Mr. Flood's Last Resort(19)

Renata glances up at me. “A tall dark handsome stranger will come into your life and turn it upside down.”

I think, briefly, of the quarried slate of Sam Hebden’s eyes. “I think we’ve heard that one before, Renata.”

“And the satellite TV repairman came, didn’t he?” says Renata stiffly.

“He was short and bald and you sent him upstairs.”

Renata shrugs. “Details, darling.”

“So, no murdered wives and faceless children, no communications from beyond the grave?”

Renata wrinkles her nose. “No, but there’s something else: this.” She taps the card second from the top. A man in a cape is waving a wand. “And this.” A naked woman dances with a curtain pole in each hand.

“There’s a lot of wand waving going on there.”

“Of course, there’s a magician in our midst and a riddle to be solved; whether the two are linked or the outcome is favorable I cannot tell.” She peers up at me with mischief in her eyes.

“Before you start, I’m not giving Mrs. Flood another thought.”

“Just answer one question, Maud. When did Mr. Flood’s hoarding habit start?”

“Around twenty-five years ago I think.”

“After Mrs. Flood took a tumble? I’d put money on it.” Renata is triumphant: I can tell from the uplift of her eyebrows. “It’s grief, you see, Maud.”

“What is?”

“That causes people never to throw anything else away, ever again. Not even a crisp packet. They can’t take another loss. Believe me. I’m no stranger to bereavement.”

“Not with the late Bernie Sparks in an urn in your spare room.”

We sit in silence for a while, looking at the cards.

She straightens the edges of the black velvet cloth, smoothing invisible wrinkles. “It could have been very simple,” she says, “a crime of passion. Mary was planning to leave him and in the heat of the moment Cathal killed her and made it look like an accident.”

“Just like that?”

Renata nods. “He didn’t want to part with her.”

“Like a crisp packet?”

“With his history of violent mood swings, I think murder is the most likely outcome for Mrs. Flood.”

“You would.”

“And as for the girl . . .” Renata bites her lip.

I narrow my eyes at her. “Don’t even think it.”

“Maud,” she says, her voice a steely purr. “You and I both know that something isn’t right up at that house. Just have a little poke around, eh? See what else floats to the surface.”

I look at the magician on the card. He’s about to let rip with some powerful conjuring; he has his wand gripped tight and one eye narrowed. This is someone who means business.





CHAPTER 6




Dr. Gabriel Flood has joined us for afternoon tea. He says he normally visits at night, which is why I thought he was selling conservatories or Jesus; else I would have been more polite when he materialized on the back doorstep. He could easily be a confidence trickster or God-botherer, but right now he’s masquerading as a college lecturer with a leather manbag. He tells me to call him Gabriel and gives me a handshake of unnecessary firmness.

It is not unusual for relatives to turn up unexpected; they do this in order to catch care workers pocketing heirlooms and beating their loved ones senseless. Today, Gabriel was disappointed, because on his arrival I was making sandwiches and Mr. Flood was doing a sudoku in a cleared corner of the garden.

I have finally lured the old fecker outside where I can see him, in the same way that you would encourage any wild creature into the garden: by providing a suitable habitat. I set out a sunlounger and on a table next to it I left a half ounce of tobacco, a puzzle book, and a flask of tea. Sure enough, after a while, Mr. Flood landed there and began to roost, enjoying a bit of fresh air as he squinted at the book and picked his dentures. I was confident that if I made no sudden movements he might stay.

Gabriel sits down at the kitchen table and sets his manbag on the chair next to him. He doesn’t look a bit like his father; there’s no trace of bedraggled Irish giant in him. Neither are there echoes of the pale little boy scowling in the photographs. Grown Gabriel is a small man and a discordant amalgamation of the doughy and the angular. A sharp nose and pointed chin protrude from an otherwise round, flabby head, which, together with his close-set eyes give the impression that Gabriel’s features are being irresistibly drawn to the middle of his face. Gabriel’s body runs with the doughy theme, although he seems light on his feet for all that. As if he’s a nimble weasel of a man dressed up in a plump man’s skin. His hair is black, not the searing red of his childhood, and badly thinning, although it has been artfully heaped into a peaked cone to make the most of it. Gabriel colors his hair, then. I can just imagine him dripping dye under plastic.

He offers to help, so I set him slicing tomatoes at the kitchen table and study him out of the corner of my eye as I mash the eggs. He approaches the tomatoes fussily, getting up, moving the chair farther round the table, inspecting the chopping board, making a big show of taking off his jacket and rolling up his cuffs. He is unused to manual labor and it’s all a great novelty for him, chopping.

He picks up a tomato. “Maud,” he says, “you are working wonders, really you are. I can’t believe the old man has let you clear all of this.”