The Final Curtain

by Priscilla Masters

  Well, two could play at that game. In return she would suppress the fact that the post-mortem had revealed that Timony had had a child.

  Tit for tat.

  SEVENTEEN

  Thursday, March 15, 8.30 a.m.

  Joanna scanned the room. This was how she liked her officers: awake, alert and, above all, eager. All except Hesketh-Brown, who looked a little bleary-eyed and was doing his best to disguise a yawn as a cough. She could forgive him. He had a little baby, Tanya, who had the habit of keeping Danny and Betsy, his wife, up for much of the night. Lately he had looked permanently tired. But studying the others’ expressions she knew they would work doggedly and keep working until they’d got right to the bottom of this.

  She turned to the whiteboard and began briskly. ‘So, we’ll begin with you, Bridget and Phil. I think you were going to tackle the two ex-husbands and Rolf Van Eelen, as well as speak to Mrs Weeks’ solicitor about her will.’

  Phil spoke up for both of them. He’d always been keen to join the plain-clothes branch and had only recently moved to the detective force from uniformed. Joanna smothered a smile. The newly created Detective Constable Scott was still intent on proving himself and self-conscious enough to blush like a virgin when addressing his colleagues.

  He cleared his throat, looked around to make sure he had everyone’s attention, and began. ‘We spoke to Mrs Weeks’ solicitor,’ he said, ‘a Mr Claude Drake from Battersea. As Timony died intestate and she had no other close relatives he’s confirmed that Mr Rolf Van Eelen will be cited as her next of kin. There’ll be nobody to contest it so he’ll probably get everything as they were never divorced.’ He grinned. ‘There’s not quite as much as Mr Van Eelen might have hoped. Apart from the farmhouse Mrs Weeks didn’t have a lot of assets. In fact she might have struggled to hang on to the farmhouse. According to Mr Drake she wasn’t exactly careful with her money. And then – his words not mine – there were Mrs Tong’s wages to be paid.’

  Joanna felt her expression change. She had not asked about or considered the companion’s wages.

  ‘Did he say how much Mrs Tong was paid?’

  ‘Forty thousand a year plus expenses. But he did add that for that Mrs Tong practically gave up her life.’

  ‘I see. And the farmhouse – how much is it reckoned to be worth?’

  ‘Well, naturally, being a solicitor rather than an estate agent he thought that large country properties in this area, with not enough land to viably farm, would probably fetch well under a million. Still …’ He’d found the confidence now to grin at his fellow officers. ‘I wouldn’t mind it.’

  There were a few nods of agreement around the room and Phil Scott looked pleased with himself.

  WPC Bridget Anderton spoke next. ‘Mr Drake said that he’d tried to persuade Mrs Weeks many times to make a will but she was superstitious and was convinced that it would, somehow or other, hasten her death. He couldn’t make her see that this was nonsense.’ A few people in the room nodded. It fitted in with their opinion of Timony Weeks, a superstitious woman, who wanted to drink from the eternal fountain of youth. Bridget Anderton continued, ‘Mr Drake also pointed out to her that if she died intestate a considerable sum of money might well go somewhere she wouldn’t want – also that the government would take a substantial cut.’

  ‘Did he actually point out to her that Mr Van Eelen would inherit?’

  Bridget shook her head. ‘She assured him that they were divorced so he’d assumed that the lot would go to the State or to some distant relative. Not to Van Eelen.’

  It was another of Timony Weeks’ idiosyncrasies. She had lied about Van Eelen. They weren’t divorced at all but still married.

  ‘So when did he find out that they were still legally married?’

  ‘Apparently Mrs Tong told him. She rang him yesterday evening.’

  Joanna’s toes began to prickle. ‘And did she know that Timony had died intestate?’

  ‘Apparently not. She rang him to ask about the terms of Timony’s will.’

  It got murkier. Joanna wondered if Diana Tong, faithful companion, had expected a little something in return for her doglike fidelity.

  ‘Right,’ Joanna said. ‘Does the solicitor have a current address for the lucky Mr Van Eelen who has just won life’s lottery? She smiled. ‘Maybe not quite a Rollover but a Win all the same.’

  There were a few chuckles around the room.

  ‘Not a current address, Joanna. The last one he has is a Marbella address, but he said he’d find out where he was now within twenty-four hours.’

  Bridget smirked. ‘Somehow I think the idea of inheriting money will soon flush Van Eelen out, waving a flag. Over here. Over here.’ She shimmied her hand in a suitable action.

  Joanna smiled at her in agreement. ‘Yep. Money’s a great magnet for finding folk. And Sol Brannigan?’

  ‘No luck there, sorry.’ Phil Scott gave a tentative grin. ‘We’ll keep on it though.’

  ‘Did you try the last known address in Brighton?’

  ‘He left there six months ago and left no forwarding address.’

  ‘And what about Mr MacWilliam?’

  ‘Died last week of alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver.’

  So that let him off the hook.

  ‘There’s a warning to us all,’ Korpanski muttered darkly at her shoulder. He was already looking irritated with his shadow, Jason, who was bouncing at his side with eagerness.

  She turned towards them both. ‘Did you get anywhere yesterday evening?’

  Korpanski had secreted Jason in the corner of the barn where they had surfed the Internet for details of Timony’s stalker.

  ‘The long-lost sister?’ Joanna prompted. ‘I don’t mean the one that died, Kathleen, I mean the one that stalked her.’

  ‘One and the same,’ Korpanski said, frowning, as though he didn’t quite believe it.

  ‘What?’ It wasn’t the response she had been expecting.

  ‘We found some stuff on the Internet and looked in the police files.’ Korpanski winked at Jason Spark, who beamed back. ‘Then we made a couple of phone calls and had a quick word with our mutual friend, Mrs Tong.’ His grin was bordering on cheeky but she didn’t care.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was Kathleen who wrote to her from the time her sister left home until the time of her death.’

  ‘I don’t understand. If she really was her sister why not acknowledge her?’

  ‘I can only think that Timony’s humble roots were an embarrassment to her.’

  ‘But they were in regular correspondence?’

  Korpanski nodded.

  ‘Mrs Tong offered nothing about all this.’ She looked at him.

  There was something about Korpanski’s face. Deliberately bland. But his eyes were gleaming. Joanna could have punched him in frustration. He was keeping something else up his sleeve.

  ‘Kathleen Muriel Hook,’ he recited. ‘Born in nineteen thirty-nine. Married nineteen sixty to a Tom Renshaw.’

  ‘Renshaw?’ Joanna repeated. ‘I don’t suppose …?’

  Korpanski gave an irritating and, in Joanna’s opinion, slightly smug, smile. ‘They have one son.’

  ‘Stuart,’ Joanna supplied. ‘So she’s kept in touch with her nephew.’

  Korpanski prompted Jason with a nod. ‘Born in nineteen sixty-six,’ Jason said importantly. He had been dying to give this one out. ‘And he was adopted.’

  ‘Timony would only have been fourteen years old.’

  Jason nodded.

  ‘And she would only have been thirteen when she got pregnant. The father?’

  Jason shrugged. ‘Anybody’s guess.’

  Joanna wondered who it was. The obvious choice was Gerald. That was her first response. Then she remembered the clip of film she had seen of Sean Butterfield, aka Malcolm Hadleigh. The way he had sat little Lily on his lap, the way his hand had strayed over her knee, the creepy way he had gripped her arm.

  She needed to read more of thos
e memoirs. Perhaps all this legwork would then prove unnecessary. All she had to do was to read that book from beginning to end. But would it actually tell her who had killed its author? She shook herself. The rest of the officers were ready and eager to report their findings.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So let’s move on. Well done, Mike and Jason.’

  Special Constable Sparks blushed orange to match his hair while Korpanski grinned a slightly sheepish smile. But his eyes were dark and friendly and for a brief moment she felt the glow of their friendship and camaraderie like a sudden burst of sunshine on a dull day.

  She broke away and turned to Danny Hesketh-Brown, who was still yawning. ‘You want a coffee?’

  He nodded gratefully.

  ‘OK, we’ll have a short break and then you can give us your report.’

  There was a buzz in the air as they queued up at the drinks machine and filled their cups. While they were drinking Joanna wandered across to the board which held a photograph of Timony Weeks in happier days. It was a wedding photograph taken from the house of her and Van Eelen, the date below 2000. She was beaming into the camera, wearing a short white dress and fresh flowers in her Titian hair which tumbled down her back. It was undoubtedly her most striking feature. And certainly not a wig – not then. She looked lovely. Twelve years ago, at the age of forty-eight, Timony Weeks had been a beautiful woman. The facelift and Botox had frozen her in time but had left her with a strange disparity between her real and apparent age. Even the most skilled scalpel-wielder cannot completely disguise the ravages of time.

  Joanna turned her scrutiny to Van Eelen. He was big and blond, with a slightly pudgy face which made him look bloated and dissolute. He also looked calculating and, looking at the body language, Timony rumpling his sleeve as she clutched at his arm, gazing up at him adoringly while he stood, confident. From the body language a few hours into the union Joanna surmised that Van Eelen, Timony’s brand-new husband, was rejecting the contact, his smile aimed not at his new wife but straight into the camera lens. On Timony’s left was a smiling woman, a little younger than her, wearing a raspberry cocktail dress and similar flowers in her hair. Presumably this was the bridesmaid. Joanna unpinned the picture and looked on the back. Me, Rolf and Trixy. So Van Eelen had absconded with the bridesmaid. What a cliché! She looked a sharp-featured, conniving sort of woman. As Joanna studied her smirking face one could almost imagine that she already knew she would end up with the bridegroom. However, Van Eelen had not actually divorced Timony and married her, which might have been laziness on his part or it might have been optimism that Timony would die and he would inherit her money.

  But that was all changed now. Timony had a son. Adoption by her sister might have displaced him as her child but he was still her nephew, therefore her next of kin. No wonder Timony had not wanted to publicly acknowledge her sister. Kathleen had held the key to a less-than-savoury period in her little sister’s life. Joanna wondered, for a while, which one of Butterfield’s star cast had been Stuart Renshaw’s father. Whoever he was, he should have gone to prison. Timony had been underage. Whoever had had sex with her, the scandal would have meant the end of his career, possibly the end of the series. Butterfield exposed, not as an idyllic, beautiful and safe place for a child to grow up but somewhere where a child was coerced into having underage sex, persuaded to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather and exposed and humiliated by the very people who were supposed to protect and care for her. Butterfield was not a beautiful place but sordid and ugly.

  The officers filed back, a couple reeking of cigarette smoke, a few still nursing mugs of coffee. Joanna was very reflective as she returned to the front of the room. Now that she knew more about the actress she felt slightly guilty at the abrupt way she had dealt with her. But she also wished that Timony had been more honest. Perhaps found the courage to face up to her demons?

  ‘OK, Danny,’ she said to Hesketh-Brown, revived by the coffee. ‘How did you and Hannah get on with Mrs Tong?’

  ‘She wasn’t amazingly helpful and she didn’t give us anything we didn’t already know.’

  ‘What was your impression of her?’

  ‘Hard to work out,’ Hannah said, frowning. ‘She and Mrs Weeks have been together for years but I really wasn’t sure how fond she was of her.’

  ‘Did you pick up on any particular animosity or resentment?’

  ‘No. It seemed more like a grudging admiration, the sort of fond respect you might have for someone you knew very well.’

  ‘Did she appear very upset by the murder?’

  ‘Upset, yes. Very, no.’

  ‘What I’m getting at is could you imagine her shooting her friend?’

  They both shook their heads.

  ‘Can you think of any reason Diana would want her dead?’

  Hannah considered the question before answering, shaking her head very slowly. ‘Not that I can imagine. Unless she thought she’d inherit some money.’

  It seemed to be a weak motive.

  ‘Did she talk about her Butterfield days?’

  ‘A bit. She obviously felt great nostalgic affection for those days.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Joanna frowned, chewing over the word nostalgic. ‘I don’t suppose she offered any explanation as to who shot Timony or who’s been playing these tricks?’ Something was gnawing into her mind like a rat through a corpse. It released the same stench. Something rotten.

  ‘She just kept claiming it must be Dariel,’ Hesketh-Brown added wearily. ‘She said he was the only person who had ever wished Timony harm.’

  ‘Maybe she’s right,’ Joanna said. ‘Maybe it was Dariel.’ She considered this for less than a second before rejecting this too. Too much time had passed from his first attack.

  Alan King and Dawn Critchlow shifted on their feet but said nothing. Their turn would come.

  Joanna resumed her questions, still searching for something. ‘Did you get a chance to speak to the Rossingtons too?’

  ‘They weren’t a lot of help either,’ Hannah said, obviously feeling that they had drawn the short straw in the investigation. ‘They seem to come in, do their work and don’t – didn’t – interact much with either Timony or Diana. They don’t appear to have much opinion about anything.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  So that was that.

  DC Alan King and WPC Dawn Critchlow came next. It was obvious from their brisk demeanour that they did have something to contribute.

  Alan King spoke first. ‘We tracked Paul Dariel down to a Care in the Community Hostel in Manchester,’ he said. ‘The person in charge said he’s quiet and withdrawn, very thoughtful and intuitive. She said he’s on medication and isn’t a danger to anyone now. He’s in his late sixties but looked well. She said we’d be perfectly safe so we saw him alone.’

  ‘Did he tell you why he attacked Timony?’

  ‘He said that, as a youngster, he was obsessed with her.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘He said it was because of her purity and innocence.’ King’s eyebrows rose. ‘Those were his exact words.’ he said. ‘Then one day he sensed she’d lost it. She was just pretending to be innocent but it was all fake. She had become a whore.’ He looked apologetic. ‘His words,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Strong sentiment,’ Joanna said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He said her deceit made him mad. He knew she’d lost her purity. Worse,’ he said, ‘he also sensed that she was pregnant.’

  Joanna held her hand up. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Timony was attacked when?’

  ‘November, nineteen sixty-five.’

  ‘And Stuart was born?’

  Jason Spark supplied the answer. ‘Late January, nineteen sixty-six.’

  ‘So Timony was six months pregnant when Dariel attacked her.’ She thought for a moment, remembering. Lily Butterfield had been stick-thin. A six-month pregnancy would have been visible to an obsessive fan. And a little obscene – a child who was about to produce a child?
/>   DC Alan King continued, ‘He said he was enraged.’

  ‘With her?’

  King nodded.

  ‘And that was why he attacked her?’

  ‘Yes. He called her his fallen angel. In the aftermath he was arrested. It was a very high-profile case. Subsequently he tried to hang himself in his cell. The verdict was that he was of unsound mind and he was detained under a section of the Mental Health Act, considered a risk both to himself and to the general public. He was finally released in nineteen ninety and has committed no further offences.’

  ‘Does he still feel angry with Timony?’

  Both officers shook their heads.

  ‘Has he made any effort to contact her since being let out of a secure unit?’

  Again, the answer provoked shakes of the head.

  ‘Does he know where she lives?’

  ‘No.’ King answered for both of them.

  So could she let him off the hook? Had the verdict been correct? Was Dariel no longer a danger to the general public and Timony Weeks in particular? She wished she felt more convinced.

  She aimed a questioning glance in Korpanski’s direction and raised her eyebrows. He simply nodded and smiled. And she made her decision. For now, rightly or wrongly, she would focus the investigation elsewhere.

  ‘Right. Ruthin. You spoke to Stuart Renshaw?’

  ‘I rang his office,’ PC Paul Ruthin said, ‘and spoke to him.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘Mr Renshaw said that he was acting for Mrs Weeks, managing some of her affairs.’

  ‘That might be true,’ Joanna said coolly. ‘I take it he didn’t think to mention that she was also his aunt?’

  Ruthin shook his head. ‘No, Inspector,’ he said. ‘He didn’t. He just said he was acting for her in a professional capacity which could have no bearing on her murder. He said he couldn’t help us but would be happy to cooperate in any way he could.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Joanna said dubiously, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’ll bet.’ She was only too aware that Timony had deceived her about Renshaw.