Chapter 20
Everyone stared.
‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’ Lady Bradbury-Scott rose from the sofa. ‘Leave him alone.’
Sitting next to her, Adriana put a hand on her mother’s arm. Voice low and warning. ‘Mother . . .’ But she was shaken off.
Her Ladyship straightened her broad shoulders, chin up, tall and regal. ‘Sandy didn’t kill Reginald, I did.’
‘Mother!’
Sergeant Moore blinked at her. ‘Jocasta, don’t!’
‘It was an accident. He came in, drunk from the wedding, fell and hit his head on the bath.’
Oh, aye, that was plausible.
Roberta didn’t bother suppressing the laugh. ‘What, and then magicked himself up onto that statue? Do I look like I floated down the Dee on an unbuttered dildo?’
She waved that away. ‘Nairn said he would dispose of the remains. I suppose he couldn’t resist the urge to create one of his silly little tableaus on a more dramatic scale.’
Adriana sighed, then stood. ‘Mother’s only covering for me. I discovered Daddy had embezzled hundreds of thousands from party campaign coffers. Complete shamefest. When I confronted him, he threatened to sabotage Douglas’s political career if I told anyone. We struggled and he fell.’
Douglas stepped out from behind the sofa and took his new wife’s hand.
‘Actually, darling, I think you’ll find it was me who struggled with him, when I came to your aid.
And then he fell and hit his head.’ Douglas raised his chin, playing to the crowd.
‘It was a tragic stroke of bad luck, but I truly believe he would have preferred death to the ignominy of the headlines when it got out he’d betrayed our beloved Conservative Party. ’
Someone in the back actually clapped.
‘Oh Jesus, no’ this . . .’ Roberta stepped away from Sergeant Moore and glowered at the lot of them. ‘Do you think this is some sort of joke? Two men are dead!’
The last one on the couch levered his fat bum upright, took a deep breath and straightened his three-piece tweeds. ‘No, I killed Father.’ Tears sparkled on those chubby cheeks. ‘I had enough of the pain he’d put Mother through. The man was a monster!’
‘Eef I can make small statement.’ The wee Russian pushed his way to the front of the crowd. ‘Friday night, I see Meester Bradbury-Scott trip and fall down all the stairs. Was terrible accident. Very shocking to me.’
Agatha Beresford stepped forward, clutching her husband’s hand. ‘No, it was us. He robbed Mortimer of his chance of an OBE!’
Susan’s boss nodded. ‘Man was an absolute stinker of the first water.’
A voice from the back: ‘Hear, hear!’
‘Actually,’ Mr Reeves shook his head, pulling himself up to his full half-sooked lollypop-height, ‘it was me that killed the chap, and me alone. I shan’t say why, but it was a matter of honour. I’m responsible, not this good lady!’
Agatha beamed at him. ‘Oh, you are sweet, Hugo.’
It was a proper sodding garden party in here.
Roberta thumped her boot heel into the carpet again. ‘Enough of the “I’m Spartacus” bollocks! It doesn’t matter how much of a shite he was, you don’t get to kill him!’
Everyone looked at her like she’d just crapped in the punchbowl.
Then the lights flickered a couple of times and the library was plunged into darkness again.
Idiots! Why did she always have to work with idiots?
She turned to PC McKinnon. ‘No’ now, you snot-brained sheep-shagging halfwit!’
‘It wasn’t me! Generator must’ve run out of diesel.’
Lord Fitzroy-Galbraith sat forward in his armchair, leaning on the head of that silver walking stick of his, eyes glittering in the dark like a rat’s. A razor smile clear in his voice. ‘You seem to have an embarrassment of confessions, Detective Chief Inspector. And you can’t arrest everyone.’
‘You bloody watch me!’
A hard, white circle of light burst into the library, sweeping across the carpet till it found Roberta, making her glow like she was centre stage.
PC McKinnon shuffled in after it. ‘Erm, there is another option. If you’re interested?
’ He let his torch beam drift across the shelves of books.
‘Only, after you were banging on about Murder on the Orient Express, I found it in the library.’ The torchlight came to rest on the crime section.
‘I skiffed through to the end, cos, you know, not really my kind of thing, but I thought . . . maybe . . . we could do what Hercule Poirot does?’
How was that a reasonable suggestion?
‘Hercule . . .?’ She thumped him. ‘This is real life, Constable, no’ a Golden-Age crime novel!’
‘Ow!’ He backed off a pace and the torch focussed on her again.
‘No, but maybe I saw a broken window round the back of the property when I was looking earlier? So what if someone broke into the hotel Friday night, under cover of the storm, and murdered Sir Reginald? Then, you know, hung his body up on the statue, and disappeared off into the night before the bridge collapsed?’
Lord Fitzroy-Galbraith’s voice stalked out of the darkness, dragging its pink scaly tail with it. ‘Or, perhaps, he disappeared as the bridge collapsed? Meaning his body’s been washed downriver and out to sea, where it will never be found. Hmmm . . . But what about Nairn’s confession?’
McKinnon’s torch found him in the darkness, the beam wide enough at that distance to illuminate most of the VIP section. ‘Maybe no one needs to see it and we can chalk it up to a lonely old man going a bit dotty with all his stuffed weird animals in the woods?’
Lady Bradbury-Scott dabbed at her eye with a hanky. ‘So tragic.’
‘You know,’ the little Russian’s voice chipped in from the gloom, ‘now I am theenking about it, maybe I not see Meester Bradbury-Scott make fall. Maybe I see shadowy figure in middle of night?’
‘Ooh,’ Mortimer Beresford nodded. ‘Yes, I think I saw that too.’
Then Weird Janey sidled into the torchlight, one hand raised like she was needing a pee. ‘I’m sure the sound of broken glass woke me up. Must’ve been about . . . three in the morning?’
A man’s voice: ‘You know, that’s just what I remember: smashing glass, three a.m. Coming back to me, bright as day now.’
And before you could say, Lying Bunch Of Utter Bastards, they were all at it, nodding and murmuring in the darkness about how they all remembered the exact same thing.
Roberta bared her teeth again. ‘You can’t just—’
‘I wish to alter my statement.’ Lady Bradbury-Scott did that regal thing with her chin again. ‘Reginald never came to bed that night, because he was out . . . having relations with that floozy parlourmaid of his.’ She pointed at Weirdo Janey. ‘Her.’
‘Hoy!’ The redhead’s cheeks flushed hot pink. ‘I’m a Residents’ Hospitality-Experience Manager, not a parlourmaid.’ Didn’t deny the floozy bit, though.
Lady Bradbury-Scott gave her a little bow.
‘No offence.’ Then turned back to Roberta.
‘Sergeant Moore . . . Sandy, was with me all night after the reception ended and the bar was closed, so he couldn’t have had anything to do with Reginald’s unfortunate end.
Besides, he was far too tipsy. And he was with me last night as well, so he can’t have had anything to do with Albert Nairn’s suicide either.
’ She held her hands out to Sergeant Moore.
‘We’ve been having an affair, and are in love. ’
Moore bit his lip, then rushed over and wrapped her up in his arms, framed by torchlight. ‘Oh, Jocasta . . .’
She beamed at him. ‘Sandy!’
The pair of them kissed and every bugger in the room applauded, like this was a rom-com instead of a murder inquiry.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Roberta hauled in a deep breath. ‘YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF UTTER BASTARDS!’
Lord Fitzroy-Galbraith stood. ‘Well, I think that concludes our business, ladies and gentlemen. Janey?’
The weird wee redhead curtseyed. ‘Yes, Your Lordship?’
‘Open the curtains, there’s a good girl. And I think we’ll have afternoon tea in the conservatory today, shall we?’
Roberta turned on her heel and stormed from the room, slamming the library doors behind her.
She leaned back against the carved grey stonework that flanked the hotel entrance, and took another swig of Glenfeòrag, straight from the bottle. Burping as its smoky burn spread across her chest, warming Old Faithful from the inside.
From here, on the top step, beneath that stone portico, there was a perfect view – if your idea of a perfect view involved lots and lots of grey and rain and trees.
Not the comfiest of seats, bit hard on the old arse, but at least she wasn’t in there hobnobbing with conniving, lying, murdering, conspiratorial bastards.
Now that was something worth drinking to.
So she did.
Should’ve nabbed some crisps when she liberated the bottle, but there weren’t any in the sort-of-locked case it’d been hiding in behind the reception desk.
Well, it wasn’t like they needed it to welcome anyone, was it?
No bugger was turning up till the bridge got fixed, or the phones came back on . . .
She pulled out her mobile and checked. Nope: still no bars.
No bars and the battery was almost flat too.
But the generator was out of diesel, which meant no lights, no hot food, no hot water, and no way to recharge her e-cigarette either .
. . Unless she siphoned fuel out of those big posh four-by-fours marooned in the overflowing car park?
Or broke into someone’s Jaguar and hijacked their USB charging port? Which was definitely worth a go.
To celebrate, Roberta sooked in a huge breath of cherry vape and hissed it out through her nose. Closing her eyes to enjoy that nicotine and whisky hit.
A creak and a thunk sounded behind her – the hotel door opening and closing again.
‘Robbie?’ Susan settled down on the top step. Close enough to feel the warmth of her skin.
Roberta kept her eyes on the rain-drenched world. ‘Yup.’
‘That lanky constable’s off breaking a window round the back.’ She nudged her. ‘Are you all right?’
Course she wasn’t.
Another swig of Glenfeòrag, eyes front. ‘Did you know?’
‘Did I know what?’