“Good God. Did you have any inkling he might do such a thing?”

“They’ve asked me to fly out to Portugal as soon as possible to identify the body and make the necessary arrangements,” she said, so matter-of-factly it seemed she simply hadn’t heard my question. “I leave first thing in the morning.”

“Can I help in any way?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here. I’ve been trying to contact Sarah all day without success. She’s not answering her phone at home and she’s not been at work today. Off sick with flu, apparently.”

“Really? She seemed all right last night.”

“Last night?”

“She called in. On her way back to Bristol from some course or other in Guildford.”

Bella shook her head in weary puzzlement. “I don’t know anything about that. The point is she has to be told. I’d ask that gormless boyfriend of hers, but I don’t have his number. I can’t even remember his surname, for God’s sake! Could you go up there tomorrow morning and break the news to her? At least I can rely on you to make a sensitive job of it. First her mother. Then her sister. Now her father. It’s going to hit her hard, isn’t it?”

The mounting tally of Sarah’s bereavements suddenly came home to me. They were all gone now but her. All that serene normality she’d described growing up in had been pared down by different kinds of self-destruction till only she remained. Explaining it to her would be bad enough. But to live with it, as she’d have to, on into middle age and beyond…

“You will go, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“It doesn’t interfere with your travel plans, does it?”

“No.” Sarah’s words of twenty-four hours before bubbled into my mind. “Promise me you’ll leave on Friday. Whatever happens.” It was almost as if she’d foreseen the catastrophe. As if she’d known what her father meant to do. “But my plans don’t matter anyway. Not now.”

“I’m only asking you to see Sarah, not to cancel your trip.”

“In the circumstances-”

“Catch your plane on Friday, Robin.” Bella had moved closer and lowered her voice. Her eyes seemed to urge me to accept her advice. “Get out while you can.”

“Get out of what?”

“All of this.”

There was something beyond her words and looks, some message she wanted to convey without declaring what it was. “Sarah’s bound to ask whether her father’s death was an accident or suicide. What do I tell her?”

“What I’ve told you. Nobody knows.”

“She may want to follow you to Portugal.”

“Try to discourage her. There’d be no point.”

“How can you be so sure?” Bella’s strength was failing. Her will to keep whatever it was to herself was ebbing. Even her self-reliance had its limits. And now we’d reached them. “What the hell is all this about, Bella?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“I doubt it.”

“Then he must have killed himself?”

“Not necessarily.”

“You’re not suggesting he was murdered?” She didn’t reply, merely swallowed hard and took a drag on her cigarette. But her eyes remained fixed on me. And in them there was no longer much attempt at concealment. “Why would anybody kill Keith?”

“There’s a reason. A very good reason.”

“What is it?”

“It would explain why he went to Portugal. And why he never left.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“I can’t.”

“If you want me to go and see Sarah, you must.” It was a bluff. I think we both knew that. We were beyond such bargaining now. But still Bella hesitated, weighing some other issue in her mind. The need to guard her secret against the desire to share it.

“All right.” She moved back to the fireplace and tossed the remnant of her cigarette into the grate, then leant against the mantelpiece, slowly arched her neck as if it were aching and turned her head to look at me. “Keith knew Paul was lying, Robin. Paul couldn’t have murdered Louise or Oscar Bantock.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Keith knew Paul’s confession to be a pack of lies from start to finish.”

“You mean he hoped it was.”

“No. He knew. For a fact.”

“How could he?”

“By being responsible for the murders himself.” She studied the shocked expression on my face for a moment, then said: “Keith paid Shaun Naylor to kill Oscar Bantock. He commissioned the crime. And unintentionally brought about his wife’s murder as a result.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Yes it can. He told me so himself when he realized there was no other way to convince me Paul was lying.”

“But… why should Paul have lied?”

“That hardly matters now, does it? Don’t you see? Keith wasn’t prepared to let Louise’s murderer get away with it. He was going to intervene to prevent Naylor’s release. He was going to admit his part in the crime. That’s why he’s been killed. To stop him confessing.”

“I… I don’t understand. If Keith hired Naylor… who killed Keith?”

“There were intermediaries. Keith never met Naylor. The whole thing was arranged for him by somebody else. And I’m pretty sure it’s that somebody who murdered Keith-or had him murdered.”

“If this is true-”

“It’s true.”

“Then we must go to the police. Without delay. Naylor isn’t innocent after all. A guilty man’s just been set free.”

“Perhaps you’d like to explain what we’d go to them with.” There was more pity than scorn in her expression as she stared at me. “Keith’s dead. And I can’t prove a single thing he told me.” She sighed and looked away, motioning dismissively at me with her palm. Only to abandon the gesture halfway through and slowly lower her hand to her side. “Get me some gin, Robin,” she said wearily. “I think it’s time you heard the whole story.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Bella took a deep swallow from the very large gin and tonic she’d just poured herself, lit another cigarette and crouched forward across the coffee-table between us. The central heating had already taken the edge off the chill, but Bella, whose preferred temperature was five degrees above most people’s, hadn’t even turned down the collar of her raincoat, let alone taken it off.

“You’ll say I mishandled it from the start,” she began. “You’ll say I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark or tried to solve the problem without forcing Keith to own up to what he’d done. Well, you can say what you damn well please. I was actually trying to spare everyone a lot of unnecessary suffering. I might even have succeeded if you’d been just a bit more-” She broke off and gave me a little head-shaking smile. “Sorry. Recriminations won’t get us anywhere, will they? And nor will being wise after the event. You remember coming to The Hurdles a few days after Paul had confessed to you? You remember Keith insisting Paul had made it all up? Well, I didn’t believe him any more than you did. But the following day, after Sarah had gone back to Bristol, Keith told me how he could be so sure. And then I did believe him.

“It seems Keith became convinced during the spring of nineteen ninety that Louise meant to leave him for Oscar Bantock. He accused her of having an affair with Bantock and she neither admitted it nor denied it. She said he had to make up his own mind about her fidelity. As for leaving him, she wouldn’t promise not to do that either. He’d always been a possessive husband. Sometimes an irrationally jealous one as well. I’ve seen that side of him myself. And ours was never exactly a love match. Whereas he really did love Louise. Too much for her peace of mind, I suppose. She wanted the freedom to do as she pleased. And if leaving Keith was what it took to find it, that’s what she was willing to do.

“I don’t blame her. In fact, I’m sorry never to have known her. She sounds like a woman after my own heart, though you probably think I’m flattering myself. But, reasonable or not, it was a dangerous line to take with Keith. He’d always suspected there was something going on between Louise and Howard Marsden, despite Louise telling him how unwelcome Howard’s attentions were. Perhaps he suspected it just because she told him. In his mind there were lots of other men she didn’t tell him about.”