The Final Curtain

by Priscilla Masters

  Through the bedroom was a surprisingly spacious bathroom, so pure white it dazzled the eyes like a snow scene on a bright day. Lit by overhead high-voltage spotlights, it was as clinical as an operating theatre. It smelt of bleach, which added to the surgical ambience. Joanna opened the mirrored bathroom cabinet. Inside was the usual paraphernalia of cosmetics, toiletries and cotton Q tips plus, more interestingly, a half-empty bottle of Temazepam. She eyed it and mentally added it to the list of items she wanted Fask to brush his fingerprint dust over.

  She returned to the bedroom and pulled open the top drawer of the chest of drawers. Amazingly, it held even more boxes of jewellery. The burglars had obviously missed these. So even after the burglary Timony had not wanted for adornment. Joanna opened the nearest one and found a pearl necklace in an antique, satin-lined box, a New Bond Street jeweller’s name in gold lettering. She eyed it thoughtfully. Since Matthew had given her the briefest of lectures on pearls when he had presented her with her beautiful black pearl engagement ring, she knew enough about them to know that the irregularity and slight difference between their colour meant that these were genuine 1930s South Sea pearls. Not freshwater farmed or ‘cultured’ but the real McCoy, dived for and matched up to form this lovely three-strand necklace. Two cream-coloured strands either side of a strand of the palest pink. They were beautiful.

  She returned them to the box. They were probably 1930s and must be worth a few hundred pounds. They weren’t terribly distinctive so would be easily saleable. So far it appeared that the motive had not been a second robbery.

  Korpanski was watching her and she knew from the look in his deep, dark eyes that his thoughts were tracking along the same path as hers. They had worked together on so many cases they could read each other’s minds.

  Why had Timony been murdered? They looked around them for an answer, at the luxurious bedroom, at the diminutive body in the bed and at the concerned companion. Then at the walls which were hung with press photographs, heavily posed, of the cast of Butterfield Farm. The Happiest Family in the World, was the strapline. Fact or Fiction? Joanna wandered around the room, looking at the pictures, wondering if these held the explanation.

  Amusingly there were even a series of wedding pictures: the first of a child bride and her paternalistic father figure, his arms protectively around her, more tightly than you would expect in such an image. Why had she needed protection? The walls didn’t answer. Joanna moved on. Some of the photographs came with corresponding newspaper headlines: Timony Shore Marries Again. And yet, as Joanna moved closer to take a look around the walls, she could sense that DS Mike Korpanski was focusing on the picture of her first nuptials, the one picture where she looked particularly vulnerable and frightened.

  ‘What was she frightened of?’ She sensed Korpanski was speaking to himself rather than directing the question at her. She stepped back. Had Timony Weeks spent her entire life being frightened, feeling threatened?

  Joanna reflected that in all the call-outs when Timony really had seemed frightened, she had never seriously indicated any idea as to who was behind all this. Even her early suggestion of Sol had sounded weak. The threat had been nebulous, a cloud which hovered over her rather than one particular person. And that had communicated to the police, sowing the seed that her fear might not be real but imagined. Joanna frowned, met Korpanski’s eyes again and saw his face twist into an equally frustrated scowl. They both knew that even with Timony’s murder they were no nearer an explanation or an understanding. They were nowhere.

  She watched Fask brush the surfaces with grey fingerprint powder. And so the work began. Perhaps this time it would lead somewhere. It had to lead somewhere.

  Matthew turned up half an hour later. She heard him talking to Fask downstairs and looked over the bannisters to see him being handed the obligatory white forensic paper suit. Not even Matthew could look smart in that. She met him at the top of the stairs and, in spite of the circumstances, was unable to keep her grin away, a grin which was both welcoming and intimate as she queried his presence. ‘How come you’re here, Matt?’

  His eyes were warm. Soft moss green. ‘Well,’ he said, crinkling them with his grin, ‘I knew this was your case, so when the call came in I volunteered.’

  ‘I’m so glad you are here,’ she said softly. ‘Although there probably isn’t much doubt about the cause of death I haven’t a clue why the crime was committed or by whom.’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘So, cause of death, Jo?’

  ‘Well, she was shot twice – once in the head and the other in the chest. I thought that might …’

  Matthew nodded and looked towards the room. ‘She was in bed when …?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Asleep?’

  ‘She doesn’t appear to have moved,’ Joanna replied cautiously. She knew Matthew’s work, had watched his thorough and structured approach ever since she had first met him. This meticulous method of working had been one of the things that had attracted her to him. He checked everything, took nothing for granted, and questioned even his own findings more than once.

  ‘So, I’m about to meet your actress,’ he said, snapping on the pair of Latex gloves.

  ‘You are,’ she said and led him into the bedroom. Korpanski nodded a hello. There had always been a guarded relationship between the two men. They skirted each other as warily as a couple of wrestlers who had just entered the fray.

  Matthew’s eyes took in the scene 360 degrees and she knew his memory would be as accurate as a photograph. He looked last at the still, small figure in the bed. Drew back the covers and touched the blood, dried as stiff as starch, with his index fingertip. He nodded then pulled out a thermometer. ‘Give us a hand, Jo.’

  Reluctantly she helped roll Timony Weeks over. She had never quite lost her aversion to dead bodies but Matthew, as a pathologist, was oblivious. He regarded them as a string of clues. Which, she supposed, was what Timony was – to him. Not a person but a collection of evidence which he would painstakingly tease out of her inert body. He didn’t so much dehumanize them as detach them from the living person they had once been. But then he never had met Timony Weeks alive.

  He read the thermometer. Picked up a limb and dropped it again, glanced at his watch, took an ambient temperature reading then looked up with a grin. ‘Some time in the night? Will that do you?’

  Matthew was well aware of the conflict between the police, who would like an exact time of death, down to the very minute, to help their enquiries, and the pathologist, who knew just what an inexact science estimating the time of death was. She raised her eyebrows and he continued, ‘It’s ten now. She’s probably been dead for eight or so hours. There’s some rigor mortis in the jaw but it hasn’t really spread. I would doubt it was earlier than midnight and certainly not later than six this morning. I’m really sorry, Jo.’ His face was warm and friendly, lit by an impish grin. ‘I’d love to say five past midnight last night or whatever but you know I’d be sticking my neck out too far.’

  She nodded and looked down, pondering the still figure and the story behind her intimidation and now murder. She almost wondered whether they would ever know the truth. She doubted herself, however much evidence Matthew extracted from the post-mortem. The police photographer was, even now, photographing the scene, but would those photographs ever be perused by a jury? Would an accused stand in the dock?

  Matthew continued making his notes. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I suspect she’d had a heavy dose of barbiturates so didn’t know anything about this. I’ll do some toxicology and stuff. But that’s my instinct.’

  ‘Thank you, Matt.’ She was so tempted to kiss him. Why not? He was her husband.

  But Korpanski was standing by and Matthew was starting to pack his equipment away. ‘Get her down to the morgue, Jo.’ He gave another swift glance at his watch. ‘I might even be able to fit her in this afternoon. I’ll have a word with the coroner.’

  As she watched his long legs skitter down the stairs,
two at a time, Joanna was suddenly aware that a) he was her husband, b) he was very attractive and c) how many cases they had now worked on together. She vividly remembered the first, an old lady bludgeoned to death, the work of a half-crazed cocaine addict who didn’t even remember the crime when he had been charged. The woman had been small and frail and in her nineties. It had been an ignominious death for a much-loved great grandmother for a profit of exactly £7.80. Both the post-mortem and the crime itself had upset her so much she had felt nauseous and had moved to the sink, hoping no one would notice her weakness. And then, embarrassingly, in the mirror over the sink, she had caught Matthew Levin’s merry green eyes laughing at her. The rest, as they say, was history. A long and complicated one at that.

  She caught up with him downstairs as he was just about to leave. ‘Jo?’ he queried. And then he must have caught a hint of the conflict she was struggling with. ‘Hey,’ he said, bending down and kissing her very lightly on the cheek. ‘It isn’t your fault, you know. You couldn’t have known it would come to this.’

  She was relieved that he understood some of what she was going through. ‘I know but – I feel involved; in some way I do feel responsible.’ She met his eyes. ‘If I’d done this or that differently. Maybe listened a bit harder.’ She frowned. ‘I worry I’ll never know who’s responsible. And now there’s this ghastly Superintendent Rush who’s bound to rub in everything I do wrong.’

  ‘Hey,’ Matthew said again, ‘come on. Be fair. Give the man a chance. You don’t know he’s that bad.’

  ‘His reputation goes before him,’ she said grumpily. ‘And it’s bad all right.’ She made a face. ‘Believe me, Matt,’ she said, meeting his eyes, looking for more reassurance.

  ‘OK.’ He patted her arm. ‘Maybe he is. I’ll see you later. Do you want to attend the PM?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She managed a watery smile. ‘Yes and no. I feel I knew her.’

  ‘OK.’ He started finding a number on his mobile. Joanna knew he would be ringing the coroner, moving things forward without delay. Matthew could be a very impatient man. She let him carry on with his call and climbed the stairs again. Korpanski was standing at the bedroom door conferring with two uniformed police.

  She stood for a moment looking down on the bed. ‘She’s so small, isn’t she, Mike? Quite tiny. Fragile. Vulnerable.’ And all of a sudden something welled up inside her, something more like anger and frustration than grief. ‘Why didn’t you leave here?’ Joanna appealed to her corpse. ‘Why didn’t you go away after the burglary? Why did you stay?’

  ‘What, leave and give in to it?’ Joanna jumped at Diana Tong’s harsh voice behind her.

  She moved away from the bed and studied the companion’s face. Hard, inscrutable, hostile, unreadable and unfathomable. Something was troubling her that was even deeper than the murder of a friend and employer. Joanna regarded her without speaking, feeling that Diana held some answers. Answers that she might well not share.

  Diana Tong was oblivious to Joanna’s feelings. She was gazing at something to the side of the bed. Joanna followed the line of her gaze. At the side of the bed, on a small cabinet, a photograph was propped up. It was a publicity photograph, similar to the one she had signed yesterday for Elizabeth Gantry. Unmistakably Timony, probably in the early days of Butterfield: white ankle socks, gingham dirndl skirt, a tumble of red hair. And she was surrounded by her film family. Father, brothers, mother. All giving toothpaste grins. She would have picked it up but there was no fingerprint dust on it. Yet.

  Diana Tong had moved right into the room and was now behind her. Her face was sad, her hands clasped together. And something struck Joanna. Timony Weeks was a stage name. She remembered Diana’s early words to her: Timony is not her real name, by the way, but her stage name. She turned and faced Diana Tong. ‘Who is she?’ Joanna asked. ‘Who is she really? Who is Timony Weeks? We don’t even know who she really is, do we? But you do.’

  SIXTEEN

  Diana Tong’s entire body seemed to sag.

  ‘I wondered when you’d get around to that,’ she said quietly.

  Joanna tilted her head at Korpanski. He took the hint. She wanted to be alone with Diana Tong.

  ‘Shall we go into the sitting room?’

  Diana nodded.

  When they had settled down Joanna asked her curiously, ‘Whatever’s wrong with someone knowing your origins?’

  Diana heaved a great sigh. ‘Maybe it doesn’t seem to matter so much these days,’ she said, ‘but in the early sixties there was a lot of snobbery about. Particularly amongst the BBC lot.’ A faint smile crossed her face. ‘Have you ever listened to the BBC announcers from that era? I mean, really listened?’

  ‘Are you trying to tell that Timony’s background was lower class?’

  Diana shook her head. Her skin looked lined and old, parchment white, thin and white as silk. Worse,’ she said. ‘Her father was …’ She began again. ‘Her father … What I’m trying to say is that her …’ Her voice trailed off.

  Joanna waited, wondering what on earth was so hard to reveal that Mrs Tong could hardly say it.

  ‘Timony’s real name was Dorothy Hook,’ she said at last. ‘She was from Balsall Heath, Birmingham. If you know Birmingham,’ she continued, ‘you’ll know that Balsall Heath is not one of the wealthier areas. And in the fifties and sixties it was considered a slum.’ She looked up sadly. ‘The old back-to-backs, you know?’

  Joanna nodded. The practice of building houses bordered on three sides, sharing backyards, was one which had largely been cleared from the UK, although she couldn’t see what Diana was getting at. Still … Does this have something to do with Timony’s death? She tried to listen patiently, without interrupting.

  ‘Poor old Mary Hook.’ Diana looked up. ‘Dorothy’s mother. She had a hard time of it. There isn’t a nice way to say this,’ she said, looking up, ‘but Hugo Hook spent some time in prison. He was a burglar who used force. Timony was in a school play and a scout from the TV company saw her. The rest,’ she said with a smile, ‘is history. Naturally, when Timony was given the part Mary was thrilled at the thought that her daughter would be away from all that. It’s quite possible that money was involved but Mary did make Freeman promise that Dorothy – or Timony, if you prefer – was properly taken care of. The trouble was that as far as the production company was concerned the last thing they wanted was for pretty, innocent little Lily Butterfield to be associated with slums and the daughter of a convicted burglar. A violent burglar, at that. It would have done the series harm so it was suppressed.’ She looked up. ‘Successfully.’

  Joanna was fascinated. To be able to reinvent your past sounded like magic to her. Timony could shed her mother, her sister. And her violent father. ‘So,’ she said, ‘new name, new identity.’

  Diana nodded. ‘But she lost her family. She was vulnerable.’

  ‘I see.’ And she did. There had been no one to represent the interests of an eight-year-old girl. She suddenly cottoned on. ‘And the sister who repeatedly wrote to her? Was she real?’

  ‘There was a sister. Dead now. Her name was Kathleen.’

  ‘And Timony’s mother is, I assume, also dead.’

  Diana nodded carefully.

  Something struck Joanna. ‘Was all this going to come out in her autobiography?’

  Diana Tong blinked then nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Joanna stood up. ‘We’ll talk again,’ she said. ‘But for now I have work to do.’

  Diana Tong bowed her head and nodded.

  Wednesday, March 14, midday.

  As she and Korpanski, along with another twenty or so other officers, started setting up a major incident room in one of the barns, she was painfully aware of all that had gone wrong. It was almost as though Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush was already conducting an enquiry, telling her she should have probed more when the call-outs escalated, taken more notice after the cat incident, delved further into Timony Weeks’ real history and, in particular, the assaul
t, even though it had been years ago, which had scarred her and almost cost her her sight. She could practically hear him speaking quietly and without drama into her ear with his clipped, public school accent. She knew he would take great delight in her mistakes. Hah, she wanted to say. Easy in retrospect. If I’d known she was going to get bloody well shot I’d have taken a bit more notice. What about all the other ‘more important’ crimes on my desk? She knew that at the beginning Timony Weeks had appeared a rather histrionic sixty-year-old woman. All the same she could still imagine Rush focusing on all the questions she should have asked and hadn’t. More detail on the husbands who were still alive. And in all probability Rolf Van Eelen would prove to be her legal heir. So there was a motive. A few million constituted a very real motive for murder.

  But what about the fan who had tried to kill her, the only person who appeared to have wished the child star real harm? Joanna considered this possibility but was tempted to reject it. That had been the frenzied attack of a madman. Not intelligent, structured intimidation, almost a warning of what was to come, followed by a cold-blooded execution. There was no sign of emotion in the death of Timony Weeks. It hadn’t been a jab with a pair of scissors but two accurate shots which had ensured her death. No, for her money she should have pursued Rolf Van Eelen, husband number five; at least found out where he was, asked a few questions about his financial situation. Did he need money? How badly? Of course, he could be purely avaricious but murder was a hell of a risk to take. And what about the woman who had claimed she was Timony’s long-lost sister? Who was she really? Had the pursuit continued?

  Sol Brannigan. Had they been wrong to discount him so readily?

  There were the two farmers who were, geographically, in the running as suspects but she judged them both incapable of the more subtle psychological bullying.

  And then there was the wild card. Who was Stuart Renshaw? A bona-fide accountant? Son of a friend? Or was there something or someone else that she was missing?