The Festival Murders

by Mark McCrum

  Back in the real world, though, if Bryce really had been the victim of foul play, then it would, most likely, have been someone outside this cosy circle. This was why police procedure was so different from Poirot-style antics. Solving a case like this involved the painstaking business of checking and eliminating all possible suspects. TIE was the police acronym. Trace, Interview, Eliminate. There were no short cuts.

  As he sat deep in thought, Francis’s gaze settled idly on the couple under the willow tree. He could half see in, so could they half see out? Probably not. Now, after a long slow snog, and some touchy-feely stuff involving hands and hair, they had pulled apart. Then the woman’s head sank back onto the man’s shoulder. They were obviously a very recent item. A passionate meeting of minds, followed shortly afterwards by bodies – typical of many a festival. Now the man stood up and edged his way through the curtain of green fronds and out into the sunlight, carrying two empty pint jugs.

  It was Conal O’Hare.

  Francis looked hurriedly down at his notebook. If Conal spotted him, then he might not want to say hello. Out of the corner of his eye, Francis watched the Irishman cross the garden and lower his head to enter the bar. Francis looked back at the willow. The young woman was half hidden by the trailing greenery, but he could see enough of her now to work out who it was. Fleur. So Grace had been right. She had liked Conal. And Conal seemed to have overcome his heartache about Priya at double-quick speed. If, that is, he’d had any heartache about Priya.

  When he saw the pub door swing open again, Francis returned to his notebook. Conal paused in his tracks for a couple of seconds, then turned and headed over to where Francis was sitting.

  ‘Francis …’

  ‘Oh hello, Conal. What are you doing here?’ The travel writer looked flushed, almost high.

  ‘Escaping from the festival bullshit. Like you, I expect.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful spot, isn’t it?’ Francis said. ‘I came across it by accident.’

  ‘One of those little gems that can’t possibly stay the same forever. Somebody’s bound to buy the old crone out and turn it into a gastropub. Anyhows, just thought I’d say hello. I enjoyed your talk, by the way.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘It was interesting. And the questions – you did a fine job of keeping them off the one subject they all wanted to know about.’

  He paused, but Francis wasn’t going to be drawn. ‘I’ll leave you in peace,’ Conal said. ‘Come out to Wyveridge later, if you’ve nothing better to do. Ranjit’s having another of his parties. Starts about eight. Should be excellent crack.’

  ‘I might just do that.’

  Conal sloped off. He hadn’t mentioned Fleur, but Francis was amused, looking up, to see that his presence hadn’t intimidated them. He finished his drink and headed back to the Saab. The bottom line was that this wasn’t a George Braithwaite story. Thinking about his dubious list of suspects Francis could only conclude that it was unlikely that any of them had done Bryce in. The few oddities in the room this morning almost certainly had simple explanations.

  He had no idea why the police had decided to send in forensics. Had the love bite and the bruise been enough to set the whole investigative process going? Then again, it was perfectly possible that there was a Chinese whispers effect from the doctor’s other jokey remarks. Green young copper mutters to DS, DS summons DCI, till everyone’s covering their arses and the full rigmarole of TIE is under way. The post-mortem would probably confirm a heart attack or aneurysm. And that would be that. Bryce just another one of those who fell in their fifties. There were more of them than you realised, as a wander round any graveyard would confirm.

  Returning to Mold, Francis easily found a parking space in the yard at the back of the hotel. The police activity, he noticed, was visibly reduced. The marked cars and vans had gone, even the WPC on the front door had been stood down. Ah well, perhaps that was it. Drama over. With a good conscience he could retire for a quiet meal at the Rising Sun.

  At the end of the main corridor he saw Cathy, working away under the bright beam of an anglepoise in the little reception booth.

  ‘Police left you to it, have they?’

  She looked up. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘There’s been another death. Out at Wyveridge Hall. One of the people staying there. Fell from the roof, apparently.’

  ‘God help us,’ said Francis, quietly. ‘D’you know who it was?’

  ‘A young woman, apparently. Grace somebody-or-other. Roger Webster’s already out there.’

  NINETEEN

  Francis found the gravel circle at the front of Wyveridge crowded with police vehicles, not all of them marked. That sharp-eyed humorist WPC Wendy was stationed by the front door. An altogether heftier PC, whose ballooning beer belly made you wonder how many criminals he’d chased recently, stood guard by the blue and white scene-of-crime tape which blocked off the gravel path that ran round the side of the house to the terrace. POLICE DO NOT CROSS POLICE DO NOT CROSS.

  Francis decided that the direct approach was likely to work best. ‘We meet again,’ he said, walking up to Wendy.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There’s been another death …’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A young woman who was staying here?’

  Wendy started to nod agreement; then she recovered herself and said: ‘I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss the incidents with the general public, sir.’

  ‘Fair enough, you have your procedures. I’ve come out in the hope of seeing Ranjit Richardson, the young gentleman who’s hosting the house party. D’you think you could you let me in?’

  ‘Only house guests are allowed in and out, sir. And they have to be cleared.’

  ‘What does that involve?’

  ‘I’d need to talk to my superior, sir.’

  ‘DCI Morgan?’

  ‘Yes sir. Though she’s just left. It’s DS Povey now.’

  ‘Now DS Povey I met this morning. Perhaps I could have a word with him?’

  Ten minutes later, Francis was inside. It was lucky, he thought, that Povey was a Braithwaite fan. Francis did as he was told and kept away from the police activity on the ground floor. He found a shattered group of the house party’s remnants in a room at the end of the long upstairs corridor, huddled round a low, glass-topped coffee table in front of the empty fireplace: host Ranjit; a lithe young woman with high cheekbones and catlike green eyes; and a big, bearded fellow in an untucked denim shirt.

  ‘Francis,’ said Ranjit, rising to his feet. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a thing …’

  ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘She fell from the roof. So it seems. Over by the tower. None of us can work out what she was doing up there. See for yourself, if you like. It’s pretty grim.’ He gestured towards the bay window at the end of the room.

  Francis walked over and looked out. Down below, poor Grace was still prone on the terrace, surrounded by forensics people performing various intricate tasks. One moved around the body taking flash photographs while another crouched over the gravel, picking up individual stones in a white-gloved hand. Another was finishing the job of marking out her position with white tape. Grace’s arms and legs were akimbo, but otherwise she could have been sleeping, enjoying the last rays of the sun, which cast a slanting parallelogram lengthwise from the gap between the hedges at the end of the terrace. She was still in the yellow dress and blue jeans combo she’d been wearing at breakfast.

  ‘She had a video camera with her,’ Ranjit said, at his shoulder. ‘You can see it on the bank a few yards away to the right. Totally buggered by the looks of it, though the police obviously haven’t let us anywhere near.’

  ‘That’s Fleur’s, right?’

  ‘We think so. Grace must have borrowed it off her. So how did you manage to get in, Francis? We’re under strict orders that all v
isitors are banned.’

  ‘I’m afraid I dropped your name with DS Povey. Told him that I was moving out here from the White Hart, so was technically a house guest.’ Francis walked back towards the window, craned his neck round to look up at the battlements. ‘Is it likely,’ he said, ‘that Grace would be up there, on her own, in the middle of the afternoon? And if so, could she really have slipped?’

  ‘No,’ said the green-eyed girl. ‘I went up there with Fleur yesterday evening and the battlements are a good three feet high. You’d have to physically climb over before you could jump.’

  ‘You were on the battlements with Fleur?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘She was filming the start of the party. And the view …’

  ‘I see,’ said Francis. ‘So if Grace couldn’t have slipped, how on earth did she go over? Unless she was suicidal …’

  ‘Which she so wasn’t. Rushing around getting copy off the celebs for her gossip column.’

  ‘Or, I suppose, tripping?’ Francis looked meaningfully from one to another of the silent trio.

  ‘Implying what?’ said Ranjit.

  ‘It’s hardly a secret that there are drugs out here.’

  ‘Not any more there aren’t.’

  ‘The police have confiscated them?’

  ‘Hell no. What d’you take us for?’ Ranjit made a face and mimed a toilet chain being pulled.

  ‘You didn’t try and ship them out somewhere?’

  ‘My friend’s just, like, er, died,’ said green-eyes, in a sarcastic voice, ‘so excuse me delaying calling the ambulance while we hide our illegal substances for use later.’

  She was as tiresome as she was beautiful, this one, but it was clear she was close to Ranjit, so Francis bit back any response in kind. ‘So who found her?’ he asked.

  ‘We did,’ said Ranjit. ‘Got back here just after your talk.’

  ‘You and …?’

  ‘Carly was with me.’ He gestured at his girlfriend. ‘We let ourselves in and went straight into the drawing room …’

  ‘Then I saw her through the French window,’ said Carly. ‘Just lying there. In the sun. For ten seconds I thought she’d crashed out. Her head was turned away.’

  ‘Then we realised she wasn’t moving,’ said Ranjit. ‘We ran out. And there she was, with this thin line of blood running down onto the gravel from her mouth. We shook her and rolled her over and slapped her, but her head just lolled back, eyes wide open. She was absolutely gone.’

  ‘Shocking,’ said Francis quietly.

  ‘It was. Is. I can’t get my head around it.’

  ‘I was sick,’ said Carly. ‘On the bank. I’ve never seen a dead body like that before. Let alone a friend.’

  She was crying now. Ranjit went over to her, held her as she slowly calmed down. From outside came the voices of the professionals, the crunch of boots on gravel, surprisingly loud.

  ‘Was there any way Grace might have taken something that could have led to this?’ Francis said eventually. ‘I mean, were any of those drugs you got rid of hallucinogenic?’

  Carly looked up, eyes glinting. ‘No,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘Even if they were,’ said Ranjit, ‘Grace wouldn’t have taken them. She didn’t do drugs.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘In confidence,’ said Ranjit, ‘she was up here in this room when we were doing coke last night. She didn’t touch a single line.’

  ‘Rory was trying hard enough to persuade her,’ said the bearded guy.

  ‘She barely drinks,’ said Carly.

  ‘So if she wasn’t suicidal,’ said Francis, ‘and she wasn’t tripping, and she couldn’t have slipped, someone must have pushed her.’

  This stark assessment brought silence.

  ‘D’you think that’s likely?’ said Ranjit.

  ‘There she is,’ said Francis. ‘Dead on the gravel.’

  ‘So – what? You think she came back with someone?’

  ‘Or someone followed her.’

  ‘But if they wanted to bump off Grace why on earth would they come all the way out here to do it?’

  ‘Because if you could persuade your victim up onto the battlements,’ said Francis, ‘it would be relatively easy to push them off. And make the whole thing look like an accident. While other forms of murder are harder to conceal. This way, you don’t have to worry about getting rid of the body, nor what might turn up in the post-mortem. All you’ve got to do is sneak away unseen.’

  ‘Almost sounds as if you did it,’ said Carly.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Francis replied coolly, ‘I have an excellent alibi. In that I was giving my talk at the time.’ He turned back to Ranjit. ‘The other possibility, of course, is that the murderer was here all along. You don’t happen to know who was in residence at half three this afternoon, do you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ranjit, ‘I don’t keep tabs on my guests. Or their visitors. It’s always been open house here.’

  Not any more, thought Francis. He turned back from the window. ‘So what’s going to happen to you lot now?’

  ‘The police are taking statements and contact details,’ said Ranjit, ‘and we’re supposed to stick around till they let us go. But the party’s over. I might go back to London tomorrow. It feels a bit spooky staying on.’

  ‘Too right,’ Carly agreed. ‘I want to get out of this hideous place as soon as possible. Don’t you, Adam?’

  The bearded guy nodded agreement.

  ‘Thank you all for your collective time,’ said Francis. ‘Now tell me, where am I likely to find that housekeeper I met at breakfast time?’

  ‘Mrs Mac?’

  ‘Small, bright-eyed old biddy? Been here since the Fifties or something?’

  ‘That’s Mrs Mac,’ said Ranjit. ‘She’ll probably be at her cottage, which is up the back, beyond the kitchen garden, which runs behind the sheds and greenhouses you see as you come in on the right. There’s a row of three. Gunther the German gardener lives in the near one, and she’s in the middle.’

  ‘Who’s in the end one?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Some Ugandan friend of the owner’s.’

  ‘Mr Gerald?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s quite something, if you see him. Very tall and rather beautiful. Likes to dress as a woman. Which suits him, because he’s a dead ringer for Grace Jones. He’s an artist, paints funky abstracts. A local character.’

  Francis left the house the way he’d come in. He walked down past the greenhouses and found the kitchen garden, a big oblong with crumbling brick walls. It was dilapidated: bare earth, brown grass, brambles and long trails of bindweed with its distinctive white, bell-shaped flower. Up in the top left corner were a few rows of vegetables marked out by bamboo canes. Beyond this he came to the little row of cottages, up against the six foot high estate wall that ran along the main road. It seemed a shame that in all this peaceful space, the staff living quarters should be here, right by the traffic. But then these pretty, ochre-stone buildings dated from a time when the noisiest vehicle passing by would have been a coach and four.

  Francis saw no sign of the cross-dressing Ugandan, but a sturdy old figure with a bushy white moustache and thick eyebrows was digging in the front garden of the end cottage. Gunther, presumably. Francis smiled at him and received a grunt. He gestured at the second cottage. ‘Mrs Mac?’

  Another grunt and a nod. Francis opened the gate, walked up a crazy-paving path to the front door and pressed the bell push, which rang inside with a quaint suburban ding-dong.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Mrs Mac, peering out from a dark hall. ‘You’d better come in.’

  They sat opposite each other in a gloomy front room, which was crowded to the ceiling with ornaments: porcelain, plastic, wood, wicker, cloth; fairies, shepherds, dogs, dolls, you name it, lined up on the shelves of the bookcase, on the mantelpiece above the old-fashioned gas fire, and on the white tablecloths and doilies that covered the four occasional table
s.

  ‘You’ve heard about the accident?’ Francis said.

  ‘I found out when I went in just now. I’m supposed to be giving a statement, though what I’ll say I can’t think, except that she seemed a very nice young girl, a lot better than some of them, I can tell you. Always a pleasant word, helped me clean the place up one morning, wouldn’t take no for an answer. We haven’t had a death here for years. Not since Miss Alison’s riding accident, and that was in the 1960s.’

  ‘So you weren’t in the house yourself this afternoon?’

  ‘Not after two o’clock, no. That’s when I knock off, come back here for my break. Then I go in again, generally about six, tidy round, light the fires in winter, put the drinks tray out and what have you. I don’t stay long. I don’t cook any more and I don’t like to get involved in their high jinks.’

  ‘I imagine not. Was anyone else there when you left this afternoon, Mrs Mac? That you were aware of?’

  ‘There was. Three of them. In the kitchen. Still having their breakfast at lunchtime. I wouldn’t know their names. There’s so many in and out.’

  ‘You couldn’t give me a description?’

  ‘I could. It’s the tall young gentleman with the haughty look. And that black velvet smoking jacket what he’s always wearing. Looks like he’s stepped out of one of them TV costume dramas. And his little friend, with the spiky hair and the coloured glasses. And that American girl, bare feet and bows in her hair. Hippy chick, they call them, don’t they?’ She gave Francis a mischievous smile.

  ‘I think they might. But you’d gone before they left for town?’

  ‘I didn’t know what that they had left. They were still having their breakfast, as I say, because I couldn’t finish in the kitchen, which I like to do before I go. Still, if Mr Ranjit doesn’t mind a dirty kitchen I dare say I’m not fussed. Leave them to it.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anyone else around?’

  ‘I was over here after. As I said, I don’t go back in till six.’

  ‘And when you went back over today?’