Part 37 (1/2)
”And I'd be luckier still, dear boy, if you would be so kind as to get us another bottle of vin. And none of that treacly stuff we've been making our friend drink. Look.” He pointed disdainfully at my gla.s.s. ”He won't even finish it.”
Jason popped to his feet, happy to escape.
Toby waited until he left the room and then draped himself over the arm of his chair so he could capture all my attention. ”He feels terrible about it, you know.” Toby's eyes for some reason reminded me of moons. Big moons. Sad moons, like I used to see in cartoons. ”All he was trying to do was protect his friend, his secret society friend from university days.”
It was, I thought, a rather interesting interpretation of what I had just been hearing. I said, ”But he wasn't. He was protecting his friend's cousin, who had murdered a young girl.”
”I don't think that's ever been proven.”
This information was delivered solemnly to me by an Englishman in France, draped over a chair.
”Think about it, George. You don't mind if I call you George, do you? We're not the least bit stuffy here in Monflanquin. I think it's what attracted me. I digress. Hear me out.”
Toby dropped his arms so that they dangled almost to the floor. Interesting combination, this Toby, of a brute and an aesthete.
”He doesn't know how the girl died. The family, a famous family, a family who bring rewards just by having you in their presence, a family who have always been quite good to him, explain that she left, sallied forth from the garden gate or whatever, traipsed down the lane.” He ill.u.s.trated with rolls of his big hands and swirls of his thick fingers. ”Is he to argue? Would you? Would anyone?”
”He could have told what he knows.”
I said that. George Becket: voice of experience.
Toby stopped his display of theater and looked at me peculiarly.
Did he know? About me?
”He sees her, she leaves, he leaves. Is that enough for him to talk about? With a family so newsworthy as the Gregorys? Do you really think he should have sold his story to the tabloids? Tell them all about randy Ned, doing a little s.h.i.+lly-shally on the side? That would have sunk Ned's career. Ended his marriage. And for what? It didn't have anything to do with the murder. No. No! Better to say Heidi Telford was never there. Better to say you were never there. Better even than that, not to be around yourself when questioners come knocking on your door.”
”The same message this Mr. O'Donald gave Leanne.”
Toby straightened himself out, then kicked his chair around so he could face me without the drape and the dangle. ”Well, yes and no. The fact is, Mr. O'Donald liked Jason, and he had a project for which he thought Jason would be just perfect.”
”Moving to France?”
”Not quite. As luck would have it, the family had a number of properties across the globe that needed checking on, make sure they were not being ripped off too basely. What the family needed was for someone to go to these properties, look them over, issue a small report that a.s.sured them, yes, this one's still standing, still functioning, not overrun by monkeys or wild goats or Arab seamen. Do a service and see the world. It was exactly the sort of thing Jason would love to do.” Toby wanted me to appreciate Jason's good fortune.
”And there was probably no hurry to complete the task, I'm guessing.”
”No hurry at all. Isn't that right, dear boy?”
Jason had come back into the room. He was holding a single gla.s.s and an opened bottle of very dark red. He didn't say anything.
”Is that what you've been doing for nine years, Jason?” I asked.
”Why, then he met me,” Toby answered, his voice rattling the windows in the old stone building. ”Trekking in Nepal. And when he explained about his job, how he simply had to dash about, we decided we should move here. Set down our stakes. Isn't that what they say in America?”
”Do you think, Jason,” I said, trying not to let Toby distract either one of us, ”the Gregorys are going to support you forever?”
Jason had put bottle to gla.s.s, but he stopped in mid-pour. Droplets of wine dribbled off the mouth of the bottle and fell onto the marble table. ”What's that supposed to mean?”
”It means that after all this time, the search for the killer is still on. Whatever they may have done to try to hide you, it hasn't worked, has it?”
Jason's question lingered. I answered it another way. ”I mean, I'm here, aren't I?”
”And,” he said, handing the gla.s.s to his partner and then refilling his own, ”I've told you I've got nothing to tell you.”
”I think you'll have plenty to say if the Gregorys keep trying to make it seem that you're the one who killed Heidi Telford.”
The pouring stopped again. ”They're not going to do that,” he said.
”Why not? You're the perfect guy to take the fall. You don't know anything about what happened that night other than Ned's little tryst, so you've got nothing to say in your own defense. And where, exactly, have you been all these years? You haven't been on the run, have you? I mean, suppose you get asked that. Do you have a record of your employment? No? Why do you suppose that is, Jason? Tell me, the money you get, it wouldn't by any chance get transferred into your account from the Cayman Islands, would it?”
Jason continued to hold the wine bottle almost but not quite parallel to the floor. He looked stricken.
”So now that everything's set up, what's going to prevent them from making you the scapegoat?” I asked. ”Leanne? When was the last time you had any contact with her? McFetridge? He's known the Gregorys since birth. He's the next thing to family, and you, Jason, who are you to them? A now distant college friend of Ned's, and at this point n.o.body even cares that he was boning the babysitter a decade ago.”
”She cares.”
”What?”
”I said, 'She cares.' Her family cares. Her husband cares.”
I was missing something. I struggled to sit up while I replayed that last exchange in my mind. ”The au pair? You know her?”
”I know her husband. I went to Eaglebrook with him.”
Eaglebrook, a pre-prep school. A boarding school you went to in order to get into a good boarding school. An inst.i.tution for the country's elite. A place from which someone might grow up to be sensitive about his wife having once had an affair with a married Gregory.
”Who is she?”
Jason glanced at Toby. Words were not spoken, but there was plenty of message in the glance.
I was struggling to unravel that message when Toby's booming voice brought my thoughts to a halt. ”I think, Mr. Becket,” he said, ”you will concede that you have no jurisdiction in this country.”
”Yes, but-”
”And that it is highly unlikely you or anyone else would be able to obtain extradition from this country for Jason, because nothing gives the French more pleasure than to f.u.c.k with the American legal system.”
I didn't need extradition. I needed information. And cooperation. I started to say that and was cut off.
”Those things being true, or at least unrefuted by you, I think you will agree that there is little reason for Jason to continue speaking to you on this subject.”
But there was. I was almost there, within an arm's length of nailing Peter Gregory Martin for the murder of Heidi Telford. I needed only to reach a little bit farther.
But I was not going to get the chance, because Toby the protector was not done protecting.
”Which means, sir,” he said, ”your time as a guest in our home is at an end.”
It is possible my mouth hung open.