Chapter 18
SUNDAY MORNING
It was eight-fifteen, and I’d just finished my breakfast when my phone bleeped to tell me that I’d received a text from Inspector Trevisan. It wasn’t a long message.
Definitely murder. Victim was poisoned. Please inform the others that I’ll be coming over soon to interview everybody. I have an interpreter booked, but she won’t be here until late morning. If you could help out, I’d be grateful. Thanks. Giulia.
For the sake of doing things by the book, I replied immediately.
No problem, but are you sure you want me to help? Now that it’s certain it was murder, I suppose I’m a suspect as well. Given that there are some very important people here, you’re no doubt being scrutinised by your superiors. I wouldn’t want to do anything that makes life difficult for you.
Her answer came back after less than one minute.
Thanks, Dan, but I already thought of that and passed your name up the line. Would you believe the questore himself has spoken to his opposite number in Florence, and you’ve been given a glowing reference. All help gratefully received.
I glanced down at Oscar. ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’
He was far more interested in the end of a croissant that I had given him, but he did at least wag his tail.
The only other guests sitting out under the pergola this morning were Greg Gupta and Carlos Rodriguez on one table, and Dirk Foster, all on his own at another.
I swallowed the last of my coffee and went over to break the news to them that Lucy had been murdered.
Gupta looked appalled, but Rodriguez just stared down into his coffee cup and gave no sign of even having heard what I’d said.
When I went across to Foster, he, on the other hand, visibly paled when I gave him the news.
If he was acting, he deserved every single award he’d ever won.
He looked up at me with an expression of unbridled horror on his face.
‘Murdered? She really was murdered? But how…?’
I decided to let the inspector answer this one when she got here, so I just shrugged my shoulders. ‘At this stage, I’m afraid I don’t know. Maybe drugs?’
‘Surely not. We flew over from the States together and she told me she’d had a hiccup – that’s what she called it – and she’d gone back on the drugs again for a few weeks, but that she was back off them again now. She sounded really committed this time.’
‘This time? Had you spoken to her about this sort of thing before?’
He took his time before replying. ‘Lucy and I had a thing together some years back. All right, so she’s…
she was a whole lot younger than me, but I really thought we might have had something.
She’d been doing drugs before she met me, but I got her to stop, and she was doing really well before things fell apart between us. ’
‘Can I ask why things fell apart?’
Again, I had to wait for his answer, but when it finally arrived, it didn’t really come as a major surprise.
‘I screwed up. I was in London filming a movie with Carlos and I ended up in the wrong bed.’ He looked up at me with what could have been genuine anguish in his eyes.
‘What’s wrong with me? I had this great girl back in the US and yet I still couldn’t say no to some random woman I met at a party.
’ He hung his head. ‘It’s been the story of my life.
I find somebody good and I screw it up. Thank God the media didn’t get hold of it, but the news got back to Lucy all the same, and that was that.
The relationship was over, and within days, she was back on the drugs again.
’ He reached out and caught hold of my arm.
‘I screwed up her life and mine, and now she’s dead.
But who would want to kill her? She was so sweet…
’ His voice tailed off and I left him to his coffee and his regrets.
I found Alice in her study and I passed on the message from the inspector.
I studied her face closely as the news that Lucy really had been murdered sank in.
I saw her reach for a tissue but, before she could raise it to her face, tears of real grief came running down her cheeks.
However good an actor she might have been, I couldn’t see how these might be anything but signs of genuine sorrow.
I sat quietly with her for a couple of minutes while Oscar at her side did his best to provide her with some much-needed support.
Finally, she blew her nose and looked across the desk at me, her eyes still damp and bloodshot.
‘Lucy’s dead, and it’s my fault. I was being selfish.
I thought this weekend would be a good way of getting some kind of closure for me, but all it’s done is to get a poor unfortunate creature killed.
I don’t know about you, Dan, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the murderer’s target was me.
It should have been me lying there, not Lucy.
’ A lone tear rolled from one eye, and she dabbed at it with her tissue. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’
‘You weren’t to know how extreme the reaction was going to be. Now, if you want to help Lucy, you need to concentrate on helping me and the police find out who did this.’
She nodded, and I decided the time was right to ask a few questions of my own before the police got here.
‘When I was reading through your book last night, I found references to many of your guests this weekend, but I couldn’t see any mention of Greg Gupta or Wilfred Baker.
Were they just invited to fill out the cast of your murder mystery, or did they have a role in your past as well? ’
She looked up from Oscar. ‘Greg, no. He and Carlos are a couple, so where Carlos goes, he goes. I don’t know what Greg sees in him. Greg’s a nice guy, but Carlos is a pain in the ass.’
I gave her a gentle prompt. ‘A pain in the ass who figures in your past, according to what I read last night. He said some uncomplimentary things about you, didn’t he?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Like I say, he’s an ass, but he’s a dangerous ass.’
My ears pricked up. ‘When you say “dangerous”?’
‘Dangerous to my career. Louie, my agent, told me I’d been picked for the starring role in a movie, but then Carlos got chosen to direct it and he talked the producers out of casting me.
’ She looked across the desk at me and shook her head.
‘That’s what I mean when I say he’s dangerous to my career. ’
‘But what would make him turn down a megastar like you?’
Her reply didn’t come straight away. Finally, she looked up. ‘He has a guilty conscience, and I imagine that seeing me reminds him of what he did, so he prefers to keep clear of me – and I’ve stayed out of his way as well up till now.’
‘Can you tell me what he did? What gave him a guilty conscience?’
After another long pause, she explained.
‘It was a long time ago, probably thirty years or so. I was in the running for an Oscar for my portrayal of Cleopatra, and my career was riding high. Everybody wanted a piece of me, and I was the toast of the town in LA. One night in June, I was invited to a party at Carlos’s place – it’s a ridiculous replica of a medieval castle just off Rodeo Drive.
It was a wild night with people doing drugs and drinking to excess.
At four minutes past midnight, one of the guests fell to his death from the top of the tower. ’
‘Four minutes past midnight? That’s a very precise time. How can you be so sure?’
She looked up. ‘Because I saw it happen, and the tower has a clock on it.’
‘And what did happen?’
‘The verdict was death by misadventure. The guy, a young actor called David Vernon, had been drinking heavily, and they said he must have slipped and fallen.’
I had a feeling I knew what was coming next, so I tried to ease her into it. ‘But that’s not what you saw?’
‘I don’t know what I saw. At least, I don’t know how he came to fall, but what I did see was Carlos up there with him.’
‘And you think he might have pushed the man over the edge?’ This was serious. ‘You think Carlos Rodriguez killed him?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t see Carlos as a killer, but what struck me as suspicious, and what still strikes me as suspicious to this day, is that Carlos swore blind he was down in his cellar, looking for more wine, when it happened.
Why would he lie about something as serious as that if he didn’t have a guilty conscience? ’
‘And did Carlos see you looking up?’
‘No question, eye contact. He saw me looking at him.’
‘Have you ever spoken to him about that night?’
‘I haven’t spoken to anybody about that night.
The police never questioned me and, looking back on it now, I suppose I didn’t have the courage to come forward.
After all, what could I say except that I’d seen Carlos up there?
To be completely honest, I was doing cocaine in those days – recreationally, not mainlining – and I couldn’t be totally sure about what I’d seen.
I was afraid that the police might start investigating me, and the fallout could have been terminal for my career.
’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘So I said nothing.’
I filed this news away for further reference and queried the other name I hadn’t found in her book. ‘What about Freddie Baker? Does he get a mention? I couldn’t see one.’
‘He’s there, all right.’ She paused for thought for a few seconds. ‘Take a look at the chapter headed “Falsehoods and Fabrications”. You’ll find him there.’
I decided to check that out before asking any more about her relationship with Baker, so I changed the subject slightly.
‘You told me your intention was to sit down with each of the people who figure in your autobiography and see how they react. Have you had the chance to do that yet with any of them?’
‘Not really. I had a quick word with Dirk yesterday lunchtime, but within seconds, we were arguing again.’