Chapter 23
SUNDAY LUNCHTIME
The sound of the lunch gong summoned me before I could dig any deeper into the mysterious Bloc organisation, and a glance at my watch told me that it was almost one o’clock.
In case I might have had any thoughts of carrying on working and turning up late for lunch, Oscar walked over to his spotlessly clean food bowl and stuck his nose right into it before glancing around at me and uttering a plaintive yelp.
I might be prepared to be late for lunch, but he certainly wasn’t.
I took the hint, abandoned my online research and got up.
I filled his bowl and, by the time I had washed my hands, he had hoovered it all up and was slurping up a bellyful of water to wash it down.
He really doesn’t take his time and savour his food.
We went outside and headed for the pergola, where lunch was being served. As we walked, it occurred to me that I might be able to find out more about the mysterious Bloc by talking to some of the guests over lunch – although I would have to pick my interviewees carefully.
Lunch today was roast beef in a thick, red-wine-based sauce.
As an alternative, Diego was busy grilling fresh fillets of fish, sardines, skewers of prawns, squid rings and octopus.
Along with these were grilled peppers, slices of cauliflower and even halves of red lettuce, sprinkled with olive oil and cooked on the barbecue. It all looked and smelt amazing.
I looked around and did a rough count-up.
Most of the guests had assembled – unsurprisingly, none of them deciding to come and eat with me after my presence alongside the inspector earlier – but there were a few notable absences.
I spotted Antoinette, but there was no sign of Freddie Baker.
Alastair Groves was here, but not his wife, and the most significant absentees were Alice, Mary and Dirk Foster.
I hoped this meant that Foster was sitting down with mother and daughter, digesting and discussing the momentous news.
Anna had prepared some excellent roast beef for my mum and dad last weekend so, seeing as we were not only at the seaside but immersed in it, I decided to go for a plate of assorted grilled fish.
Along with this, Valentina gave me a slice of toasted bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil and a couple of slices of grilled cauliflower and grilled red lettuce.
Grilled lettuce and cauliflower were something new to me, but I accepted gratefully, keen to try something out of the ordinary.
I saw the inspector and the sergeant sitting at a table at the far end of the pergola, and when Giulia caught my eye, she waved to me to come over. I waved back but stopped off first for a quick word with Antoinette before her boyfriend put in an appearance.
‘Hi, Antoinette, can I ask you something? Have you ever heard of something called the Bloc?’
She gave a weary sigh. ‘That’s just about the only thing Freddie ever talks about. According to him, they’re out to get him. Worse than the Mafia, he calls them.’
‘And who is “them”? Do they have names, these people?’
‘It’s all very secret, as far as I can tell. I’ve no idea how many of them there are or who they are but, according to something Freddie said this morning, the leader was Jack Sloane.’
‘Sloane?’ I felt a surge of excitement. Surely this had to be more than a coincidence. ‘I didn’t think Sloane was a financier. Wasn’t he a casting director, a talent scout?’
She nodded. ‘A very rich talent scout. According to Freddie, he’s one of the richest men in Hollywood. His name almost never appears in the credits, but he’s been executive producer of all manner of movies, most of them making him an awful lot of money.’
I thanked her for the information and made my way across to the inspector and the sergeant. Sergeant Scarpa pushed out a chair for me and I sat down. Oscar wandered around to say hello to the two of them, while Giulia brought me up to date.
‘Between us, we’ve interviewed everybody who was at the party last night and we’ve managed to draw up a plan of exactly who was where when the first murder took place.
The bad news is that everybody was supposed to swap tables just before dessert was served, so almost anybody could have gone past the table where Lucy O’Connell was killed in the fifteen minutes between the fruit salad being brought out and the victim’s death.
Forensics have tested what was left of the fruit salad in the main serving bowl and there’s no trace of the poison, so somebody must have got close enough to the victim’s table to be able to drop the poison into her dish.
Ironically, the only guest who didn’t go near the victim’s table was Jack Sloane.
Nobody can recall him moving out of the seat he occupied from the very start of the evening, and people who sat with him at various times during the meal report that he had no interest in the mystery whatsoever and just sat there drinking and silently fuming. ’
I had been listening, but my mind was still processing the possible significance of what Antoinette had just told me.
Still, when Giulia stopped talking, I managed to summon up a bit of interest. ‘At least it removes one possible line of conjecture. On that basis, it seems quite clear that Sloane almost certainly can’t have murdered Lucy O’Connell, so the scenario of him committing murder and then taking his own life would appear to be a non-starter. ’
The two officers nodded, and I took a few bites of my lunch. In particular, the grilled red lettuce turned out to be unexpectedly excellent, but my mind was on the case rather than the food. Through a mouthful of fish, I asked another question.
‘What about people slipping away from the party to lace Jack Sloane’s whisky with poison?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘Anybody or nobody. With all the table changing, it would have been easy for anybody to have gone off for a few minutes without any of the others noticing. Mind you, there was one person who definitely left for about ten minutes. Mary Stevenson went into all the rooms, delivering copies of the book. She, more than anybody else, had every opportunity to add the poison to the whisky.’ He gave me a look that said quite clearly that he considered her to be a prime suspect.
I had been expecting something inconclusive so I was disappointed, but not surprised, that the only definite absentee had been Mary, but I didn’t share the sergeant’s opinion of her as a killer.
I was just about to tell them about Freddie Baker and the mysterious Bloc organisation when Giulia gave me a searching look and I realised that I’d been right when I’d thought that she didn’t miss much.
‘What’s on your mind, Dan? I can almost hear your brain churning. Have you discovered something?’
I gave her a smile. ‘You’re dead right. I’m still trying to get my head around what I’ve learned over the last few minutes. Does the name “the Bloc” mean anything to you?’
They both shook their heads, and I recounted what I’d read online and what Antoinette had just told me. As I did so, I saw her exchange glances with the sergeant. As soon as I’d finished, she delivered judgement.
‘That’s fascinating. From what Antoinette Latour has told you about Freddie Baker being short of cash and convinced that he was the victim of a deliberate campaign by the mysterious cartel, I think we should seriously consider him for the murder of Jack Sloane, but I still can’t see any reason why he would want to kill either Lucy or Alice. ’
I nodded in agreement. ‘My thoughts exactly. We must be missing something. How did the search of the guests’ rooms go?’
Sergeant Scarpa answered. ‘Nothing suspicious. As well as searching the bedrooms, Forensics have been poking around the whole complex, including the gardens, but without seeing anything untoward. Whoever it was who killed the first or even both victims, we’re going to struggle to prove it.’
Giulia looked similarly pessimistic. ‘I’ll get onto my people back at the station and ask them to investigate this Bloc organisation, but I’m not going to hold my breath for an immediate breakthrough.
As Scarpa says, we’re struggling, and I’m conscious that these people – important people with friends in high places – are expecting to be able to leave tomorrow at the latest. I’ve already had a number of them asking for permission to go today.
I’ve said no, and it didn’t go down well. ’
I sat there and thought about it as I picked at my food.
To my shame be it said, I barely tasted what was yet another excellent meal and I could almost feel the disapproval emanating from my ever-hungry Labrador.
I handed him down a couple of prawn heads – and they disappeared in a flash – while I did a bit more thinking out loud.
‘But Freddie Baker isn’t the only one. It wouldn’t surprise me if Sandra Groves turned out to be the person who tried to murder Alice.
She struck me as a particularly tough character.
Her husband potentially has a lot to lose if the book comes out, so she had a strong motive to silence Alice – or even Lucy, who is, after all, the only witness to what happened when she was an abused teenager.
Carlos Rodriguez – maybe aided and abetted by Greg Gupta – had motive to kill Alice, because she saw what happened at his party all those years ago, but why wait so long to silence her?
Maggie McBride is clearly furious with Alice after what was in the book, but surely hurt pride isn’t normally enough to make people resort to murder.
But even if it was one of them, why kill Sloane as well?
’ I looked up from my plate of rapidly cooling food.
‘Maybe we are looking at two different perpetrators after all.’
The sergeant’s gloomy expression darkened. ‘And we don’t have a shred of proof against any of them.’
I nodded in agreement. ‘Then there’s the question of the poison. I doubt whether any of the guests would have recognised the suicide tree here in the greenhouse, so my feeling is that the killer must have brought the poison with them.’
‘Unless the killer was Graceland herself or her PA, Mary Stevenson.’ The sergeant wasn’t giving up on his original theory.
I shared another grilled prawn with Oscar. ‘Anything’s possible, Sergeant, but there’s been an interesting development on that front in the last few minutes.’ I went on to tell them what Mary had just told me about her parentage and both officers looked as surprised as I had originally felt.
The inspector was the first to react, echoing my own thoughts.
‘I wonder why Alice Graceland chose today, of all days, to break the news to her daughter?’ She glanced around, but there was nobody near enough to hear.
‘Assuming that it did come as news to Mary Stevenson. Might she have been play-acting, Dan? Might the two of them be working together to murder their guests?’
‘I seriously doubt it. Mary looked totally convincing to me. I may be completely wrong – it wouldn’t be the first time – but I can’t see what possible reason either of them might have had for killing Lucy O’Connell – Sloane, maybe, but surely not O’Connell.
I believed Alice when she said she loved Lucy dearly.
As for why Alice chose today to give Mary the news, I’m only guessing, but I wonder whether she deliberately planned to tell Mary when Dirk Foster, the father, was here as well.
’ I tasted a piece of the grilled cauliflower, now cold, and decided that I wouldn’t be in a hurry to try this again on my own barbecue back home.
I handed a piece down to Oscar for his opinion and, most unusually for him, he took it suspiciously, held it in his mouth for a couple of seconds and then deposited it on the ground with an affronted expression on his face.
While I was still registering the fact that I had at last found a food that even my omnivorous dog wasn’t prepared to eat, the inspector took a drink of water and sat back.
‘As you so rightly say, Scarpa, we are desperately short of proof. To make matters worse, I agree that we might have to start looking for two different killers, rather than just the one, simply because it seems impossible to find any of the guests with a motive for murdering both. I’m going back to the office to see how they’re getting on checking the backgrounds of everybody here and to look into this Bloc cartel, but I have a feeling my superiors aren’t going to be too happy.
’ She sighed and stood up. ‘You never know, maybe we’ll have a stroke of luck. We certainly need it.’