‘Are you telling us,’ asked Carole, ‘that you committed murder out of boredom?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I got very caught up in it.’
‘And did you get the idea for your murder method from Best Served Cold by G. H. D. Troughton?’ asked Jude.
‘You really have done your groundwork, haven’t you? A woman came to the Writers’ Group and talked about that book.’
‘Professor Vanessa Perks.’
‘Oh, well done, Carole. Another brownie point for research. Yes, the book was what set my brain in motion. I liked the idea of everyone suspecting that the poison had been in a wine bottle, while all the time it was in a hipflask.’
‘Though in your case you didn’t use cyanide.’
‘No. I didn’t want to follow G. H. D. Troughton too slavishly. Wanted to add a few of my own touches. Then I saw that Burton St Clair was coming to talk at Fethering Library, and I happened to know about his walnut allergy.’
‘From when you made the film about the Wordway Trust at Blester Combe.’
‘I can’t tell you two anything, can I? So, anyway, I’d recently heard Burton being interviewed on some radio programme about Stray Leaves in Autumn, and he sounded so pretentious, such a self-regarding liar, and I thought to myself: Why don’t I murder the bastard? At first it was a kind of joke, but gradually the appeal of the idea became stronger and stronger. By the end, it was an obsession. I didn’t know whether it would work, but I loved the idea of trying. I think if it hadn’t worked, I’d have lost interest. Forgotten about him, taken up macramé or something.’ His eyes glowed. ‘But it did work.’
‘And didn’t you feel any guilt?’ asked Carole, very much in Home Office mode.
He shook his head. ‘None at all. The world was free of another bastard. And, what was more to the point, I had succeeded! I had achieved what I set out to do.’
‘You said you did a lot of research.’
‘Yes, Jude, I did. Real cloak-and-dagger stuff. I started trailing Burton St Clair, following him, particularly when he went to do literary events. I’m very proud of how I did it, actually. He never suspected for a moment that he was being followed.
‘And I found out the important things I needed to find out about him. I found out that he still had the walnut allergy. I found out that he still carried a hipflask of whisky, and had a habit of taking a swig when he got into the car after a gig. And I found out that he always kept his car keys in the pocket of his leather jacket.
‘I was very excited when the relevant Tuesday arrived. I’d offered Di Thompson my help in putting out the chairs, so I knew I’d have time to set everything up if all went according to plan. But I still didn’t really believe it would. I wouldn’t abort my mission, but I was fully prepared to have my mission aborted by external circumstances. You know, he might keep his jacket on because it was cold; I might not be able to get out to the car park unobserved: there were any number of things that could go wrong.
‘But, come the day, none of them did. I kept my gloves on in the library, which was reasonable given the outside temperature. Burton’s jacket was left unattended in the staff room. I helped myself to his keys, went out to the empty car park, opened the BMW and found the hipflask in the glove compartment, just as he’d left it when he was out on previous gigs. I opened it, tipped in the ground walnuts I’d brought with me, returned it to the glove compartment. The car was locked and his keys were back in his jacket pocket. And nobody had noticed a thing. Whole exercise took … under two minutes.’
‘And then you just had to wait?’
‘Yes, but you’ve no idea how wonderful that waiting time was, Jude. I felt so in control. I was challenging myself, presenting myself with the ultimate challenge, in fact. For the first time since Aileen died, I felt good.’
Both Carole and Jude realized it was the first time he had mentioned his wife’s name.
‘But if the anaphylactic shock had killed Burton St Clair – as indeed it did,’ asked Carole, ‘how were you planning to remove the evidence of the hipflask from the car?’
‘Ah, this was when my plan started to go wrong. After I’d supposedly left the library, I hung around in the rain, watching from that little copse next door. And the first thing I wasn’t expecting was for you, Jude, to get into the car with Burton.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Jude suddenly.
‘What?’
‘That should have put me on to you. When you asked me for that drink at the Hare & Hounds, you said you knew I hadn’t got a car because I’d accepted Burton’s offer of a lift. But in fact you’d left the library before he made the offer.’
Melodramatically, Oliver Parsons struck his head with the heel of his hand. ‘Mea culpa! You see? I’m sorry, I am not the master criminal I thought myself.’
‘Go on,’ said Carole coldly.
‘Very well. I must confess, I thought at that stage, when I saw Jude get into the BMW, my plans were really scuppered. I thought Burton was going to take you to your home, to his hotel … I didn’t know where. Whether he would then take a swig from the hipflask at some other time, I had no means of knowing. All I do know was that I felt very disappointed, cheated of my triumph at the last moment.’
‘So what did you do?’ asked Carole.
‘I drove back home and tried to console myself – unsuccessfully – with a bottle of Scotch.’
‘And then? Did you return to the library?’
‘Yes, I did, Carole. You guessed that, didn’t you?’
Carole was about to say that his return had been witnessed by Eveline Ollerenshaw, but a look from Jude stopped her. Both were silent, as Oliver went on, ‘A dog returning to his vomit, isn’t that the usual image?
‘So, I went back and found – in spite of my gloomy prognostications – my plan had actually worked. There was no sign of you, Jude, and Burton St Clair was dead. I could tell from the expression on his face and the smell of walnuts from his mouth that it was the anaphylactic shock that had killed him. Yippee! I had got away with it!
‘Except, of course, there was one thing wrong. My earlier plan, once Burton was dead, had been to remove the evidence from the car.’
‘The hipflask?’
‘Exactly, Jude. But when I look for it in the middle of the Tuesday night, there’s no sign. I move Burton around in a way which I’m sure is unseemly for a dead body, but it’s not there. I still don’t know where it is.’
‘And that’s why you got in touch with me, wasn’t it, so soon after Burton’s death? Nothing to do with wanting to play amateur sleuths. You just wanted to keep up to date with how much I knew.’
‘Sorry, Jude.’ Then, gallantly, he added, ‘But I did enjoy your company too.’
‘Thanks a lot.’ She knew he was just being polite. Since his wife’s death – and indeed during her lifetime – he had had no romantic interest in other women.
‘What happened to the hipflask, though?’ he asked. ‘Did you take it, Jude?’
‘No. Burton was still alive when I got out of the car.’
‘Why did you get out of the car, incidentally? In that filthy rain?’
‘Because he came on to me.’
‘Ah. Yes, that would figure. So where is the hipflask?’
Quickly Jude summarized the part Uncle Pawel had played in the night’s proceedings. Still neither of them mentioned the confirmation they had had from Eveline Ollerenshaw of what had happened.
‘And where is the hipflask now?’
‘Who knows, Oliver? Possibly in the hands of some Polish gangsters?’
‘Melted down by now, I would think,’ said Carole.