by R. W. Heber
“Avoiding everybody, I expect.” He knew she’d had breakfast taken to her on a tray. “They gave her another room. The Gilroys would like to have locked her in a padded cell, and called in the men in white coats.” He had overheard Dee Dee on the subject.
“I’ll go and look for her,” Jemma said. “What are you up to?”
“Might go for a stroll.”
It was another glorious day. How sad that this drama was being played out against a background of perfect English weather, when everyone should have been enjoying themselves. Not, of course, that they would be doing so on a Monday. Most people would be working. For the first time since he had arrived here Jim remembered that when he did get home himself, he would be going to a life without a job, and felt a sudden pang in his gut. It was all very well being an amateur detective, pointing out clues to the professionals, but the inspector had a job and every prospect of promotion. He himself had neither. Then he pulled himself together and set off towards the Lion Park. He had a feeling that something might be going on there.
He was right. Lord Gilroy was outside the headquarters building, in earnest discussion with Sergeant Timmins and one of the wardens. When he approached them Timmins immediately stopped talking and Gilroy called out, in a strained way, “Want to have a drive round the park? One of the boys will take you.”
Jim hesitated. There was nothing much else to do. On the other hand, he wanted to talk to Gilroy about an aspect of the reenactment that the police seemed to have neglected. Somewhere there must have a been a plan for the fictional murder and instructions to the characters on what they were to do. He had been given his own, which had been vague. Others could have been more specific.
“Would you be able to give me a lift back?” he asked. It had taken him quite a time to walk there.
Gilroy looked at Timmins, who muttered something and frowned. “In about half an hour,” he replied. “Gary will give you a quick safari.”
The warden who was with them went to fetch Gary, while Timmins remained studiously silent, and very soon Jim was in the front of a Land Rover and headed for the gate in the electric fence.
The media stories about the death of Ted Matthews had generated far more visitors than usual. Yesterday having been a fine summer Sunday, the ghoulish had arrived in unprecedented numbers. Even today there was a line of cars waiting to get in, which Gary jumped.
“It’s an ill wind what blows nobody no good,” he commented as they passed through the gate. “Poor old Ted. He’d have been glad to see the takings go up, but not at the price he paid.”
They progressed very slowly behind other cars along the winding tarmac, until they stopped near a pride of lions. The day was warming up and the lions were already somnolent. Their only activity consisted of a lioness’s cuffing a cub which was being, in her view, hyperactive.
“Where did the … er … tragedy take place?” Jim asked. It was almost impossible not to refer to Ted.
“Further on. We was keeping an eye on this lot, while Ted followed Caesar. He darted him just over there.”
“Does anyone know what went wrong?”
Gary remained convinced that Ted was not the sort to make mistakes. He said so, adding, “We found the dart yesterday. Needed a metal detector and all.”
“You learn much from that?”
“It fell out quite a way from where Caesar finished up.” There was doubt in Gary’s voice. “Should have worked, though, I’d have thought. Wasn’t much liquid left inside.”
The cars ahead of them moved on and he shifted into gear again and continued their trundling pace, just two more spectators in a sanitized version of Africa in the English countryside. Except, Jim reminded himself, that it was in no way sanitized. Bringing a lion to Oxfordshire did not transform its natural character. Not far from here the grass had been wet with blood.
“Is there to be an inquest?” Jim asked.
“This arternoon.” Gary gave the word his own accent. “I’ve to be there.”
Ninety to one, the verdict would be “accidental death,” Jim knew. However you viewed Ted’s killing, it had been an accident. Appalling. Tragic. Deserving all the adjectives the media used. But still an accident.
They continued their brief safari, though with Jim’s mind focused elsewhere. Why should Priscilla burn her night-dress? Had she returned to Welch’s room in the morning? Maybe Jemma would find out. It would have been nice to think that he was in telepathic communication with his daughter and could will her to ask certain questions. In reality, even if he had, he would have got back a very curt reply telling him to stop interfering. Father/daughter relationships were like that. Close, but easily frazzled.
Telepathy or no telepathy, up at the house Jemma was working her way towards the same obvious question. However, she began by trying to persuade Priscilla to put on some clothes and rejoin everyone else. They were sitting in a tiny bedroom, the discarded breakfast tray on the floor, and Priscilla herself still in her dressing-gown. In spite of its being summer she sat huddled on the bed as if it were mid-winter.
“I can’t face them,” she kept repeating. “I wish they’d let me go home. Oh, my head.” She clearly had a monster hangover.
“But you didn’t mean to set the house on fire, did you? You ran to get help.”
“Of course I didn’t,” Priscilla tried to convince herself. “That night-dress brought me nothing but bad luck.” She was close to tears and Jemma gave her a quick hug. “Your father’s the only one who understands.”
“He is a bit special.” Jemma was more proud of her father than she would have let him know. “He’ll tell them. Then it’ll be all right. Come down for lunch.”
“I might.” She shook her head vexedly. “I should never have gone to George’s room in the first place. I should have known better.”
“Why did you?” The use of Welch’s first name put Jemma on the alert.
“It was in my script. I was Mrs. Sketchley’s companion and in league with her brother to kill her. Don’t you remember?”
Subsequent events had driven the Gilroy’s original story-line out of Jemma’s head. The Friday-evening briefing seemed light-years ago.
As if anxious to justify herself, Priscilla slid off the bed and opened the suitcase into which her clothes had been crammed after the fire. It was a cheap imitation-leather suitcase and its top sagged as she opened it. She rummaged unsuccessfully for a minute and then turned to her make-up case. This was tall enough to take an assortment of bottles and jars, and when Priscilla lifted out the top tray Jemma saw that lotions were not its only occupants. There was the recognizable top of a flat-sided half-litre liquor bottle. However, Priscilla hastily put back the tray, having found what she wanted. It was a computer-printed slip of paper, like the clues they had all been handed on Friday evening. She gave it to Jemma.
“At 9:30 P.M. you take her poisoned cocoa up to Mrs. Sketchley. But you do not go direct. You take it to her brother’s room next door. He will deliver it.”
Jemma read this twice, struggling with her memory. Hadn’t Priscilla quarrelled with Welch over taking it up? And, of course, Priscilla herself had doped it for real.
“Why did you ask Welch to take it up?” she asked. “When that wasn’t in the script.”
“That man was such a pain, darling.” Priscilla sounded relieved at talking about him. “So I put a few sleeping tablets in as well. I was supposed to go to his room again in the morning.”
“For what?” Jemma felt a thrill of discovery. Maybe Priscilla was her mystery woman after all.
“I was to go through his room and the bathroom to Mrs. Sketchley’s room, make sure she was dead, and bring the cocoa cup down. So no one was seen going to her room from the passage. Darling, don’t tell Lady Gilroy, but it was the most crummy plot. A five-year-old would have seen through it.”
“Did you do that on Saturday morning, then?
“I thought of it, because the old fart still owed me twenty pounds.” Priscilla w
as becoming quite chirpy now. “But I’d never have got it off him. He was far too mean.”
Suddenly the light dawned, and Jemma asked the question that no one had asked so far.
“Did you know Welch before?”
Priscilla stared at her. “How did you guess? You promise not to tell?” Luckily for Jemma, she did not wait to be given the promise. “Five years ago. I was in a comedy at the Birmingham Playhouse. One evening this man came round to the stage door with a huge bunch of roses and asked if he could take me out to dinner.”
“And that was Welch?”
“That was George. I hadn’t got a boy-friend at the time and I didn’t fancy going out for fish and chips with the others, so I accepted. He took me to the best place in Birmingham. Then he propositioned me.”
“I can imagine.”
“I bet you can’t, darling!” Priscilla was enjoying telling her story and had quite cheered up. “Of course he asked me back to his hotel. Which I refused. Then he offered me a thousand pounds to burn the theatre down.”
“You’re joking!”
“I never did understand all the complications. But he wanted to redevelop the site and he knew the theatre owner was underinsured. Darling, I couldn’t believe it. A thousand may not sound like much, but it was to me.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, if it had burned down we’d all have been out of work, wouldn’t we? It was a repertory company and we had contracts for the season. So I refused. And then he took me to dinner again and offered me two thousand. I thought, well, if I started a tiny fire in my dressing-room, the kind that would set the alarms off at once, perhaps I could get the cash and do no harm to anyone.”
It was not difficult to guess the outcome. “The fire got put out and he refused to pay?”
“In the end I rang him at home and his wife answered. Well, darling, you know what she’s like. She wouldn’t let me speak to him. What I never expected was to meet them here.”
“What an incredible coincidence.”
Priscilla laughed nervously. “Someone used to say that you’re allowed one coincidence in every plot. We were as surprised as could be to see each other. And I didn’t let him forget about the two thousand either. Not that I stood a chance. All he was after was what he didn’t get in Birmingham. Mean bastard. And his wife guessed.”
“He didn’t ask you to burn this place down?” Jemma tried to make a joke of it and failed.
“Oh God.” Priscilla veered back into depression. “How can I ever face them again?”
“Look.” Jemma mixed decisiveness with coaxing. “You get dressed and I’ll go and talk to Lady Gilroy. Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out.”
She went downstairs in search of her hostess, having put Mrs. Worthington back on her list of suspects. The woman might be crazy, but she often seemed to have been crazy with a purpose.
She located Dee Dee in a small room on the ground floor of the servants’ wing, which she had converted into a temporary study.
“This is one good thing about having a huge house,” Dee Dee said, “there’s always a spare corner somewhere. So you’ve been talking to that mad actress? Why did we ever hire her?”
This was not a question Jemma could answer, but she did assure Lady Gilroy that she was sure it wouldn’t happen again.
“How do you know? Why not?”
“I just don’t think it will. She’s terribly ashamed of herself. But she can’t stay in her room all day.”
“You mean I have to welcome her back into society?” Dee Dee groaned.
“If you want her to behave.”
Dee Dee looked intently at Jemma. How come this twenty-something-year-old was telling her to do things? “You know about criminal behaviour?” she asked.
“A little,” Jemma said, then realized that even this claim was extravagant. “I write about crimes all the time. I have a feeling that if you encourage her to come down, she won’t do anything again.”
“She had better not, I tell you. Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Dee Dee conceded.
“She talked a lot about her role in the ‘murder’ plot. Is there a copy of the whole thing? I mean a master plan for the weekend?”
“Of course there is. Or there was. I had it all worked out.”
“Have you got a copy?”
“Somewhere. It’s not been the most important thing on my mind.” Dee Dee shifted through a pile of the papers that the police had allowed her to bring through. She found a red folder and extracted a print-out. “Here you are. No secrets worth having any more. But I’d still like to have it back.”
Jemma thanked her and carried off this trophy to her own room. There she sat down and read the whole document. As Priscilla had commented, it was a crummy plot. But one thing was crystal-clear. All the actions and clues assigned to the characters related to the Friday evening. With the exception of the maid’s screaming session, and Priscilla’s going to Welch’s room, no one had movements allocated to them after the discovery of the murder.
While Jemma pondered this, her father was on the way back to the house with a dejected Lord Gilroy.
“Bad business with Ted,” Gilroy muttered. “Now they think it’s negligence. But it was his own, poor fellow.”
“Must be ‘accidental death,’” Jim prompted.
“Absolutely.” Gilroy lapsed into silence, but after a minute he glanced quickly at Jim and said, “They think I murdered Welch.”
“Why?” This was no surprise, but Jim did his best to mask it.
“It’s obvious. That sergeant looks at me as if I was something the cat brought in and Morton never stops asking questions about the contract.”
There, Jim thought, Morton had it dead right. The contract had to be at the heart of the case. “Did you have a quarrel with Welch?” he asked.
“Who could fail to? The man’s an out-and-out—well, you know what I mean. Remember when you were in the hall after dinner on Friday evening?”
“We heard a bit of an argument. We also overheard one before dinner. Was that the row that the clue referred to?”
“Before dinner?” It took Gilroy a moment to recall the original “murder” plot and his attention lapsed, so that he nearly ran the Land Rover off the road. He swerved back onto the tarmac, swore, then regained his concentration. “Good God, no. The fictional row was with my wife during dinner. Wasn’t so damn fictional, either.”
“Welch certainly thought he was being insulted then.” Jim remembered the developer’s angry reactions.
“My wife couldn’t resist putting the knife in a little. I paid for it later. Phew.” Gilroy shook his head. “Welch wanted to develop land by the lake. There was no way we were going to sell him that. He made one hell of a fuss. So did his bitch of a wife.”
“Do you have to sell?”
“Lloyds.” The single word expressed a volume of misery. Gilroy had enough thick reports on Lloyd’s requirements to fill a bookshelf.
“Is it really so bad?”
“If you believe that fellow McMountdown, it is.” Gilroy’s expression became puzzled, as his brain shifted with difficulty into overdrive. “Come to think of it, there hasn’t been a letter from Lloyds today.”
“So that was all a false alarm?”
“Could be,” Gilroy said gloomily. “Doesn’t alter the fact that I’m still up to my neck in it. I do need to sell land, but I’m damned if I’ll ruin the estate. That’s what I told them. Welch blew up. ‘It’s sods like you what’s ruining the country. Here’s a decent bloke like me trying to give people the homes they need and you’re pouncing on about the view.’ Bloody man.”
They had reached the house and Gilroy stopped alongside one of the police cars in the drive, giving it a baleful look, as if it were a trespasser he would like to see clamped. But he did not get out immediately. This conversation had set him thinking.
“You know,” he said, “with hindsight I think Welch was desperate to buy and that’s why he lost his temper when
I wouldn’t sign for what he wanted after dinner.”
“How did it end?” Jim asked.
“Oh, his wife walked out and then the lawyer woman calmed him down a little. She and I tried to sort out a compromise.”
“Hardly a reason for murdering him,” Jim suggested.
“Exactly what I keep telling the police. Between you and me, I think his wife told them I’d threatened him. Well, I did, as a matter of fact. Told him I wasn’t going to be insulted in my own house and he could leave in the morning.”
“But he refused?”
“Didn’t have the chance, did he? He would have refused. There’d have been a long palaver about having paid his money for the weekend. I wish to God that inspector would get on with it and arrest someone.” Gilroy heaved himself out of the Land Rover.
“Thanks for the lift,” Jim said. They walked to the house together, then Gilroy excused himself and Jim went through to the library, hoping to find his daughter and asking himself how much Gilroy had been concealing in his account of the quarrel. What was needed next was to talk to Dulcie. It was Dulcie whom they had overheard say, in a most challenging voice, “Go ahead then!” Since Gilroy had not been in the room at that point, she must have been talking to Welch himself. What had she been challenging him to do? And would she, being as circumspect as lawyers were, be willing to reveal it?
The group were gathered for “elevenses” in the library and still absorbed by the subject of Priscilla’s fire-raising escapade. This was hardly surprising, given their enforced idleness and a collapse of their small-talk conversation. By now no one had anything to say to anyone else. They were all obsessed with how to get away from Wittenham. Consequently a misdeed that could be unequivocally pinned on a particular person was welcomed.
“She ought to be locked up,” Jim heard Adrienne say, before he was collared by Jemma and told that Lady Gilroy was waiting to speak to him. He grabbed a cup of coffee and they retreated to a relatively private corner of the room.
“Mr. Savage,” Dee Dee began, “you were the last person to see Mrs. Worthington before she set her room on fire. Was she drunk?”