White Bodies(68)

38


She was totally mad, sending a torrent of emails, ranting, practically hysterical.

How could you?! You’re such a crazy bitch. You’ve no idea—the price I had to pay!

Luke had gone home and accused Scarlet of sounding off at Narcotics Anonymous, of having secrets. Like, how come she was even in Narcotics Anonymous. And how dare she talk about their private lives to people like me, whom she hardly knew!

You’ve no idea what you’ve unleashed. He became turned on by the role he was playing—of a master reprimanding his slave, forced to punish me, forced to humiliate and hurt me. If I’m found strangled, or choked to death with some piece of rag rammed down my throat, Luke’s to blame, and so are you!

Then she added:

How did you know? Luke’s sensitive about drugs, because he was a user himself.

I didn’t know, of course. But it made sense. When I thought about how she wanted to kill him, with diamorphine in the arm, looking like it was self-inflicted. But I didn’t want to engage with that—instead I told her she was being unfair, and also that I needed to distance myself. But Scarlet said our lives were intricately bound together now, that there was no escape for me. That it was more crucial than ever that I kept my side of our bargain.

I wrote:

We made no bargain! It’s all in your head.

She came right back telling me that I was deluded. A deal had been struck—she had acted, and I had to reciprocate. And the date she’d sent me earlier would still work.

When you went to Luke, you increased the urgency of your mission. Don’t lose your nerve. Honor Belle.

I’m not even convinced that you actually did what you said you did, I wrote back, sickened, and untruthful.

Remember the four-leaf clover. How else would I have it? It’s proof.

I need more proof.

Okay—well, I can tell you this. I brought him breakfast that day—a pain au raisin. What does it say in the postmortem? Is that what he had eaten that morning?

I felt dizzy. She’d done exactly as I had asked and had supplied me with more evidence—it was almost too good to be true. I could go to Melody Sykes now and say, “Look what she wrote! How could Scarlet possibly have known they found raisins in his stomach?” Together with the cuff link, it was almost conclusive. At the back of my mind, though, I felt that one small piece of the picture was missing, some third sign that would place Scarlet at the Ashleigh House Hotel that day—and I took the decision to go back there, to see Agnes again, the receptionist who’d taken photographs.

? ? ?

It was easy—a short train journey, and then a cab ride, and I was back in that stylish Georgian hotel, lawns stretching out to the woods.

I asked for Agnes. The young man on reception said that she was on her break. “Who shall I say wants her?”

“Tell her Callie Farrow, the sister-in-law of Felix Nordberg.”

A few minutes later, she appeared, looking smart in her black uniform and perfect makeup, and her hair tied up in a neat ponytail.

“I wondered whether you could tell me about the day Felix died,” I said, “and whether I might have another look at the photographs you took.”

“I sent them to your sister.” She sounded wary.

“I don’t want to bother my sister. It’s a difficult time for her.” It sounded weak, but I couldn’t think of anything better.

“She asked me to delete them. . . .”

“Did you?”

“Actually, I didn’t. But they’re very intimate, I haven’t shown them to anyone.”

She wasn’t budging, so I tried a new tack: “It’s possible that someone came to see Felix that morning, and I want to see if there is any evidence of that in the photographs.”

“Really? I didn’t see anyone go to his room.”

“But wasn’t the hotel busy? There was a conference going on.”

“That’s true. One of his colleagues, maybe.”

That wasn’t what I meant, but there was no need to elaborate, and I gave Agnes a half smile that was meant to say Well?, and at last she reached into her bag, telling me to come with her to the lounge area where we could sit down. She passed me the phone and I scrolled through the photos—once again I was struck by the pristine nature of the room—everything perfectly tidy. Of course, that was normal for Felix. Nonetheless there was a strange sense of the scene of his death being arranged for a viewing, the artistic way in which he was lying on the bed, his arm hanging down the side. Even his bathrobe appeared to be draped in a thought-out fashion—and I thought of Scarlet’s attention to detail, the way she planned things so carefully. I looked at the photographs a second time, hoping that something would unlock my thoughts, make me realize why I’d thought it so important to have come back here, to the hotel. Then, something struck me—the picture of the untouched hospitality tray. Nothing drunk and nothing eaten, not the wrapped-up biscuits, nor the piece of fruitcake encased in cellophane.

“Did Felix have any breakfast sent to his room that morning?”

“No. Not at all. It was one of the reasons we thought something was wrong, when he hadn’t left the room all day. He hadn’t eaten anything, no breakfast, no lunch. Nothing.”

I thought about the pain au raisin. I supposed that Felix could have brought it with him to the hotel—but why? And if he had, why were there no used plates, no crumbs anywhere?