Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

Art, Marriage and Death by Liza Cody

A winner of the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger and John Creasey awards, Liza Cody lives in Bath, England. Good news for Ms. Cody’s fans: Her popular Anna Lee private eye novels will soon be republished in the U. S. by Felony & Mayhem Press. More of her short fiction can be found in Lucky Dip and Other Stories, published by Crippen & Landru in 2003.

When you’re young you don’t know what’s going to be important later on. Things happen and then other things happen. Some of it jars your mind, some of it grasps your heart, but it takes time to decide which is which and how you really feel about it. Some of the really big events you don’t even recognise as big until later when you talk it out to yourself — make a narrative of it.

It was like that when I first met Gail. I went to pick up Alastair at his shared flat in Notting Hill and I walked in on two women. One had a pair of scissors in her hand, and the other had a towel around her shoulders. They turned towards me with the kind of bright curious eyes that made me want to account for myself.

“I’m looking for Alastair,” I said. In those days I often looked for Alastair. He did not often look for me.

“He’ll be along in a minute,” Gail said, or her friend. I don’t, to this day, know which was which. They looked at me, waiting, while I fought the urge to cough up my life story.

Then Alastair appeared and we left.

“That’s Gail,” he said.

“Which one?”

“The one I’m going to marry.”

“In your dreams,” I said, shocked because now I knew finally that he meant more to me than I did to him. But equally, it didn’t occur to me that I had just met one of my future best friends. And in the long run, that was what made the day important.

For a while I assumed she was a hairdresser. Of course, I was wrong. I often am. Then I got a job at a small liberal arts college in Canada and didn’t see any of my friends for three long years.

The next time I met Gail, we were both wearing black. She was with Alastair and he was wearing black, too. They had married while I was away, and I was too poor to come back for the wedding. Now, slightly richer, I was home for the funeral of a mutual friend, a woman both Alastair and I had been close to — the way students are, for no reason at all except you went to the same movies. Moselle was exotic, secretive, and even had rich parents. She was the one, early on, who introduced me to the word recherche. “Searched-out; rare,” she explained loftily. “Far-fetched.” And Alastair nodded wisely. Words were his thing, too. I didn’t want to recognise it then but they shared far more than just a sophisticated vocabulary. Of course, that was before he met Gail.

While a rabbi mumbled banalities about Moselle, whom clearly he had never known, I studied the sparse crowd looking for other old friends, especially looking for her rich parents. I’d never met them but they were famous for bailing Mo out. She had much more money than the rest of us, but she was always in debt.

Gail nudged me. “Her father can’t leave Simla. Apparently he’s too ill.”

She nudged me again. “That’s the mother.” She pointed with her chin toward a large black hat in the front row. The large black hat was flanked by two young men, also wearing hats. Some guys knew how to dress in the presence of a rabbi. Alastair was bare-headed.

“Who’re the guys?”

“I don’t know.” Gail was obviously annoyed. I recognized the gleam of curiosity in her bright eyes. If the two guys were important enough to be in the front row, they were important enough to be known by Gail. “We’ll find out later,” she promised. I was only beginning to understand that the Gail I was getting to know needed, almost viscerally, to satisfy her curiosity. It was as much a part of her as her brilliant eyes.

I was glad to be whispering with Gail. It took my mind away from the grotesque thought of Mo, dead and nailed in a wooden box. The last time I saw her she was dancing in the mud at the Glastonbury Festival, flinging the rain out of her hair, slender arms reaching for... well, everyone, everything.

She was the first of our group to die, and it was as if the grim reaper reached across her coffin and touched us all with his chilly finger. “You may be young,” he hissed, “but you are not exempt.”

Alastair, on the other side of Gail, stared stonily ahead. I wondered how he was taking it. Gail intercepted my glance and breathed, “He’s expecting her to leap out from behind the flowers and yell, ‘Ha-ha, can’t you take a joke?’ Like this was one of her Performance Art events. He doesn’t believe it. He’s still in shock.” She had an enigmatic expression on her face and I wondered, not for the first time, what Alastair had told her about the past.

There was nothing personal about the service: Not one of her friends had been asked to speak; there was no music or poetry. It was as if the grown-up world, as well as death, had claimed her and extinguished every individual spark. And there were so few of us. Where were all the friends who could have given her back some identity?

“Where is everyone?”

“In the last three years Mo fought with loads of people,” Gail said. “You know Mo. She wasn’t backward about confrontation.”

“With you?”

“Oh no. She tried, but I wouldn’t let it happen.”

That didn’t surprise me at all. Since I left England there had been two reluctant letters from Alastair. The correspondence and the friendship would have wilted from sheer neglect if Gail hadn’t taken it over. Words might be his thing, but using them for communication and storytelling was definitely hers, and I’d come to rely on her for news of friends back home. At first I thought of these e-mails as a substitute for Alastair, but lately I’d looked forward to and welcomed them as a connection with Gail. I was at the crematorium only because she told me where to go and when.

“Where’s Jay?” I murmured.

“Somerset,” said Gail. “They had a really nasty bust-up. I wrote to you...”

“But all the same...”

“Still angry.”

“Christine?”

“Angry, too. Something about money.”

That sounded like Mo, the rich girl always overspending, always borrowing from poorer friends and then not quite understanding when they became desperate to be repaid.

“Drew?”

“Couldn’t stand her.”

“I thought he fancied the pants off her.”

“Oh, Liza.” Gail sighed. “You don’t know much, do you? They had a little scene a couple of years ago and she went round telling everyone he couldn’t get it up.”

“All the same...”

“Still angry. And he married Sha-sha and she’s angry too. I wrote to you.”

But this was what Moselle was all about. No one was ever indifferent to her. She was infuriating. You loved her or you hated her, and sometimes you did both at the same time. But you cared.

Now it seemed as if her mojo was still operating, because just as the mumbled ceremony was droning to a close, Moselle’s mother’s large black hat flew into the aisle and a scuffle broke out between the two guys in the front row. The service ended with fists and fury.

“Thank God,” Gail said, standing on tiptoe and craning her neck to see. “Something Mo-like at last.”

The first to leave was a guy nursing a bloody nose. He strode to the door, raging and humiliated, not looking at anyone.

Gail shoved me. “Go on. Find out who he is.”

“Me?”

“Don’t be such a wimp, Liza. You’re a writer now — go do some research.”

Reluctant to admit I was more at home in libraries than real life, I ran, and when I caught up with him, the man with the bloody nose was already unlocking his car — a brand-new Volvo. I did the first thing to come into my jet-lagged head: I thrust a handful of tissues at him and said stupidly, “Are you all right?” I have always despised people who say that when things are so clearly not all right, and the man with the bloody nose distinctly felt the same way. He glared at me and grimaced — showing his bloody teeth. He did, however, grab the tissues.

“Am I all right!” he snarled. “That arsehole hit me. At her funeral. What a brilliant time to meet her boyfriend! Oh yeah, I’m all right.”

He might’ve been quite fit if it weren’t for the blood and the fury. He fumbled the Volvo open.

I said, “Wait. You can’t drive like that. Some of us are going for a drink or a curry. Come with us.”

“I never want to see any of you arty freaks again. You and your stupid stunts are what killed her.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“North Camden Art Exhibition. Does that ring a bell?”

“I was in Toronto till last night.” Far away the sound of an ambulance rose and fell like a sigh.

The guy with the bloody nose said, “Moselle was not a tart. She did not take drugs.”

“What are you talking about? Of course not.” I wanted him to calm down but he wasn’t listening.

“She was my wife,” he shouted. He wadded up the reddened tissues and hurled them across the carpark. I was too stunned to say anything. The guy climbed into his car and started the motor.

“Wait!” I cried. “I didn’t know Mo was married. Who are you?” But he didn’t hear me. He just drove off, his tires screaming. He was Mo’s husband? And he’d just met her boyfriend? I stood for a second with my jaw hanging.

The others were waiting in the Garden of Remembrance, looking perplexed. The woman in the large black hat turned out not to be Mo’s mother after all. “But I am married to her father, dear,” she told Alastair. She was redheaded and stick-thin and she was hanging on his arm as if being the deceased’s stepmother entitled her to support. “Actually, I’m the third Mrs. Joffe, but I’ve never felt like a Mrs., so do call me Bekki.” The invitation seemed to be extended solely to Alastair.

Gail gave me an evil grin but didn’t intervene. The second man from the front row, the boyfriend, was nursing a bruised hand and a swelling eyebrow; otherwise he was quite fit, too. And that was no surprise: Mo always picked lookers. It was a characteristic we shared. Sometimes we even picked the same lookers, except she was better at catching them than I was — which was one of the reasons why I exiled myself in Canada.

The third Mrs. Joffe was saying, “You can imagine what a shock this has been, having to cope with all the arrangements on my own. Her father never leaves his precious air conditioning at this time of year. Weak lungs, you know.”

“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.”

“That’s when you pulled us over. And anyway, Bekki was more interested in the size of the cheques Mo’s father sent than in the number of husbands. What about you? What did you find out about Woody?”

“Tell you later.” Gail pushed open the pub doors. “But talking of Bekki — if I dress like that or behave like that when I’m her age you have my permission to take me out to the country and shoot me.” She narrowed her bright eyes and searched the shadowy interior of The Sun in Splendour.

“The pub time forgot,” she murmured, picking on the only man there with a sense of style and all his own teeth. He was nursing half a pint, a hand-rolled cigarette, and a hangover. “Go on, Liza, or do I have to do everything?”

I steeled myself. Talking to attractive men always leaves me short of breath.

“Yeah,” he said when I accosted him. “I am supposed to be at the chapel, but we’ve had practically zero visitors in since we opened.” He was older than us, tall, fair, and wore an antique Armani suit over a granddad vest.

“Hmmm?” said Gail, flicking an eyebrow at me as we followed him along the narrow pavement. He moved well and she could see I was hyperventilating.

“He might be Mo’s third husband,” I said gloomily. Men I liked often liked someone else more.

“Trigamy,” Gail said. “Is there such a word?”

“We’ll have to ask Alastair,” I said, even more gloomily. I was supposed to be the writer but he was still better at words than me.

The fair guy wielded a key as big as a tire iron. “Don’t come in till I see to the lights and music.”

“What do we call you?” Gail asked.

“Mick,” he told her as he disappeared into the chapel.

“Mick, eh?” Gail looked at me to make sure I was paying attention. She was the only one who didn’t seem cold or depressed. Bekki was still clinging to Alastair like ivy to a wall and Woody stood, hands in pockets, with his head bowed.

And I thought, Today is one of the weirdest days of my life and when I go back to Canada I’d like to be able to take with me a coherent narrative of all these improbable elements.

Just then, the music started, and I cannot begin to describe how inappropriate it was — the voice, Morrissey’s, was like a cat being neutered without anaesthetic; and the words hit me in the heart like a hammer: “Take me out tonight / where there’s music and there’s people / and they’re young and ali-i-i-ive.” Drawn by the strangulated voice, we stepped one by one into the chapel, into a series of compartments.

Mo’s installation was in the first compartment. It began with a tumble of boxes wrapped in silver, gold, and white. Some were torn open revealing the presents inside: a toaster with burnt toast already popping out, a steam iron crusted with lime scale, china with dried-on food, stained and crumpled bed linen. Congratulatory cards were tossed around. It was all about wedding presents several years after the wedding when the shiny new gifts had become symbols of servitude.

“I don’t understand,” said Bekki. No one bothered to explain.

A screen suspended from the ceiling came to life and there was Mo, stepping out of a church in a pearl-embroidered white dress, holding Joss’s hand, posing for a photographer. She looked archetypal and triumphant. She was beautiful and alive. And for the first time on that awful day Alastair looked as if he was holding back tears. Then the tape went into reverse — Mo and Joss were sucked back into the church. There was a jump cut to another church door and Mo came out in a far more elaborate dress with...

“That’s me,” Woody said unnecessarily. “That’s my wedding video.” But he too was sucked backwards into the church, still with the stupid but proud expression on his face that bridegrooms always seem to adopt.

Mo, however, emerged from what, this time, looked like a small cathedral. She was floating in clouds of lace and froth accompanied by a small plump man in full morning suit, grey top hat, with ownership on his mind and stunned disbelief in his eyes. He was not Mo’s usual type. Or rather, he was not mine. But I’d had too many surprises that day to be certain about anything Mo did.

“What a lovely dress,” said Bekki.

“Who the hell is that?” said Woody.

“It’s art,” said Mick. “It’s a statement about marriage as a Performance Art in the twenty-first century.”

“No it bloody isn’t,” said Woody. “It was my wedding. My marriage. I loved Moselle.”

The video looped back to Mo and Joss, and I noticed that the soundtrack was also stuck on a loop where Morrissey was singing, “To die by your side I well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine.”

“Can you turn the sound off?” Gail asked. “It’s freaking me out.”

“It’s meant to.” But Mick moved away to the sound-desk.

When I could hear myself think I said, “Is she equating marriage with death? Isn’t it time someone told me how she died?”

“Pneumonia, dear,” said Bekki.

“Then why did bloody-nose Joss say arty freaks killed her?” We all turned to look at Mick.

“Don’t look at me,” Mick said. “I’m not a freak. All I can tell you is what the police told me. They found her, in her wedding dress, chained to the railings outside the chapel with a pair of those fluffy pink handcuffs you pick up at sex shops. She was soaking wet and suffering from hypothermia. They cut the cuffs and rushed her to the Royal Free Hospital but, you know...”

Woody said painfully, “They told me it was some sort of publicity stunt gone wrong. There were broken eggs and posters and stuff written on the pavement all the way from the main road to the chapel.”

“The posters were for the North Camden Art Exhibition,” said Mick.

“Only someone added a T to Art.”

“North Camden Tart Exhibition,” Bekki said, slowly explaining it to herself. “What were the eggs for?”

“Hen party, I suppose,” Gail said.

“And there were arrows painted on the pavement,” Woody said angrily. “ ‘This way to the TArt,’ and, ‘Only 50 yards to the TArt.’ Which is why she was found by a bunch of drunken bastards who were actually looking for action.”

“Where were you while all this was happening?” I asked. I would have liked to ask all the husbands that, but Woody was the only one available.

“You think I should’ve stopped her? She was in London to set up the exhibition. I was at home in Weymouth. She’d been gone for a week. How was I supposed to know what all this was about?”

“It’s about art,” Mick insisted.

“It was a real marriage,” Woody said. “But now I think maybe they were all real marriages. I shouldn’t have hit that guy.”

“Who’s the third man?” Gail said. “Does anyone know who he is?” Again we all looked at Mick.

“Don’t ask me.” He shrugged his elegant shoulders. “I thought they were all actors. I never imagined she’d go so far as to actually marry anyone.”

“I don’t understand,” said Bekki. “Are you saying that it was all a joke? Because in that case, it was a very expensive joke. Those were real cheques her father sent. And by the way, dear,” she added to Woody, “I don’t know what you mean by being at home in Weymouth — my stepdaughter lives in St. John’s Wood. Her father pays the rent on a two-bedroom flat there.”

“Well, I knew she had a pied-a-terre...”

Gail nudged me and whispered, “Three homes and a pied-a-terre?” Aloud she said, “What about drugs? Didn’t Joss mention drugs?” I nodded.

Mick said, “C’mon! A little E and a little weed? That’s not drugs. That’s just relaxing.”

“Well, with Daddy paying the rent,” Gail muttered close to my ear, “and three husbands supporting her, I guess she could afford to relax.”

I said, “At college they always ask if you can make a living out of art and I usually say, ‘no’ or, ‘not for years and years.’ ”

“You agree with Mick? This is art?”

“Female self-reference has been recognized as serious art for years now.”

“Bugger self-reference,” said Gail. “There’s something really worrying about handcuffing yourself to railings on a cold, wet night and calling yourself a tart — even to publicise your own exhibition. It just doesn’t sound like Mo. She didn’t rough it even at Glastonbury. Remember her deluxe Caravette?”

“I think she felt she needed the exposure,” Mick said, and then blushed and squirmed. The rest of us stared awkwardly at our shoes.

Gail recovered first. “But you said the police had to cut her off the railing. If she cuffed herself, where was the key? That’s what I mean — she might do it to be dramatic, but she’d be damn sure to undo it if it got uncomfortable. This is Moselle we’re talking about.”

“Good point,” said Woody.

“I thought it was a grand gesture,” Mick said. “She liked grand gestures. It was another feminist statement about marriage — women going like slaves to the altar, loving their own chains, throwing away the key, just for the theatre, the spectacle, which is all that a wedding is these days.”

“Is that what she said?” I was interested.

“Did the police look for the key?” Gail was somewhat more practical.

“She said a wedding and a marriage were polar opposites.” Mick swung his arm to draw our attention back to the installation. “Princess for a day, a servant for life.”

I nodded. I have always thought the Cinderella story was back-to-front or, at least, ended the wrong way.

“I just don’t see Mo as a servant,” Gail said, “even with three husbands.” She had turned and was watching the silent footage of the short plump man almost eclipsed by Mo’s bridal crinoline. “I want to know who the last poor sucker was.”

From the doorway behind us a voice said, “I rather think you must be talking about me.” Dwarfed by his own cashmere coat, he came forward saying, “I’m Charles. I got to the crematorium too late. I’m sorry.” His eyes behind little round glasses looked weak and weepy, but his voice was plummy and vigorous. “They’re still talking about you all there. I gather there was some dispute about who was the widower.”

“Er, how do you do?” Woody made a great effort and held out his hand. “I’m Woody, one of the widowers, I suppose.” He introduced the rest of us, except for Mick, who’d gone outside for a smoke. I’d seen him fumble in his pocket for his tobacco and make for the door. He really was a pleasure to watch.

Charles said, “Mine was a proper marriage and I have the certificate to prove it.”

“Me, too,” said Woody. “And I promise there was no divorce.”

“I don’t remember speaking to anyone called Charles,” Bekki said. She assessed the quality of the cashmere coat and transferred herself to Charles’s side. Alastair looked as though ten tons had been lifted from his shoulders and Gail whispered, “Who put the cash into cashmere?”

“It was on her Web site,” Charles was explaining. “I was in Paris on business...”

“Ooh, Paris,” Bekki sighed.

“Obviously we kept in touch while she was setting up the exhibition, but she warned me things might get frantic, so I didn’t worry when she stopped answering her messages. I went to her Web site to see if there’d been any critical reaction to the installation on her interactive. But Mick had put in the death notice instead. Of course I came straight over.”

“Of course you did, dear,” Bekki said, stroking the cashmere as if it were a thoroughbred horse.

I was conscious of Gail and Alastair drawing together and away from the rest of us. I followed them.

Gail was saying, “...three husbands, none of whom knew anything about the others.”

“So they say.”

“Don’t you believe them?”

“I’ve had an absolutely bloody morning,” said Alastair, “and I don’t believe anyone.”

“Alastair thinks one of the husbands found out about the others and decided to punish Mo,” Gail told me. “He thinks the handcuffs and the TArt stuff demonstrate male anger and violence.”

“Which one?”

“Alastair thinks Joss was both the most angry and the least in control.”

“That’s fair,” I said, “but surely the whole thing was self-generated. I agree with Mick: I think it was art and publicity that lost control.”

“You would,” Gail said.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think I want to talk to Mick again. You’d agree to that, wouldn’t you, Liza?”

But when we went outside into the cold drizzle we couldn’t find Mick.

“I’ve had it,” said Alastair. “I’m cold and hungry and I want to leave before anyone notices we’re gone.”

“Anyone?” said Gail. “What can you mean, dear?”

“I’m serious.”

“Well, you warm up the car. Liza and I want to see if Mick’s gone back to The Sun in Splendour.”

But Mick was not at the pub.

“Shame,” said Gail. “I don’t suppose you asked for his phone number, did you, Liza?”

“What d’you take me for?”

“A wimp,” said my new best friend, “a nice wimp, an arty wimp, but you don’t take life by the throat, exactly.”

“And you do?”

“I sort of have to — not being arty.”

We trailed back to the car, each in our own way disappointed.

Half an hour later at The Star of India, we ordered Chicken Tikka and Lamb Jalfrezi, Aloo Gobi, pilau, riata, and paratha, hot food to warm our frozen hearts. The beer came and we began to thaw out. Alastair grabbed a napkin, borrowed a ballpoint, and started a list. Gail and I craned our necks to see. He wrote, Woody: too nice. Charles: too fat. JOSS.

I said, “Oh, bloody hell, Alastair. You’re assuming someone wanted to hurt or humiliate Mo. We don’t know that. And lists don’t work unless you know everyone involved, which we also don’t. Besides, you’re supposed to list suspects — not non-suspects.”

“Alastair’s good at cutting out the crap,” Gail said.

“A list of non-suspects doesn’t make it non-crap.” For some reason I was quite cross and depressed. “And what about the non-husbands? Bekki, for starters. As far as I can see, she only came over to protect her husband’s money because she thought Mo was getting too much of it.”

Alastair gave me a pitying look and wrote, Bekki: too stupid.

“But she’s greedy enough,” Gail said.

I said, “And Mo herself? Isn’t it far more likely that self-promotion went horribly wrong?”

Alastair wrote, Mo: too Sybaritic.

“What about Mick?” Gail said. “I’m sorry, Liza. You’re going to hate me for saying this when you’re so obviously smitten, but I’ve got a bad feeling about Mick.”

“Mick? Why?”

“Well, he’s a liar.”

“How can you say that?” I protested.

“He said he didn’t know any of the husbands and he thought they were all actors. But Charles knew him. Without being introduced. He said, ‘Mick left a message on her interactive.’ Also Mick slunk out as soon as Charles turned up. You know he did, Liza. You were watching him.”

“Was not — well, sort of.”

“Then you know he snuck off as soon as Charles appeared. I think he didn’t want us to know he’d lied. And he didn’t want Charles to accuse him of not informing him about Mo’s death, except on the Web site.”

“So Mick knew at least one of the marriages was real. So what?”

“He lied about it. Why? He wasn’t surprised that Woody was a real husband, either. He should’ve been as astonished as we were. What if he knew all the marriages were real? He’d be aiding and abetting... trigamy. Is that a real word, Alastair?”

Alastair nodded wisely. He was still circling Joss’s name on the napkin.

“And,” Gail went on, “he kept avoiding the question about the key — had the police found it? Why didn’t Mo unlock herself when it got cold and wet? As soon as we brought that up he started droning on about art. He wants us to think it was all about art and promoting art.”

Alastair looked up and said, “Did any of us look at his work? Did any of us look at anything that wasn’t Mo’s?”

“Hers was nearest to the door,” I said. “The music — it was so gob-smacking — ‘To die by your side, well the pleasure and privilege...’ It drew you straight to her installation.”

“Did it, though? Mo despised that kitsch ’nineties retro. Her thing was Extreme Dance.” Alastair looked down at his list and hesitantly wrote Mick’s name. “If you ask me, the music didn’t go with her work at all. She’d never have chosen it.”

“That’s it!” Gail said.

“What?” I said.

“The music was wrong. Mo wouldn’t have picked it. So Mick had to.”

Gail seemed to be obsessing about Mick just to wind me up. And yet, now that I thought about it, although the music spoke to me that bizarre morning, Alastair had a point — it was utterly wrong for Mo.

But Gail had moved on. “And it was Mick who turned the music on when we went in to see Mo’s installation. The music was Mick’s choice, not Mo’s. And the only reason he’d have done that was...” She looked at Alastair and then me, her eyes gleaming, inviting us to catch up with her train of thought. I didn’t know about Alastair, but I was thinking so slowly I was unlikely to catch up with anything.

“Mick was Mo’s boyfriend,” Gail declared.

“Boyfriend?” I slumped in my chair. “Boyfriend? But...”

“Both Joss and Woody thought Mo had a boyfriend — they each thought it was the other. But it wasn’t. It was Mick. Think about it. He didn’t go to the funeral. Why not?”

I glanced at Alastair, then shrugged. There are plenty of reasons not to go to a funeral, but they didn’t seem compelling in the face of Gail’s enthusiasm.

“Because he knew Mo’s husbands would be there,” Gail said. “I think Mick was in love with Mo. I’ll bet to begin with he really did think the ‘husbands’ in the installation were actors — like he said — until he found out somehow.” She turned to Alastair.

“What?” he said.

“Charles. Charles is the answer. Where is he?”

Alastair looked at me. I said, “Isn’t he with Bekki? Or, rather, isn’t Bekki with him, and his cashmere?”

“Mick didn’t duck out when Woody showed up,” Gail said, “but he vanished as soon as Charles arrived. I’ll bet Charles will confirm that Mick knew he was Mo’s husband. One of Mo’s husbands.”

I said, “And finding out one of the husbands was for real meant they all were?”

Gail said, “All we have to do is talk with Charles to prove it.” She turned to Alastair. “Call Bekki.” She dug out her cell phone and handed it to him. “I saw her slip her card into your pocket.”

“She did?” Alastair looked in his pockets and discovered a card. “Why the hell would that silly woman think I’d want her phone number?” He turned to Gail without knowing he was already defeated. “No way, no day am I calling Bekki.”

“Mick’s responsible,” Gail said. “Maybe he didn’t mean for Mo to die, Liza. I’m not saying he’s a cold killer. He probably just wanted to teach her a lesson — leave her chained to her husbands in her wedding dress till she was really uncomfortable. Went for a drink, perhaps, but then had another and another and by the time he went back... Well, it was too late.”

“Three husbands,” I said, “and yet it was her boyfriend who killed her? Gail, you can’t mean it. She married three men for her installation and had Mick on the side for love?”

“She didn’t marry for art, Liza, she married for money.”

“But, Gail, she already had money.”

“Her father had money, but he married a greedy woman. Why do you want everything to be about art?”

“Because art’s the only thing that makes sense of life. Otherwise it’s all random and horrible. And Mo was an installation artist who had witty stuff to say about marriage. She was our friend. I don’t want her death to be about clichés like jealousy and money.”

“Love, jealousy, and money,” Gail corrected me. “Love isn’t a cliché.”

“It is, in this context,” I said, miserable.

“Don’t argue with her, Liza,” Alastair said. “You know she’s always right.” He started circling Mick’s name. “Always, always right.” He began to draw hearts and pound signs around Mick’s name. It was a detail I could fit into a narrative — the story about this day which I would tell myself sometime in the future; like the detail about the music — something I had not recognised as important at the time — which was that the soundtrack to Mo’s life was Dance music because Dance is music for the party people in the pretty dresses, the people who don’t care.

With astonishment I realized that I had never liked Mo and that I despised her taste in music. And with sadness I accepted what Gail probably knew instinctively, that Mick was a man who hid depression and destructiveness behind wit and irony — just like Morrissey. His taste in music gave him away. Just as the other big giveaway was my taste in men. There had to be something wrong with Mick if I liked him.

Gail crunched into a popadum. “Make the call, please, Alastair,” she said.

And I started to remember all of us as if it were already long, long ago. We are young, drunk, howling but essentially happy. The grim reaper hasn’t chosen us. Yet. We have theories but no experience, no proofs. We’re too green for that. In thirty years’ time, who knows — Mo’s death may mean more to us than it does now. It might even have become some sort of art. But until then there is hot food to eat and life to live and a story to construct.

Gail said, “Are we going to tell the police?”

Copyright (c); 2005 by Liza Cody.