‘Thanks, Dan, I might take you up on that, but probably not until tomorrow. All I need for now is to check through the list of who’s here, and for the pathologist to work overtime to establish the exact cause of death. If it turns out to be suspicious, then I’ll be back first thing in the morning to take statements from everybody. I’ll give orders that nobody is to leave the island until I say so.’
I nodded approvingly. ‘Sounds very sensible. What I can do in the meantime is to take a quick look through Alice Graceland’s book.’ In response to a raised eyebrow from the inspector, I explained. ‘A copy of the first draft of the manuscript of her autobiography has been delivered to each of the guests this evening, including to me, and I can’t wait to take a look at it. Certainly, if Lucy O’Connell’s death turns out to be suspicious, I feel pretty strongly that the murderer’s real target must have been Alice Graceland and, depending on what she says about each individual guest in her book, that might help us establish who had the strongest motive for trying to murder her.’
17
SATURDAY NIGHT/SUNDAY MORNING
As soon as Oscar and I got back to my room, I spotted the manuscript lying on my bed. It had been copied and spiral bound, and I wondered if this had been in the package that Diego had had to pick up the previous day. There was even a colour cover, with a picture, not of the author as I might have expected, but simply of a plate with the remains of a meal on it and the titlePayback. The strapline underneath read,A dish best served cold.It was a bleak image, and I had a feeling I was going to find that what lay beneath the cover would be equally bleak.
It was almost eleven o’clock when I started reading, and I finally had to stop at just after three in the morning. This was for two reasons: firstly, because my eyes were starting to close and secondly, and more urgently, because Oscar’s dietary excesses of the last twenty-four hours had started to catch up with him, and his ominously rumbling tummy told me that he and I would do well to go out in the fresh air. We went outside and I closed the door quietly behind me, expecting to find everybody on the island fast asleep. Instead, I saw that there were lights on in three of the bedrooms and I could hear muffled voices further alongthe terrace under the pergola. I had a feeling that the midnight oil was being burnt by the guests as they leafed through Alice’s book, searching for references to themselves. I took Oscar the long way around the garden and, while we walked, I reflected on what I’d been reading.
In many cases, Alice had opted not to name names, but the descriptions she gave meant the various people who cropped up in the course of the book were fairly easy to identify. Many of the people she mentioned received very favourable treatment from her, and I actually found myself smiling at some of the anecdotes. Given the circumstances, however, I skipped quickly through the happy chapters and concentrated on those relating to events in Alice’s past that were anything but happy. The majority of these dated back to the years when she had been starting out in show business and, given the recent Hollywood scandals involving lecherous movie execs with their infamous casting couches, I was unsurprised, but still appalled, to read her accounts of deplorable incidents in her past.
One of these involved somebody described by her as ‘the most powerful man in Hollywood’. This man, some twenty-five years older than her and far from attractive, had invited her up to his rooms, where he had made her a proposition. It made my skin creep to read the matter-of-fact way in which she recounted that he had told her quite openly that if she had sex with him, he would give her a part in a movie. According to her book, she had refused and left, but she hadn’t fared so well with another man the following year. This man was described as beinga heavily overweight character over ten years older than me, and the man they called the star-maker. When she had visited his office, he had insisted that she strip to her underwear – ‘so I can see your figure’ – and then, in spite of her attempts to defend herself, he had sexually assaulted her.
The identities of these two men were all too easy to work out. Desmond Norman was twenty-three years older than Alice, and he had very definitely been all-powerful – and probably still was. Jack Sloane, the casting director, was thirteen years older than her, and he fitted the description of the heavily overweight star-maker perfectly. Reading the accounts of her ordeals at their hands, I could well understand why she might be longing for revenge.
Carlos Rodriguez, described in her book simply as ‘a well-known Latino movie director’, had apparently refused to cast her in a leading role in one of his most successful movies, telling Alice’s agent that she was ‘too old and too unprofessional for the part’. Considering that she was over ten years younger than him and with decades of experience, this must have really hurt, but why had he been so mean? I got the distinct feeling that there was something here that wasn’t being said.
The most mysterious one of all was her former agent, easily identified as Alastair Groves. Nowhere did Alice specify what he’d done, but she indicated that she had had no choice but to sack him, in spite of his having been instrumental in building and developing her career. The only explanation she gave – if indeed it could be called an explanation – was,He knows what he did.
The whole of chapter seven was devoted to her whirlwind romance with Dirk Foster twenty-five years earlier, and it confirmed that, just like his character in the murder mystery, he had been unfaithful to her and she had dumped him as a result. But the bombshell was the identity of the woman with whom he had hooked up. This woman, born within a few days of Alice, was described asa little tart with dyed blonde hair, who slept her way around the USA until she finally managed to hook herself a real live billionaire – a bit long in the tooth, but loaded. This wouldappear to explain why Maggie McBride had been invited to the party.
I had been speed-reading most of the time, but I had been unable to find anything negative about Lucy O’Connell – in fact, I sensed real affection in the description Alice gave of this unfortunate victim of the Hollywood jungle. Nor could I find any mention of Greg Gupta or Wilfred Baker but, considering that it was a three hundred-page manuscript, I could easily have missed them.
Once Oscar and I had walked around to the other side of the garden, I climbed up a set of steps onto the top of the wall and paused to ponder what all this meant. The lights of the old city twinkled in the distance and, in spite of the hour, I was surprised to see the green and red navigation lights of a number of vessels moving across the lagoon. Clearly, Venice was a city that never fully slept. Oscar sat down beside me and started yawning. I knew how he felt. I knew I really should be in bed, because I felt sure that tomorrow, or rather today as it already was, was going to be busy. I tried to concentrate on the case, but I could feel my eyelids drooping so I glanced down at Oscar.
‘Well, dog, who do you think did it?’
He yawned again and looked up with an expression that clearly indicated that this would be up to me to work out, but first, of course, we had to discover whether poor Lucy O’Connell really had been murdered or whether she had taken her own life.
I was woken by somebody knocking on my door at just after seven-thirty in the morning. Under normal circumstances, I would already have been up by this time, but upon returning to my room with Oscar in the middle of the night, I had stripped offand gone out like a light. I wrapped a towel around my waist and padded across to open the door. To my surprise, it was Alice. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of a beauty parlour, her make-up, hair and clothes perfect. I took a couple of steps back and waved apologetically in the direction of my bare torso.
‘Sorry I’m not dressed. I spent most of the night reading your book.’
She smiled at me, a slightly nervous smile, and came into the room, closing the door carefully behind her. ‘Hi, Dan, sorry to wake you, but I need your advice.’
By this time, Oscar had realised that he was being visited by his new best friend, and I left the two of them happily making a fuss of each other while I grabbed some clothes and ducked into the bathroom to pull on shorts and a T-shirt. When I emerged, I found Oscar sprawled on his back, all four legs in the air, sweeping the floor with his tail, while Alice tickled his tummy. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, so I opted to sit on a nearby chair. She gave Oscar one last pat and then straightened up.
‘Dan, do you think Lucy was murdered?’
‘I honestly don’t know. As far as I could see, she might well have still been on drugs. Do you think that’s possible?’
Alice nodded. ‘It’s all so terribly sad. She’d been in rehab for months, and I really thought she was getting somewhere, until I got word from a friend two weeks ago that she’d checked herself out and was shooting herself full of that stuff again. I’ve always had a soft spot for her, so I invited her to come here and stay for as long as it was going to take. I persuaded Desmond Norman to give her a lift in his jet, so it couldn’t have been easier for her. The idea was that she would have a bit of company for a couple of days with everybody else here, but then they would leave, and she and I could settle down to a quiet routine in a place whereshe wouldn’t constantly be pestered by drug dealers or other addicts.’ She looked up and I could see tears glistening in her eyes. ‘And now, of course, that’s all gone out of the window.’
I gave her a few moments to compose herself before I asked the question that had been preying on my mind. ‘Do you think it might have been a deliberate overdose? Might she have been trying to take her own life?’
Alice shook her head. ‘No way. She and I spent most of yesterday afternoon together, and she was telling me how she was determined to really make a go of it this time. She bitterly regretted falling off the wagon again and she said she was doing all she could to get her life back on track. She claimed she’d been clean for over a week now. I’m sure addicts say that sort of thing all the time, but I got the impression that she really meant it.’
I tried another question. ‘Might she have overdosed by mistake?’
Alice paused for thought. ‘I suppose anything’s possible. I don’t know much about drugs, particularly not hard drugs, but surely somebody who’s shooting up on a regular basis is unlikely to make that kind of mistake.’
This didn’t really accord with my experience of drug addicts, but I said nothing. Instead, I queried what had brought her to my room at this early hour, and she explained.
‘You said you’ve been reading my book. I don’t know how far into it you’ve managed to get, but I imagine you’ve identified a number of the people who’re here now. I suppose any one of them would be delighted to see me dead, and I’ve spent all night wondering just who might have been so outraged that they decided the only way was to kill me.’ She paused to take a couple of long, calming breaths. ‘But then, of course, as a result of my stupid game, an innocent girl got killed in my place.’
I did my best to offer some comfort. ‘Don’t blame yourself,Alice; last night was just a game. If Lucy’s death turns out to have been murder, and at this point, we still don’t know for sure, the fault lies with whoever did it, not you. You can’t be held responsible for something like that. The inspector said she hoped to hear back from the pathologist this morning one way or another, and, if it turns out to be murder, she said she’d be coming back to interview everybody. I met her on Friday – she’s a friend of a close friend of mine in the Florence murder squad – and she strikes me as a good, competent detective. When she comes here, I’d like the three of us to sit down together, and for you to spell out why you invited these particular guests and what shady secrets they might have in their past. She needs to have all the relevant information at her fingertips. You will be prepared to do that, won’t you? Don’t worry, I’ll be with you all the way.’
