by Nicola Upson
‘I don’t care if they’re long-lost twins, Mr Wyllie. I won’t have an outsider interfering in an investigation on my patch.’
Particularly when it was such a high-profile case and all but solved, Penrose thought cynically; most policemen would consider it a very welcome boost to a flagging career. He considered telling Roberts that he was perfectly capable of earning his own reputation without stealing anyone else’s glory, but Wyllie spared him the indignity of fighting for something he did not even want. ‘Clough has already cleared it with the Chief Constable, Inspector. Just out of courtesy, you understand. I gather it’s perfectly in line with procedure.’
There was a long silence‚ and Penrose could imagine several of the words with which Roberts would have liked to fill it. In truth, he would have preferred to wash his hands of the case entirely and leave Roberts to deal with what was left of Alfred Hitchcock’s ill-fated weekend, but he felt an obligation of friendship to Clough and – although he could not quite explain why – a duty to Branwen Erley, too. She seemed to have paid very dearly for other people’s choices‚ and, alongside the death of two celebrities, hers was the tragedy most likely to be forgotten. ‘I’ll show you to Government House,’ Wyllie said, satisfied that his case had been made beyond further argument. ‘It’s just next door.’
Turnbull’s suite on the top floor of the eighteenth-century-style building consisted of a sitting room, bedroom and small en-suite bathroom. The apartment was uniformly sparse: Turnbull had not bothered to make himself at home, and his suitcase sat untouched on the luggage rack at the bottom of the bed. There were no clothes in the wardrobe, no toothbrush or aftershave in the bathroom, and the bedside table held no books or personal items, just an empty water jug and glass. The only evidence that the actor had spent any time there at all was the state of the sheets and the raincoat in which Penrose had seen him the night before, stained with blood and dirt. ‘Looks like he was ready for a sharp exit,’ Roberts said. His eye fell on the mackintosh and the empty loops around its waist. ‘Does that coat match the belt that was with the girl’s body?’
‘Yes, it’s exactly the same.’ Penrose walked over to the fireplace in the sitting room, redundant at this time of year except for a vase of flowers in the hearth. A piece of notepaper had been screwed up and tossed into the grate. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully picked it up. It was part of a letter, brief and apparently written in haste; the address and first few words were missing, but he read what was left with interest. ‘For years I’ve asked you to tell me what happened to my mother but you’ve refused even to see me. Well, losing a child doesn’t give you the right to keep everyone else apart‚ and now I’ve found someone else who can and will give me the information that you won’t. I’m meeting Bella Hutton tonight‚ and she’s going to tell me where my mother is. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Everyone deserves to know where they’ve come from.’ The signature was Branwen Erley’s.
He handed the note to Roberts. ‘I’d call that a fairly conclusive challenge, wouldn’t you?’ the inspector said, slipping the piece of paper into a bag.
‘Odd that there’s only part of it, though.’ Penrose looked round the room for the rest of the letter but there was nothing; a cursory search through Turnbull’s case told him only what the actor had been planning to wear that weekend.
‘At least it’s the important part.’
‘But there’s no form of address on it,’ Penrose said. ‘We can’t even be sure that it was for him.’
‘Of course it was for him. It was screwed up in his fireplace‚ and it fits with everything you’ve told me about Turnbull’s past.’
‘Not quite everything. David Franks said that Branwen didn’t know who he was when she was talking to him. This implies she’s known for years.’
‘We’ve only got his word for that.’
‘Why would Franks lie?’
Roberts looked at him with the strained patience that a parent gives to a difficult child. ‘I meant Turnbull’s word. He could tell David Franks anything he liked.’
‘And how did Bella Hutton know what had happened to Branwen’s mother? She wasn’t still with Turnbull when he turned up in the States.’
‘Maybe Turnbull told her. Or maybe she didn’t know at all but was just saying she did to get the girl off her back. I can’t imagine that someone as famous as Bella Hutton took too kindly to being asked about a past she’d left behind and a brother she didn’t even like.’ That was true, Penrose thought: Bella could have told Branwen anything for a quiet life, and such a promise explained the exchange that Josephine had witnessed on the terrace. ‘Anyway,’ Roberts continued, ‘who else would a letter like that be for?’
Because of the reference to the child, the only other possibility was Gwyneth Draycott, but surely she was unlikely to have known where her husband was planning to take his lover? Penrose cast his mind back to what Franks had said and remembered that, again according to Turnbull’s testimony, both he and Branwen had been on the Harlech road yesterday afternoon. Had one or both of them been to see Gwyneth? And if so, how did that explain where the letter had ended up? The scenario raised more questions than it answered‚ and he dismissed it from his thoughts for the present; there was no point in opening up a conversation with Roberts only to be told that no matter what information Gwyneth might have withheld from Branwen, she had most certainly not raped her.
Instead, he concentrated on something more tangible. Wyllie had not come into the room with them but stood waiting at the door. ‘Have you got a sample of Branwen Erley’s handwriting?’ Penrose asked, ignoring Roberts’s sigh.
‘Almost certainly. We should still have her original letter of application on file. We keep everything relating to the permanent staff.’
‘Good.’ Penrose went over to the open window and looked down. The Bell Tower and Watch House gardens had both been sealed off now‚ and a police photographer was finishing his merciless work with Leyton Turnbull’s body. The figure, still dressed in evening clothes and splayed grotesquely on the ground, looked incongruous in the morning sunlight. Penrose wished he had a more reliable witness than Hitchcock to the actor’s final moments, but there was no way of knowing now what his state of mind had been when he climbed those steps. ‘So what happened to Branwen’s mother that Turnbull didn’t want people to know about?’ he asked, turning back to the room.
Roberts hesitated‚ and Penrose was almost ashamed of how much satisfaction the moment of doubt gave him. Recovering quickly, the inspector said‚ ‘Impossible to tell after all this time. They left twenty years ago or more, and she probably changed her name just like he did.’
Penrose waited in vain for him to continue. ‘Aren’t you even curious?’
‘I could be dying to know, but I still wouldn’t have the time or the manpower to track down Leyton Turnbull’s every move before he got to America when he’s lying there dead in front of me. It’s not as though there’s a case to be made to bring him to justice, is it? And Rhiannon Erley certainly never wanted to be found or she’d have kept in touch with her daughter herself, so does it matter what happened to her?’
‘It does if you’re going to make it the motive for two very different murders and a suicide.’ It wasn’t the first time that Penrose had heard a lack of resources used as an excuse not to follow up every line of enquiry; he had used it himself in the past for other crimes when he was sure of the man in custody. But never for murder. Never when there was so much at stake.
‘It’s not the only motive,’ Roberts argued defensively. ‘Bella Hutton didn’t tell him about his child.’
‘Is that really a reason to stab someone forty or fifty times?’ Penrose asked. ‘You haven’t seen her body yet, but her face is mutilated beyond all recognition.’
‘And he was seen with Branwen Erley.’
‘His explanation for that was feasible, particularly if there turns out to be an abandoned bicycle somewhere along the Harlech road.’
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‘We’ll check, sir,’ Roberts said sarcastically, acknowledging Penrose’s rank for the first time and not out of respect. ‘But whatever we find, there’s no getting round the fact that Bella Hutton was slandering him‚ and he had a track record for rape.’
‘You’ll check on that too, I presume?’
‘If it will make you happy.’
‘It’s not about making me happy, Inspector, it’s about serving justice – and that’s justice for everyone, the victims and the accused.’ He sounded sanctimonious, even to himself; the perfection he was looking for was, he realised, unrealistic‚ and he stopped himself going any further. There was no logical reason to dispute Roberts’ conclusions‚ and he could not explain why he was fighting them, other than a personal dislike of the inspector’s arrogance and a few misgivings which were no less nagging for their improbability. He allowed himself to indulge one more of these before giving up. ‘Why would he go to all that trouble only to kill himself?’ he asked.
Roberts shrugged, his interest in human nature as probing as ever. ‘Remorse perhaps, or resignation. He must have known he’d be caught. Talking of which, have you checked his car yet? You said he was seen in the garages last night.’
‘I’ve hardly had time to . . .’
‘Right then, we’ll do it now.’ He felt inside the pockets of the raincoat and took out a set of keys. ‘They must be what we need.’
‘I’ll take you over,’ Wyllie said.
The three men walked across the village square in silence‚ and Roberts pulled back the garage door. Penrose saw the blood on the bodywork of the Alvis immediately. The car had been driven straight in and its boot was only a couple of feet away from him; bending down to look more closely, he noticed that it was smeared all around the lock, where someone stowing things away had been careless. Roberts took the keys and opened the lid. Inside, there was a set of bloodstained overalls – the sort mechanics wore – and some gloves‚ a torch‚ and a knife with a blade about six inches long, also covered in blood.
‘I’ll get forensics over here straight away,’ Roberts said, ‘but I don’t think we need their help to tell us what we’re looking at.’
Penrose had only seen what he had expected to see, but that in itself made him suspicious. ‘I want to go with you when you question Gwyneth Draycott,’ he said.
‘I won’t be questioning Gwyneth Draycott.’ Roberts looked at him in astonishment. ‘I think she’s been through enough, don’t you?’
‘I think she might be interested to know that her husband’s dead.’
‘Of course, but we can take care of that. I could hardly ask a detective chief inspector of Scotland Yard to waste his precious time on condolence calls.’
Penrose had lost the appetite to fight a battle that he could not win. ‘If you’re remotely interested in tying up some loose ends, there’s some news on what happened to her son,’ he said, wanting at least to be sure that the information was passed on. He outlined what Franks had told him and added: ‘You’ll want to question him yourself, obviously, but it might give her some shred of comfort to know that the case is nearer to being closed.’ He could see from the expression on Roberts’ face that it had never truly been open.
15
Even here, on the Amis Reunis in the afternoon sun, the chill gloom of the woods was proving hard to shake off. Bridget leant back against the side of the old boat, enjoying the warmth of its wood through the thin cotton of her shirt. It was a relief to close her eyes: the reflection of the light from the brilliant white paper in her lap made it hard to draw for more than a few minutes at a time, and the subject matter she had chosen was hardly conducive to peace. She often turned to her work to exorcise ghosts and had hoped that, by setting down a physical expression of the morning’s horror, she might be able to lift the emotional pall that clouded her mind. So far, the effort had been in vain.
‘Policeman’s widow already?’
She smiled without opening her eyes. ‘Just because you spent the night alone, Jack, don’t take it out on me.’ He sat down next to her and she kissed his cheek. ‘It shows what a lucky escape I’ve had, though, doesn’t it? Second fiddle to a corpse would never have suited me, no matter how famous.’
He shook two cigarettes from a packet and looked at her curiously. ‘Past tense? Does that mean you’ve told him?’
‘No. I haven’t made my mind up yet, and there wouldn’t have been time if I had. Things have got a little out of hand round here, haven’t they?’ The half-finished image lay between them, a composite of memory and fear, and Jack studied it for a long time. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Bridget said, ‘but sometimes, if you can draw a scream, it loses some of its power.’
‘Although it will need a certain type of collector.’ She smiled‚ and he pulled her towards him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘It can’t have been easy to walk up there and find Bella like that.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Bridget watched the ash burn down on her cigarette, knowing that she did not need to say anything else: Jack was one of the few people who understood something of what she had felt that morning, and it was a relief not to have to explain. ‘I’m fine, though. What about you? You seemed a long way away earlier.’
‘A long time away, perhaps, but I haven’t moved far from here. I was thinking about this place and how it used to be. You heard what happened this morning when Archie got us all together?’ Bridget nodded. ‘I can’t believe that was David’s father. Everybody was talking about it when I came back here after the war. I think some of the men on the farm had even helped search for the missing boy. I remember going to look for the burnt-out shell of the cottage and finding the dog cemetery. Clough’s probably still got the photographs somewhere. I gave them to him when he bought the old house.’
‘We used to look for Gypsy graves in those woods when we were kids. Do you remember?’
‘Of course I do, but they were far too clever to leave clues for strangers. And it seems a lifetime ago now.’
She resisted the temptation to point out that, if he followed his plans through, there might not be any more years to add. ‘You always did love this part of the world.’
‘I’ve always been happy here. There aren’t many places you can say that about. It has good memories.’
Bridget let her mind run through a series of images from her youth. ‘I can’t believe you had to spell it out to me,’ she said eventually, shaking her head in embarrassment. ‘I felt so stupid. All those years and I never noticed you were in love.’ She knew she was about to cross a line, but she did it anyway. ‘You can’t keep punishing yourself because you lived and he died, you know.’
‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’ Bridget nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She had expected him to be angry‚ but he refused to rise to the bait. ‘Who’s to say it would have lasted anyway? These things so rarely do. I suppose that’s what makes them precious. If he were still here, we’d probably be as unrecognisable to each other as this shoreline. And that would be worse, I think – much worse.’ He grinned at her. ‘You and your policeman don’t seem to have that problem. Think about that before you destroy it.’
Bridget threw the butt of her cigarette into the water. ‘Well, I’ve punched as low as I know how,’ she said, ignoring his last remark, ‘and I still haven’t managed to change your mind, have I?’
‘No, but don’t take it personally. A man’s got to do and all that.’
He spoke the words with a convincing American accent, every bit the brave pioneer, but Bridget didn’t laugh. ‘Since when have you worried about that?’ she asked. ‘Why start now?’
‘Don’t, Bridget. Let’s not go through all that again. It’s the right thing to do – for me, anyway. That’s all there is to it.’
He took her hand‚ and Bridget wondered why she suddenly felt so lonely. ‘When do you leave?’
‘As soon as possible, but I won’t go without letting you know. We can have dinner.’
&n
bsp; ‘You mean I get to share your last supper.’
‘I’ll be fine, Bridget. I’m always fine.’
She hugged him, trying to ignore a sense of foreboding which refused to go away. Over his shoulder, she saw Hitchcock coming towards them across the lawn. ‘It looks as though I’m not the only one who’s trying to persuade you to do other things with your life,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’ll have more luck.’
‘I doubt it.’
Hitchcock raised his hand and climbed aboard the stationary vessel with surprising agility. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss Foley, but I need to borrow Jack for a moment. Do you mind?’ Bridget shook her head, surprised that the director knew her name. ‘Mrs H. and I enjoyed your last exhibition very much,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘We make a point of never buying a painting unless we both like it – the only time I’ve ever considered divorce was over a Paul Klee which she refused to have in the house – but in your case we were spoilt for choice.’ Her obvious astonishment seemed to amuse Hitchcock. ‘I’m not just a cheap sensationalist, you know,’ he said, winking at her as he led Jack away.
Still smiling, she saw Archie walking down across the sea lawn and went to meet him. ‘You look furious,’ she said as he bent to kiss her. ‘Has something else happened?’
‘No, I’ve just had a run-in with the local police. It seems that everyone is in Alfred Hitchcock’s fan club except me. He’s caused havoc this weekend‚ and he’s just going to wash his hands of it and walk away.’
‘Well, he does have a certain charm.’
Archie looked at her in amazement. ‘Not you as well?’