‘Then one day George came in, looking a bit shaken, and he said Sir John had told him he wanted him to burn the house down.’
At first Vogel thought he must have misheard.
‘Sir John told George what?’
‘That he wanted him to burn the house down.’ Janice Grey sounded quite matter of fact.
‘With him in it?’ queried Vogel, trying to sound just a matter of fact.
‘Well yes, apparently that’s what Sir John wanted so it wouldn’t look like he could have had anything to do with it.’
‘Ummm. Rather a high-risk strategy then, as it turned out,’ said Vogel mildly.
‘I told you, Mr Vogel, none of that was supposed to have happened. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.’
‘Right. And did George tell you why Sir John wanted him to burn down his house with him in it?’
‘Yes. It was because he had money troubles. Big financial problems. His own, personal like, and the bank. He wanted the insurance money. That’s what he was after.’
‘Mrs Grey, there’s no doubt Blackdown Manor was a valuable property and would have been substantially insured, but in terms of bailing out an international bank the amount involved would be little more than a drop in the ocean, don’t you think?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, would I? There was a Gainsborough portrait, wasn’t there, worth millions? George said it was all about cash flow. Sir John just needed to keep all his balls in the air for a few more months.’ Janice Grey managed a small smile. ‘He always talked like that, did my George,’ she commented.
‘So, it was George who set fire to the house?’
‘Well yes, but only because Sir John wanted him to. He told George there was going to be an enormous bonus for him. A six-figure sum, George said.’
‘And do I assume then, that there were no armed intruders?’ Vogel asked.
Janice Grey coloured slightly. She shook her head.
‘So how did your husband suffer those stab wounds?’
Janice looked away from Vogel, avoiding his steady gaze. ‘I really couldn’t say.’
‘They were rather unusual injuries, as I am sure you know,’ Vogel said. ‘There was a great deal of blood, but your husband suffered only relatively superficial damage to his body. Extraordinarily fortunate placement, the doctor said at the Musgrove.’
Janice Grey remained silent and continued to look away from Vogel.
‘C’mon, Mrs Grey,’ persisted Vogel. ‘You know perfectly well where I am going with this, don’t you?’
‘I do not. I have no idea at all.’
‘I think you have, Janice. I believe your husband’s wounds were inflicted in such a way that as little damage as possible was caused by them. You are an experienced nurse. You would have been able to do that. You would have known how to execute stab wounds so that they actually did far less harm than at first would have appeared. You could do that, couldn’t you?’
‘What?’
Janice Grey’s face was already very pale, her eyes sharply defined in dark wells. She seemed to grow even paler. Just as her husband had done in hospital earlier when Vogel had cross-examined him about his part in the fatal fire.
‘I couldn’t stab anyone, I just couldn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Not under any circumstances. And certainly not Georgie. My poor Georgie.’
She appeared to be choking back tears. Vogel had neither the time nor the inclination to be sympathetic. This was a woman who had already stood trial for murder. In spite of her protestations, who knew what she was really capable of? It was certainly now beginning to look as if both the Greys had been involved to some degree or another in the fire which had razed Blackdown Manor to the ground and taken the lives of two people.
He ploughed on.
‘All right then, Mrs Grey. It’s time you started telling me what did happen that night instead of what you claim didn’t. If you didn’t stab your husband, either in complicity with him or not, and you have admitted there weren’t any intruders, armed or otherwise, then who did?’
Janice Grey stifled another sob. ‘He did,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ responded Vogel. ‘Who is “he”?’
‘George. My Georgie stabbed himself.’
‘Your husband stabbed himself?’ queried Vogel.
He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. That was something he hadn’t considered. He could hardly believe it was possible.
The woman nodded.
‘That’s hard to believe, Mrs Grey.’
Janice Grey narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes, well, that’s as may be,’ she said. ‘But that’s what happened.’
She shot out the last words with a certain amount of latent aggression.
‘Could you perhaps explain exactly how it happened, Mrs Grey?’
The woman stared blankly ahead. She was clearly very weak. Vogel wondered if he should call the paramedics, but at once dismissed the thought. He needed her story. And he needed it now.
‘Were you there, Mrs Grey?’ he asked. ‘Were you with George when he stabbed himself?’
‘Yes.’
The woman’s voice was small.
‘So, what happened? C’mon, Mrs Grey!’
Vogel was a patient man. But he had his limits.
‘C’mon,’ he repeated, more loudly. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Janice Grey turned her head slightly, and looked Vogel in the eye.
‘I told George what to do,’ she said.
‘What? You told your husband to stab himself?’
‘No, no, not that.’ The woman sounded impatient. ‘I’d never have done that. George insisted that I showed him where to stab himself. So that there would be a lot of blood, but not a lot of serious damage. That was the plan. To make it look as if he’d been attacked. George said Sir John was going to make all the pain worthwhile, that the bonus he was going to get would be enough for us to buy our own place again.’
‘Didn’t either of you think that setting the house on fire with your employer in it was just a little bit dangerous? Unless you meant for him to die, of course.’
‘We didn’t, I swear we didn’t. George knew what he was doing, you see. He trained to be a fireman years ago. He said it was a piece of cake to start a fire which would undermine the structure of the building, but not endanger Sir John in his bedroom. George was careful, he started the fire at the front of the house. Sir John and his nurse were in his bedroom at the back, and it was supposed to be fire-proofed, that’s what George said anyway.’
‘But Sir John was endangered, Mrs Grey. About as endangered as you can get. His bedroom may have had fire-proofing, but once that gas tank went off and pretty much lifted the roof from the place, it would have been worse than useless. Sir John died in the fire. Along with his nurse. So what went wrong?’
‘I don’t know. It all went according to plan at first. George lit the fire at the front, blocking the main entrance. He piled up some furniture and poured on petrol. I mean, it was always going to look like arson, he suspected that the firefighters would guess that early on, but he didn’t need to hide anything because he was blaming all of it on armed intruders. We knew Sir John and the nurse were going to tell the police there were armed intruders. So, we just thought that would be accepted, and if nobody had died it probably would have been. Anyway, I went over to the house and helped George, helped him stab himself. Then I went back to The Gatehouse, leaving George outside the front of the house on his own. George was sure that the fact that he appeared to be so badly stabbed would shift suspicion away from him. And it would have done, surely, if, if...’