Chapter 15
SATURDAY NIGHT
In the course of the next hour, we all changed places three or four times, and I found myself speaking to most of the guests and to all of the actors.
I didn’t get the chance to speak to Alice, but I was pleased to see at least some of the guests interacting with her as the meal progressed.
Darkness fell and Valentina set candles on the tables under the pergola, giving the night a romantic air.
Any trace of romance disappeared at just after nine-thirty, when there was a sudden crash.
Oscar jumped to his feet and my eyes followed the direction of his pointing nose.
At the next table but one, a lone figure was slumped forward, face down, with a wine bottle lying smashed on the floor alongside.
Even from this distance, the blonde hair, the golden mask and the cream gown were unmistakable.
Alice, AKA Donna Alicia, the Doge’s wife, had been murdered.
It was time for the Magistrate to get to work.
I got to my feet and walked across, taking charge of the situation.
I moved everybody away from the table, just as if it were a real murder, leaving Alice slumped with her head on her hands, apparently dead.
I toyed with the idea of letting my hand press against the carotid artery in her neck as I had done numerous times in my career as a detective, but I decided that, as this was only a game, the audience would just have to take my word for it that she was dead.
I turned towards the assembled guests. There was an expectant silence, broken only by the distant sound of an aircraft coming in to land at Marco Polo airport.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have grave news.’ I did my best to act the part.
‘Donna Alicia, the wife of our beloved Doge, has been murdered, and the killer has to be here among us now.’ I took off my mask and let my eyes run across the terrace as I addressed them all.
‘Fortunately, I know that you will all now do your best to solve this case for me. Has anybody any theories about who might have committed this foul deed?’
The actor playing the part of the Doge stood up and pointed an accusing finger at his half-brother’s wife. ‘I know it was you, Donna Eleonora. You killed my beloved wife.’ He looked over in my direction. ‘Magistrate, how was she killed?’
I had been wondering about this. Had this been a real murder, I would have ordered a forensic team to come and establish the facts, but as this was a game, I did a bit of invention. ‘It looks to me, Your Excellency, as if she has been poisoned.’
The Doge nodded slowly. ‘I wonder if the poison was intended for her or for me. If it was poison, then I could just as easily have eaten or drunk whatever it was that has killed her. I was sitting alongside her only a few minutes ago.’ He spun around once more and pointed his finger in the direction of his half-brother’s wife again. ‘It was you. I know it was you.’
I thanked him for his intervention and threw it open to the guests.
Greg Gupta was the next to stand up. He appeared to have no doubt about the identity of the culprit, but it wasn’t Donna Eleonora.
He walked over to the table where Mary was sitting and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
‘The last person I saw sitting with the Doge and his wife was this young lady, his personal secretary. She was best placed to poison the food on the table, so it must have been her.’
I looked around at the other guests. ‘A murder needs a motive. What motive might this young woman have had for killing her employer?’
Mary jumped to her feet and did a convincing job of denying any involvement in the murder.
This was followed by a variety of accusations and rebuttals from a number of guests, although at least half of them didn’t bother even to hazard a guess.
I assumed that they were still furious with Alice and had no intention of playing by her rules.
Jack Sloane was still sitting at a table by himself – as far as I could tell, he hadn’t moved an inch all evening – with no fewer than three wine bottles in front of him – two of them empty – and on the other side of the terrace, Lucy O’Connell had also chosen a table on her own.
Neither of them took any part in solving the mystery and appeared lost in their own little worlds – in Sloane’s case, a highly alcoholic one.
Oscar must have worked out that Lucy O’Connell wasn’t doing too well as he had wandered over to position himself alongside her and I saw her fondling his ears with her hand.
Hopefully, he would be able to bring some cheer into her life.
I gave the guests ten minutes or so of accusations and counteraccusations before I decided the time had come to wrap things up.
I genuinely had no idea whatsoever who had committed the murder and I was reaching for the sealed envelope in the pocket of my tunic for the solution when something suddenly struck me.
Alice had told me that the murder mystery would have a twist in the tail.
In other words, she had planned things so that everybody would be surprised, and it occurred to me that I might know what she had had in mind. It was Oscar that gave it away.
Ever since he’d met Alice, he’d been obsessed with her, and her generous distribution of tasty nibbles to him in the course of this evening had only cemented their relationship further.
As a result, he had spent most of the meal either sitting alongside me, or more often positioned beside Alice, looking up at her adoringly – and receiving yet more food in return for his idolatry.
And yet, he had now transferred his attention to the lonely figure of Lucy O’Connell.
Or had he?
I called the proceedings to order.
‘Right, ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s time we solved this murder.
’ As I spoke, I walked through the tables across to where Lucy O’Connell was sitting with Oscar at her side and I stopped when I reached her table.
‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, unless I’m very much mistaken, you will find the ever-resourceful wife of the Doge, whose cunning ruse has allowed her to avoid assassination.
’ I pointed at the figure in Lucy O’Connell’s costume.
‘Would you like to stand up and tell everybody the truth, Donna Alicia?’
I was gratified to hear at least a couple of gasps of surprise behind me and even more gratified to see the figure dressed in Lucy O’Connell’s clothes slowly stand up and reach for her mask.
She pulled it off and revealed what I had suspected.
Alice had swapped clothes and masks with Lucy, so as to confound the murderer and her guests, and there was even a little ripple of applause.
At this point, I decided to hand over the big reveal to the party organiser.
‘And now, Donna Alicia, it’s over to you to tell us exactly what happened. Who just tried – and failed – to murder you?’
She headed for the centre of the terrace and as she passed me, she murmured quietly in my ear, ‘Selena said you were good.’ She stopped when she reached the middle of the group of guests and launched into her explanation.
It was a bit tortuous, and I had a feeling that the logic wouldn’t have stood up to close scrutiny in a court of law, but everybody listened, most of them apparently riveted, as she revealed that the murderer had in fact been the character played by Dirk Foster.
He, Don Dirco, had once had a relationship with the Doge’s wife that had ended when he’d been unfaithful to her.
Since then, he had lived in fear of her taking her revenge against him and had chosen to strike first, before she could tarnish his reputation.
I studied the faces around me as she related the backstory that so closely reflected the events that had really happened in Alice’s past. As the murder mystery was now over, most of the guests had removed their masks, and I was able to observe their reactions to this story.
Quite clearly, it didn’t come as such a surprise to at least some of them.
As for Dirk Foster, his face displayed a range of emotions from outrage and anger to something more akin to embarrassment and, before Alice had even finished talking, he leapt to his feet and disappeared into the dark.
His departure was followed by another ripple of applause led by Greg Gupta, who stood up and walked over to where Lucy O’Connell was still playing the part of the murdered woman.
‘It’s all right, Lucy, you can straighten up now. The big bad wolf’s gone.’ He touched Lucy’s shoulder and immediately stepped back with a shocked expression on his face, casting a despairing look in my direction. ‘Something bad’s happened. Something very bad.’
I hurried across and did what I had almost done fifteen minutes earlier.
I placed my finger against the side of her throat in search of a pulse but found nothing.
I tried again, but still without success.
My mind was racing. The premonition I had been feeling had been justified.
The murder mystery game had suddenly become a real murder.
It was a struggle to get my head round what had just happened.
Finally, accepting the inevitable, I straightened up and turned around slowly.
‘I’m afraid it looks as though she’s dead. ’
There was a boo from the far side of the terrace. ‘Damn actors, always trying to milk it. Cut, sweetheart, cut. Your scene’s over.’ Jack Sloane’s slurred voice was unmistakable, and his comment raised a few sardonic laughs.
I held up my hands to quell the merriment.
‘I’m afraid I’m not joking. This is for real.
Lucy O’Connell is dead.’ I took out a tissue and used it as I gently loosened and removed her mask.
The blank, staring eyes on the tabletop told their own story, and I heard gasps from several of those closest to the table.
In case there were still any doubters, I lifted the convincing blonde wig from her head, revealing her short hair beneath.
The jocular mood across the terrace died, and I turned and searched the shadows for Diego or Valentina.
Spotting them over by the kitchen door, I called across to them.
‘Contact the emergency services now – police and ambulance.’ As they stood there, rooted to the spot, I raised the intensity in my voice. ‘A woman’s dead. Call them. Now!’
As Diego turned and scuttled back indoors, I set about securing the crime scene – if, indeed, it had been a crime.
A drug addict ending up dead didn’t always imply foul play.
Maybe Lucy had overdosed. Automatically, as I’d done so many times before, I did my best to memorise where everybody had been seated, wishing I’d thought to tuck my notebook in my pantaloons.
I called Valentina over and asked her if she could organise some coffees and maybe something a little stronger for anybody who felt the need.
I positioned her son and daughter several metres from the victim with instructions to ensure that nobody came any closer than that.
Once I was certain that nobody was going to interfere with the crime scene, I walked over to where Alice was still standing, motionless.
Her face was deadly pale. I recognised the signs of shock and took her arm, leading her to a seat, where she collapsed in a heap and looked up despairingly at me.
‘That could have been me, Dan. Whoever did that thought they were killing me.’ There was abject terror in her voice, and I did my best to reassure her – for now.
‘At this stage, we don’t know whether Lucy really has been murdered, Alice.
She was a drug addict. You know that, don’t you?
Maybe it was self-inflicted. The police will be here soon and they’ll get to the bottom of it.
Please try not to worry.’ Automatically, as I had done many times in my career, I tried to sound as comforting as possible although, deep down, my gut was telling me that something far worse than suicide had just taken place here.
Predictably, Oscar positioned himself at Alice’s side again with his nose on her knee, doing his best to add a bit of canine support.
She looked as if she needed it but, I reminded myself, she was a very talented actor, after all.
The brutal truth was that if Lucy O’Connell really had been murdered, her killer was almost certainly one of the people close by me right now.
And nobody was above suspicion.