Janet though, seemed in no hurry to move. Instead she looked slowly from Trudy to Clement and then at Ronnie in a calculating way that now made everyone openly uneasy.
Ronnie, perhaps last of all, also felt the unnaturalness of the situation and he took a small step away from Janet, and half-turned to look at her more closely. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked helplessly.
Janet gave a bleak smile. ‘Wrong? What could possibly be wrong?’ she asked tightly. ‘Apart from the fact that you murdered my best friend, you mean? And your own, apparently?’
Ronnie went white. He took another couple of awkward steps away and gaped at her. ‘What? What are you talking about?’ he asked, his voice half aghast squeak and half fearful whisper.
‘Don’t bother denying it,’ Janet said flatly, almost angrily, taking comfort from the feel of the knife handle in her hand. ‘I found his diary.’
‘Diary? Whose … You mean David’s?’ Ronnie shot a quick look – seeking confirmation – at Clement, who met his gaze with a level one of his own.
Ronnie felt himself begin to nod vaguely, even as his mind scurried about, trying to seek traction. So his worst nightmare was coming true after all. To his surprise it was almost a relief. For so long now he’d lived with the dread of it all coming out and fearing what would happen then. But now that it had, curiously, instead of feeling even more terrified, he felt instead as if someone had lifted off a massive, heavy, suffocating weight that had been smothering him.
‘I did start to wonder,’ he said wearily. ‘When you first asked me about it …’ He turned to look at Clement, but then turned to Janet again. ‘You found it?’
‘I did,’ Janet said with immense satisfaction. Of them all – the astute coroner, his pretty assistant, her mother, all the villagers and even all the cops working on Iris’s case, not to forget Ronnie … her Ronnie … she had been the only one clever enough to make the discovery. It gave her a much-needed confidence boost. ‘He hid it in his favourite hiding place when we were kids,’ she said simply.
Ronnie blinked, then nodded with a bleak smile of acceptance. ‘Under the old pavilion? I never did like playing that game much,’ he added sadly.
‘I know, that’s probably why you never thought of it,’ Janet said. If he had, he could have found the diary himself and destroyed the evidence against him. And she couldn’t help, even now, almost wishing that he had.
She was watching him closely now, like a cat at a mouse-hole, and he began to feel a coldness creep up his spine.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded.
‘Because I read it,’ Janet said, her voice turning hard. ‘David found out. About Iris.’
‘What do you mean? What about Iris?’ Ronnie asked, his mouth going dry. ‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, he was very diligent,’ Janet said almost mockingly. ‘He found out all about what went on at Mortimer Crowley’s parties, for instance. That must have turned his stomach.’
Ronnie shook his head, looking like a bewildered puppy. Clearly, whatever he’d expected her to say, it hadn’t been that. ‘What?’
‘Iris told me about it,’ Janet said indifferently, shrugging one shoulder. ‘Oh, not right away. She knew I’d be shocked and try and talk her out of going. But when she started to buy herself nice things, and saw me noticing …’ Janet sighed. ‘She told me about the men who paid her to … You know …’
Ronnie swallowed hard. Absurdly he felt himself flushing red with embarrassment. ‘Oh,’ he mumbled. ‘I never knew … I mean, I knew Iris … but not …’
‘Oh yes, I daresay you knew Iris all right,’ Janet said, and there was no denying the bitterness in her voice now. ‘I always thought that you, at least, were different,’ she swept on, glaring at him. ‘But you weren’t, were you? You were just like all the others,’ she went on, her voice rising and getting louder and louder as she finally lost control. ‘Panting after her, promising her the world, no doubt. Just like all the silly old duffers in the village, and Mortimer’s perverted London friends, and … oh, how could you?’ she all but wailed.
‘But I didn’t!’ Ronnie said, finally prodded out of his shock and into anger of his own. ‘I never liked Iris, I told David so! She was no good, anyone could see that, and I tried like hell to get him to see that! We almost fell out about her – you know all this.’
‘I know that’s what you pretended,’ Janet spat bitterly. ‘I know that’s what you’d have us believe. But David found out!’
She moved a few steps forward towards him, and that’s when Trudy spotted that she was holding something in her right hand, keeping it hidden by the side of her leg, in the folds of her skirt.
What is it? She shot a quick glance at Clement, caught his eye, then looked significantly at Janet, and surreptitiously moved her hand down to her own leg, matching Janet’s stance, and tapped her leg significantly. The coroner caught on quickly, of course, and his eyes narrowed as he too, realised that Janet was probably carrying a weapon of some sort.
Clement stiffened unhappily. Things, in spite of all his attempts to keep control of them, were beginning to get dangerously out of hand.
‘Found out what? What did David find out?’ Ronnie challenged rashly, then went abruptly white as he realised that he shouldn’t have asked that question again. After all, there might still be the slightest chance that they didn’t know it all … But it had been more than he could bear to have Janet, whom he’d always liked and secretly coveted for himself, looking at him and accusing him of preferring Iris, Iris of all people, over her.
‘About Iris’s sneaky little trips here, for a start,’ Janet
