I edge closer still. I know I’m really pushing my luck but this will be my only chance to figure out the contents of these photos and whether they hold any clues hidden away in them. Then I see another photo. An older Armand and Bryony this time. It looks like they’re at a party. Their stance is somehow too staged, posing for the camera, their body language uncomfortable. The contrast between the two sets of photos is so marked that they don’t even look like the same couple. What happened between the earlier one on the beach and the later one at a party?
Bryony scoops a handful of the photos off the table and into a bag. “If you’ve quite finished nosing, these are personal. Treasured memories. Now, get out of here and leave me alone while I try to sort through my husband’s belongings.”
I turn on my heels and head for the stairs. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, that’s where I bump right into Jack.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Jack looks at me questioningly. Without words he manages to convey several questions. Foremost of which I interpret as being, what on earth were you doing in Armand’s flat? Bryony slams the door shut behind me and Jack immediately hooks a hand through my arm and tugs me down the stairs after him. “I thought we’d agreed you were staying away from here. Visiting Armand’s flat is not staying away!”
“I had to do something,” I hiss as he steers me towards the door to the bar.
“I’m doing the something,” he retorts.
“Well, I couldn’t just stay up at the farm and fret about things.”
Once we’re outside the Veggies he asks, “Where’s Daisy?” A flicker of warmth runs through me. He didn’t ask where my car is; he asked where Daisy is. Sweet. I point up the road and we both scurry towards her.
“Bryony was in Armand’s flat.” The words burst out of me. “She was going through some old photos but something didn’t seem right.”
Jack stops in the middle of the pavement and frowns at me. “Like what?”
“There was a photo taken on a beach somewhere of Bryony and Armand. They looked so happy together. The chemistry was positively zinging between them. Obviously so in love. Then there was another photo of the two of them but they looked completely different. They looked strained, uncomfortable and unhappy.”
“Maybe they’d had a row,” Jack suggests.
“It seemed like more than that,” I persist, searching for the right words to describe the sharp contrast in the images. “Almost as though it was different people, but it was definitely them. Armand looked younger in the happy photo, but it was still definitely him.”
“And definitely Bryony too?” he checks.
I stop, close my eyes and think.
“What are you doing?” Jack asks and I can hear the frustration simmering in his voice. “We’re in the middle of the pavement!”
I shush at him with my hands. “I’m trying to conjure up the pictures again in my mind. I think there was something different about Bryony.”
“Yeah, you said she was happy in the first and…”
I hold up a hand to silence him. “No, more than that. Something physical. There was a scar on her left cheek. I’m sure of it.” I look up and Jack is narrowing his eyes at me. I can almost hear his mind whirring, thinking around what I’ve just told him and the possible implications. “She doesn’t have a scar now, does she? No sign of one. Her skin is perfect.”
“She could have had plastic surgery,” he reasons. “Maybe, once the money started pouring in, she booked herself in to get it sorted.”
“She’s the businesswoman, the one with the investments and the money. She didn’t need to wait for Armand to be famous, bringing in the money,” I reply.
He nods. “True. Come on, we need to get out of here and get on the Internet. I want to check a few things.”
Back at Eskdale, Jack is soon busy on his phone and he has me hard at work on my computer, trawling through one of those ancestry genealogy websites. “What am I looking for?” I ask when he pauses for a second from doing whatever he’s doing on his phone.
“Bryony’s family history. According to the stuff I have on her, her maiden name was Turnball. Bryony May Turnball. Born in London. If I was working this case officially, I could request her full family history from agency HQ and it would be with us,” he pauses, snapping his fingers, “like that, but, as I’m not, it might be faster to try and sort this one ourselves.”
I tap away at the keys trying to find the right Bryony Turnball. “Did you speak to Carl Silvers today?” I ask Jack, who is busy finding information via his phone.
“Yeah, briefly,” he answers distractedly. “Not much use though. He was helpful enough but was in the middle of working in the kitchens so it was pretty chaotic. On the night of the stabbing he was doing that cook with a celebrity class at the hotel in Cumbria, remember? His alibi checked out.”
Disappoint floods through me. There’s the terrifying possibility that the killer could be somebody we don’t have on our investigation radar yet but I don’t even want to think about that prospect. We don’t have the time to go back to square one with this case. In the meantime, I could be landed in jail. Then I remember about the woman who Bryony had mentioned, the one who was a finalist on the TV cookery show with Carl and Armand. “What about that Francesca woman?”
Jack doesn’t even look up as he replies. “That was a dead end as well I’m afraid. She’s out of the country, working in a restaurant in France. She has been for months.”
Great. Another name crossed off the list of potential suspects.
“What are you looking for?” I ask minutes later, after rejecting yet another Bryony Turnball in the births, deaths and marriages records. Who knew there would be so many people with that name – I mean, it’s not exactly common, is it?
“Old news stories involving a woman named Turnball,” he replies.
“There must be millions! We don’t even have a date or a year to search for to try to narrow things down.” If I’m struggling with too many results on this search, then I dread to think how many news stories Jack must be having to trawl through. “Why news stories anyway?”
“I’m hoping that what you find and what I find will fit together and complete the puzzle.”
We both continue our searches in silence. The clock ticks loudly, and my nerves edge ever closer to breaking point. Then, finally, it looks as though I may have found my piece of the puzzle. “Jack!”
He’s at my side in a second and reading the screen over my shoulder. “I knew it!”
“Bryony has an identical twin sister called Bethany. So, Bethany is the one with the scar, isn’t she?” I clarify. “Those photos I saw, they mean Armand was originally involved with Bethany, but then he got involved with Bryony. The earlier, happy photos were of him and Bethany, the later ones, without the chemistry, were him and Bryony. But why?”
Jack stands up and resumes tapping away on his phone. “Can you search on there for a death? Use the name Bethany Turnball and try, say, from about six years ago up to three years ago. See if anything comes up.”
Using the date and information from Bryony and Bethany’s birth certificates, I start trawling through death records. “Here!” I say, pointing frantically at the screen. “Bethany June Turnball died four years ago in Australia. It doesn’t say how she died on here though. We’d have to apply for a copy of the death certificate to find that out and that will take days.”
“We don’t need to, I know what happened,” Jack says, leaning down and showing me the screen of his phone. I read the news headline Girl Dies in Australian Crash, and my stomach flips. The story explains how Bethany was travelling in a vehicle with three female friends in a town outside Sydney. The car skidded off the road and slammed into a wall. Bethany, sitting in the front passenger seat, and the driver, named as Annalisa McInerney, were both pronounced dead at the scene of the crash. My mouth goes dry as I force myself to finish reading the rest of the story. “The date! The crash happened four years ago to the da
y Armand was stabbed! His death has something to do with Bethany’s? But he wasn’t there… It doesn’t make sense.”
“Somebody is obviously blaming him for her death, though the question is who. My money is on Bryony, attempting to avenge her sister’s death,” Jack says, taking over the computer now and accessing some official looking website and logging in.
“Should you even be on this site?” I ask nervously as Jack gains entry to the system and starts a search on Michael Seville – Armand’s real name. “With your suspension, they’ll know you’ve been on here and you’ll get in even more trouble, won’t you?”
“I’ll worry about that later. For now we need to access Seville’s travel data to see where he was at the time of the accident.”
“You think he was in Australia, too?” I conjure up a mental image of the photo I’d spotted earlier. The beach, the backdrop. Then I recall the holiday mementoes I’d found in that box days ago when Jack and I had first searched Armand’s flat. “The picture of Bethany and Armand I saw could have been them in Australia. I’ve never been so I don’t know for sure, and I can’t recall any significant landmarks in the background which might help us pin down the location.”
Jack leans back in his chair so I can see the computer. “He was in Australia, with her. This database holds information on passport and customs details. It confirms he was there. Bryony, however, wasn’t. Armand and Bethany must have been on holiday together. Maybe they made friends with some other people or they met up with some old friends who were out there too. That must have been the girls Bethany was in the car with.”
I stare at the words on the screen. “But why wasn’t he with her in the car if they were on holiday together?”
“Maybe it was a girls’ night out,” Jack replies with a shrug. “Maybe the guys were elsewhere, on a pub crawl or something. But this all suggests to me that Bryony is laying the blame for her sister’s death firmly at Armand’s feet.”
“But she married the guy!” I shout. “Why would she marry him if she hated him and blamed him for her sister’s death?”
“Classic case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” He gets to his feet. “I should call all of this information in to the local police. They need to know this stuff and fast.”
“So, it looks like Armand dated Bethany first, then, after her death, got involved with her twin sister. Wow! What do we do now?” I flop onto the seat Jack has just vacated. “Are we close to finding the real killer? Can the police prove it was Bryony who stabbed her husband? Didn’t she have an alibi, though? She was visiting her parents in London.” Jack doesn’t answer me; he’s already speaking to the police station and asking to be put through to the Chief Inspector leading the investigation. I sit and listen to him recite all the details, the dates, the places they can find the information for themselves, so they can see it’s all true. Eventually he ends the call and turns to face me. “And?”
“They’re looking into it. He said they’ll send somebody over to speak to Bryony again as well. This is all new information but it still doesn’t prove anything. Not yet anyway.”
My hopes crash and burn once more. So, this horrible nightmare isn’t over yet.
“That’s all?” I jump to my feet, waving my arms in a volatile cocktail of anxiety, frustration and disappointment. “She could have left the country or anything by the time they get around to…”
Jack walks over and gently grips my upper arms. “Calm down, Lizzie. They’ll investigate it all thoroughly.”
I look up at him. “So, you’re saying that’s it? We just step back and leave them to it?”
“No way,” he says with a shake of his head, releasing me and heading for the door with me following hot on his heels.
“Are we going to get Bryony?” I ask nervously.
“I think we should have another little chat with her, don’t you? But first I want to call at the farm and pick up some stuff. I can wire myself up so if we get there first and can get her to say anything useful for the investigation, then we’ve got evidence we can pass on to the police later.”
I wait anxiously in the car as Jack races into the farmhouse and reappears moments later with a handful of tech type stuff. Then we’re on our way again. I glance across at him as we whizz along the country lanes. He’s frowning. “Everything OK?”
“Yeah, hope so. Emma was having a lie down, said she felt a bit off. Can you ring Frazer for me and tell him to get home pronto?”
I do as requested and Frazer says he’ll be home within minutes. I relay the information to Jack, who nods and looks relieved. When we arrive at the Veggies the restaurant has finished serving lunch but the bar is still open. In the car I help Jack rig up the wire. Under different circumstances I would have quite enjoyed putting my hand up his T-shirt but for now I have to focus on following his instructions to connect up the device. I’m aware that some of the places he could easily have reached himself but I’m not going to quibble about it. After a few false starts, we eventually get everything up and running. Jack had mentioned the other day that he wasn’t a techy kind of guy, but, thankfully, he’d been wired loads of times before so could recall how to set it all up. I just hope I’ve got it right!
We stroll in through the front doors as though we’re just here for a quick drink but I use the staff key code once more to gain access to the private area designated for staff and which also leads to Armand’s flat. I follow Jack as he takes the stairs two at a time. The door at the top is closed. Does that mean Bryony has left?
“Now what?” I whisper at him.
He tries the handle and it opens. Lifting his shoulders in a ‘may as well go in then’ shrug, he eases the door open. The living area of the flat is empty and he beckons me inside. Some of the photos Bryony was going through earlier are still lying on the table. Gingerly, I walk over and look at them closely, careful not to touch anything. Jack slips a hand to my waist as he moves to stand right behind me, inspecting the photos, too.
“Looking for something?” a female voice demands.
We spin round. Bryony has silently appeared from the flat’s bedroom.
I jump a foot in the air but beside me Jack stays stock still and focussed, the only sign he’s concerned being the tightening of the grip of his hand on my waist.
“My, my, my, you two are persistent, aren’t you?” she continues, walking towards us and scooping up some of the photos out of our reach. “You do keep sticking your noises in where they’re not wanted. This is private property. You have no right to be here.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about your sister?” I blurt out.
“That’s personal,” she scowls, stiffening. “How did you find out?”
“I saw the photos and thought they looked different and…” I stop, realising I’m digging the proverbial hole for myself here. If she asks me how they were different and I say there was no chemistry between her and Armand but there was with him and her sister, then she’s not going to take very kindly to it, is she? She already hates me. Jack’s hand is now tightly gripping mine and I’m not sure if it’s as a warning to shut up or as encouragement to continue but either way it’s reassuring and comforting, having him beside me. I couldn’t have tackled any of this investigation without him.
“You spotted the scar Bethany had,” she says. “You figured out it wasn’t me in the photos, didn’t you?”
“We know Armand was dating your sister,” Jack says, still squeezing my hand tightly. “And after she died, you married him. That’s a bit… odd, don’t you think?”
If he’s trying to goad her into snapping and saying things, admitting to stuff, then I figure he’s definitely going the right way about it. Anger flares in her eyes. “We comforted each other, grieved together, grew to love each other. How dare you imply it was odd?”
“I’d say marrying the guy you blame for your sister’s death is odd, wouldn’t you?” Jack continues.
I hope and pray the wire we rigged up is rec
ording all of this. She looks close to losing it and, if she does, we want her confession on tape.
“Of course I didn’t blame him!” she shouts, clutching the photos tightly to her chest, anguish in her eyes. “Armand blamed himself enough without me adding to his burden.”
“Why did he blame himself?” I force my dry mouth to form the words.
“Because he knew the woman who was going to drive had drunk too much and he should have stopped her, taken the keys off of her. The guys were going to get some food and the girls said they were going off to some beach bar. They were all going to meet up there later. Armand never forgave himself.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks now and she’s gripping the photos so tightly they’re getting all scrunched up.
“Why was Armand killed on the exact same date as your sister died in that crash? Just four years afterwards. That cannot be a coincidence,” Jack pushes on for a confession. “You married Armand to keep him close so you knew where your enemy was. Then you plotted his death to both avenge and commemorate your sister’s death. Didn’t you?”
“NO!” she screams at us. “I could never do that! Maybe I shouldn’t have married him. I wasn’t sure if I did love him or if it was more about having somebody who understood how traumatised I was. We helped each other.”
“So why were you separated? Getting a divorce?” Jack demands, and I can see he’s desperate to push her over the edge. “Is that why you killed him? Because he wanted to leave you and you couldn’t face having him walk away from you to start a new life with somebody else? A new life funded by your money and your business acumen.”
“NO! NO! NO!” Bryony gulps back sobs and releases her tight grip on the photos only to have them fall to the floor at her feet.
“Tell us the truth!” Jack yells. “If you don’t, then an innocent women could go to prison for his murder! Is that what you want? Can you cope with that on your conscience as well as killing your husband?”
“I didn’t…” she gulps and wipes at her eyes. “I didn’t kill him.”
Murder On The Menu: A Romantic Comedy Culinary Cozy Mystery (A Celebrity Mystery) Page 19