The Final Curtain (36 page)

‘Start at the beginning,' Joanna ordered.

Diana looked up then and Joanna realized how tortured those apparently calm grey eyes were. But they were also deeply thoughtful and intelligent.

She gave a little smile. ‘You know a lot of it,' she started, ‘but you've come to all the wrong conclusions. You've known but you haven't understood.'

‘Then enlighten me,' Joanna invited.

The solicitor jerked and Joanna knew he was to tell his client to say nothing but Diana, who must also have anticipated this advice, put a hand on his arm to restrain him. ‘It'll be a relief to unburden myself after all this time,' she said.

At her side DS Mike Korpanski was looking thoroughly confused. Joanna didn't even need to look at him to know this. Korpanski was practically snorting in frustration. His breathing was fast, his large fingers writhing and occasionally his feet scraped along the floor. Backwards and forwards. Inwardly, Joanna was smiling. DS Korpanski was crap at hiding his feelings. He was also crap at keeping still.

She turned her attention back to Diana Tong. ‘Start at the beginning, Mrs Tong,' she said. ‘Start with the silly little tricks that frightened her so much. What on earth did you hope to achieve by them?'

Diana's eyes searched for empathy but there was little chance she would find it. Not here, not in a police interview room. By her side the solicitor was making notes with the coolness of a teacher marking a very average essay.

Diana continued, ‘I thought that if Timony was a little scared that it would work and I wouldn't need to do anything more to keep the past buried.'

Joanna reflected that there were two potential meanings to the words.

‘But it didn't work like that. She kept on writing. The trouble was that she couldn't sort out what was OK to put in and what would be better left out. She couldn't even differentiate fact from fiction. She thought in storylines and dramatic cadences.'

And now Joanna was beginning to understand. ‘The body in the well. She was going to write about it in the manuscript.'

Diana Tong nodded. Jerky, vigorous movements. She folded her arms and looked straight at Joanna, as though she had decided now was the time for truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

‘You know, I joined the work force of Butterfield in nineteen sixty-four. The show had been running for nearly four years and, I think I told you this before, I was quite a fan. To meet my idol was fantastic. Lily was my favourite.' A small laugh. ‘She was everyone's favourite. She was just a sweet child then. I knew little about her past and James discouraged us from being too curious about her background. No one wanted the press to know that she came from poor stock. It might have destroyed the image the studio and particularly Freeman had built up so carefully. It was as though James wanted her past to remain a mystery.' She gave a cynical snort. ‘As though he expected everyone to believe a fable, that she'd been dropped by the fairies or something.' The solicitor's eyebrows shot up and he gave his client a quick, surprised look before settling back into the bland, uninterested expression.

Diana continued without seeming to notice the movement. ‘Then one day, on set, a man forced his way in. He was a vagrant. Unwashed.' A flash of distaste soured her features. ‘He was wearing a badly fitting suit. He wanted money and …' Her eyes drooped with sadness. ‘To cut a long story short, he threatened to tell the papers exactly who he was.'

‘Her father,' Mike guessed gruffly.

She looked at him. ‘Our lovely, innocent, sweet Lily,' she said. ‘Her father a jailbird. It would have been catastrophic. People were a lot more snobbish and judgemental in those days.' She paused. ‘However the Swinging Sixties and Free Love is bandied about I can tell you what it was like in nineteen sixty-four. It would have been the end of the series. She would have been dropped. Dumped. Abandoned. Her mother wouldn't have had her back. She had practically sold her into slavery.'

‘So he was murdered and his body dumped down the well.'

She nodded.

‘Who by?'

‘I don't know,' Diana Tong said simply. ‘Not for certain. I've always thought that Timony was probably involved, but that doesn't seem likely. When her memory returned about the well … I do know that James Freeman must have known all about it because it was
he
who bought the property and sealed it up. It might also have been
he
who torched it. I don't know.'

Joanna needed to think. ‘But there is so much more, isn't there? Someone's been pulling your strings, haven't they? What I don't understand is why you've gone along with it.'

Diana's gaze was evasive.

A firm knock rapped on the door.

T
heir main suspect had arrived. Joanna switched off the recording equipment and stood up, excusing herself.

‘He's here,' she said to Diana, whose response was a nibbling of her lower lip and an almost ashamed glance up into Joanna's face. She was wondering how much the detective knew. Then she stretched her arms out, put her head flat on the table and wept. It was an attitude of complete submission.

Joanna almost felt sorry for her. ‘You'll be brought some tea,' she said.

She had not
met
him but she had
seen
him on a snowy, freezing morning, driving past her while she had crouched, hiding behind a rock. As she entered the room he struck her as an angry man. Angry and arrogant. She sat down opposite him, introduced herself ‘for the record', asked him if he would like a solicitor present and when he said no, launched straight in without further preamble. She'd wasted enough time, doubted Timony's story for months and knew, in her heart, that she could and should have prevented her murder if she had picked up on the signs, had probed more into Timony's fantasy world. She could have stayed the finger that had pulled the trigger, held back the hand that had pointed the gun, screwed the cap of the tranquillizers back on before they were mixed, in excessive quantities, with Timony's goodnight glass of wine. She knew this so strongly that she almost felt she shared this man's guilt.

‘Why did you hate her so much?' she asked. ‘Why did you want her to suffer? What had she ever done to you?'

Something was niggling at the back of her mind even as she asked the questions. The administering of barbiturates didn't fit in with hatred and a desire to hurt someone.

He said nothing.

‘How could you hate her so much?' she asked again. ‘She was simply a faded woman, a past actress, someone who spent more than half of her life facing backwards, trying to recapture a fantasy land of Disney and childhood. How could you?' she asked again.

Stuart Renshaw practically sniggered. ‘You ask that? You surely know who I am.' There was no humility and a large dollop of pomposity in his manner.

‘She was just fourteen years old when you were born.'

She searched his face for two things: remorse – at least some – and a resemblance to his mother. She found neither.

Renshaw grinned. ‘You still don't get it, do you?' he jeered.

Under the table Joanna felt Korpanski bunch his hands up into fists. The muscles in his neck bulged and she could see a pulse throb. He was dying to punch this guy. She could read his mind. But that wouldn't do. She met his eyes and he gave her a slight smile of reassurance. These days Korpanski was more able to keep his emotions in check.

Renshaw spoke. ‘I know what you think,' he said. ‘But you're wrong. Timony Weeks or Dorothy Hook wasn't my mother. It's Diana. Diana's my mother. Not Timony. Kathleen, Timony's sister, and her husband, Keith, adopted me and brought me up as their own. I've known that from the start,' he said disdainfully. ‘It wasn't that I hated Timony. That wasn't it. It was Diana who owed me one.' He leaned back, pleased with himself to have
got one over
on the police.

Renshaw continued. Most killers like to boast and he was no exception. ‘Timony was my adopted aunt. And I knew I would inherit, despite her being married to Van Eelen. My mother was going to make sure Timony divorced Van Eelen. I came to see them every now and then just to keep in touch. To remind them of my existence.
Auntie
Timony …' he used the epithet,
auntie
,
with such disdain it made Joanna nauseous, ‘was writing her memoirs. Lovely. More money for me. They were going to be worth a bob or two. But the trouble was she kept putting stuff in that she shouldn't have done, which could have proved embarrassing and led to a couple of court cases, which are expensive. On the other hand, you can't sue the dead.' His eyes crinkled. ‘Always a bonus. With her out of the way the money would have been safe – even if her stories were libellous. Diana told me about the fracas between her producer and, let's say, a close family relative, which ended in tragedy. Timony's memory of it was returning, and originally I couldn't risk it being included, so I told Diana to play a few tricks. Move stuff. Play around a bit. If Timony was considered not quite the full shilling I could have had power of attorney.'

‘Why shoot her?' Joanna asked simply.

‘Oh, Inspector,' Renshaw said. ‘You're forgetting. You need to prove that I did.'

Joanna needed to think on her feet. ‘Then let's say, just for argument's sake, that I can.'

For the first time Stuart Renshaw lost some of his cockiness. ‘You want me to imagine that I shot her, and to think up a reason why?'

Joanna nodded and Korpanski looked across – interested.

‘I might have found the money useful, let's say,' he said coolly.

‘But you won't inherit. She was still married.'

‘Exactly. So why would I shoot her?' He grinned at Joanna.

She returned to Diana Tong, who was sitting with a wooden expression on her face. As before Joanna launched straight in. ‘So Stuart is
your
son?'

Diana nodded. ‘A twisted being.'

‘Who was his father?'

Diana drew in a deep breath and folded her arms tightly around her. She was reluctant to tell so Joanna replaced the question.

‘And Timony's child?'

‘The baby had something wrong with her. She died. I did wonder whether Dariel's attack had something to do with it – damaged it in some way. I don't know.'

‘Whose baby was it?'

Diana gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘He was just a nobody,' she said disdainfully. ‘One of the technicians. A lad. Blond and pretty. He and Timony had the odd fumble but we never thought it had gone so far. He was sacked and Timony fell pregnant, losing the baby – a little girl – while my own child flourished like a twisted tree inside me.'

‘And your child's father was?' Perhaps this time Diana would tell.

‘Bloody Gerald,' she said bitterly. ‘And then he goes and marries Timony. Bloody pervert. Naturally I never told Timony who the father of my child was. She never knew. In fact, she never referred to it.'

‘You had Stuart adopted.'

‘I couldn't have returned to the set, unmarried and with a child. Kathleen was desperate for a baby and she had a husband who would support her. It was the obvious solution.'

She leaned back in her chair, at ease with herself now. ‘As Timony and I were pregnant at around the same time we were sent away, the pair of us, like naughty schoolgirls. I'd thought Gerald would visit, and that he would eventually marry me. He was such a gentleman. But he kept away and on the telephone, only to marry Timony years later.' Joanna was beginning to understand where Diana's hate must have come from in their love/hate relationship. ‘When I mentioned the fact that Timony's sister was desperate for a child of her own, it was he who suggested I had the child adopted.' She gave a half smile. ‘Notice the word “I”. Not “we”.
I
had the child adopted. Gerald wanted nothing to do with it. With him,' she corrected. ‘Timony and I were sent away together, the shame of Butterfield, to be hidden in a farmhouse in South Wales, under false names and registered with the local midwife. Neither of us was married. No one knew who we were. We hardly left the property. James organized everything. Absolutely everything for us. No,' she said, not without a sense of warped pride, ‘Stuart was not Timony's. He is my son.'

And when Joanna said nothing she continued, fiercely defensive, ‘Under the circumstances it was the best solution.'

‘But you did get married. You could have—'

Diana nodded and smiled. ‘Much later. Too late to have reclaimed the child I had signed away. I was married to Colin, one of the scriptwriters. It didn't last. To be honest it never was going to last.' She went quiet. ‘I'm not built that way.'

‘Who shot Timony, Diana?'

The grey eyes met hers with a hint of mockery. ‘
Not I, said the fly,'
she said, before the veneer of humour lifted from her face. She sobered up and looked upset. ‘I couldn't have hurt her. I was far too fond of her.'

‘But the little psychological tricks?'

Diana smiled, again caught between two emotions. ‘Those, yes. I admit that. Stuart's an accountant. He could have had charge of her money – particularly if her memoirs fetched real money. One publisher had said he might pay a good price
if they were interesting enough.
The trouble was that to Timony the word ‘interesting' meant that she was going to put lots of sensational stuff in, some real and some pure fantasy. The body in the well was one such example. Timony blocked out a lot of her past – it was obviously very traumatic for her.' A look of sadness suddenly crept into Diana's eyes. ‘Being on the show quickly turned her into a star, and she had everything she wanted – adoration, money, status, marriage. She suppressed all the bad things, and over time it was as though they hadn't happened at all. It got to a point where she genuinely seemed unable to recall a lot of her past, she'd hidden it so well. But, as I told you, she lost a lot of her money, and the memoirs seemed a good idea. I thought she'd just make up some events, but unfortunately, writing them seemed to reawaken the past – more than I could have anticipated. I tried to discourage her but it didn't work. The body in the well was real, and exposing that would have had repercussions. And as for the pregnancy, it reflected badly on all of us who should have taken care of her. I don't know if she wrote about them – as I say, I haven't read all of it – but Stuart wanted the book to come out. Or at least, he wanted the money. He wasn't too happy at the prospect of Timony being taken to court. I was just managing to convince her that to go ahead, to publish and be damned,' she quoted, ‘was not a good idea. She was coming around to seeing things my way. It was the writing that was cathartic to her, not the money.' At that she broke down.