Free Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page B

was very knowledgeable about Italian cooking. I think she was part Italian herself,’
     she added vaguely.
    ‘Was she? Did you ever meet her parents?’
    ‘Both dead,’ she said succinctly. ‘I think she said they died when she was a baby, and an aunt brought her up. I never met
     the aunt. I don’t think they got on. Anne-Marie used to go and visit her once in a while, but I gathered it was a chore rather
     than a pleasure.’
    ‘Brothers and sisters? Any other relatives?’
    ‘She never mentioned any. I gather she had rather a lonely childhood. She went to boarding school, I think because the aunt
     didn’t want her around the house. I remember she told me once that she hated school holidays because her aunt would never
     let her have friends home to play in case they made a mess. Wouldn’t let her have a pet, either. One of those intensely houseproud
     women, I suppose – hell to live with, especially for a child. Have you spoken to her yet?’
    ‘I didn’t know until this moment that she existed. We asked your Mrs Bernstein, but she didn’t know who the next of kin was.’
    ‘No, I suppose she wouldn’t,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose if it was me instead of Anne-Marie, it would be just the same.
     So the aunt won’t know yet, even that Anne-Marie’s dead?’
    Slider shook his head. ‘I suppose you don’t know her name and address?’
    ‘Oh dear! Did she ever tell me her aunt’s name? I know she lived in a village called Stourton-on-Fosse, somewhere in the Cotswolds.
     The house was called something like The Grange or The Manor, I can’t remember exactly. But Anne-Marie said it was a large
     house, and the village is tiny, so you ought to be able to find it easily enough. Wait a minute,’ she frowned, ‘I think I
     saw the name on an envelope once. Now what was it? I was going to the post box and she asked me to post it along with mine.’
     She thought for a moment, screwing up her eyes. ‘Ringwood. Yes, that was it – Mrs Ringwood.’
    She looked at him delightedly, as though waiting for praise or applause, but their main course arrived and distracted her.
    ‘Mm,’ she said, sniffing delightedly. ‘Lovely garlic! You could give me matchboxes to eat as long as you fried them in garlic.
     I hope you like it?’
    ‘I love it,’ he said.
    Long, long ago in his youth, before Real Life had happened to him, he had cooked for Irene on a grease-encrusted, ancient
     and popping gas stove in their little flat; and he had used garlic – and onions and herbs and wine and spices and ginger –
     and food had been an immediate and sensuous pleasure. So it still was, he could see, for Joanna. She seemed very close to
     him, and warm, and what he felt towards her was so basic it seemed earth-movingly profound. He wanted to take hold of her,
     to have her, to make good, wholesome, tiring love to her, and then to sleep with her all night with their bodies slotted down
     together like spoons. But did anything so simple and good happen in Real Life? To anyone?
    Under the table he had a truly amazing erection, and it couldn’t be entirely because of the garlic. He saw with an agony of
     disappointment what life could be like with the right person. He imagined waking up beside her, and having her again, warm
     and sleepy in the early morning quiet; eating with her and sleeping with her and filling her up night after night with himself.
     Just being together in that uncluttered way, like two animals, no questions to answer and none to ask. He wanted to walk with
     her hand in hand along somebloody beach in the sunset, with or without the soaring music.
    The erection didn’t go down, but the pressure seemed to even itself out, so that he could adjust to it, like adjusting to
     travelling at speed, all reactions sharpened. He watched her eating not only with desire, but also, surprisingly, with affection.
     He could see how the rough, heavy locks of her hair were like those sculpted on the bronze head of