by Nicola Upson
‘He thought he’d killed you?’
Even as he said it, Penrose doubted his own interpretation of her words, but she nodded. ‘I can see what you’re thinking; I never thought he’d be that stupid, either. But he panicked, and nobody acts rationally in a situation like that. He was horrified at what he’d done‚ and he would have agreed to anything to get away with it. Gwyneth made him promise to leave. If he went immediately and swore never to come back, she said she’d hide my body and tell everyone we’d run off together. As you can imagine, it didn’t take much consideration. Rightly or wrongly, murder is a capital offence and adultery isn’t; he barely stopped to pack a bag.’
‘He died thinking he was a killer?’ As contemptible as he found Henry Draycott’s behaviour, Penrose could not reconcile what had happened to him with his own personal sense of justice. Whatever else he had failed at, Draycott had excelled in the role of scapegoat for the rest of his life, even in his own mind, and David Franks’s undertaking at Portmeirion had been made so much easier as a result. Franks had gambled on the human readiness to judge, and he had been right. Rhiannon must have sensed his disapproval because she made no effort to defend what she and Gwyneth had done. ‘Who else knew about this?’
‘David and his father. I had to leave quickly – it was only a matter of time before Gareth Erley came knocking at the door, demanding to know where Henry Draycott had taken his wife – and they helped me get away. Tobin was pleased to do it. There was no love lost between him and my husband. The feud was long-standing, and I expect you know how it ended.’
‘What about Bella Hutton? Did she know?’
‘No. She believed that Henry had run off with me at first. Then Gwyneth got a letter from her, saying she knew what had really happened and that Henry couldn’t be allowed to get away with murder. This was back in the thirties, just before Henry died. It wasn’t the truth at all, of course. David must have put it into her head.’
‘Because he knew that Bella would do something about it and he could use that to destroy them both?’ She shrugged. ‘Did you know what David was planning to do that weekend, Mrs Erley?’
‘No, absolutely not. I hadn’t seen him since I left here, and he was still just a boy then. All I knew was that Gwyneth had been in touch to say that it was safe for me to come back – if I wanted to.’
‘Safe because Henry and Bella would soon be past caring whether you were dead or alive.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she repeated calmly. ‘I just knew that Gwyneth was getting worse and she needed someone to care for her. I wanted to make up for all the years – all those difficult years with Taran – when I couldn’t be there for her.’
‘A kind of penance for not being around to stop her making that terrible decision?’
‘If you like, yes.’
‘So you were back here by the time the murders took place?’
‘I came back the following morning.’
What excellent timing, Penrose thought. ‘And did you go to Portmeirion that weekend?’ If Henry Draycott had been the third murder victim mentioned in Franks’s confession, it was not inconceivable that Rhiannon Erley had been waiting in that Bell Tower to help him on his way while Franks was conspicuous on the terrace. It would have been risky, but she would just have had time to get down the steps and out before he arrived at the scene.
‘No. I’ve never been there.’
She had no trouble meeting his eye, and Penrose believed her. ‘Did Gwyneth know about the murders in advance?’
Rhiannon hesitated. ‘She knew something was up when she saw Henry outside the house. It terrified her – she thought he’d discovered the truth and come back to punish her. She told me that she’d telephoned David at the hotel to find out what was happening and he just told her not to worry. She trusted him to protect her.’
‘Don’t fool yourself,’ Penrose said. ‘He settled all his personal scores that weekend: he wiped the slate clean, and organised the evidence accordingly.’
‘I can see that now‚ but I didn’t know it then.’
‘So when a policeman knocked on Gwyneth’s door and told her that her husband had killed two people and then himself, you both took that at face value?’
‘Gwyneth would have turned a blind eye to anything after what David did for her,’ Rhiannon admitted. ‘She loved him unconditionally.’
‘And you?’ Throughout the interview, Penrose was conscious that Rhiannon Erley had made no reference whatsoever to her daughter. He would have expected her to talk of regret at leaving her child or pleasure at returning, but Branwen seemed to have played no part in any of her mother’s choices – and that baffled him. He could not approve of the decisions that Rhiannon had taken, but he understood most of them and sympathised with many; her attitude to Branwen’s murder, however, was beyond him. ‘Did you love Gwyneth enough to turn a blind eye to the murder of your own daughter?’ he asked. ‘Franks used her – to set Turnbull up and because he enjoyed it.’
She thought for a long time before answering, but her expression was impossible to read. ‘Please don’t think I wasn’t shocked and upset by Branwen’s death,’ she said at last, ‘but she wasn’t my daughter. My husband was her father‚ and she was raised as our child, but I had almost nothing to do with her. Gareth’s mother saw to that.’
‘So all the time she was looking for you . . .’
‘She was looking for the wrong woman, yes. I don’t know who her real mother was. There were a number of candidates.’
‘Do you know if Branwen sent Gwyneth a letter that weekend?’ Penrose asked.
‘Yes. It was something else Gwyneth panicked about.’
‘Did she give it to David?’
‘I don’t know. I never saw it, but she told me later that Branwen was threatening to talk to Bella Hutton to find out where I was because her baby had a right to know its grandmother, but obviously I . . .’
‘Branwen was pregnant when she died?’
Rhiannon looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’
‘No,’ Penrose said quietly. ‘I had no idea.’ At the time, he had asked Roberts to send him copies of the post-mortem reports on all the victims, but the inspector had never bothered‚ and Penrose had been too busy with his own cases to chase them. So Branwen’s unborn child was the third life that Franks had taken that weekend; he would have learnt about her pregnancy when he doctored the letter to incriminate his uncle.
He walked over to the window and looked out at the well-kept garden, stocked with fruit trees, roses and hydrangea. ‘Do you know where Taran is buried?’ he asked. ‘Is he somewhere here?’
‘Gwyneth would never tell me,’ Rhiannon said, coming over to stand beside him. ‘Obviously I’ve thought about it, and it’s possible that his grave is somewhere in the garden. She’s left the house to me, and I suppose that would be a way of keeping him safe.’
‘But you don’t think that’s the answer.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I have no idea, Mrs Erley. It just seems to matter.’
His answer persuaded her to trust him. ‘Come with me.’ She led him back into the hall and opened the front door. Penrose looked across to Portmeirion and wondered if she was going to tell him that Taran’s final resting place was in the dog cemetery or somewhere in the village; in fact, she surprised him by suggesting neither. ‘Gwyneth has left instructions in her will that she’s to be cremated and her ashes scattered on the island,’ she said. ‘So that would be my guess.’ He followed her gaze and knew instantly that she was right: the island was the perfect burial place, peaceful and solitary, viewed constantly from both sides of the water but never truly seen, and always at the heart of Gwyneth’s world. ‘Only she and David know for sure, though.’
‘You’ve given your life to her.’
‘It may seem like that to you, but loyalty is complicated. From the outside, it’s duty; from the inside, it’s love.’ He nodded, remembering that Josephine had on
ce said something very similar to him. Rhiannon glanced back up the stairs, torn between waiting to see what he was going to do and returning to Gwyneth’s bedside. ‘I can’t expect you not to act on what I’ve told you. We’ve broken the law in so many ways, and love and fear don’t justify everything.’ She must have seen the indecision in his eyes, because she added‚ ‘Gwyneth needs me now, but do what you have to. You know where I’ll be when you’ve decided. I hope, by then, she’ll be somewhere much safer.’
She closed the door behind him‚ and he walked back to the gate. A few yards further up the road there was a bench overlooking the estuary‚ and he sat down to think, glad to be out of the house. It was just after three o’clock, and Portmeirion had finally lost its exclusive arrangement with the sun; the heat had burnt away the last of the cloud and the whole of the peninsula was bathed in a glorious light. If he didn’t know better, he might have been fooled into thinking that the transformation was more than surface-deep‚ but, in the house behind him, two women were playing out wasted lives surrounded by guilt and fear; and to his right, on an island covered with heather and sweet-smelling gorse, a small boy lay in an unmarked grave. He knew what he should do. He knew what he wanted to do. And he thanked a god he didn’t believe in for waiting until now to trouble him with a conflict between the two. He sat there for a long time, thinking back a few years to when Josephine had given him a copy of her new novel, Brat Farrar, and they had argued over its ending: he had insisted that the police could never turn a blind eye to such a serious misdemeanour, no matter how sympathetic they were; she had laughed at his earnestness and kissed him, and he could still hear her saying that just because something was real that didn’t necessarily make it right. He had had no reply to her then, and he had none now.
Rhiannon’s face fell when she saw him back at her door, and he spoke quickly to reassure her. ‘I’m only here because there’s something you should know, Mrs Erley, and then I’ll leave you both in peace. Taran died in this house.’ The shock took a moment to register. ‘Obviously, that’s not something his mother would ever want to hear‚ but I thought you should know. I don’t know what you plan to do with your life once Gwyneth is gone, but it might be time to make a new start.’
Penrose turned to go‚ but she called him back. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘Why are you being so kind?’
He smiled sadly. ‘A friend of mine should have waited to hear the end of this story. We were in Portmeirion together when it started, but it’s too late now for me to talk to her about it. The least I can do is make sure that it finishes in a way which would have pleased her.’
Rhiannon was about to say something‚ but Penrose didn’t trust himself to stay any longer. He got into his car and drove away from the house for the last time. As he reached the end of the narrow lane he had to pull over to allow an ambulance to pass, and he realised what she had been going to tell him. In his rear-view mirror, he watched the vehicle make its way down the bumpy track, skirting the potholes as it went, but there were no lights, no warning bell and the lack of urgency could only mean one thing: Gwyneth Draycott was dead. What that said about justice, he could not even begin to work out.
4
The Friday-night crowds in Mayfair fell into different camps: locals and tourists taking a stroll after dinner and asking for nothing more than the splendour of a summer’s evening in the capital and those with a more specific purpose, rooted to the pavement outside Claridge’s, desperate for a glimpse of the next star to pass through its doors. During the war, the hotel had served as a haven for kings and queens from all over a war-ravaged Europe; these days, its royalty came almost exclusively from Hollywood – less authentic, perhaps, but more popular, and ardent movie fans of all ages were now as regular a feature of the Claridge’s façade as its soft red stone and cast-iron balconies. Reluctantly, Penrose took his place alongside them, standing at the corner of Brook Street and Davies Street, waiting impatiently to see at which of the hotel’s two entrances Hitchcock’s car would stop. The papers had been full of the director’s visit to London to promote Rear Window – his homecoming, as those still smarting from his Hollywood defection would have it – but Penrose guessed from a quick glance round that most people were here to see Grace Kelly. Press photographers held their cameras ready, fans clutched their magazines, hopeful of a signature, and even Penrose could not remain entirely immune to the sense of occasion. Josephine would have been proud of him.
There was a murmur of excitement as a sleek black car pulled up in Brook Street, and Penrose was pleased to see that he had positioned himself well. Hitchcock got out first without waiting for his chauffeur, and he looked relaxed and happy as he walked round to open the door for his latest leading lady. Other than being a little slimmer and a little greyer, he had hardly changed since those days in Portmeirion – but even from a distance there was an air of success about him, a confidence that exists only in a man at the very top of his game. Grace Kelly emerged from the limousine to a barrage of cheers and whistles: elegant, serene and cool to the point of glacial – like a piece of Dresden china, as one of the magazines had put it. Penrose stared in awe at her perfection, and wondered what Bella Hutton would have made of this new generation of film star; somehow, he thought, she would have approved. Hitchcock and Kelly played up to the cameras‚ and then, as the actress was whisked off into the hotel, Hitchcock turned back to the car and held out his hand: Alma got out, looking more petite than ever, and smiled up at her husband. The cameras had turned away by the time the director and his wife walked inside together; in Penrose’s opinion, they had missed the picture of the night.
He pushed through the crowds and followed the party into the hotel. The art-deco lobby was exquisite, and Penrose smiled to think that the finest British craftsmanship could still compete so effortlessly with all the glamour that Hollywood cared to throw at it. A champagne reception was being held in the film’s honour in one of the downstairs suites, and the sound of laughter and celebration made it easy to find. Penrose walked up to the door, but a waiter stepped forward discreetly to stop him. ‘I’m sorry, sir, this is private unless you have an invitation?’ Instinctively, he reached inside his jacket for his warrant card but found only air. Across the room, he saw that Alma had noticed him. She spoke quietly to her husband, and Hitchcock broke away from the crowd. ‘Mr Penrose, how nice to see you again after so long.’ He waved the doorman away and ushered Penrose into the room. ‘It is “Mr” now, I believe? You’ve retired?’
Penrose ignored the social niceties: he had not come here to catch up with an old friend. ‘I want to talk to you about David Franks.’
‘Ah yes. A terrible business, but my association with Mr Franks was very brief‚ and it all happened a long time ago.’
‘Franks wrote to Alma from prison, didn’t he?’ Hitchcock looked at him sharply, and Penrose experienced the satisfaction that always comes from being underestimated. ‘She liked David, and she must have been horrified when she heard what he had done. She wanted to understand, so she sent him a letter to ask why.’
‘I hardly think my wife . . .’
Penrose interrupted him. ‘You don’t need to defend what she did. It’s human to look for a reason: evil for evil’s sake is too much for most of us to contemplate. And Franks was happy to tell her all about that weekend at Portmeirion because he wanted you to know how clever he’d been. Alma gave him the excuse he needed: to write to you would have been an admission of how important you were to him, but he knew she’d show you the letter. He wanted you to realise that all the time you were blaming him for what went wrong, he was actually a step ahead of you – the organiser, the manipulator, the director. Everything that happened that weekend was planned by him, not by you.’
‘I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Hitchcock said, recovering his composure.
‘There’s no point in denying it. The prison records of Franks’s communications are quite clear. What I don’t un
derstand is why you sent the letter to me.’
‘Don’t you?’ Hitchcock smiled. ‘I’m not admitting anything, Mr Penrose, but if I had sent you that letter, it would have been to set the record straight. I can’t bear the thought of such a long and distinguished career coming to an end with questions still unanswered.’
‘Fine. Then answer this one: what about the killings on your film set? I don’t know who you’ve talked to or what strings you’ve pulled to keep them quiet, but that’s not justice. Those women have died, and their lives have to be accounted for.’
‘I agree. Everything has to be accounted for.’ He looked defiantly at Penrose, and then his face broke into a smile. ‘Come with me.’ He walked across the room to a woman in a strapless green evening dress. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Miss Sidney? Joan, this is the policeman I was telling you about.’
The woman turned round‚ and Penrose stared in astonishment at the face he had last seen contorted on the screen in his office, choking in agony with what he had thought were David Franks’s hands around her throat. He had watched Joan Sidney die over and over again, and it took him a few seconds to accept the fact that she was alive and well and standing in front of him; then it all fell into place. ‘You made that film to get my attention,’ he said to Hitchcock. ‘You wanted to do the right thing‚ and you knew something had to be done about the contents of that letter. But why go through this charade?’
‘Sometimes it’s very hard to admit that you’ve behaved badly.’ He winked and began to walk away. ‘But‚ as I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Apology accepted,’ Penrose called after him.
Hitchcock turned back and nodded gravely. ‘Keep the Portmeirion films, Archie. Alma and I were both deeply saddened to hear about Miss Tey’s death.’