Part 19 (1/2)

11.

Penrose had left the room to go after Hitchc.o.c.k, and Danny took advantage of his absence to draw Astrid to one side, away from the rest of the group. 'Why were you looking at me like that in there? What have I done?'

She met his eye for the first time that morning. 'I don't know, Danny. What have you done?'

'You can't think I had anything to do with this? Astrid, for G.o.d's sake a you know I'm not capable of that.'

'I don't know what to believe. You unexpectedly b.u.mp into a girl who in many respects has ruined your life, and the next morning she turns up raped and strangled. Surely you can't blame me for wondering what exactly did happen last night?'

'You know what happened. I was with you.'

'Not all night. You were late to meet mea and you'd changed your clothes. Where did you go for your walk, Danny? You never mentioned it. Did you have a stroll up the coastal path?' She hated the whining sarcasm in her own voice but could not seem to do anything about it, and Danny's silence only made her want to punish him further. 'And Hitchc.o.c.k was right. You were staring at her all through dinner. You couldn't take your eyes off her.'

'So that's it. You're jealous?'

'Jealous?' She laughed in his face. 'That's not the sort of attention I'm looking for, Danny.'

'I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.' He calmed down and tried to reason with her. 'You know why I was looking at her.'

'I know what you told me, but I didn't realise you were a liar until just now. Why did you tell Penrose that Turnbull had made a bet with you about having s.e.x with her? He didn't say anything of the sort, at least not in my hearing. Why would you say he did?'

'Since when did you become his biggest fan?'

'I don't give a d.a.m.n about Leyton Turnbull. I'm just trying to find out what sort of man I spent the night with.'

'I thought you'd know that by now.'

He winked at her, trying to make her smile, and she marvelled at how quickly the charm that had attracted her to him in the first place had begun to have the opposite effect. 'Aren't you even the slightest bit touched by her death, Danny? By the way she was killed? I was watching the faces in that room while Penrose was telling us what had happened, and everyone else looked shocked or sad or frightened. But not you. You looked guilty, and you couldn't even catch my eye. What are you hiding?' she asked, suddenly afraid of the answer; she had never, in her heart, believed that Danny was responsible for the attack, but she had needed to hear him proclaim his own innocence; now, she was not so sure that he could do so truthfully. 'Did you hurt that girl?'

He nodded. 'Yes. I'm sorry, but I lied to you. She was telling the truth when she said I went too far.' Astrid was so shaken that it took her a moment to relate his confession to the incident in his childhood, not the crime of the night before. 'But I was fifteen years old, Astrid, and it was my first time with a girl. She encouraged me. I thought she was as keen as I was.'

'So that makes it all right?'

'She led me on, then changed her mind at the last minute.'

'Just like I tried to?' At last, the personal resentment that had spurred her anger with Danny was out in the open. She bitterly regretted what she had allowed to happen between them, but there was no going backa and, while she knew that it was cheap and shabby to use Branwen Erley's death as an excuse to turn the shame she felt back onto him, it fitted her new opinion of herself perfectly.

The embarra.s.sment hung in the air between them, and it was Danny who tried to brush it aside. 'You were nervous,' he said. 'That's understandable, but you didn't mean . . .' He tailed off when he saw the expression on her face and tried to take her hand insteada but she flinched at his touch. 'Come on, Astrid, don't be like this. Don't spoil things. We had a wonderful night.'

'Did we?' She undid the top two b.u.t.tons of her blouse and pulled the silk to one side to show him the livid, purple beginnings of a bruise on her breast. 'That's your trouble, Danny. You always think we're enjoying it far more than we really are.'

It was the final blow to his pridea and he turned away in disgust. 'Jack's right,' he said. 'You do need to grow up. People have to do things they don't like to get on. It's how the world works.'

'And how does going to bed with you help me to get on? You're not a producer or a director. You're a run-of-the-mill juvenile lead who may or may not still have a career in three years' time a just like me.' She put a hand to his cheek and looked at him sadly. 'I wasn't with you to get on, Danny. I was with you because I liked you. I thought you were different, more sensitive than other men. When you were telling me about your father, I really felt sorry for you.'

'Did you?' He laughed, but there was no humour in it. 'Well, maybe that's not the sort of attention I'm looking for.'

There was nothing more to say. Astrid started to walk awaya but he caught her arm. 'Are you going to tell Penrose? I haven't done anything wrong, Astrid. If I wanted to kill that girl, I'd hardly have admitted to you that I even knew her.'

'That's really all you care about, isn't it? What I'm going to say, not how I might feel.' She stared at him for a long time, as if trying to make up her mind. 'Neither of us are very nice people, are we Danny? I thought we were, but that sort of sentimentality is just one of the things I lost last night.' Without another word, she turned and went back to join the others.

12.

Hitchc.o.c.k hurried back through the village to the patch of lawn outside his own apartment, determined that a no matter what else Leyton Turnbull was guilty of a he was not going to give Penrose any more scope for criticism by outlining the prank that was supposed to have been played out that day. By the time he got there, the small gra.s.s-and-gravel garden was deserted, and he cursed the actor for choosing now to start behaving reliably. He had no choice but to follow Turnbull inside the Bell Towera and he made swift work of the climb; the ninety-six steps to his top-storey flat in Cromwell Road might be his only concession to exercise, but they were at least effective. As he reached the second level and made for the next flight, a shadow pa.s.sed across the window.

He stopped, knowing instinctively what had happened but unable or unwilling to believe it. Later, he found it hard to be sure if the sound of Turnbull's body hitting the ground was real or had been conjured purely from his own dread, but it would haunt Hitchc.o.c.k's dreams for the rest of his life, unshared and unacknowledged. Shaken, he walked reluctantly over to the window. His eyes swept the courtyard below and settled on Turnbull's shattered corpse, unconsciously framing the peculiar arrangement of his limbs against the gravel. A surge of panic welled up inside him but he forced himself to stay calm as he went back down the steps, praying that this might somehow be an illusion, a more elaborate version of the joke he had himself intended to play. But there was no mistake, and he found himself drawn towards the body. The panorama of Portmeirion faded as he moved nearer until, when he was just a few feet from the dead man's face, there was no beauty or suns.h.i.+ne left, only horror. There was blood, so much blood, but he ventured closer still, so transfixed by Turnbull's eyes that nothing else existed: their stare was relentless, accusing, and Hitchc.o.c.k held them for as long as he could, but eventually they saw too mucha and he had to look away.

13.

Lettice steered the boat skilfully into sh.o.r.e and Ronnie clambered out. 'Absolutely b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous!' she said with enthusiasm. 'Who'd have thought the ringside seat would actually be out here?'

'It's certainly a far better view of the Bell Tower than anything you get inland,' her sister agreed, throwing a rope over the landing post and pa.s.sing Lydia her sun hat.

'We saw the whole thing: the dummy going out of the window, everyone running round like headless chickens.' Josephine tried to interrupta but Ronnie was in full flight and she had no choice but to let the momentum tire itself out. 'Archie didn't waste any time in getting up there, did he? I bet the look on his face was priceless when he realised that Hitchc.o.c.k had had the last laugh. I'm not surprised he was fooled: it all looked terribly realistic. Who was the dummy supposed to be? We couldn't quite make that out from a distance.'

Josephine took the oars from Lettice and helped her out of the boat. 'It wasn't supposed to be anyone.'

Lydia looked at her sharply. 'What on earth do you mean?'

'It was Leyton Turnbull. Not a dummy, and certainly not a joke. It's been quite a morning while you've been sculling around out here, playing Swallows and Amazons.' They listened, incredulous, as Josephine explained the whole story.

'So you're telling us that Leyton Turnbull murdered them both and then topped himself?' Ronnie asked. 'I wouldn't have thought he had it in him.'

'No, but that's what it looks like. n.o.body has said it officially yet, but it's the conclusion that everyone has jumped to.'

'Where's Marta?' Lydia asked. 'Is she all right? It must have been a terrible shock for both of you to discover the girl's body like that.'

If she harboured any feelings of resentment because Marta and Josephine had shared an experience from which she was excluded, she hid them well. 'She's over there with Bridget.' Josephine pointed to the terrace, where the two women were deep in conversation, and wondered if Archie was getting his testimonial. Lydia went to join them and she turned back to Lettice and Ronnie, reluctant to witness any sort of reunion.

'What were you saying yesterday about a matinee idol never being a killer?' Lettice shook her head in disbelief. 'It just shows how wrong you can be, doesn't it?'

'Though in your line of work, we might have hoped for a little more insight,' Ronnie said, then added thoughtfullya 'It seems an awful lot of trouble to go to.'

Josephine laughed, in spite of the situation. 'Trust you to put innocence down to laziness. You make it sound like Leyton Turnbull should be given marks out of ten for effort.'

'I didn't mean that.' Ronnie smiled. 'Although it was a spectacular jump. I was just questioning why you would murder two women to protect your reputation and then kill yourself anyway? It's not very logical, is it?'

n.o.body answered. To the left of the hotel, Josephine could see two policemen carrying a covered stretcher down the sun-flecked path which led behind the building and out to the road. 'We shouldn't be talking like this,' she said quietly. 'That's the reality of it.' They watched as Bella Hutton's body was loaded into a waiting mortuary van and driven slowly away from Portmeirion for the last time. 'Thank G.o.d they've taken her before the press get a whiff of this. There'll be no dignity left for anyone once that happens. She deserved better.' Josephine remembered the stoicism with which the actress had talked of her own death and wondered how long it had taken that courage to desert her when tested by a reality more horrific than any she could possibly have foreseen. 'Come on,' she said, suddenly glad of the Motleys' company. 'Let's go and get a drink.'

14.