Last Act of All (18 page)

‘
Here you are. It’s not very tidy, I’m afraid.’ Helena cleared some papers off the elderly chesterfield drawn up in front of the fireplace.

Lilian
sank down gratefully. ‘Oh, that’s better. My head! And Jack would keep shouting! Whatever did he expect? It was a bit of fun, and now it’s over. A long-standing affair with a glorified mechanic isn’t really part of my career plan — however good he may like to think he is in bed.’

Helena
did not comment on this supremely egotistical remark. It was, however, likely to be her last chance to talk face-to-face with Lilian. ‘This business of selling the house — have you consulted the trustees?’

Despite
her headache, Lilian’s expression became alert and business-like, and she dropped her drawl.

‘
You think I’m stupid, don’t you? That’s all been taken care of, and they’re delighted. You’ll be hearing from them whenever I give the word.’

‘
Don’t you think it was a little unkind and — well, dishonest, not to put too fine a point on it, to lead people like poor George to think you’d dropped the whole idea? It obviously came as a terrible shock to everyone.’

Lilian
’s eyes narrowed, and she bared her neat white teeth in a mirthless smile.

‘
Warn them, you mean, and find myself lying there with a poker embedded in the back of my skull? Cheers! No, I wasn’t about to announce my plans to blow apart this godawful little place until I knew I wasn’t going back to the house to give them a second bite at the cherry.’

There
was an underlying assumption here, which made Helena catch her breath. ‘You mean — you think someone from the village killed Neville? You knew it wasn’t me?’

When
she spoke there was more than a hint of scouse in the carefully-cultivated voice. ‘Listen, chuck, you weren’t there the night they marched on the house. They scared me, you know — really scared me. They hated him enough to do anything, and if we’re being frank — we are being frank, aren’t we? — I was quite relieved they only killed Neville.

‘
And as for you,’ the narrow smile held contempt, and the drawl had returned. ‘Well, face it, darling, I never thought for a moment you had the guts.’

What
could you say? You could hardly take offence because someone had said you weren’t a murderess, but while Helena was groping for her reply, the other woman shivered. ‘God, it’s cold in here,’ she muttered.

It
wasn’t cold, but her face was very flushed. She was clearly unwell and Helena swallowed her irritation. ‘Here,’ she said briskly. ‘Take my jacket. It’s very warm, and I really don’t need it. I’m sure there’s a rug somewhere — yes, here it is. Put your head on this cushion, and you can pull it over you.’

Lilian
did as she was told without protest, snuggling into the cushion and shutting her eyes with a sigh of relief while Helena went to fetch the aspirin.

As
she returned, she was drawn in to the kitchen by one of the caterers with a query about the coffee. The kitchen helper deputed to take the aspirins in to Mrs Fielding found her asleep, her breathing deep and even as a child’s, her hair fallen forward across her face. The woman set bottle and glass quietly down on a side-table, and left without waking her.

In
the silence of the room, the old wall-clock ticked slowly, portentously, as if spelling out the ancient motto, ‘
Ars
longs
,
vita
brevis
’, which was inscribed on its face in copperplate characters and flaking paint.

Chapter Eleven

Outside, on this mild and windless day, the scene was positively arcadian. In the unexpected warmth, knots of people gathered, parted and reformed, as if in some rustic dance. Some of the younger guests, indifferent to the chill of damp stone, were grouped with unconscious grace on the low, lichened wall by the lawn.

Stephanie
was sitting there with Jim Wagstaff. They had been friends for a long time; she treated him much like the older brother she had never had. Today, however, their conversation was strained: he, too indignant and upset to talk of anything but the blow which had fallen, and she, feeling somehow responsible, embarrassed. She had said she was sorry, and agreed it was entirely unfair; there wasn’t a lot else she could say, but she lacked the social skill to withdraw without unkindness.

‘
It’s such a helluva shame,’ Jim was saying, as if voicing an original thought, and not repeating it for the tenth time. ‘When the old man’s put so much into that place, it’s not right. There ought to be some way of putting a stop to it.’

Stephanie,
shifting uncomfortably, became aware of the hurried, crab-like approach, from round the side of the house, of Tamara Farrell. She had a strange expression on her face, and in Stephanie seemed to find the person she was looking for.

The
older girl watched her advance without enthusiasm. ‘What do you want, Tamara?’

Tamara
rubbed one grubby leg against the other, and would not meet her eyes.

‘
Your mum’s dead,’ she said, in a sort of sullen mutter.

Stephanie
stared at her coldly. ‘Your stupid jokes are just so childish. Go away and bother someone else. I certainly don’t want to hear them.’

The
child looked up with a defiant pout. ‘She is, too. She’s dead in there.’ She jerked her head towards the side of the house. ‘She’s got a cushion over her head, and I tried her hand and it went all like this.’ She demonstrated, horribly, a flopping arm.

Stephanie,
suddenly white, was on her feet, but Jim moved faster. ‘No, Steph, stay here,’ he said, setting off across the grass. His longer legs covered the ground faster, but she was close behind him as he wrenched open the garden door into Edward’s office.

After
a single glance he turned, blocking her view with his body, but not before she had seen the jade-green mohair jacket and the blonde hair, disordered above the smothering tapestry cushion, and the lifeless arm flung out as if in some brief struggle.

It
was her screams that alerted the rest to tragedy. Those in the garden clustered round first, as the girl, gasping hysterically, and supported by Jim, grim-faced, came staggering round the corner, but then they were hurrying from the house, too; Edward, Charles, Chris.

Tamara
had been standing aloof, with her usual watchful detachment, but it was a shrill shriek from her that made the distraught Stephanie look round.

‘It’s — it’s her!’ Tamara was pointing. ‘But she’s dead, she’s dead!’

Coming
from the house, Helena, her heart pounding, came running towards her daughter, to see her take one incredulous look and crumple, in a dead faint.

*

At last the lorry-crane had come, and the wreckage was being towed to the side of the road.

Knowing
the difficulties under which her colleagues laboured did not lessen Frances’s exasperation. She had told Helena she would be there promptly, and, until she came across this accident, had been making good time. Now she would be lucky if she got there before they had all finished their lunch and gone home.

But
there was still a fair number of cars standing in the square when she reached her destination. She parked hurriedly and jumped out.

The
Red House was looking pretty today in the unseasonal sunshine, pretty and peaceful. Strangely so, she thought, puzzled, glancing through the sitting-room window at the empty room. She rang the bell.

The
door was flung open, and Dyer stood there, the hall telephone in his hand.

‘
Oh well, well, well,’ he said, putting it down, ‘and to think that they say you can never find one when you want one. You’re the lady detective, aren’t you? Radley said you were expected. All right then — this will give you something to detect.’

She
had dismissed as irrational the uneasiness she had felt. Wordlessly, she followed him through the hall and along the back corridor to where Radley, looking shaken, stood as if on guard outside a closed door.

‘
In here,’ Dyer said brusquely, and Radley stood mutely aside.

It
was dark inside the little stuffy office, and it was a moment before Frances’s eyes adjusted to the light. Then she saw the figure on the couch, and caught her breath.

‘
Helena?’ Her lips were almost too rigid to form the word.

‘
That’s what they thought at first. But it’s Lilian.’

‘
Lilian?’ Her astonishment was patent, and to Radley at least, offensive.

‘
Were you expecting someone to kill my wife, Sergeant Howarth?’ he asked stiffly.

‘
Not expecting, no.’ She left the subject there. ‘Has anything been touched?’

‘
I lifted the cushion,’ Dyer said. ‘The vicar’s brat found her, and in her usual spirit of helpfulness went and told Stephanie her mother was dead. Stephanie and young Wagstaff came in and saw the body. Then Helena appeared, and Stephie fainted, and a few people screamed, then Helena got hysterical... Well, you get the picture. I came in and there was poor bloody Lilian. She’d borrowed Helena’s jacket, apparently, and with the blonde hair…’

He
paused for a moment. For all his air of sang-froid, Frances noticed that he had positioned himself where he could not see the body; now he glanced quickly at it, then looked away. ‘Well, like I said, I lifted the cushion, thought maybe we could still do something. But it’s — well, you could say it was unmistakable.’

She
was, indeed, in her limpness, unmistakably dead. The tumbled hair was across the face, and the head was still turned to one side, the body twisted; she had fought hard against her unseen assailant, and the travelling rug was wound about her legs as if she had lashed out, in vain. It had not been a peaceful death, and the face, mercifully obscured for the moment, would tell its own tale of agony and terror.

Radley
had not come right into the room; he stood, hesitating, in the doorway.

Frances
turned from her scrutiny. ‘Mr Radley, would you please go and tell your guests that no one may leave, and keep them away from this part of the house and garden. Mr Dyer, perhaps you would now make that phone call? Ask them to get in touch with Inspector Coppins, and tell them I shall need a Criminal Investigation Unit and a police surgeon.’

The
matter-of-fact authority in her tone sent them on their way without discussion, leaving Frances alone with all that remained of Lilian Sheldon Fielding.

She
had never found herself in this position before. Usually, she came upon the results of violent crime as one of a team; this strange tryst was a much more intimate relationship.

What
did she know about Lilian? She was, by reputation, selfish and greatly disliked. Frances herself had observed no signs of real grief over her husband’s murder, though much paraded emotion, and there appeared to be no close friends or family. There had been no hint of an interest or objective beyond the enjoyment of the lotos-fruits of media success; Lilian, as far as she could tell, had led a purposeless existence which amounted to little more than the exploitation of a slim, sensuous body and an ephemeral commercial prettiness.

She
sighed. What would remain? Only ‘a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair’, a fast-fading memory, and not one person who would sincerely mourn her.

It
seemed a squandered life, and in some ways, this death was the more pitiable for that very reason. She had left so little behind, it was as if her killer had condemned her to extinction, like stamping on a butterfly. Poor pretty, shallow Lilian.

Pity
was all very well. But it was by the exercise of her professional skills that she could best discharge this oddly personal sense of responsibility.

While
her eyes automatically carried out the procedure that had been dinned into her — look, look, and then look some more — her mind began to race.

Could
this disaster, too, be laid at her door, or was she exaggerating the importance of the part she had played? Mentally, she fingered the notion of guilt, like some brilliantly-coloured toadstool, attractive and poisonous. Joe Coppins had accused her of arrogance in her assumptions about this case, and he was frequently right.

More
practically, then, could she, somehow, have stopped this, if the accident had not delayed her? Probably not; her attention would have been misdirected, guarding Helena rather than Lilian, who had, after the morning’s deliberations, been high on the list of suspects for Fielding’s murder. Well, this had certainly cleared her. The drastic method of eliminating suspects.

She
bent over the chesterfield, frowning in concentration, the body before her a problem now rather than a human tragedy. She dared not touch it until Forensic arrived, but studied its tortured position, knelt down to check the fingernails. Lilian could have raked her assailant with those long, manicured talons, and scratches on hands or face would be hard to disguise. But there was no sign of blood or tissue under the nails, as far as she could see, only a thread which looked as if it might have come from one of the cushions. There was another cushion on the floor; might her killer have used it to shield his hands from her desperate clawing?

She
got up and crossed to the garden door. Not much hope of fingerprints there, or from the door to the hall. Too many people would have grabbed the handles, without a thought for the sanctity of evidence, though the experts would try. You never knew when a print in context might be useful. The cushion — she glanced at it, where Dyer had thrown it down — was rough tapestry, and would do them no good.

She
dropped to her knees again, feeling across the carpet on the direct route between door and couch, looking for any unusual indication, but there was only the slightly sticky dampness of earth from the feet of those who had come in, the faint smell of garden loam. They would check thoroughly when the Unit arrived.

Time
was passing. She was still seeing the room as the killer had left it; what could it tell her?

He
had taken quite a risk, coming in here, whether by house or garden door, and then committing a murder in full view of anyone who happened to be passing. Most people, of course, were on the lawn at the back, and by standing to one side of the chesterfield — she took up the position experimentally — you could be in shadow, with only the cushion in full view, and even then, considering the darkness of the room, only if someone stood close to the window and peered in, as Tamara Farrell must have done.

A
gambler, then; he would have had to take his risks coming in and going out as well. And people took risks because the stakes were high.

But
she did not, as yet, know what had been at stake. She needed to talk to people, get out and ask the questions they had failed to ask before. She sighed again.

Without
equipment, there was nothing further she could do here. Shortly, the team would arrive, and the last trace of atmosphere would vanish in a chaos of arc lights and plastic sheeting. She had only a few more minutes alone with the dead woman who knew no more than she did who her murderer had been.

Someone
had found a sleeping woman, and held that cushion ruthlessly over her face until her breathing stopped. The woman had displayed blonde hair, like Helena’s, and Helena’s distinctive green jacket. Had her killer actually murdered the shadow or the substance?

But
when Joe Coppins arrived, shouldering his way through the door, she knew he was in no mood to indulge her with the discussion of such theories. He had been dragged away from some domestic Saturday-fest, and finding his sergeant at the scene of the crime in a social capacity was another grievance. And he was not a stupid man; she read in the gathering blackness of his brow his immediate understanding of the reason for her presence, as she tried to explain what she believed to have happened before he erupted.

It
was his worst sort of rage. It was ostensibly over her disobedience, arrogance and criminal stupidity, but she knew him well enough to appreciate that what gave it force was the need to banish a darkling suspicion that the horrifying mistake might turn out, after all, to have been his. She hung her head and waited silently until the attack became less violent and more specific.

‘
That’s women for you,’ he said with rancour, at last. ‘Don’t like anything to be straightforward — everything’s got to be complicated, hasn’t it? Seems to me as plain as the nose on your face — woman’s a convicted murderer; only just out of prison, and she’s turned into a homicidal maniac. I suppose you’ve got her under close guard, before she decides to run amok with a carving knife?’