Moon Over Soho Read Free Page A

a baggy sky blue Shetland sweater. She had a pale pretty face and a mess of brown hair that would have fallen halfway down her back if it hadn’t been tied up in a crude bundle at the back of her head. Her eyes were chocolate brown and her mouth was big, full-lipped, and turned down at the corners. She asked me who I was and I identified myself.
    “And what can I do for you, Constable?” she asked. Her accent was cut glass almost to the point of parody. When she spoke I expected a Spitfire to go zooming over our heads.
    “Is this Cyrus Wilkinson’s house?” I asked.
    “I’m rather afraid it was, Constable,” she said.
    I asked who she was—politely.
    “Simone Fitzwilliam,” she said and stuck out her hand. I took it automatically; her palm was soft, warm. I smelled honeysuckle. I asked if I could come in, and she stood aside to let me enter.
    The house had been built for the aspirational lower middle class so the hallway was narrow but well proportioned. It still had its original black-and-white tiles, though, and a scruffy but antique oak hall cupboard. Simone led me into the living room. I noticed that she had sturdy but well-shaped legs under the black leggings she wore. The house had undergone the standard gentrification package, front room knocked through into the dining room, original oak floorboards sanded down, varnished, and covered in rugs. The furniture looked John Lewis, expensive, comfortable, and unimaginative. The plasma TV was conventionally large and hooked up to Sky and a Blu-ray player; the nearest shelves held DVDs, not books. A reproduction Monet hung over where the fireplace would have been if it hadn’t been ripped out sometime in the last hundred years.
    “What was your relationship with Mr. Wilkinson?” I asked.
    “He was my lover,” she said.
    The stereo was a boring high-end Hitachi, strictly CD and solid state—no turntable at all. There were a couple of racks of CDs, Wes Montgomery, Dewey Redman, Stan Getz; the rest were a random selection of hits from the 1990s.
    “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions if I can.”
    “Is that entirely necessary, Constable?” she asked.
    “We often investigate cases where the circumstances surrounding the death are unclear,” I said. Actually we, that is the police, don’t investigate unless foul play is bleeding obvious or if the Home Office has recently issued a directive insisting that we prioritize whatever the crime du jour was for the duration of the current news cycle.
    “Are they unclear?” asked Simone. “I understood poor Cyrus had a heart attack.” She sat down on a pastel blue sofa and gestured for me to take my place on the matching armchair. “Isn’t that what they call natural causes?” Her eyes glistened and she rubbed at them with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, Constable,” she said.
    I told her to call me Peter, which you are just not supposed to do at this stage of an inquiry—I could practically hear Leslie yelling at me all the way from the Essex coast. She still didn’t offer me a cup of tea, though—I guess it just wasn’t my day.
    Simone smiled. “Thank you, Peter. You can ask your questions.”
    “Cyrus was a musician?” I asked.
    “He played the alto sax.”
    “And he played jazz?”
    Another brief smile. “Is there any other kind of music?”
    “Modal, bebop, or mainstream?” I asked, showing off.
    “West Coast cool,” she said. “Although he wasn’t averse to a bit of hard bop when the occasion called for it.”
    “Do you play?”
    “Lord no,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly inflict my ghastly lack of talent upon an audience. One needs to know one’s limitations. I am a keen listener, though—Cyrus appreciated that.”
    “Were you listening that night?”
    “Of course,” she said. “Front-row seat, although that isn’t hard in a tiny little place like the Spice of Life. They were playing ‘Midnight Sun,’ Cyrus finished his