The Festival Murders Read online

  ‘So Dan Dickson …?’

  ‘Classic case in point. People have been sick of Dan and his posturing for ages. Just nobody’s dared say anything. Until recently. But Otherworld’s a bit crap, so there’ve been a few mutterings and tweets and so on, and now it’s open season.’

  Francis smiled and looked over towards the window, where the morning sunshine was now streaming in.

  ‘What other enemies did Bryce have?’ he asked.

  ‘Apart from the paper tigers of the literary world?’ Priya shrugged. ‘The mother of his children, Scarlett. I think she hates him, pretty much, these days.’

  ‘His children?’

  ‘Twins. Identical girls. They’re eleven. He adores them. They’ve been a little tricky with me, but who could blame them?’

  ‘They live with their mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were they married then, Bryce and Scarlett?’

  ‘No, they had the weirdest set-up. They lived together for years and kept up this sort of family life for the kids, but then they both had other things going on on the side as well. It was like an open marriage, but not really, because from what I can work out Scarlett got jealous of Bryce’s shenanigans and I think Bryce got more action than she did. I mean, when he met me, he already had another girlfriend on the go as well.’

  ‘Besides Scarlett?’

  ‘Yes. Anna Copeland. She’s a ghostwriter.’

  ‘It all sounds a bit complicated.’

  ‘It was.’

  They sat quietly for a moment; birdsong floated through the open window.

  ‘So d’you mind me asking: why did you …?’

  ‘Get involved?’ Priya sighed and her intense, dark eyes flashed downwards in the direction of the floor. ‘Good question. I didn’t mean to. But, you know, I was working with him, on a daily basis. Bryce has – had – this huge charisma. He knew everything … had read all the classics … and despite everything that Dickson said yesterday he was really up to speed on all the new stuff too. That applied to the visual arts and music as well. His frame of reference was astonishing. To cap it all he had this effortless writing style …’

  ‘I see,’ Francis said, in that quiet way of his that always invited more.

  ‘He could sit down, in a crowded newspaper office, with all the crap going on around him, and bang out a thousand words of fantastic journalism. He was like Dr Johnson, writing a Rambler article while the delivery boy waits in the pantry. Then he was a great companion, always entertaining, but kind and thoughtful too. You know, funny little presents, dinners out …’ Suddenly Priya’s face had crumpled and she was in tears.

  Francis reached out and covered her hand with his. ‘It’s OK,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For goodness sake, don’t be.’

  Eventually she looked up at him. ‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Ask … whatever. I don’t mind.’

  ‘I was wondering how exactly … you managed to replace Scarlett … and, er –’

  ‘Anna.’ Priya grinned. ‘I gave him an ultimatum. I told him I wasn’t prepared to be another of what his therapist called his “satellites”.’

  ‘He had a therapist?’

  ‘Yeah, God knows what she did. She was like a mother confessor who imposed no penance. Bryce told her everything and she validated the whole lot, as far as I could see. Anyway, I wasn’t having any of that shit, so I gave him a deadline to sort himself out. He had a week to leave that sham home of his and finish it with his mistress too, otherwise I wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Tough terms. Did you think he’d manage it?’

  ‘No, I was gobsmacked when he told me. On day six. He hadn’t been in to work for a couple of days, so I thought it was over. Then he turned up with a bunch of flowers and a big smile on his face to say that he’d moved out. He was staying at his friend Rob’s place and Anna was history too.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘I did, as it happened. I made him show me emails.’

  ‘Very thorough.’

  ‘I didn’t want to be messed around. I had a boyfriend myself.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But you know, he was a bit younger, more on the make, had less and less time for me, so it was time to move on. He’s here, actually.’

  ‘At the festival?’

  ‘Yes. He’s staying out at Wyveridge Hall.’

  ‘This is the ex you had the row with last night?’

  ‘Yes. Conal O’Hare. He’s a travel writer. That’s one of the reasons why I stayed so late. To prove a point to him. That I wasn’t going to let his histrionics put me off enjoying myself. Not that he noticed. He buggered off into the woods, like the drama queen he is.’

  ‘So what happened to Anna and Scarlett in all this?’

  Priya filled him in. ‘Anna and Marv are here at the festival actually,’ she said when she’d finished. ‘Promoting the book they’ve been working on together.’

  ‘So it’s a real gathering of the clans,’ said Francis. Looking over at the window, he saw pale flashing blue again, mingling now with the glow of sunshine on the curtains. ‘Uh oh. More fuzz, by the looks of it.’ He got up and Priya followed him. They peered out to see a man in a casual jacket and grey jeans emerge from the front of a marked police car. From above, his round pate stood out against a corona of dark brown hair. Perhaps they should paint a number on it, Francis thought, as they do with the cars. ‘This one looks a bit more senior,’ he said.

  ‘They’re taking it seriously?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  TEN

  Breakfast at the White Hart was a surprisingly lively affair. Newspaper headlines were left unread as individual experiences of the night were relived and the developments of the morning discussed. Some of the guests had slept through the whole drama; others had clearly been craning out of windows to keep up. The ambulance had long gone, but there were now two police cars and a van parked outside the side door that led up to Bryce’s wing. There was blue and white scene-of-crime tape sealing off this entrance and the gate outside. A uniformed policeman was standing guard and men and women in protective white forensic suits came and went, looking like so many spacemen getting ready for a moon landing.

  Twenty minutes after Francis and Priya had spotted the balding guy emerging from his car, he knocked on Francis’s door and introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Brian Povey, CID. After a quick chat with the pair of them he asked to see Priya alone.

  ‘The same questions all over again,’ she said on her return. ‘I think they think I did it.’

  ‘You were in a relationship with him and you were first on the scene,’ Francis said. ‘In police terms that puts you firmly in the frame.’

  ‘I suppose it does.’

  Since then DS Povey had been joined by an important-looking female with a younger man in tow. ‘It’s the West Country version of Prime Suspect,’ Francis joked to Priya. Not that the policewoman looked anything like Helen Mirren. She was shorter, for a start. And younger. Early forties, Francis reckoned, with shoulder-length dark hair and a crimson lipsticked smile. Her companion looked as if he could keep her out of trouble, though; he was a burly prop-forward type, with cropped curly blond hair.

  Now Francis and Priya sat together at a table in the corner of the dining room, Francis wolfing down a full English while Priya toyed with a kipper and a torn-off half of brown toast. There was a hush and the clatter of cutlery being put down. The policewoman and her sidekick were at the far end of the room, with Cathy Tyndale next to them.

  ‘Good morning, ladies and gents. If I could just introduce myself. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Julie Morgan and these are my colleagues Detective Sergeant Brian Povey and Detective Sergeant Steve Wright – no relation to the Radio Two DJ, I’m afraid. I’m sorry to disturb your breakfast but I have an important announcement to make. As you all, I’m sure, know by now, there was a death upstairs during the night. We have no reason to believe at the moment that
this was due to anything other than natural causes, but as the gentleman in question was relatively young, and there are a couple of other factors to be taken into account, we will be keeping the part of the hotel where the fatality occurred sealed off. Once an autopsy has taken place we should have a clearer picture, but for the time being my team will be taking statements from everyone who stayed here last night. So if you could please make yourselves available to one of the officers sitting downstairs in the guest lounge we would be grateful. This is particularly important if you are checking out this morning. Any questions?’

  ‘Are you in fact saying that this is now a formal murder investigation?’ It was that unmistakable fluting voice: the badger-woman, Ms Westcott.

  ‘Absolutely not, madam. As I said, we’re keeping an open mind on the fatality until we get the results of the autopsy.’

  ‘Taking statements from everybody staying in the hotel doesn’t sound like a terribly open mind.’

  ‘At this stage, it’s a formality we need to go through. Once people have left the area, it becomes a whole lot harder to gather the information we need.’

  ‘So you do need to gather information. That hardly suggests a simple death from natural causes.’

  ‘And what about all these people popping in and out in forensic suits?’ piped up a man at a central table.

  ‘Do you actually suspect foul play?’ came another voice.

  It was at this moment that Dan Dickson strode into the breakfast room. He was accompanied by a tall blonde in a crimson pencil skirt and fish-net tights. There was a hush. Dan’s eyes darted nervously around the occupied tables until his gaze settled on Cathy the manageress.

  ‘Are we too late for breakfast?’ he asked.

  Involuntary laughter rippled across the room. Dan looked taken aback. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘have I missed something?’

  Whatever they were saying in public, Francis knew the police had serious suspicions. Rapidly and efficiently, particularly for a Sunday morning deep in a rural area, a Major Incident Investigation was clearly under way. As he looked out of his bedroom window at half nine in the morning, he could see that the place was swarming with all the characters associated with serious crime: forensics people, photographers, scene-of-crime officers (SOCOs in the jargon). That last, grey-haired guy who had emerged from the blue BMW with a heavy black medical bag looked suspiciously like a pathologist, almost certainly from the Home Office recommended list.

  For the time being Francis held off from giving his statement. It wasn’t as if he were leaving today, and he didn’t particularly want to waste good coffee-drinking time in the shuffling, politely grumbling queue that had formed outside the guest lounge downstairs; in which, at twin green baize card tables, sat two officers taking statements, WPC Wendy of earlier and DS Brian Povey. He would pop along later, when the smoke had cleared. Maybe at that point he might get a chance to talk to DCI Julie Morgan herself.

  Not that any of this was Francis’s business, even if he did have the girlfriend of the deceased camping in his room. But there was no way it wasn’t intriguing. What lay behind all this activity, he wondered, as he drained his coffee cup and strolled off down the garden. Was it just a string of police officers covering their respective arses? Was it down to that bruise on Bryce’s cheek, the unusually red eyes, or even the love bite? Had somebody – Priya perhaps – said something untoward? Or maybe DS Brian Povey had turned up something else suspicious in the room?

  There were lots of people who disliked Bryce, and plenty of them were here in town this weekend. But who, seriously, hated him enough to want to kill him? In a traditional murder mystery, of course, Dickson would be the main suspect, bigged up at the start, only to be replaced further on with less obvious characters, until finally the least likely person of all would turn out to have done it. But in mundane reality the idea that one writer would do away with another because of a bad review was so ridiculous that of course Dickson wasn’t in the frame. A spat with Bryce was just what he needed. A diary item in the Sentinel, followed by an amusing five minutes on the Today programme on literary feuds – it could do him nothing but good.

  If George and Martha had been on the case, Francis thought, who else would they have wanted to speak to? Bryce’s two previous partners, for sure; but thinking through what Priya had told him earlier, Francis reckoned it would be interesting to talk also to her jilted boyfriend. Was being spurned in love enough of a motive for murder? In the books, yes. But in real life? Allied with something else, who knew?

  Francis’s talk wasn’t until three that afternoon. Unless he was going to listen to Alain de Botton on the news or Jennifer Saunders on her life in laughs, he had the rest of the morning to kill. What the hell was the harm in satisfying his curiosity? Probably Conal O’Hare would refuse to speak to him and that would be that. But at least he would have tried.

  ELEVEN

  Crunching up in his Saab onto the big circle of gravel at the front of Wyveridge Hall, Francis smiled to himself. This was more like the setting for a traditional murder mystery; the kind of old English country house that had battlemented towers, tall windows in elegant bays and inside probably still a library and billiard room, if not a length of lead piping or a revolver to hand.

  The front door was eight feet of solid oak, complete with decorative brass studs, set inside a little arched porch. Francis let himself into a stone-flagged hallway area, where coats were piled on hooks and wellington and walking boots stood haphazardly by the wall. Beyond, through another, smaller oak door, was a central hall, dark with mahogany panels. On the left was the main staircase, with an elaborate wrought-iron banister, painted pale green under a polished wooden rail. At the far end, up against a faded tapestry of some classical scene (a half-naked maiden either being rescued or set upon by warriors) was a grand piano, its top still covered with a scattering of last night’s wine glasses. Francis walked through into a big drawing room, where French windows opened onto a gravel terrace. Beyond and below that was a croquet lawn surrounded by thick green hedges, embellished with the topiary Priya had mentioned – doves, dogs, rabbits, even a small, squat horse. On the far side was a ha-ha and beyond that open countryside.

  There was no one around. A couple of half-burned logs in the fireplace indicated a fire, quite something for the end of July. There were more dirty glasses on the mantelpiece and a stale smell of alcohol and tobacco.

  Francis heard a sound behind him and turned. It was a short, white-haired woman in pink overalls, carrying a dustpan and brush and a black plastic rubbish sack.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  ‘Morning, sir. I’m just going to get this room straight and then it’ll all be done for you.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not staying here. I came out looking for a friend.’

  ‘They’re still in bed, most of them. They had one of their parties last night, as you see.’ She gave him a nervous smile. ‘I don’t know. Mr Ranjit is a very nice young gentleman, but they don’t half leave a mess for me to clear up in the morning. It’s lucky he’s such a good tipper, else I might have something to say about it to the boss.’

  ‘Who is the boss?’

  ‘Mr Delancey, sir.’

  ‘He lives here?’

  ‘Oh no. Mr Gerald lives in Berlin. That’s why the Hall is rented out. We get all sorts. Wedding parties, house parties, shooting parties, conferences, even, since they installed that wi-fi thingy.’

  ‘And how long have you worked here, if I may ask?’

  ‘Fifty-eight years, sir. I started as a parlour maid. Of course, Mr Digby, that’s Mr Gerald’s father, was the master in them days. We had a butler and a cook and a proper household.’

  ‘And you’re the last survivor?’

  ‘Me and Gunther, sir, yes. The German gardener. He came over in the war and never went back.’ Her lips pursed. ‘A prisoner,’ she whispered.

  ‘He must be getting on a bit now.’

  ‘Ninety-two. Still clips the hedges hi
mself. Most of them, anyway. Now I’d better be getting on or I’ll never get finished. If any of them are up, sir, you’ll most likely find them in the kitchen. Through that door and along to the end.’

  Francis was in luck. There was a smell of bacon wafting down the corridor and a couple of house guests already up and about. A skinny blonde, yellow dress over jeans, diaphanous blue scarf slung round her neck, was bent over a cafetière, making coffee. Up at the Aga was a young woman with a mane of dark hair and a Gibson Girl figure in a green and white floral tea dress. She was stirring scrambled eggs with a wooden spoon. A laptop was open on the side, with a little video camera plugged into it and a picture on the screen of partying youth (outside this very house, it looked like).

  ‘Good morning,’ said Francis.

  ‘Hiya,’ said the dark-haired girl, turning to reveal a pair of thoughtful hazel eyes. ‘Would you like some breakfast?’

  ‘No, no, I’m OK, thanks. I’ve eaten already.’

  ‘We’re having a quickie before we shoot. We’ve got tickets for Hilary Mantel at eleven.’

  ‘Right …’

  She yawned extravagantly. ‘Sorry, bit of a late one last night. Then we’re going to see Stephen Appleby at one and the big attraction at three.’

  ‘Which is?’ Francis didn’t for a moment think she’d say, Francis Meadowes, the crime writer. She didn’t.

  ‘Bryce Peabody. Didn’t you see his piece in the Sentinel yesterday? Slagging off Dan Dickson?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And then there was, like, this big row between them at Dan’s talk.’

  ‘Which I witnessed.’

  ‘Wasn’t it great? So Grace and I are hoping that this afternoon is going to be the rematch. Dickson’s just the type to want to turn up and make a scene.’