Supping with the Devil

by Sally Spencer

  ‘And you’re their priestess?’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘No, I am just the little old lady in the front pew who wants no more than to sit there and worship,’ the dowager countess said, with surprising humility.

  ‘And that little old lady was outraged when your son opened the grounds of the Hall to the rock fans?’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘My husband was too lenient with both our sons,’ the dowager countess said. ‘He beat them – as he beat me – when they had done wrong, but he did not beat them hard enough or long enough. If he had, my eldest son might perhaps value the wonderful gift he has been given more than he does.’

  ‘Why did you go off into the woods the other night, my lady?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘What makes you think that I did go off into the woods?’ the dowager countess countered.

  ‘You were picked up on the security cameras,’ Paniatowski lied.

  ‘But I thought …’

  ‘You thought what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There is a broad strip of land in the centre of the woods which does not appear on either of the screens,’ the dowager countess had said, in an accusatory voice, to Edward Bell. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘You thought, having seen the monitors in the control room for yourself, that you’d taken a route which avoided the security cameras,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Well, you were wrong.’

  But she hadn’t been wrong. She had charted her course between the cameras exactly right, and, but for the report from Meadows – which had been made strictly off the record – Paniatowski would never have known anything about the other woman’s expedition into Backend Woods.

  For the first time in the entire interview, the dowager countess was starting to look a little rattled.

  ‘I did go to the woods,’ she admitted. ‘I felt the sudden need for some exercise.’

  ‘You don’t find it easy to walk, even on flat land, and to get to the woods, you’d have to cross some pretty rough ground. It would have been a difficult journey for you, so whatever reason you had for undertaking it, it must have been a compelling one.’

  ‘I am the dowager countess,’ the old woman said. ‘Nothing – and no one – compels me to do anything.’

  ‘Did you go into the woods to talk to your son?’ Paniatowski suggested, giving the countess the opportunity to lie.

  ‘My son?’ the dowager countess repeated. ‘Why would Gervaise have been in the woods?’

  ‘It’s your other son that I’m talking about – Sebastian.’

  ‘Was he there?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? Didn’t the earl tell you?’

  ‘The earl tells me nothing. And even if I had known Sebastian was there, why would I have wanted to talk to him?’ The dowager countess paused for a moment, as if the mere mention of her younger son had reignited unpleasant memories. ‘I’m tired of playing games,’ she continued. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you know – or at least, what you think you know?’

  ‘I know that you paid three of the Devil’s Disciples six thousand pounds to beat up your daughter-in-law – but I think that was only part of the deal, and that, to earn that money, they also had to kill Terry Lewis.’

  The countess looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Who is Terry Lewis?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s the journalist who was murdered.’

  ‘And why should I want him dead?’

  ‘Because he was about to run a story which would have put the earl in a very bad light, and might even have meant he ended up in prison.’

  The countess shrugged. ‘Why would I care about that?’

  ‘Aren’t you the least concerned about the family name?’

  The countess’s lip curled in disdain. ‘We are members of the old aristocracy of England, not here-today, gone-tomorrow television personalities,’ she said. ‘We don’t care what other people think about us, because their opinion is totally unimportant.’ She paused again. ‘Tell me, is there some kind of date on this film the cameras took of me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paniatowski said.

  Or, at least, there would have been a date if the dowager countess had actually been filmed.

  ‘Then you will see from the date that I did not go to the woods until after the reporter was killed,’ the old woman said.

  She sounded so sure of herself that she had to be telling the truth, Paniatowski thought – which meant that the six thousand pounds had been payment for just the one job.

  ‘Why did you pay the Devil’s Disciples to beat your daughter-in-law up?’ she asked.

  ‘You will never be able to prove that I did pay them to do that,’ the dowager countess told her.

  ‘You’re quite right, I won’t be able to prove it,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘So you’re under no obligation to tell me your motive, and if you’re ashamed of what you did, I can quite understand why you wouldn’t want to talk—’

  ‘My son is intent on destroying all Stamford Hall stands for,’ the old lady said. ‘Last weekend it was the barbaric music that he allowed to invade – who knows what he might plan next.’

  ‘And you blame his wife for that?’

  ‘No, I don’t blame her at all. Katerina is a typical bourgeois hausfrau. She has no plans of her own – all she cares about is what Gervaise wants. She is, in other words, quite sickeningly in love with him.’

  ‘And you disapprove of love?’

  ‘Love is a much-overrated emotion at the best of times, and when it gets in the way of duty, it becomes quite intolerable.’

  ‘What I don’t see is what you hoped to gain by having Katerina beaten up,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Gervaise had a nervous breakdown while he was serving in the army – his father, naturally, was disgusted by it – and is constantly teetering on the brink of a second one.’

  ‘I don’t see the connection between his nervous breakdown and his wife being attacked.’

  ‘Then you are an even bigger fool than I took you to be. Katerina being hurt was just the sort of thing that was likely to push him over the edge.’

  ‘And if he had another breakdown, you would be able to seize control of Stamford Hall?’

  ‘Exactly. Before they were married, Katerina insisted on a prenuptial contract which gave her virtually nothing, and certainly no say in how the Hall was run – and as for my younger son, Sebastian, I knew I could snap him as easily as I might snap a twig.’

  ‘What I don’t see is why you had Katerina beaten up, instead of Gervaise,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘For such an apparently frail man, Gervaise has a great capacity for withstanding pain,’ the dowager countess said. ‘A beating might have done no more than strengthen his resolve. Besides, what kind of monster do you think I am? He is my son!’

  What kind of monster indeed, Paniatowski asked herself.

  ‘I wish I could see you go to gaol for what you’ve done, but we both know that will never happen,’ she said.

  ‘Will you tell my son about it?’ the dowager countess asked.

  ‘Would you prefer me not to?’ Paniatowski replied.

  A look of indecision crossed the dowager countess’s face.

  She doesn’t want me to tell him, but to ask me not to would be too close to begging for her taste, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘You may tell Gervaise precisely what you wish to tell him,’ the dowager countess said finally.

  ‘You sound as if you think I was asking your permission,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I wasn’t. I don’t need your permission.’

  ‘In fact, having thought about it, it might be to my advantage to have him know the truth,’ the dowager countess said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He will want to hate me for it, but – because he is so very, very good – he will not allow himself to do so. Instead, he will come up with all sorts of reasons to excuse me – I am old, I am in pain, et cetera, et cetera. That will put a great strain on him, and perhaps he will have the nervous breakdown which woul
d so benefit the Hall without me having to lift another finger to cause it.’

  ‘You really are a complete monster, you know,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I am the curator of history and beauty – and that is the noblest calling in the world,’ the dowager countess said calmly.

  EIGHTEEN

  The civilian lab technician’s name was Ron Attwood. He had a receding hairline and a top pocket crammed with ballpoint pens. It was widely rumoured around police headquarters that he had a large photograph of Monika Paniatowski on his bedside table, and while the rumour was possibly untrue, there was no doubt that when he was in contact with the chief inspector, he flirted with her in a way which only a true techie would ever imagine might eventually be successful.

  He was flirting with her now, as he laid the video tapes on the desk in her office.

  ‘I’ve done my best with them, but it hasn’t been easy,’ he said. ‘These things were never designed to be fireproof.’ He glanced down at Paniatowski’s bandages. ‘They’re a bit like hands in that way.’

  Paniatowski grinned. ‘The only reason you’re pushing your luck, Ron, is that you know that if I slapped you across the face, it would hurt me much more than you.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the technician agreed. ‘You have to grab your opportunities while you can.’ He put his own hand up to his mouth, in mock horror. ‘Oh, sorry, DCI Paniatowski, you can’t grab anything, can you?’

  ‘Whoever said that our technicians were subhuman was flattering them,’ Paniatowski told Meadows. ‘So what can I expect from these tapes, Ron?’

  ‘Well, you can expect them to suddenly jump where I’ve had to splice them, and you can expect several sections to be murky at best, for scientific reasons you couldn’t possibly understand.’

  ‘When there’s the inevitable backlash against technology, and the villagers turn up at police headquarters armed with pitchforks and flaming torches, and wanting to burn you as a witch, I want you to know I’ll be standing there right by your side,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Chief Inspector – and not a little unexpected,’ the technician said.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘And when you hear me testify to them that I’ve seen you sacrificing virgins at midnight, I don’t want you to take it personally.’ She gestured to Meadows that she would appreciate it if the sergeant would put a cigarette in her mouth and then light it. ‘Seriously, Ron, you’ve done a great job, and I really appreciate it.’

  ‘It’s always a pleasure to work for you, DCI Paniatowski – though, for the life of me, I couldn’t say why,’ the technician told her.

  Once he’d gone, Meadows slipped the first tape into the machine and pressed the play button.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re looking for something which would have convinced Edward Bell that the tapes needed to be destroyed immediately, and – possibly – convinced him to take his own life.’

  ‘And do you have any idea what that might be?’

  ‘No, if I’m honest, I don’t have a clue.’

  The first tape was from the camera that had covered the area around the entertainment enclosure. It was this camera which had captured Terry Lewis cutting through the wire and entering the park. It was possible that this camera would also have filmed Lewis leaving by the same route, but when it didn’t, Paniatowski was not greatly surprised.

  The second tape covered the area around the smaller of the two lakes. There was no sign of human activity there until ten o’clock, when the butler walked down to the lake and sprinkled breadcrumbs on the water.

  ‘That’ll be the bread left over from dinner,’ Meadows said. ‘Waste not, want not. My butler …’

  ‘What was that?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You said, “my butler”.’

  ‘Did I? I suppose what I was going to say was my butler would find something more useful to do with his time – if I had a butler, that is.’

  But she hadn’t been going to say that at all, Paniatowski thought.

  The third tape covered the South Gate, which was neither the main entrance to Stamford Hall nor the access to the camp site. In fact, Paniatowski remembered Bell telling her that it was hardly ever used.

  ‘This is a waste of time, boss,’ Meadows said, after they had fast-forwarded through the first couple of hours. ‘Shall I take it out of the machine and put the next one in?’

  ‘You might as well,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  But just as Meadows was about to eject the tape, a car appeared on the screen, heading towards the gate.

  ‘Leave it!’ Paniatowski said to Meadows. ‘I want to see this.’

  The car stopped at the gate, waited while it automatically swung open, and then drove into the night.

  ‘I know who killed Terry Lewis,’ Paniatowski said.

  And she should have realized it much earlier, she thought – because she’d known all the relevant facts even before Lewis had been murdered.

  ‘I heard you’d burnt your hands,’ the countess said, with concern in her voice. ‘Are they very painful?’

  ‘Not any more,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘I’m on the mend. And you seem to be, too.’

  It was true. The countess’s leg was still firmly held by the pulley, but some of the bruising had started to fade, and she looked considerably better and happier than she had two days earlier.

  ‘The doctor says I can go home in a few days,’ the countess said. ‘It will be a while before I can walk again, but with a wheelchair, I can at least get around and see people. And I do like seeing people, you know?’

  ‘From what the nurse has been telling me, you’ve seen a fair amount of people while you’ve been here in hospital,’ Paniatowski said.

  The countess smiled. ‘Yes, I have had quite a lot of visitors – especially the tenant farmers and their families. They really seem to like me.’

  ‘I’m surprised that you’re surprised by that.’

  ‘Well, you know, when you’re the countess, you’re never really sure whether they’re being nice to you for yourself or because the earl is your husband. Yet when they came to visit me, I got the feeling it was because they really wanted to see me – that they’re genuinely fond of me.’ The countess paused for a moment. ‘But you’re a busy woman, and you’re not here to talk about my revelation that I can be quite likeable, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘The reason I’m here is to tie up a few loose ends.’

  ‘Where would you like to start?’

  ‘Could you tell me about your brother-in-law?’

  ‘Sebastian is fifteen years younger than Gervaise, and Gervaise has always seen it as his duty to protect his little brother.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘From their father, initially. My late father-in-law was, by all accounts, a brutal unyielding man. Gervaise tried to shield Sebastian from the kind of punishment he’d had to endure himself, but he was away a great deal – first at boarding school and then in the army – and you can only do so much from a distance. I think what upset Gervaise most was that his father had learned nothing from the experience of bringing up his first child, and made all the same mistakes with Sebastian. I think that if Sebastian had had a better childhood than he’d had himself, Gervaise would have considered all his own suffering to have been worth it.’

  ‘You make your husband sound like a saint,’ Paniatowski said, with a smile.

  ‘There are very few saints – but I think Gervaise comes closer to that state than anyone else I have ever met,’ the countess said seriously.

  ‘Why does your mother-in-law seem to hate both her sons?’

  ‘I think it is because neither of them came up to their father’s expectations – and he blamed her for that.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Gervaise told me that she once went down on her knees to her husband, and begged to know why it was that he did
n’t love her. All he would say was, “How can I love a woman who could bring such wretches into the world?” I think she believed she really had failed him. And that’s why, now he’s gone, she wants to keep the Hall just as it was in his day – as a shrine to him! In many ways, she’s trying to fill the role of the good son – the son she could never produce herself.’

  ‘When did Sebastian leave home?’

  ‘He left home many times – but he always came back in a few months, because he couldn’t really handle the world outside the Hall. But the last time he was there, his mother was particularly vicious to him, and when he left, he swore he’d never come back again. That was three years ago. We kept expecting him to turn up, but he never did.’

  ‘So your husband hired a private detective to find him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was because he was a member of the Devil’s Disciples that the gang were hired to provide security for the festival?’

  ‘Gervaise knew he wouldn’t come back of his own free will, but he thought that if Sebastian was forced to come back, because his gang would be here, he might start to realize how much he missed his home.’

  ‘I think I understand now why you wouldn’t admit it was the Devil’s Disciples who beat you up,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Please, you mustn’t say it was them!’ the countess urged.

  ‘I know it was them,’ Paniatowski said firmly. ‘I even know who paid them to do it.’

  ‘Was it my mother-in-law?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suspected as much.’

  ‘The reason that you didn’t want it known was because it was your husband’s decision to bring the Devil’s Disciples here – and he would have felt guilty.’

  ‘You’re quite right,’ the countess admitted. ‘He has endured enough guilt in his life, without my adding to it.’

  ‘On Friday night, your car was filmed leaving by the South Gate at around midnight,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Who was driving it?’