The Death of Marco Styles (2 page)

She gave him a doubtful look, glanced towards the bar as if to assure herself that they were not going to be overheard, then carried on.

‘We don't know, except that it's nothing obvious. A sample has been sent away for further analysis. What we do know is that it is very, very powerful. His nervous system must have shut down within seconds.'

‘Intriguing,' de Lacy responded.

‘It also breaks down very quickly once inside the body,' she continued. ‘In fact, if we hadn't asked the lab to test the glass we'd never have noticed. Thank you.'

‘It's my pleasure to be of service. And, if I may ask, do you have a suspect, aside from myself?'

She ignored his question and asked another.

‘What do you gain by this, Mr de Lacy?'

‘Marco Styles was an old friend of my father's,' de Lacy replied, ‘and more importantly, a human being. I deplore the taking of human life, which to my way of thinking is excusable only in very exceptional circumstances. That's my main reason, but I enjoy working out complex problems in any case, particularly if it allows me to put my specialist knowledge to good use.'

‘OK, and I think we can safely eliminate you anyway, given that without your input we'd probably never have realised that Marco Styles had been murdered.'

‘Not at all,' de Lacy insisted. ‘I must remain a suspect, albeit one low on the list of possibilities. Certainly I'd hope to continue helping you with your enquiries, as the expression goes.'

‘Do you know anything else?'

‘I know something of the family background, which might be relevant.'

‘Go on.'

‘Well, Marco Styles was at school with my father, Latchley College on the Sussex Downs, where I went myself as a matter of fact.'

‘A public school?'

‘Of course, although a very minor one and somewhat bucolic by the standards of Winchester or Eton. It's mainly for the children of local farmers and businessmen, and all the more so back in the sixties. Marco Styles was one of those wild, precocious boys, always determined to make his name in the world, as he did. He was the driving force behind the school band, in which my father played the saxophone, rather badly I suspect, and only as a stand in. Marco was good, very good, and so were Jeremy Blake and Richard Vine, who went on to form the core of Marco Lawless. My father was younger than them and lost touch during the late sixties but they picked up the threads again twenty years later. By then Marco had retired to the life of a country gentleman and was keen to get in with the county set – or rather, Irene was. My father used to live at Bournestock, just a few miles from here.'

‘And they're rich?'

‘Perhaps not as rich as you might think. Certainly they're not as rich as Irene would like to be. No doubt the royalties still come in, and they may have investments, but Marco hasn't worked for years. The only one who brings in any income to speak of is Clive, and he no doubt has his own affairs to see to. That's why I was invited, you see, in the hope that I'd hit it off with one of the girls.'

‘That seems a very mercenary attitude.'

‘Mercenary is a word that perfectly describes Irene Styles. She was from a family with more sense of place and history than money, but was very much part of the London scene in the sixties, not just as a socialite either, but as a model. I believe she went through a series of up-and-coming young men before she latched on to Marco, but I suspect she was the one who kept him together during the latter part of his career and generally ensured that he remained focused on making money. They had children very late, you know, which is telling, and from the conversation last night I know she was the one who chose to purchase Elthorne House, which had apparently been in her family some generations before. Left to his own devices, I imagine Marco would have retired to a life of modest comfort in London. He was an easy-going old boy, in fact, for all his reputation, and it's hard to imagine anybody wanting to kill him.'

‘But she's a snob and a social climber?'

‘More of a social clinger, a remnant of an upper class that barely exists anymore, royalty excepted. She's tough, though. My father once said they used to call her the Mantis, for her habit of using men to gain the contacts she needed and then moving on.'

‘But she married Marco and stuck with him?'

‘It would have been a wise choice at the time, seventy-four or seventy-five, I believe, and no doubt she felt it was time to pick a winner and settle down, or perhaps time had mellowed her, although it certainly hasn't diluted her determination to see her daughters marry well.'

‘To yourself, for instance? But you're unemployed.'

De Lacy winced slightly, allowing his reaction to be seen.

‘I'm unemployed only in the sense that I don't have a job. From Irene's point of view, I'm ideal: single, with a comfortable private income, from an old family …'

‘And why don't you work? Surely a career …'

‘I have no need, and if I did I would be depriving some more deserving soul of their salary and career. I also prefer to devote my time to my hobbies, and I admit I have occasionally benefitted from investments in art, fine wine, that sort of thing. But returning to the death of the unfortunate Marco, it seems we have a classic case, with a victim and a selection of suspects, any one of who could be the murderer. So …'

‘I have a case, Mr de Lacy,' she interrupted him, ‘although I've now handed it over to CID and only have responsibility for security. Still, I see what you mean.'

‘Can we not discuss the situation if it were an abstract problem?' he suggested. ‘After all, is it not my duty to pass one any relevant information I might come across to the police? People will talk to me far more openly than they would to you, after all, while you can be assured of my complete discretion.'

An expression of doubt crossed her face and she glanced over her shoulder once more before she answered him.

‘OK, I'll trust you, but you'd better not have murdered him, or bang goes my career.'

She had allowed herself a smile as she spoke and de Lacy responded in kind.

‘My innocence will be established in due course,' de Lacy assured her. ‘But as you're off duty, perhaps I can buy you a drink?'

‘Asking you questions is one thing,' she told him, ‘drinking with you is another, so no, but thank you all the same.'

‘As you please. So then, given that the murderer must somehow have tainted an individual glass of port with the poison, the suspects must be limited to those who were in the house at the time. That includes myself, Adam Carradine, and the five remaining members of the Styles family. Then there's the butler, cook, and two maids.'

‘All hired for the evening from an agency in Solsbury,' Sergeant McIntyre put in, ‘so they can safely be eliminated.'

‘I disagree,' de Lacy answered. ‘They are merely less likely to be responsible, but all had the opportunity, if not the motive. You see, the old Sherlock Holmes maxim, that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, is quite wrong, or at best simplistic. In practise, once you have eliminated the impossible what remains will be a range of possibilities. These possibilities can then be ranked in order of decreasing probability and tested, one by one. Eventually you will have your answer.'

De Lacy had hoped she would be impressed by what was one of his favourite pieces of logic, but she merely nodded and carried on.

‘Fair enough, but I'm sure you'll agree that there must be a motive, and a pretty strong one at that, also that we're dealing with a carefully planned and executed crime.'

‘Certainly,' he agreed. ‘So, shall we consider the holy trinity; means, motive, and opportunity?'

Again she simply nodded before speaking again.

‘The means we know: this neurotoxin was introduced into a glass of port, or more likely, introduced into the glass before it was filled, but one thing does strike me as odd. Why were only the men drinking the port?'

‘That's hardly odd,' de Lacy responded. ‘Old-fashioned, certainly, eccentric even, but our grandparents would have considered it normal for the ladies to retire after the dessert and leave the men to take port.'

‘For your grandparents, maybe,' she told him. ‘Not mine. Grandpa McIntyre was a Lanarkshire miner and my mother's father was in the army. And both my parents were in the police. In fact my father made Assistant Chief Constable, which …'

She trailed off as if embarrassed. De Lacy, guessing at the difficulties she must have faced as the pretty daughter of a senior officer, quickly moved the conversation back to the case in hand.

‘I agree with you about the glass. The port was standing in a decanter on the sideboard throughout the meal. Once the ladies had left the room the butler placed it on the table beside Marco. Marco poured a glass for himself, then passed the decanter to the left, to me. I in turn poured myself a glass and passed the decanter to Adam Carradine. Apparently he doesn't drink much, and he not only didn't take any port, but failed to pass the decanter on, so that Clive Styles was obliged to reach for it himself. Marco made his remark about the port being bitter a moment later, after I had taken a sip, so I have to say that I am profoundly grateful that the port itself wasn't poisoned.'

‘Do you think Adam Carradine's behaviour is suspicious?' Sergeant McIntyre asked.

‘Quite the reverse,' de Lacy stated. ‘He took a glass of Chablis with the fish course and made it last the entire meal, which implies that he drinks very little and doesn't understand the etiquette of the English dinner table, but that hardly makes him a murderer.'

‘Yes,' she agreed, ‘and if he'd known the glass was poisoned he'd presumably have poured himself some port in order not to look suspicious?'

‘Exactly, but the important question would seem to be: who had access to the glasses? Unfortunately, the answer is that everybody did. The table was laid by the maids under the supervision of Irene Styles, and was fully set while the party gathered on the terrace with the maids serving Champagne and the cook busy in the kitchen. The butler was seeing to something elsewhere in the house. Any one of us could have gone into the dining room and tampered with Marco's glass. In fact, I went in myself, to check on the wines, but at the same time as one of the maids. There is also a remote possibility that an outsider might have come in through the French windows, which were open.'

‘We need more facts,' she answered, now openly enthusiastic, only to go quiet as Inspector Morden entered the bar.

The inspector was with another man, equally tall but lean and lank, with shaggy grey hair and a day's stubble on his face, features that sat oddly with casual but plainly expensive clothes and a ring set with a single diamond cut in the shape of a guitar pick.

‘Now that,' de Lacy said, ‘is Richie Vine, who played lead guitar in Marco Lawless and must have come down for the funeral, but I'm interested to see him talking to Inspector Morden.'

III

‘So what do you make of all this?' de Lacy asked as he selected a black tee to go with the bright orange golf ball he'd been given by Adam Carradine.

‘I don't know,' Adam admitted. ‘Who'd want to murder Marco Styles?'

De Lacy ducked down to push the tee into the ground and balance the ball on top of it while Adam Carradine continued to talk.

‘I can't believe it would be Irene. She may be an old dragon, and I suppose he's become a bit of an embarrassment when it comes to her social aspirations, but if she wanted to move on why not just get a divorce? I can't see Clive doing it either. They've always got on well, and as for the girls, ridiculous. Frankly, I think it's all a ghastly mistake.'

‘The police seem to think he was poisoned,' de Lacy said as he addressed himself to the ball.

Adam didn't answer, watching as de Lacy completed his drive, sending the ball high and far into a clump of pines well to the right of the fairway.

‘Sliced it,' Adam commented, ‘bad luck. No, we'll find something's been contaminated. The drugs and booze caught up with him, that's all. Did you know he used to go on stage with a bottle of whisky? Apparently he'd send a roadie out to buy the best malt he could get hold of, then drink the lot. It's a miracle he lasted into his sixties.'

‘You're probably right,' de Lacy admitted.

They started down the fairway, to where Adam's ball lay neatly positioned for an approach shot. The copse of pine into which de Lacy's own ball had vanished was some way ahead, allowing him at least some satisfaction, but he had no real interest in winning the game. His purpose in suggesting it was to talk to Adam Carradine, who ranked low on his list of suspects but was a close friend of Clive Styles, whom he reckoned the second most probable candidate after Irene. Not that either of them seemed likely murderers, as it was hard to see how either could gain sufficiently from the death of Marco to make up for the risk.

Adam Carradine took his shot, sending the ball skipping across the turf to stop at the very edge of the green. They started towards the clump of pines, where the bright orange speck of de Lacy's ball was clearly visible on the carpet of brown needles.

‘If Marco was murdered, it will be for money,' Adam remarked. ‘Insurance, probably. Between you and me, they're quite badly in debt.'

‘Oh?' de Lacy asked. ‘I assumed they were comfortably off. The house …'

‘The house is a white elephant,' Adam interrupted. ‘OK, it's worth a couple of million, but it costs the earth to keep up, and what with Irene and the three girls spending like it's going out of fashion, well, you can imagine. I think Irene's hoping I'll marry Louise and support the lot of them.'

‘You get on well with Louise, don't you?'