‘No, I don’t suppose you do. You probably think it’s your fault he strayed, don’t you? For not being tiny and blonde and undemanding? So you just have to remove Adele from the competition and keep Cosmo’s little foible a secret, so he never knows you found out? That’s what you thought, I expect?’
To Sara’s relief, sensation and power seemed to have returned to her hand. ‘Because you can also suddenly see that Adele could actually destroy him completely. And you too, of course. She could undo everything you’d done for him. Everything.’
Poppy folded back the blanket away from Sara’s feet. Her hand brushed gently over the ankles. She had clearly decided she hadn’t heard. ‘Now this time, you might feel one or two of the needles. Just let me finish and any slight discomfort will all melt away.’
Sara was struggling to sit up. Poppy, with her back to her, now had a firm hold of one ankle.
‘And supposing then, supposing you found out a new thing? Something even
worse
?’ Her voice was rasping now. ‘Suppose, Poppy, you found out you’d got it
wrong
? That there was no reason, no reason at all to protect Cosmo, because it wasn’t Cosmo who stole Herve’s work, but the other way round! What
then
, Poppy?’
Sara drew up her free leg and kicked forward with all her strength into the middle of Poppy’s broad back. Poppy shot forward and fell sprawling on to the floor. Winded only for a moment, she crawled away to the wall where she cowered, white-faced.
‘What are you doing? Stop it! Just stop it! Stop saying these things!’
Sara was struggling to free her feet, caught up in the blanket. ‘It’s true! You killed Adele for nothing, you know. You thought the same as I did, didn’t you, that night when Adele got so agitated about the backwards, forwards thing? You thought Cosmo had been stealing Herve’s ideas and turning them round?’ With shaking fingers she tried to stop the blood welling out from her ankle. More came. ‘It was you who took those sheets of music from my case, wasn’t it, Cosmo’s and Herve’s, so that you could check it for yourself?’
Poppy was still on the floor but sitting up now, aghast. ‘It
was
the same music. I didn’t get it wrong! Cosmo couldn’t help it. He works hard, but sometimes nothing comes. You were all waiting for something, expecting something. He doesn’t know I know. He did it for both of us.’
Sara had made it onto her feet now. ‘Poppy, are you listening? You killed her for nothing. It was Herve who stole music from Cosmo. Understand? Don’t you see? You got it wrong. And it would have made Cosmo’s career. If you’d just waited for the première of Herve’s piece you could have exposed him. And here’s Cosmo Lamb, the one the great Herve Petrescu steals from? Think of the attention he’d have got. You could have made him. Missed a trick there, didn’t you? You screwed up again. Just like you screwed up with the letter-bomb. You’re crap, Poppy.’
A hideous wail escaped from Poppy’s mouth and she was having difficulty drawing breath. ‘Oh, no, no . . . how did . . .? When she shouldn’t even have . . . it wasn’t even address—I don’t believe it . . . I can’t . . . oh, no . . .’
Sara walked over to the sound system, clicked off the machine and removed the tape. ‘I’m going to ring the police.’
But since, when she turned to leave the room she was surprised by a scream and Poppy’s full weight landing on her back, she didn’t, after all.
CHAPTER
37
A
NDREW, THOUGH THE
effort nearly killed him, slowed the car down on the approach to Medlar Cottage. He parked quietly on the lane below the house and came up the side to avoid being seen from any of the front windows. Banking on Sara’s persistence in her bad habit of not locking doors, he tried the kitchen door. It opened noiselessly and he stepped in, sensing not only that the room was empty but that the air in it was utterly still. He stopped, listening to the house. No creak, no sigh of feet on carpet, no voice came to him. Disturbing the unbearable quiet, he strode into the drawing room, terrified of what he might find. A sound outside the door brought him into the hall to see, stepping through from the music room and locking it, Sara. She had clearly been struggling. She turned, sank against the door and stared, breathing hard.
‘You took your sweet time,’ she declared, sliding down the door. He ran to her, brought her into the drawing room and got her on to the sofa.
‘Christ. Where is she? What happened?’
Sara took a moment to answer. ‘She’s in the music room. In a bit of a heap. She hit me. I hit her back. Here.’ She held out the cassette tape.
‘Oh, my God! You lunatic! You should have rung me before she even arrived! How did you know, anyway?’
‘Well, no thanks to you, I’ll say that,’ Sara said. She sighed. ‘I didn’t know, not clearly. Not when she arrived. But I was awake most of the night, going over things. All right, I got it all wrong about the guy. Other things too. I think I’ve got it right now. I didn’t see till this morning how crazy she really is.’
‘I’m going to get officers out here now and have her arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Phil Leung.’ He pulled out his mobile phone.
Sara interrupted with the small amount of energy she had left. ‘
Phil?
I thought Phil was safe? Not Phil, too? Oh, God.’
From where he stood Andrew could see that both her eyes were bloodshot from last night’s fall. On her cheek and forehead were two angry red patches where sparks from the fire had touched her. He had pulled from her head flakes of white ash and crisp wisps of burned hair like brittle black straw. She had been lucky to escape so little scathed, yet the signs of even this little damage almost physically hurt him. He made his call.
As he turned away from her to speak Sara closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Tiredness like a sickness spread through her. She yawned. Andrew finished speaking, switched off the mobile and came to her, standing over her.
‘You’re exhausted. Look, they’ll be here in a few minutes. I’m going in there now just to see she doesn’t need any urgent medical treatment and make sure she stays there. She’ll soon be in custody, then you can relax. I want you to see a doctor. And you must try to get some sleep.’
‘Oh, you,’ she murmured, opening one eye. ‘Just trying to get me into bed, aren’t you,’ she said, holding up her arms.
CHAPTER
38
T
HE FOLLOWING
T
UESDAY
Andrew left the Royal United Hospital and drove straight to Medlar Cottage. He walked in by the kitchen door and went silently through the house, across the drawing room and out to the passage that led to the music room. There he stopped, knowing that if he went any further he would be seen, and he did not want her to stop yet. She was playing. Andrew closed his eyes, listening and thinking. If she had been only a little more cowardly and less clever, this sound would never have been made. He would have been too late to save her, and on Friday morning her life would have been extinguished, one way or another. Instead of standing here now listening to her, he might be arranging her funeral. Even worse, he might be feeding her porridge in a hospital, her huge eyes like stones, her limbs already locking into rigidity and the hands that were capable of making this music seizing up into rigid claws. He still felt his throat tighten at the thought of it. Part of him wanted never to let her out of his sight again.
A yearning melody that he did not recognise drifted from the music room. She was drawing out of the phrases an unbearably beautiful sobbing, like raw suffering, new grief undamped by the passing of time. He stepped quietly towards her as the piece ended. She raised her head as she lifted the bow away from the strings, and smiled.
‘I knew you were there,’ she said, reaching out a hand. He bent and kissed her.
‘That was beautiful. Especially beautiful. You’re beautiful.’
Sara got up and began to loosen the end pin of the cello. ‘I was thinking of Phil. How is he?’ She carried the cello to its case, standing upright against the wall. Andrew did not answer straight away. She turned, alarmed. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he?’
Andrew opened his arms and she came over to the sofa and settled against him, using his chest as a pillow.
‘He’s awake,’ Andrew said. ‘He’s in a neurological ward. There’s no obvious paralysis or brain damage that they can see. They think he’s all right, but they’re keeping him in a bit longer to do more tests. He was able to talk, but he couldn’t tell me very much. He remembers Poppy arranging to come and do his costume fitting and coming to his room. He remembers her measuring him and trying on various hats. Then she said she’d noticed that he seemed rather stressed, and acupuncture would help release tension.’
‘Oh, God, where have I heard that before,’ Sara groaned, burying her face in Andrew’s sweater.
‘She made him some sort of herbal tea, very sweet, he said, and made him drink it all. That’s undoubtedly how a high dose of tranquillisers came to be in him. He doesn’t remember anything after that. He doesn’t remember any of the treatment, though she must have done some, there are the marks. Anyway, what happened next is that she took a syringe, no doubt taken from the nursing home, picked a nice big vein, and filled it with air. Induced a thrombosis, effectively. She knew he’d been hitting the booze and drugs, and very likely his death would be passed off as an overdose. Couldn’t be traced to her, anyway. Tragic, sudden, but the things kids do to themselves . . .’
‘Oh, it’s ghastly. And she was planning to do the same to me.’
‘With your high blood pressure, which quite a few people knew about, coming in handy. Tragic, sudden, but the way these artists work themselves . . . Yes, horrible. What she didn’t get right, thank God, is just how much air is needed to kill someone. You’d probably need over two hundred millilitres to be certain. The syringe she had with her here on Friday was only sixty. Even if she got the lot in, and she can’t have done in Phil’s case, that would probably result in permanent brain damage rather than death.’
‘What a comfort you are.’
Andrew squeezed her tight, and they were silent for a while.
‘What I still haven’t worked out is how you knew you were in danger. When you didn’t even know about Phil.’
Sara had been waiting for four days to be asked this. Slyly, she said, ‘Oh, I just worked it out. How in the end it all came down to Imogen Bevan.’
‘What?’ Andrew sat bolt upright, almost dislodging Sara from her comfortable position. ‘Stop right there. Imogen Bevan?’ He sighed heavily and settled again in the sofa. Sara lay back again complacently. ‘Let’s hear it,’ he said meekly, closing his eyes.
‘Well, I admit I got the whole thing wrong about Cosmo and the guy. I spent most of the rest of that night thinking. The way Cosmo denied stealing the music made me want to believe him about that, at least. But the music
was
the same. Then I remembered that Cosmo had been in Prague, and I realised that Herve could easily, well,
must
have stolen the material from Cosmo, and killed Adele to keep it quiet. He’d been down to see Adele in the workshop, after all, when he recorded her voice, and could have seen the cooker then. He knew about her smoking, too. So I was sure Herve had done it.’
Sara hesitated. She had not, despite four days in which to think about it, decided what she was going to say about her visit to Camden Crescent. ‘Andrew, has Valerie . . . I mean . . . do you . . .?’
‘Do I what? Why are we suddenly talking about Valerie?’
‘Oh,’ Sara said. ‘No, you’re right, it’ll keep.’
‘We will settle all that stuff,’ Andrew said gently. ‘We have to, now. But go on.’
‘Right. So, er, that’s what I was thinking when Poppy arrived. I was trying and trying to get hold of you. I didn’t know she was going to do me any harm because I didn’t even know about Phil at that point. No, what really put me on to Poppy was Imogen Bevan. And Dotty. When Poppy and I had our chat about critics, and I read James’s review . . .’
‘I should have known your fixation with Dotty would come into it. You wouldn’t let up about her, would you? I suppose I should have listened.’
‘I’d been thinking about Dotty as well. There was something missing in the way she talked about all those letters. When Adam Hart-Browne told her that he’d written her dozens of letters, she knew immediately why she hadn’t got them. She knew it wasn’t anything to do with the post, even though they were sent from Africa. “I knew at once what had happened,” she said. “I went straight round to confront her.” Not once did she say how outrageous it was in the first place. The only question was whether Imogen had kept them or not. Dotty was sad and angry, not
surprised
. She really was used to her, you see. Taking and opening other people’s letters must have been Imogen Bevan’s kind of thing.’
‘Yes, but all that was what, over thirty years ago. I suppose you’re going to say people don’t change?’
‘Well, there’s no
evidence
that she’d changed, is there? Nobody else could stand her. Now, remember her kitchen? She ran out up to the street after the explosion, leaving the kettle on. She’d had the kettle on even though breakfast was over and done with. I’d wondered what she was wanting hot water for after she’d had breakfast. It was when I was watching Poppy sterilising the needles, standing there in all that steam, I suddenly thought, you don’t always put on a kettle for boiling water. Sometimes it’s the steam you want. I think Imogen had been steaming open the letter-bomb, because it wasn’t addressed to her. It was addressed to James. There wasn’t enough of the wrapping left to tell, was there?’
‘No. Oh, Christ. We hadn’t looked at it that way. Oh, Christ.’
‘That was when I got frightened. And then I thought what a bore you are about evidence, so I thought if I could just get something out of Poppy, at least something to go on, and it would have to be recorded, of course.’
Andrew sucked in a breath and tried to sound furious. ‘You were mad and stupid to attempt it. Bloody insane. Don’t you dare
ever
—’
‘Shut up and listen to the funny part. So I nipped back to the music room and set up a tape to record, right? Not a blank tape, though. Herve’s tape. His newly finished, final, pre-recorded tape for the new piece. I recorded over it.’ Sara exploded with laughter. ‘The one and only master. He’d given it to me to copy.’
‘And then,’ Andrew said, when their laughter was fading, ‘you drew Poppy into discussion about making all those little explosions in the opera. And she showed that she knew how to.’
‘Yes.’
‘Wait, wait. Go back to the bit about the critics.’
Sara sighed, lying back and tucking Andrew’s arm more tightly round her. ‘Well, I’d asked James if Cosmo had submitted anything for these awards he’s judging and he hadn’t, which I thought was slightly odd. James also told me that he didn’t know Cosmo’s music but his name was vaguely familiar. He’d forgotten he’d reviewed this short piece. He does tons of these things.’
‘And he can be quite a wasp.’
‘Exactly. And Poppy couldn’t take it. I could see that from the way she reacted when I found it in the magazine. At the time Cosmo was in Prague and she was doing all she could to get him performed and recognised. The European New Composers Awards are big, and she would see that after such an awful review Cosmo would get nowhere as long as James was judging. She was working on these stage effects when the article came out and she must have seen how easily it could be done, setting the charge the same way and using more explosive, but still only a small amount. The article mentioned he has a house in Bath, and he’s in the phone book. She could make sure that someone would have to replace James as the awards judge and also make sure he didn’t touch a piano again. Anyway, of course, James wasn’t even in Bath, and Imogen Bevan steams opens the post. So James stays in Brussels oblivious, and of course Poppy doesn’t submit anything of Cosmo’s for the awards. Hard to know if she cared about damaging the wrong person.’
‘Destroying a pianist’s hands? That’s sickening,’ Andrew said. ‘But also hard to prove.’
‘You could start with the stage effects department at the Coliseum,’ Sara went on. ‘They have to be careful with explosives, don’t they? They should know if even a little’s gone missing, shouldn’t they? Anyway, I don’t suppose she thought of herself as a murderer at that stage,’ Sara went on. ‘I think she was just so desperate and furious. She might even have regretted it. But since Imogen Bevan died, I’m sure it was easier to contemplate getting rid of Adele. Adele had to be stopped from exposing Cosmo’s plagiarism. It would just be a matter of setting the scene, like a stage manager does, because Adele’s routines meant that she carried out the same actions in the same order as predictable as a scene in a play, the same moves every night. Poppy would have seen that, she knew all about the morning cigarette in the workshop.’
‘But it’s Herve who’s the plagiarist, I thought? Herve who was using the stuff Cosmo left behind in Prague?’
‘Oh, you are so stupid. Poppy didn’t know that
then
. After that rehearsal when Adele was upset and saying “backwards, forwards” she came to the same conclusion that I did, that Cosmo was the plagiarist, getting Adele to sing all the Herve material she remembered from Iford and then setting it backwards. So Adele had to go. Oh, and of course that was also the night she found out that Cosmo had been sleeping with her.’
‘
What?
How on earth did
you
know that? How did you—?’ Andrew sighed. ‘No, no, I should know better by now. Just tell me.’
‘Adele’s drawing, the one she did that night. Some sort of star, wasn’t it? An exact copy of something she’d seen. Poppy saw the drawing too. It was the snowflake on Cosmo’s boxer shorts. Poppy did all their laundry at the nursing home. So Adele could only have seen it if—’
‘Wait,
wait
. How the hell do
you
know about the Christmas pattern on Cosmo’s boxer shorts?’
Sara laughed. ‘Remember the guy? Cosmo had given the Scouts some clothes for the guy. The guy had them up his sleeve. I remember staring at them, thinking they were familiar but knowing they couldn’t be. It was the pattern.’
‘And you think Poppy realised when she saw the drawing that Cosmo must have been sleeping with her?’
‘Yes, and that was another reason for killing her. It could even have been the main one. Poppy needs Cosmo. Nobody else can have him, that’s for sure. And if it ever got out about him and Adele, think how she’d be humiliated. Adele was in the way, badly.’
‘Used by Cosmo and then disposed of by Poppy.’
‘Not that Cosmo knew about the disposing part. He may still not even realise that Poppy knows about the sex.’
‘So last Thursday, when she tried to kill Phil it was because she still thought Cosmo was the plagiarist? And Phil knew, because somehow Adele had told him before she’d died?’
‘Yes. Poor Phil.’
‘And she thought you knew too, which is why she wanted to kill you, too?’
‘I wonder if by that stage she knew
what
she thought. It was all getting a bit out of hand, rather, wasn’t it, by then? But what I did at the bonfire must have struck her as too dangerous to overlook. She knew I was frantic about Phil, and why would I be unless I knew something? Even though I didn’t get it right.’
‘Christ.’
‘So most of the night after the bonfire, I was awake, thinking, and I still got most of it wrong.’ Sara paused.
‘Poor Adele. Poor, poor girl.’ Andrew gave a growl and thought a little longer, gloomily. ‘It’ll still be difficult. There’s next to no evidence.’
‘Well, there’s the thing about the gas tap. You said if it was turned on by Adele it couldn’t have been turned on full. If it had been on full it would only have taken about ten hours to fill the room with the right amount of gas for an explosion. And you said that it was desperately
unlucky
that the proportion of gas to air was perfect for an explosion. But it wasn’t luck or unluck. It was planned and it had to be someone with technical knowledge, mustn’t it? Someone who could do the calculation about the output of a standard gas burner, the size of the room and the mixture of air and gas? Like the highly practical daughter of a “heating engineer”, perhaps, which is just a posh name for a gas fitter, isn’t it?’
‘Poppy was working at the nursing home the night before the explosion, wasn’t she?’