“Very little,” said Bourke agreeably, “but I’m going to have fun suggesting it’s a possibility. This should shut Raeburn up quite effectively.”
“Anne called in a few minutes ago. She’s found a cub reporter on the Sentinel who fielded a telephone inquiry about whether Collis Raeburn was dead, but it was on Sunday, before his body’d been found. The journalist was just a kid, and didn’t realize there might be something worth following up.”
“Don’t suppose the person left a name?”
Without pleasure Carol said, “No, Mark, but it was a woman. Also, I called Pat at work this morning and asked her some questions about the Saturday night reception at the Museum of Modern Art.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Helpful?”
“I think we’re near an arrest. I’d like you and Anne in my office at two.”
“Come in, Inspector. We’ve been waiting for you.” Carol felt like an interloper, guarded on one side by Mark Bourke and by Anne Newsome on the other. She said formally, “Thank you for agreeing to a joint interview.”
Alanna went to stand beside Lloyd Clancy. Behind them, through the open balcony doors, the blue water of Manly Cove shimmered in the afternoon sun. Carol felt a pang of pity and compassion as she saw Alanna take Lloyd Clancy’s hand and hold it tightly.
Lloyd Clancy gestured, the thoughtful host. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”
Alanna and Clancy sat beside each other on a couch, still holding hands. Carol thought of all the roles these two had taken, where intense, flamboyant emotions were translated into glorious music. She remembered Aïda where, as now, they were doomed lovers. This was an anticlimax, this real drama ending so mundanely in a harborside apartment.
“You know why we’re here,” Carol said with quiet authority.
Alanna looked at her steadily. “Yes, we do.”
“Do you object to us recording this interview?”
Alanna shook her head slowly, and Bourke efficiently set up the tape recorder on the coffee table. He nodded to Carol to indicate he was ready. She took no pleasure in reciting the formal words of the caution, adding to make sure they understood, “You don’t have to say anything now if you don’t wish to.”
“It’s quite all right,” Alanna said. “It’ll be a relief, actually.”
Bourke said, “Collis Raeburn didn’t kill himself. He was murdered in a way that was intended to look like suicide.”
Lloyd Clancy sighed. “I’ll save you the trouble of spelling it out. I can’t imagine how to say this without sounding overly dramatic, but I killed Collis. No one helped-it was just me.”
Carol said with real regret, “That’s not true.”
“Sweetheart, don’t,” Alanna said to Clancy. “I’m sure the Inspector knows.”
Lloyd was haggard, but his look to Alanna was so full of love that Carol almost winced. She said, “You went to a lot of trouble to make people think you hated each other.”
“We thought it would stop any suspicion that we might be working together,” said Alanna. She looked embarrassed. “The idea of threatening to sue Lloyd was my idea, but it was over the top, I see that now.”
“Why did you make the phone calls to check if Raeburn was dead? You knew he was.”
“Lloyd knew,” said Alanna, “but I didn’t. We couldn’t be seen anywhere near each other at the reception, that would have been too dangerous. And we’d agreed not to use the telephone because there might be a record of the calls. I kept on thinking that Collis might be lying there, still alive, and if he were to recover…” She made a face. “It was stupid, but I had no idea when the hotel would open the room, and I was frantic to know if he was dead. I tried the newspaper, but drew a blank. When nothing had been in the news by early Monday morning, I tried the hotel.”
Lloyd Clancy coughed painfully.
Bourke said, “You’re not well, Mr. Clancy. Can I get you some water?”
He smiled faintly. “I think it’s the flu, but of course I keep thinking it’s something worse…”
“When did you realize that Collis Raeburn had infected Ms Brooks, and through her, you?”
Alanna answered. “Collis finally got up the courage to tell me six weeks ago. It took a while to sink in that I was probably going to die from AIDS. And when I found that I’d infected Lloyd… that’s when the rage began… that’s when I knew I wanted to exterminate Collis.”
Anne Newsome said faintly, “There’s treatment for AIDS…”
Alanna nodded wearily. “Yes, Sergeant, of course we’ve both had the latest medical advice, but my immune system is seriously compromised, and Lloyd’s T-cell count is falling.” She laughed bitterly. “You know, even though he’d been infected longer, Collis was doing better than either of us. He’d had pneumonia, but seemed to recover well. AIDS affects everyone differently, but that didn’t seem fair to me.”
Lloyd Clancy said, “Collis didn’t care, Inspector. He never said he was sorry because he couldn’t see he’d done anything wrong. Bad luck, he called it. And he was sure he’d be all right… Thought he had a charmed life.”
“Why did you kill him?”
Alanna answered. “I asked him if he’d told others he’d slept with-Corinne for example-and he said he wasn’t going to, that he’d only told me because of old times and because he knew I couldn’t tell anyone else without ruining my own life.”
“He was an egotistical monster,” said Lloyd. “Collis really believed that, for him, ordinary rules and standards didn’t apply, and other people were there for his use. And now he’d condemned us both. Alanna’s – my life is singing. Opera’s demanding, exhausting. We both realized it would be only a matter of time before one or both of us couldn’t continue. We decided to kill him for what he’d done to us… and would continue to do to others.”
He rubbed his face wearily and Carol suggested they stop for coffee or tea. The recorder was switched off and Lloyd Clancy, Anne and Bourke went to the kitchen. Alanna said to Carol, “Inspector, you understand, don’t you?”
“I think I do, yes.”
“What will happen to us?”
What a pair of amateurs these two are, Carol thought. She was sure Alanna would reject pity, so she said matter-of-factly, “Plead not guilty at the committal hearing and apply for bail. I’ll do everything I can to see that you get it. That way you can spend more time together.”
“With a bit of luck,” said Alanna with mordant humor, “we might die before we ever come to trial.”
When they resumed, Alanna seemed to have new energy. “We used a duplicate checklist. We knew we couldn’t make any mistakes. Lloyd and I went separately to the reception in the Museum of Modern Art and we each made sure we spoke to as many people as possible. I had a large shoulder bag with me-not the sort I usually carry, but I had to hide cotton gloves, a bottle of whiskey and the suicide handbook in it. I knew the sleeping tablets Collis used-we’d been lovers, after all-and I’d managed to get a doctor to prescribe the same brand for me. I crushed more than half of them, dissolving them as much as possible until they made a solution which I put in an old medicine bottle. The other half I kept in tablet form in case Collis hadn’t brought any with him, but he had, so in the end I didn’t need them.”
She grimaced. “It sounds bizarre describing it like this, but at the time it seemed like the script of a movie-not quite real, but logical and right. About eight o’clock I slipped out of the Museum and walked the few minutes to the hotel. I’d spoken to Collis in the afternoon and he’d told me he had his usual room, so I went up the fire stairs to his floor. He was surprised to see me, but he’d just finished a bottle of wine and he was quite relaxed. Actually, Collis was feeling proud of himself because he’d called Corinne and told her I was staying on as his singing partner. I remember he said, ‘See, I’m making it up to you’ and that made me so angry that I really wanted to kill him. He’d infected me with the HIV virus and he thought this would make it up to me! I smiled and showed him the bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. It was always his favorite drink-and he was quite happy to have me serve him. While I was getting ice from the bar fridge I poured some of the solution into his glass. He said it didn’t taste quite right, but I pointed out he’d just eaten tuna and he was a bit tipsy, so he kept drinking. I just pretended to sip mine…”