Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005
- Автор: Купер Наташа, Майерс Эми
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
“Where’s her real mother?” I asked. I’d come all the way from Toronto, but her blood relations were absent. Poor Mo.
Bekki ignored me and informed Alastair, “Of course I tried to contact everyone in Moselle’s address book, but there was so little time. Maybe she’s abroad. She’s quite old now, you know. She was the first Mrs. Joffe, after all.”
Alastair threw Gail a silent plea for rescue, but she drew me aside instead. “Well?” she said. “Who was the guy with the bloody nose?”
“I don’t know his name, but Mrs. J. must: He’s Mo’s husband and—”
“Oh, Liza, no, you must’ve misunderstood.”
“No, no, he said—”
Gail pulled me even further away from the others. She nodded towards the boyfriend. “Don’t let him hear you. He’s devastated. He’s Woody, and Mo was married to him.”
“No way. My guy said he was the boyfriend.”
We stared at each other. Gail, who had been married for eighteen months, said, “Surely even Moselle couldn’t manage two husbands.” While I, who was not married, said, “How the hell did she manage to marry two men?”
“Sheer bloody talent, I suppose,” Gail said, in a tone of such sardonic scepticism that she drove all my feelings of desolation away with one puff. Maybe Alastair had told her more about the past than was wise.
“But Gail,” I said hurriedly, “bloody-nose husband said something about a North Camden Art Exhibition and it was us ‘arty freaks’ who killed her. What did he mean? I thought you told me she died of pneumonia.”
“Oh, Lord. Woody-husband said something about that, too. All I know is that Mo was exhibiting with the North Camden Arts Group. It’s a loose association of visual artists — NoCArGo, they call themselves. Mo was the only woman — surprise, surprise.”
“Aren’t any of them here?”
“I didn’t actually know them. You remember I wrote and told you Mo had gone into Installation? Well, she got in with a bunch of, I don’t know... Wankers describes it pretty accurately. Their first exhibition opened a week ago and that’s when Mo died.”
It started to rain and we all ran to the carpark. Alastair tried to organise us so that Gail and I would ride in his car. He failed because Gail had other ideas. Bekki and I rode in his car. Gail went with Woody-hubby. We were going to The Star of India for a curry wake. Gail was satisfied with the arrangement, but Alastair looked miserable. Bekki sat in front with him and every time she spoke she squeezed his knee with her jewelled claws.
To distract her, I asked quite bluntly about the two husbands.
“Well, dear, yes.” Bekki squeezed Alastair’s knee as if he’d asked the question. “I suppose I did know.”
I met Alastair’s shocked gaze in the mirror. It was the first he’d heard of it.
“But my stepdaughter was so melodramatic. We couldn’t make it over for the first wedding. We sent a cheque, of course, but Moselle was furious. She said she’d set her heart on us coming over for her big day. She said it wasn’t a proper wedding without her father giving her away.”
“So much for Mo’s feminism,” I muttered.
Bekki might not have heard me. “I’m glad now we didn’t make the effort,” she told Alastair, “because hardly a year later, we received an invitation to the second wedding. That was during the rainy season and my husband refuses to fly in the rain. He sent a cheque again. But you know how ungrateful Moselle could be. I assumed she’d divorced the first one before marrying the second. But unfortunately that detail seems to have slipped her mind.”
“So who are they?”
“Well, dear, the first one, I think, was Joss, who owns a house in Wentworth and pots of money. Quite a good catch, we thought, because however grown-up Moselle was, she could never manage to be self-supporting. Such a worry to my poor old husband. And all that artiness had to stop sometime. What’s attractive in the very young becomes such a bore in later life.”
“And the second one?”
“Oh dear me, what a come-down! I’m sure Woody’s a very sweet boy, but I’m afraid there was no money there. I’m told he has oodles of potential, but what good’s that? Dear, aren’t you driving a little fast?”
Alastair threw me a look of total despair and slowed down.
Bekki went on, oblivious, “The third invitation arrived a month ago...”
“Third!”
“Yes, dear.” She patted Alastair’s knee. “We thought it very odd, too. That’s partly why I’m here.”
“For the wedding?”
“I probably missed that, but I really felt... well, the cheques, they were for such very large amounts, and my poor dear husband’s so very gullible when it comes to the ways of young women.” She paused for a moment, leaning confidentially against Alastair’s arm, and then added, “And young women are so very clever about how to manipulate men — speaking of which, dear, isn’t that your little girlfriend waving at us? I wonder what she wants now.”
“Wife,” said Alastair through clenched teeth, “that’s my wife.”
Woody-hubby was doing something no one should attempt on congested North London streets — he was overtaking. Gail, with the passenger-side window rolled down, was making frantic hand signals.
“Do you think she’s being kidnapped?” Bekki asked hopefully.
Woody cut in ahead of Alastair to a chorus of furious horn-blowing and abuse. He then took the next available left turn and we followed. There was nowhere to park so he braked in the middle of a one-way street. Gail was out of the car almost before it stopped moving. She came towards us, dark hair flying, and I thought, No one has the right to look so alive on the day of a funeral.
She said, “We’re just two blocks away from the NoCArGo exhibition and I think we should check it out. Alastair and I would’ve gone last week if Mo hadn’t died.”
“What about lunch?” Bekki asked.
Gail took in the jewelled claw on Alastair’s knee and smiled sweetly. “If you’re that hungry... dear... we wouldn’t dream of holding you up. There are plenty of taxis. Shall I call one for you? It’s no trouble.” She fumbled in her bag for her cell phone. To me, she mouthed something that looked suspiciously like, “Hideous old bag.”
But Bekki didn’t want to be alone, and she was still hanging on to Alastair’s arm when we trailed into the yard in front of St. Margaret’s, a disused chapel just off Murray Street. A plastic banner advertised the exhibition but a handwritten note pinned to the door said, Gone for a pee, back in 5.
“Typical artists,” Gail said, “all genius and no loos. Where’s the nearest pub, I wonder?”
“Drinkies?” said Bekki.
“No. I’m betting it’s where the genius who’s in charge of this exhibition will be. Coming, Liza?”
We left the others standing disconsolately in the tiny damp graveyard in case the genius showed up. Gail said, “Well? What’s the story?”
“How d’you mean?”
“What did you get out of Bekki?” My new best friend seemed unstoppable when her curiosity was roused. “There was absolutely no reason not to run her over in the crematorium carpark — except she knows stuff. Haven’t you been pumping her?”
“Er...”
“You’re supposed to be a writer, Liza. You’re supposed to be good at research.”
All I’d done was to sit passively in the back of a car listening to Bekki. It wasn’t research exactly, but I couldn’t disappoint Gail so I repeated as much of what Bekki had said as I could remember.
“A third wedding?” Gail said, stopping dead outside a grim little pub called The Sun in Splendour. “Who to? Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t find out.”