Death Of A Diva (17 page)

“And you think this Dolly knows where Barry is,” Dominic demanded.

“Doris,” I corrected, “and it could be any Barry, but I’m willing to bet it’s Barry Haynes.”

“Well where is she?” Dominic stood on tiptoes and scanned the room and I realised that, as we’d been engrossed with Jenny, the house had acquired even more visitors so that the whole place was now jammed with people.

“I can’t see her,” I admitted. “But she was getting a refill, so she can’t be far.”

“Right,” Mouret pointed to the door to the living room. “I’ll check the living room. You check the hall and upstairs. Caz, wait here and grab her if she turns up. Jenny? Are you OK to check the garden, in case she’s gone walkies?”

Jenny nodded. “Good.” Mouret fixed Caz with a stern glare, “Then let’s find this woman and put this ridiculous accusation against you to bed for once and for all.” And so saying, he stalked off towards the living room.

I looked at Caz and Jenny, nodded and headed off to the hallway.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

              The crush in the entry rotunda of
Casa Day
was heaving. The sonorous tones of a well-known Shakespearean actor, discoursing on the state of the arts today mingled with a group chorus of ‘My old man said follow the van’, and a fog of alcohol fumes hung over the assembled mourners (not many of whom appeared heartbroken).

              I scanned the mob for Doris, but saw nobody resembling her.

              “’Scuse me,” I caught the arm of one of the Music Hall singers, “I’m looking for Doris. Doris Chapel?”

              “Doris?” He turned his head over his shoulder. “’Ere, Lil: you seen Dumpy Doll?”

              Lil paused in the act of providing percussive accompaniment to the tune using a pair of salad tongs and squinted at me. “Inside,” she said, jerking her head towards the living room and resuming the beat. “She’s ‘angin’ out with the nobs.”

              I shook my head. “Not there anymore.”

              “Sorry love,” Lil shrugged and – amazingly – performed a perfectly executed drum roll using only the silverware, as the gang segued into “
Waiting at the church”
.

              I turned and headed up the stairs, pausing halfway to scan the crowd, but there was no sign of Doris.

              Mouret walked through the living room door, crossed the hallway, caught my eye and shrugged as if to say
No
joy, then vanished into the crowd.

              I trudged to the top of the stairs, where the sheer scale of the place became apparent.

              A hallway stretched before me into a gloomy distance. To my left and right, corridors led to guest wings and, even up here, people were dotted around.             

              The first doorway I opened led to a darkened bedroom and, on hitting the light switch, I discovered a couple of well-known comedians engaged in an act that looked more enjoyable than their usual stand-up. I beat a hasty retreat.

              I began, after that, to knock, but not a sign of Doris did I find.

              I paused at the last door in the corridor and was just about to knock when it opened and Liz Britton stepped out, saw me, and jumped about five feet in the air.

              “
You
!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”

              “I was just going to ask you the same question,” I answered. “Party’s downstairs.”

              “It’s a funeral,” she remonstrated.

              “Memorial service,” I clarified. “Body’s still with the police, isn’t it?”

              “So?” She demanded. “If everyone’s downstairs, what are you doing up here?”

              “I’m looking for Lyra’s sister.”

              “Doris? What the hell would you want with Doris?”

              “She knows where Barry Haynes is.”

              “Haynes? The manager you were looking for?”

              I nodded. “She mentioned him, said enough to make me think she knows where he is right now.”

              “Well she’s not in there,” Liz jerked a thumb at the door behind her. “She’s probably downstairs, which is where I should be.” She pushed past me, and walked off down the hallway.

              I turned to the door opposite.

              The room inside was almost totally filled with a huge four poster bed covered in a snow white sequinned coverlet. A black and white portrait shot of Lyra filled the wall facing me. Doris – unless she had crawled under the bed – wasn’t here. I checked, just in case.

              She wasn’t.

              I left the room, retraced my steps to the landing and began to search the west wing.

              Forty minutes after I’d begun the search, I trudged back down the stairs. The joint was jumping harder than when I’d gone upstairs and even the Shakespearean thesp had joined in the singing and was baritoning ‘The boy I love is up in the gallery’ whilst cradling an overflowing brandy glass in one hand, a chorine of indeterminate gender in the other and a still clattering away Lil on his knee.

              I rechecked the hallway and stalked across to the living room, where I bumped smack into Doris.

              She weaved, wobbled, gasped for breath, hiccupped, pulled herself upright, squinted at me, swigged from her empty glass, peered suspiciously at it, parked it on a passing tray, snagged an obscenely overfilled brandy balloon and shot me a filthy look.

              “Don’t wanna talk to you!” She slurred. “Bloody killer!”

              Christ! She was wasted. Just what I needed: another blotto old bird. And one, to boot, who’d clearly been got at by someone; Doris had switched from flirtatious to hostile in the time she’d been missing.

              “Listen, Doris,” I caught her elbow as her knees sagged and pulled her upright,  “what say we get something to eat? Nice sausage roll?”

              She attempted to shrug me off, squinted into my face again, swigged from the brandy balloon and jerked a finger at me, splashing my shirt and jacket in VSOP as she did so. “You, shwee’hear’, can take yer fuggin sausage roll and poke it up yer...”

              “Dear me,” I attempted my trademarked avuncular young man smile, which had got countless old dears on my side in previous situations and guided a clearly befuddled Doris back into the living room, which was now dominated by an even bigger version of the black and white Lyra portrait from her bedroom.

             
Christ,
I thought,
can this afternoon get any weirder
?

              “What d’you want?” Doris demanded, as I spotted a corner space, ushered her towards it, wedged her into the right angle, beckoned a white jacketed waiter over, relieved him of his tray of canapés, shoved one in my gob and attempted to make Lyra’s sister consume what – for all I knew – were the only solids she’d ever taken.

              “Have a fish stick, Doris!”

              “Fuggin’ hate fish,” she grimaced, holding the brandy balloon in a white knuckled grip of death and downing another few units in one mouthful. “’Cept whelks.”

              I was not about to enter into a debate about the difference between bivalves and fish, nor to attempt to locate some pickled whelks in the room.

              “Doris?” I had to say her name three times – the third one almost shouting, before she focussed on me, her heaving bosom going ninety-to-the-dozen.

              “Oh,” she smiled – or at least her eyes smiled, the muscles in her face having long since lost the power of independent movement – and turned her face up to me. “Yes dear?”

             
This is good. At least I’m not a murderer any more,
I thought. “Doris, I need to talk to you about Barry. Barry Haynes?”

              “
Big Baz
?” She sniggered “Ellie’s nickname f’rim. Poor Ellie.” She suddenly acquired a maudlin look about her, even as her décolletage took on the appearance of a prize fight between two highly over-developed Stafford Terriers under a black lace blanket. “Big Baz...”

              She drifted into a reverie, then jerked her head up at me, her eyes no longer focussed, “Spittin’,” she rambled, before focussing over my shoulder at the picture of an insanely young Lyra, before the surgery, the fame, the drugs and the booze had turned her into a plastic doll. A black and white shot taken by an unnamed photographer that showed a young woman with a long nose, deeply dimpled chin, gapped teeth, heavy eyebrows and
spirit
, smiling at the camera, with a magnificent future laid out before her.

              “That’s how I wanna remember her.” She gulped down a sob, struggled for breath, moved her rambling gaze into my eyes as her head began to jerk back and forward in an effort to gasp in air, let her gaze drift past me and over my other shoulder, frowned, straightened up and said “
Barry
?”

              I jerked my head around, trying desperately to see which of the busload of locals was Barry Haynes and, at that moment, Doris pitched forward, emptied what remained of her brandy down my left leg and, as both her arms spastically jerked upright, knocked the tray of canapés out of my hand.

              I scanned the crowd as fish sticks, blinis, a selection of dried fruits and what was either day-old hummus or baby spew rained down on my shoulders, then jerked back just in time to catch the full weight of what I would later discover was Doris Adelaide Kryszczynski, nee Chapel, of 93 Tamurlaine Gardens, under the armpits.

              My eyes bulged, my biceps strained, my knees bowed and we both went down in a heap of lace, canapés and stained-beyond-redemption designer suiting.

              In falling, I’d hoiked Doris up so that, perpendicular, we were face to face and I was staring now into a makeup smeared, sweat drenched face, the young seeming eyes – as though looking from inside a  mask, darting desperately around.

              They focused on me momentarily, swivelled blindly round the room, settled on something in the crowd, moved in the direction of the portrait and, in a harsh whisper that was inaudible beyond my ears; Mrs Doris Kryszczynski breathed her last.

              Then, all hell broke loose.

Chapter Forty

              It was raining when, next morning, Ali opened the pub door and DC Nick Fisher strolled in, a light veil of mist in his wake. I straightened up from the shelves I’d been filling and my heart sort of
jumped
.

Tragic, I know, but there you go: I was falling in love with him, as he nodded at me.

“Danny,” he said, in a tone that made my knees weak. Then, over his shoulder appeared Reid, his beady little eyes dancing with a joy that suggested that my neck was, once again, in the noose, and my ‘Morning gorgeous’ died in my throat.

“Morning,
Mr Bird
,” Reid leered, sliding past Nick and settling his lardy arse on a bar stool. “Lovely morning for it.”

Ali looked over her shoulder. “Should I call the council and have them send round the vermin team?” She asked, slamming the door shut and sliding the bolt up.

“Inspector Reid,” I nodded at him and turned my eyes to Nick, who frowned at me sadly and shifted his gaze to a beer mat. “What can I do for you?”

“You can confess. To killing Lyra Day and – yesterday – murdering her sister.”

“So she was murdered, then,” I said.

“Poisoned,” Nick answered, his eyes finally finding mine.

“After you and her had been heard having a barney and after you announced that she knew who murdered Lyra.”

“She what?” This was news.

“Get your coat,” Reid announced, sliding his bulk off the seat. “You’re nicked.”

I contemplated making a run for it, then decided that though I’d easily escape Reid’s lumbering bulk, Nick was more sprightly. Besides, I was innocent. Just like I was innocent of Lyra’s murder.

I was lead out of The Marq and into a waiting police car, which went straight to the local cop shop, where we were met by Dorothy Frost, who appeared to have come straight from doing her Christmas shopping. “This better be good,” she snarled at Reid, pushing a small flotilla of shopping bags at Nick and putting an arm around my shoulder, “I’ve just had to leave Mr Frost to choose the stilton for Christmas Day and if we end up with something nasty, sweaty and wrapped in cling film, I will be coming back to you.” She raked her glare up and down Reid and pursed her lips threateningly.

We entered the interview room, Reid directed me wordlessly into my chair, switched on the tape machine and collapsed his bulk into the audibly straining chair facing me. “Oh, Dot,” he chuckled, “it’s better than good; it’s golden.”

Dorothy turned to me and spoke
sotto voce
. “You OK, Danny?”

I nodded, my glare fixed on Nick, who at least had the decency to blush.

“Well just leave this to me,” she replied, settling herself into her chair.

“Right, Danny, suppose you tell us a little about Doris Kryszczynski,” Reid suggested after he’d intoned the usual introductions to the tape machine.

“I don’t think Mr Bird has anything of use to say to you, Mr Reid,” Dorothy interjected before I could speak.

Reid raised an eyebrow. “Really? Nothing? What about the fact that Doris told you she knew who killed Lyra Day?”

“She didn’t,” I protested. “And if she had, why would I have kept something like that secret?”

“Oh, let me think: because it was
you
?”

Dorothy Frost shook her head. “Here we are again: source of this accusation?”

“Your client. He was heard announcing in the kitchen to Lyra Day’s stepdaughter that her aunt knew who’d murdered Ms Day. Statement was confirmed by a Mr Dominic Mouret, the young lady’s fiancée.”

“I said she knew where Barry Haynes was,” I protested.

“And this Mr Haynes is?” Reid tilted his head and glared at me.

“Lyra’s first manager. He tried to strangle her, threatened to kill her and had been in touch with her last year,” I answered.

“And,” Dorothy Frost jumped in, addressing Reid, “you’ve subsequently interviewed this Haynes and removed him from your list of suspects?”

Reid flipped through his notes, reached for a pack of Marlboro that lay before him, hesitated, raised his eyes to Mrs Frost, who pointed a finger at the conspicuous
No Smoking
sign on the wall and went back to flipping through his notes.

“So, Danny,” Dorothy addressed me as though Reid and Nick weren’t even present, “where did you hear about this Barry – Haynes, was it? – Barry Haynes,” she leaned in and spoke directly at the microphone on the desk, “and his threat to murder Ms Day?”

“Hear? Um…” I was a bit stumped there: did I want Nick and DI Reid to know that I’d been snooping around? “Well it’s not exactly a state secret,” I finally admitted. “I found out by talking to some of the Lyra obsessives at the pub.”

“
Fans
?” Dorothy telegraphed her disbelief, as Reid shot a filthy look at Nick.

I nodded and, at Dot Frost’s request, said “Yes, I found out about his existence by asking her fans if there were any well-known threats against Ms Day’s life.”

“I’m waiting,” Dorothy Frost smirked at Reid. “Have you or have you not interviewed this person?”

Reid glared at her. “We will, of course, continue to build our list of parties we would like to interview. But right now, we are talking with your client.”

“Yes,” she responded, “because you prefer to take the word of some tittle-tattler than look into documented events of threats against Lyra.”

Reid waved a sheet of paper in front of me. “This one was poisoned,” he declared, “after your client was heard having an argument with her.”

“Good, now we’re getting somewhere,” Dorothy nodded curtly. “Danny, did you have an argument with Mrs – oh let’s just call her Doris. I had two sherries at lunch and the chances of me getting that Polish name out unmangled are slim. So: argument? Doris?”

“No,” I answered.

“Raise your voice? Manhandle? Appear threatening?”

“No!” I protested, then, “Wait…”

A glint appeared in Reid’s eyes as he leaned in closer. “Go on.”

“She was wasted. I mean, she was drunk when I first met her and I gave her my gin.”

“You gave her your gin,” Reid intoned, as though I had just disclosed the secret of the universe to him.

“But I lost her; she went to the loo and we lost her and by the time I found her again, she was rambling – incoherent – and I had to take her elbow to stop her falling over. She was really out of it and I may have shouted at her. I was trying to get her to focus, to tell me where Barry Haynes was.”

“But you did not argue with her?” Dorothy Frost was most insistent and I confirmed this understanding. “And you did not, at any point, threaten or assault her?”

“Absolutely not!”

“But you did give her your gin,” Reid intoned, in a way that had me seriously worried.

“Yes,” I snapped back, “I gave her my gin. Is that illegal now?”

“Giving her the gin isn’t,” he shot back, with a look on his face that said
Gotcha
, “but lacing it with Morgan Foster’s blood pressure medication is. Filling the old girl with so much
medication
, that the deceased appeared, even as her blood pressure continued to plummet to be drunk, disorientated, incoherent, rambling. Till finally, with virtually no pressure, the heart tries pumping one last time and she goes into cardiac arrest and dies in your arms.
Wasted
, I think you said.”

“Oh.” I looked at Dorothy, who looked back at me and we both looked at Reid who leered triumphantly at us both.

“Thought that’d shut you up,” he sneered.

“Wait!” I snapped myself out of my shocked silence, “Where did you say this medication came from?”

“Morgan Foster’s bathroom cabinet,” Reid sneered back.

“And how the hell would I have had access to his bathroom cabinet?” I demanded.

He could, by now, barely keep the smirk from his face. “How? Oh, perhaps when you went walkabouts through the whole bloody upstairs, let yourself in and out of bedrooms and went hunting for the relevant medication. Which, before you ask, you already knew about, because you were present when Ms Day admonished Mr Foster about his heart condition.”

“Well, all I can say,” Frost observed, “is thank the Lord we don’t have hanging any more, cos otherwise, Daniel, you’d be a goner. He’s got you, as they say,
banged to rights
.
If
, that is, we’re now accepting hearsay, supposition, fantasy and downright
delusion
as legally admissible evidence.”

“He was seen, Dot, opening the door of Morgan Foster’s bedroom.”

“By whom?”

“By Liz Britton, Ms Day’s PA.”

“Hang on a minute,” I jumped in. “I may have been seen opening the door to Foster’s bedroom, but I didn’t go in. I couldn’t, because Liz Britton was on her way out of the room and blocked me from entering.”

Reid frowned, wiggled both eyebrows and blushed in a truly alarming manner.

“You knew this already, right?” Frost asked. “Wait:
you didn’t?
Oh Frankie, you’re getting sloppier every day. It didn’t dawn on you to ask Britton where she was when she saw something that might be putting my client in the hot seat? Didn’t enter your mind to wonder whether she herself might have a reason for directing suspicion away from herself? Jesus, Frankie!”

She shook her head, for all the world, like a very disappointed school ma’am.

“He’s hiding something,” Reid insisted, pointing menacingly at me, as his head changed shades from puce to post-box.

“
Hiding
? R
eally
? What, you mean the way that you hid the fact that you haven’t even considered the possibility of a suspect that’s already closely linked to Ms Day – say, this Mr Haynes? Or the fact that you were so desperate to collar Mr Bird for these crimes that you hid the fact that you hadn’t properly interviewed your supposed informants? I don’t think Mr Bird has anything to hide.”

I shot a filthy look at Nick, who met my eyes momentarily, shook his head sadly and returned his gaze to the paperwork before him.

“She spoke to him!” Reid insisted, jabbing his finger at me. “As she was dying!”

“Mr Bird?” Frost turned to me and I nodded. “And would you care to disclose what it was that she said?”

I nodded.

And disclosed.