Letting himself into his hotel room half an hour later Francis found Priya slumped on the sofa. Her eyes were red; she had clearly been crying.
‘You’ve heard the news?’
‘Last night,’ she said. ‘I ran into Rory and some of the Wyveridge lot at that Joe Sacco talk, and we went on to the poetry slam and ended up in the pub. Then Ranjit phoned to say he had something terrible to tell us. When he turned up, some of them thought he was taking the piss. The rest of us were too stunned to take it in. Then they started ordering bottles of wine. A wake, they said, though I thought it was a bit early for that. That Eva woman was crying. Really howling. It was all too much for me, so I came back here.’
‘You didn’t see my note?’
‘Not till this morning. I was knackered. I lay down flat on the settee and the next thing I knew it was breakfast time.’
Francis stared out across the room, watching the bright particles of dust dancing in the sunbeam that fell across the beige carpet in a narrow strip, the triangle at its tip reaching high up onto one of the wardrobe doors. Come to think of it, ‘dancing’ was entirely the wrong word; if this was a dance, it was the slowest, gentlest, swirling waltz.
‘What’s going on?’ Priya asked.
‘I wish I knew. So what did you think? About Bryce? Before this? That he’d been murdered?’
‘No, not to start with. But then, as the police stuck around, I was beginning to wonder. You?’
‘I thought they might find something.’
‘Like what?’ asked Priya.
‘That he’d been poisoned. Or suffocated.’
‘Poisoned! Why?’
‘He just looked so peaceful, lying there. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered a heart attack – or a stroke …’
‘But poison! Wouldn’t he have been rolling around in agony?’
‘Not necessarily. There are some very sophisticated products out there these days.’
‘But who on earth would have given it to him? And when? Considering that he came straight back here after the party and went to bed.’
‘He made himself some herbal tea.’
‘Yes,’ said Priya. ‘He made himself some tea. From one of the sachets in the room. Who could possibly have known that he’d pick Tranquillity?’
‘Someone who knew him well.’ Francis gave Priya a searching look. ‘There are other possibilities. Someone might have done something to the home-made biscuits. Or the pillow chocolates.’
‘In that case I’d be dead too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I ate one.’
‘What! When? You told me you went in there, saw him and immediately started screaming.’
‘I did. But then when I went back up to the room to say goodbye I saw there was a second chocolate. On my side of the bed. Which I’m embarrassed to say I polished off.’ She smirked guiltily. ‘It sounds a bit macabre, doesn’t it, but I needed that fix.’
‘I see.’ That explained that then – unless this was a brilliant double bluff.
‘It never occurred to me,’ she muttered. ‘I could have bought it too …’
‘I’m glad to have that explanation.’
‘What, you mean …?’
‘I thought it was possible you’d thrown it away,’ Francis said. ‘Or hidden it. While you were up there, changing.’
‘Why?’
‘To cover up the evidence.’
‘You thought I was …?’
‘The first person on the scene is always a suspect, Priya. You know that.’
‘You seriously thought I might have had something to do with it?’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
‘The one rule of thumb in this business is that you can never rule anything out.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘I’m surprised you let me stay in the same room as you, Francis. I might have slipped you a poisoned choccy too. What was my motive supposed to be, by the way?’
‘I had no idea. Unless you’d managed to get Bryce to change his will with the same speed that you sorted out every other aspect of his life.’
‘What! So I targeted him from the start. Knew he was rich. Talked myself into a job as his deputy. Seduced him. But why Bryce? Why didn’t I go for – I don’t know – a hedge funder? Why didn’t I marry a hedge funder, come to that? Get myself the man and the lifestyle without the hassle of killing someone.’
‘I’m sorry, Priya. I was trying to keep an open mind.’
‘And how about poor Grace? How do I fit into that?’
‘Second murders usually happen because someone discovers something the murderer of the first victim doesn’t want them to know. Grace was looking for answers yesterday. The first person she spoke to when she got into Mold was you.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘She left her scarf here, on the bed.’
‘Did she now? I hate to disillusion you, Francis, but she was buzzing around talking to everyone. Virginia, Jonty, Dan, she was like a bitch on heat. So what was I supposed to have told her that was so incriminating?’
‘I’ve no idea. But then again I’ve no idea what you were up to yesterday afternoon.’
‘Meaning?’
‘In theory, it’s entirely possible you drove out to Wyveridge with Grace …’
‘Yeah, right. “Oh do please show me the famous view from the battlements, Grace.” Push. Bye bye. I was at your event, Francis. In case you didn’t notice. I was about to tell you how interesting I found it. All that stuff about the Chinese and Dupin being a model for Holmes. After which I came back here for a snooze and then went out to hear Joe Sacco talk about graphic novels. The rest you know.’
‘Did anybody see you come back here?’
‘Not you, obviously. Hey, where were you after your talk? Perhaps it was you who was out at Wyveridge?’
‘Don’t be silly. I was in the Green Room.’
‘Apart from anything else I don’t see what my motive could have been. I owe my job on the paper to Bryce. Now he’s gone, I’ll be lucky to keep it …’
Suddenly she was in tears; and Francis felt terrible. He had been trying to be straight with her, but it hadn’t come out well. He sat down next to her on the sofa.
‘I’m sorry, Priya. That was very inconsiderate of me.’
‘No, no, it wasn’t.’ She looked up at him with gleaming eyes. ‘Why shouldn’t you suspect me? As you said, I was first on the scene. It’s just … well … I thought we were working together on this. I thought we trusted each other.’
‘We do … we are. I’m sorry. I was thinking aloud. I didn’t mean it.’
‘But you clearly did.’
‘I suppose I’d decided that someone had done it and my list of suspects is lamentably small. I mean, unless these two incidents were unrelated accidents, which seems unlikely, we’re still left with the basic question – why on earth would someone want to murder Bryce? A nasty review just isn’t enough of a motive.’
‘No.’ Priya pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her face. ‘But what,’ she said, after a few moments, ‘if it were more than a review? What if it was an actual exposé? Would that be enough, d’you think?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you this. I promised Bryce I wouldn’t breathe a word.’
‘About what?’
‘Celebrity and Hypocrisy.’
‘The talk he never gave?’
Priya nodded. ‘But how am I supposed to trust you? Especially after all you’ve just said.’
Francis stayed cool. ‘That’s a call only you can make,’ he said. He got to his feet and walked over to the window, looked out at the perambulating festival goers in the sunshine. Just below him, a young man in a white Australian-style hat was laughing at two female companions as he dodged theatrically out of the way of a slowly passing car. ‘Hey,’ he said, turning to her with a smile. ‘Shall we go up the road and grab a sandwich from the pub? I’m starving.’
At The Rising Sun, Mutton Chops was back behind the bar in person. Faced with two brown-skinned punters, he was on exaggeratedly courteous form.
‘And what can I get you and your, er, friend?’ he asked Francis. In a moment, Francis thought, he’s going to ask us where we originate from.
After a little deliberation, Francis and Priya ordered baguettes, then took their drinks out to an empty table under the apple trees.
‘The Sentinel Review attack on Dan Dickson was just part one,’ said Priya. ‘Of Bryce’s promotional plans …’
‘For The Poisoned Pen?’
‘Exactly. The main event was going to be his talk on Sunday afternoon. It was a full-blown assault on the phenomenon of celebrity publishing. How spineless and cynical editors are commissioning this stuff when privately, so often, they despise it. How tragic that the decision makers are almost all highly educated, yet continue to push out this crap that swamps any decent writing that might occasionally appear. Bryce was passionate about it. He’d been devious too, worming quotes out of leading publishers and agents to back him up. He was going to juxtapose those with extracts from some of the worst of these kinds of books. I think it would have brought the house down.’
‘So he let you see it?’
She nodded. ‘I was sworn to secrecy, though, because I think quite a few of the publishing types would have been seriously upset.’
‘That was the point, presumably. Nothing career destroying, though?’
‘Probably not in that bit. But then he moved on to the celebs themselves. How fraudulent they are in that often they only want one side of their story told, so each of these kinds of books is really just a huge vanity project.’
‘He had examples?’
‘Of course. Then he was going to talk about other aspects of the scam. Celebs who insist on saying they’ve written a book when they hardly even read. Not everyone is as honest as Jamie Oliver …’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He stood up in front of four hundred children’s writers and told them that despite his success as a bestselling author he’d never actually finished a book. Reading one, that is.’
Francis laughed. ‘To be fair, I did read somewhere that he was dyslexic,’ he pointed out.
‘Then the kind of distortions that follow from all that,’ Priya continued. ‘So, like, people start to think that writing is easy. From there he went on to the real hypocrisy. Whereby a personal myth is invented and sustained by a book, when the reality is something completely other.’
‘Such as?’
Priya leaned forward. ‘His star example was someone who’s headlining at this very festival.’
Francis thought hard, his brain spinning through the big names in the programme. Priya looked round conspiratorially, though there was no one within ten yards of them.
‘Jonty,’ she whispered.
‘What, Family …’
‘… Man, yes. The idea of this wholesome guy who lives with his family and his pigs and chickens on a smallholding in Somerset is total bollocks. Apparently he spends most of his time in Soho snorting coke and shagging waitresses. His poor wife looks after the farm and he just turns up to film …’
‘It all sounds a bit libellous, Priya.’
‘Bryce’s argument was that proof of the truth is a defence in libel. He had evidence to back up everything he was going to say. Sworn affidavits from girls Jonty had dumped, one he’d got pregnant.’
‘Spare us, not a love child.’
‘Little Amelie. Aged two and a half. And this is the really shocking bit. Jonty doesn’t want to see either her or her mother and he pays the mother the absolute minimum required by law … Family Man.’
‘Goodness …’ muttered Francis. Here at last was a real motive. ‘So why hasn’t this come out in the press?’
‘Jonty had all that covered, according to Bryce. Point one, he’s a national treasure, so unless the evidence is incontrovertible people won’t believe it. Point two, he’s got an immensely powerful PR who offers up the misdemeanours of lesser celebs in return for hands off Jonty. Point three, just to sew it up nicely, he’s got a super-injunction.’
‘And how was Bryce going to get round that?’
‘By claiming he wasn’t aware of it. Jonty’s lawyers had served the super-injunction on the newspapers but hadn’t thought of serving it on authors like Bryce.’
‘But would the papers be able to print what he’d said?’
‘They’d find a way. Probably by getting someone to repeat the allegation on Twitter. Once the cat was out of the bag, their lawyers would be able to advise that publication was fair game.’
‘He’d worked it all out, hadn’t he? Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’
‘I swore to Bryce that I wouldn’t say anything about it to anybody.’
‘While he was alive. But obviously this makes his death so much more suspicious. Quite a few people stood to lose if that talk went ahead. Not just Family Man.’
‘D’you really think Jonty might have had something to do with all this? But he’s such a huge star …’
‘All the more reason,’ said Francis. ‘If his brand goes down in flames there’s one heck of a lot to lose. For him, the publishers, the TV company, the associated merchandising operations, the annual Family Man exhibition at Earl’s Court. It’s an awful lot of dough. Now and in the future. Because his career would never come back from a revelation like that. It’s not as if he’s some Jack-the-lad, like Gordon Ramsay or Boris Johnson, who can just say, “Yeah, I did it, sorry, bit stressed at the time” – and then everyone forgets it. This is central to everything he stands for. The question we need answering now is: had Jonty somehow found out what was in this talk? If he had: how and when? Presumably recently, otherwise he would surely have tried to scupper Bryce earlier. I mean, is this something that someone might have gossiped about at one of the parties? On Saturday night, even?’
‘But that was the night Bryce died.’
‘I know. So maybe earlier on Saturday. Or Friday night?’
‘But how could they have done? I was the only one who knew.’
‘Are you certain about that?’
‘Not completely certain. I mean, Bryce could be indiscreet.’
‘I should say! At the Sentinel party he nearly spilled the beans about his talk to Grace, right in front of you.’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘I was there. I’d just been chatting to him.’
‘Were you? I don’t remember that.’
‘You breezed up with some champagne from Laetitia and cut him off just as he was about to say something. He was going on about having a big fish in his sights. He must have been talking about Jonty.’
‘You’re right,’ said Priya thoughtfully. ‘You don’t think he was just teasing her?’
‘It didn’t look like it to me …’
‘Because he swore me to total secrecy. And I didn’t get all this out of him easily.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t. But I’m afraid, from what I saw, that doesn’t mean he didn’t tell someone else what that Sunday session was going to be about. Who then told Jonty. Or one of his people.’
‘If you say so …’
‘We need to get to Jonty somehow,’ Francis said, excited now. ‘And/or the people around him. Discreetly suss them out about all this. So how are we going to do that?’
‘I suppose we could do worse than go and listen to him talk. He’s on in twenty minutes.’
Priya passed over the festival programme, open at that afternoon’s page:
2 pm. Big Tent. £10
FAMILY MAN
Everyone’s favourite countryman and smallholder, Jonty Smallbone, talks frankly about the ups and downs of life on Peewit Farm, the joys and challenges of bringing up three kids in a rural setting, and the problems he faced as he researched and wrote his latest book, Wild Stuff.