“So they work for you here?”
“I have no need. But Stamos has a continual need for workers round the hotel in St. Ives, and I find a former husband’s guilt is a useful tool.”
“I didn’t know you still speak to Stamos.”
“Only when it is helpful to me. Otherwise, he could disappear off the face of the earth and, believe me, I wouldn’t bother to wave good-bye. Could you tuck that in properly, darling? I can’t abide rucked sheets.”
She moved to Daidre’s position and demonstrated deftly how she wanted the sheets seen to. She said, “Nice and fresh and ready,” when she was done. Then she looked at Daidre fondly. The light in the room was greatly subdued, and in it Aldara shed twenty years. She said, “This isn’t to say we won’t, eventually. Narno will, I think, make a most energetic lover, which is how I like them.”
“I see.”
“I know you do. The police were here, Daidre.”
“That’s why I’ve come.”
“So you were the one. I suspected as much.”
“I’m sorry, Aldara, but I had no choice. They assumed it was me. They thought Santo and I?”
“And you had to safeguard your reputation?”
“It isn’t that. It wasn’t that. They need to get to the bottom of what happened to him, and they aren’t going to get there if people don’t start telling the truth.”
“Yes. I do see what you mean. But how often the truth is…well, rather inconvenient. If one person’s truth is an unbearable blow to another person and simultaneously unnecessary for him to know, need one speak it?”
“That’s hardly the issue here.”
“But it does seem that no one is quite telling the police everything there is to tell, wouldn’t you say? Certainly, if they came to you at first instead of to me, it would be because little Madlyn did not tell them everything.”
“Perhaps she was too humiliated, Aldara. Finding her boyfriend in bed with her employer…That might have been more than she wanted to say.”
“I suppose.” Aldara handed over a pillow and its accompanying case for Daidre to sort out while she herself did the same with another. “It’s of no account now, though. They know it all. I myself told them about Max. Well, I had to, hadn’t I? They were going to uncover his name eventually. My relationship with Max was not a secret. So I can hardly be cross with you, can I, when I also named someone to the police?”
“Did Max know…?” Daidre saw from Aldara’s expression that he did. “Madlyn?” she asked.
“Santo,” Aldara said. “Stupid boy. He was wonderful in bed. Such energy he had. Between his legs, heaven. But between his ears…” Aldara gave an elaborate shrug. “Some men?no matter their age?do not operate with the sense God gave them.” She placed the pillow on the bed, and straightened the edge of its case, which was lace. She took the other from Daidre and did the same, going on to turn down the rest of the linen in a welcoming fashion. On the bedside table, a votive candle was nestled in a crystal holder. She lit this and stood back to admire the effect. “Lovely,” she said. “Rather welcoming, wouldn’t you say?”
Daidre felt as if cotton were stuffed into her head. The situation was so much not what she believed it should be. She said, “You don’t actually regret his death, do you? D’you know how that makes you look?”
“Don’t be foolish. Of course, I regret it. I would not have had Santo Kerne die as he did. But as I wasn’t the one to kill him?”
“You’re very likely the reason he died, for God’s sake.”
“I very seriously doubt that. Certainly Max has too much pride to kill an adolescent rival and anyway Santo wasn’t his rival, a simple fact that I could not make Max see. Santo was just…Santo.”