Her reply didn’t come straight away. Finally, she looked up. ‘He has a guilty conscience, and I imagine that seeing mereminds him of what he did, so he prefers to keep clear of me – and I’ve stayed out of his way as well up till now.’
‘Can you tell me what he did? What gave him a guilty conscience?’
After another long pause, she explained. ‘It was a long time ago, probably thirty years or so. I was in the running for an Oscar for my portrayal of Cleopatra, and my career was riding high. Everybody wanted a piece of me, and I was the toast of the town in LA. One night in June, I was invited to a party at Carlos’s place – it’s a ridiculous replica of a medieval castle just off Rodeo Drive. It was a wild night with people doing drugs and drinking to excess. At four minutes past midnight, one of the guests fell to his death from the top of the tower.’
‘Four minutes past midnight? That’s a very precise time. How can you be so sure?’
She looked up. ‘Because I saw it happen, and the tower has a clock on it.’
‘And what did happen?’
‘The verdict was death by misadventure. The guy, a young actor called David Vernon, had been drinking heavily, and they said he must have slipped and fallen.’
I had a feeling I knew what was coming next, so I tried to ease her into it. ‘But that’s not what you saw?’
‘I don’t know what I saw. At least, I don’t know how he came to fall, but what I did see was Carlos up there with him.’
‘And you think he might have pushed the man over the edge?’ This was serious. ‘You think Carlos Rodriguez killed him?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t see Carlos as a killer, but what struck me as suspicious, and what still strikes me as suspicious to this day, is that Carlos swore blind he was down in his cellar, looking for more wine, when it happened. Why would he lie about something as serious as that if he didn’t have a guilty conscience?’
‘And did Carlos see you looking up?’
‘No question, eye contact. He saw me looking at him.’
‘Have you ever spoken to him about that night?’
‘I haven’t spoken to anybody about that night. The police never questioned me and, looking back on it now, I suppose I didn’t have the courage to come forward. After all, what could I say except that I’d seen Carlos up there? To be completely honest, I was doing cocaine in those days – recreationally, not mainlining – and I couldn’t be totally sure about what I’d seen. I was afraid that the police might start investigating me, and the fallout could have been terminal for my career.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘So I said nothing.’
I filed this news away for further reference and queried the other name I hadn’t found in her book. ‘What about Freddie Baker? Does he get a mention? I couldn’t see one.’
‘He’s there, all right.’ She paused for thought for a few seconds. ‘Take a look at the chapter headed “Falsehoods and Fabrications”. You’ll find him there.’
I decided to check that out before asking any more about her relationship with Baker, so I changed the subject slightly.
‘You told me your intention was to sit down with each of the people who figure in your autobiography and see how they react. Have you had the chance to do that yet with any of them?’
‘Not really. I had a quick word with Dirk yesterday lunchtime, but within seconds, we were arguing again.’
‘It’s clear from the book that you and Dirk Foster had a relationship twenty-five years ago, but that it ended acrimoniously.’ Greg Gupta had already told me this, but I saw no point in involving him. ‘I gather the two of you have hardly spoken since then. Can I ask why you invited him?’
‘Like I said, I invited him because he’s in the book, and because I wanted to give him the opportunity to apologise forwhat he did.’ She looked me straight in the eye for a couple of seconds, and I read bitter anguish in them. ‘He didn’t only break my heart, Dan; he scarred me for life, mentally and emotionally.’
‘You don’t mention it in your book, but I read somewhere that you disappeared from circulation for a year after that. Something about a trip to India, if I remember right?’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read. If you want the honest truth, I went back to stay with my mum in Dorset. I needed to get away from Dirk and I needed to get away from Hollywood. I buried myself in the middle of the countryside and kept my head down.’ She looked up at me and her eyes were bright with tears. ‘I look back on that time of my life with mixed emotions. Mum was diagnosed with cancer while I was there, and I stayed with her till the end.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She was looking really down, so I did my best to cheer her up. ‘But then you came back to Hollywood and picked up where you’d left off, and your career went ballistic. When your book comes out, I’m going to read it carefully, line by line. You describe some really happy times as well as some grim times. And, of course, you got married, didn’t you?’
Her reaction to this was bittersweet. ‘We got married in 2004. Andrew was a wonderful man. He was my rock, but then he was plucked away from me ten years ago, almost to the day.’ She wiped her eyes again. ‘A massive heart attack. One day, he was there; the next, he was gone.’
Any further nostalgia was interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside and I heard somebody tapping at the door, accompanied by a familiar voice. It was Mary. ‘Miss Graceland, are you there? The police have arrived and they want to speak to everybody.’
I got up, opened the door, and let her in. When she saw Alice still wiping the tears away, she hurried over to her side of thedesk and stood alongside her. ‘Are you all right, Miss Graceland? Is there anything I can do to help?’ She sounded genuinely concerned.
To my surprise and probably Mary’s, Alice reached over, wrapped her arms around Mary’s waist and buried her head against her side, sobbing quietly while Mary, clearly moved, stroked her boss’s hair, doing her best to comfort her. At this point, Oscar was looking so concerned, I thought he was about to climb onto the desk to be close to them, so I thought it probably a good idea if he and I headed off and left the two of them alone.
Giulia Trevisan and Sergeant Scarpa were standing under the pergola. I went over and we shook hands. Formalities completed, I raised an inquisitive eyebrow in the inspector’s direction. ‘So the pathologist says she was poisoned; what sort of poison was it? Presumably, something quick-acting like arsenic?’
