The Cherry Blossom Corpse by Robert Barnard

Author:Robert Barnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Chapter 10

Attendants on the Queen

WHEN I GOT BACK to Kvalevåg, negotiating the Norwegian roads with a confidence born of a little experience and a little alcohol, the first person I saw there was Wes Mackay. He was walking around the circular patch of lawn in front of the house, but he was looking up to the mountains on one side, or out to the fjord on the other, as if he were itching to be away from the petty irritant of murder, to become part of The Big Outdoors.

As very probably he was. I sat in the driving seat for a moment, fiddling with road maps, and looking at him as if for the first time—looking at him, in fact, in the light of a suspect. He certainly, at first glance, impressed one principally as an outdoors man: no more than average height, but broad, tough and capable. I guessed him to be a bit over forty. The face was moustached, to give it that slight look of Hemingway that outdoors people seem to cultivate, though why they should wish to look like that appalling phoney is beyond me. In the case of Wes Mackay, the rugged image, the feeling that he had in his time taken on lions single-handed, was complicated by the fact that for a living he wrote sentimental love stories. But then so did Ernest Hemingway.

I got out of the police car and went over to him.

“How go things?”

He pulled at his bushy brown moustache.

“Pretty jumpy. That’s why I came out to get a breath of air. The police want us to stay around the house, but the gardens are still within bounds. Except for the boathouse, but that’s one place I don’t feel like visiting anyway.”

“I can understand that. I expect they’ll restrict you for a day or two, and then you’ll be free to do pretty much as you like.” I added cunningly: “Especially you four in Lorelei Zuckerman’s room. You ought to be able to alibi each other, put everyone in the clear.”

Wes Mackay shrugged.

“Pretty much, maybe. Tell you the truth, I’d thought of doing a little experimenting in how long it would take to get from her room or from the bar, down to the boathouse, murder the poor woman, and then get back. But the thought of how that would look to the cops if they came upon me holds me back. They’re pretty sure to do their own experiments anyway.”

“Sure to. So you weren’t all in her room all the time until you heard about the murder?”

“Not one hundred per cent of the time. Mrs. Zuckerman—is it Mrs., by the way?—”

“You ought to know, if anyone. Being so pally with her.”

“Consulting her professionally, not personally pally. Anyway, Lorelei was, but the rest of us were in and out at least once.”

“Let’s get this straight. What exactly was the set-up? You were all four in her sitting-room, right?”

“That’s it: Martti, Felicity, Lorelei and me.”

“What were you doing?”

“Talking about markets, agents’ percentages, current trends—and drinking.

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