Endpeace

All the women in the big drawing-room looked at the woman who had been to finishing school in Switzerland, then on the diplomatic circuit and had finished up marrying a policeman.

‘You appear to have had an interesting life,’ said the Premier’s wife, and looked as if she wished desperately to know what an interesting life was like.

‘We all have our own lives to live,’ said the Huxwood younger daughter, then had the grace to smile. ‘God, how smug that sounds!’

‘Indeed it does,’ said her mother.

The two Huxwood daughters were almost totally unlike, except that both had their mother’s large myopic eyes. Sheila, the elder, had her mother’s boniness without the beauty; she wore glasses with large fashion frames that actually made her look attractive. Linden, on the other hand, was comfortably fleshy and, Lisa guessed, wore contact lenses. Both were dark-haired, Sheila’s in a Double Bay modified beehive, Linden’s in a French bob with bangs. Both were expensively dressed in simple dinner dresses and both wore simple diamond pendants and rings that winked lasciviously at anyone who found value in jewellery. Lisa, feeling ashamed that she should even care, was glad she had worn the gold necklace she had inherited from her grandmother. She had always preferred gold to diamonds, though Scobie, bless his stingy heart, had never bought her either.

She had noticed that the other women guests had been as quiet as herself; Lady Huxwood did nothing to put anyone at her ease. The Premier’s wife sat next to Lisa; we’re the two wallflowers, thought Lisa.

Beatrice Supple sat beside Lady Huxwood, and the tycoon’s wife had not sat down at all, hovering on the fringes like a lady-in-waiting.

‘Sit down, Gloria, for heaven’s sake!’ said Lady Huxwood.

Gloria surprised Lisa by saying, ‘My bloody girdle’s killing me. Have I got time to take it off before the men come in?’

‘Go for your life,’ said Linden, giggling. ‘Get a wriggle on.’

Gloria stepped behind Lisa’s chair, grunted and gasped, heaved a sigh of relief and her girdle dropped to the floor. As if they had all been constrained by the same girdle, all the women suddenly seemed to relax. Then the men came into the room, bringing with them their air of self-importance. Or am I, Lisa wondered, becoming paranoid about this house?

Gloria Bentsen, who had now sat down, moved aside on her couch for Sir Harry to sit beside her. He did so, taking her hand, stroking it and smiling, not at her nor her husband but at his wife. Lady Huxwood smiled back, but Lisa couldn’t tell whether she was indulging his mild flirtation or not.

Malone came and stood behind Lisa, leaned down and said softly, ‘I hope you’ve got a bad headache.’

She reached up, took his hand and said just as softly, ‘Splitting. But we can’t leave just yet.’

Nigel Huxwood drew up a chair alongside Lisa. He was the handsomest of the family, with finely chiselled features; the only blemish was a weak mouth but that was disguised by the dark moustache above it and the beautifully capped teeth that were exposed when he smiled. He looked up at Malone. ‘Go and chat to my sister, Scobie, while I try to charm your lovely wife.’

Not wanting to throw up on the big Persian carpet, Malone crossed the room and squeezed into the French two-seater beside Sheila. ‘I’ve been sent to charm you,’ he said and, hearing himself, wanted to throw up even more.

‘Nigel is always doing that. It’s never let me charm you. Brothers can be bastards.’

Gallantry did not come easily to Malone; from what he had read, Irish knights had been a bit slow on the chivalry bit. But he tried: ‘Righto, let’s reverse it. I’m not really good at the charm show.’

‘Is that because you’re a policeman?’

‘That may be part of it.’

‘Is the other part because you’re out of your depth in this house?’

Malone had met snobbery before, but never arrogance like this. ‘Not out of my depth. Just a different sort of breeding.’

She leaned away from him, to get him into better focus it seemed. Then she smiled, a very toothy smile but suddenly surprisingly friendly. ‘Touché, Mr Malone. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, y’know. La Malmaison has sunk more people than you could guess at, over the years. I don’t know whether it’s the house or we Huxwoods.’

‘I think it might be the Huxwoods.’ He would never be asked again, so what the hell?

‘Is that a police opinion or a personal one?’ She didn’t sound offended.

‘Cops are not supposed to have opinions. We just gather evidence and leave the opinions to the jury.’

‘Have you gathered much evidence this evening?’

‘Conflicting.’ He retreated, because all at once she sounded as if she might be likeable: ‘Conflicting evidence never gets you anywhere in a court of law.’

‘I must remember that,’ she said, as if to herself; then she looked up as the tycoon came and stood beside them. ‘Charlie darling, pull up a chair. You’ve met Inspector Malone?’

Malone was not sure exactly what a tycoon was: how rich, how powerful one had to be. There had been a barrage of tycoons in the past decade, most of whom had been shot down like so many balloons. But the newspapers, including the Huxwoods’ own Chronicle and their Financial Weekly, called Charles Bentsen a tycoon. He had emigrated from Sweden at eighteen, one of the few Swedes heading Down Under; his name then had been Bengtssen. He had started as a labourer on a building site and within twenty years owned a corporation. He had built office buildings, shopping malls, roads and bridges: he also built a personal fortune that every year got him into the Financial Weekly’s Rich List. Like all the nation’s New Rich, he had been subjected to the suspicion that no one had made his money honestly in the Eighties, but nothing had ever been proved against him. He possessed only one home, his art collection had been bought out of his own funds and not those of his shareholders, and his charitable works were not legendary only because he did not broadcast them. His wife Gloria had been his secretary and no one had a bad word to say about her. Malone knew very little of this, since he read neither the gossip columns nor the Financial Weekly, but he was prepared to take Bentsen at face value.

He was a big man, still with a labourer’s shoulders; now forty years out of Gӧteborg, he still looked typically Scandinavian, except for the Australian sun cancers. He had a wide-boned face, thick blond hair in which the grey was camouflaged, bright blue eyes; but the mouth looked cruel, or anyway uncompromising. Malone was sure that Bentsen had not made his fortune by patting people on the back.

‘I’ve never met Mr Malone, but I’ve heard a great deal about him.’ Then he looked at Malone. ‘Assistant Commissioner Zanuch is a friend of mine.’

He would be, thought Malone: AC Zanuch spent his free time climbing amongst the social alps. ‘It’s nice of him to mention me.’

‘I gather you get mentioned a lot, Inspector. You seem to specialize in cases that get a lot of attention.’

Malone tried to keep the sharpness out of his voice. ‘I don’t specialize, Mr Bentsen. Murder happens, we in Homicide have to investigate it.’

‘Just like those bumper stickers, Shit Happens?’

‘Usually a little more tragic than that. And sometimes messier.’

‘Don’t fence with him, Charlie,’ said Sheila Custer. ‘He has already put me in my place.’ She put her hand on Malone’s. ‘Only joking, Mr Malone.’

Malone gave her a smile, but he continued to look at Bentsen. Crumbs, he thought, why is everyone in this house so bloody aggressive? What’s scratching at them?

Bentsen said, ‘I read murder mysteries, they’re my relaxation. The old-fashioned sort, not the ones written by muscle-flexing authors.’

‘I get enough of it during the course of a week. I can’t remember when I last read a murder mystery – reading our running sheets is about as close as I get. Do you read books about business leaders?’

‘Only those that fail,’ said Bentsen and looked around him as if one or two fallen heroes might be here in the room.

On the other side of the room Lisa was resisting, without effort, the charm of Nigel Huxwood. In another location she might have good-humouredly responded to him; but not in this house. While pretending to listen to him, she had been taking in her surroundings. There were treasures in this room with which she would have liked to have surrounded herself: the two Renoirs on opposite walls, the Rupert Bunny portrait of two women who might have been earlier Huxwoods. The chairs and couches and small tables were antiques, though the upholstery had been renewed; the drapes were French silk. The room reeked of wealth well spent and, against the grain of her nature, she suddenly felt envious. This house was working on her in a way that made her angry.

She looked up almost with relief, any distraction was welcome, as the two female in-laws, who had been missing since dinner, came back into the drawing-room. They bore down on Lisa and Nigel, drawing up chairs to sit side by side like twins who always did everything together. Yet in looks they could not have been more dissimilar.

Brenda Huxwood was an almost archetypal Irish beauty; the only thing that stopped her face from being perfect was that her upper lip was too Irish, just a little too long. She had been an actress, but her talent had never matched her looks and British producers had always shied away from promoting an actress on beauty alone. She was Nigel’s third wife and, if Lisa had asked her, would have said she was determined to be his last. She had started life with no money but always with an eye to attaining some; now she had grasped it she had no intention of losing it; her credit was that she loved Nigel, despite his faults. The brogue in her voice was only faint, like a touch of make-up to enhance the general appeal, though it could thicken into a soup of anger as others in the room knew.

Cordelia Huxwood, on the other hand, had had to borrow her looks: from hairdressers, beauty salons, aerobics classes. Her mouse-brown hair was tinted, her pale blue eyes somehow made to seem larger than they actually were, her figure, inclined to plumpness, slimmed down by only-God-and-gym-instructors-knew how many hours on exercise machines. The package was artificial, yet sincerity shone out of her so that one instantly liked her. She was inclined to blame herself for too much that might go wrong, to wear hairshirts, but since they were usually by Valentino or Hermès she got little sympathy, especially from her mother-in-law.

‘Where have you two been?’ said Nigel.

‘Talking business,’ said Brenda and made it sound as if she and Cordelia had been composing a poem. Everything with her, Lisa decided, was for effect.

‘We in-laws needed to get a few things straightened out,’ said Cordelia.

Lisa was never sure whether she had been born with a sharp eye, had acquired it as a diplomat’s secretary or had learned it from Scobie: whichever, she did not miss Nigel’s warning glance. ‘You must tell me about it. Later.’