Murder At Wittenham Park (7 page)

“In fact, no.” Gilroy knew what was coming and tried to steer past it.

“Have to close the lions down once our homes is built,” Welch said. “Frighten the families.”

“The Lion Park is not going to be closed,” Gilroy said firmly, which was a way of saying that the houses would be built over his dead body. But there had been a sting in the tail of Welch's remark. This week he'd received a letter from the local council questioning security and claiming that local residents were concerned about certain dangers. He had asked Ted to draft an answer.

Luckily Dulcie came up at this moment, saying, “I've something to show you, George.” She grinned at Gilroy. “I've never seen lions screwing before. Quite a giggle.” She then led Welch off to examine a map of the estate that she had found hanging in the cafeteria.

“Disgusting, I'd say,” Adrienne chipped in. She was out of temper. It had been hot and bumpy in the Land Rover. She'd imagined they were going straight on to drinks, which was why she had put on the silk dress, and now it was stained with sweat.

“What they were doing was entirely normal,” Gilroy said stiffly, then quoted from his own brochure. “We aim to show the King of Beasts in a completely natural environment.”

Loredana now insisted on having her little talk with Ted. Gilroy directed her to the unobtrusive office door in the far wall of the exhibition area. Characteristically she did not knock, but went straight in.

The keeper's office-cum-laboratory was thoroughly modern. A wide chrome-legged desk and several filing cabinets stood at one end beneath a window. There was another door in the outer wall, and at the opposite end a long laboratory bench had a steel sink set into it. Two empty glass vials for samples were by the sink. Shelves held a range of bottles and there was a rack of veterinary instruments.

The only thing missing was the keeper himself.

Tempted by his absence, Loredana explored. A letter from the local council lay on the desk, suggesting that the electric fence put children “at risk” and mentioning local fears about lions escaping.

Beside was Ted's draft reply, stating that the fence had a five-thousand-volt pulse, but very low amperage, and could not kill. He had pencilled on his draft: “The talk in the village is that a developer has been paying people to write to the council complaining. They get £10 a letter. I'm trying to find someone who'll admit it and name the developer, or his agent. Then we can go to the police.”

Not hard to guess who that is, Loredana thought. Hamish had told her what Welch was after. She wandered across to the laboratory bench. Lying on it was a thin metal cylinder, about four inches long, with a needle projecting from one end. A vial of colorless liquid was beside it. She realized this must be the tranquillizer dart, ready for filling. The needle was almost an eighth of an inch thick. Small wonder the lion objected to being hit by that! She picked it up, tried to see how it worked, failed, and put it down again. She was examining the liquid when she heard the handle turn in the outside door. She put the vial down again, telling herself that she was being extremely naughty.

“Hallo, there,” Ted said cheerfully, though with a question in his tone.

Loredana explained about her interest in lions with unusual brevity.

“It was you spotted Caesar limping, then? Glad to meet you.” He shook her hand warmly, finding her response firmer than he would have expected from her delicate appearance. “I'll have to take a look at his paw tomorrow, it's too late today. He's a magnificent animal, but easier to approach in the heat of the day when he's sleepy. So, how can I help?”

“How do you keep them fit?” She gestured towards his medicines. “I give my Timmy all sorts of tablets, but what do you give a lion?”

Few professionals do not enjoy talking about their profession. It was a full twenty minutes before Ted escorted Loredana back into the exhibition hall. He took with him his draft reply to the council to give Lord Gilroy.

“We were wondering where you'd got to.” Hamish came up to her immediately. “We're off to the house for drinks.”

“But I must change first! I simply must.” Loredana reverted to her normal demanding self, though making a point of thanking Ted with the sweetest of smiles.

Gilroy was relieved to see her too. The moment he needed to assemble a group, its members started to wander off. It was one of those immutable laws of nature, the kind they had taught about at Eton, like gravity or the way peas fall off one's fork. A professional tour leader's life must be absolute hell!

Before anyone else could stray, he and Dee Dee ushered all the guests into the vehicles and so back to the house. The serious business of the weekend was about to begin. Ted waved before taking his Land Rover again and Loredana blew him a kiss. “Such a darling man,” she said, causing Hamish to look at her askance. He expected her to be faithful in her infidelity. Dulcie noticed the blown kiss and her husband's expression, interpreted it correctly and quite suddenly decided that tonight would be the night. If Hamish took a trip down the corridor later on, it was going to be on a one-way ticket.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Gilroy announced when they were all in the hall, “drinks will be served in the library at six-thirty, that's in half an hour, and we'll be handing out the first clues. From then on it's murder time.”

Mrs. Worthington clapped, to Gilroy's consternation, and the others followed suit faint-heartedly. She had spent an industrious hour with Dodgson, working out how the notional poison would be planted. After that she had taken on board a little fortification, in the shape of the gin from her suitcase. She was now all set for her role as animator-in-chief.

“Darlings,” she announced, “I don't know about all of you, but I can't wait for the first clue.”

“Speak for yerself,” Welch was heard to mutter, before Dee Dee firmly chivvied them all upstairs to change, Mrs. Worthington included.

“Am I dreaming,” she asked Gilroy, “or has that woman been at the bottle?”

“Sounded a bit like it,” Gilroy agreed gloomily. “Have to tell Dodgson to keep the drinks locked up.”

“Which you cannot do, honey. This is an all-inclusive weekend, remember? Right through from the beer to the brandy. When are you seeing Welch?”

“After dinner.”

“Well, for God's sake, don't sign anything.” Dee Dee was tempted to insist on being present, but that would be too demeaning for her husband. “Now, I am about to transform myself into Mrs. Louise Sketchley. And don't you dare applaud when I come down.”

Half an hour later, rather too punctually, Jim and Jemma Savage descended the great stairway. Jemma paused to fondle one of the carved unicorns at the bottom. “It is rather splendid, isn't it, Daddy. Think of the work this must have taken.”

As they stood there, the muffled sounds of an altercation came from somewhere close by.

“Officially it's murder time,” Jemma whispered. “We'd better listen.”

The voices were easily traceable to an oak door off the hall, leading to the room that was Lord Gilroy's office, though neither of them knew this. It sounded as though two men were arguing, but not loudly enough for the words to be distinguishable. Then suddenly one bellowed sentence came through distinctly.

“You bloody well will! Or else!”

There was a brief silence. Then a third, less belligerent, voice added, “You haven't any option.”

The reply was inaudible. It also sounded as though the threat might have ended the conversation. Jim and Jemma backed away from the door in case it was opened.

“That was Mr. George Welch shouting,” Jim remarked. “No question about it. God, he's a thug.”

“It did sound terribly real,” Jemma commented. “I mean, not like acting at all. But who were the others?”

“No idea. Better make it the first of my detective's observations.” Jokingly her father pulled out a small red spiral-bound notebook and recorded the time, 6:31
P.M
., and the words. Then they went through into the library, where the butler was on duty with a drinks tray.

They were the first arrivals. Dee Dee greeted them, looking superb in a long flame-coloured dress, with a diamond choker and diamond earrings.

“Meet Mrs. Louise Sketchley,” she said genially, “rich widow and blackmail victim. This might be the last occasion she'll be able to wear her best jewels, unless the blackmailer is defeated, so she's loaded on the lot.”

“Which will remind her relations of just how much she's worth and what they stand to inherit,” added Gilroy, who wore a well-cut dinner jacket, yet somehow still looked as if he had only hired it for a salesman's conference. “Since you're the first down, would you like to read the first clue?”

“Why not?” Jemma agreed.

“But first,” he said, childishly pleased with all this “first” punning, “you can be the first to have the first drink. What's your poison, ha ha?”

“An orange juice and lemonade, please. And I hope it won't kill me!”

A look of panic came over Gilroy's dimpled features, as though he had suddenly realized that his rented trousers were unzipped. For a moment Jemma thought she might be the first intended victim. What had actually taken him aback was that he had failed to reckon on non-drinkers. They had orange juice on the drinks tray, but Dodgson needed to go to his pantry to fetch lemonade. It was a relief when Jim Savage asked for an ordinary “G and T,” the standard drink of the Surrey stockbroker belt where he and Jemma lived. Gilroy winced at the expression, but at least gin and tonic was easy and he poured it himself, mixed another for Dee Dee, and gave himself a Scotch and soda.

“Here's to the weekend.” He raised his glass and they all toasted its success. “And here”—he took two slips of paper from a small pile on a table—“is the first clue.”

The text ran: “This evening two characters are overheard in fierce argument. Who are they and why are they in dispute?” Dee Dee was planning to stage an argument with Welch, which would not be hard to bring about, and give a red-herring clue as to why he might be the murderer.

“We seem to be ahead of the action,” Jemma remarked to her father as she read this.

“Possibly,” Jim conceded in his dry way, appreciating that during this weekend his own instinctive caution was going to be overruled by his daughter. Just as she had insisted that they didn't cancel, in spite of his losing his job, now she was going to find mysteries at every turn. She had all the curiosity and ghoulish imagination of a born crime reporter.

Gilroy overheard Jemma's comment and had an alarming presentiment that events were already spiralling out of control, in the way that his business ventures invariably did. He had begun to think of it as the curse of the Gilroys. If he really had been a car salesman, pieces would have fallen off his cars during the test drives and gearboxes disintegrated. It would be typical of his luck if there actually was a murder this weekend. What exactly had the girl meant? What row could she have already overheard? There was going to be one with Welch, all right. But that would be after dinner, and he thought he'd been pretty clever to weave it into the “murder” clues. “Dashed neat, darling, don't you think?” he had said to Dee Dee. So what the heck was all this?

“When will this argument be?” Jemma asked, sounding innocent.

“Could be any time.” He tried to put a bold face on the reply, but his discomfort showed through. Luckily he had to break off to welcome Dulcie and Hamish, who were soon followed by Loredana and then by Welch and his wife. Dee Dee had already guessed that only Dulcie and the Savages would put any effort into making the weekend work, and she was right. Loredana's interest in the evening went precisely as far as tricking herself out in a skimpy, clinging silk dress, which revealed a great deal more than it concealed and kept both Welch's and Hamish's eyes on her most of the time.

However, Hamish had dressed decently, almost overdressed himself, in a dark-blue velvet smoking-jacket with enough loops of black braid on its sleeves to satisfy a four-star general.

As for Welch, he was in another of his Mafia-style blue suits, causing Adrienne embarrassment and anger. She had told him to pack a dinner suit and he'd refused. “What, tog meself up for that toffee-nose?” he'd snorted “You have to be joking!” Why did George have to be so obstinate and always put people's backs up? There were times when she had really had enough. “Reely,” she'd told her mother last week, “now I've wormed that million of insurance out of him, I'd be better off if he did drop dead. No more having to beg him for money all the time and I'd be able have my friends round when I want.”

It had taken little short of the rack and thumbscrews to get George to buy that insurance, but the threat of more Lloyds losses had done the trick. She'd pointed out that Lloyds could take every penny if he died unexpectedly, whereas an insurance payout would be inalienably hers. She suspected he'd given in because having done so gave him a kind of licence to womanize. She felt a lot more secure as a result, but was still furious at the way he kept sneaking glances at Loredana's well-defined nipples. That woman was no more than a high-class tart, she decided. Trust George to be spellbound!

Gilroy's fears regarding his guests' enthusiasm were justified when the rest were given their clues. Welch read his and scrumpled it into a pocket. Hamish made a sotto-voce comment and did the same. Loredana handed hers to Hamish, protesting she had nowhere to put it. Possibly not, Jemma thought wickedly, since she was neither carrying a handbag nor wearing a bra, though lacking a handbag was strange. She was probably worried she'd end up leaving it in the wrong room. The vibes about Loredana and Hamish had been easy to pick up.

Dulcie's reaction was the most intriguing. She smiled to herself as she read the clue, then carefully folded it and tucked it into her evening bag. What caused that smile? Jemma wondered.