Murder At Wittenham Park (28 page)

One by one the others filed down and joined in somewhat stilted conversations, with Loredana leaning on a stick and showing a livid bruise on her left arm, whilst still contriving to shimmer in the Versace dress that had caught Welch's eye so successfully on the first evening. But despite Dee Dee's efforts the conversation inevitably coalesced around the arrest of Adrienne.

“Is it true she stood to walk away with a million from the insurance?” Loredana asked.

“Whether it is or it isn't,” Dulcie retaliated, “in my belief, she's not guilty.”

“You would say that, wouldn't you, being her lawyer?”

Dulcie gave her a look that ought to have stripped the Versace off her back, but the damage was done. Buck Gilroy took up the subject again.

“If she is innocent,” he asked, “who did kill Welch?” He turned to Jim. “You must have a few ideas.”

“He certainly does,” Jemma chimed in, “don't you, Daddy?”

“Could we at least wait until after dinner?” Dee Dee asked. She was counting the hours to her final release from this torment and knew she could always excuse herself once they had eaten. “If we're going to be foul about anyone, let's at least be foul on full stomachs.”

But restraint was a lost cause. The subject re-erupted after the main course, when Dodgson was carrying round a summer pudding, with Priscilla arguing provocatively that any one of them could have murdered Welch.

“Even the butler could have poisoned his early-morning tea. Couldn't you, darling?”

“I beg your pardon, madam.” Dodgson paused in the act of serving her. “But I did no such thing.”

“You could have done, though,” Jemma commented. “You had access to the morphine bottle and you could have dropped some into Welch's teapot while Tracy was taking the other trays upstairs.”

“This is absurd, my lord,” Dodgson appealed to Gilroy. “I must protest.”

“But you did have access to the morphine,” Savage said gently, wishing to stir up the subject with absurdities first. “And it is a fact that the teapots and cups were all washed up immediately after their use.”

For a moment they all thought the butler was going to drop the salver. His face turned quite purple and he began to stutter unintelligible phrases. Dulcie, who was closest to him, stood up quickly and rescued the pudding, taking it to the sideboard.

“Thank you,” Dee Dee said gratefully, “that was very sensible. Dodgson, you may go. I should like a word with you afterwards.”

“I didn't do it, milady!” Dodgson managed to transform his mumbling into shrill speech. “I know I could have done, but I swear I didn't.”

“Should bloody well hope not,” Gilroy muttered. “Can't have one's butler going around murdering people.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dodgson said and fled.

“You'd better all help yourselves to pudding,” Dee Dee suggested and turned maliciously to Priscilla. “Perhaps we should investigate your part in it next?”

“I suppose George was always fooling around with other women?” Loredana said pointedly.

“Or trying to, the old goat.” Priscilla fended her off with feeling. “But I wouldn't have murdered him for that.”

“Adrienne might have done,” Loredana suggested. “She struck me as being a very jealous person.”

“She certainly noticed him looking you up and down the first evening,” Jemma said. “And she was very suspicious of Priscilla.”

“Well, darlings.” Priscilla decided to put a brave face on her past. “Since Jim here knows, you might as well all know. I first met him five years ago, and he was only interested in money and sex. In that order.”

“Any fool could see that,” Loredana observed.

“But neither was exchanged between them,” Jim put paid to Loredana's bitchiness, something he'd been wanting to do all weekend.

“Thank you, darling,” Priscilla said. “It's nice to know someone understands.”

“Priscilla's problem with the police,” Jim went on “has been that she was the last person to see Welch alive. At least, she might have been.”

“Who else could have done?” Dulcie asked.

“A lady in a lace-edged night-dress,” Jemma said, “whom I saw go into Welch's room at about seven-ten. But I only saw her back and legs, because she was leaning forward to open the door.”

“In my plot it was supposed to be Mrs. Worthington,” Dee Dee remarked to Jim. “I'd completely forgotten about that until your daughter reminded me.”

“No such thing happened in the re-enactment,” Hamish insisted.

“Very little that was accurate did,” Jim countered him, “As you know yourself. And I don't imagine Morton was deceived by your supposed movements either.”

“I don't know what you mean.” Hamish flushed. “I did what I actually did. Went downstairs for coffee.”

“Who d'you imagine you're fooling?” Dulcie asked wearily.

“Talking of deception,” Gilroy interrupted, “you told me a pack of lies, McMountdown. There was no Lloyds call for money today.”

“I'd been assured there would be,” Hamish protested. “I resent that remark and I demand an apology.”

“What was your cut going to be?”

“He wasn't getting a cut,” Dulcie said. “He was saving his own skin.”

“Surely,” Loredana said, worried by this attack on Hamish in spite of their quarrel, and switching the subject to the night-dress, “the mysterious woman must have been Adrienne?”

At last Jim became totally serious. “Before we carry this joke any further,” he said, “we ought all to recognize that if Adrienne is innocent, then Welch's killer must be one of us.”

A hush fell over the room.

“That's quite a challenging statement,” Dulcie observed. “True, furthermore.”

“Adrienne is a most unlikely killer. Unless, of course, she had set up her insurance scheme with the intention of killing her husband this weekend, but I think not. Would she have bought new clothes for the occasion? Hardly. I'm sure she intended simply to have an enjoyable time, in spite of her husband's business purposes.”

“But something got in the way,” Hamish observed.

“The business got in the way,” Jim said curtly, “because there were only two things Welch was serious about, and as Priscilla just told us, they were money and sex.”

“Which brings us back to night-dresses,” Priscilla said, with a totally false laugh.

“Come to think of it, everyone had lace night-dresses,” Loredana suggested, widening the field of suspects.

“Except for me,” Jemma said. “And if you had one, it was underneath your dressing-gown.”

“So you're ruling out the men?” Dulcie asked Jim.

“Since Lord Gilroy was asleep around that time and we've exonerated the butler, and Hamish was down in the kitchen, that only leaves myself.” Jim paused. “Oddly enough, Welch had threatened me the night before.”

“Why?” Dulcie asked sharply.

“He knew my profession and I knew he'd been suspected of insurance fraud. He told me to keep my nose out of his business here.”

“George made enemies unnecessarily. He was very stupid over that.”

“Which led to his death, d'you think?”

“Possibly.” Dulcie became guarded and again a hush fell on the room.

“Well,” said Priscilla, making Dee Dee wince at yet another intervention, “as it wasn't me who went to his room at seven-ten, who was it?”

“How do we know it wasn't you?” Loredana asked.

“Because Priscilla's night-dress had a blue ribbon through its lace and the woman's didn't,” Jemma said. “In fact, your spare one looks more like it than anyone's.”

“How do you know I have a second one? How can you possibly know?”

“I saw it in your room when I went for your book,” Jemma said simply.

“You sneaky little bitch!” Loredana exploded, then knew she had over-reacted and said with enforced calm, “I always wear a gown over my night-dress.” Everyone was watching her. “Anyway, why should I have gone to George's room, for heaven's sake?”

“I think,” Jim said, all eyes now on him, “that you went because your horoscope told you that Saturday was a day for decisions.”

Loredana gave a little cry. “It's true. It did. But it was nothing to do with George. It was deciding to run away with Hamish.”

“Since Hamish's wife was throwing him out because of his affair with you, was that such a difficult decision?”

“That is true,” Dulcie confirmed in a very level voice. “I was, and I still am.”

“And Welch swore to sue him for fraud if the contract wasn't signed. It had not been signed. Dulcie told Hamish that late on Friday night, before she fell asleep. Lord Gilroy was being difficult over the terms.”

“Damn right I was,” Gilroy cut in.

“Trevor had seen through you at last and was going to boot you out,” Jim continued to address Loredana remorselessly in the same very quiet voice that he had used professionally with fraudsters. “You were foul to him once too often. You wanted Hamish. You wanted him desperately, but not penniless. Not when you adore Versace dresses and Bruno Magli shoes. You'd realized weeks ago that Welch would have to be dealt with. This weekend brought it to a crunch.” He turned to Hamish. “Or possibly you cooked up the scheme to kill him. You're a cold-enough and hard-enough person.”

“It's not true.” Loredana had gone extremely pale. “How dare you accuse me!”

“You know what I believe you did? It was neat, simple and ingenious. You put poison in your own teapot, then took your tray down the passage, perhaps with your dressing-gown over your arm, and knocked on Welch's door. That was when my daughter caught a glimpse of your back. You took in your tray, told him you'd brought his tea and spun him some story about why you were there. Perhaps you asked if he'd got the contract signed. Probably he said no, then made a grab for you, but you evaded him, because your night-dress had certainly not been not torn.”

“It had not,” Jemma affirmed, earning a furious look from Loredana, but no comment.

“Doing that was taking a risk, but with luck everyone else would be in their rooms. Your luck held. You escaped and returned to your room, with the dressing-gown on. Within minutes Welch was dead. When the screaming started you came back, wearing your other night-gown. Now came the riskiest part. You had to retrieve your own tray before anyone discovered that he had one inside his room and the other was still outside. You went down for breakfast earlier than anyone else and on the way down you passed Welch's room, darted in and took your own tray down to the kitchen to ensure the pot and cup were washed up. But you did one last thing before going down. You poured out some tea into what had been Welch's proper cup and left it there outside his room, so that the maid would assume that he had drunk his tea and finished with it. That was intelligent.” Jim turned to Hamish and said sardonically, “I assume you thought of that?”

“I've never heard such a cock-and-bull story in my life,” Hamish protested.

“But how do you know what did or didn't happen,” Jim said equably, “when first you were with your wife and after that in the kitchen, fetching coffee?”

“You know perfectly well I was with Loredana.” Hamish turned to his wife. “Sorry, Dulcie,” he said, as if everyone did not know this already, and sounding every bit as sincere as a traffic cop apologizing for fining a driver.

“And what else did the horoscope say?” Dulcie asked frigidly. “Kill George now before he sues?”

“What with?” Hamish asked, while Loredana began to cry softly. “It's a marvelous theory, it's worthy of Agatha Christie, but it's nonsense. Where did the poison come from?”

“From the Lion Park.” Jim took the tiny bottle out of its envelope and held it up in its tissue. “When Loredana stole some of the tranquillizer she poured the small amount she took into this. There were several of these bottles in the laboratory.”

“I've never seen it before,” Loredana sobbed. “How can you be so cruel! It's all lies.”

“Probably poor Ted Matthews told you it was lethal to a man. So fast that it's a favourite for vets committing suicide. That sparked the idea that it could be used on Welch. You had no idea exactly how, you acted on instinct.”

“How can you say these things!” Loredana screamed.

“I'm not listening to any more of these slanders.” Hamish got up. “The police have made an arrest. We had nothing to do with George's death.” He took Loredana by the arm. “Come on, darling. We're leaving.”

But, to Dee Dee's surprise as much as everyone else's, Gilroy was faster. He reached the dining-room door well ahead of them and barred their way.

“Do you have any proof at all?” he asked Jim.

“There'll be fingerprints on the bottle. With luck hers will show through below the maid's.” He looked at Loredana with something close to pity. “Throwing the bottle into the library waste-basket was about as stupid a way of trying to throw suspicion on someone else as I can think of.” He saw from Hamish's furious expression that he thought so too.

Loredana began to protest and then to weep. “You're inventing it all. I hate you.”

“Well,” Dee Dee said decisively. “I think we should call the police. It's not as though there aren't enough of them around.”

17

“W
E
'
D NEVER
get a conviction on the fingerprints alone,” Morton was saying to Timmins, “and that pair are rock-solid in their denials. The woman Loredana claims she was given the stuff legitimately by the keeper to put down her cat, which is why her fingerprints are on the bottle, and the maid stole it from her.”

“The maid could have done,” Timmins commented “She had the opportunity. The problem is motive. Why kill a man simply because he goosed you? Mrs. Welch had much more reason.”