“I believe she mentioned that she had at some point. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time.”
“I think you know rather more about her book that that.”
“What do you mean?”
Carole took over the prosecuting role. “I think you had read at least some of Polly’s manuscript. You read the bit about her grandmother, about her pretentious grandmother, who’s an opera singer in the novel rather than an actress, and who prides herself on a family name supposed to date back to the Norman Conquest, whereas in fact the grandmother has no connection with the family whose name she stole. The name the character in the novel invented wasn’t Le Bonnier, but the story’s the same.”
There was a long silence, then Flora said in her even, beautifully modulated voice, “I am a Le Bonnier. The world knows me as a Le Bonnier. My autobiography is about being a Le Bonnier. I cannot have that taken away from me.”
“Even if it’s not true?”
The old actress turned on Carole a look of pure malevolence. “True? What do you know about truth? Most people never find real truth. I have been blessed to find it through my professional work. I have been nearer to pure truth on stage than you ever have been in your entire miserable life. People with my talent don’t have to obey the rules created by ordinary people. I am Flora Le Bonnier. That is my name. That is true.”
“But it’s not your name.”
“I cannot expect someone like you to understand.” The line was spoken with enormous dignity, and Jude felt sure Flora was quoting from some play she had once been in. That was really the trouble. The old actress could no longer distinguish between reality and the parts she had played.
“I can understand this much,” said Carole. “That you killed Polly down at Gallimaufry and then persuaded your son to torch the premises in the hope of covering up your crime.”
Flora Le Bonnier offered her clawlike hands. “I shot someone? These hands were able to hold a gun and pull its trigger? I wish that were true. I wish I were capable of shooting someone. Because then I would also be capable of doing a lot of other things which these hands will not allow me to do.”
Jude tried another tack. “Do you deny that you have read any of Polly’s book?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Do you know where there are copies of the book now?”
A sly smile crept across the old lady’s patrician features. “Polly was, I believe, carrying a copy of the manuscript in the haversack she brought down to Fedborough. It was destroyed in the fire at that ridiculous shop of Lola’s.”
“And that was the only copy?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“But in these days of computers,” said Carole, “copies of any text are ten-a-penny. The original stays on the writer’s computer.”
“It is my belief that Polly also had her laptop computer in the same haversack. That, too, was burnt beyond recognition or repair.”
“How fortunate then that I have this,” said Carole, producing the flash drive that she had just bought at PC World.
“What on earth is that?”
“A miracle of miniaturization, Flora. This tiny object, called a flash drive or a memory stick, is a wonderful device for storing data. You can put an enormous amount of text on a little thing like this. A whole book, if you want to. And that’s what Polly used this one for. The whole text of her book is retrievable from this tiny little rectangle of plastic.” As she spoke, Carole placed the flash drive casually on the table next to Flora Le Bonnier.
Then she looked glumly across to Jude. “Sorry, it looks as if we’ve been barking up the wrong tree.”
“Oh?” Jude wasn’t quite sure what her neighbour was up to, but was happy to play along until an explanation arrived.
“Our clever theory about Polly having been killed by her grandmother looks a bit threadbare now, doesn’t it, Jude? With her hands in that condition, Flora wouldn’t have been capable of holding a gun, let alone pulling its trigger. And she certainly wouldn’t have been capable of sending the text message from Ricky’s phone that summoned Polly back to Gallimaufry. I’m sorry, Flora, I think we owe you an apology,” Carole concluded, standing up as she did so.
“Apology accepted,” said the old lady gracefully. “I’m afraid the shock of tragic events has a tendency to stop people from thinking straight.”
“Well, goodbye,” said Jude, also rising from her seat. She still didn’t know what Carole’s plan was; she just hoped her friend had one.
“Excuse me if I don’t see you out, but movement is getting increasingly difficult for me.”
“No, of course. That’s fine,” said Jude, looking enquiringly at Carole in hope of some elucidation of what the hell was going on.
But she got nothing. Dutifully, she led the way into the hall and reached up to open the front door. Just at that moment, Carole said, “Oh, good heavens, I forgot the memory stick!”
Both women turned back towards the sitting room. And both women saw Flora Le Bonnier’s hand reach instinctively forward to grab the memory stick. Between her fingers. Which, though their knuckles were swollen, were otherwise straight and fully functional.
¦
“…and none of us likes losing power,” said Flora, “particularly when one has been powerful, when one has been the centre of attention. And for most of my life I had certainly been the centre of attention.” She sighed. “Anyway, the acting work just wasn’t there anymore. Enquiries to my agent were getting more and more infrequent.” Carole remembered Rupert Sonning describing the same experience – death by a thousand silent telephones.
“And I didn’t want to announce my retirement, because something might still have come up, and one must never say never. And my hands, which had once been one of my great beauties…” she stretched them out to look at them – “were getting misshapen with arthritis, and so I thought why not exaggerate that a bit more? Why not pretend I can’t use them at all? And it seemed to work.”
“You mean it got you attention?” asked Jude, not very sympathetically.
“Yes. It didn’t quite get me back centre stage – nothing was going to do that – but it did mean that people took more notice of me, felt sympathetic towards me because of my disability, helped me out. And with the autobiography written – ”
“Did you have a ghost-writer for that?”
“Yes, but it’s mostly me. I talked into tape machines at great length, then this little chap typed it all out, and I went through it and cut out all the extra stuff he’d added.”
“Personal stuff?” Carole suggested.
“Most of it was. Stuff that I didn’t want made public, anyway.”
“By the way, who was Ricky’s father?” asked Jude.
“Do you know,” said Flora Le Bonnier with a winsome smile, “I really can’t remember.” And it might even have been true.
“And do you feel any guilt about having murdered Polly?”
Flora gave Carole’s question a moment of thought before answering, “No, I really don’t. She was not a happy child. She never really recovered from her mother’s death. And, anyway, that book she had written, it was a complete betrayal of her family.”
“One could argue that it was simply telling the truth about her family.”
“One could argue that, but for me it would always be a betrayal.”
“When did you decide to kill Polly?” asked Jude.
“A couple of weeks before Christmas. Well, I didn’t decide to kill her. I decided to offer her the opportunity to destroy all copies of the book. Had she done as I requested, the girl would still be alive.” Flora Le Bonnier’s tone made it sound as if Polly’s intransigence was responsible for her own death.
“How did you come to know the book’s contents?”
“The girl actually came round here to see me. She gave me a copy. She was proud of what she’d done, she wanted me to read all the cruel things she had written about me.”
