Guns in the Gallery (29 page)

Carole wouldn't have minded more of a dramatic build-up to her denouement but, presented with the direct question, could only say, ‘You.'

Bonita Green took the accusation pretty coolly and asked, ‘As a matter of interest, how did I do it?'

‘You heard about the original suicide note from Giles. Go on, can you deny that's true?'

‘No, I can't. He showed it to me. For reasons of his own he'd purloined it from that ghastly girl, Chervil. Or maybe she'd given it to him, I don't know. But he'd showed it to me and it was in the flat upstairs, yes.'

‘Well then . . .'

‘What do you mean, “well then”?'

‘Well then, you knew about it, so you saw a way of using it to set up a death for Fennel that looked like suicide.'

‘Did I?'

‘Yes. You also knew that Ned Whittaker had some of the same wine as that supplied here by the Crown and Anchor for the Private View. You laced two bottles with liquid paracetamol, so that Fennel would pass out and not resist as you slashed her wrists with the Sabatier knife which you had taken from the kitchen at Butterwyke House.'

‘I've never been inside Butterwyke House.'

‘Of course you have.' Carole couldn't help feeling that, as confrontations went, this one wasn't one of the all-time greats.

‘Oh, one thing you haven't told me,' said Bonita. ‘Just as a matter of interest . . .
why
did I kill Fennel Whittaker?'

‘Because of what she said at the Private View. Everyone assumed that she was attacking Denzil Willoughby when she talked about “causing someone's death”, but the person she was really targeting was you.'

‘And whose death am I supposed to have caused . . . apart, of course, from Fennel Whittaker's?'

‘The death of your husband Hugo.'

That did strike a deep blow. Up until then, Bonita Green had been playfully dismissive of Carole's accusations. But she almost physically reeled at this one.

‘Have you been talking to Ingrid?' she asked through tightened lips.

‘Jude has.'

‘Ah, your fellow conspirator. Of course.'

‘Ingrid remembers you in Corfu, deliberately capsizing the boat and watching your husband drown.'

Bonita Green tottered, found the edge of the counter with her hand and propped herself up against it.

‘I know that's what Ingrid thinks. She's told me enough times. That's why she left. She said she couldn't bear to continue living in the same house as her father's murderer.'

‘Well, you could see her point.' Carole was beginning to think that the balance of power in the conversation was finally shifting in her favour.

‘But I didn't kill Hugo.'

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?'

‘I didn't. But I couldn't tell Ingrid what really happened.'

‘She saw what really happened. She saw you capsize the boat.'

‘No, she didn't. That's what she thought she saw.'

‘She saw you suddenly stand up in the boat to tip it over.'

‘No! I stood up in the boat to try and catch Giles. To stop Giles doing what he was doing.'

‘What was he doing?'

‘He was pushing Hugo off the boat.'

‘What!'

‘Giles, five-year-old Giles, had heard his father going on about how useless he was, and how he'd be better off dead, and so Giles thought he was doing what Hugo wanted. But I could never tell Ingrid that, could I? She had her own interpretation of what had happened. Better she thought what she thought than knew her brother had killed her father.'

Bonita Green was engulfed by deep emotion. A tsunami of sobs ran through her body. ‘I couldn't kill anyone,' she wailed.

‘No, but I could.'

Carole turned at the sound of the voice, and saw Spider emerging from his workshop.

THIRTY-FOUR

‘
I
'll kill anyone,' Spider went on, ‘who tries to hurt Bonita. I knew about the drowning. Ingrid talked to me about it. She thought she could get me on her side against her mother. She thought I'd believe Bonita'd kill someone. I knew she wouldn't. And when I heard that girl at the Private View accusing Bonita . . . well, I couldn't let that go unpunished, could I?'

‘Are you saying, Spider,' asked his employer, ‘that you killed Fennel Whittaker?'

‘Of course I did. I did it for you, Bonita. I won't let anyone hurt you.'

‘But how on earth did you set it up?' asked Carole.

‘I hear a lot when I'm in my workshop. People in the gallery forget I'm there. And I work my own hours . . . evenings, sometimes weekends. That's how I heard Ingrid accusing Bonita of murdering her Dad. Way back, that was. I knew that wasn't true, and all. Then more recently I heard Giles in here, talking to that new bit of stuff of his, the one with the silly name.'

‘Chervil,' said Bonita.

‘Right. A Friday it must've been, because I know you wasn't here. And from what they were saying, I think Giles at that stage was still going out with the other sister, Fennel. Anyway, that Chervil was saying her sister was, like, a loony and Giles'd be much better off going out with her. And, like, to prove what a loony Fennel was, she produced this suicide note and told him about how she'd found it.

‘Then she was, like, joking about how, if her sister ever got too much for her, she could use the note to set up, like, Fennel'd committed suicide. And she spelled out how easy it would be, to lace some booze with paracetamol and use a kitchen knife to slash her sister's wrists. She talked like she'd really thought it through. And Giles said, like, what a devious mind she'd got, and Chervil said she was dangerous, and Giles said that was part of her attraction, and then . . .' He stopped, embarrassed. ‘Then they, like . . . you know . . . they had sexual intercourse.'

‘In the gallery?' asked Bonita.

‘Yeah, right here. I didn't see anything, of course, but I could hear.'

A silence ensued, then Carole asked, ‘How did you know where to find Fennel . . . on that Friday night?'

‘After the party finished . . .'

‘The Private View?'

‘Yes. That Chervil and Giles had an argument. She wanted him to go back with her to Butterwyke House, but he wanted to go and, like, drink with his mate Denzil Willoughby. So she stormed out, but she'd left her mobile here. And I picked it up and put it in my pocket. And later I heard it bleep and, like, a text had come through. And it was Fennel, saying where she was. And I know it was a message.'

‘A text message?' asked Carole, confused.

‘No, a message to me, telling me what to do.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't understand. The message was to Chervil.'

‘The text was from Fennel to Chervil. But the message was to me. Quite often I get messages like that, messages that tell me what to do.'

‘Who from?' said Carole in a very small voice.'

Spider beamed. ‘Well, Elvis Presley, of course. The King is my guide in everything I do.'

Bonita Green and Carole exchanged looks, the truth dawning on both how completely deranged Spider was.

‘So what did the King tell you to do?' asked Carole.

‘He told me to reply to the text and tell Fennel to meet in the big hut in an hour's time.'

‘So she thought she was going to meet her sister?'

‘Yes.' Spider smiled at his own cleverness. ‘The text came from, like, her sister's phone. The King was looking after me.'

‘So what did you do with Chervil's mobile after that?'

‘I took it with me to the place with the huts that night. I left it there with Fennel's body.'

‘And was her own mobile phone there too?'

‘Yes. I left them both. I thought that was, like, clever. Anyone who, like, found the body would think it was Fennel's sister who'd fixed to meet her there.'

So, thought Carole, Chervil must have removed two mobile phones from the scene of the crime. And probably thrown both into the sea. That way the note might still make people think Fennel really had committed suicide.

Carole thought of another detail. ‘The knife,' she said, ‘the knife you used, Spider – did you take that from the Butterwyke House kitchen?'

He looked puzzled by the question. ‘No, it was just one I had in the workshop.'

‘You used it for your framing work?'

‘No, I kept it here in case anyone threatened Bonita. I won't let anyone hurt Bonita.' He turned towards Carole, moving forward, looming over her. ‘That includes you, lady. I don't know that I can make yours look like suicide, but through in the workshop I've got my underpinning machine, and I've got the guillotine and . . .'

He reached out suddenly and grabbed Carole's wrist. His grip was like a steel manacle. She tried to resist, but felt herself being pulled ineluctably towards the workshop door.

‘Gulliver!' she shouted. ‘For God's sake, Gulliver, do something!'

Gulliver moved towards Spider and licked his free hand.

‘God, you're useless!'

Carole was in the workshop now. She could smell the paint and glue. She could see the underpinning machine and the guillotine. And she was not strong enough to prevent herself from being dragged towards them.

‘Spider.'

It was Bonita Green's voice, calm now and authoritative.

Spider stopped in his tracks.

‘Let her go, Spider.'

His moment of irresolution seemed very long to Carole. But then slowly she felt the iron grip on her wrist relax. He let go of her and shambled across to his seat, mumbling, ‘Anything you say, Bonita.'

Gulliver, realizing that the focus of attention had moved away from the gallery, padded into the workshop. He looked around, moved across the room and licked Spider's hand again.

THIRTY-FIVE

C
ontacting Detective Inspector Hodgkinson the following day didn't feel like a cop-out to either Carole or Jude. Though they had come to a good few wrong conclusions, they had at least proved that Fennel Whittaker's death had been murder. And since Spider now readily confessed to the crime, there didn't seem a lot more for them to do on the case.

Carmen Hodgkinson expressed her thanks for their contribution. Spider was arrested, and, standing by his confession, was sent to prison. There his behaviour was exemplary and occasionally in the evenings he would entertain his fellow inmates with his perfect Elvis Presley mime. And he still received messages from the King.

Bonita Green and Addison Willoughby finally got married. The Cornelian Gallery was sold off and its next incarnation on the Fethering Parade was as another estate agents. Bonita moved into Addison's huge house in the Boltons, he sold his agency and they lived out their lives in great wealth and happiness.

Things turned out all right for Denzil Willoughby too. On his own initiative he came to realize the good sense in what Ingrid Staunton had said to Jude. He gave up conceptual art and explored his skills in drawing and painting. The results were highly appreciated and prices for his work ballooned very gratifyingly. He continued to be a poseur and treat women pretty badly, but he still didn't find one with whom he wanted to share the sanctity of marriage.

His friendship with Giles Green endured, though Giles went back to cohabit with his wife Nikki. Both continued to have affairs, but there seemed to be something in the marriage that both of them needed.

Whether Giles would have gone back to Nikki if his affair with Chervil Whittaker had continued, who could say? In fact, she dumped him within six months of Fennel's death.

She also rather lost interest in Walden, moved back to London and got another job in the city . . . something in PR again. The Whittakers brought managers in to run the glamping site. It was successful for a couple more years, then Ned and Sheena changed their minds and developed the site into an alpaca farm. They continued to be courted for sponsorship of a variety of charitable ventures. But however generously they gave, their money just went on accumulating. The marriage remained strong, though Ned Whittaker never ceased to miss his beloved daughter, Fennel.

Sam Torino remarried. A Russian oligarch this time, one who spent most of his life in London and who always liked to have an attractive woman on his arm. It was a good career move for her which was loved by the gossip columns, who devoted a lot of energy to inventing new ‘Beauty and the Beast' headlines. Force of habit meant that she ignored Jude's advice and continued to be full-on Sam Torino all the time. She still had a lot of pain from her back, but nobody would ever have known it.

There was no reconciliation between Bonita Green and her daughter Ingrid. But then they'd never had that much in common.

Carole Seddon had her week at the end of May with Gaby and Lily. Of course they didn't go to Walden. The friends they were coming to West Sussex with had cried off at the last minute, so they ended up staying at High Tor. An arrangement which, to Carole's surprise, worked rather well. But how could anything fail if it involved someone as gorgeous as her granddaughter? Lily was very pleased with the photograph of her that hung in her grandmother's sitting room, and she never found out what had happened to the man who framed it.

Next door at Woodside Cottage, Jude continued her work of healing. At times she felt rather claustrophobic in the confines of Fethering, but no one would have known that from the customary serenity of her demeanour.