The man paying her to watch over his dogs came into the house with a weary step. ‘Got an earlier Shuttle,’ he said, without preamble. ‘Back on British soil by one. But it’s a bloody long drive from Folkestone and that M20’s a swine on a Friday.’
‘You’ve made quite good time, even so,’ said Thea.
‘What happened to your dog’s ear? Don’t tell me Rocket did it.’
‘Actually…’
‘I thought she’d stopped that game. She does go a bit bonkers when it rains – I noticed that. And there’s something about ears. Must be a saluki thing. Is it bad?’ His lack of genuine concern was annoying. Had he felt no obligation to give Thea a warning before letting her innocent spaniel near the volatile Rocket?
She gave a tight reply. ‘It won’t kill her, but it’s going to leave a hole. I should probably have rushed her off to be stitched up, but I didn’t. It won’t show too badly when the hair grows back, I suppose. It didn’t occur to me that your dog could be so treacherous.’
Umberto nodded vaguely, and said, ‘Otherwise …?’
They were still standing in the hall, the weight of the week’s events pressing down on them until they could hardly speak. There was a sense that they each wanted to talk about entirely different things. Umberto had his adventures in Germany to relate and Thea was inwardly reciting the many questions she had for him. Or perhaps he was the one with the questions. If so, she would quite like to dodge any more conversation. All she wanted was to go home and forget all about the Kingly family. But she had told Gladwin she would ask about Sunday’s party and who was there and what horrible conspiracy they could have devised between them. For the moment, however, they remained with the safer subject of dogs.
‘Otherwise they’ve been fine. Plenty of exercise, good appetites, no problems.’
‘I blame myself. I should have warned you it was risky to bring your own dog. But she seemed such a placid little thing. I thought it would be all right.’
‘Well …’ said Thea. In the overall scale of things, she had to admit that a torn ear carried little importance. ‘These things happen.’
‘That’s very sporting of you. Give me five minutes with them and then we might sit down? I got up at five this morning, and I can hardly keep my eyes open.’
The dogs had already detected his presence and were whining and scratching at the door of their room. Umberto headed for it, as Thea spoke to his back. ‘I’ll make some tea. Then I should go. I can get back in time to have supper with my husband and the kids, at this rate.’
He made no reply, but disappeared into the back room. Thea left him to it and put the kettle on. It was not much more than five minutes before they were sitting together in the front room with mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits.
Umberto leant back against the cushions, looking plump and relaxed. ‘Am I to expect a visitation from the CID, do you think? I had a call from my sister that implied that was on the cards.’
‘Which sister?’
‘Oh – Penny, of course. Imogen wouldn’t phone me. Nor Theresa. Especially not Theresa.’
Thea tried not to read anything into this remark. Umberto’s lack of curiosity as to how she had spent her week was beginning to rankle. Where was his concern for her welfare? And he had yet to pay her fee for the house-sitting.
He was on the sofa, with the wall of family portraits behind him. As Thea gave them a glance, she found herself foolishly hoping that one of them would somehow shimmer or twitch with guilt. One of them was very probably a killer – ought not Gabriella Milner’s ghost arrange for a sign of some kind? One of them could crash inexplicably to the floor perhaps, or the glass suddenly crack. Instead, they all seemed to fade into smudgy marks on paper with very little meaning.
‘So what do you think?’ said Umberto. ‘About the cops?’
‘I really don’t know. The investigation has made a lot of progress. I think they’ve got to grips with most of the background, and there’s quite a bit of evidence about the vehicle.’ She was being as careful as she knew how, wary of conveying anything that he couldn’t learn anywhere else. Already she might have said too much.
‘Penny said they’ve got nowhere. Just going round in circles.’
‘Did she?’ Thea clamped her lips together, resisting the urge to say more.
‘You’re the one who knows most, aren’t you?’ He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You’ve got detectives on your list of friends, and a long history of helping them out at times like this. So who do you think killed my poor little niece?’
Thea had always been slow to admit to herself that there might be actual danger close by. She habitually rationalised herself into believing that everything was all right. Granted there had been a few exceptions, not least only a day or two ago finding herself in a quiet evening lane with a man who had just made self-incriminating statements in a phone call – and who knew she had heard him. And yet, that might well not have been genuinely dangerous, either. She had run away unscathed and afterwards assured herself he was never intending to hurt her. The fact was that not once in her life had she been physically hurt by anybody, man or woman. No one had ever laid a violent hand on her. And when it came to it – unlike most of the population – Thea Slocombe put experience before theory.
But verbal attack was different. She had been criticised, accused, blamed, a great many times. She had been told about her failings and defects in ringing tones. It was always unpleasant, making her go cold and wobbly inside.
‘I saw it happen,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I was involved.’
‘All right,’ he said, looking even more tired and really not at all threatening. ‘It’s a complete mess – I can see that. You know – I was going to let Gabriella and Ramon have this house. It’s what my mother would have wanted. I don’t have any proper right to it. But I needed to get some money together first and work out what I should do with myself. As Penny would tell you, my career so far has been sadly inglorious.’ He smiled weakly, and Thea could see that he was genuinely exhausted.
‘Oh?’ she said, feeling rather weary herself. Here was a new fact that might well impinge on the murder. It might comprise the whole motive, in fact. ‘But what about Christian and Stefan? I know about them.’ She frowned, wondering what had prompted her to say that. ‘I mean – it looks as if everything centres on them. Do you think?’
Umberto shrugged. ‘Everybody knows about them now. Imogen’s dark secret exploded in all our faces nearly a year ago. But that dust has settled. In fact, I saw Christian on Wednesday. He came over to Munich to meet me. He’s a very decent chap. Actually offered to start another little branch of the business in Vienna. There could be a good market there for the cameras, if we do a bit of research.’
‘Did you sell the ones you took?’
‘Nearly all of them, at very good prices. It’s going to work out very nicely, with just a few bits of luck and ironing out the glitches.’ He looked at her speculatively. ‘For a start, I can’t afford to have you here every time I go over. It’s taking nearly half my profit.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘And see what happens when I go away.’
It felt to Thea as if the conversation was dense with implications and important clues. The house, the dogs, the cameras, the relatives – everything jumbled up together and all of it carrying strong feelings and old animosities, to use Victor Rider’s word. In there somewhere was a towering passion that had led to murder. She reviewed the faces of each member of the family in turn, searching for a sign. Like testing an egg for fertility, its weight suggesting a growing chick inside it. Somebody she had met in the past three days could well be a killer, carrying a burden of guilt – surely there had to be something about that person that would give him – or her – away?
Clifford Savage would be her favourite candidate, despite his apparent denial in the phone conversation she had heard. Ramon was probably volatile and deeply involved emotionally—she stopped herself. Hadn’t she gone through all this already? Weren’t they past that point – with Umberto here in front of her, full of relevant knowledge, if only she knew how to extract it.
‘What are they like? Christian and Stefan. What do they think about you and the rest of the family?’ The mysterious nephews had been gaining in stature in her mind ever since she first heard about them. ‘It must have been a huge surprise when you discovered they existed.’
‘Not as huge as hearing that Gabriella had been murdered,’ he said with a reproachful look. Evidently, she was not supposed to be so excited about last year’s drama. ‘I can’t understand why you’re talking about them. They’ve been accepted as part of the family, but we’ve missed too much of their lives for it ever to feel they really belong. They both look like their father, and they don’t speak very good English.’
Thea felt she was being dishonest, keeping too much from him. But she had assumed from Gladwin that none of the Kinglys knew that the police had proof of the identity of the vehicle that had killed their girl. It was definitely not her place to wreck everything by splurging to Umberto. And yet treachery was lurking on all sides and she did not want to be part of it. ‘I saw Imogen and Kirsty today,’ she said, aware of a wish to startle him, or at least impress him with her knowledge of his family. ‘And before that I went to see the Riders.’
‘Why?’ Again his eyes were narrow. ‘What have you been playing at?’
This time she felt no trepidation. Umberto was not going to hurt her, or even say anything very wounding. He was half-asleep, and despite his claims to have financial worries and a potential loss of the house, he appeared to be perfectly calm. Like an otter with its impervious pelt, everything she told him simply slid off, leaving him unaffected.
‘I was involved,’ she said again, without emphasis. ‘And I had time on my hands.’
‘It sounds to me as if you’re convinced that somebody in my family murdered my niece. That’s not very nice of you, is it? Who says it wasn’t some total stranger? A maniac with a big car, driving too fast down the village street. She must have stepped out in front of him.’
‘She didn’t,’ said Thea clearly. ‘I saw what happened.’
‘I know you did – but it can’t have been a very good view. Which room were you in?’
‘Upstairs. It didn’t happen by accident.’
He patted his thighs in a gesture that implied he had finished with the subject. ‘I’ll phone Theresa later on,’ he said. ‘There might be a plan for the funeral by now.’
But Thea was not done yet. ‘There was a party on Sunday at her house, wasn’t there? Did you go? Who else was there? How about Stefan?’
‘Oh, stop it, you silly woman. Just take your money and your dog and go home. Your work here is finished. You’ve done your best to get under the skin of my family, but it’s an impossible task. Ask Victor Rider. He’s spent twenty years or more at it, and still barely scratched the surface.’
‘He’s not the only one.’
The voice came from the hallway. With a huge thump, Thea’s heart registered genuine fear. On her lap, the spaniel jerked and yapped like an echo of her mistress’s reaction. A small agitated red-headed man appeared in the doorway, confirming Thea’s instant identification from his voice. ‘How did you get in?’ she asked, speaking for Umberto, who seemed to be paralysed not so much from fear as total surprise.
‘Across a field, over the fence and through an open door,’ said Clifford Savage. ‘I didn’t think you would let me in through the front.’
‘Cliff,’ said Umberto. ‘What’s going on, mate?’
‘More than I can explain in the time available. I’ve come for the deeds of the house, old mate.’ The word was an attempt at a sneer, but he was too tense for it to work properly. Thea had an impression of a man playing a part that really didn’t suit him. He came over like a panicky understudy suddenly thrust onto the stage with no choice but to see it through. ‘I’m not letting it go, just because someone’s slaughtered one of your nieces. That’s just a distraction. Kirsty and I are the rightful heirs to this house and have been from the start. Just go and get the papers, and we’ll say no more.’ A flicker of something like pleading crossed his face.
Thea was thinking back to Wednesday. ‘You told me a whole lot of absolute barefaced lies,’ she accused the intruder. ‘Coming over here pretending to be worried about me. Not a word of truth in anything you said.’ She stared at him, remembering how frightened she had been for a few moments out by the church. ‘And what about last night, scaring me like that?’
‘I didn’t do anything to scare you,’ he said. ‘You ran off before I could say a word. And on Wednesday, all I did was let you think I was a lot less well acquainted with the family than I really am.’
‘And what about your sister being at school with Caz?’
‘That’s true. Those girls bullied me mercilessly.’
Umberto interrupted. ‘I’m not giving you the deeds and that’s final,’ he said, as if he’d just arrived at a firm decision. ‘The idea is preposterous. Pure fantasy.’
‘You’ll have to in the end. You’ve got no claim on the house and you know it. I just want to get things moving more quickly.’
It was barely two years since Thea had sold a house. She knew something of the procedure. ‘The papers don’t mean anything these days,’ she said in a voice that was as wobbly and uncontrolled as Savage’s. Only Umberto seemed calm. ‘Everything’s online now at the Land Registry. You can’t just grab a house simply because you’ve got the deeds.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Savage with more confidence. ‘This house has been in the same hands for fifty-five years. It doesn’t concern the Land Registry. I checked, if you must know. With Jocasta dead, it’s been in limbo for a year already. She left no will, but the family in their wisdom chose the sainted Gabriella to have it, once she married her Spaniard. Now she’s been conveniently removed, it can only be Kirsty in line for it. God knows she’s earned it.’
‘And Kirsty’s mother? Is she going to live here as well?’
He shrugged. ‘If she lasts that long.’
Thea frowned at him, waiting for her pulse to stabilise. Had her wits deserted her or was this very close indeed to a confession to murder? Before she could speak, Umberto said it for her. ‘Are we right in thinking that you and Kirsty murdered poor little Gabby, then?’ His calm was unnerving. Thea and Savage both manifested far more agitation.
Savage choked out a furious response. ‘Are you mad? Gabriella died under the wheels of some hit-and-run drug-addicted lunatic. Granted the family’s bizarre and complicated, but nobody in it would commit murder.’
‘Except they did,’ shouted Thea in a sudden fury. ‘And you know it. It’s long past the point where anyone could believe otherwise. And it’s all about Imogen and her sons. Isn’t it?’ she demanded. Then she looked at Umberto. ‘Except it can’t possibly have been Kirsty…’
Umberto held her gaze, with slightly raised eyebrows. Can’t it? he was silently asking.
Savage said nothing. He looked from Thea to Umberto and back, as if waiting for one of them to say something he could relate to. Finally, he exhaled, a long-held breath released, and said, ‘Well I didn’t kill her either. The whole thing was sickening.’
Thea’s memory flashed. ‘That’s what you said on the phone. You were talking to the person who killed Gabriella, and you said Imogen was their mother. That narrows it down to three people, and Kirsty—’ Again she stopped. What had she been going to say? The logic was so stark and incontrovertible that it stood like a brick wall in front of her. There was no getting around it.
‘Leave it out,’ said Savage flatly. ‘Just admit that we’ve got a good claim to this house. That’s all I came for. Fetch the deeds and I’ll leave you in peace.’
Thea was floundering, clutching her spaniel to her in near-panic. This was the moment of truth and she was tempted to turn away and leave it out, as Savage instructed. Her brain had gone numb. There had been a horrible murder and it was incumbent on them all to see justice done. It was outrageous that both these men seemed content to let it slide, as if other matters outweighed it in importance.
‘I’m not leaving it out,’ she said. ‘No way. I want to know the whole thing. Were you at the famous party as well? Did you hear Stefan and the others planning it all?’
Savage flapped an impatient hand at the question. It dawned on Thea to be thankful that the hand did not hold a gun. The man had come unarmed, both materially and emotionally. His eyes were glistening with adrenaline, his words jerky and largely rehearsed. ‘Get the deeds,’ he repeated.
‘Or what?’ said Umberto.
‘Or I’ll make so much trouble for you and your family, you’ll curse yourself for refusing me.’
Umberto’s bravado subsided a notch or two. Thea was in no doubt that the threat carried considerable heft. The sense that she had barely scratched the surface of the Kingly secrets, with the whole edifice already cracking, gave credence to Savage’s words. ‘But why is it so important to you?’ she asked. ‘You told me you were only here for a few more weeks. You told the person on the phone you were leaving even sooner than that. What is it that you want?’
‘I want Kirsty,’ came the simple answer. ‘Whatever I have to do to get her.’
‘Oh Lord!’ groaned Umberto. ‘You poor fool. She sent you to collect the house deeds, I suppose. What else has she made you do?’
Thea forced herself to review everything she had seen and learnt of Kirsty Peake, and then reran the overheard phone call the previous evening. She knew already what the conclusion would be. ‘You were speaking to Kirsty last night, weren’t you?’ She looked at Umberto. ‘I was right just now, and you know it as well, don’t you?’ She turned to Savage. ‘You more or less admitted it yourself. Never mind some crazy convenient hit-and-run driver. You two killed Gabriella. It’s been plain for days, if I had but faced up to it. Everything’s been pointing that way.’ She paused, still doubting. ‘Except …’ She remembered Kirsty’s concern for her mother, and obvious lack of organisation. The unconvincing assertions that things would come right, and the troubles were only temporary. She had glimpsed someone struggling desperately to stay afloat in a treacherous world. Poor Kirsty, she found herself thinking, before sternly correcting herself.
‘We did not,’ said the man loudly. ‘There is no way they could find any evidence pointing to her – or me. I was at work, with a hundred people to say so. And Kirsty’s always been fond of Gabriella. They were like sisters. And there’s obviously not a scrap of evidence,’ he repeated.
Thea was briefly tempted to accept his denials and let the whole thing go. It was nearly four o’clock and she badly wanted to go home. Unless Kirsty actually confessed, with a full explanation of how and why she had done the deed, it was probably right that there would never be enough evidence to charge her. But then there was the matter of the house. What would happen to Umberto? And was it remotely acceptable that a killer should not only get away with her crime, but also actually benefit from it? And, weirdly, she felt a sudden urge to protect little Cliff Savage from a woman who was probably both predatory and ruthless. ‘Wouldn’t you be scared to live with her, knowing what she’d done?’ she asked, really wanting to know.
He stared her down, with his shining eyes. ‘I’d be in heaven,’ he said.
‘She’s bewitched you, mate,’ said Umberto with a small cynical laugh. ‘As only a woman can.’ He looked at Thea. ‘This is another one. They don’t even know they’re doing it half the time. You just can’t trust them, you know.’
She remembered the way he had eyed her at the beginning of the week. Appreciation, knowledge, but no real engagement. Had a woman broken him in his early years, immunising him against feminine charms for the rest of his life? It would explain a lot, if so. She could find nothing to say to him, sensing yet more betrayal in his past, its damage never-ending.
‘I can trust Kirsty. She’s the only one in this damned family that is trustworthy.’
‘If you believe that, there’s no hope for you,’ said Umberto.
‘It’s true. Compared to bloody Gabriella, Kirsty’s a rock.’
‘And you’re going to break your stupid head on her before you know what’s happened,’ predicted the older man.
‘Shut up!’
Thea was doing her best to assess the degree of responsibility she held, now that there was so little doubt as to who killed Gabriella. The picture was still very out of focus, with the morality even more obscure. If Kirsty was sent to prison, what would happen to Imogen? And how closely involved had Stefan been? The loose ends were still there, albeit slightly fewer and of lesser importance than before.
‘You said on the phone you were leaving and never coming back. What changed?’
‘None of your business.’ Which Thea had to accept was true. Up to a point.
The sheer lack of drama was making everything more difficult. If Savage had burst in waving a gun, that would have felt more fitted to the situation. If Umberto had suddenly hurled himself out of his comfortable spot on the sofa and called the police while sitting on Clifford’s back, it would have made a good finale. As it was, there were scattered pieces of the story lying all around the room, amounting to a solid solution to the crime, and yet nothing had been proved or admitted.
Then Thea’s mobile jingled, breaking the tension at the same time as being an irritating cliché. She assumed it would be Gladwin, and was already worrying about what she ought to say, when she looked at the screen. ‘Stephanie’ it said.
‘Hey – are you all right?’ she responded.
‘No, I’m not. It’s Mr Rodriguez. It’s on Facebook. It says he killed himself today, in his car.’