“Just like that?”
“Well, I wouldn’t think you’d need to dress things up for a man like Smith, would you? You just put it to him and he says, ‘Sure, no problem. Leave it to me.’ It’s the kind of thing he does, after all. Kill people. For money, usually. But in this case as a favour.”
“Good God.”
“The plan was to wait until Keith and Louise left for Biarritz after Sarah’s graduation, then take out poor old Oscar. That’s all Keith knew and all he wanted to know. Smith was to handle the details. Keith didn’t have to worry about a thing. But he should have worried. Because Smith was semi-retired by then. Spent most of his time at his villa in the Algarve.”
“The Algarve?”
She nodded. “That’s right. Southern Portugal. Well, it seems Smith’s contacts weren’t as numerous-or as reliable-as they had been. But he hadn’t wanted to disappoint Keith, so he contracted the job out to somebody more active-let’s call him Brown-who sub-contracted it to a man called Vince Cassidy. Remember him? He was a prosecution witness at Naylor’s trial.”
“I remember.” Bella could have no idea just how memorable Cassidy was to me. Instantly, I wished I hadn’t refused to listen to him when I’d had the chance.
“Cassidy took the job, but at the last moment got Naylor to do it for him. Brown would never willingly have used Naylor, apparently. He had a reputation for carelessness. And for mixing business with pleasure if women were involved. But women weren’t involved. Or weren’t supposed to be. The trouble was Louise chose the same weekend to walk out on Keith as Naylor chose to raid a few houses in Herefordshire, adding Bantock’s murder onto the list. The prosecution got it right. Louise must have walked in on Naylor just after he throttled Oscar. And Naylor must have decided he couldn’t afford to let her live.”
“He’d have had no idea who originally commissioned the murder, would he?” I asked, picking up the thread of Bella’s reasoning. “Or why?”
“Exactly. To his warped mind, she must have seemed like an unexpected bonus. So he raped her-and then he strangled her.”
“When did Keith find out?”
“When he got back to Biarritz from his conference in Madrid. He found Louise had gone, leaving a note for him. It didn’t say she’d dashed back to England on impulse to buy one of Bantock’s paintings, as he claimed later. It said she’d left him for good. And it also said she hadn’t left him for anybody, least of all Oscar Bantock. She’d simply had enough of his possessive ways and meant to start a new life on her own. Then, almost immediately, Keith heard the news of her death and realized what must have happened. By setting out to do everything in his power to keep her, he’d only succeeded in destroying her.”
“What did he do?”
“He was horrified, gripped by guilt as well as grief. And frightened into the bargain. He had to think quickly. He had to decide what he was going to do before he went back to England. Tell the police everything, with no guarantee they’d ever catch Louise’s murderer but an absolute guarantee he’d be charged with conspiracy to bring her murder about. Or suppress his part in the whole ghastly business and strike a deal with Smith to have the culprit brought to book. Not a difficult choice, really, was it? Keith excused himself on the grounds that his confession would only increase Sarah and Rowena’s suffering and deny them his help and support in coming to terms with their mother’s violent death. A handy piece of reasoning from his point of view, but I suppose we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
I said nothing, some vestigial reluctance to speak ill of the dead reining in my tongue.
“Keith contacted Smith straightaway. Smith had met Louise a few times and was almost as horrified as Keith by what had happened. He flew up from Faro to meet Keith at Bordeaux. Then they flew on to England together, agreeing a strategy on the way. The man who’d raped and murdered Louise would be made to answer for it, but their connection with the crime would be kept out of it. Not difficult, since Naylor didn’t know who’d hired Cassidy and Cassidy didn’t know who’d hired Brown. While Keith went to comfort his daughters and pose as the baffled and bereaved husband, Smith went to sort things out with Brown. Brown hauled in Cassidy and told him he had to inform on Naylor to make up for using him in the first place and take his chances if Naylor told the police he’d put him up to it. Once Naylor was charged and put away, Brown would pull a few strings to supply another witness in case Cassidy botched it up.”
“You mean Bledlow?”
“Presumably. Though, as it turned out, Naylor never named Cassidy as an accomplice because he decided to plead not guilty. A risky thing to do, since it committed him to portraying Louise as a scarlet woman. Distasteful stuff, which probably added a few years onto his sentence. But at least Keith could console himself he’d been properly punished. As for his indirect responsibility for Louise’s death, he tried to put that out of his mind completely. And he didn’t do a bad job, because I never had the slightest suspicion. His grief seemed genuine to me, which it was of course, and uncomplicated-which it wasn’t.
“I know you think I set out to marry him for his money. But there was more to it than that. I couldn’t just hang around here after Hugh’s death. I needed a complete change of scene. Well, Keith gave me that. And he gave me a lot of fun too. As I did him. At least at first. But Louise just wouldn’t go away. His memory of her, sharpened by guilt. And the mystery of how she’d died, sustained by Naylor’s refusal to admit killing her. Then there was Henley Bantock and his bloody book. That started them all sniffing around, didn’t it? The scandalmongers and mischief-makers. Nick Seymour and his ego-trip of a TV programme. Which you helped him out with. Along with the Marsden bitch.”
Again, I held my tongue. There seemed no point reminding Bella that I’d been taken for a ride by Seymour. She knew, anyway. Pretending she didn’t was merely an attempt to forestall some of the condemnation she’d earned.
“Rowena committed suicide because of the doubts about her mother Seymour planted in her mind with all his prying and probing. But Paul must have blamed himself for her death and decided he deserved to be punished for it. Why else would he confess to a crime he hadn’t committed? He’s obviously unhinged. I suppose his attack on you was the first sign of that. And his confession was the second. How he convinced the police it was true-how he put together his story without making some vital slip-is quite simply beyond me. He must be extremely clever as well as seriously insane.
“Keith didn’t think he would convince the police. He was sure they’d find some flaw in his account. But what if they didn’t? What if somehow, by some uncanny fluke, Paul was believed? Keith said he’d have no choice. Weak and frightened as he was, he’d own up rather than let Naylor walk free. I could see he meant it. And that meant I might find myself married to a known murderer, with everybody suspecting I’d gone along with his attempt to cheat justice. Can you blame me for doing everything in my power to prevent that happening?”
“No. But I can blame you for setting about it the way you did.”
“Yes, well…” She gave a faintly contrite toss of the head. “It stood to reason there had to be a weak spot in Paul’s story. It was a lie, after all. And lies are never perfect. But I didn’t trust the police to search it out. And I wasn’t prepared to wait while they tried. I reckoned the sooner we put a stop to Paul’s madness the better. Since Keith forbade me to take a hand myself, I had to persuade somebody to do it for me, somebody intelligent and reliable who might be willing to help me out for old times’ sake.”