Murder At Wittenham Park (25 page)

This was the sort of plea Dulcie herself was in the habit of making to clients. Come clean, it can only help your case. Be frank and I can clear your name.

“I assume you were talking to Welch about the contract,” Jim said.

Dulcie shifted on the bench to face him more directly, though not in the coquettish way that Loredana and Priscilla had done. Jim knew there would be no rewarding kiss on the cheek, no cry of “You are a darling.” Dulcie had a good brain and no need to rely on being flirtatious, even if she sometimes took advantage of her sex.

“Are you going to solve this murder?” she asked. “Because if you're not, then I shall not betray confidences.”

“I think I may, if Morton doesn't get there first. We are travelling by different routes. He's the professional. He has all the technical resources. I have better access to the suspects.”

“Of which I'm one?”

“As am I.” Jim smiled. “We're all in the same boat.”

“Let me tell you what happened, then. But don't forget that this is my version. You might hear others.”

*   *   *

T
HERE HAD
been four of them in Gilroy's study: Gilroy himself, Dulcie, Welch and his wife. Adrienne had insisted on being present, despite Dulcie's subdued protests.

“I'm a director of his company. He's brought me along. I don't want him making commitments I don't know about.” What she had left unsaid was her resentment at Dulcie's influence over her husband. She suspected they were having an affair. Why had Dulcie sat in the front of the Roller with him on the way here, while she was consigned to the back with that gormless Hamish? “You lawyers,” she had limited herself to commenting, “are only interested in your fees.”

Dulcie had been forced to swallow that insult and get the meeting going. It had not started well. Gilroy had categorically refused to sell any land by the lake.

“The other bloody farmland's no use to me,” Welch had protested, knowing that he must come away from this weekend with a development site in order to raise more loans. “How do I get planning permission?”

“What about the golf-course site?” Dulcie suggested a compromise. “Could we see those plans?”

This was when Gilroy had left the room to fetch them and Adrienne had turned on Dulcie.

“I thought your husband was supposed to work on him. Make him so scared of Lloyds losses that he'd sign?”

“Didn't you hear Hamish at dinner? He was doing all he could.”

“I told you,” Welch said aggressively. “I told you on the way 'ere. If I don't get this land, I'll sue that useless man of yours for fraud. He got me into the Lloyds mess. He can bloody help me now.”

“Gilroy will agree to sell some land,” Dulcie insisted, keeping her temper.

“Not the part I want.”

“If my George gets second best, my girl,” Adrienne cut in, “we'll sue you, and that's a promise. And you'll get no fees.”

“Wait a minute, love.” Welch backed off, suddenly worried at having gone too far with the lawyer he depended on. “She's doing what she can.”

“For who, I'd like to know?” Adrienne dismissed George's plea and turned on Dulcie again. “I tell you, we'll sue your hubby till he don't know if he's on his ass or his elbow.”

Adrienne had taken it too far. “Go ahead then!” Dulcie said in her steeliest voice, and would have said more if she had not been interrupted by Gilroy's return.

*   *   *

“I
DIDN
'
T
like my husband being threatened,” Dulcie said.

“But you still tried to negotiate?” Jim asked.

“Of course. It was what I was here for. I persuaded Gilroy to give away quite a lot that evening. Possibly George hoped for more. We'll never know.”

“Either way, your husband was saved a court case.”

“True,” Dulcie conceded. “But it was one he wouldn't have deserved and George might never have brought, because George knew he was on risky Lloyds syndicates.” She gave Jim a half-sad, half-quizzical look, as if to ask what else could anyone expect. “It's not unfair to say that Adrienne likes money. George got a genuine buzz out of what he did. He was almost creative. That was the likeable side of his character, though no one here saw it. Adrienne was always more interested in the bank balance.”

“And Hamish?”

“I wouldn't have wanted him to be sued, but I wouldn't have minded his getting a shock. This weekend has really been the end.” She sighed. “I don't know what he sees in Loredana. I'm not sure I even want to. Come on, you don't need to hear all that. Let's go back.”

When they were nearing the house Dulcie asked him if their discussion had solved anything.

“It gave me some ideas. Especially about who took the contract and left it in my room.”

“Who?”

“Ah. That would be telling.”

“You old devil! And after all I've told you!” Dulcie pretended outrage, yet actually she was relieved to have revealed, if not everything, at least more than she had confided to the police. There was something about Savage's unassuming approach that generated confidence. “And when are you going to get us out of here?”

“I ought to leave that to you, if the Gilroys fail, and I'm sure they're trying. Thank God it'll soon be lunch-time.”

*   *   *

J
IM
'
S GUESS
was accurate. In Dee Dee's temporary office she and Buck were discussing how best to tackle Morton, and indulging in some understandable marital recriminations.

“Darling,” Dee Dee was saying in a voice that now seemed permanently strained, “only four days ago I was asking you if this weekend would make money and you promised it would.”

“Not exactly promised,” Gilroy protested, recalling last Thursday vividly because it had been at that memorable tea-time that the guest list had arrived with Welch's name on it. He should have known that the proverbial bad luck of the Gilroys was about to reach new heights, or plumb new depths, whichever it was that bad luck did.

“You said, ‘The weekend must show a profit.' I can hear you now. And it's a disaster. I've just had to phone through another huge order to the supermarket. We have to get rid of these people, quite apart from the strain. They're all at each other's throats. Any minute now there'll be another murder.”

“Do we tell Morton that?”

“Oh my God!” Dee Dee clenched her fists in exasperation. “No, we do not. If necessary, we'll get that lawyer woman to talk to him on behalf of all of us.”

“You don't suppose she did it, do you? Killed Welch, I mean?”

“What does it matter?” Buck's inability to see the wood for the trees was maddening. “The point is she knows all about powers of arrest and what the police can do. Morton said himself that he couldn't keep anyone here against their will. We've co-operated long enough.”

“I doubt if he'd listen to me. He thinks we're the murderers.”

“How totally stupid.” Dee looked at her husband with alarm. Buck had disliked Welch intensely. He had unburdened himself about it at length on Friday night, and he had felt himself cornered. He hadn't signed the contract, but he knew he was going to have to. “You didn't put morphine in his tea or anything like that, did you?”

“Dodgson or Tracy might have done. Someone's been at the stuff.”

“They've been worried that we might sell the whole place and they'd have to go. Dodgson told me as much yesterday. He's been even gloomier than usual since this happened.” Dee considered the possibility. “The poor guy would never get another job.”

“Except at an undertaker's.”

“No.” Dee Dee shook her head, her American upbringing asserting itself. “He's too gloomy. And that voice! Funeral parlours need re-assuring people. Dodgson looks as if he's just escaped from a grave himself. Why do we keep him on?”

“Because he worked for my father and he has nowhere to go.” Gilroy had heard this argument before and always provided the same answer. “Noblesse oblige and all that. Anyway, if we did sell up I'd give him a pension.”

“Have you ever told him that?”

“Not exactly,” Gilroy hedged. “I mean, he must know we'd do the decent thing.”

Dee Dee gazed at her husband with a mix of affection and despair, the despair predominating. There he sat, wearing his habitual Guards tie and boating jacket, along with a hangdog expression that would make even a pawnbroker wonder if he was trying to hock stolen goods, and he expected the servants to trust him with their futures at a time of crisis.

“You're crazy,” she said. “I also think Dodgson could have done it. He'd have overheard conversations, he had the morphine, and he could have laced anything that tasted strong enough. Coffee, tea, whisky. Welch had them all. Tracy would have helped too. She already had it in for Welch in a small way. Not to mention that madwoman Mrs. Worthington. I bet they were all in it.”

“I suppose they could have been,” Gilroy said, then went on with remarkable lack of tact, “of course, you were in the room next to Welch. You could have—”

“Buck,” Dee Dee snapped, “snap out of it. Nothing would have pleased me more than to see that odious man off the premises, but not as a corpse. Go and tell Morton that we've had enough.”

“Anything you say, darling,” Gilroy obeyed, “but you do realize we're both suspects?”

“Get out of here before I scream!”

*   *   *

D
OWN IN
the library Jemma had been reading a magazine and covertly watching Hamish and Loredana. They had evidently taken advantage of Dulcie's absence to get together. But it didn't appear that their conversation was going smoothly. Loredana was making emotional gestures and Hamish was defending himself.

“Why are you making such a fuss about that woman?” Jemma heard Loredana say. “She can more than look after herself.”

Hamish's reply was inaudible.

“Well, maybe, but she's recovered amazingly quickly,” Loredana said and Jemma realized they must be talking about Adrienne.

Then Dulcie came striding in, faltered momentarily when she saw the two together, but continued and told Hamish that she needed to talk to him. She took no notice whatever of Loredana. Shortly after they had gone, Loredana came across and sat down next to Jemma.

“What do you really make of Priscilla?” she asked in a gossipy sort of way, as though it were Priscilla she had been discussing with Hamish.

“She's quite highly strung.” Jemma felt sorry for the actress. “I'd say this has all been too much for her.”

“Is it true that she was trying to burn her night-dress? It's incredible.”

For reasons that she could never have explained, because her reaction was instinctive, not rational, Jemma took the subject further.

“It's an odd thing about the night-dress,” she said. “On the real morning of the murder I saw a woman in a night-dress going into Welch's room at about ten after seven.”

“Who was it?” Loredana sounded intrigued.

“That's what I don't know. I only caught a glimpse of her back.”

“Who could it have been? What kind of night-dress was it?”

“The hem was trimmed with white lace. That's all I saw.”

“And no one was wearing the same at the re-enactment?”

“On the contrary, everyone was except for me and you. Adrienne was, Priscilla was, Lady Gilroy was. I don't know if you were, because you had a long silk dressing-gown over yours.”

“Well, of course I noticed all the lace,” Loredana said a little huffily. “I meant was anyone wearing exactly the same?”

“It might have been Priscilla's.”

“Which she tried to burn! How riveting!”

“You didn't see her, did you?” Jemma asked. “You must have taken your tray down to the kitchen about that time.”

For a second Loredana was startled. “I quite forgot about that. No, I didn't see anyone. Did you see me?”

“No,” Jemma confessed. “But I only peeked down the passage on my way to the bathroom.”

*   *   *

I
NSPECTOR
Morton was perplexed and, which was unusual for him, irritated. He had been on the phone to the pathologist again and very little had been definitely confirmed, except that the poison was a powerful opiate. Traces of a substance the forensic lab had not yet identified had been found in Welch's blood, but not his urine. That meant it had been administered shortly before his death. Tea had been found in his stomach. But so had alcohol in his blood. If he had driven a car, he would have been well over the limit.

“We can say for certain that it was in something Welch drank,” the pathologist had said.

“And how long before we know what it was?”

“Chromographic tests could take the rest of the week, I'm afraid. It's like consulting a dictionary. You have to identify a substance before you can look up the reference.”

Technical explanations had followed, which Morton was obliged to accept. He knew that it could take three days to complete a full blood-alcohol test, and that was when the lab technicians knew what they were searching for. And with this they did not, beyond that Welch's lungs and liver had been congested and he had died of respiratory failure, indicating an opiate.

So Morton was sitting there, tapping the desk with a pencil and reviewing his list of suspects, when Timmins announced that Lord Gilroy would like to see him.

“Give me five minutes,” he ordered and quickly went through the file on the owner of Wittenham Park. It was already voluminous.

Gilroy's character was variously described as weak, friendly and untrustworthy. He had been under a lot of pressure from Welch. Down at the Lion Park Timmins had found a memo from Ted Matthews suggesting that Welch had instigated a series of local complaints about the lions. Investigations in the village had shown this to be true. There had been rows on the Friday evening between Welch and Gilroy. Although Mrs. McMountdown had been circumspect, it was clear that there had been bad blood between both Lord and Lady Gilroy and Welch. No one at the Friday evening dinner had doubted that Lady Gilroy had been deliberately insulting to the developer.