Farnell smiled. ‘You've a good eye, inspector. Isobel's suit is designer. But it's true the family hasn't a bean.’ He told them this with a certain relish. ‘Rumour has it that some foolish speculative venture did for them financially just before Isobel entered her teens. They've been on their uppers ever since. Every penny they have is put on Isobel's back. I gather she's meant to be the human sacrifice that placates the gods and puts everything right.’
‘Human sacrifice?’ Rafferty echoed.
‘Isobel's supposed to sacrifice herself on some rich man's altar, snare herself said husband and so restore the family fortunes.’
‘I thought stuff like that went out with the Victorians.’
Farnell laughed. ‘Don't you believe it, Inspector. Persuading a nubile daughter to sacrifice herself for the sake of the family is still pretty rife, at least amongst the upper elements of society. Hasn't the aristocracy a reputation for ruthlessness in pursuit of their desires? Not that Isobel's unwilling, far from it. That's the trouble. For all that she's from a real ‘true blue’ background, Isobel's vamp routine's been borrowed from the Mae West school of seduction. It gives the agency a bad image as I've several times complained to Caroline. Of course, as far as the agency's concerned, the sacrifice of the not-so-nubile daughters can be lucrative. We get a lot of business from fathers of plain, middle-class girls past the first flush egged-on by mothers who want grand-children before it's too late. We have a side-line in makeovers and have an arrangement with a first-class plastic surgeon who's also joint owner in a beauty salon, so we're able to quickly arrange for a bit of plastic surgery, boob jobs, laser eye treatment, botox, etc. After all that, mummy and daddy have a real chance of wedding bells and babies.
‘Demeaning for the girls to realize that even their parents believe they have no hope of hooking a worthy man without such measures. I feel sorry for them sometimes.’
So did Rafferty. And to think he hadn't even clipped his nasal hair before climbing into his ill-fitting borrowed suit and entering the agency dating ring. ‘And you say that Isobel's willing to do whatever's necessary?’
‘Why wouldn't she be? Isobel would like a return to the good life as much as the rest of her family. She's already had a boob job – you might have noticed she has plenty to put in the shop window. I gather she's speedily amassing funds to have her short sight corrected. She's paying for the operations herself, too. God knows where she gets the money as her salary's not large.’
Rafferty was beginning to have one or two ideas about that.
‘You won't know this, of course, having just met the girl’ – was that another hint of criticism? Rafferty wondered, aware he was becoming sensitive to such sly rebukes – ‘but she's not only dim and not very efficient, she's also lazy and indiscreet – not the best secretary/receptionist from the agency's point of view, which is something else I've been at pains to make clear to Caroline.’
Rafferty wanted a few moments to think, so he signalled to Llewellyn to take over. Farnell certainly seemed to have a down on Isobel. Was that just because he was clearly homosexual and Isobel's crass style offended his own impeccable taste? Or was there a deeper reason? Lancelot Bliss had revealed that Isobel was a bit of a snoop. Did she have something unsavoury on Farnell? But given that Farnell made no secret of his homosexuality, what could she have on him? Isobel would be unable to use her usual weapon – her body – to prise his secrets from him, as some of the recent statements hinted she did.
Llewellyn had discovered that Farnell had pushed to set up a ‘gay’ section to the dating agency and although Guy Cranston had made no objection, Caroline had. Was it possible that Farnell was the killer but that he had mistakenly killed the wrong women? Given that Caroline had crushed his ambition by rejecting out of hand his desire to set up the gay section and if Isobel did have some kind of hold on him, either woman could have been his chosen victim.
If so and Farnell had made a botch of it, his remark that such a killer would have to be completely inept to make such a mistake not once, but twice, could be a double-bluff.
‘You're looking very thoughtful, inspector. I do hope you're not judging me too harshly for my frank comments about Isobel.’ Simon Farnell gave him a coy glance from under his lashes.
Rafferty assumed the man must have a taste for the butch look he currently sported. Dear God, he thought, please don't let him start flirting with me. Not on top of all my other troubles. I might just land him one.
‘Just so you don't think I'm being a spiteful queen, let me give you an instance of Isobel's ineptitude. The party where we've since learned Jenny Warburton was murdered was another of her muddles. She caused both Caroline and me to arrive late. We didn't realize until we got to The Elmhurst hotel and found there was no booking that Isobel had given us invitations for the previous week's function. It wasn't the first time something like that has happened, either. I can only think Caroline puts up with her because it was Guy who took her on.’ Simon sighed. ‘The perils of nepotism.’
Rafferty recalled Simon and Caroline's late arrival at the first party; now he knew the reason for it.
‘I wish Isobel would find herself a wealthy man to keep her in style.’ Farnell looked archly at Rafferty. ‘Wouldn't mind one myself, come to that.’
Beside Rafferty, his sergeant was emitting strange muffled sounds. He ignored them and observed stiltedly, ‘Isobel's plan doesn't seem to be working. I gather she's been on the staff since the agency opened. How old is she, twenty-seven?’ Farnell nodded. ‘So what's she doing wrong?’
‘As I said, Inspector, I find the female of the species unfathomable. But you're a red-blooded male, my dear, what do you think she's doing wrong?’
Rafferty winced at the ‘my dear’. Careful to call to mind only Isobel's office clothing of low-cut blouse and scarlet lipstick rather than her barely-there party dress, Rafferty shrugged. ‘She's a bit obvious, I suppose. Shows a bit too much flesh and wears too much make-up. It hints at desperation.’
‘Perhaps you should tell her that. Then we might get her married off before she tries her vampish tricks on any more clients. Several have complained about her. She's also inclined to be inquisitive, which doesn't go down too well. Our clients expect discretion. It's the reason they come to us in the first place.’
There was no question now that Farnell had a definite down on Isobel. But as Rafferty recalled the comments in the statements of some of the male members, perhaps Farnell perhaps had a point.
‘Isobel's a bit of a snoop,’ Lancelot Bliss had said. ‘Caught her going through my desk once I often work at home and keep lots of confidential stuff there. Luckily, I keep the main section locked. God knows what she was looking for.’
‘Isobel's a bit of a bike’ – this had been Ralph Dryden's comment. ‘Most of the members here have had a ride or two on her.’
‘Isobel likes expensive presents,’ Rory Gifford had revealed.
Tired of trying and failing to find a rich husband, had Isobel settled for expensive trinkets and a side-line career as a blackmailer? Could that be why she made her body available to rich men who might have a murky secret or ten? Men forgot to be discreet when their trousers were down and their passion was up. If she was into using her body to encourage men to reveal their secrets it would explain why she had thought herself the murderer's intended target .
The fact that Jenny, Estelle and Isobel were all superficially alike, all being blondes, around the same height and build and all favoured little black dresses increased the possibility of mistaken identity. In the sparsely illuminated car parking area at the Cranstons’ home and the equally dimly-lit rear grounds of The Elmhurst's annexe it would have been easy to mistake one girl for another.
Rafferty mentioned the possibility to Llewellyn when they left the agency offices and were back in the car. Llewellyn had taken to being the driver as quickly as he had taken to running most of the investigation. Rafferty was beginning to suspect, if he ever managed to divest himself of the shackles
tying his hands in this case, he might find himself permanently in the passenger seat in more ways than one.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘why should she think she might have been the intended victim if she didn't harbour a guilty secret or two?’
‘Such a possibility had occurred to me, sir,’ Llewellyn told him. ‘I put something similar in my last report if you recall. I can't think how you missed it as you've been studying the paperwork so assiduously.’
Rafferty couldn't think how he'd missed it, either. He supposed he could put it down to his father's glasses. The headaches were now getting pretty insupportable. Obviously, he couldn't tell Llewellyn this. Instead, he clutched at a dim memory. ‘Must be that bang on the head that's affecting my memory.’
‘What bang on the head?’
‘Happened when you were on honeymoon.’
‘Ah,’ said Llewellyn.
‘What do you mean, Ah?’
‘Just that it would explain a lot.’ Llewellyn briefly studied him, before he returned his attention to the road. ‘You've been subdued lately, not like yourself. Not like yourself at all,’ the usually eloquent Welshman repeated. ‘You've been behaving, well, as I said, not like yourself.’ Solicitously, he asked, ‘Are you feeling unwell?’
Rafferty, seeing the genuine concern on Llewellyn's face, felt a brief temptation to ‘tell all’. Fortunately it passed. But he was hungry for sympathy, so he decided to seize the moment and the ready excuse for his recent uncharacteristic behaviour. He made his voice weak and lacking in conviction. ‘I'm all right, really. I suppose.’ His pathetic reply brought the desired response.
‘You're not, though, are you? Even Maureen said she's never seen you so subdued. Why not tell Dr Llewellyn what the problem is?’
The normally dour, dry as a desert Llewellyn must be worried to make such a naff effort at humour, Rafferty realized. I'm not lying, he told his nagging conscience before it got into its stride, as he confessed. ‘I haven't been sleeping well. Apart from these headaches, I keep getting recurring nightmares.’
‘Nightmares?’ Llewellyn echoed again. ‘What about?’
Rafferty was again tempted to confide his troubles to Llewellyn and put himself out of his misery. But again the temptation lasted only a moment. He could imagine Llewellyn's reaction if he told him his nightmares consisted of bloody visions, with him in the role of double murderer. So he temporized. ‘I keep getting nightmares about murdering Ma.’ Well, that was true, too. He had sometimes had murderous thoughts in that direction. He was only human. But the knowledge that his ma always bested him had put a stop to such dreams. He had never managed to win an argument with her, never mind a struggle to the death.
‘There's nothing else troubling you?’
Rafferty was quick to deny it.
‘Then, apart from making an appointment with your doctor for a check-up, I suggest you need a holiday. You should try to get away when we've resolved this case. A long break from murder is probably exactly what you need.’
Rafferty merely nodded, smiled and said, ‘You're probably right.’ It was the possibility that he'd have a very long break – an involuntary one, courtesy of Her Majesty – that had exacerbated the nightmares. But, of course he said nothing about that. Keen to get all the most problematic interviews over as quickly as possible, he simply suggested Llewellyn put his foot down – a request sure to encourage the suddenly chatty Welshman into stubborn silence
He made use of the journey time to think about another possibility. Thus far, because the two victims had been young women and Simon Farnell clearly played from another sexual song sheet, he hadn't featured strongly as a suspect. But the murders were not necessarily crimes of gender. Neither girl had been raped. They might well have been killed for reasons other than sexual ones.
Farnell was ambitious, gossipy and also a little spiteful. Caroline had thwarted his ambitions to launch a homosexual arm to the agency. She, rather than Guy had been the stumbling block to this ambition. Had he tried to remove this stumbling block and made a hash of it both times?
It seemed pretty unlikely, even though the three women – Jenny, Estelle and Caroline – were superficially alike and might be confused for one another in dimly-lit grounds by a man blinded by ambition. But what made the possibility difficult to accept was Farnell himself. The man might harbour ambitions, but they were realistic ones. Or they would have been if Caroline hadn't been so set against them. Farnell's resentment about this had come across clearly in his statement even though he'd barely referred to the matter. But he'd clearly researched the market. Lancelot Bliss had confided to Llewellyn that Farnell had paid for a firm of accountants to do the costings out of his own pocket. Clearly, he must be convinced his planned agency arm would meet a need.
Rafferty was inclined to agree with him; not every male homosexual would be happy to explore the more sordid ways of finding a partner. Farnell's ambition was far from blind. It was clear-sighted, unhampered by distorting blinkers. That was why Rafferty had managed to convince himself that if Simon Farnell meant to kill a particular person he wouldn't mistake their identity.
There again, Isobel had managed to head him off when it came to questions about her intelligence, so maybe Farnell had done the same but from the opposite direction. Perhaps, for all Farnell's apparently intelligent application to providing solid evidence to support his desired gay section ‘baby’, it only pointed to what an obsession it had become to him. It didn't necessarily mean he would be able to apply such intelligence to other areas.
Given the electronic gates at New Hall, the odds were short on Jenny's murderer being one of the attendees at the house party, so he couldn't discount Farnell. Nor could he be discounted when it came to Estelle's murder as the side entrance to The Elmhurst's annexe had a spring-loaded lock that only opened from inside. So again, without complicity from someone inside, no stranger could have gained easy access to the grounds to kill Estelle.
Everyone had been questioned as to whether they had let someone in from outside; naturally, all had denied it. Nor could an outsider have gained access from the front of the annexe. Doormen had been on duty all evening to keep out potential gate-crashers.
By now, thanks to Llewellyn's diligence, most of the attendees at both parties had been whittled from the suspect list. They had already checked and disproved the possibility that a stray stranger-killer could have gained access to the first party by waiting outside the grounds of New Hall for the gates to open so he could slip through and find a girl to kill. The possibility had been there for a time, even though he had thought it too bizarre to be given any credence, his increasing paranoia had insisted he consider it. But that worry had died an early death on the study of the video footage. The camera on the gates of New Hall had failed to record any suspicious looking characters – apart from himself – as he and Llewellyn had discovered on playing the tape back.
Rafferty had cringed when he had recognized himself in the back of the cab behind the concealing handkerchief. He had cringed even more when Llewellyn had said, ‘I don't know why, but there's something strangely familiar about that cab passenger. I wish I could put my finger on what it is.’
Fortunately, Llewellyn hadn't mentioned the matter again, so Rafferty concluded his sergeant's finger had failed to find the spot. Even I must have one stroke of good fortune, Rafferty told himself.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Next on the list was Rory Gifford, the TV producer friend of Dr Lancelot Bliss. Gifford's apartment, like Nigel's, was another of the recent developments that attracted affluent young professionals. Of course, Elmhurst was a handy commuter ride into the centre of London.
Situated on Elmhurst's outskirts, on the north bank of the river at Tiffey Reach, within easy walking distance of Northgate and the High Street with their shops and restaurants, Gifford's apartment was in a futuristic modern block. Rafferty guessed it must have stunning views over the water and the mostly open country to the north-east of the town. Each apa
rtment had a large balcony featuring intricate ironwork and supported by metal pillars.
An entry-phone system was in operation. Rafferty pressed the button for Gifford's apartment and they were admitted to a spacious entrance hall carpeted in a soft grey and filled with huge plants lit from a central atrium. Two lifts faced the entrance door, while, to the left, a wide staircase curved round the wall.
Rafferty headed for the stairs. He'd always understood that independent TV producers led a hand-to-mouth existence. Seemed Gifford was the exception. Still, Llewellyn's research had revealed that the TV Doctor programme which featured Gifford's friend Lance Bliss was very successful. According to the rather smug statement Gifford had made which confirmed Llewellyn's research, it had sold to a number of foreign countries, including the States.
Gifford's apartment was on the second floor, not penthouse-class, but as Gifford let them in and Rafferty glanced around, he concluded that it was still seriously pricey. Seriously stylish, too, in the minimalist way that Llewellyn admired, though to Rafferty, envious though he was about the large balcony, the enormous living room looked practically bare. A vast almost cinema-size screen filled most of one wall; beneath it were assorted DVDs and video recorders. A long, black leather sofa faced the screen and in front of it was a sleek metal and glass coffee table with an assortment of zappers. Apart from a dining table large enough to seat a dozen, a couple of enormous black armchairs and ceiling-high racks holding books and yet more videos and DVDs, that was it.
As they sat on the sofa, Lancelot Bliss appeared clutching a mug of coffee. He greeted them in his TV doctor voice as if they were nervous guests on his programme who had to be put at their ease.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, as if he owned the place. ‘Make yourselves at home. I always do.’ He sat down in one of the easy chairs and sprawled back as if determined to show how much at ease he was even when, as now, he was a suspect in a murder enquiry.
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