Deadly Stuff (21 page)

‘She was running a risk there though, wasn’t she?’ Peter Trent mused, and Jenny shot him a surprised look.

‘Well, not really. I mean, she didn’t leave the room intending to kill anyone, did she, so what did it matter, at the time, if anyone had noticed and commented on it?’ Jenny said flatly. ‘It was just sheer bad luck that she then ran into Maurice, on his own like that, in the hall.’

Peter smacked his own forehead. ‘Of course. Sorry, I keep forgetting. It was a totally spur of the moment thing, wasn’t it? She didn’t make any plans at all.’

Jenny smiled her forgiveness at him. ‘Did it go down as I thought?’ she asked eagerly. She’d not have been human if she
hadn’t been curious to know just how accurate her prediction had been.

It was Trevor Golder, now in a benevolent mood, who nodded. ‘It was almost exactly as you said, Miss Starling,’ he confirmed.

A day had passed, and Pippa Foxton had been arrested, and her confession was down in black and white. The lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service, not to mention his own bosses, were all looking on him favourably, so he was in a good mood, and willing to be magnanimous by filling her in.

‘She’d just left her boyfriend to his acolytes, and was feeling bored, as you thought,’ he confirmed, and was going back to her room when she spotted Maurice alone in the hall, and decided to have things out with him.’ Trevor explained. ‘She wasn’t to know, poor girl, just what a bad time she’d chosen for it.’

Jenny heaved a massive sigh. ‘No. Maurice would have been all worked up, waiting for Jenks to arrive, and wouldn’t want to be bothered with Pippa just then.’ She paused delicately. ‘I take it Pippa has confirmed what she wanted from him?’

Again Trevor nodded. ‘That she thought that he was her natural father? Yes. You were right about that too.’

Jenny sighed sadly. ‘As soon as Ian said that Pippa had grown up in Wither Sedgewick, it clicked. Someone had told me earlier that Maurice had grown up there as well, and that he had a reputation for getting the local young women into the family way.’

‘Pippa’s mother apparently got drunk on her ruby wedding, and told her that her dad wasn’t, well, her real dad,’ Peter Trent took over. ‘She started by tracking down Maurice Raines and getting close to him. We couldn’t tell, from speaking to her whether she was fascinated or repelled by him.’

‘No, I can imagine,’ Jenny said with a small shudder. ‘I suppose she cultivated Ian Glendower simply as a way to get
an introduction to the society, and thus access to Maurice?’

‘She admitted as much. And said that, almost instantly, Raines started coming on to her,’ Trent confirmed, with a
moue
of distaste. ‘That carries some nasty psychological baggage whichever way you cut it, and I reckon the shrinks are going to use it as a basis for a plea of diminished responsibility.’

Jenny sighed. ‘Well, who’s to say they’re not right? She always struck me as being rather unstable anyway.’

‘The way she tells it, she came upon Maurice in hall, and tried to talk to him about her mother,’ Trevor Golder put in.

‘She thought that in making the big dramatic statement that she was his long-lost daughter, it would be all hearts and flowers, or at any rate, have some sort of major impact on him,’ Trent added. ‘If you ask me, she watched too much daytime television. I think she saw herself as starring in her own soap opera, and expected Maurice to play the role of contrite father.’

‘But he didn’t?’ Jenny asked sadly.

‘No. Maurice only wanted to bundle her out of the way, saying that they’d talk about it later. Of course, we know why that was: he was desperate to get rid of her before Simon Jenks showed up, and he only had a little time to do it. By that time, he must have been well worked up.’

‘So I imagine he was rather brutal,’ Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, he would be.’

Again Trevor took over. ‘According to Pippa, he said he didn’t even remember her mother, and couldn’t care tuppence if she was his flesh and blood or not. He just dismissed her out of hand, and had even started to manhandle her out of the room. That’s when she lost it, according to her. She just grabbed the nearest thing to her and stabbed him in the neck. She was almost blind with hurt and rage by this point, to hear her tell it. Being rejected by him and made to feel so insignificant and unworthy was the last straw. I don’t think, between you and me, that once the shrinks have finished their reports, that
it won’t come down to manslaughter, and with diminished responsibility at that.’

Jenny sighed but made no comment. ‘And you found
blood-stains
on her shoes, like I thought you would, right?’ she added, almost as an afterthought.

Peter Trent smiled. ‘Yes, we did. It was clever of you to pick up on that, Miss Starling. You were quite right, she
had
already got rid of the bloodstained clothes she was wearing just after the murder, but she couldn’t throw out her shoes, it seems.’

‘No, I thought not,’ Jenny said. Then seeing the two men look at her oddly, she shrugged. ‘She was always dressed so well, it was clear that clothes and fashion meant everything to her. She’d be in a different outfit every time I saw her. That’s why I didn’t think much of it at the time, when she wore one outfit to breakfast, but another the next time I saw her – which was just after finding Maurice’s body. Also, I was still in a bit of shock and not really paying that much attention,’ she apologized. ‘As it was, I just thought that she’d changed outfits. But when I heard her giving her statement to you later, and she didn’t mention going back to her room to change, I realized what it could mean. But I still had no motive for her, so …’ She shrugged.

‘But you noticed she was always wearing the same shoes,’ Trevor prodded.

‘That’s right. She might bring herself to get rid of the other clothes, but those Jimmy Choo shoes were easily the most expensive thing in her entire wardrobe, I’d guess, and certainly the most high status. When I saw her still wearing them, I knew that she must have just washed them thoroughly instead of dumping them. No doubt she thought she’d got all the evidence off them. But with modern forensics being like they are, I knew a lab would find traces of Maurice’s blood on them.’

‘As they did, in the stitches in the seams,’ Trevor confirmed. ‘It’s what eventually got her to confess. And once she started,
she couldn’t stop. Like you said, she’s not the most stable of people. Maurice couldn’t have realized how much he was playing with fire when he refused to take her seriously, as he did.’

‘Maurice had other things on his mind at the time,’ Jenny reminded him darkly.

For a moment, all three were silent as they thought about this, and then Trevor stirred himself. ‘Well, we have to be off,’ he said, and held out his hand somewhat awkwardly. ‘Miss Starling, it’s been a pleasure,’ he said.

If he was being somewhat just a shade untruthful, she didn’t hold it against him, for she smiled back and shook his hand heartily.

She watched the policemen depart, then turned and spotted her cherry-red van parked in the shady corner of the quad. Remembering that James had left a present for her inside, she walked towards it and looked through the open window.

Sitting on the passenger seat was a bright green chameleon.

‘Norman?’ Jenny said, exasperated.

Quickly she reached for her mobile phone to call James Raye, and ask him to come back for his niece’s pet before he could travel too far down the road, then paused.

What if it wasn’t Norman? After all, James was a
taxidermist
. Suppose her present was the gift of a stuffed lizard?

She’d rather have had flowers,. Most definitely, she’d rather have had chocolates. But he was a man, and she knew enough never to trust a man’s giftgiving sensibilities.

Cautiously, she squatted down a bit and surveyed the lizard more closely.

Was it Norman?

It was certainly the same size, colour and, to her untrained eye at least, the same species as Norman. But did that mean it
was
Norman? She squinted, trying to see if the creature was breathing, but she couldn’t tell. Neither one of its eyes had
moved. But then, chameleons were known for staying
statue-still
for long periods of time, weren’t they?

She supposed she could give it a gentle poke, but then, if she were a lizard, she wouldn’t be any too happy to be prodded about by a big ape.

Jenny cast an increasingly desperate look around the interior of her van. Perhaps James had left a nicely wrapped gift in the glove box. A piece of jewellery maybe?

This could be just another example of Norman, the great escape artist, at work. But if it wasn’t, just what the hell was she supposed to do with a stuffed lizard?

Jenny Starling once more peered down uncertainly at the reptile.

‘Norman?’ she said hopefully.

Birthdays Can Be Murder

A Fatal Fall of Snow

Dying for a Cruise

An Invisible Murder