After being assured by Bella that she and John could manage to clear up alone, Vinnie drove us back toward Central London. Renata had declined the offer of a lift, because Sir Simon Pendlebury had failed to arrive by the time he’d said he’d be there, and she assured us it was imperative she handed over the bags of papers she’d brought to the house to him, personally. Our journey was largely silent – because Bud and I had stomachs full of carbs, and it had been a long and stressful day…which meant we both nodded off.
The first thing I was aware of was Vinnie’s booming, “So the restaurant I was telling you about isn’t so far from John’s place. You’ll be able to get a cab back no problem.”
A tell-tale dry mouth and damp chin suggested I’d been snoring and dribbling, and Bud’s dazed look told me I hadn’t been the only one enjoying the effects of jet lag. “Lovely,” I answered, rather half-heartedly. The desire for a chatty soirée with Bud had evaporated, and all I really fancied doing was getting a proper sleep.
Bud rubbed his face with both hands, then said, “Thanks, Vinnie. We’ll rally. Where are you taking us?”
“Just delivering…don’t panic. I’ve some laundry to take care of, and I’m putting together a few bits of fresh clothing, and so forth, for John that I’ll drive over to him first thing. I’ll drop you off, and let you have some alone time. Nice place. A brasserie on Brompton Road. Been there for…well, a good, long time, anyways. First all-day brasserie in London, so they say. Good menu, excellent service, and a dessert trolley to die for. Quite literally…it’s always covered with the best ways to con your body into overdosing on sugar and fat, so it is.”
“I know the one you mean,” I said, sitting upright, and orientating myself. We didn’t take much longer to reach our destination – which was a place I’d wanted to share with Bud in any case. We waved Vinnie off, and I pulled at Bud until we were teetering on the edge of the pavement. I pointed at a window above our heads. “I had a boyfriend who lived up there. We used the restaurant a great deal. We broke up, he left for the shires…so I got ‘custody’ of this place. Came here often, throughout the time I lived in London. I had planned for us to come here to eat anyway – so now’s as good a time as any.”
Bud hugged me as we walked into the restaurant, which looked as though it had been plucked from a Parisienne street and dropped not much more than a stone’s throw from the Victoria and Albert Museum, relatively speaking.
When we walked in, I remembered the maitre d’ we were greeted by from the time when his hair had been brown and there’d been more of it…but his slight overbite and general pallor hadn’t changed. I said, “You were once a waiter here, I recall. It’s Yves, isn’t it?”
The man looked amazed, then a little sheepish. “I’ve been here since I was in my twenties. You used to come here regularly?”
“I did. For some time.” I suspected I’d blended into the many thousands of faces Yves must have seen over the years, but, now that I’d established my credentials, and explained we only wanted desserts, he led us to the end of a red-upholstered banquette which ran the length of a mirrored wall, facing the splendid – and well-stocked – bar.
Yves bent to us and spoke quietly. “The party requiring these seats will arrive in an hour. They are delayed. Bon appétit.” He pulled the dessert trolley to our side, then returned to his post.
“Do you come here often?” asked Bud, with a wicked grin, as he surveyed the scrumptiousness laid before us.
I returned his smile. “It’s pretty much where I learned to eat. I was a girl who came to London from what was, as you know, a relatively poor family in Wales. I’d never been introduced to anything more exotic than the Welsh interpretation of curry before I began to come to this very restaurant. It’s where I learned to read a French menu, order the right wine to match every dish, where I first grappled with tongs for escargots, and was shown – in the hallowed kitchen – how to make a perfect omelette. It’s also where I was able to discover the difference between champagnes. I learned a lot here. It’ll always be an incredibly special place for me.”
“And the guy who lived upstairs?” Bud tilted his head. His eyes weren’t playful.
“I’ve mentioned him to you. He was the one who spent his work-weeks in London, and weekends in the country…with his family, as it turned out.”
Bud nodded, “Ah yes, the one who wasn’t quite as ‘separated’ as you’d thought.”
I nodded. “That’s him.” I reached out and touched my husband’s hand. “It hurt, back then. But now? It’s all so far in the past…that distant land I choose to visit only infrequently.”
“But more often at the moment, I guess,” replied Bud, squeezing my fingers, then drawing back as a young, long-faced, aproned man approached, with a hopeful air.
Bud licked his lips as he surveyed the splendors before us, and whispered, “Everything looks so good. Bad, but good. Do I just point?” I nodded. He did, and we ended up with five desserts between us, and two glasses of champagne – because we were on holiday, after all.
We began by sharing the pot au chocolat, a light, silky mousse, with a little brandy poured into the top. As we oh’ed and ah’ed at the flavor and texture, Bud asked about my time alone with Worthington, which I recounted in every detail, though we were both careful to use no names, because the party beside us could overhear every word.
His look of concern about Worthington’s offer to share confidences with me abated when he savored the first mouthful of crème caramel. “Thanks for telling him we’re a team, Wife,” he said, eventually. “J and I have chatted about the man you speak of, and we’ve agreed he’s a decent enough chap.”
I chuckled. “Picking up the local lingo, I hear. Oh – oh, let’s try the tarte au citron next; I hope it’s well-balanced between sharp and sweet.” Bud carefully sliced the little pastry in two – with me watching him like a hawk.
As I bit into my perfectly-judged half of the crumbly delight, I wished everything about Beulah House would vanish into thin air, so we could float on a cloud of happiness, but I knew it wouldn’t, so was just about to pick up our conversation when the foursome beside us paid and departed, for which I was grateful. We enjoyed the distraction of the balletic flurry of activity that followed, to clear and reset the table.
“How did Worthington react when you told him about the telescope?” Bud wiped a crumb from his chin, and licked his fingers. “That was good,” he said, smiling.
“Said he’d check it out. And I think he will have done. I’m glad he found paper that matched the suicide note somewhere other than the palace room,” I added. “That could explain a great deal.”
“So where was it he found it, exactly?”
“When we were in the master bedroom, it was clear it only used half the upstairs space. Remember? It was above the bowed window of the salon below – so there had to be another space above the bowed window of the dining room. It sounds as though Sasha had a place next door to her bedroom where she had a bit of an office set-up, or maybe just a small study, or something like that.”
“But would she really sit there to write a suicide note, then take it up to the palace room with her?”
“Come on, Bud, Worthington told us something was off about Sasha’s injuries; I believe there was some sort of altercation up in the palace room, and that – somehow – Sasha fell or was thrown or pushed to her death because of it. Her hair being down suggests to me she was meeting someone who put her into her non-business mode of thinking; Renata told me she usually had her hair down, then wrapped it into a chignon for business. The telescope’s position suggests she could have been hit by that – it wouldn’t have been pointing at the floor of the room for any other good reason. The SOCO told us the lamp wasn’t lit at the desk where the note was found. I mean, who writes a suicide note then does that? If they’ve written it, they want someone to find it, right?”
“I guess.”
“Of course they do.” Bud shrugged, and I continued, “So the question is – who could have been up in the palace room with Sasha?”
“And the answer is…?”
“I still think Piers is a good option, despite the fact he’s dead. If he’s found to have overdosed, that could be his remorse enacted. But – to think beyond that for a moment, if it wasn’t Piers, then who? Renata went out of the French doors with Sasha, who she said left her, and went up the outdoor staircase to get a wrap, or something, because she was cold. Do we believe what Renata said about Sasha?”
Bud didn’t answer; he was sipping his champagne and eyeing the tarte tatin. “Oh, sorry. Umm…I don’t see why not. There were footsteps in the slush on the roof terrace leading to the master bedroom, so there’s some physical evidence to support Renata’s story that Sasha went up there, and she must have done, because how else would she have got to the palace room without you seeing her, right?”
“Right. Renata says she remained on the lower terrace, however, she could have followed Sasha up the outer stairs, and then into the palace room. She joined us all in the entry hall by entering the salon through the French doors, but she could have retraced her steps to do that. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Shall I cut the tarte tatin now? Into two perfectly equal halves, of course.”
I grinned. “Yes please.”
He did, and I allowed myself to luxuriate in the texture of the wafer-thin apple slices and their caramelly goodness for a moment or two.
I finally returned to our reality, and said, “Next, Charles and Felicity. They said they were using the pink and blue bathrooms – which we now know means the en suite bathrooms attached to each of those bedrooms. Felicity said they weren’t together, but they each seem to have taken an awfully long time to simply powder their noses…unless that is, in fact, what they were doing.”
“I’m not with you,” said Bud as we both sat back, wiped our sticky lips with our napkins, and reached for our drinks.
I said, “I reckon they might both be using cocaine: they seem to have mood upswings at the same time as each other, and always after they’ve been alone somewhere. It could be that they have that in common, too.”
Bud sighed, “I can’t say I noticed, to be honest. I’m usually pretty good at that – though, to be fair, there was so much nervous tension in the place that what might have stood out under normal circumstances looked pretty average.” He paused, looking a little sad. “There’s only the crème brulée left – shall we dig in with our spoons at the same time?”
I nodded, but let my spoon hover for a moment. “What I can tell you with certainty is that Felicity was lying when she said she’d been alone in the pink bathroom the whole time. Her body language was screaming that she’d filled those moments with something she doesn’t want us to know about. When she presented herself alongside Charles at the top of the stairs, her hair was arranged differently than it had been earlier in the evening. She was a little flushed, and her dress was crumpled. My most charitable thought at the time was that a woman with uncooperative hair had sought and received aid from experienced hairdresser.”
“And your less charitable interpretation of what you saw?”
I weighed my response as I allowed the silky, crunchy, sweetness in my mouth to linger for as long as possible. “Felicity and Charles aren’t that far apart in age. She’s probably not even twenty years his senior. Such an age difference, were the genders reversed, wouldn’t be seen as unusual. In this instance, if there is a relationship – beyond a sniffing one – I believe both parties would prefer it to be kept secret due to the fact she was once married to Charles’s father, so was – technically, at least – Charles’s stepmother. Maybe not even their set would accept that? That inconvenience aside, they are two people who both understand only too well the opportunities and challenges associated with being a darling of the tabloids, so their shared world view might make for a relationship built on some common ground.”
Bud grinned. “The inside of your head must be a fascinating place.”
I reached across the table and playfully tapped his hand with the back of my spoon. “Setting all that aside for a moment,” I continued, “if they were together, they could alibi each other. If they were not together – which is what they both said – then either of them could have followed Sasha up to the palace room.”
“Oh dear, I see where this is going.”
“And, of the two of them, I think Felicity could have been the one who had a spat with Sasha that got out of hand, and who threw her off the roof – well, okay then, pushed her, because I don’t believe Felicity would have been capable of throwing someone even of Sasha’s weight off the roof.”
“What about Piers? He’s now a suicide because of grief, not guilt? And Felicity meant to gravely injure Julie all along?”
“See – my mind’s not much more of a cesspit than yours, when you try,” I said.
Bud sighed. “I can’t see Felicity doing all that. In any case – why would she?”
I shrugged. “That’s what I don’t know – so, moving on…Julie and Glen were clattering about in the kitchen, they said; I know at least one of them was, because I could hear noises, and singing – though I couldn’t tell if I was hearing a male tenor, or a female contralto. The other one could have been anywhere – and I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t be surprised if Beulah House had a way by which they could have gained access to the upstairs without my having seen them do so from my vantage point in the salon.”
“Yes, they could have done.” Bud sounded triumphant. “There’s a servants’ staircase – John mentioned it. It was built to allow the servants to get up and down without having to use the…you know, the real stairs. I’m a bit fuzzy about its exact location, because John just waved his arm. But I guess that puts at least one of the Powells in the frame as possibly able to get to the scene of the crime – if that’s what we’re now calling the palace room.”
“Good – well, not good, but, you know what I mean. Oh now, that’s something…if there’s a staircase I didn’t know about, I wonder if Sir Simon could have used it to get to the palace room without me or Renata seeing him? That puts him back onto my list of suspects – and it might explain his actions in trying to shut things down – he wasn’t trying to protect someone else, he did it himself.”
“So now you’re saying it wasn’t Piers, or Felicity, but Sir Simon?”
I took what was, sadly, the last sip of my champagne, and Bud did the same with his. “Come on, we’re talking through every possibility, here. So, moving on…Bella said she used the yellow bathroom upstairs, and she said Piers used his own. Either of them could have gone up to the palace room. You and John were in the two downstairs WCs – which I discovered have doors which would have allowed either of you to nip out of the back without being seen…”
Bud said, “Now hang on…it just so happens that what Felicity said about those little cubicles is bang on the money – they have almost no insulation, and John and I…well, we carried on a bit of a conversation while we were each in our own. He was keen to know what I thought of Bella, as you might guess. So I can tell you that both of us were there, that whole time. Probably why it took us so long – he asked a lot of questions. And I couldn’t get the soap out of that little dispenser thing they had in there.”
I squeezed his arm. “Good to know – that means you and John can alibi each other, so that leaves me, and I’ll admit that while I know I remained in the salon the whole time, I could also have gone upstairs without anyone seeing me do it. Finally, there’s Vinnie who was…well, why was Vinnie even there? I thought he’d left, and Worthington didn’t get around to asking him last night.”
“Now that’s where I can help again.” Bud beamed. “Vinnie had planned to spend a few hours at a local pub – was going to get something to eat there, and so forth, then give us all a ride back to John’s place. But when he got there, they were hosting the grand final of some local area pub quiz – which I gather is a big deal. He couldn’t park, and didn’t think he’d be able to eat – so he came back to the house to use the facilities…not knowing everyone else would be doing the same at that time, I guess. And that’s when he found Sasha.”
“So there’s not one single person who couldn’t have done it, if they’d wanted to.”
“Everyone could have done it? If by ‘it’ you mean gain access to the palace room to push Sasha off the roof – sounds about right.”
“Not helpful, is it?”
We both surveyed our empty plates and glasses, and agreed it was time to leave, so Bud caught our server’s attention to ask for the bill.
Yves brought it himself, about thirty seconds later. He leaned toward me and said, “We shall be closing our doors for good, in just a few weeks. Geri has been our head barman for many years; he and I have spoken about you, and I can see now who you once were. I am pleased you have a happy life. I believe you used to know Gaston, the owner?” I nodded. “I am sorry to say he has decided to sell. To retire to a family farm in France, in the south, not far from Biot. This might be the last time you are able to dine with us. As such –” he tore our bill into pieces – “everything is on us tonight. I wish you both a happy future. I shall retire when we close – it’s a good time to do so.”
I was suddenly aware that – while a few of the ghosts from my previous life were reaching out to touch me – some aspects of my previous life were dissolving, or at least losing their meaning for me. I looked around; I’d never imagined this place would cease to exist.
Bud and I thanked Yves, wished him and the team the best for the future, and I waved to Geri behind the bar, where the customers were standing two-deep. As we were leaving, a group of six took over the corner where we’d been huddled; their red-and-green hats, with giant elf ears attached, suggested they were thoroughly enjoying the Christmas spirit.
When we left the joyful din and warmth behind us, the traffic suggested there was no such thing as a Central London surcharge on cars, and we waited patiently, trying to spot a taxi we could flag down. We could have been any couple out to enjoy a spot of dinner and the Christmas atmosphere, but we weren’t.
The cab ride back to John’s didn’t take long, and I was glad it took us through Sloane Square, where the skeletal trees were decked out with sprays of snowflake-inspired lights, the buses were Santa-red, and Peter Jones’s department store was a glittering presence dominating the entire place. The sight lifted my spirits…but not enough, apparently, to allow me a good night’s sleep when we finally hit the sack: my dreams turned out to be full of faceless people running up and down endless flights of stairs, entering and leaving a countless number of bathrooms…like some irritating Brian Rix farce, but without any funny one-liners. I blamed the crème brulée.