Jessie reached for another biscuit.
“Some days later, you drove Cyril to Bath for the funeral, which ought to have been just a formality, like everything else up to then. It wasn’t. You didn’t realise Ivor Pellegrini would be playing detective. You’d never even met the guy. Your trips to the house had always been on different days from the railway people. Unknown to you, Max had treated Pellegrini as a confidant and even asked him to take care of those valuable gowns. The funeral reception was the last opportunity for any of you to be inside the house and clear out any remaining items of jewellery. Pellegrini was on the lookout for the thief. He may well have decided by then that the anoraks in the railway club were in the clear, which left you and Cyril as the prime suspects.”
“We’ve been through this,” she said. “He stained my skirt, I stupidly left the room without my bag and he found the flash drive.”
“Which meant-from your point of view-he couldn’t be allowed to live,” Diamond said. “And if you needed any more convincing, he made the trip to Little Langford and got talking to Cyril. All your tidy arrangements were under threat. You were sent out for the evening while God knows what was discussed between the two of them. I don’t believe you panicked, but you had to take emergency action. Cyril was killed the same night. His usefulness was over anyway. In the morning you were gone-but not before laying a trap for anyone who would come looking.”
“The hairbrush,” Ingeborg said.
“Near genius,” Diamond said, but the face across the table was expressionless, no longer susceptible to flattery.
He pressed on. “There was sympathy in the underworld for the harsh way you’d been treated after Bob’s death. You’d stayed in touch with some of them, like Larry Lincoln. Kept an ear to the ground. And when a working girl known as Maria from Sofia died literally on the job and ended up in the river, you offered your help removing all trace of her. You collected a sack full of her possessions, including the hairbrush with some of her hairs attached. This happened a few days before you murdered Cyril and you’re far too smart to miss an opportunity of faking your own death. It worked, too, until we compared your recent history and Maria’s. Even a woman as versatile as you are couldn’t be on the game in Oldfield Park at the same time as caring for dear old Cyril in Little Langdon. We rumbled you in the end, but it took some doing.”
“Is that it?” she asked as calmly as if enquiring whether dinner was ready. Her composure hadn’t been shaken at any stage.
“Going by your diary I strongly suspect it isn’t. We’ve still got hours of work to do, finding out when you started and who you killed in years past. You’re not new to this, are you?”
She didn’t need to say, “No comment.” It was in her eyes.
“You’re not going to tell us where it began and how many there are and how many false identities you’ve lived under, but you definitely knew what you were doing when you killed a man as powerful as Bob Sabin. I was about to add ‘and got away with it,’ but you didn’t.”
Her eyes gleamed a response.
Diamond smiled at her. “And it’s over now. If neither of you ladies wants the last biscuit, I’ll take it.”
28
The woman known variously as Jessie, Elspeth, Dilly and other identities yet to be revealed, was charged as Dilys Sabin and remanded in custody. The extent of her murderous career would remain unknown until at some future date her exceptional ego needed nourishing by the revelation that she was unequalled as a female serial killer. She was certain to spend the rest of her life in prison with the consolation that she was a celebrity of unending interest. Psychiatrists would study her, publish books and articles, and be anointed as professors for their insights into her disordered personality.
Peter Diamond had never had much time for that kind of analysis. He had some explaining of his own to do to another formidable woman, his boss Georgina, and it was more about his own motives than Dilys’s.
“I can’t understand why you kept all this to yourself,” the ACC complained when she finally cornered him. “Don’t you think I deserved to be taken into your confidence?”
“And placed in an impossible position, ma’am?” he told her. “Couldn’t do that to you. There’s such a thing as loyalty.”
“Loyalty? The loyal thing to do would have been to tell me about your suspicions the minute you had any.”
“You had your work cut out dealing with Flogham and Flay.”
She made a sound like a deflating tyre. “Please. Mr. Dragham and Miss Stretch.”
“If they’d got involved, we’d have had our hands tied, to put it mildly. Have they gone now?”
“For the time being. They had hopes of interviewing Mr. Pellegrini, but they’ll need to come back at a later date if they do. It’s abundantly clear anyway that our driver wasn’t the main cause of the accident. With luck, we may not see them again.”
“Do you have the latest on Pellegrini?” he asked.
“I phoned the hospital and spoke to the ward sister in Critical Care. He’s recovering well, considering all he’s been through.” Georgina gave him a penetrating look. “Who exactly is Hornby?”
“The toy manufacturer?”
“I’m asking you, Peter.”
“He died years ago, but his name lives on. Model trains. Most of these railway fanatics play with them. It’s a symptom of the disease.”
After the weekend, Pellegrini was well enough to receive visitors and Diamond was the first. He wouldn’t be content until he’d had certain matters clarified.
The patient was seated in an armchair in the day room of Bradford Ward, leafing through a copy of Heritage Railway magazine. The pages shook a little and he was slumped, but he straightened on seeing he had a visitor and his eyes lit up. “I understand you saved my life,” he said after Diamond introduced himself. “It’s weird. I can’t remember any of it, but I’m more grateful than I can say.”
“No need,” Diamond said. “We’re drilled in first aid. I should be grateful to you for the chance to brush up on my technique. So is everything a blank?”
“Everything that put me in here. I’m told that’s to be expected. I don’t like it. I’m a stickler for detail, always have been.”
“You wouldn’t want to know about most of it,” Diamond said, thinking of his unauthorised visits to the house. “How is your memory for events before the accident?”
“Pretty sound, I think.”
“So what turned you into the best amateur detective since Lord Peter Wimsey?”
He raised a smile. “That was my old friend Max Filiput. He died, poor fellow. I went to the funeral. It seems a long time ago.”
“You had your suspicions he was murdered?”
“No, I’m telling it wrong. When Max was still alive he had suspicions of his own that things were being stolen from the house. He’d inherited quite a collection of antiques and jewellery from his late wife, Olga, who came from a wealthy family. Max, being the sort of fellow he was, hung on to them out of a sense of loyalty to Olga, but he wasn’t interested in them as possessions. He shut them away and didn’t look at them again. Then for some reason he opened a drawer where he thought some item was and couldn’t find it. He didn’t trust his memory enough to go to the police, but he was worried. He asked me to take care of certain items of great sentimental value, antique gowns that he thought might be at risk. As far as I know the things he entrusted me with are still stowed away in my workshop. I must do something about them when I get home. They’ll be part of his estate. He left everything to a very good cause.”