Murder At Wittenham Park (24 page)

“She had better not, I tell you. Well, I'll see what I can do,” Dee Dee conceded.

“She talked a lot about her role in the ‘murder' plot. Is there a copy of the whole thing? I mean a master plan for the weekend?”

“Of course there is. Or there was. I had it all worked out.”

“Have you got a copy?”

“Somewhere. It's not been the most important thing on my mind.” Dee Dee shifted through a pile of the papers that the police had allowed her to bring through. She found a red folder and extracted a print-out. “Here you are. No secrets worth having any more. But I'd still like to have it back.”

Jemma thanked her and carried off this trophy to her own room. There she sat down and read the whole document. As Priscilla had commented, it was a crummy plot. But one thing was crystal-clear. All the actions and clues assigned to the characters related to the Friday evening. With the exception of the maid's screaming session, and Priscilla's going to Welch's room, no one had movements allocated to them after the discovery of the murder.

While Jemma pondered this, her father was on the way back to the house with a dejected Lord Gilroy.

“Bad business with Ted,” Gilroy muttered. “Now they think it's negligence. But it was his own, poor fellow.”

“Must be ‘accidental death,'” Jim prompted.

“Absolutely.” Gilroy lapsed into silence, but after a minute he glanced quickly at Jim and said, “They think I murdered Welch.”

“Why?” This was no surprise, but Jim did his best to mask it.

“It's obvious. That sergeant looks at me as if I was something the cat brought in and Morton never stops asking questions about the contract.”

There, Jim thought, Morton had it dead right. The contract had to be at the heart of the case. “Did you have a quarrel with Welch?” he asked.

“Who could fail to? The man's an out-and-out—well, you know what I mean. Remember when you were in the hall after dinner on Friday evening?”

“We heard a bit of an argument. We also overheard one before dinner. Was that the row that the clue referred to?”

“Before dinner?” It took Gilroy a moment to recall the original “murder” plot and his attention lapsed, so that he nearly ran the Land Rover off the road. He swerved back onto the tarmac, swore, then regained his concentration. “Good God, no. The fictional row was with my wife during dinner. Wasn't so damn fictional, either.”

“Welch certainly thought he was being insulted then.” Jim remembered the developer's angry reactions.

“My wife couldn't resist putting the knife in a little. I paid for it later. Phew.” Gilroy shook his head. “Welch wanted to develop land by the lake. There was no way we were going to sell him that. He made one hell of a fuss. So did his bitch of a wife.”

“Do you have to sell?”

“Lloyds.” The single word expressed a volume of misery. Gilroy had enough thick reports on Lloyd's requirements to fill a bookshelf.

“Is it really so bad?”

“If you believe that fellow McMountdown, it is.” Gilroy's expression became puzzled, as his brain shifted with difficulty into overdrive. “Come to think of it, there hasn't been a letter from Lloyds today.”

“So that was all a false alarm?”

“Could be,” Gilroy said gloomily. “Doesn't alter the fact that I'm still up to my neck in it. I do need to sell land, but I'm damned if I'll ruin the estate. That's what I told them. Welch blew up. ‘It's sods like you what's ruining the country. Here's a decent bloke like me trying to give people the homes they need and you're pouncing on about the view.' Bloody man.”

They had reached the house and Gilroy stopped alongside one of the police cars in the drive, giving it a baleful look, as if it were a trespasser he would like to see clamped. But he did not get out immediately. This conversation had set him thinking.

“You know,” he said, “with hindsight I think Welch was desperate to buy and that's why he lost his temper when I wouldn't sign for what he wanted after dinner.”

“How did it end?” Jim asked.

“Oh, his wife walked out and then the lawyer woman calmed him down a little. She and I tried to sort out a compromise.”

“Hardly a reason for murdering him,” Jim suggested.

“Exactly what I keep telling the police. Between you and me, I think his wife told them I'd threatened him. Well, I did, as a matter of fact. Told him I wasn't going to be insulted in my own house and he could leave in the morning.”

“But he refused?”

“Didn't have the chance, did he? He would have refused. There'd have been a long palaver about having paid his money for the weekend. I wish to God that inspector would get on with it and arrest someone.” Gilroy heaved himself out of the Land Rover.

“Thanks for the lift,” Jim said. They walked to the house together, then Gilroy excused himself and Jim went through to the library, hoping to find his daughter and asking himself how much Gilroy had been concealing in his account of the quarrel. What was needed next was to talk to Dulcie. It was Dulcie whom they had overheard say, in a most challenging voice, “Go ahead then!” Since Gilroy had not been in the room at that point, she must have been talking to Welch himself. What had she been challenging him to do? And would she, being as circumspect as lawyers were, be willing to reveal it?

The group were gathered for “elevenses” in the library and still absorbed by the subject of Priscilla's fire-raising escapade. This was hardly surprising, given their enforced idleness and a collapse of their small-talk conversation. By now no one had anything to say to anyone else. They were all obsessed with how to get away from Wittenham. Consequently a misdeed that could be unequivocally pinned on a particular person was welcomed.

“She ought to be locked up,” Jim heard Adrienne say, before he was collared by Jemma and told that Lady Gilroy was waiting to speak to him. He grabbed a cup of coffee and they retreated to a relatively private corner of the room.

“Mr. Savage,” Dee Dee began, “you were the last person to see Mrs. Worthington before she set her room on fire. Was she drunk?”

“Not when she went upstairs. She was upset about things and she's quite a highly strung person. Mrs. Welch had been very rude to her.”

“Well, it's very difficult to know what to do. We can't ask her to leave.” Dee gave an exasperated sigh. “But what if she tries some other crazy stunt?”

“I'm certain she won't. She's made her statement, her protest.”

“And nearly burnt the house down. I'd call it arson.”

At this moment a complete hush descended on the gathering. Jim looked round. Priscilla was coming in from the Great Hall, fully dressed in a skirt and blouse, but moving with caution, as if someone were about to leap on her. She looked at the main group, hesitated, saw Jim and came his way.

“How dare she show her bloody face!” Adrienne said loudly and challengingly. “She ought to be ashamed.”

Priscilla stopped dead, looked imploringly at Jim, then turned towards Adrienne and said in a very quiet, understated voice, “And who killed George Welch?”

14

“A
RE YOU
accusing me of killing my own husband?” Adrienne glowered at Priscilla, as everyone else fell silent. She was not tall or impressive, but she hadn't lived with George Welch for twenty years without learning how to give as good as she got, and she was convinced Priscilla had been one of George's many girls in the past. “You filthy bitch. How dare you!”

The others, who had been grouped around the long table at the side of the library with the coffee on it, instinctively distanced themselves from the confrontation, leaving an open space for the two women to fight it out. Hamish tugged Dulcie back protectively a few feet towards the fireplace. Loredana followed. Jim and Jemma had already taken their coffee to one of the groups of chairs in a corner. Only Dee Dee remained by the table. Now Jim stood up, prepared to intervene if Lady Gilroy did not. He mentally kicked himself for being a fool. Adrienne was the most obvious suspect for Welch's murder. Why had he not anticipated that Priscilla would retaliate by suggesting it?

Trembling, Priscilla stood firm. “Why did you go for me?” she asked. “I can't have been the last person to see him. Someone else must have done.” She would have liked to explain the whole tangled background of why she had set her her night-dress on fire, but she couldn't find the words, and anyway, no one would have believed her. “Didn't you see him in the morning? You must have done!”

“No, I did not.” Adrienne refused to be put on the defensive. “I've told everyone. George didn't like to be disturbed.” She looked round for support, as though appealing to a jury. “It's the truth.”

“I don't doubt that for a second,” Hamish offered, moving very slightly away from Dulcie. “Your husband could be a very difficult man.”

Loredana glanced at her lover in surprise, accidentally caught Dulcie's eye, and looked away again. What was going on now? Why was he suddenly Adrienne's defender?

“Thank you,” Adrienne said warmly. “It's nice to know who one's friends are. Not that I've many here.” She sniffed loudly. “This is the most unfriendly place I've ever been in. The way you're behaving, you'd think I never loved my husband at all.”

Hamish turned to Priscilla. “You owe Mrs. Welch an apology, you know,” he said in his rather languid tone.

“I do?” she shrilled. “How about her?”

Realizing that Priscilla was about to break down again, Jim Savage intervened, walking towards the two women, who were facing each other like boxers in a ring.

“There's no point in accusations,” he said firmly. “Everyone's overwrought at the moment. Why don't we all sit down again?” He took Priscilla's arm and led her to Jemma, where she immediately burst into tears on the sofa.

“Thank God for someone with common sense,” Dulcie said quietly. “This is becoming a madhouse.”

“That's one hundred percent right,” Dee Dee agreed, putting down her coffee. “I'm going to find my husband. This can't go on.”

After she had left, Dulcie pointedly turned turned her back on Loredana and told Hamish, who was now consoling Adrienne, that she would see him at lunch-time. Then she crossed the room to join the Savages.

“Jim,” she said forthrightly, “you seem to be the unofficial lightning-conductor in this place. Where do we all go from here, apart from a lunatic asylum?”

“We might try intellectual processes, instead of emotion,” Jim suggested, getting to his feet again.

This was the opportunity he had hoped for. The contract must have been directly connected with Welch's death, though he could not for the life of him reason out how. It did not seem a sufficient cause for murder. Jemma had agreed with him. Drug dealers got themselves gunned down over contracts. Mobsters were killed for territory. But Welch, though a rough diamond, did not appear to have been in that category, and much less had anyone else here. Possibly Dulcie would help illuminate the problem. Not, as Jim kept reminding himself, that it was really his business. It was Inspector Morton's. At the same time he was increasingly caught up with it.

“Where do we go to talk?” Dulcie asked.

“Outside, where we can't be overheard. It's becoming a tradition,” Jim remarked wryly. “Thank God it's not raining.”

The policeman at the front door nodded them through and this time Jim did lead the way to the little stone pavilion by the lake. It had no doors, simply a columned frontage, giving onto a three-sided stuccoed room, with niches for statues.

“This was where George wanted his housing estate,” Dulcie remarked, after they had sat down on a bench inside. “Right by the lake. Boating, fishing. He had it all worked out. But Gilroy wouldn't sell.”

“Do you blame him?”

“Not at all. He'd have been a fool to. He was only prepared to let go five hundred acres on the other side of the estate. But George thought he could pile on the pressure.”

“Was that what the row on Friday evening was about?”

“Partly.” The directness of the question reminded Dulcie that they were supposed to be discussing what they could do next. “But what we have to decide is when to leave.”

“You're the lawyer.”

“And you seem to be our channel of communication with Morton.”

“Believe me, it's a one-way street. He's delighted to have information. He doesn't give much away.” Jim nudged the conversation back to where he wanted it. “Incidentally, Jemma and I overheard your quarrel. We were passing through the hall.”

Dulcie frowned in aggravation. “I never thought eavesdropping would be your style.”

Jim flushed. “The ‘murder' scenario told us all to listen out for a row. ‘Two characters are in fierce argument,' it read, if I remember right. ‘Who are they and why are they in dispute?' Of course we were listening.”

“I'm so sorry.” Now it was Dulcie's turn to be embarrassed. “I'd completely forgotten. We were only here for the sake of the contract.” It struck her that if they had been merely passing through, they would not have heard much and she might as well tackle this head-on. “So what did you hear?”

“You said, ‘Go ahead then!' That was all we heard. Gilroy materialized and naturally we got out of the way.”

“Hardly an incriminating sentence,” Dulcie suggested. She knew exactly when she'd said that, a moment before Gilroy had returned from fetching some documents. And it had been a crucial moment, too. One she did not wish to discuss.

Jim read most of these thoughts in her face. “Morton knows,” he said, “because he confiscated my notes. Why don't you tell me?”

“So that you can tell him?”

“No.” Jim shook his head vigorously. “So that I can fit another little piece into my jigsaw and just possibly speed this business up.” He made an appeal. “Unless you killed Welch yourself, what harm can it do now?”