Mallory looked up from the page. ‘I don’t know why she directed me towards this.’
‘It means that Bryony is happy to poison everyone,’ said Michael. ‘Nothing is a coincidence. Your headache, you’ve been poisoned. Ditto Edith’s drowsiness. There’s both a grand plan and a willingness to improvise. That’s Bryony’s hallmark. These last few hours will be the deadliest. Bryony is happy to target anyone.’
She stood, her body weary from fear and lack of sleep. ‘It’s simply confirmation of what we already knew. None of us are safe – and that includes you, Michael.’
He said nothing to her for a moment. She took in his waxy skin, but Michael, although attractive with his sculpted features, never looked well. ‘I’m all right. Look, this is what’s bothering me. You have three suspects for Bryony: Mona, Charlotte and Beth. They don’t all look alike, even though they’re a similar build. We think Grace recognised Bryony straight away, so why couldn’t Stella identify her?’
‘She says she didn’t see enough of Bryony to get a permanent impression of her. Perhaps it would be more useful to ask how Grace recognised her.’
‘We’re not going to find that out though, are we? It could be the way she walked, laughed even. The adults, Stella and Noah, wouldn’t have known this. Grace would.’ Michael shifted in his chair. ‘OK. Let’s take their appearances. Mona has bright red hair. Do you think it’s dyed?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘What else distinguishes her?’
Mallory considered. ‘She’s very thin. Far thinner than the others, although a similar build. Stella also thought she takes an unnatural interest in Edith Gregory.’
‘Ensuring the safety of the child needs to be our main priority. OK, Charlotte.’
‘Mid-brown hair, blue eyes. She has Bryony’s colouring but I think her appearance comes from hours at the makeup mirror. She gives the impression of spending a lot of attention on her looks.’
‘That’s more interesting, but if you wanted to alter your appearance, surely you’d make more of an effort.’
‘But that’s my point. She does make an effort.’ Mallory remembered the powder and ointments at Charlotte’s table.
‘OK. And Beth.’
‘With Beth I struggle to get past the exhausted-mother look. Her fair hair is dyed but the brown roots are clearly visible, suggesting she doesn’t have the time to make much effort with her appearance. No makeup, as far as I can see. If she’s Bryony, she’d be the easiest to recognise.’ Mallory sighed. ‘I just feel we go round and round in circles.’
‘If we agree Alys was the first poisoning, can we rule anyone out? She was sick about five-ish as she was coming off shift. All three suspects were here.’
‘Mona was, I’m sure. She must have been as she wasn’t on the last boat coming over. Charlotte and Noah had checked in the day before.’
‘That would be quick work on Charlotte’s part to go to the kitchens and poison the food.’
‘I have a horrible feeling that wouldn’t stop Bryony,’ said Mallory.
‘And Beth?’
‘She was out on the mainland. I saw them return but I’ve no idea how long they’d been there.’
‘That’s the whole point of poison though, isn’t it? The killer doesn’t need to be nearby. It removes killer from victim.’
‘I don’t think that’s much of a priority for Bryony, but you’re right, it still could be Beth. What gets me is, from what I know about Bryony, she was proud of the publicity she received. That was the dominant part of her personality, the thing that made the press turn against her. I don’t see it in any of our three women.’
‘Which means she’s hidden it,’ said Michael. ‘Which makes her especially dangerous.’
Charlotte was alone in her room. The bed linen was rumpled on the side of the bed Mallory had seen Noah lounging on the first evening of their stay. Mallory could sense his absence. The bathroom door was ajar and hanging from it was a green waxed jacket, the rain falling in rivulets from it and forming a pool at the base.
‘Has Noah been out?’ Mallory picked up the jacket, which was too large to belong to Charlotte. Yet it was the woman who blushed.
‘It was me, I’m afraid. I was feeling cooped up so I stood briefly under the canopy at the front of the hotel. I used Noah’s jacket as it’s the most waterproof but I got that wet just standing still.’
Mallory looked closely at the woman. It was an unnecessarily long explanation, which put her senses on high alert. She put the heavy jacket back on the door. ‘It’s your husband I wanted to see. Is he around?’
‘He’s gone for a wander around the hotel. He seems agitated about something.’ She smiled. ‘Even more agitated than usual, I mean. He’s been like a cat on hot bricks all afternoon so I told him, well as much as you can tell a man like Noah, that he needed to expend some energy.’
Again, that long stream of information. Mallory shifted her opinion of Charlotte again. Perhaps she was just a woman who needed to explain her position in life.
‘I’ll go and find him.’ Mallory hesitated. Here was a chance to find out about Noah if he didn’t want to talk to her himself.
‘What does Noah do?’
‘Noah? He’s a criminal barrister. He and his brothers all went into the law. James Vass didn’t pay a fortune in school fees for them to lounge about.’
Which explained the ease with which he took charge of his daughter after she found Grace’s body. Mallory was aware of being wrongfooted again. She’d pegged Noah down as an arrogant oaf, she was right about the arrogance but, as a barrister, he had as much insight into the criminal mind as she did. He was also a potential victim of Bryony – and Mallory had his wife on her list of suspects. Mallory groaned. She should surely rule Charlotte out. Noah would know if he’d married a killer. And yet, Mallory knew of prison authors who married convicts they’d met in prison, guards who had relationships with their wards. It was possible, just possible, that Noah knew who Charlotte was and had married her anyway. No wonder he had been so insistent when asking questions about Grace’s cause of death. Stella’s revelation about Bryony and a child could be in relation to Charlotte’s marriage to Noah. Even the acquisition of a stepdaughter would trigger interest from authorities.
‘I’ll go down and talk to him.’
She found Noah in the library. For a man with restless energy, he was oddly still. He was sitting at one of the tables, his elbow resting on the table. He started slightly when she appeared.
‘Can I talk to you?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What has Julia been up to now?’
‘It’s not about Julia. It’s about Bryony Clive.’
‘Bryony.’ He let out a sigh. ‘Yes, I thought, at some point I’d need to have a conversation about Bryony. As soon as I heard the name Grace Pagonakis, I had a horrible feeling the past was coming back to haunt me.’
‘Who told you Grace’s name?’
‘My wife wheedled it out of your waitress.’
‘You do know Bryony’s here? That’s my assumption.’
‘Is she? I rather hoped we’d be dealing with a pale imitation. She became infamous enough, didn’t she? I think there might even have been some copycat poisonings around the world.’
Mallory’s heart sank. ‘So you haven’t recognised her amongst the guests?’
He shook his head, but kept his eyes on the table.
‘Noah, it’s important. Are you absolutely sure you haven’t seen Bryony here?’
‘No.’ He held her gaze, his amber-flecked eyes reminding her of a lion’s.
Mallory sat opposite him. ‘Tell me about her. Anything you remember. Anything that will help.’
He put his hands in the air, a gesture of defeat. ‘It was one of my first murder trials and, of course, the most famous. I was the junior defence barrister so it was an exciting case to be part of but we never really expected her to get off. The idea of diminished responsibility was hard to argue when confronted with Bryony, who was highly intelligent and perfectly aware of what she’d done.’
‘How did she look?’
‘Pretty insignificant. She wore glasses, which were pretty, a sort of turquoise blue, but it meant that the rest of her face was hidden. You sort of focused on the glasses, if that makes sense. Brown hair that she wore in a ponytail. At first, I felt sorry for her. She was tiny in a courtroom of adults. She sat at the bench with a social worker next to her. For support, but the social worker was more upset at the evidence in the trial than she was.’
‘The newspaper reports emphasised her lack of emotion.’
‘Exactly. We tried to argue a diminished responsibility plea but the judge wasn’t having any of it.’
‘And she was found guilty.’
‘Exactly. Except…’
‘What?’
‘Well firstly she was irrationally angry about the testimony of her friend, Grace Pagonakis. If anyone’s got reason to be angry, it would be Grace. She sees her schoolfriends poisoned and then is nearly killed herself. I’d be pretty upset. But Grace was a lugubrious child. A sort of plodder who gave her evidence in this adenoidal voice. I remember the only time I saw Bryony angry was after she’d given her testimony in court.’
‘What was it in particular that upset her?’
‘I think it was the fact Grace was giving evidence for the prosecution. I think she’d not expected any survivors and Grace laid the afternoon events out in their appalling glory.’
‘If she’s on the island, it’s a pretty good motive for Grace’s death. Why was no photo of Bryony produced? We have them for other child killers.’
‘That’s the problem. A few of them have been identified as an adult. If you have a photo, you have an image to compare it with. There are experts in ageing children’s faces. After the guilty verdict, the stringent reporting requirements weren’t lifted.’ Noah drummed his fingers on the table. ‘So, I’m afraid you’ve only got my memory to go on.’
‘And Stella’s.’ Mallory decided, for the moment not to inform him of the woman’s death.
‘Stella?’
‘The guest with the orange glasses. She was a DS on the case. She wrote a book about her experiences under the name of Anna Kirby. It was called The Birthday Girl.’
‘Never heard of it. And she’s here?’ His face darkened. ‘Then she needs to be bloody careful. Do you know why we’re here? Someone sent an email to Julia saying a great aunt of her mother’s was a nun on this island and was involved in a poisoning. There was a tour being organised – a one-off – and it was to come this weekend or forever miss the opportunity.’
‘Bridget Marsh.’
‘That’s not her name.’
‘I mean Bridget Marsh was the girl who was poisoned. Julia was sent an email?’
‘Exactly. And Julia, of course, loved the story. She’s had a rough time at school. She was in a fair bit of trouble last year and, after a lot of therapy, we think she’s on the straight and narrow. But of course, that makes her a loser in her friends’ eyes. She asked me to book a weekend here.’
‘When did she ask?’
‘A few weeks ago. Now I’m wondering if I’ve been played.’
‘Noah. You have got to be very, very careful. Stella Atkinson is dead.’
‘What?’ He stared at her. At last she’d shocked him.
‘I found her dead. I can’t tell you the whole story now but believe me you have to protect yourself.’
‘And my family.’ He stood but Mallory saw his hands were shaking.
‘Noah. I need you to confirm this one more time. You absolutely don’t recognise Bryony now? There are some female guests here about the right age for Bryony. Beth Gregory, for example, the woman with the young child. Or Mona with the red hair. Stella even thought it was me.’
He looked up, startled. ‘You?’
‘It’s not me, I promise.’
He shook his head.
‘I know this is going to sound strange, but you’re absolutely sure that Charlotte isn’t Bryony, aren’t you?’
He looked back at her, his eyes shrouded. ‘Give me some credit for knowing my own wife.’