The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(47)

‘Hmm.’ Rycroft, after his initial surprise, thought it over. ‘But why forge a suicide note, and then put the body in a cupboard and fairly advertise the fact that it was murder?’

Jenny frowned then shrugged. ‘Just because he forged the note doesn’t necessarily mean he did the killing,’ she pointed out reasonably.

‘He was in cahoots with someone else, you mean?’

Jenny thought about it, then shook her head. ‘No, that would hardly make sense either. I think, perhaps, David Leigh intended to kill Olney. Or at least had fantasized about it. But somebody else beat him to it.’

‘Or else he was very clever, and planned it to look that way. A sort of double bluff,’ Rycroft said, giving the cook a fascinating glimpse into the way his convoluted mind could work. ‘Any idea why, though? We need a motive.’

Jenny was beginning to like the way Rycroft’s mind worked. He went right for the nub of a problem with the unerring instinct of a weasel going down a rabbit hole. She liked that in a policeman.

‘I have no idea, specifically,’ she admitted. ‘I can only say that it was obvious that David Leigh hated Gabriel Olney intensely.’

At that, Rycroft perked up. ‘Oh?’

But now Jenny was staring at the body. She looked in detail at Gabriel’s shirt, now dry. Her eyes followed the clean white folds, and then moved down, over his dark blue slacks, to his bootless, pale foot.

‘Can you turn him over?’ she asked respectfully.

Rycroft did so, somewhat impatiently. ‘So you think Leigh hated Olney? That’s significant, at least.’

‘Hmm?’ Jenny said, distracted, still staring at the body. Rycroft looked down, but couldn’t see what was so fascinating to her. Olney was beginning to dry off now. His hair was dry and clean, but his moustache was still somewhat limp.

‘David Leigh, Miss Starling,’ Rycroft prompted with a touch of asperity.

Jenny dragged her eyes from the body, a puzzled frown still wrinkling her forehead. ‘Leigh? Oh, yes, David Leigh. He hated Mr Olney certainly, but he was not the only one, I’m afraid.’

Rycroft felt his spirits sink. ‘Oh? Who else was there?’

Jenny shrugged. ‘Well, Mr Olney was making a very determined play for Mrs Leigh.’

‘Ah,’ Rycroft said. ‘So that’s why Leigh had a down on him,’ he said, totally missing the point.

Jenny, with a slightly sinking heart, hoped that he wouldn’t prove to be one of those officials who had a frustratingly one-track mind.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said firmly, watching the man’s face fall. ‘I don’t even think, in fact, that he noticed much. Or, if he did, it certainly didn’t worry him. And nor should it have. Dorothy Leigh is devoted to her husband — anyone with even a half-decent pair of eyes in their head can see that. She’s the sort of woman whose life revolves around that of her husband and home. And, when the baby’s born, around her child too. I doubt she’d even think of looking at another man.’

Rycroft nodded, obviously thinking that that was only as it should be.

Jenny was rather of the opinion, however, that too much devotion and adoration could be just as dangerous as too little.

‘So Olney was after her because of the challenge, was he? Some men are like that.’ He looked down at the corpse but his face revealed neither disgust nor admiration. ‘An ex-soldier, I believe.’

But again the cook shook her head. ‘I don’t think that was it, no. Oh, it added a little piquancy, I suppose. But what he really wanted was a cat’s paw.’ And when Rycroft looked blank, added succinctly, ‘Divorce.’

Rycroft stared at her. ‘You think he wanted to divorce his wife?’

Jenny nodded. ‘I do.’

‘Why?’

The cook thought of Jasmine’s hot and hungry look that first morning, when she’d spotted Brian O’Keefe’s half-naked torso, and shrugged.

‘I imagine it had something to do with a man. Mrs Olney is very attractive, as you’ve probably already observed, and she is twenty years or so younger than her husband.’

Rycroft grunted. ‘So that’s the Leighs and Mrs Olney. Anyone else who might want our chap here dead?’

Jenny sighed. ‘I’m afraid so. Mr Olney and Lucas Finch had a terrible argument yesterday afternoon.’

‘How terrible?’

‘Mr Finch had Gabriel Olney by the throat. Quite literally, I mean. I had to insist that Lucas put him down. Mr Olney was turning a quite unbecoming shade of purple,’ she said, in massive understatement.

Rycroft swore roundly. As an effort at profanity, it was well beneath the parrot’s expertise, but the high squeaky voice with which he made his delivery might well have caught the bird’s attention, had he been present.

‘Anyone else?’

‘I think you’d better talk to Captain Lester about that,’ Jenny said at last. ‘I don’t know any of the details, but yesterday evening Mr Finch announced that he’d sold the Stillwater Swan to . . .’ She nodded down at the corpse, her eyes once again lingering in a puzzled frown on the cleanly drying body at her feet.

‘Sold the Stillwater Swan? What, this boat?’ Rycroft asked doubtfully, and obviously not grasping the significance at all.

Jenny sighed. As a general rule, she would never knowingly drop anybody in the cacky-cart, but when it was murder, you had no choice but to be a tattletale.