He frowned. “Not up to now.”
“From the film you can’t see what sex the attacker is. You don’t get much idea of their size and you don’t see their face. I wouldn’t rule Candida out. She may already have murdered her own mother.”
“Mary Wroxeter?”
“Lacing her drink with pure alcohol.”
“Did I tell you that? I’ve changed my opinion. It was another of my wild theories, impossible to prove. Today I heard Candida’s version of that evening’s events and what she told me made sense and sounded honest.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“I understand where she’s coming from. She didn’t have an easy upbringing, but I was reassured about her feelings towards Mary. As an adult, she understood that Mary was a caring mother, in spite of all. When she got pregnant herself, she really wanted to share the news with her before anyone else knew of it. She wanted her approval and she got it. If I’m any judge of character, she didn’t cause Mary’s death.”
“Did someone else?”
He shook his head. “The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’m sure it’s a red herring. There’s only one murderer in this case and he — or she — works to a pattern, making a cold-blooded decision to kill, using a knife on the victim and going to some trouble to make sure the body isn’t discovered. None of this fits Mary’s death, which was brought on by an excessive intake of alcohol. As a method of murder, it would be unreliable and unpredictable. I was mistaken even to consider it.”
“No, Peter. It was a sudden death. It was your job to look into it.”
“I should have dismissed it earlier than this and given more time to the real crimes. As it is, I’m at a loss now.”
“Were Fergus and Will your only suspects? Can’t you cast the net wider? What about all the others? Could any of them have had a grudge against Deans?”
“Almost everyone in the show. He wasn’t a lovable man.”
“Perhaps it wants a rethink. Is it worth having a look at some of the other things this jinx is supposed to have caused, like the elderly actress who died suddenly?”
“Daisy Summerfield.” Daisy wasn’t someone he had thought much about after reading the coroner’s report of her death. “It’s pretty clear Daisy’s heart attack was triggered by discovering a burglar. There was no intent to kill. It’s just unfortunate she arrived home when she did.”
“Wasn’t there something about the timing?”
“Yes, she got home sooner than expected. They filmed her scene at the end of the day instead of next morning.”
“So if they’d followed the schedule she might still be alive?”
He nodded. “I had a theory about that as well. Someone from the show tips off a burglar that Daisy is away and the last-minute change screws everything up. I asked the Met for help with that one and they sent us the burglar’s prints and DNA.”
“Helpful.”
“Except there’s nothing on the national database that matches. They reckon the burglar was a newcomer to the trade. It goes down as an unsolved crime.”
“You’re jinxed at every turn.”
“No, I’m not blaming anything except myself. I’m past my sell-by date and everyone knows it. The right thing to do is step aside and let someone else take over.” Having reached the decision, he emptied his head of all thoughts about the investigation and slept for seven hours.
Under the shower next morning a remark from the previous evening’s conversation crept back into his brain, lodged there and replayed itself like an annoying bar of music. Peter, how’s your maths? Don’t two negatives make a positive? If he remembered rightly, Paloma had picked up on some phrase he’d used himself about his prime suspects, Will Legat and Fergus Webster, turning out to be negatives. When he’d asked her what she meant she’d shrugged and turned pink as if she realised they were empty words. She couldn’t explain how a truth that worked in mathematics and grammar had any relevance to the jinx inquiry. But the remark continued to nag him.
He could think of nothing positive about those two. At the time of the latest crime, Will was at the pottery thinking about cocoa and Fergus was on the road to Saltford hungry for Irish stew. Positive for them, maybe, but not for him.
He got dressed — back to the suit and striped tie — and fed Raffles. Paloma was still sleeping, so he found himself having a one-sided conversation with the cat. “Nothing negative about you, old friend. You know what you want and you get it: the gourmet ocean delicacies. Then it’s rest and relaxation. Well, I’ll be joining you soon for the R & R, if not the fish.”
Paloma still hadn’t stirred when he left the house.
In the slow-moving morning traffic, he put on the car radio, already tuned to a station that played vintage stuff. The voice was Bing Crosby’s from another era, with the Andrews Sisters backing: “You’ve got to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.”
He switched off, but the damage was done. He was back with the catch-phrase he’d been trying to forget.
Halfway along the route to Emersons Green, he had his Eureka moment, the spark of connection that made sense of Paloma’s remark. She was right. Two negatives could make a positive and they probably had.
For that morning only, the Keynsham Bypass became his road to Damascus. It was a good thing he was so used to driving this route because for the rest of the journey he was virtually on autopilot, thinking through the sequence of crimes that had mystified him for so long. The explanation steadily emerged. Enough was there to remove the confusion, make a credible solution and convince him after all that this wasn’t the morning to end his career.
He reached Concorde House with ten minutes to spare. Georgina’s PA was in the outer office, but the great lady herself had not yet arrived.
“Would you cancel our appointment? Give her my apologies and say it was a personal matter I wanted to see her about and happily it has been resolved, so I won’t need to take up any of her valuable time.”
“She’ll be in very shortly,” the PA said. “You can tell her yourself.”
“I wish I could, but I must rally the troops. We have an unbelievably busy day ahead.”
He was out of there quicker than hell would scorch a feather, praying he didn’t meet Georgina on the way up.
In the incident room, the working day hadn’t begun. Ingeborg was putting on lipstick and Halliwell and Gilbert were talking about cars.
“Right, team,” Diamond alerted them, his voice charged with urgency. “We have lift-off. Paul, get Wolfgang on the phone for me.” The squad were instantly aware that something major had occurred. He started assigning duties with all the urgency of Montgomery on the eve of El Alamein. But this time there was a notable change of approach. He was giving nothing away about his as-yet unproved conclusions. Twice bitten, once shy.
By rights he should have stayed here at headquarters directing the operation, but he never let rights get in the way of his activities. He needed to be part of the action, so he asked Halliwell to drive him out to Jacob’s Ladder where, according to the call sheet, a new day of filming was already underway. Paul Gilbert came, too, already tasked to link up with Wolfgang and make sure the crime scene expert knew what was expected of him.
They drove south of the city through the Edwardian estate known as Poet’s Corner, up Shakespeare Avenue and into Alexandra Park, turning left on the perimeter road along an avenue of beeches and limes. Off the tarmac at the Jacob’s Ladder corner of the park they spotted the television vehicles and the behemoth that was Sabine San Sebastian’s motorhome. Halliwell parked where the crew members had lined up their cars.