Kitabı oku: «Endpeace», sayfa 2

‘A good piss is one of life’s little pleasures.’ Even his smile looked ghastly. Then he sat down at the desk, there was more light on his face and he suddenly appeared less frail. ‘Were you and my son Derek ever close, Mr Malone?’

‘Scobie ... No, not really. We got on well, but there was the age difference. In sport six years is quite a gap. He’d been playing for five or six years before I got into the State team. We weren’t real professionals back then, none of us earned the money they do these days.’

‘I don’t think Derek ever gave a thought to what he earned as a cricketer.’

‘He could afford not to.’

The old man accepted the rebuke. ‘Sorry. So you and he were not close?’

‘Not as bosom friends, no. He was my – well, I guess my mentor.’

Sir Harry nodded. ‘He was always good at that. Mentoring, or whatever the verb is. Except with his siblings.’

That was another old-fashioned word that, unlike lavatory, had come back into fashion. Malone, having no siblings, could think of nothing to say and, as he often did in interrogations, stood and waited. The old man seemed not to notice his silence; he went on, ‘What’s your heritage, Scobie?’

The question made Malone pause; he could not remember ever having been asked it before. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. I’ve never bothered to trace the family further back than my grandparents. And even that far back I’m in the dark on a lot of things.’ Including my own mother’s early life; or anyway her early love. ‘I’m of Irish descent, the name tells you that. I guess all I’ve really inherited, if I knew about it, is a lot of pain and trouble. That’s Ireland, isn’t it?’

‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you. On the surface.’

‘Maybe it’s because I don’t think too much about it. Maybe I should.’

Sir Harry shook his head. ‘If you don’t have to, don’t. Heritage, I’m beginning to think, is like history – it’s bunk. Henry Ford, one of history’s worst philosophers, said that. But perhaps, who knows, he had a point.’ He had an occasional stiff way of putting his thoughts into words, as if he were writing an editorial. Then he smiled and stood up. ‘I’d like you to come again, Scobie. I don’t get to talk enough to –’ Then he smiled again, without embarrassment. ‘I was going to say the common folk. Does that offend you?’

‘I’m a republican, Sir Harry. We’re all common folk.’

‘You must debate some time with my wife. She’s a monarchist through and through. At Runnymede she would have been on side with King John. You’ve heard of Magna Carta?’

There it was again, the arrogance: unwitting, perhaps in Sir Harry’s case, but endemic. ‘They were still teaching English history when I was at school. I had to study it in a plain brown wrapper, so my father wouldn’t throw a fit. He hates the Brits.’

‘Perhaps you should bring him here to debate with my wife.’

‘Are you a monarchist, Sir Harry?’ All at once Malone was interested in the older man, wanted to put him in front of the video recorder in one of the interrogation rooms at Homicide. Take him apart, perhaps take a hundred and fifty years of Huxwoods apart. This family, this man, had wielded influence that had toppled governments, that had sent young men to a war they didn’t believe in, that had, in various ways, influenced the running of the force in which Malone himself served.

‘Mr Malone, I fear that all my beliefs, whatever they were, have somehow turned to water.’ Then abruptly it seemed that he had revealed enough of himself: ‘Shall we rejoin the others?’

They went out into the wide tessellated hallway. A curving staircase went up to the first floor, its polished walnut banister following it like a python heading for the upper galleries of a rain-forest. Four of the family stood in the hallway: Derek, Nigel, Sheila and Linden. Halfway up the staircase Lady Huxwood had paused, stood with one hand on the banister and stared down at her children. Malone, the outsider, unconnected to whatever demons were stirring in the family, was struck with a sudden image: he had seen it all before on some late night movie, The Magnificent Ambersons or The Little Foxes, Bette Davis or some other over-the-top actress pouring venom from a great height.

‘You deserve nothing, none of you! I should have aborted the lot of you!’

Then she went on up the stairs, paused on the gallery that ran round the upper level of the hallway and looked back down into the pit. Malone waited for another spit of spite, was surprised when she looked directly at him and snapped, ‘Goodnight, Mr Malone. I’m sure you won’t come again.’

Then she was gone. There was absolute silence and stillness for a long moment, then the four siblings let out a collective sigh. Sir Harry touched Malone’s arm, said, ‘Forgive us, Mr Malone,’ and went on up the stairs, moving stiffly and not looking back at his sons and daughters.

Malone had known embarrassment, but nothing like this. He looked for an exit, some way he could skirt the four Huxwoods and be ignored by them. Then Lisa appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, coat over her dinner dress. If she had heard what had just been said in the hallway, she gave no sign of it.

She held out her hand to Derek. ‘Thank you, Derek, A most entertaining evening.’

Nigel and his sisters slipped away, not even looking at the Malones, just disappearing into the shadows of the house. Derek shook hands with Lisa, did the same with Malone, then escorted them towards the heavy front door.

‘I’m glad you thought it was entertaining.’ He was smiling, that whimsical grin just short of a sneer. ‘Like Macbeth or King Lear. You should see us when we’re in top form. Our paper’s cartoonists could get a month’s run out of us.’

3

Driving home Lisa said, ‘Don’t ever accept an invitation to that house again, understand? Never!’

‘There’s no chance of that. What happened while I was out with Sir Harry?’

‘I don’t know. All of a sudden the four of them were down one end of the room with Lady Huxwood, arguing in whispers. The rest of us were at the other end, trying to look as if we hadn’t been left there like – what’s that expression you use?’

‘Like shags on a rock?’

‘That’s it. We never go there again, understand?’

He knew how adamant she could be, but never about anything as unimportant as a dinner invitation. He had, however, noticed a gradual change in her over the past few months. Last year she had been operated on for cervical cancer; the operation had been successful and there had been no metastasis since. She had undergone chemotherapy and it had had a temporary effect: there had been the recurring bouts of vomiting and she had lost some of her lustrous blonde hair. The hair had grown back, as thick as ever, and she was once again healthily vibrant; but her patience had thinned, she had less time for inconsequentialities. It was as if she had looked at the clock and decided it was closer to midnight than she had thought. She had not become self-centred, but she had begun to ration her time, her attention and her charity. He couldn’t blame her: she had been fortunate to come out on the lucky side of a fifty-fifty chance.

‘What drives them to be like that, for God’s sake?’ She was stirred, more than she should be. ‘They have everything, there’s nothing missing in their lives. Not the way ordinary people count things. And yet ... Have you ever met such a bunch?’

‘There’s lots more around like them, I’m sure. We just never meet them. When we do, it’s usually after a homicide and by then they’ve called a truce.’

‘Lady Huxwood invites homicide. Anyhow, we never go there again. Watch the red light.’

‘You’re the one who’s driving. You watch it.’

Chapter Two
1

For several years the Homicide Unit of the Major Crime Squad, South Region, had been housed in the Hat Factory, a one-time commercial building where the ambience had suggested that the Police Service was down on its luck, that the hat had had to be passed around before the rent could be raised. Recently Homicide, along with other units in the Major Crime Squad, had been moved to quarters that, for the first few weeks, had brought on delusions that money had been thrown at the Service which the State government had actually meant for more deserving causes such as casino construction or pork-barrelling in marginal electorates.

Strawberry Hills was the enticing name of the new location, though no strawberry had ever been grown there nor had it ever been really enticing. It had begun as clay-topped sandhills held together by blackbutts, blood-woods, angophoras and banksias, but those trees had soon disappeared as the men with axes arrived and development raised its ugly shacks. ‘Environment’, in its modern meaning, had just been adopted in England, but so far word, or the word, had not reached the colony. For years there was a slow battle between the sandhills and the houses built on them, but that did not stop a developer from naming his estate after the sylvan Strawberry Hill in England where Horace Walpole, in between writing letters to addressees still to be chosen, had built a villa that would never have got above foundation level if it had been built on the colony’s sandhills. Time passed and gradually Strawberry Hills, like the sandhills, virtually disappeared off maps. The city reached out and swamped it. A vast mail exchange was built where once tenement houses had stood, but though Australia Post could sort a million letters an hour it couldn’t sort out the industrial troubles in the exchange. Eventually the huge ugly structure was closed as a mail exchange, an impressive glass facade was added, as if to mask what a problem place it had been. Six huge Canary Islands date palms stood sentinel in the forecourt, looking as out of place as Nubian palace guards would have been. The winos across the street in Prince Alfred Park suffered the DTs for a week or two, but became accustomed to the new vista and soon settled back into the comfort of the bottle.

Australia Post moved its administrative staff back in and then looked around for tenants who would be less of a problem than its unions had been. Whether it was conscious of the irony or not, it chose the Major Crime Squad. Level Four in the refurbished building was almost too rich in its space and comfort for the Squad’s members, but it is difficult to be stoical against luxury. One of the pleasures for those in Homicide on night duty was to put their feet up on their brand-new desks, lean back and, on the Unit’s television set, watch re-runs of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and pity the poor bastards who had to work in such conditions.

The morning after the Huxwood dinner Malone overslept, but, a creature of certain habits, he still went for his five-kilometre walk before breakfast. It was nine-thirty before he reached Homicide and let himself in through the security door. Russ Clements was waiting for him, looking worried.

‘You sick or something? I rang Lisa ten minutes ago -’

‘I’m okay. I knew there was nothing in the synopsis -’

‘There is now. Four murders in our Region alone, two in North Region’s. You and I are on our way out to Vaucluse –’

‘I’m not going out on any job. That’s for you –’

The big man shook his head. ‘I think you’d better come on this one, Scobie.’

Malone frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Lisa told me where you were last night. Malmaison House. That’s where we’re going. Kate Arletti’s out there waiting for us – I sent her out as soon as Rose Bay called in. It’s their turf, theirs and Waverley’s.’

‘A homicide at Malmaison?’ Lady Huxwood invites homicide. ‘Who? Lady Huxwood?’

Clements looked at him curiously. ‘What made you say that?’

‘Lisa and I were talking about her on our way home ... It was a bugger of a night, you’ve got no idea. She’s the – she was the Dragon Lady of all time.’

‘She probably still is. It was the old man, Sir Harry, who was done in.’

Malone managed not to look surprised. No one knew better than he that murder always held surprises, not least to the victim. But Sir Harry? ‘How?’

‘I’m not sure yet. Rose Bay called in, said there was a homicide, but gave no details other than that it was Sir Harry who copped it. The place is probably already overrun with the media clowns.’

‘What about the other murders?’

‘I’ve organized those. I’ll tell you about them on the way out to Vaucluse.’

Homicide had been re-organized late last year in another of the Service’s constant changes. Modern life, Malone thought, had been taken over by planners; they were everywhere, termites in the woodwork of progress. Change for change’s sake had become a battle cry: if it ain’t broke, let’s fix it before it does break. Malone was still the Inspector in charge of Homicide, but he was now called Co-ordinator and his job, supposedly, was now more desk-bound. Clements had been promoted to senior-sergeant and was now the Field Supervisor. Murder was still committed, evidence was still collected, the pattern never changed; only the paperwork. Malone knew that conservatism was creeping over him like a slow rash, but he didn’t mind. The itch, actually, was a pleasure.

The two detectives drove in an unmarked car out to the farthest of the affluent eastern suburbs. Vaucluse lies within the shoulder of the ridge that runs out to end in South Head at the gateway to the harbour; it is a small area facing down the harbour like a dowager gladly distant from the hoi polloi. The suburb is named after a property once owned by a titled convict who was as thick in the head as the timber that grew down the slope from the ridge. He built a small stone house and surrounded it with a moat filled with soil shipped out from the Irish bogs – ‘to keep out the snakes’. The area has had several notable eccentrics since then, but Sir Henry Brown Hayes had established the standard. The Wentworths, a family with its own quota of eccentrics, were the first to give the suburb its social tone, which it has never lost.

The first Huxwood arrived in 1838, bought five acres along the shore and built the first stage of what was to become La Malmaison. Huxwoods still owned the five acres, paying local taxes that exceeded the annual entertainment allowance of the entire local council. There were three houses on the estate, which had not been subdivided: the Big House, Little House One and Little House Two. Tradesmen, coming to the estate for the first time, had been known to expect fairies at the bottom of the extensive gardens and were surprised to find the family appeared to be both sensible and heterosexual.

Huxwood Road had been named by the founder of the family, determined to have his name on the map; in the 1840s, when he had suffered his first delusion of grandeur, it had been no more than a dirt track. Some years ago, Sir Harry, at the urging of his wife, had attempted to have the council change the name, insisting the family was not interested in advertising or being on any map. But Huxwood Road was now the street in Vaucluse, if not in Sydney, and the residents, having paid fortunes for the address, were not going to find themselves at a location that nobody would recognize. One didn’t pay thousands of dollars a year in taxes to live in Wattle Avenue or, God forbid, Coronation Street.

When Malone and Clements arrived, the street had gone down several hundred thousand dollars in rateable value, at least temporarily. It was chockablock with police cars, press and radio cars, TV vans and an assorted crowd of two or three hundred spectators, most of whom looked as if they had rushed here from nearby Neilsen Park beach. The street had not looked so low grade since the titled convict’s day. The snakes had taken over the Garden of Eden, Irish bog soil notwithstanding.

‘Christ Almighty,’ said Clements. ‘It looks like the finish to the City to Surf gallop.’

He nudged the car through the crowd, in through the wide gates of the estate and down the driveway to the front of the house. Several vehicles were parked there, including three police cars and a private ambulance. As Clements pulled up, another car came down the driveway behind them. Romy Clements got out.

‘What’re you doing here?’ It had the directness of a husband-to-wife remark.

Romy gave Clements a brush-off smile, looked instead at Malone. ‘I thought I’d have a look at how the other two per cent lives. I used rank and told Len Paul I’d do the job.’ She was the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and ran the day-to-day routine of the city morgue; normally she would not respond to a call for a government medical officer in a homicide. ‘Shall we go in?’

‘I’ll bet she fingers the curtains first,’ Clements told Malone. ‘Then she’ll look at the kitchen. Then she’ll look at the corpse.’

Malone was glad there was nobody close enough to hear the banter. Outsiders might not appreciate that no disrespect was intended, just that murder was part of the day’s work. They went in through the open door, beneath a carved stone replica, like a coat-of-arms, of the Huxwood Press logo: an open book marked with a bookmark, inscribed Only the Truth. The wide hallway inside seemed crowded with people standing around looking lost. It reminded Malone of a theatre lobby and latecomers wondering if seats were still available.

Kate Arletti pushed her way into Malone’s path. ‘Morning, sir. The Rose Bay officers are here and between us we’ve got a few facts. Can we go into that room there?’

It was the library, where Sir Harry last night had said his beliefs had turned to water. The room now had none of last night’s shadows; the summer sun streamed in through the big bay window. Out in the tiny bay a small yacht rocked daintily in the wake from a passing ferry. Then a launch hove into view, crowded with photographers trying to capture the house from the water. Two uniformed policemen appeared down on the shoreline and waved them away. With the policemen was an elderly gardener holding a spade like an axe. Malone nodded, condoning the gardener’s threat of assault and battery.

‘The body was discovered at seven o’clock this morning,’ said Kate Arletti. ‘The butler went up with his morning tea. What’s the matter?’

‘I shouldn’t be grinning. But all this sounds like something out of Agatha Christie. Butler, morning tea ... We don’t get many crime scenes like this, Kate. How did he die?’

‘A gunshot wound to the side of the head, left temple. It looks like death would have been instantaneous. Dr Clements will confirm that, I suppose.’

‘How are the family?’

‘Shattered, those I’ve met. All except the eldest son, Derek. He’s got some men from the Chronicle out in the garden room, he’s organizing how the homicide is to be reported. He strikes me as cold-blooded. Sorry, I shouldn’t be making comments like that so early in the piece.’

She was small and blonde, a little untidy in her dress but crisp in everything she did. She was dressed in a tan skirt and a brown cotton shirt; somewhere there would be a jacket and Malone would bet she had already forgotten where she had left it. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, her face not disfigured but lent character by the scar down her left jawline. When she had been a uniformed cop a junkie had tried to carve her up with a razor and she had retaliated by breaking his nose with the butt of her gun. Six months ago, when Malone had first met her, she had been in uniform, neat and tidy as a poster figure. Since coming into Homicide, into plainclothes, her natural untidiness had emerged. All that was still neat about her was her work. With a sartorial wreck like Russ Clements setting an example, Malone had never had the heart to ask her to do up a button or roll up a loose sleeve.

‘What about Lady Huxwood?’

She hesitated. ‘Composed, I guess would be the word. She’s pretty – formidable?’

‘That’s another good word. I was here for dinner last night, I’ll tell you why some other time. They’re a weird mob, Kate. Don’t entertain any preconceived notions about them. Take ’em bit by bit, inch by inch.’

‘It sounds as if you didn’t enjoy last night?’

‘I’m not going to enjoy this morning, either.’

They went out into the hallway, which was less crowded now. Clements came towards them, biting his lip, an old habit when his thoughts did not fit as they should. Whether it was because Romy had dressed him or he had known, subconsciously, that he would be coming to this elegant house, this morning he was not his usual rumpled self. He wore an olive-grey lightweight suit, a blue button-down shirt and a blue silk tie with club or regimental stripes; though he had not belonged to a club in fifteen years and never to a regiment. His broad face, just shy of being good-looking, had a harried look, an expression unusual for him.

‘I’ve had only a glance at the family so far – that’s enough. Listening to ’em ...’ He shook his head. ‘Keep an eye on ’em, Kate. We’re going upstairs.’

He and Malone climbed the curve of the stairs. Halfway up Malone paused and looked down: this was the spot where Lady Huxwood had told her children she should have aborted the lot of them. It was an elevation for delivering pronouncements; he wondered how many other insults and dismissals had been hurled from here. Then he went on after Clements, following him into a bedroom off the gallery.

It was a big room with old-fashioned furniture: a four-poster bed, a heavy wardrobe and a dressing-table that could have accommodated at least two people. A large television set, in an equally large cabinet, stood in one corner. On a table by the two tall windows was the only modern note, a computer.

Romy, in a white coat now, was drawing off a pair of rubber gloves. She gestured at the body on the bed and nodded to the two men from the funeral contractors. ‘You can take him to the morgue now. Tell them I’ll do the autopsy.’ Then she crossed to join Malone and Clements by the windows. ‘Time of death is always guess-work, but I’d say he’d been dead ten to twelve hours. I’ll take some fluid from his eyes when I get back to the morgue, check the amount of potassium in it. That gives a bit more precision in the timing, but don’t expect me to pinpoint it.’

‘Any sign of a struggle?’

‘None. He could have been asleep when he was shot, I don’t know. There are powder-marks on a pillow, looks as if whoever killed him used it to muffle the shot.’

Malone walked over to the bed to take a last look at Sir Harry before the contractors zipped him up in the body bag. The democracy of death had done nothing for Sir Harry’s arrogance; a last spasm of pain looked more like an expression of distaste at the world he had just left. Malone nodded to one of the men and the zip closed over Sir Harry Huxwood, like a blue pencil through one of the many editorials he had written.

‘There’s this –’ Romy pulled on one of the rubber gloves, took a small scrap of paper from the pocket of her white coat. ‘Looks like he had a cadaveric spasm. It happens – the muscles tighten like a vice. It’s usually the hand that spasms, but sometimes the whole body does, though that’s pretty rare.’

Malone held the piece of paper with the pair of hair-tweezers he always carried. Clements said, ‘It’s a torn scrap, looks like it’s been torn off the corner of a letter or a memo. Good quality paper. Evidently whoever did him in tried to take the whole paper, but he wouldn’t let go. If they shot him in the dark, maybe they didn’t know it was torn till they got outside.’

‘Why would he be holding a letter or a memo in the dark?’ Malone held up the fragment. ‘There’s one word on it in red pencil. No – N – O, exclamation mark. Got your French letter?’

Clements produced one of the small plastic envelopes he always had in his pockets, grinning at Romy as he did so. He slipped the scrap of paper into the envelope. ‘I’ve never used these as condoms, in case you’re wondering.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised at anything he did before we met,’ she told Malone, taking off her white coat and folding it neatly. ‘I’ll see Ballistics gets the bullet when I’ve done the autopsy.’

‘How’s business? Can you do him this morning?’

‘They told me before I came out here there’d been six homicides last night, plus four dead in accidents. He may have to take his turn.’

‘He hasn’t been used to that. Put him at the head of the list.’

‘Inspector –’ All at once she was not Mrs Clements but the Deputy-Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Her squarely beautiful face became squarer as she set her jaw; her dark eyes lost their gleam, seemed to become even darker. It was what Clements called her Teutonic look. ‘Nobody jumps the queue in our morgue. I’ll get to him when I get to him.’

Malone was glad the funeral contractors had already gone with the body; he did not like being ticked off in public. Clements looked embarrassed for him, but said nothing.

‘Romy, I’m not pandering to Sir Harry because of who he is. Or was. But with all due respect to the other five murder victims, the media aren’t going to be interested in them. They’re going to be on my back about this one. And so will my boss and the AC Crime and the Commissioner and the Premier and, for all I know, maybe God Himself.’

‘Tough titty, as you vulgarians say. I’ll do him when I do him. That all?’ She had packed her small bag, stood like a wife walking out on two husbands.

Malone recognized he was not going to get anywhere with her. He nodded at the door to an adjoining room. ‘Whose room is that?’

‘Lady Huxwood’s. I was told she wasn’t to be disturbed.’ Romy was still cool. ‘I’ll see you at home, Russ. Pick up the meat.’

Then she was gone and Clements said, ‘Don’t you know you don’t push a German around? You went about that in the wrong way, mate.’

‘Righto, you work on her, if you’re so bloody subtle.’

‘It’s not that I’m subtle. I’m married to her. You learn a few things. I thought you would have known that. The Dutch are as stubborn as the Germans, aren’t they?’

‘One thing I’ve learned, never bring up ethnic differences in a marriage. That’s a good way of starting World War Three ... All right, see what you can do with her. I don’t want to be carrying the can for the next week. Let’s go down and talk to the family.’

Down in the hallway one of the Rose Bay detectives, a middle-aged man named Akers, was waiting for them. He was a senior-constable and had the resigned look of a man who realized he might, just might, make sergeant before he retired. His hair was already grey and his plump face was pink with blood vessels close to the surface.

‘Some of the family are here, Scobie, some have gone home. You’ll want to talk to them?’

‘I’ll talk to those that are here.’ Malone looked up and around the high hallway. ‘What’s the set-up here? How many rooms?’

‘Fourteen in this house, not including the bathrooms but including three rooms for the staff. There’s a wing out the back for them, beside the garages. The butler and cook are husband and wife, name’s Krilich, they’re Yugoslavs. Outside there’s what they call Little House One and Little House Two –’ He made a face. ‘I think Enid Blyton or Beatrix Potter must of stayed here once.’

‘You’re well read, Jim.’

Akers grinned, relaxing; up till now he had been a bit stiff. Local Ds never did like Major Crime Squad men appearing on their turf. ‘My wife’s a schoolteacher ... Derek, the eldest son, and his family live in Little House One – it has eight rooms, I believe. Little House Two has six rooms and Sheila, the elder daughter, and her husband live there – they have a child, but she lives out.’

‘What about Nigel and his wife? And Linden and her husband?’

Akers looked surprised that Malone was so well acquainted, but he made no comment. ‘Nigel, the actor –’ He uttered ‘the actor’ as he might have said ‘the poofter’; the theatrical profession obviously got no rating with him. ‘He and his wife, she’s an actor too, I hear. Or was. They have a flat at Point Piper. He has two kids, a boy and a girl – he’s been married twice before. The kids are from different mothers. The younger sister – Linden, did you say? – she and her husband – actually, he’s her de facto – they live out in the country, somewhere south of Bowral. They have no kids, though she’s been married before. They stayed here last night. In the Big House,’ he said and just managed not to simper.

‘Nice rundown, Jim. You been here before?’

‘About two years ago. There was an attempted break and enter, but they were disturbed and got away.’

‘Righto, let’s go and talk to someone. Derek, the eldest, first.’

‘He’s in the garden room. Got three guys from the Chronicle with him. I’ll leave him to you and Russ. I’ve gotta report to my boss at Waverley.’

‘Tell him I’ll check with him later.’ It was the old territorial imperative, everybody protected his own little authority. ‘He didn’t put in an appearance?’

‘Superintendent Lozelle leaves the silvertails to us. I think he finds the riff-raff easier to deal with. Don’t quote me.’

Jim Akers, having had no rank for so long, had no respect for it. But he was not disrespectful of Malone and the latter let him get away with it. ‘Maybe he’s wiser than either of us. Give him my regards.’

Then he and Clements turned into the garden room, next door to the library. The entire wall that faced the harbour was one big bay window; the room was half-conservatory. Sections of the huge window were open, letting in some of the mild nor’easter, but the room was still warm. Derek and the three men with him were in their shirtsleeves. They stood as if lined up for a team photo, backed by a bank of palms in big brass-bound wooden tubs. There were no pictures decorating the walls, but flowers cried out for attention in a profusion of vases of all shapes and sizes. It was a room, Malone guessed, where the watering-can would be used more than tea- or coffee-pot.