Charles Goddard chimed in. ‘I don't understand why she went back to Elmhurst if that's the case.’
Neither did Rafferty.
‘I told her she could give up that position my wife found for her,’ Goddard said. ‘I don't like to think of my daughter being alone in Elmhurst when there's a dangerous maniac on the loose.’ Goddard turned to his wife. ‘It's worrying, too, my dear, to think he might have attacked you that same night.’
‘You were in Elmhurst on the weekend of the murders?’ Rafferty asked.
Eve Goddard's beautifully sculpted lips thinned. ‘Yes, but really, I can't think why you should question me on my movements. If you must know, I had found a wonderful dress for Isobel. I stopped at her flat that Friday night – the night I gather the Warburton girl was killed – to drop it off. I wanted her to have it for the party. I then drove her to the Cranstons’ house.’
Rafferty recalled the man-bait dress and was astonished at the discovery that her own mother had bought Isobel such a revealing costume.
‘And you really had no cause to worry about me,’ she assured her husband. ‘I was in no danger. I didn't even get out of the car.’
In her statement Isobel had made no mention of her mother dropping her off. Presumably she hadn't thought such information relevant. Mrs Goddard had appeared annoyed when her husband had mentioned it. Rafferty wondered why. Was it simply because she objected to being questioned? Or did she actually have something to hide? Whether she had or not, she was clearly a forceful woman. If it were up to her, Rafferty believed, the family fortunes would soon be revived.
Although when questioned, she denied turning up at the second party also, with her looks, Rafferty didn't think she would have found it too difficult to persuade one of The Elmhurst's doormen to let her in. Or she could simply have asked her daughter for an official invitation.
Charles Goddard's mind was still on safety issues. ‘I can only hope Isobel comes to her senses and returns home.’ He turned to his wife and remarked, ‘I said to you at the time, my dear, if you recall, that I thought working in a dating agency was not quite the thing.’
‘It gives Isobel an income, Charles.’ Implicit in Eve Goddard's voice was the rider that this was more than her husband managed. She didn't trouble to hide the contempt, though Charles didn't appear to notice this any more than he seemed to notice that the beautiful girl he had married had turned into a deeply frustrated woman.
‘Still, as I said, that will soon be a thing of the past.’ Goddard's previously dull eyes had developed an enthusiast's sparkle as he turned to Rafferty and said, ‘I've got plans, you know. Great plans.’ Even his stoop seemed less pronounced. ‘Chap was telling me about this marvellous idea–’
‘Not another one.’ Eve Goddard's mouth thinned. ‘How many more?’
Goddard appeared oblivious to his wife's interruption. ‘He said he'd made a packet in six months. All I'd need for capital is £5,000. I could raise it if I sold part of the library.’ He gazed vaguely round. ‘Some valuable first editions here, I believe.’
If there were, they were also veritable Houdinis at concealment. Rafferty, who had spent some twenty minutes in the library while he waited for Charles Goddard to appear, guessed if there had been valuable first editions, Eve Goddard would have long since realized their worth. As far as he could see, this ‘valuable’ library consisted mostly of snore-worthy collections of old sermons, dusty tomes by authors with unrecognizable names, piles of torn paperbacks and several teetering yellow towers of The Times.
Goddard, clearly intent on making the most of his captive audience, explained the ‘marvellous idea’. To Rafferty it sounded like a classic scam. He began to give Goddard his opinion, but Goddard waved his doubts away.
‘I'm sure you mean well,’ he said, ‘but you're quite wrong, my dear chap. You're a policeman, don't you see? You haven't the entrepreneurial flair required to get such a scheme off the ground. You would need the contacts, too, of course.’
Goddard's voice petered out as he realized he'd implied that Rafferty couldn't possibly have the contacts required. But although his voice trailed away, the light of the born enthusiast still burned in his eyes. After seeing Eve Goddard's reaction to this latest wheeze and hearing the exasperation in her voice, Rafferty realized Goddard was the type of man who would always see yet another new Jerusalem on the horizon. Hadn't Lancelot Bliss and Ralph Dryden made some acerbic comment about this tendency? It seemed clear that no matter how many false dawns lighting the way he'd already seen, Goddard would still be marching purposefully towards Jerusalem when they took him away either to jail or a rest home for the serially deluded.
Rafferty – whose family had always been poor – had the novel experience of feeling sorry for a man who had once had everything life could offer, but who had thrown it all away chasing rainbow-gold. He began to understand something of Eve Goddard's frustration.
For how many years had Isobel witnessed this same scene and her mother's contemptuous treatment of her father? When had it begun? She was 27 now and he recalled Lance Bliss saying she had been around 12 when her father had made his disastrous investment. So, from an impressionable age and through fifteen long years after, she had seen the man who should have been the most important male in her young life abused and derided. Was that what had made her view all men as empty vessels worthy only of exploitation?
Charles Goddard appeared ineffectual and unlikely to restore the family fortunes, but he was still able to delude himself that one or another hare-brained scheme would provide the answer to the family's money problems. Rafferty was surprised a realist like Eve Goddard had stayed around long enough to witness yet another grand plan unfold.
Though he questioned them further, it was clear Charles Goddard could tell him nothing more. As for Mrs Goddard, Rafferty thought it was probably more a case of wouldn't than couldn't. Even if she didn't strike Rafferty as the most caring mother in the world, she seemed determined to reveal nothing more than what she had already told him.
It was as Charles Goddard escorted him to the door that Rafferty’ eye alighted on the woodworm raddled oak staircase. It was lined with portraits; most, to judge by the costumes, of long-dead people.
Goddard noticed Rafferty's study of this dark and dusty collection and told him proudly, ‘My ancestors, Serg– Inspector. There have been Goddards living here since 1565, when my namesake, another Charles Goddard, built the house. ’He's that rather villainous-looking character at the bottom.’
Goddard pointed to the portrait of a swarthy-skinned individual at the lower turn of the staircase. Dressed in scarlet velvet and lace, he reminded Rafferty of Charles II, but without the charm.
‘Bit of a Casanova where the ladies were concerned,’ Goddard confided. ‘Ruthless too, if the family stories that have been passed down are to be believed.
‘The man couldn't stand rivals at any price. He had a particularly effective way of seeing them off by arranging to have them attacked by footpads and run through with a sword. Rumour had it that old Charles wielded the sword himself.’
‘Handy to have your very own gang of cut-throats,’ Rafferty observed. ‘Must iron out life's little problems a treat.’
Goddard shrugged. ‘I suppose so. But the rumours did for him in the end, especially when he ran through one of Queen Elizabeth's favourites. He ended up on the gallows.’
Rafferty shuddered. ‘Direct ancestor of yours, is he?’
‘Yes. He's my great, great… What is it now?’ Goddard looked bemusedly along the row of portraits as if he expected one of them to come up with the answer. ’Is it ten or eleven greats? I can never seem to get it right. Anyway, he‘s my however-many-greats grandfather. It's funny how every generation seems to produce someone in his mould.’ Goddard attempted a little joke. ‘Thank God they've done away with hanging.’
Amen to that, thought Rafferty as, a minute later, the massive front door closed behind him. But even as his neck was gratefully shrugging off the rough noose imagination had dropped around it, he couldn't help but wonder whether, concealed beneath the make-up, the designer clothing and the décolletage Isobel might not be the current generation's chip off cut-throat Charlie Goddard's block.
He started up the engine and bounced back up the drive to the road. How had she felt when the burden of saving the family had been thrust on to her shoulders? Desperate and frustrated, like her mother? Or determined, like her father's namesake? And if delusion was another family inheritance, like ruthlessness in ridding oneself of love rivals, was it possible that Isobel had thought if she removed Caroline then Guy would marry her?
Of course, the difficulty there was that it hadn't been Caroline Cranston who had been murdered. But if he was putting Isobel in the frame there was an answer to that little difficulty. Not only was Isobel extremely short sighted, she was also very vain and refused to wear spectacles. And– as he had overheard at the first agency party – since she had tried and failed to get used to contact lenses, she was reduced to a half-world of vaguely-formed faces and red rhododendrons that closer inspection turned into tractors. No doubt, even now, she was saving madly for one of those laser treatments that would remedy the problem.
The fact that she was more than half-blind wouldn't have assisted her in correctly identifying her victim. Both murder scenes – the Cranstons’ car park and the grounds of The Elmhurst's annexe – had been dimly lit. Easy enough to mistake identities when the two victims had been dressed in similar clothes to Caroline Cranston and shared a superficial likeness to her.
Of course, the fact that both murder scenes had been poorly lit meant that others, too, would have found it difficult to correctly identify the chosen victim. Maybe, if Isobel had a guilty secret that gave her a valid reason for suspecting she had been the intended victim both times, she had been right to flee for her life.
It had been a long day. Rafferty was tired by the time he got back to the station. He had anticipated some peace and quiet while he studied the latest reports and had to bite back the irritation when he saw Llewellyn hovering by his office. He had hoped to avoid Llewellyn's questions for a while longer, but as that hope vanished he led the way into his office.
‘I was just about to make a start on the reports,’ he told Llewellyn as they both sat down and before Llewellyn had a chance to question him about his trips to York and Suffolk. ‘But seeing as you're here you might as well tell me if you've found out anything new.’
‘Depends what you call new. A number of other witnesses have also now stated that there was something odd about this Nigel Blythe.’
‘The supposed Nigel Blythe, you mean.’ Keeping it as brief as possible, Rafferty told him that the real Nigel Blythe's alibis had both held up. ‘What do you mean by ‘odd’, anyway?’ he asked.
‘The agency clients I've spoken to all said they thought he seemed to be pretending to be something he wasn't. From your discoveries in York it would appear they were correct. For one thing, he wore an extremely expensive suit but it didn't fit him properly.’
‘Presumably, if he's the man who burgled the real Nigel Blythe's flat, he helped himself to the suit at the same time as he took Blythe's personal documents. Mr Blythe told me when I spoke to him on the phone that he was missing an expensive designer suit from his wardrobe.’
Llewellyn nodded. ‘And then there was his accent. It kept changing, apparently. Not that he said much; not to the men anyway. One witness, a Mr Ralph Dryden, actually called the man furtive. He said he seemed reluctant to reveal anything about himself, though several of the other witnesses I spoke to were of the opinion that he seemed keen to get the two victims on their own. They told me he seemed to have plenty to say to them.’
‘Mm. What do you make of it?’
‘If it wasn't for the facts of the two murders I would have thought him simply someone intent on a bit of social climbing, hoping to find a woman of means to support him. Most of the members of that agency, male and female, hold down high-powered careers with commensurate salaries; highly attractive to a certain kind of man intent on battening on some lonely woman for an easy life.’
Not the most flattering description of himself Rafferty had ever heard. He forced out another question, ‘And with the facts of the murders?’
‘I think we must assume he burgled Nigel Blythe's apartment with the intention of setting himself up with an identity that would enable him to meet and murder women of the professional classes. We must assume that means premeditation; premeditation from a determined and extremely dangerous psychopath. We know from the security arrangements at both venues that – unless we're dealing with a deranged partnership of an agency member with an outsider as you earliest suggested was a possibility – it's unlikely any outsider could have gained access. It leaves us no alternative if we're to launch a manhunt but to check out the tiniest fact about this man. And as he seems to have deliberately targeted Nigel Blythe in his identity theft, Mr Blythe merits further questioning. It seems likely the murderer must have known him in some capacity – maybe he bought a house from Mr Blythe's estate agency? But of one thing I'm certain— there's a connection of some sort. There has to be.’
Rafferty forced down the bile that had risen from his stomach. This was the conclusion he had most feared Llewellyn would reach. Because if they investigated each of his cousin's known contacts, how could they possibly miss him, or the fact that he had inexplicably failed to mention the relationship at all?