Sins Out of School (30 page)

“She told me this morning. She told me everything. I can't believe I don't remember anything about it.”

“Probably just as well. Look, you're getting tired and I'm seeing Gillian home, but I'll be back later. Get some rest, and try not to worry about Miriam.”

Her face, before she turned away and closed her eyes, clutched at my heart.

I'
D
had some time, on the train, to think about how I was going to approach Gillian. She didn't like me very much, and I wouldn't have called her my favorite person, either, but we had, I thought, established a certain level of wary mutual respect. So the truth was probably best.

The truth, up to a point.

“Gillian, are you feeling well enough to answer some questions?” I asked when she was installed in the taxi as comfortably as her injuries would allow.

“I feel like hell, but my head is on straight, if that's what you mean. No thanks to types like you who tried to push pain pills. Why should I answer any of your questions? Why don't you just ask your police friends?”

“They didn't ask the same questions I'm going to. And I can't think of a single reason why you should answer me, unless you're interested in finding out who killed your brother-in-law and tried to kill you.”

She glared at me, then winced as the taxi went over a rough patch of road. “Oh, get it over with.” She sighed and waved her hand in a gesture of resignation. “I suppose you want to know where I was taking Mandy and Miriam, and why.”

“Well, actually—”

“It's rather funny, in a way, really. Dear Papa phoned me at the flat, when we were all there for a few minutes getting some things together. I hear nothing from him for years, and then suddenly, when I have no time, when I'm only interested in getting Mandy and Miriam away, he rings up. I didn't tell him much, only that I was taking them for a rest, and he actually volunteered a place he owns, a cottage in Hampshire. It's usually rented out, but he said it was vacant at the moment, and we could use it, that no one would disturb us there. He gets philanthropic, and look what happens!”

“I see. I had wondered where you'd go, but I wanted to ask you something quite different. I need answers to some technical questions about television production. I know you're a writer, but you do know something about the technical end?”

“I'd have to, wouldn't I? But why—”

“I'm not even sure why, myself, but what I want to know is this: Suppose someone shot a videotape and sent it to a television station. If the tape was shot against a blank background, a white wall or something like that, could the station chroma-key in a different background?”

“You do live in the dark ages, don't you? You can do anything with electronics these days. You can put the prime minister in a cage with monkeys at the zoo if you want to. It doesn't matter what the original background was. They just zap it out and put in anything they want to, and there are lots of techniques for doing it. Chroma key is pretty much used only for live studio production, the weather, that sort of thing.”

“I see,” I said with satisfaction.

“But if you're saying you want to make some sweet little tape of your grandchildren and get a station to mix it in to a royal garden-party scene, forget it. There are production companies that do that sort of thing, but no TV station would bother with it. They're not interested in amateur stuff.”

“I was thinking of something a little different. Suppose someone videotaped something newsworthy. A plane crash, say. They might have scenes that the station would want, mightn't they?”

“Oh, well, yes, that is a different matter. A disaster, where the first person on the scene shot some distinctive footage—right, the stations would be fighting over that.”

“And if the background was bad in some scenes? Out of focus, or simply too gory for public viewing—”

“There is very little that is considered too gory for public viewing these days.”

“Well, you know what I mean. If part of a scene was good, and part not so good, would they clean it up electronically?”

“That depends. Sometimes the amateurishness gives a quality of spontaneity to that sort of footage. Then, too, there's the question of truthfulness. The BBC won't edit news film except for length, because of ethical issues. Some of the other stations aren't quite so particular, but they all try to be careful not to show something that never, in fact, happened. If they don't care about fooling the public, they certainly do care about lawsuits, and the legal departments won't let them mess about very much.”

She waited. I remained silent.

“Well? Are you going to tell me why you've taken such a sudden interest in television production?”

“I can't, Gillian. Not quite yet. I haven't quite worked out what it all might mean.”

It was fortunate that we arrived at her flat just then, and she had to occupy herself with the exhausting business of getting out of the taxi and up a flight of stairs. I helped her as much as I could, but we were both out of breath by the time I got her settled in an armchair, with her crutches and the telephone within easy reach.

“Would you like some tea, or something stronger?”

“What I want is a great deal of whiskey, but they say I can't have it. Do you know how to make coffee that's drinkable?”

“I do. How strong do you like it?”

She had apparently lost interest in my questions, which was fine with me. When I left her, coffee in hand, she looked as if she might doze off before she had a chance to finish it.

I was, despite the previous restless night, very wide awake on the train home. My still-damp clothes and shoes weren't conducive to a nap, but worry was really what kept me awake. I had all the pieces now. I was convinced of it. The problem was what to do with them.

Anthony Blake was looking more and more like England's next prime minister. It was going to take some very delicate maneuvering to accuse him of murder.

When I looked at my problem from that point of view, it almost took my breath away. It was one of the most important men in the country I was dealing with, here. Not quite the Prince of Wales, but an heir apparent, all the same. And my only proof, the only foundation for my shaky structure of if-and-maybe, was an extremely ambiguous note.

I went over it all again in my mind. Doyle goes to London. He finds a note. He mulls it over and then gets in touch with Blake. How? Telephone, probably. He could have broken through the protective wall of secretaries simply by saying he was Blake's son-in-law.

It didn't matter how. He had talked to Blake, probably on Tuesday, or maybe early Wednesday. Blake had soothed him, said he had put the wrong interpretation on the whole thing. Had said he couldn't explain it over the phone.

Why not? Well, the simplest lie, the lie I would have come up with, was that the note had to do with a delicate political situation. Then Blake could go on to say that he would be happy to meet Doyle somewhere and explain in detail.

Okay. So Blake and Vanessa between them make plans. I was willing to bet that Vanessa made most of them. They arrange a lovely alibi. He makes a few comments, on videotape, about some genuinely important issue. Then how do they get it to the TV stations?

Well, I could see Vanessa phoning the stations, in a huff because they hadn't shown up for an arranged taping session. With her efficiency, she could quite easily convince the television people that it was someone on their staff who had messed up. That would put them on the defensive. They would then be delighted to accept the tape Vanessa had made, and air it as she asked, with the clock tower as background.

Or maybe she just phoned and said some important personages, unnamed, had dropped into Blake's office, and he had made these comments to them. No, she was not at liberty to say who the other people were, and they were not seen on the tape, but they were very highly placed.

She'd managed it somehow, leaving Blake free to be discreetly somewhere else. Maybe in London, more likely closer to Sherebury. The number of small, discreet pubs in southern England is amazing, and it would take the police a long, long time to find the place, unless they got very lucky.

So. Blake and Doyle meet. Blake (undoubtedly briefed by Vanessa) manages to get hold of Doyle's heart pills. They're probably in a coat pocket, and he must have found a way, knocked the coat to the floor or something. Then he doctors the coffee or whatever. Doyle begins to feel ill, his heart begins to beat erratically. Blake manages to get him home, waits for him to die, and then stabs him.

Why stab him? So Amanda will be blamed, of course. Why after he's dead? Because Blake doesn't want to get blood all over himself.

Why doesn't he take the note? That damning note, right there in Doyle's pocket for the police to find. They didn't, of course, but Blake couldn't have anticipated Amanda's actions.

Oh. He had asked Doyle for the note earlier, but Doyle had said he had destroyed it. Blake might not have believed him, might have looked, but something changed his mind. A noise from upstairs, from outside? I'd probably never know, but almost anything might have spooked him. At least, it would for me, if I had just committed murder. I would want to get out of there as fast as humanly possible.

And then—and then what? Then Blake, or more probably the invaluable Vanessa, watches developments. Amanda is arrested; very good. She is released; not so good, but not terrible. The police take no further obvious steps. No one approaches Blake. He appears to have escaped notice.

But then this nosy American woman appears from out of nowhere. She wants to know what Doyle did in London. She says she doesn't think Amanda did it. Maybe worst of all, she sees Vanessa drop things out of her purse.

I thought back to that brief meeting. Vanessa had been cool, capable, very much in control. She hadn't reacted in any unusual way to anything I'd said. What, in fact,
had
I said?

I couldn't remember saying anything that was at all incriminating. I'd certainly said nothing to suggest that I thought Blake might be up to something, because I'd had no such idea, then. My suspicions had all been of the chapel people, those thoroughly unpleasant Rookwoods.

I'd rather lost sight of them, hadn't I? Was it possible, still, that they were responsible for Doyle's death? If they really were raking a lot of cash off the top of the chapel's operation, they had an excellent motive. For one delightful moment I pictured them at one of those Wednesday night prayer meetings, with Doyle standing up to denounce them in front of the whole congregation.

In a way it was almost a pity it had never happened. If anyone ever deserved that kind of pillorying, it was the Rookwoods. I would have liked to be there.

Which was an unworthy thought and one that put me in the same basket as them, glorying in someone else's downfall. Shame on me. All the same, if they had known such a thing was a possibility, they would have done a lot to prevent it.

Of course, the police knew that as well as I did. They were certainly looking very closely into the movements of that pair on the night in question.

What the police didn't know about was a note found in John Doyle's pocket. A note in Anthony Blake's distinctive handwriting.

I wrenched my thoughts away from the Rookwoods and back to my scenario. After Vanessa and I meet, she tells Blake that I'm asking awkward questions. She doesn't think I know anything, but I have to be silenced.

I shivered. Why was I still alive? Perhaps only because I had a noted policeman for a husband. Or perhaps it hadn't been easy to follow my movements. But Blake could easily find his daughters and his granddaughter, because he had told them to go to his cottage in Hampshire. And they might hold important knowledge, important keys that could lock him out of the future he wanted. Gillian with her knowledge of television, Amanda with whatever John might have told her, Miriam with her memory of whatever she might have seen or heard that night …

I'd tried not to think about that part. I didn't want to believe that anyone could be callous enough, cold enough, to kill his family out of political ambition. But as I sat there nearing home, I knew as surely as I knew the train route that Anthony Blake had not been in Edinburgh when Gillian's car was wrecked. I was willing to bet money that he had been in a car on that roundabout, or perhaps that Vanessa had been there, making sure in the fast, heavy traffic that Gillian's car was crowded off the road and into a nice brick wall.