The rain continued unrelentingly, splashing off rooftops, bubbling along gutters and into drainpipes, running in streams down the steep hill to the river. An hour and a half later Francis and Priya met up again in the Old Bakery.
‘Any joy?’ Francis asked, as he ran his fingers through his wet hair, then sat down opposite her at a table by the wall.
Priya grinned. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I got through to the Sentinel and managed to speak to Grace’s boss on Muckraker. Matthew Ashcombe.’
‘And?’
‘He’s in a state. Wondering if he shouldn’t talk to the police himself. Basically, Grace phoned in yesterday afternoon at about quarter past three to say she had a scoop.’
‘Did she tell him what it was about?’
‘She couldn’t get hold of Matt personally, because he was in a meeting, but she did tell his assistant that it was something big to do with a major TV celebrity. Matt never got the email. By the time he phoned her back, around five, she wasn’t picking up.’
‘He should definitely talk to the police. Hang on. Maybe this could be our way in.’
‘To …?’
‘The police, of course. I imagine DCI Julie would be extremely interested to hear about this.’
‘So you really think,’ Priya said, her voice dropping, ‘that Family Man did it? Murdered Bryce … and then Grace?’
Their waitress was upon them; it was the same nose-ringed starlet as the previous night. ‘Hello again, sir,’ she said warmly.
‘Jonty may not have been personally involved,’ said Francis, once they’d placed their order and young Marilyn was out of earshot, ‘but I’d say it was perfectly possible, considering everything he stood to lose.’ He sat back and took a swig of wine. ‘Imagine for a moment,’ he continued, ‘that having arrived at the festival, Jonty – or possibly one of his associates – got to hear about what Bryce was planning to reveal on Sunday. It wouldn’t have taken him – or them – long to decide that this was really, really serious for him. In fact, in order to save the Family Man brand Bryce had to be silenced before things could go any further. Now, Bryce is well-off, as a literary journalist he hardly has a respectable position he needs to uphold – so neither bribery nor blackmail are options. However. He is most definitely staying at the White Hart for the weekend. So it wouldn’t be impossible to get to him in a more serious, shall we say final, way, if such a desperate course of action could be countenanced.’
‘OK …’
‘He’s fifty-four years old and a celebrated party animal, no stranger to the kind of recreational drugs that wiser people stop taking before they hit middle age. So maybe his sudden death could be disguised as something altogether more natural, such as a heart attack or a stroke. We already know that Jonty is an expert in poisons from the wild …’
‘But surely anything like that would turn up in a post-mortem?’
‘So maybe he tried something less visible.’
‘Such as?’
‘Strangling is a possibility … as is suffocation.’
‘Strangling would leave a mark, surely?’
‘It’s amazing what you can do with a silk scarf. Suffocation could be even more discreet, and one of the symptoms of that is …’ Francis held up a finger.
‘Yes?’
‘Bloodshot eyes. Which Dr Webster remarked on when he was examining the body.’
‘Did he? I should have been there. I could have told him that Bryce was already red-eyed on Saturday evening. We went for this walk and he … fell over and got some grit behind his contacts.’
Francis nodded thoughtfully. ‘Is that so? Doesn’t rule it out, though, does it? Now just imagine for a moment that Jonty and/or the people around him did decide that something drastic had to be done about Bryce; that a plan was hatched and actioned; that the murderer – or murderers – did the deed, then snuck away from Room 29 in the small hours. When Bryce is discovered, they’ve told themselves, most likely by his girlfriend returning late from the Wyveridge party, his death is going to seem entirely natural. With any luck, they’re going to get away with it. However. When the police arrive and look at the body, they are, for some reason, suspicious. Soon scene-of-crime officers are crawling all over the place and the whole festival is jumping to the wrong – that is, the right – conclusion. Meanwhile, to compound our man’s problems, a keen young hackette is running around asking awkward questions and seems to have found something out.’
‘About what? The truth about Jonty’s private life or … Bryce’s death?’
‘Both, probably. Jonty gets to hear about this or, more likely, realises what’s up when Grace interviews him, which we know she did on Sunday morning. Now he’s got a new problem. If he doesn’t stop her, it’s all going to come out. So she has to be dealt with too – and quick. But what’s he going to do? Grace is far too young for the heart attack/aneurysm trick, and in any case that could hardly be repeated. She’s most unlikely material for “suicide”. But what is there out at Wyveridge that everyone already knows about?’
‘Drugs?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Your starters, sir?’
Francis looked up to see their waitress right above them, her blue eyes wide; her timing was uncanny.
‘So,’ he continued in a low voice, once she’d put their plates down and was well out of the way again, ‘everyone knows about the drugs at Wyveridge.’
‘I guess so.’
‘It’s general gossip that this is what’s fuelling the parties out there. There’s people openly spliffing on the lawns, mountains of coke in the bathrooms, and for those who fancy something a bit more organic, magic mushrooms too. So if our killer can make it look as if Grace had a few shrooms before she jumped from the battlements, when the post-mortem finds traces of psilocybin in her bloodstream, it’s the perfect explanation.’
‘So you’re thinking … that’s where the rest of Eva’s funny tea went?’
‘It had to go somewhere.’
‘But how would Jonty or whoever have known she was going to make it in the first place?’
‘You said yourself that she was offering it around on Friday night. Jonty was there then, wasn’t he?’
‘But on Sunday afternoon?’ said Priya. ‘How on earth could he have known that that gang were going to be there, let alone go for a walk, find some shrooms and randomly brew up another jug?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Perhaps you were half right earlier. Perhaps our murderer had planned to give Grace something else, a tab of Rory’s acid maybe, and then came across this tea instead.’
Priya looked puzzled. ‘So you’re saying … Rory’s involved too?’
‘Not directly. But he might easily have sold Jonty – or an accomplice – one of his tabs. Then again, one might have been pinched from him.’
‘Either of which would explain why he’s acting so oddly.’
‘Exactly. Especially if it’s the selling option. Which would mean that Rory knows who the murderer is, but in order to out him he’s got to admit to dealing Class A drugs. Not the nicest dilemma for a young man training to be a barrister.’
‘No,’ Priya agreed. ‘OK, so then what – in your theory? Jonty arrives out at Wyveridge … with a tab of acid he’s already somehow got from Rory … but then finds the shroom tea …’
‘Already brewed and waiting on the table. Now this is a much more natural and likely alternative. So he dumps the acid idea and runs with that.’
‘And what time is this?’
‘After Rory and co. have gone into town. Unless he came with Grace and somehow made himself scarce. Or unless Rory and co. are covering up and they knew he was there all along.’
‘D’you think that’s likely?’ said Priya.
‘I don’t. I think Eva is honest enough that she would have said something.’
‘I agree. OK, so Jonty gets out to Wyveridge once the coast is clear?’
‘Yes,’ said Francis.
‘But how would he persuade Grace to drink this tea? When she’d already turned Rory and the others down?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t need to persuade her.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Maybe he gave her the tea after she fell.’
Priya’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘What! Like, poured it down her throat … as she lay … dead on the gravel?’
‘It’s a dreadful thought, isn’t it, but perfectly possible.’
Priya nodded silently, an appalled expression on her face. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I guess when the post-mortem comes back we’ll know more.’
‘Or the police will know more, anyway.’ Francis sliced into his Maryland crab cakes, then dipped a forkful into the gleaming orange splodge of Dewkesbury chilli jam that sat to one side.
‘If only there was a draft of this alleged scoop,’ he said, ‘or even the start of what Grace had planned to write, on her laptop, that would be a huge help.’
‘Presumably the police have got that too?’
‘Yes, Fleur told me they took all Grace’s stuff away in bags early this morning.’
‘So come on,’ said Priya, brightly. ‘How were the love birds?’
Francis made a face. ‘With Ranjit’s help I found them snuggled up together in The Sun Rising. Put it this way, I don’t think you need worry unduly about Conal’s broken heart.’
‘Ridiculous man,’ said Priya, wincing visibly. ‘He always was. So theatrical and sentimental. And then he wonders why I had doubts about his sincerity.’
‘More to the point,’ Francis continued, ‘I found out why Grace had Fleur’s video camera with her. She was filming those interviews for a show reel. To help her break into the Sentinel’s online operation. In return for the loan of the camera, Fleur was going to have the use of them for her film. So if the memory card survived the fall, that might be interesting. See who Grace spoke to on Sunday morning and what they said.’
‘Yes,’ Priya agreed.
‘Whatever our wilder speculations,’ said Francis, ‘we’ve reached an impasse. We need to speak to the police as soon as possible. Find out proper answers to these questions. At least now we’ve got Matthew Ashcombe’s evidence to offer them. Not to mention all your thoughts about Jonty.’
Meal over, they left the restaurant and walked back to the White Hart together. The rain had stopped. The pavements were still awash with dark puddles, but overhead the moon rode clear across a star-bright sky, a few fluffy, backlit outriders of cloud accompanying her on her way. Near the hotel, Priya slipped her hand into Francis’s arm. They walked on together, saying nothing.