Jenny sniffed the air and wondered how an Edinburgh street came to be called Cumin Place. The air smelled of pollen, barbecue and old money, the Victorian houses easily going for over a million. That didn’t mean much in Edinburgh these days, of course, but this was a long way from brash hedge funders in the New Town. Jenny was only five minutes from Grange Cemetery, the cricket ground in the other direction. That said it all, an Edinburgh neighbourhood with a cricket club.
She pushed the doorbell of number forty-nine and stood back, guessed at five bedrooms. Francesco opened the door in an apron covered in flour. His hair was impeccable, perfect tanned skin, exact length of stubble. He was around thirty, a few lines around his brown eyes, enough to make him seem distinguished rather than a naïve toyboy.
He rubbed his hands on a dishtowel and opened the door further.
‘You must be Ms Skelf.’
Jenny noticed the ‘Ms’, respectful and precise.
‘Francesco.’
They shook hands and Jenny was dismayed to feel a shudder of electricity up her arm. Francesco’s face seemed to rest in a light smoulder, goddamn it. She felt ridiculous, heat coming to her face. What must it be like, wandering through life having women go weak at the knees in front of you? Pathetic.
So with all of that, why would Francesco tie himself to an ill woman in her sixties? Jenny looked at the expensive original art in the hall and didn’t wonder anymore.
‘I’m afraid Vanessa is in bed,’ Francesco said. ‘She doesn’t feel well.’
He led her to a room at the back of the ground floor. He saw Jenny’s look.
‘We converted this into her bedroom,’ he said. ‘She can’t manage the stairs.’
Francesco knocked and took a step back.
‘Go in,’ he said, ‘I’ll make coffee.’
Jenny watched him walk down the hall to the kitchen, then pushed the door open.
She’d expected gloomy light, muslin curtains, the stench of medication in the air, maybe spider webs in the corners and a fetid bedpan. But Vanessa was sitting in an expensive modern bed with spotlighting, the Guardian sudoku on her lap.
She peered over her reading glasses, smiled thinly, and waved towards a seat next to the bed. She put the paper and pencil down.
‘How are you?’ Jenny said, sitting.
Vanessa took a sip of water and Jenny looked round. This was a converted dining room, judging by the wallpaper and display cabinets. But the large bed was new, and the lighting. Wide patio doors opened into the back garden, sparrows and starlings chattering in the trees, a lazy bee staggering from rose to rose.
‘Before you say anything, I know why you’re here,’ Vanessa said.
Jenny had arranged this as a follow-up to the funeral. The Skelfs often did that, pastoral care after the fact. It was sometimes only after a funeral that the bereaved fell apart, without the structure and order of the ceremony to plan.
When Vanessa’s clammy kids had given her the case, Jenny had wondered how she would investigate it. She couldn’t come in undercover, Vanessa already knew her as a funeral director and private investigator. So she’d arranged the chat as the former, but already that wasn’t going according to plan.
Vanessa had taken an age to drink her water, swallowing seemed to be difficult. Her hand shook as she placed the glass on the bedside table. She looked worse than at the funeral. Burying your mother wasn’t easy, of course, but she didn’t just look out of sorts, she seemed properly ill. Sunken eyes, skin waxy and grey, sores at the corners of her mouth. The backs of her hands were covered in similar sores.
‘Those fucking children of mine,’ Vanessa said, and slumped from the effort of talking.
‘I’m not here to bullshit you,’ Jenny said. ‘They’re just worried.’
‘They’re worried about their inheritance.’
Vanessa waved a hand around the room. Jenny had checked with Matthew and Maria, the house was paid off generations ago, passed down their father’s side of the family, afforded by old-fashioned stockbroking. Everything the twins said smacked of snobbery, it was important to them that Jenny knew their family had been rich for generations.
‘You don’t look well,’ Jenny said.
‘Thank you,’ Vanessa said, not unkindly. ‘That’s not something Maria and Matthew would notice.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ Jenny said. ‘They noticed enough to ask me to speak to you.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Vanessa said. ‘They asked you to investigate Frankie, I know that. They think he’s some gigolo out to dupe me, right?’
As if on cue, Francesco opened the door with a tray carrying two tiny Italian coffees, sugar bowl and cream jug. He smiled at Vanessa, placed it on the bedside table. Vanessa reached out a hand and touched his face and they shared a look. It seemed genuine.
Jenny and Vanessa both watched him leave, then Vanessa turned.
‘He’s amazing in bed,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He can go all night.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘And he’s very interested in my pleasure, if you catch my drift.’ She actually looked at her own crotch, and Jenny flushed then laughed.
‘I think I do.’
Vanessa looked at her coffee but didn’t pick it up.
‘Those kids don’t know a thing about us,’ Vanessa said. ‘They have no idea. I buried my husband a year ago, he was the love of my life. And I just watched my mother get lowered into the ground. Do you know what that’s like?’
Jenny thought about the smoke from her dad’s funeral pyre. ‘Yes.’
Her tone made Vanessa stop and examine Jenny closely. ‘I believe you. I’m a good judge of character, you know.’
Vanessa waved at the coffees and Jenny picked hers up. It was little more than black sludge in the bottom of a thimble. She downed it and felt a bitter buzz immediately. Vanessa did the same, breathed deeply.
‘I know why Francesco is here, I’m not an idiot. You think an Italian stud-muffin like him would normally be interested in this?’ She waved a hand down her bedridden body.
‘So?’
‘I look after him. He lives here, free food and board, of course, and I’m also paying for his studies.’
‘Studies?’
‘Law at Edinburgh University.’
‘Law.’
Vanessa smiled and coughed. ‘Yes, he’s one of those annoying bastards who’s effortlessly beautiful and charming, and intelligent to boot.’
Jenny smiled. ‘And you get out of it…’
Vanessa narrowed her eyes. ‘I already told you, he fucks all night.’
Jenny gave Vanessa a look. ‘Forgive me, but you don’t look as if you could fuck all night.’
‘I try, that’s the main thing.’
Vanessa coughed, which built to something nasty and uncontrollable. She grabbed a tissue and spat into it. Jenny saw blood.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
Vanessa shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’
‘That blood says different.’
Vanessa nodded. ‘So the twins think he’s killing me, is that it?’
It had been hanging in the air from the start, and Jenny was glad Vanessa said it first. She glanced at the sludge in her coffee cup, thought about the bitterness.
Vanessa waved her coffee cup at Jenny. ‘I know Frankie, he would never harm me.’
‘Forgive me, but that’s the kind of thing a trusting idiot says. I should know, I’ve been one.’
Vanessa examined her. ‘I’m sure you have. But Frankie is not like that.’
Jenny placed her cup on the tray. ‘Do you have an up-to-date will, Mrs Chalmers?’
‘Vanessa, please. And yes, of course I do.’
‘And?’
‘That’s the thing,’ Vanessa said. ‘Frankie gets nothing if I die. But if I live he gets paid through law school. I ask you, does it make sense for him to be trying to kill me?’
Jenny shook her head.
Vanessa coughed again, eventually got it under control. She fixed Jenny with a stare. ‘Maybe you should ask my children about this, they stand to inherit everything.’