‘So what you said last night wasn’t a joke? You really did watch your father burn to death?’ The compassion in Alma’s voice was as strong as it had been the night before, even though she had been lied to.
‘Yes, but I don’t know why I said that. It was out of order. I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no need to apologise, David,’ Hitchcock said, looking at his wife. ‘Sometimes a joke is the only way to get through.’
‘Bella took me away because Grace begged her to,’ Franks continued. ‘It was dangerous for me here: I was frightened and angry, and the mob would have found a way to get to me, too. There’s no stopping violence like that once it starts.’ He looked round the room. ‘It’s ironic, but this was where Bella told me that I was leaving with her. If you look carefully, you can still see the mark where I threw a doorstop at the fireplace. I didn’t want to go.’
‘The child who went missing was related to Bella,’ Penrose said, piecing the details together with what the policeman had told him. ‘Her brother’s child. Is that right?’
Franks looked surprised. ‘Taran? Yes. He was only three at the time. How did you know?’
‘One of the local officers told me. He also said that Bella’s brother never knew his son because he ran off with another woman. Branwen Erley’s mother, to be precise. That’s how she and Bella were connected. Did you know that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were you going to mention it?’
‘No, but only because I was trying to protect someone.’ His honesty was disarming, and Penrose looked at him in surprise. ‘What’s the point now, though? You’re going to find out anyway. Bella’s brother – it’s Leyton Turnbull. He changed his name when he left here.’
It was obvious that this was a revelation to everyone in the room, including Josephine. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ Penrose asked.
‘Because he’s all I’ve got left, dammit.’
Penrose left the room for long enough to control his temper and find James Wyllie. ‘Will you take one of these officers to Leyton Turnbull’s room and find out if he’s there? If he is, bring him down here but don’t tell him what it’s about.’ He went back to the Mirror Room and sat down opposite Franks. ‘Right. Tell me everything you know about Leyton Turnbull.’
‘He turned up in America about eighteen months after I got there. He’d spent some time in Europe – Denmark first, then Germany after the war ended, and he’d had a few small parts in terrible films. By that time, Bella was very famous and very rich‚ and he wanted to cash in on her success. He arrived at the studios one day, completely out of the blue.’
‘With Branwen Erley’s mother?’
‘No. That can’t have worked out because he was on his own when he got to us. Bella was horrified, but he hit it off with Max straight away. He found Turnbull some work on the production side. That didn’t go down very well with Bella.’
‘But she put up with it?’
‘As long as there was never any acknowledgement that they were related. She didn’t want anything to do with him. Then Turnbull pushed his luck too far, Max refused to rein him in, and Bella had had enough. She filed for divorce and came back to England.’
‘Was that when he raped an actress?’ Astrid asked. ‘Bella told me he’d destroyed a young girl’s life. Did the boys stick together and turn a blind eye?’ She looked at Penrose. ‘Had Branwen Erley been raped?’ He said nothing. ‘She had, hadn’t she?’
‘Jesus Christ, what about Bella?’ Franks demanded. ‘She hadn’t . . .’
‘No,’ Penrose said. ‘There’s no sign of a sexual assault on Miss Hutton.’ He chose not to add that it was about the only atrocity that had not been performed on the movie star’s body.
‘Turnbull was with that waitress last night, Archie,’ Spence said quietly. ‘He brought her back in his car at about seven o’clock and dropped her off at reception. I saw them when I was walking down to the hotel. She kissed him goodbye‚ and her stockings were ripped.’
‘Obviously begging for it, then,’ Astrid said sarcastically.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Spence said impatiently. ‘For Christ’s sake grow up. People have died.’
‘You’ve been very quiet, Mr Lascelles,’ Hitchcock said, his confidence seemingly restored by the growing antagonism in the room. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you were quite interested in Miss Erley last night while she was singing for us. Is there anything you’d like to share?’
Danny flushed, as he had the night before when Hitchcock had picked on him. ‘I was looking at her because of something Turnbull told me.’ He caught Penrose’s eye. ‘He said he’d fuck her one way or the other before the night was out. You heard him, didn’t you, Astrid? He offered me a bet on it.’
Astrid ignored him and continued to glare at Jack Spence. ‘Why is Turnbull here this weekend?’ Penrose asked.
‘I told him about it,’ Franks admitted. ‘We kept in touch now and again. He begged me to get him an invite‚ and Mr Hitchcock needed someone to play a certain role, so it seemed to kill two birds.’
Penrose didn’t bother asking what that the role was: Hitchcock’s games had ceased to be important. ‘He didn’t come because he knew Bella was going to be here?’
‘I don’t think so, but I couldn’t swear to that.’
‘So it’s not impossible that he could have known and seen an opportunity to settle the score with her? From what Miss Lake says, she was spreading allegations about him quite liberally‚ and he must have wanted to stop that?’ Franks hesitated. ‘Is that why they were arguing in her room last night?’
‘How did you know that?’
Ronnie had her moments, Penrose thought, but he didn’t explain. ‘Was that the reason?’
‘No. At least not entirely. Turnbull only found out yesterday that he’d had a child. Branwen Erley let it slip – he told me he’d picked her up on the Harlech road, said she’d had an accident on her bike and had to abandon it. She didn’t know who he was,’ he added, anticipating the next question. ‘She was just telling him the local gossip, oblivious to the damage she was doing. He was livid with Bella for keeping it from him.’
‘And was he angry with you? You didn’t tell him either.’
‘I know, but he was too busy with Bella to think about me. It was wrong of me not to say anything, but I didn’t want to have to admit that my father was involved in the disappearance of his son.’
‘But your father was an innocent man,’ Josephine said. ‘Bella made that very clear.’ Franks remained quiet, and she looked at him curiously. ‘You think your father did it, don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure what to believe. I don’t think he meant to hurt Taran, but I think he might have taken him.’ He rubbed his hands wearily across his eyes. ‘He’d done it before, you see, in another part of the country, somewhere we were just passing through. After my mother died he was sick with grief, for her and for the baby; he didn’t know what he was doing. Everyone else in the camp looked out for him‚ but this time no one could help him. It all happened too quickly.’
‘You mean they set fire to that cottage with the child alive inside?’ Josephine asked, horrified. ‘Surely they would have looked?’
His expression showed his contempt for her naivety. ‘Have you ever been near a mob when it smells blood?’ he asked. ‘Nobody stops to check. Not until it’s too late. The fire took hold so quickly that I think even they were surprised, but when I looked up at the window I thought I saw the boy in my father’s arms. Maybe they realised later what they’d done. That would explain why no one tried harder to find Taran’s body.’
‘You’ve never told anyone this?’ Penrose demanded angrily. ‘It didn’t occur to you that you could have saved Taran’s mother from the pain of waiting and wondering?’
‘At the expense of my father’s memory? I couldn’t do that. So that’s why I’ve never told Turnbull: he would have killed me. Yesterday, when I went into Bella’s room, he had his hands around her throat because she’d kept Taran’s birth from him. God knows what he’d have done if he knew the truth about his death.’
‘Last night, when we found you in the square with him‚ and he was talking about the cemetery, what did he mean?’
‘There was a rumour at the time that my father had buried Taran there. Branwen told him that, too. It was nonsense, of course, but I could hardly say anything. So if Bella was killed there . . .’
There were footsteps in the corridor and Wyllie put his head round the door. ‘He’s not in his room.’
Penrose swore under his breath. ‘All right. We’ll have to organise a thorough search. I’ll be out in a second.’ He turned back to the room. ‘Did anyone see Leyton Turnbull after he left this room last night and before two a.m.?’
‘Astrid and I did,’ Danny said. ‘He came into the garages at around one o’clock and put something in the boot of his car.’
‘What on earth were you doing in the garages at that time of night?’
They glanced nervously at Hitchcock. ‘I wanted our young friends to get to know each other a bit better, so I arranged for them to be shut in together,’ the director said brazenly. ‘
The 39 Steps
gave me the idea. Everyone said I’d handcuffed Robert and Madeleine together and deliberately misplaced the key, but I didn’t; it would have wasted studio time‚ and studio time is expensive. But garage rental is much cheaper.’ He smiled, and Penrose was tempted to wipe it off his face.
‘Are there any other tricks that might hinder this investigation? The nun, for example. Who is she?’
Hitchcock shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You must know who she is. You invited her to dinner.’
‘I paid her. I didn’t hire her. Ask David. He found her.’
Archie turned to Franks and raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’
David looked uncomfortable. ‘I’d rather not say. She had nothing to do with this.’
‘I’ll establish that for myself.’
‘But she left the village before we finished dinner.’
‘No she didn’t,’ Josephine said. ‘I saw her when we were in the Mirror Room. She came from the direction of the headland and walked towards reception. That must have been around nine thirty.’
‘And she kept peering at Leyton Turnbull and saying she knew him,’ Astrid added. ‘It seemed to make him uncomfortable.’
‘Who is she?’ Penrose demanded again.
‘Her name is Joan Sidney. She’s a porn star from Kansas.’
Hitchcock’s explosion would have been amusing under other circumstances. ‘You brought a porn star here without telling me and put her on my payroll? What the hell were you playing at?’
‘He didn’t mean anything by it, Hitch,’ Alma said. ‘It’s just the sort of gag you’d have played yourself if you’d thought of it.’
For once, her attempts at keeping the peace seemed to fall on deaf ears; Penrose was surprised to see that Hitchcock’s anger at the joke – which he personally found funnier than anything the director had attempted all weekend – seemed to stem from a kind of naive embarrassment. ‘Where is Miss Sidney now?’ he asked, ignoring Spence’s smirk.
‘I booked her into the Castle overnight. The Deudraeth Castle Hotel,’ he explained when the others looked blank. ‘It’s the building you see on the way in. She’s probably left by now, though. She was paid in advance. She always is.’
‘I’ll go and find out. Stay here until I come back.’ Josephine followed him out of the room and walked with him to reception. ‘Thanks for your help in there,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how much of all that would have come out without your having heard it first from Bella Hutton.’
‘She didn’t mention David Franks to me at all, you know. Don’t you find that odd?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, she talked about the people she loved and the people she hated, and his name didn’t come up in either category. I would have expected someone who was close enough to her to know about her cancer to feature quite prominently in the sort of musing she was doing on her life when she spoke to me. She even compared herself to Christine Clay and said that there would be no real grief when she died.’
‘They’d obviously drifted apart recently. Franks said as much himself. Perhaps that was it.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’ Josephine sounded unconvinced. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to hold you up. I just wanted to let you know that she also talked about leaving all her money to charity. I’m almost certain she was joking, but I thought you should know‚ and I could hardly say it in there.’
He smiled at her. ‘Quite. Anything else to add?’
‘Only one thing: it occurred to me that perhaps it was Bella who had come here to settle the score with Leyton Turnbull, not the other way round. She had nothing to lose, after all, and she gave me the impression that she had come here this weekend for a specific reason connected to her family. She told me that I’d helped her make her mind up about something, but she wouldn’t tell me what.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘And now you’ve bled me dry, will you forgive me for not coming back in there with you? I’ve had enough of all of them.’
‘Of course, but don’t leave the hotel until we have a better idea of what’s going on.’
The receptionist at the Castle told him that Joan Sidney had not officially checked out yet but was nowhere to be found on the premises. He left a message, asking her to contact him immediately on her return, then found a policeman to take formal statements from Hitchcock and his guests. Back in the Mirror Room, everyone was gathered by the French windows‚ but there was no sign of the director.
‘Where has your husband gone, Mrs Hitchcock?’ Penrose asked angrily. ‘I asked you all to stay here.’
‘He’s gone to fetch Leyton Turnbull,’ Alma said apologetically. ‘I spotted him on the lawn outside the Bell Tower just after you’d left the room.’
When Leyton Turnbull eventually awoke that morning, he was horrified to see how late it was. His head hurt and he felt faintly nauseous, but he dragged himself out of bed and straightened his clothes. His trousers were still damp from the rain and his jacket and shirt were splashed with blood and dirt, despite having transferred a good deal of both to the sheets. His raincoat – slung carelessly over a chair by the window – seemed to be missing its belt. There was a jug of water by the bed which he had no recollection of placing there himself, but he was grateful for it: as he drank it down, mouthful after tepid mouthful, tainted by the sour taste of whisky and vomit on his tongue, the events of the night before came gradually back into focus.
It was only a short walk from his room to the Bell Tower. Before going in, he paused on the lawn outside and looked down to the hotel‚ but there was no one on the terrace yet. It was nearly noon. Bending to avoid scraping his head on the low stonework, he accessed the tower through the nearest of four arched entrances; half a dozen steps led up to a wooden door, then the staircase wound round to the right and became narrower. The musty smell of damp and mould did nothing for his hangover‚ and, when he reached the fourth level – the one that held the bells – he was glad to emerge into daylight again.
But he was still not high enough. The Bell Tower was the most dramatic flourish that Portmeirion had to offer, a striking landmark on the village’s eastern side, and his own gesture needed to be worthy of it. The final two levels of the tower were reached by a ladder; when he had gone as far as he could, he stood at the window and gazed out in wonder. It seemed to him now that he was level with the distant peak of Snowdon, that its grandeur no longer dwarfed him, and, as he looked down, the other buildings of Portmeirion appeared as brightly coloured models built on his past. There were figures on the terrace now, tiny and insignificant, miniature dolls who had lost their power to hurt; up here, he was in control‚ and the feeling was intoxicating, all the more so for having been absent from his life for so long. He climbed out onto the window ledge to make himself more visible, and the stone felt hot and rough against palms which were soaked with sweat. He waited until he was sure of his balance, then allowed himself to look down; even in that momentary glance, the feeling of being pulled towards the ground was extreme, an insidious lure to self-destruction. Turnbull shook his head‚ but it only made the sensation worse. Two floors below him, the old chiming turret clock began its greatest effort of the day. The sound startled him and he grabbed at the side walls, feeling his heart beat rapidly in his chest.
And then he saw the house. It seemed to move closer as he looked at it, obscuring everything else on the horizon; he knew it was an illusion‚ but still it taunted him, daring him to make things right. He felt himself spinning and imagined Gwyneth in his arms; he heard her screams quite clearly, and then the cry of a child – a child who might not have died in violence if he had not been conceived that way. He knew what he had done was wrong‚ and she had shown him what the consequences would be, but he had loved her‚ and that was his only defence. At last, he knew what to do. Closing his eyes, he pictured Gwyneth’s face and walked out to join his son.