by Nicola Upson
‘So that’s it. You’re jealous?’
‘Jealous?’ She laughed in his face. ‘That’s not the sort of attention I’m looking for, Danny.’
‘I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.’ He calmed down and tried to reason with her. ‘You know why I was looking at her.’
‘I know what you told me, but I didn’t realise you were a liar until just now. Why did you tell Penrose that Turnbull had made a bet with you about having sex with her? He didn’t say anything of the sort, at least not in my hearing. Why would you say he did?’
‘Since when did you become his biggest fan?’
‘I don’t give a damn about Leyton Turnbull. I’m just trying to find out what sort of man I spent the night with.’
‘I thought you’d know that by now.’
He winked at her, trying to make her smile, and she marvelled at how quickly the charm that had attracted her to him in the first place had begun to have the opposite effect. ‘Aren’t you even the slightest bit touched by her death, Danny? By the way she was killed? I was watching the faces in that room while Penrose was telling us what had happened, and everyone else looked shocked or sad or frightened. But not you. You looked guilty, and you couldn’t even catch my eye. What are you hiding?’ she asked, suddenly afraid of the answer; she had never, in her heart, believed that Danny was responsible for the attack, but she had needed to hear him proclaim his own innocence; now, she was not so sure that he could do so truthfully. ‘Did you hurt that girl?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. I’m sorry, but I lied to you. She was telling the truth when she said I went too far.’ Astrid was so shaken that it took her a moment to relate his confession to the incident in his childhood, not the crime of the night before. ‘But I was fifteen years old, Astrid, and it was my first time with a girl. She encouraged me. I thought she was as keen as I was.’
‘So that makes it all right?’
‘She led me on, then changed her mind at the last minute.’
‘Just like I tried to?’ At last, the personal resentment that had spurred her anger with Danny was out in the open. She bitterly regretted what she had allowed to happen between them, but there was no going back‚ and, while she knew that it was cheap and shabby to use Branwen Erley’s death as an excuse to turn the shame she felt back onto him, it fitted her new opinion of herself perfectly.
The embarrassment hung in the air between them, and it was Danny who tried to brush it aside. ‘You were nervous,’ he said. ‘That’s understandable, but you didn’t mean . . .’ He tailed off when he saw the expression on her face and tried to take her hand instead‚ but she flinched at his touch. ‘Come on, Astrid, don’t be like this. Don’t spoil things. We had a wonderful night.’
‘Did we?’ She undid the top two buttons of her blouse and pulled the silk to one side to show him the livid, purple beginnings of a bruise on her breast. ‘That’s your trouble, Danny. You always think we’re enjoying it far more than we really are.’
It was the final blow to his pride‚ and he turned away in disgust. ‘Jack’s right,’ he said. ‘You do need to grow up. People have to do things they don’t like to get on. It’s how the world works.’
‘And how does going to bed with you help me to get on? You’re not a producer or a director. You’re a run-of-the-mill juvenile lead who may or may not still have a career in three years’ time – just like me.’ She put a hand to his cheek and looked at him sadly. ‘I wasn’t with you to get on, Danny. I was with you because I liked you. I thought you were different, more sensitive than other men. When you were telling me about your father, I really felt sorry for you.’
‘Did you?’ He laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘Well, maybe that’s not the sort of attention I’m looking for.’
There was nothing more to say. Astrid started to walk away‚ but he caught her arm. ‘Are you going to tell Penrose? I haven’t done anything wrong, Astrid. If I wanted to kill that girl, I’d hardly have admitted to you that I even knew her.’
‘That’s really all you care about, isn’t it? What I’m going to say, not how I might feel.’ She stared at him for a long time, as if trying to make up her mind. ‘Neither of us are very nice people, are we Danny? I thought we were, but that sort of sentimentality is just one of the things I lost last night.’ Without another word, she turned and went back to join the others.
12
Hitchcock hurried back through the village to the patch of lawn outside his own apartment, determined that – no matter what else Leyton Turnbull was guilty of – he was not going to give Penrose any more scope for criticism by outlining the prank that was supposed to have been played out that day. By the time he got there, the small grass-and-gravel garden was deserted, and he cursed the actor for choosing now to start behaving reliably. He had no choice but to follow Turnbull inside the Bell Tower‚ and he made swift work of the climb; the ninety-six steps to his top-storey flat in Cromwell Road might be his only concession to exercise, but they were at least effective. As he reached the second level and made for the next flight, a shadow passed across the window.
He stopped, knowing instinctively what had happened but unable or unwilling to believe it. Later, he found it hard to be sure if the sound of Turnbull’s body hitting the ground was real or had been conjured purely from his own dread, but it would haunt Hitchcock’s dreams for the rest of his life, unshared and unacknowledged. Shaken, he walked reluctantly over to the window. His eyes swept the courtyard below and settled on Turnbull’s shattered corpse, unconsciously framing the peculiar arrangement of his limbs against the gravel. A surge of panic welled up inside him but he forced himself to stay calm as he went back down the steps, praying that this might somehow be an illusion, a more elaborate version of the joke he had himself intended to play. But there was no mistake, and he found himself drawn towards the body. The panorama of Portmeirion faded as he moved nearer until, when he was just a few feet from the dead man’s face, there was no beauty or sunshine left, only horror. There was blood, so much blood, but he ventured closer still, so transfixed by Turnbull’s eyes that nothing else existed: their stare was relentless, accusing, and Hitchcock held them for as long as he could, but eventually they saw too much‚ and he had to look away.
13
Lettice steered the boat skilfully into shore and Ronnie clambered out. ‘Absolutely bloody marvellous!’ she said with enthusiasm. ‘Who’d have thought the ringside seat would actually be out here?’
‘It’s certainly a far better view of the Bell Tower than anything you get inland,’ her sister agreed, throwing a rope over the landing post and passing Lydia her sun hat.
‘We saw the whole thing: the dummy going out of the window, everyone running round like headless chickens.’ Josephine tried to interrupt‚ but Ronnie was in full flight and she had no choice but to let the momentum tire itself out. ‘Archie didn’t waste any time in getting up there, did he? I bet the look on his face was priceless when he realised that Hitchcock had had the last laugh. I’m not surprised he was fooled: it all looked terribly realistic. Who was the dummy supposed to be? We couldn’t quite make that out from a distance.’
Josephine took the oars from Lettice and helped her out of the boat. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be anyone.’
Lydia looked at her sharply. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘It was Leyton Turnbull. Not a dummy, and certainly not a joke. It’s been quite a morning while you’ve been sculling around out here, playing Swallows and Amazons.’ They listened, incredulous, as Josephine explained the whole story.
‘So you’re telling us that Leyton Turnbull murdered them both and then topped himself?’ Ronnie asked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.’
‘No, but that’s what it looks like. Nobody has said it officially yet, but it’s the conclusion that everyone has jumped to.’
‘Where’s Marta?’ Lydia asked. ‘Is she all right? It must have been a terrible shock for both of you to discover the girl’s b
ody like that.’
If she harboured any feelings of resentment because Marta and Josephine had shared an experience from which she was excluded, she hid them well. ‘She’s over there with Bridget.’ Josephine pointed to the terrace, where the two women were deep in conversation, and wondered if Archie was getting his testimonial. Lydia went to join them and she turned back to Lettice and Ronnie, reluctant to witness any sort of reunion.
‘What were you saying yesterday about a matinee idol never being a killer?’ Lettice shook her head in disbelief. ‘It just shows how wrong you can be, doesn’t it?’
‘Though in your line of work, we might have hoped for a little more insight,’ Ronnie said, then added thoughtfully‚ ‘It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to.’
Josephine laughed, in spite of the situation. ‘Trust you to put innocence down to laziness. You make it sound like Leyton Turnbull should be given marks out of ten for effort.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ Ronnie smiled. ‘Although it was a spectacular jump. I was just questioning why you would murder two women to protect your reputation and then kill yourself anyway? It’s not very logical, is it?’
Nobody answered. To the left of the hotel, Josephine could see two policemen carrying a covered stretcher down the sun-flecked path which led behind the building and out to the road. ‘We shouldn’t be talking like this,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s the reality of it.’ They watched as Bella Hutton’s body was loaded into a waiting mortuary van and driven slowly away from Portmeirion for the last time. ‘Thank God they’ve taken her before the press get a whiff of this. There’ll be no dignity left for anyone once that happens. She deserved better.’ Josephine remembered the stoicism with which the actress had talked of her own death and wondered how long it had taken that courage to desert her when tested by a reality more horrific than any she could possibly have foreseen. ‘Come on,’ she said, suddenly glad of the Motleys’ company. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’
14
‘I don’t understand why he didn’t talk to me. I might have been able to help.’ David Franks stared down at his uncle’s body in disbelief. He had arrived on the scene almost immediately, shortly followed by Spence, and Penrose had not been able to prevent them witnessing the full horror of Turnbull’s death. He gave Franks a couple of minutes to compose himself before leading him gently away. ‘Did you see what happened?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but it was all so quick. It’s hard to make sense of it. We all went out onto the terrace to see what was going on, and you ran off after Hitch. Turnbull was out of sight by then – he must have gone into the tower. The next time we saw him, he was at one of the windows halfway up, then he vanished again and appeared at the top. That’s when I realised what he was going to do.’ Spence handed him a cigarette‚ and he took it gratefully. ‘He climbed out onto the ledge‚ and I started to run, but it was too late.’
‘Did you actually see him fall?’
‘I did,’ Spence said as Franks shook his head. ‘He just stepped out into thin air.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ Franks said quietly.
Penrose looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It was supposed to be a joke,’ he explained reluctantly. ‘Hitch and I had it all planned. We were going to set it up to make it look like Turnbull had committed suicide.’ He caught the expression on Penrose’s face and tried to explain. ‘Hitch wanted to see how everyone would react if they thought their behaviour had been partly responsible for a man’s death. An experiment in guilt and fear, he called it. Then we found out that Bella had been killed‚ and everything changed. Hitch would have stopped it but you gathered us all together before he could get to Turnbull.’ He took a final pull on his cigarette and ground the butt angrily into the gravel. ‘It’s my fault. I took part in it‚ and I involved Turnbull. Hitch would have had anyone. He wasn’t bothered who his stooge was. And now he’s got his wish: if he wants to know what real guilt looks like, he should come and talk to me.’
‘Don’t forget it was a joke, David,’ Spence said. ‘You weren’t to know that something would happen to make Turnbull want to do it for real. That was his choice.’
‘I suppose this means he killed Bella?’ Franks asked.
Penrose was too angry to answer him. ‘Go back to the hotel and wait,’ he said, barely able to keep his temper under control.
‘What about Hitch?’
‘I need to talk to him before he goes anywhere.’ He watched them walk back across Battery Square, then beckoned to a young police constable. ‘Is your bloody inspector planning to join us at all today?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
He looked terrified‚ and Penrose regretted his sarcasm; the boy could not be more than twenty‚ and the lack of support was not his fault. ‘Stay here and make sure no one goes near the body,’ he said more kindly. ‘I’m going to have a word with Mr Hitchcock, but if anything else happens let me know immediately.’
Hitchcock was waiting on the Watch House balcony. He sat with his back to the Bell Tower, staring blankly out to sea. His face was ashen. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ Penrose demanded through gritted teeth. There was no answer, so he tried again. ‘Would you care to tell me exactly what you had asked Leyton Turnbull to do this morning?’
‘Who told you I’d asked him to do anything?’
‘Your sidekick.’ A scowl passed fleetingly across Hitchcock’s face and Penrose guessed that David Franks’s next conversation with his boss would not be a comfortable one. ‘Thanks to your fun and games, the hotel will look more like a mortuary by lunchtime.’
‘Be careful, Chief Inspector,’ Hitchcock said, regaining some of his composure. ‘I had nothing to do with any of these deaths‚ and I have very expensive lawyers.’
‘You won’t be needing them, sir, I can assure you.’ Penrose had been so caught up in his frustration with Hitchcock that he had not heard the car draw up outside the Bell Tower. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Alan Roberts‚ and I’ll be taking charge of this investigation.’
‘Better late than never,’ Penrose muttered sarcastically, furious with himself for having chosen that moment to overstep the mark. Roberts was in his late forties, tall and gaunt, with receding dark hair and a weak chin. Like Hitchcock’s, his wardrobe made few concessions to the weather, although it was considerably cheaper in cut and quality. His accent, Penrose noticed with surprise, was English rather than Welsh. Without waiting to be asked, he gave the inspector all the relevant details of the case, instinctively restructuring the information that had emerged in a more haphazard fashion throughout the morning, explaining the family connections clearly and succinctly.
‘Have you anything to add, sir?’ Roberts asked, turning to Hitchcock.
‘Only my deepest regrets,’ the director said gravely. It had not taken him long to spot that Roberts’s allegiance did not sit with his colleague‚ and he wasted no time in exploiting the fact. ‘I was always very fond of Bella, and Turnbull – well, he had his difficult moments but this could have been a new start for him. It was supposed to have been a happy weekend, a prelude to working together, but . . .’ He held his hands up to the heavens, as though God himself had conspired to wreck his good intentions. In spite of his resentment, Penrose could only marvel at the performance.
‘I’m sorry you’ve had your stay here spoilt,’ Roberts said. ‘If you’d like to go down to the hotel now, I’ll make sure you’re not bothered any further.’
‘You’ve no objection to my wife and I leaving today, I presume? We’d like to get back to London as soon as possible and pick up our daughter.’
‘Of course. You’re a busy man‚ and my wife would never forgive me if I did anything to delay the next film. When can we expect it?’
‘In December, I hope. You must tell me what you think of it when you’ve seen it.’
‘Just one thing before you go, sir.’ He got a notebook out of his pocket‚ and Penrose – who had been w
atching this display of mutual admiration in astonishment – was relieved to see that Roberts was at least going to ask for details of where Hitchcock could be contacted if there were any further questions. ‘I wonder if you’d sign that for the wife?’
‘Of course. What’s her name?’
‘Mildred.’ Roberts watched as Hitchcock drew a cartoon and signed it with a flourish. ‘I’m embarrassed to admit this to someone like you,’ he added, with the lack of self-consciousness that invariably accompanied such a statement, ‘but I make a few films myself in my spare time.’
‘You mustn’t be embarrassed.’ Hitchcock handed the notebook back with a smile. ‘I dabble in your world. Why shouldn’t you dabble in mine?’
Penrose watched as he walked away. The inspector had a brief word with one of his officers, then introduced himself to James Wyllie, who had come up from the hotel. ‘Forensics have nearly finished on the girl,’ Roberts said. ‘They’ll be up here as soon as they can. Has anyone examined his room yet?’
‘No sir,’ Wyllie said. ‘I went there about an hour ago to look for him – Chief Inspector Penrose wanted to speak to him – but he wasn’t there‚ and I didn’t stay very long.’
‘Fine. Show me where it is.’
Penrose turned to go with him‚ but Roberts held up his hand. ‘I’ll take over from here. If you’d like to go back to the hotel and wait with everyone, I’ll have some news for you in due course.’
As much as he resented being treated like a well-meaning amateur, there was nothing that Penrose could do about it: Roberts was perfectly within his rights to take charge of his own investigation‚ and, while it was not unusual for Scotland Yard to involve itself in crimes outside London, it had to be at the invitation of the local force. Wyllie, though, seemed to have other ideas. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve just spoken to the owner, Inspector, and Mr Williams-Ellis would consider it a great favour if you would allow Chief Inspector Penrose access to the enquiries you make,’ he said. Penrose suppressed a smile and wondered if the balance of courtesy and firmness in his voice was a professional acquisition or something he had been born with. ‘They’ve been friends for many years‚ and he would find it very reassuring to know that Penrose will be involved until he can get here himself.’