Murder At Wittenham Park (23 page)

Jim shrugged his shoulders. He had a theory about that which was too undeveloped to expound. “You'll have to ask her that yourself. But I can tell you where Welch's whisky glass ought to be.”

Ten minutes later a detective was recovering a broken whisky tumbler from the shrubbery beneath the window of Welch's bedroom.

“I'll be surprised if it tells them anything,” Jim remarked to Jemma, as they watched from a distance. “Any more than the decanter will. Morton admitted the poison was fast-acting. In fact, I got the impression he knows what it was, though he isn't going to let on. Either way, it was a bright idea of Priscilla's to suggest throwing the glass out of the window, so that she could get away. Just the gesture to appeal to Welch. Mud in the eye of the aristocracy, all that sort thing.”

“If she's as switched on as that, why on earth did she burn her night-dress on the floor?”

He made a slightly despairing gesture with his hands. “That's what Morton wanted to know. I'm no shrink. I can only guess at what went on in her mind. She's emotional. As an actress she responds quickly. She was very upset last night.”

“I don't blame her.”

“I think she probably started drinking in her room. She hadn't eaten anything. The alcohol went straight to her head. She needed to protest against being insulted.”

“Why burn her own night-dress?” Jemma made a face. “Especially when night-dresses are the only clue I've got to the mystery woman!”

“She might feel it was associated with the whole disastrous night. After all, this was a disaster for her. She was being paid to perform. Welch's death changed all that. Now she's stuck here, not being paid, and being villified into the bargain.”

“Could she have killed Welch?”

“I've no doubt she'd like to kill his widow.”

“Where is Priscilla now?” Jemma felt quite sorry for her and intended to help her.

“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 was 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.”