Murder in Venice

by L. B. Hathaway

  Dickie looked taken aback. ‘I haven’t a clue what you mean. You must be in shock, that’s all…’

  ‘Not at all. What I say is very simple. It’s also the truth. Roger Valentine was a truly despicable man, which he knew. But he wasn’t a murderer. He saw himself instead as an avenging angel. For Bella. Why else would he come here today and risk his own life?’

  Alaric was staring, confused. ‘Posie, what on earth are you talking about? None of this makes sense…’

  ‘It makes perfect sense, actually. But we were all too blind to see it. Roger Valentine may have lusted after Lucy Christie – he was a man, after all, and he probably hoped that one month Lucy would decide to sleep with him rather than pay out her dues – but he had met his match in Bella Alladice. Here was someone for whom he had full respect and admiration. She may have been gross in outward appearance, but their relationship was never physical. Roger and Bella relied on each other. He was always looking out for Bella; always trying to find ways of helping her. Particularly helping her to maintain her standards.’

  ‘What “standards” are you speaking of here, Posie?’

  ‘Well, particularly with regards to the business. This business.’ Posie gestured around.

  Dickie shook his head kindly. ‘I’m sorry, but you are quite mistaken. This is a new venture, as you well know. This is a business I will run together with Alaric. We were about to sign the documents this very afternoon. We will sign as soon as I get another notary over here to witness our signatures. This particular company has nothing to do with Alladice Holdings, or my sister Bella. Or my Aunt Minnie for that matter.’

  Posie smiled quizzically. ‘Oh, but it does. Doesn’t it?’

  Alaric had his arms crossed, his face was puzzled. ‘Go on, Posie.’

  She nodded at Alaric. ‘Don’t forget, Roger Valentine was the secretary for Alladice Holdings, as well as being Bella’s right-hand man. He was in charge of all the paperwork, which he, Dickie, Bella and Minnie had to sign, in order for a document to be fully valid. Four signatures were required, always. For a while now Roger had suspected some sort of impropriety was going on. He never trusted Mr Ennario, for a start. And that’s probably why he insisted that Bella make a Will with a separate, trusted English lawyer, brought out here specially for that one job. Maybe if Roger had been included in the wrong-doing from the start it could all have been hushed up? But he wasn’t. Three weeks ago, when he was due some leave, he took himself off to London, to Companies House, where all the documents of a company must be filed. He asked for the Company Register for Alladice Holdings, and he sat in a room and took photographs of everything he was presented with.’

  ‘Photographs?’ repeated Alaric.

  ‘That’s right. What he saw in that Company Register shocked him. It needed recording.’

  ‘This is complete hash, Posie. Rot! I told you Roger Valentine was a madman, didn’t I?’

  ‘Repeatedly, thank you. But he wasn’t. He was just very astute. Unfortunately for you, and your plans…’

  ‘For me?’ Dickie sounded shocked.

  ‘Yes, for you, Dickie. For what he found was fraud, on a large scale. Not just that Alladice Holdings had sold almost all of their properties in England, turning the proceeds into liquid cash, but that it had all been done without proper consent: the documents had all been returned with four signatures, but three of the signatures were faked. Your signature, and Mr Ennario’s signature as a witness were quite legitimate, but you must have found a good forger to fake Roger, Bella and Minnie’s signatures. Roger Valentine was profoundly shocked. But there was more to come: there were legal documents already filed in the Register which would split Alladice Holdings in half, and which would transfer half of that company’s cash into a new venture – this venture – and the signatures on those had all been forged, too. The cash transfer to this company was due to happen today, at four o’clock, and to be legal, the new Partnership Deeds needed to be signed on the same business day. That much Roger realised.’

  Posie watched Alaric’s face, sheet-white and only just comprehending. She turned again to Dickie.

  ‘It was a very clever plan, Dickie. It’s unlikely that the halving in value of the original family company would have been picked up by either Bella or Minnie for a good long while, and you could probably have explained it away later by admitting to unstable investments, or tricky markets…’

  Alaric swung around, perplexed, alarmed. ‘Is this true, Dickie?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I hate to say it but the lovely Miss Parker here has got quite the wrong end of the stick.’

  Posie shook her head. ‘I haven’t, and Alaric knows it. Because Roger took his photographs and then – as usual – wondered how he could play the game to his own advantage. Alaric, admit it. He contacted you, didn’t he?’

  Alaric’s bronze eyes had hardened, his jaw set. He gritted his teeth.

  ‘Yes. It was dashed odd. I was winding things up in Constantinople two weeks ago, when I got a telephone call at the University, out of the blue. It was Roger Valentine, and he explained he was connected to the Romagnoli Palace. He told me he’d heard I was about to get involved with Dickie’s new business here and he warned me off: advised me to check the Company Register for Alladice Holdings in London. He said I’d find irregularities there. He said that if it was the case, I could reward him as I saw fit later on.’

  ‘So you asked Inspector Lovelace to bring the papers out?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted him to come out anyway, for our…’ He paused, then looked away, swallowing, deep hurt in his eyes. ‘For our wedding. I knew he was senior enough to get the information for me, so it was a case of two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something to me, old boy?’ asked Dickie, a hurt expression on his face. ‘If you didn’t trust me?’

  Alaric shrugged. ‘I don’t know you that well, really, do I, Dickie? And anyway, when I got my hands on the Register, I couldn’t see what on earth Roger Valentine was talking about. It all seemed absolutely fine to me. Tickety-boo. I’d been expecting bankruptcy or something worse.’

  Posie grimaced. ‘Mnnn. Well, for once Roger wasn’t specific enough. He should have told you about the fake signatures. How were you to know the documents were all forged, Alaric? But maybe Roger didn’t have to wait for Alaric’s ‘reward.’ He thought he’d already made sufficient money on the faked documents, didn’t he, Dickie?’

  Dickie just laughed, and Poise saw a hardness settle in his eyes. Where on earth was Max? Where was Lovelace?

  She turned to Alaric. ‘Roger Valentine took his findings, his clever photographs, to Dickie immediately upon his return. He asked for a huge payment – the largest he’d ever had the nerve to seek out – to ensure his silence, and to ensure he wouldn’t show Bella. And Dickie agreed, on the condition that Roger left his employment. But Dickie was probably short of cash, and only paid half of what he promised, the money coming from a secret little account he’d set up with Mr Ennario here in Venice. Roger Valentine was then left in an awkward position, in a sort of limbo, holding off showing the documents to Bella, waiting for the rest of the payment… but then he decided he would force Dickie’s hand. And he had a trump card.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alaric was casting quick nervous glances between Posie and Dickie, trying to ignore the bodies on the floor.

  ‘Roger was overheard speaking to Dickie the night before Bella died. He was threatening to show Bella the forged papers, and something else, unless he was paid his missing half. When no payment was forthcoming by the next morning, he decided enough was enough: he put everything together in Bella’s black leather folio, including the trump card, ready for her to look at. And then he went for a good long walk, to see how things would play out.’

  ‘What’s this second thing I’m supposed to have been so scared of?’ said Dickie, his hand on the door-handle, eyebrows raised in mock surprise. ‘What’s this ‘trump card’?’

  Posie smiled cooll
y. ‘It was something you didn’t know even existed. Not until Roger showed it to you the night before your sister died. Because, careful investigator that he was, Roger hadn’t just been busy in London at Companies House, he’d been pursuing other lines of inquiry. Apparently, he had a lot of journalist friends, and it must have been one of them who let him look in their archives. What he found there was like gold dust. Unbelievable, explosive. Life-changing. It forced your hand, didn’t it, Dickie?’

  Alaric’s eyes had widened to saucers. ‘You mean, you mean…that Dickie…’

  ‘Killed his own sister in cold blood? Yes. That’s absolutely right. And Roger realised it, and got scared, and ran for his life. But today he decided to get even for Bella, and got himself killed in the process.’

  ****

  Thirty

  ‘But why? Surely this company business – however bad – could have been smoothed over? Bella would have forgiven you, surely? You must be wrong, Posie! Dickie, speak up, man, what on earth can Posie mean?’

  But Posie saw that Dickie Alladice was now possessed of a calm which was altogether unsettling.

  A tight smile played over his lips. It reminded her of an arch-criminal she had been faced with on the first big case of her career as a Private Detective. But that man, Caspian della Rosa, had been armed to the hilt. Thank goodness Dickie Alladice has no gun, Posie thought to herself. Otherwise he could simply kill us here and now and say there had been a mass shoot-out and he was the only survivor.

  And then the significance of the photograph from the Associated Press office, and all the truth it contained would never come to light. Past wrongs would never be made right, nor the financial irregularities in the company discovered. And Roger Valentine would have died in vain. He had come here to ‘stop all of this’, and his actions wouldn’t have changed a thing.

  There was nothing for it but to plough on, breezily, speaking directly to Dickie.

  ‘I think Alaric is right. I think that Bella could have forgiven you about the company, perhaps. In time. Although the good name of Alladice Holdings meant a lot to her, like it did to your late brother Johnny, whose memory she held so dear.’

  Posie unfurled the photograph which had never left her hands. The reel.

  ‘But she couldn’t have forgiven you this. This was Roger’s trump card. This is the second incriminating item which he placed in Bella’s folio for her to discover on Wednesday morning, alongside the company documents…’

  Alaric craned his neck, and Dickie stared, and for a second he flushed: ‘You! Where the blazes did you get that from?’

  ‘Roger Valentine is not the only one to have a friendly journalist on his books. This photograph is identical to the one you took from Bella’s folio on the morning she died, isn’t it? You removed it along with Roger’s photographs of the company documents, which I see are over there now, stacked on your desk. I take it you burnt the photograph which exactly matched this one, though? It’s too dangerous to keep. Roger actually had three photographs in his possession like this, all nearly the same, like me; but it’s this one which does the damage.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Alaric took the photograph and stared, uncomprehending.

  ‘I don’t understand. It looks old. It’s nothing special, just a snap of some smart-looking folk. Oh! I say! Isn’t that you here, Dickie? Grinning your head off? And isn’t that Bella, but, I say! Wasn’t she a looker back then? It says: “ICE CREAM GIRL MURDER TRIAL: THE ALLADICE FAMILY HEAR THE VERDICT.” What on earth is this to do with right now?’

  Dickie laughed, and lurched suddenly over the body of Roger Alladice. When he stood up again Posie saw with utter dismay that he was holding Roger’s pistol. How had she forgotten there had been two guns in the room? That Dickie was so dangerous – and possibly unhinged – that to use a gun just now would mean nothing to him except as a way to accomplish his own ends?

  ‘Dickie, old boy, play fair. Not Posie…’

  But Dickie was training the gun on her anyway. Posie shrugged. ‘Why don’t you tell us, Dickie, what this photograph has to do with right now?’

  ‘Everything,’ he smirked. ‘And nothing.’

  Posie stayed rooted to the spot, terrified. If, as she so desperately hoped, there were police out on the balcony, maybe Lovelace among them, it would be good to get a confession from the man’s own lips. To get him to speak.

  ‘You’re quite right, Dickie. There have been so many different elements to this case, and sometimes it’s been difficult to see through them all to the very core. But I told Bella in the first place that this was either about love, or money. And I was right, or almost right. It’s been about money, for sure. But it’s mainly been about love. A love for Lucy Christie. A life-shattering, life-destroying love…’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Dickie wiggled the gun a bit at Posie but she stood very still, holding her nerve.

  ‘Oh, but you do know. In 1912 Alicia Allessandro – Lucy Christie, as she now is – was arrested and put on trial for the murder of Robert Gattling, her almost-fiancé. She was found guilty of the crime of murder, that she had killed Robert by using prussic acid. This, and the two other photos in the set, show the moment at which the verdict was given. The Charltons were the photographers in the Courtroom that day at the Old Bailey, and they sold these reels all about the place. Quite a few newspapers must have bought them.’

  Alaric was listening but only just, his eyes riveted on the gun in Dickie’s hands.

  ‘The whole thing had been a tragedy, hadn’t it?’ continued Posie. ‘Your family, previously so close, were almost destroyed. Bella, convinced of Lucy’s guilt, had testified against her. And because of this, Bella and Johnny never spoke again. But the trial had consequences for you and your brother, too, didn’t it? You and Johnny fell out, with you accusing your own brother of administering the poison to Robert Gattling himself.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do. But no-one actually knew what had happened for sure, least of all Bella. This photograph shocked her when she saw it on Wednesday morning. I think this photograph showed her exactly what had happened; made her understand. Isn’t it true that a picture tells a thousand words? And this one unpicked an entire lifetime of misunderstandings.’

  Alaric reached over for the photograph again, frowning. Posie pointed at the figures in it.

  ‘The key thing to remember is that when this picture was taken it seemed almost certain that Lucy Christie would hang for this crime. The appeal was far away in the future. She had just been sentenced. Here Lucy is in the background, in the dock, head down, almost expressionless. And now look at the other three in the viewing gallery…’

  Posie pointed. On the very far right of the picture, with her big puffy hair and cameo brooch, stood a very thin and beautiful Bella, her hands crossed elegantly, her whole pose one of quiet acceptance, of acknowledging a truth. But there was no pleasure in her face. And then, by complete contrast, the photographer had managed to catch what must have been a split-second’s gut reaction, which had been smoothed over by the time the next photograph was taken, a second or so later.

  Johnny Alladice, handsome, young, was focussed not on Lucy in the dock, but on his brother, right next to him. Johnny’s eyes had widened impossibly, and his mouth gaped in a panicked, undisguised horror. He was visibly shocked at his brother’s reaction.

  It had to be.

  For here, on the very left of the three siblings was Dickie. And the look on his face was something terrible to behold.

  If Posie had been told it was one of the demons in hell she wouldn’t have doubted it. Dickie was obviously laughing, and sneering, and hissing in revenge, all at the same time. His eyes were narrow slits, more snake-like than human, and he seemed to be doing all he could not to throw his head back in wild abandon, in absolute pleasure, in wild laughter. Here was a man who had got exactly what he wanted. And Johnny had seen it, at first-hand. And so had the photographer.

  And years
later so had Roger, and then, fatally, so had Bella.

  ‘Johnny realised then, didn’t he?’ Posie said softly. ‘Johnny probably hauled you up after the trial and asked you outright what exactly you were playing at. I think Johnny suspected you of poisoning Robert Gattling – which was, I expect, absolutely correct – and you thought you would throw the accusation back at him, to take the heat away from yourself. Not that anything came of it: you brothers never spoke again and the war took Johnny away. Forever, as it happened. Conveniently for you…’

  Alaric stared at Posie hard. ‘I may not have followed this correctly, but what I’m understanding is that Dickie poisoned one fella, and wanted Lucy Christie to hang for it. But why? And isn’t this exactly what’s just happened here, again? Bella dead with Lucy a suspect for her death?’

  Posie nodded. ‘That’s right. Actually, murderers never usually change their methods. What you have to understand – and which Lucy herself didn’t – is that along with Robert Gattling and Johnny Alladice, Dickie Alladice was madly in love with her. This was no passing childish fancy for you, Dickie, was it? It was an all-consuming passion. So you killed Robert, and seeing which way the wind was blowing between Lucy and your brother Johnny, you made sure that if you couldn’t have Lucy, no-one else would. So you slipped a bottle of poison into her evening bag and generally made it look pretty black for her: love had turned to a hate-fuelled obsession. And I expect it’s something you’ve nursed ever since. You certainly had no qualms about setting Lucy up again for Bella’s death: the same poison used; the mock protestations as to her innocence…’

  ‘You’re wrong about all of this,’ Dickie spat out. And Posie saw for the first time the narrowed eyes, the hissing hatred, the enemy within. She felt her feet turn to jelly inside her tough little boots.

  ‘You were right to be worried about Bella’s reaction, weren’t you? You went in to her yesterday, didn’t you? In the dining-room, at about quarter past nine? When she was supposedly alone and you were supposedly at the notary’s office? She was livid with you! Bella was overheard threatening you that she was going to the police. She said it was “better late than never”. And then, when you’d left her, having taken away Roger’s photographic evidence and exchanged hip-flasks so that Bella was left with poison, she did in fact try to alert Scotland Yard. She called and asked to speak to someone about a murder: a murder committed by her own brother, several years ago. You saw Bella’s death as inevitable by yesterday morning, and you would have found a way to kill her somehow. But, as luck would have it, you saw Lucy’s identical bottle lying in the corridor outside her door, and seized on it as a way to incriminate her yet again. That hatred still burnt in you like a wild fire. And why not use poison yet again, too? Prussic acid, or rat poison, was easy enough to come by out here in a city full of vermin and rat traps, and I suppose you felt it would lend a nice symmetry to the thing.’