‘I was too distraught to write anything at all when I was told the police were searching for her,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never kept a diary since.’
‘Well,’ he said, in a gentler tone, ‘thank you for your time, Julia. I’m sorry for the distress I’ve had to cause you.’
She showed him out. ‘Can I be allowed to put all this behind me?’ she said in an almost pleading tone, as they stood on the marble tiling beneath the front door’s portico.
‘I’m … sorry. I’m afraid, your involvement with her was such that the police will have to know about it.’
She gave a fatalistic nod. She knew as well as he did she was now a suspect and would need to be formally eliminated. Assuming she was innocent. Crane knew he was getting mixed vibes. She could have written up a diary that absolved herself some time after the event.
As he turned to go, she said quietly, ‘Frank?’
He turned, waited. The light flowing from the hall outlined her sturdy figure. ‘Donna … one night she woke up trembling. She’d had a frightful dream. I sometimes wonder if it was a premonition. She was in a state. Normally she never spoke about her … other life. She was very discreet. It was something to do with the photography man, the one who wanted her to be a fashion model. In the dream she’d decided he wasn’t good enough, hadn’t got the connections. She told him she wanted to enrol with a professional agency. He went berserk. Said she’d never work for anyone but him. He’d … he’d discovered her. He made the most appalling threats. To her looks, to her …’
‘Go on, Julia.’
‘She calmed him down, said she hadn’t meant it, she’d just been silly. None of it was really as I’m telling you. She was utterly distraught, almost incoherent. It must have been the dream. She was usually so self-possessed. And she was sobbing her heart out, poor darling. Said she didn’t want to go away with him. Not now. She said he was trying to control her, make her into something she wasn’t. She wanted to live her own life. She was certain he’d try to change her …’
Crane was becoming puzzled. ‘This was still the photographer?’
‘I don’t think so. It was all so very disjointed, but I think it was another man she was talking about then, who wanted her to go away with him. I think it was the man I saw at the Raven.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I made her a warm drink. When I came back she was her usual self. Made light of it. Even began to giggle. It had just been a bad dream and I’d not to take any notice, she could handle it.’
‘Thanks for telling me. You didn’t think to pass it on to the police originally?’
‘I … I couldn’t face my life with her coming out, perhaps even getting in the papers. I’m a very private person. And it seemed so likely that this man Mahon …’
He watched her, wondering if she might not have felt an overwhelming sense of relief when no police had come knocking on her own elegant door eight or nine months ago.
Anderson was already at Patsy’s, scribbling on the flipchart, on the page devoted to Joe Hellewell, as wound up, it seemed, as Crane himself was. ‘Where have you been, you bugger, when it’s all happening?’
‘What about the siege?’
‘All over in an hour.’ He grinned. ‘I told the desk to hold two inches at the bottom of page nine unless something really big had broken like a cat up a tree. The gun was an imitation and he was so gone on skunk I don’t think he knew which century it was, let alone day.’ He turned to Crane with a look of triumph. ‘There’s your killer, sunshine.’
‘Hellewell?’
‘Don’t bother with the flip chart just yet. Listen to this.’ He put a micro-cassette recorder on the table. Crane glanced at Patsy, who shrugged, drawing down her mouth at the corners.
He said, ‘Just before you begin, how come you know Kirsty so well?’
‘Last summer Leaf and Petal had a lot of saplings destroyed. The police nailed someone from another nursery trying to damage their trade. I went to report on it with a camera man. Hellewell was away on business at the time and I spoke to Kirsty. I think she took a bit of a shine to me.’ He smiled with a faux modesty as carefully honed as his charm. ‘One of their runabouts is a Scenic and I casually mentioned I fancied one myself. She made me borrow it for a couple of days to see if I liked it. Really nice woman. And then, when Donna’s body was found, I was along there again, talking to her and Hellewell and the rest of the staff.’
Crane recalled Carol at the Glass-house, acting a giggle, and asking him had there been any woman involved in the Donna affair who might have caught Anderson’s eye. Well, maybe there had been.
Anderson said, ‘I asked her if she’d mind if I used this; she said she actually wanted it on record.’
He pressed the PLAY button. They heard Kirsty say, ‘I’m very, very worried, Geoff. I should have told the police at the start. He was seeing Donna.’
‘Joe? We’d thought he might have been.’
‘I began to suspect when he wanted to keep her on for that first winter. She was quite useless for any of the real work we do in winter, all the preparation for the new season. It meant we paid her virtually to do nothing. But he wanted to be certain of having her in place the following spring.’ She gave a sigh. ‘He had a point, she really did seem to pull in the customers. She was a right little charmer. But then he couldn’t keep away from her. I knew perfectly well there was something going on. I should have had it out with him, threatened divorce, but … well, we’re not simply married, we’re married to Leaf and Petal. We have two kids, they’re keen to come into it one day.’ There was a lengthy pause. ‘I should have told the police at the time.’
‘Why didn’t you, Kirsty?’
‘Because I simply couldn’t believe it could be him who … he was so gone on her. It broke him up when they found the body. I just couldn’t believe … Not Adrian.’
‘Adrian?’ Anderson’s voice repeated, high with surprise. ‘But … but we’re talking Joe here.’
‘Oh, dear, I sometimes forget. His names are Adrian Joseph, but he always felt Joe sounded more friendly with customers and staff. We call him Adrian at home: family, close friends.’ She gave a hollow chuckle. ‘A bit like the Royal family, official and unofficial names, King George being called Bertie behind the scenes.’
Anderson paused the recorder. ‘Adrian, guys!’ he cried gleefully. ‘Adrian! The first piece in the jigsaw. But it gets better, a whole lot better. Stay tuned!’
He pressed PLAY again, to the sound of his own voice. ‘I see. Two different names. Do you think he was Adrian to Donna?’
‘Probably. I think he felt it made him two separate people. I was genuinely sorry about Donna, truly, and though he was so dreadfully upset I felt we had a chance to get our own lives on track again, Ade and me, only …’ There was another lengthy silence. ‘And then … and then I found out he was bisexual. I overheard two of the girls talking in one of the greenhouses about a wealthy customer of ours, Clement Hebden. One of them said, “All that lolly and those cool looks, why does he have to be one of them?” It gave me such a shock. I’d no idea he was gay. Adrian spent an awful lot of time with him, but he was supposed to be helping him landscape his garden. But the night Donna went missing Adrian said he’d stayed the same night at Clement’s. Said he’d had a drink too many.’
‘That’s what he told us earlier.’
‘I’ll spare you the details of how I proved to myself he was … that way, but I just had to. It had already been too much trying to cope with his affair with Donna, but, well, if there were men involved too … I knew I couldn’t handle it, Geoff. He was making what he thought were secret trips to Tanglewood. I … got it together. For months now I’ve been trying to decide the best way to break with him. It was when I read about that poor man called Ollie being almost battered to death that I began to get really, really frightened, because he was just thought to be a harmless gossip. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d somehow found out too much. And then I began to wonder if Adrian really had something to do with … Donna’s death, and his gay friends were perhaps …’