Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

Angela was when she had called. He might have been pretending. But then Angela had told Pond that the last time she spoke to Nick, even on the phone, was over two years ago.

When Nick’s telephone rang, rather aptly, and interrupted their exchange, Pond had been intrigued by the sexy, well-spoken voice of the girl with the “chewy” phone. If she was one of Nick’s escort customers, she certainly seemed to like him. Nick must be good at his work.

Pond had ‘cross-examined’ Nick on his meeting with Laurence. Pond wanted to find out what the out-of-character meet was about. But he angled towards that gradually. Nine times in ten, if you asked questions they did not mind too much answering, some key or clue would pop up, even the revealing reply, before they could stall it, when you reached the jackpot. For the same reason one might ask even superfluous questions to make the subject uncomfortable, and that would bring things to light. In line with this, Pond asked Nick for his phone numbers although Angela already had them.

There was another reason for Stewart Pond’s questions on Laurence’s clothing.

Angela had described an extra quirk of Laurence Lewis’s eclectic sex-life. It seemed, whenever he made love to another woman, he would not only shower but change his clothes before he left her to go home. That was, said Angela, not just shirt and underpants, but trousers, socks, sometimes even his shoes. Perhaps he had done this at first to throw his jealous bitchy frigid wife literally off the scent. But why he bothered to continue the practice long after he knew she had found out, she could not fathom. “I think he’s a bit cracked,” she had said to Stewart Pond, with malicious smugness. “I think it’s a form of over-fastidious cleansing he performs solely to pamper himself. Probably gets off on that too, the cunt.”

Pond, from outside Nick’s, had noted on Laurence only an overcoat, not even kept track of Laurence’s shoes that night. Why would he? After visiting Nick, Laurence should be heading straight back home. The object therefore of Pond’s asking Nick exactly what Laurence had been wearing, and which luckily Nick seemed to recall so well, was to learn - when the corpse was discovered - if it was still dressed the same. For if not then a woman - even yet another woman - must be involved. Which being an unknown, could itself raise unforeseen problems.

There was too one further oddity.

Pond had asked Nick about Laurence’s jewellery. Nick had said there was just the wedding ring. Gold? Pond had inquired. But no, the ring was platinum.

During his general observations of Laurence, Pond had seen the ring was platinum. An unusual metal, and expensive. But on that Friday night, just as Pond had noted the Angela-watch was on Laurence’s wrist, he had seen too that Laurence’s wedding ring appeared to have been transmuted into gold. Indeed Laurence had paused to twist the golden ring around on his finger, there by his car in the cul-de-sac below Nick’s flat. Almost, in fact, as if Laurence had only just put the ring on and was adjusting it.

When Laurence’s body was at last unearthed from tree roots and ferns, and Angela, (feeling, she had assured Pond, not guilty, only stressed and nauseated by the state of the cadaver), identified it, and saw his clothing, Laurence was found not to have been wearing any of the garments Nick detailed, apart from the coat and scarf. What Laurence had died in, and what consecutively had been gnawed by the animals who also gnawed his flesh, were grey trousers, a sleeveless black jumper over a brown and grey stripe shirt, and black, handmade, Tunisian calfskin slip-ons. The lace-ups and other gear had been squashed in with other items in his bags. As for the ring, it was the platinum one. There was nothing else unusual on or with him. No golden wedding band. No small piece of ivory carrying an invented curse.

Pond did not relay any of this to Angela. She was by then in enough of a state. She still insisted it had nothing to do with guilt, but Pond suggested she get her tame private physician, Telby, to prescribe some mild happy pills.

“He thinks I’m grief-stricken, so he already has,” said Angela, “but I haven’t taken any.”

“Do. They’ll help you sleep, Angie. Just till you get over the shock.”

“But how can I be shocked, Stew? I asked you to arr…”

“But we’ll try to forget what you asked, for now.” Pond added, “You’ve been through a lot, not just after but before.” Better she think herself a martyr, deserving of respite, than a Borgia who had people killed. She took the pills, and seemed to calm down. She also drank less on them. No bad thing.

Time passed. Everything seemed to be working out. Pond had filed Nicolas Lewis far back in the cabinets of his brain. But then came Nick’s message on Pond’s phone.

Telby had already tipped Pond off, apologising. “He seemed distressed, not just about his brother’s death - some sort of break-in, I gathered. He thought you might sort things out. I hope you won’t mind, I passed on your number.” Pond had said that was fine. It was not, it meant Angela had put Pond’s mobile number in what she, or Laurence, called the House Folder. Pond wished she had not and presently erased it - it remained on her own personal phone, that should be enough. But Telby knew she had hired Pond, if only in the revised scenario, i.e. after Laurence’s vanishment, when she thought the police were not trying hard enough. (Which, given Laurence’s record of stay-away weekends, they had every right not to, Pond was the first to say.)

As things were coming out, Angela and he should never now require to reveal Pond had been working for her with divorce in mind. Nor would Pond need to implicate the young woman in Wimbledon, Kit-Kitty-Kitra