fear understood the situation correctly, this George person was now the eldest and next in line for the throne, his brother having conveniently been painted out of the picture.
One thing St. Just had drilled into him was first to ask, “Who profits?” Judging from the look of George (once he had settled on which of the two men he was-there was not much choice between the handsome blonde one and the handsome dark-blonde one), they might be able to wrap this one up by lunchtime.
Snotty little upper-class twit, was Sergeant Fear’s summing up-the kind he used to revel in pulling over for speeding before he’d been elevated to the detective ranks. Not that he didn’t still enjoy doing that from time to time, but he had less time in his schedule for it now. Priorities.
“Mr. George Beauclerk-Fisk,” he said, with elaborate, and deceptive, politeness. “If you would be so kind, DCI St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary would like a word.”
George looked as though he might like to claim a prior engagement, but could think of none. Languidly, he unfolded himself from the sofa and followed Fear out of the room.
Albert leaned over to say something to Sarah, but just then his eye caught a movement in the doorway. No sooner had Fear left his listening post than he had been replaced by a young constable, who stood fidgeting there uncertainly, trying and failing to become invisible. Clearly he had his marching orders: Keep an eye on this lot.
St. Just found George, as he slouched into the conservatory in his male-model way, no more inspiring than Sergeant Fear had done. As much as he tried to quell the natural tendency, St. Just’s own experience was that fleeting first impressions-positive or negative-were often perfectly correct. While outwardly George was the image of the hip young man about town beloved of sports car manufacturers, St. Just was more strongly reminded of the lads he’d had to pull in for questioning when he first joined the force. That haunted look around the eyes meant drugs, in those cases, nearly always. Drugs in this case, also?
He motioned George to the cheetah-patterned chair opposite and quickly ran through the preliminaries-name, address, occupation. The beginning of an investigation seldom allowed time for in-depth questioning, although St. Just had a feeling George would have a lot more to contribute as the inquiry progressed. For the moment, St. Just was simply flying without instruments, using visual cues as his guide. Frequently, it was not what people told him that was of value-so often people took forever to get to the kernel of what they knew-but how they behaved during the telling. At times, he found just asking questions to which he knew the answers perfectly well to be a useful technique.
“Now, Mr. Beauclerk-Fisk: What was your relationship with your brother?”
“Quite civil,” George replied evenly. “Of course, we saw little of each other, which helped.”
“No sibling rivalry to speak of?”
“Not beyond the usual.” George began to study his manicure with riveted interest.
“Ruthven was the eldest?”
“Yes. I was second eldest, followed by Albert and Sarah. We came along at quite regular intervals; in fact, we all have nearly the same birthday, in April. We concluded from this that the mating season for my father was every August, when my parents took their annual holiday in Torquay. They never seemed to get along the rest of the year. These were all in the line of miracle births, Inspector.”
“Your parents are divorced, I take it?”
“Yes,” George said flatly.
“I see. Now, about your movements last night…”
“You would have to ask Natasha. My, er, fiancée. I would have said my movements were quite spectacular-even better than usual.”
It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in.
“I take it from that you claim to have been in bed. Together.”
“You take it correctly. And, not asleep, either. Well, at least, not until the small hours.” He smiled complacently, his pale eyes unfathomable, ice on a winter lake.
Sergeant Fear wrote down George’s alibi, putting a little star by it, meaning “Check out this statement.” He had developed his own five-star system over the years, much like a travel guide or a restaurant critic. One star meant: Probably True, for Sergeant Fear trusted no one completely. Five stars meant: Certainly a Lie. After some hesitation, he gave George three stars-somewhat the benefit of the doubt, for Fear, who struggled to be fair with suspects, did not like George. He hadn’t cared for the comment about the mating season; the delivery had shown disrespect, in his view. Moreover, Sergeant Fear, who wore his blue collar on-well, on his neck, rather than his sleeve-could see that George was the kind of blue blood born to be Fear’s natural enemy.
Sarah sat down in a swirl of billowing fabric, looking like an unsorted pile of hemp atop the cheetah chair. Her large eyes in her pretty, round face regarded St. Just anxiously.
“Your brother George tells me you are all quite close in age,” said the detective.
“Yes. All of us are Taureans, too. My father, as well. That didn’t half cause some friction among the five of us.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Taurus,” she explained, taken aback by his ignorance. “The Bull. Stubborn, you know. Oh, our external personalities are quite different, but at basic core we are similar. Very. I, Inspector, write cookbooks. If you don’t think that requires a stubborn, bulldog nature… Just because the cake falls doesn’t mean you give up. No, it’s try, try again. Now, Capricorns, on the other hand-”