Clearly, her opinion of this most recent victim was the same as mine. ‘And if it turns out that he was murdered? Would that surprise you?’
‘Not really. Jack was one of the most hated people in Hollywood. What’s that saying about great power bringing great responsibility? He certainly wielded an enormous amount of power and he would happily trample over anybody who stood in his way.’ She ran a weary hand through her hair. ‘I imagine you’ve read what happened to me at his hands, but I’m just the tip of the iceberg. I shudder to think how many young women have had their lives blighted by that bastard.’ She paused to take a couple of deep breaths. ‘I know they say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but, in the words of Groucho Marx, in his case, I’ll make an exception.’
I gave her a bit more time before I tried changing topic.
‘Can you satisfy my curiosity about your former agent, Mr Groves? It’s clear something bad happened to make you fire him, but you don’t specify what it was. Would you feel like telling me? I’m sure the inspector would be interested to know as well.’
‘Why, because she thinks Alastair might have wanted to kill me? That’s not his style. The only killing he ever does is to people’s reputations, and he’s very, very good at that.’
‘So what did he do that was so awful? Did he try to ruin your reputation after you sacked him?’
She glanced up and there was fire in her eyes. ‘Of course he did, but he failed… and failed miserably.’ She lapsed into silence for a full minute, but I didn’t press her. When she finally started speaking again, her tone was deadpan and she kept her eyes trained on Oscar. ‘What Alastair did really was awful, worse than Jack Sloane. He abused his position of trust and ruined the life of a seventeen-year-old girl.’
I waited for her to say more, but I waited in vain. In the end, I had to give her a little prompt. ‘Was that seventeen-year-old girl you?’ She shook her head without looking up, and I tried again. ‘How exactly did he ruin this girl’s life?’ Although, given what I’d heard and read about Desmond Norman’s and Jack Sloane’s past behaviour, her answer about yet another member of the Hollywood aristocracy didn’t come as a major surprise.
‘He groomed her and then he defiled her.’ Her voice was flat. ‘He fed her promises of stardom and, all the while, he treated her as little more than his whore. She never fully recovered.’ She finally raised her eyes from Oscar to me and, once again, I could see the tears sparkling there. ‘Put simply, Dan, the man is an animal, and he behaved appallingly. When I found out what he’d done, I severed all ties with him and got myself a new agent with a bit more moral fibre.’
‘But didn’t the girl go to the authorities?’
She gave a snort of derision. ‘In those days, she wouldn’t have got anywhere, except for being blacklisted and booted out of Hollywood forever.’
‘When you say, “in those days”, what days are we talking about?’
‘About twenty-five years ago.’
‘You say he ruined her life. Where is she now?’ I had a horrible feeling I knew who the girl was.
After another long wait, she finally shook her head, a note of resignation in her voice. ‘She’s dead.’
She buried her face in her tissue, and I decided to give her some privacy in her grief. I murmured, ‘I’m sorry,’ looked down at Oscar and uttered the magic word, ‘Feel like carrying on with our walk?’
For a moment, I could see him looking uncertain. On the one hand, he could tell that his new best friend needed a bit of canine support, but at the same time, it was awalk, his favourite pastime after eating. Finally, he pulled himself to his feet, nuzzled her cheek once and followed me out of the door.
Outside, I breathed deeply, seeking to cleanse myself after what Alice had just told me. It was patently clear that she’d been talking about Lucy O’Connell. Beneath the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the dark underbelly of the movie business – at least back in the not-too-distant past – had been laid bare. As Oscar and I walked around the garden, I reflected that this very definitely added the name of Alastair Groves to the list of Alice’s guests with a lot to lose if the autobiography were to be published. I remembered Mary telling me that rumours had been circulating about Alice’s intention of writing a no-holds-barred account, so this explained why people who hated her had accepted the invitation to come here, presumably hoping to find out what she intended to say about them. The problem the inspector and I now had was to work out which of them had come in the hope of redemption, and which had come determined to silence their accuser before it was too late.
I sat on the bench by the greenhouse, and my mind returned to the choice of poison. If this highly unusual toxin had its roots in India, could the only Indian guest here on the island beinvolved? I pulled out my phone and it didn’t take long for me to discover that Greg Gupta and Carlos Rodriguez had been together for over ten years. In that time, they would no doubt have built up a strong bond of loyalty between them. Strong enough for Gupta to kill, to protect his partner? Or at least for him to supply his partner with the means to eliminate the woman whose memoir risked destroying Rodriguez’s career?
I checked the time and saw that I had another ten minutes before I had agreed to meet up with the inspector again, so I searched the Internet for ‘suicide tree’. Sure enough, I found numerous references to what was apparently a very beautiful tree of the oleander family, producing white flowers and fruit that gradually changed from green to red in the course of the season. For this reason, keen horticulturalists from as far afield as Australia and America were now using the tree for decorative purposes in spite of its fearsome reputation. Apparently, the poison lay in the seeds at the heart of the fruit, and even a tiny fraction of one of these could cause the death of a healthy adult in two or three hours. For somebody sickly, or with a compromised immune system, death could be almost instantaneous. I studied a photo of an Indian man in Kerala, India, standing alongside a bunch of the shiny, green fruit. The caption underneath gave the Latin name of the tree,Cerbera odollam, and a bell started ringing in my head.
Why was this name familiar to me?
It didn’t take long for me to work it out. I scrolled back until I found the list of plants my new app had identified in Alice’s greenhouse and, sure enough, there it was. I jumped to my feet and stared into the greenhouse. There, just inside the door and already almost touching the glass roof, was the tree. Even more interestingly, there were three or four green fruits hanging from its branches. Had I just found the murder weapon?
I retreated, ensuring that I closed the door firmly behind me. The last thing I wanted was for Oscar to mistake one of these lethal fruits for a ball. I stood there in silence for a minute or two, considering the implications of my find. Up till now, I’d been assuming that the poison had been brought to the island by the killer, but now, with it readily available here on the spot, things had changed. And, as far as our investigation was concerned, they hadn’t changed for the better. This meant that anybody on the island with a knowledge of tropical plants – or simply with an app on their phone similar to mine – could have helped themselves to the fruit and crushed the seeds into a lethal powder.
The list of suspects had suddenly got longer, not shorter, and, like it or not, two names now had to be considered as serious contenders in that they both had had means and opportunity – although not necessarily motive. These two new suspects were, of course, Alice herself and Mary. As far as motive was concerned, the title of Alice’s book said it all. What better way of getting payback against Jack Sloane than by killing him? But why kill Lucy O’Connell? From what Alice had just told me, she had felt very fond of Lucy, and I had believed her. It didn’t make sense, unless Sloane’s murder had been in revenge on the man she considered responsible for Lucy’s death, but the chances of her somehow hitting upon the exact same highly unusual poison were so slim as to be not worth considering.
This, of course, left Mary, but what possible motive could a young woman with a doctorate in media studies have had for killing two people, both Hollywood icons in their own right? She had studied the movie world and she was no doubt more familiar with the darker side of Hollywood than an ordinary person, but what might she have discovered that could have driven her to commit two murders? I groaned and slumped back down onto the bench again.
Oscar returned from the fruitless chase of a big black and white butterfly and sat down beside me, no doubt aware that I was feeling frustrated. He almost immediately jumped to his feet again, tail wagging, and I looked around to see Inspector Trevisan approaching. She sat down on the bench alongside me, with Oscar stationed between the two of us.
‘Well, I’ve spoken to the boss and he seems happy, so it’s about time we started the interviews. Have you come up with anything in the meantime?’
I told her about my most recent conversation with Alice, and she listened intently before responding. ‘And you say you believed her when she said she was very fond of Lucy O’Connell?’ I nodded and she went on. ‘So that probably rules her out as a suspect for the first murder, but it’s clear that there was no love lost between her and Sloane. Might we be looking at two different killers? And, if so, our friend Signor Groves has leapt up the list of suspects with a lot to lose if the autobiography ever gets published after what he did to Lucy O’Connell.’
‘You might well be right that we need to look for two different perpetrators and I agree about Groves, but there’s something else I’ve just discovered, and it could be significant.’ I went on to tell her about my discovery of the suicide tree growing only a few metres away from us, and she immediately realised the implications of this.
‘That’s all I need!’ She gave a snort of frustration. ‘So that means that anybody here on the island, including the staff and the actors, could have had access to the poison. What about Alice Graceland’s PA, Mary Stevenson? She’s been living here for six weeks. It’s quite possible that she would have known about the poison plant. I think we’d better sit down and have a long talk to her as well.’
