Murder Your Darlings Page 13

  ‘Daddy thinks it best to cremate her here. We can take the ashes back and have a memorial service at home. Otherwise there’s a lot of trouble and expense getting the body preserved or embalmed or whatever – before it’s flown back. It’s all very boring, really. As are the other details, like registering the death, which we’ve now discovered we’re not able to do until the post-mortem’s all done and dusted, as we need the pathologist’s certificate to register. We had a fruitless trip to the Palazzo Comunale in Castiglione yesterday to discover that even though the death certificate won’t indicate the cause of death, they still need the first doctor’s certificate showing what the cause of death was to get the death certificate. Et cetera et cetera, on it goes. You even have to cancel the deceased’s passport – did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Just in case she decides to shoot off on holiday somewhere. And you can’t do that until you’ve got a copy of the death certificate.’

  ‘Catch 22.’

  ‘You can’t even take the ashes back home until you’ve got a consular certificate giving you permission. As well as the death certificate. Anyway, we had a nice Negroni in the main square afterwards. That’s one thing the Italians can do.’

  ‘Yes,’ Francis agreed. ‘So they’re not interviewing you, anyway?’

  ‘I think they are.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They definitely want to talk to Daddy again, and me too, was what that female rottweiler in boots said. Once they’ve finished the staff.’

  ‘And what are you going to tell them, since you weren’t here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Background stuff, I suppose. Whether Daddy ever had murderous thoughts towards Poppy.’ She laughed. ‘Which I fear he did, given the way she was. Seriously, though, what I don’t quite get is this: if someone really wanted to bump off Poppy, surely they’d do it back at home. Also, this is a set of entirely random guests who are here to do civilized things, as far as I can see, like write and paint. I mean, unless someone’s found out that Poppy was coming on this course, and deliberately booked on to it too, why would anything bad even be likely. It’s the level of preparation required I can’t quite get my head around.’

  ‘Only of course if someone really does want to kill someone that much, careful preparation is exactly what they do.’

  ‘It all seems a bit far-fetched to me.’

  Sasha was upon them, cartwheeling across the gravel in a pair of magenta sweatpants and a baggy white T-shirt that read TO YOURSELF in orange letters. This morning, for once, she was without the fuchsia scarf.

  ‘Good morning, folks!’ she cried. ‘Another beautiful day in paradise.’

  Was this supposed to be ironic? Francis wondered.

  ‘Doesn’t that hurt your hands, doing that?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘I’m quite used to it. If you do it all the time, like I do, your palms get toughened.’ She spun on her heel and circled off towards the drive. The back of her T-shirt read BE KIND, Francis saw.

  Fiona was on her feet. ‘Looks like the tranquillity has gone. Anyway, I’d better go and get Daddy ready for his police interview.’

  ‘Mind if I slump here?’ said Sasha, returning.

  ‘Feel free,’ Francis said.

  ‘Not disturbing you or anything, am I?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘About writing – is that annoying for you?’

  ‘No,’ said Francis, ‘it’s light relief after all this talk of death.’

  ‘OK. So when you’re writing your characters in one of your detective novels, are they always based on people you know?’

  Francis smiled. He loved the old chestnuts. Next she would be asking him whether he used a pen or a word processor, or whether all chapters should be the same length. ‘It’s a funny thing about characters,’ he replied. ‘In my experience, anyway. They often start based on somebody I know, or at least have met. But then, quite quickly, they morph into something entirely different.’

  ‘So would it be terrible to take something that a real person had told you in real life and put it straight into the mouth of one of your characters?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so. Writers keep their eyes and ears open and incorporate interesting quirks of people they come across into their work all the time. You never know, Sasha, I might end up putting you into something one day.’

  She gave him a quizzical look back. ‘But am I interesting enough?’ she said. She accompanied this with a theatrical gesture; lying back, like a fainting Victorian lady, with her palm across her brow. ‘So if there was,’ she went on, sitting up again, ‘like, something someone told you, almost in confidence, is it OK just to take that and use it, d’you think? Is it ethical?’

  ‘I’m not sure ethical necessarily comes into those sorts of decisions about writing.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? I thought the whole point of writing was about being ethical.’

  ‘There may well be an ethical purpose behind the whole work, and yet the writer might be quite ruthless in practice, in getting what he or she wants and needs.’

  ‘The end justifies the means kind of thing.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So I could borrow something that somebody said …’

  He was wondering what she was so burningly interested in. Something from last night? Liam’s story? Diana’s? Or was it something – someone – else entirely?

  ‘Who are we talking about?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d rather not say. Anyway, not necessarily anyone here. Just the principle, I suppose. It keeps coming up.’

  ‘It will do. What can I say? Different writers do different things. Have you read any Rachel Cusk?’

  ‘No, should I?’

  ‘She doesn’t have many scruples about using real-life models. You might find her work encouraging. I suppose the bottom line here is: who would ever know? I mean, where do you live? In Oregon, I think you said.’

  ‘Portland, Oregon, yes.’

  ‘Quite a long way away from here. I doubt the person in question is ever likely to see what you write.’

  ‘Unless my book becomes an international bestseller and they go, “Hey, wasn’t that that crazy chick we met on that writing course in Tuscany?”.’

  Francis laughed. ‘Umbria,’ he corrected. Then: ‘That’s a risk only you can decide on.’ They sat in silence for a few moments. ‘For someone allegedly crazy, Sasha,’ he went on, ‘I was quite impressed with your efforts last night.’

  ‘Were you?’ She looked at him coyly, eyes wide, finger on her lips.

  ‘Is it something you often do?’ he asked.

  ‘Only when I’m drunk.’ She laughed; that loud, self-regarding laugh that peppered her talk about herself.

  ‘For someone who was drunk it was pretty perceptive.’

  ‘It’s not rocket science, Francis. For example’ – she lowered her voice – ‘if you’re talking about a single person of a certain age, you can usually suppose that they’ve probably had at least one major relationship in their lives. Either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. You only have to prod them a little to get them going. And almost everyone has a complex thing going with their parents, not to mention some ambition they wish they’d achieved …’

  ‘I still think that’s all quite perceptive. For a young woman of, what, twenty-three.’

  ‘Twenty-four. Please don’t patronize me.’

  ‘Sorry. I was trying to compliment you.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So would it be patronizing to ask if you’ve had your one major relationship yet?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by major. I’ve not been married.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  ‘Divorced. When I was little. They’re both quite cool, but not people you’d look up to particularly.’

  ‘So what was your dad’s burning ambition then?’

  ‘To be Jimmy Page.’

  Francis laughed. ‘I
guess he didn’t pull that off then.’

  ‘In a limited circle he did. He’s reasonably well-known in the jazz clubs of Portland. Catfish Lou’s, places like that.’

  ‘Sasha White-Moloney!’ It was the young policeman, stumbling on the surname, calling from the front door.

  ‘I think that might be you,’ said Francis.

  ‘Okey-dokey.’ She got to her feet and smoothed her hair. ‘Coming. Arrivi! Pronto! Is that it?’

  ‘Pronto’s what they say out here when they answer the phone,’ said Zoe, from her deckchair. ‘Ridiculous girl.’

  ‘Wow,’ Sasha said, when she emerged, twenty minutes later. ‘They’re getting quite forensic in there. Ping ping ping, question after question.’

  ‘Such as?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Why did I choose this course? Did I really find it on the Internet? What other courses did I consider? Who paid for me to come out here? Had I ever met or known any of the people on the course before? As if.’

  ‘They really do suspect foul play,’ Francis said, ‘by the sounds of it.’

  ‘“Foul play”,’ said Sasha with a laugh. ‘That’s such a strange expression. What does it mean? Murder, I guess.’

  ‘It comes from Shakespeare,’ Francis said. ‘Hamlet blamed his father’s death on “some foul play”.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Diana MacDonald!’ It was the young policeman again, calling from the front door. Diana rose slowly from her deckchair. ‘Off I go,’ she muttered, looking round at them with an almost proud smile. She proceeded over the gravel like a tall ship under sail.

  Francis was the last to be called. It was almost lunchtime when he made his way into the gloom of the library, where he found Marta Moretti, the procuratore sostituto, Leonardo Sabatini and the older policeman who had accompanied him that first morning of Poppy’s death. This grey-haired figure was almost classically handsome, with film star cheekbones and chin, only let down by a large nose. His thoughtful brown eyes, too, were set a little too close together for him to be invited to appear on the front of the Saga catalogue, or its Italian equivalent. Marta introduced him as Vice Questore Ceccarelli, from the police headquarters – or questura – in Perugia. A questore from the questura – he was clearly a big cheese.

  ‘Mr Meadowes,’ Marta began, riffling through her notes. ‘May I call you Francis?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Last time we spoke you confirmed you were here as a writing tutor of some experience. And that you were also a writer – in fact, a crime writer. You didn’t tell us, though, that you had some experience as a detective.’

  She looked at him, a neatly trimmed eyebrow raised.

  Francis shrugged. ‘Well …’

  ‘One of the others has “grassed you up”, I’m afraid. To use one of my favourite English expressions.’ She turned to her colleagues and muttered a couple of words in Italian. Spia, it sounded like, and then tradito. Ceccarelli nodded. ‘It seems you solved a murder case yourself,’ Marta continued, ‘at an English festival.’

  ‘I helped,’ said Francis. ‘A little. The police also did their bit.’

  ‘I’m sure you must say that,’ Marta said. ‘At least to us. Our informer tells us, though, that this case was quite famous. You were in the news, I think.’

  ‘For a very short while.’

  ‘Not that short,’ said Marta. ‘I Googled you.’

  It was funny how things were, Francis thought. People always talked about his role in the murders at the Mold-on-Wold literary festival four years back, ‘The Festival Murders’ as the press had dubbed them. But finding the person responsible hadn’t been difficult. He was prouder, personally, of what he’d achieved on a cruise along the coast of West Africa, three years later; though what had happened on the Golden Adventurer had barely been reported. A small news item about a woman who had fallen overboard, suspected suicide, and that was that. Cruise lines liked to keep their secrets and there was no campaigning investigative newspaper for the high seas.

  ‘So I was wondering,’ Moretti went on, ‘perhaps you might have some ideas about the situation here since you know all the participants of the courses better than we do. And have their trust. What are they saying? What are you thinking? If I may ask.’

  ‘Nobody knows what to think,’ Francis replied, truthfully. ‘Mainly because nobody knows for sure what Poppy died from. We know there’s been a post-mortem, but we don’t know if that’s concluded,’ he fibbed, ‘or what any results might be. And so, as you’d imagine, there’s just speculation. Some think – or thought anyway – that you guys were only taking an interest because we were a bunch of foreigners staying in a nice villa.’

  Marta looked round at Ceccarelli and did a quick translation. ‘I am glad they think we have so much time,’ he said to Francis in a thick accent.

  ‘I personally assumed something serious must be up,’ Francis replied. ‘Especially when you confiscated the passports. That put the wind up them, certainly.’

  ‘Spaventati,’ glossed Marta to Ceccarelli, who nodded and replied quickly in Italian.

  ‘Sí,’ said Marta. ‘We have to do that,’ she went on to Francis, ‘if we have any reasonable suspicion.’

  ‘That’s what they thought,’ he replied. ‘But it unsettled them. As did the search. Some of them are suspicious of a foreign police force. They don’t understand how you operate. They don’t, to be absolutely frank with you, quite trust you. Gerry had to explain the difference between the Polizia di Stato and the Carabinieri the other night. At least one of them is worried that you’re routinely armed.’

  Marta looked round at Ceccarelli, who repeated ‘Carabinieri’ and raised his eyebrows. ‘So they think we are about to shoot them?’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Not really. But they are old, some of them, set in their ways. They would feel more comfortable with police who spoke their language. You understand.’

  ‘Of course, it’s natural. Perhaps we should put on those nice English helmets, like the big gherkins, make them feel at home.’

  As Francis chuckled politely, Marta translated her joke to Ceccarelli, who laughed too. ‘Perhaps you should,’ Francis said. ‘And then,’ he went on, ‘Stephanie told me, in strict confidence, that the necroscopo had some idea Poppy might have been poisoned.’

  This had the desired result.

  ‘Avvelenata?’ asked Ceccarelli.

  ‘Sí,’ Marta replied quickly. And then to Francis. ‘You say “strict confidence”. So the others haven’t heard this?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Stephanie didn’t believe it. “My guests aren’t the Borgias,” she said to me.’

  Moretti translated, but there was no laughter from Ceccarelli this time.

  ‘So have you had the result of the autopsy?’ Francis asked.

  Marta turned to Sabatini and Ceccarelli and they had a short three-way consultation, which Francis got the gist of but couldn’t properly follow.

  Finally Marta turned back with a smile. ‘We have. We would insist, obviously, that you keep this to yourself. But yes, she was poisoned. It was cyanide, which as I’m sure you know, acts almost immediately.’

  Even though he’d asked for it, he was surprised the police were sharing such sensitive information with him. Whoever had revealed his detective past must have bigged him up quite considerably. Unless of course they had some other motive? Getting him on side against the others?

  ‘Cyanide,’ he repeated slowly. Despite what Stephanie had told him, and his other developing suspicions, he was shocked. There was now no longer any pretending that this wasn’t murder, and cyanide spoke of a level of preparation that put any thoughts of accident or opportunism to one side. Where had the murderer – for yes, that’s who he or she was – got it from? It was hardly something you’d risk bringing through airport security. Although you wouldn’t need a lot. He couldn’t remember how much was fatal, but it was well below the 100 mg limit for liquids in hand luggage, let alone unchecked hold lu
ggage. It could easily be hidden in a nail varnish bottle or similar. This explained the reason for the surprise search of the villa; though surely if you were organized enough to bring cyanide on the plane, you wouldn’t be leaving it lying around your room.

  ‘We don’t think it would be helpful to share this with the others,’ Moretti went on. ‘It might create some kind of a panic. You all still have to live together. Meanwhile, Francis, if you find you have any new information or suspicions, we would ask you to help us.’

  ‘Of course.’ He was flattered if puzzled that they seemed to have ruled him out as a suspect himself. God help him, though, it might not be wise to be too closely identified with the police, especially as he was still sleeping in an unlocked room.

  ‘And what about Stephanie and Gerry?’ he asked. ‘Do they know all this?’

  ‘Yes, we have told the hosts.’

  They too, it seemed, were not under suspicion. But they weren’t off Francis’s own personal list. ‘And how does this work with being trapped in the sauna?’ he went on. ‘You think she was poisoned before she went in?’

  ‘She must have been,’ said Moretti. ‘The killer, perhaps, hoped that the broken sauna would be a distraction. That we wouldn’t be looking for any other cause of death.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Francis.

  ‘As to the rest of the case,’ Marta asked, ‘is there anything else you want to share with us now?’

  ‘I’m no clearer than you are, I’m afraid.’

  Moretti sat looking at him, almost as if she didn’t believe him.

  ‘I’m not protecting anyone, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘We don’t think that. However …’ She looked over at Ceccarelli again, as if asking permission.

  ‘Do you know about this big house that Sir Duncan owns?’ she asked. ‘In the English countryside. Framley Place.’

  ‘Grange,’ Francis corrected her.

  She nodded. ‘Apparently he gave a talk about it to you all the other evening.’

  ‘He did. A PowerPoint presentation, with slides.’

  ‘One of your fellow guests said he was very proud of it. And in particular the beautiful garden.’

  ‘He was. He is.’