The scene would be shot in the den, where the police had directed the girls to wait that morning. Incredibly, none of the furniture or draperies had been changed, so the room bore an eerie sameness to the way it had looked twenty years ago.
On the other hand, Laurie reasoned, my guess is that only Robert Powell has ever used that room in all these years. According to Jane Novak, the living room and dining room are where he does his entertaining when he has guests. From what she says, when he’s alone after dinner he either goes to the den and watches television or reads, or else he goes up to his suite.
With only him living here and the way Jane keeps this place up, it’s no wonder there was no need to change the interior decorating.
Or, she wondered, did Powell want to keep his home frozen in time, just as his wife had left it? She had heard of people like that.
She shivered as she walked quickly back to the den and entered by the patio door. The crew was setting up the cameras. There was no sign of Robert Powell. Jane had told them that he was in his office and would be there all morning.
From the beginning Powell had told her there was no need for him to equally compensate Jane. “I think I speak for her when I say we would both like a conclusion to this terrible business. Jane has always regretted the fact that after she locked all the doors for the night, the girls opened the one from the den, then when they came back in from smoking on the patio, they left it unlocked. If that had not happened, an intruder might not have been able to get in.”
Maybe Powell and Jane are right, Laurie thought. After checking the cameras and the lighting, she went back out onto the patio and saw Alex Buckley getting out of his car.
Today he was wearing a sport shirt and khakis in place of the dark blue suit, shirt, and tie he had been wearing yesterday. The top of his convertible was down, and the breeze had ruffled his dark brown hair. She watched as with what was probably an instinctive gesture he smoothed his hair back and walked toward her.
“You’re an early bird,” he said with an easy smile.
“Not really. You should be around when we start shooting a program at daybreak.”
“No thanks. I’ll wait until I can push a button and see it on TV.”
As he had in his office, he suddenly became businesslike. “Is the agenda still that we begin with me speaking to the graduates after you film them sitting in the den?”
“Yes. I’m doing this out of sequence because I have a strong hunch that they have all rehearsed what they’re going to say to you. By starting with them all together, it may put them off guard.
“And don’t be surprised at the way they’re dressed. They’re wearing replicas of the clothes they wore after Betsy’s body was found, and then they were told to change into street wear.”
Alex Buckley seldom allowed his face to register surprise, but this time he was so startled that he could not conceal it.
“You’re having them wear replicas of what they wore twenty years ago?”
“Yes, for two scenes. The one in the den where they were herded with Jane as soon as the police arrived. And then one wearing gowns that are identical to the ones they wore to the Gala.
“We’ll photograph the graduates against the background of films of them individually and together at the Gala. For example, when Robert Powell is toasting them, we’ll have a picture of the four of them looking at him.”
Alex Buckley’s reply was interrupted by the limousines with the graduates arriving almost simultaneously. It was Laurie’s turn to be astonished when Muriel Craig stepped out of the backseat of the second limo while her daughter, Nina, stepped out of the front passenger door. Muriel wasn’t supposed to come today, she thought. Powell either called her or she’s come on her own.
Either way, she’s bound to make Nina edgy and angry.
Which might be good when Nina is being questioned.
43
On Tuesday morning Josh drove the Bentley to be hand-washed and detailed. Mr. Rob was very particular that it be kept in pristine order, Or else, Josh thought as he waited in the chair in the service center.
With a sense of satisfaction, Josh congratulated himself on solving the problem of how the graduates would be able to play the tapes he had recorded. He would put his cassette player in the powder room in the hallway next to the kitchen. There was a vanity table and bench in it for any guest who might want to touch up her makeup or hair. He would present the cassettes to Nina, Regina, and Alison and tell them they might be interested in hearing their conversations in the car, then suggest it might be worth fifty thousand dollars to have each copy destroyed.
They would be panicky, the three of them, he was sure of it. Claire hadn’t said a word in the car when he drove her, so there was no cassette for her. And yet, of all of them, Josh would bet that she had the most to reveal.
He had the suicide note that Regina had hidden in her purse. Josh had debated whether to give it to Mr. Rob or try to find a better use for it. Then he found his answer: charge Regina one hundred thousand dollars, maybe even more, to get it back and tell her that otherwise he would go straight to the police. That note might take any suspicion of killing Betsy off Mr. Rob, Jane, and the other graduates.
And Josh would be a hero and good citizen if he turned it over to the police chief. But the police might ask what he was doing going through ladies’ handbags. He did not have a good answer to that question, and he was hoping one would not be necessary.
Mr. Rob hadn’t sent him to pick up any of the graduates this morning. Instead, sounding testy, he instructed him to come to the house after he left the service center, in case he decided to go into the office.
It was obviously unsettling for Mr. Rob to have all these people around. Not only must it bring up a lot of memories, Josh thought, but Mr. Rob must know that he’s under suspicion, too, and want desperately to clear his name.
Like Jane, Josh had managed to sneak a look at Mr. Rob’s will when it was on his desk. He had left $10 million to Harvard, to be used to fund scholarships for deserving students, and $5 million to Waverly College, where he had received an honorary doctorate and had already had the library named after Betsy and him.
Alison Schaefer had gone to Waverly. Josh remembered how she was the best student of the four girls and had talked about going to medical school, but then married Rod Kimball instead four months after the Gala.
Josh had always wondered why she hadn’t brought Rod to the Gala that night. You never know, he told himself, they might have had an argument.
As the service manager approached Josh to tell him the car was ready, Josh concluded his line of thinking. Mr. Rob is a very sick man trying to ensure his legacy before he dies, he decided.
But as Josh got into the Bentley and drove away, he could not help thinking that there might be more reasons for Mr. Rob going ahead with the program than met the eye.
Leo Farley’s impatience at his hospitalization grew with every passing moment. Disdainfully, he looked at the needle inserted in his left arm and the bottle of fluid connected to it dangling overhead. He had a heart monitor strapped to his chest, and when he had tried to get up a nurse came rushing in. “Mr. Farley, you cannot go to the bathroom alone. You have to be accompanied by a nurse. However, you can close the door.”
Isn’t that wonderful, Leo thought mockingly, even as he realized it wasn’t right to kill the messenger. Instead, he thanked the nurse and grudgingly allowed her to follow him to the door of the bathroom. At 9 A.M. when his doctor came in, Leo was loaded for bear. “Look,” he said, “I can get away without calling my daughter. She saw me last night just before I came in here, so I know she won’t look to speak to me until tonight. She has two more days to finish this program, and there’s a lot of pressure on her to make sure it’s successful. If I have to tell her I’m in the hospital, she’ll be terribly upset and probably end up coming here instead of finishing the show.”