Richard said, turning back to face Camille.
‘Well, sir,’ Camille said, returning to her notes. ‘Matthew’s the youngest. By some distance. He’s eighteen – Tom is twenty-two, and Lucy is twenty-eight – and he came back to the island this summer having left boarding school in the UK.’
‘Do you know which boarding school it was?’
‘Eton College.’
‘He went to Eton, did he?’ Richard said, Matthew’s easeful manner clicking into place for him. This was because Richard had come across quite a number of Old Etonians while he’d been at Cambridge, and, to his abiding irritation, every single one of them had been entirely and effortlessly charming. Not that that excused or justified their background of privilege, Richard felt. And nor did it mean that Richard could ever bring himself to trust or like someone who came from such a wealthy background. To his mind, it was simply wrong that so much should be given to so few, and he couldn’t help but resent the opportunities that were afforded to this wealthy minority – no matter how charming they always were when you met them in the flesh. As far as Richard was concerned, if private boarding schools like the one Richard had been sent to were ‘wrong’ – and Richard knew that they were very wrong – then schools like Eton were wrong to the power of ten.
‘Hang on, though,’ Richard said, suddenly realising something. ‘You’re saying that Matthew – the youngest sibling – was sent to Eton, but Tom – his older brother – went to the local comprehensive school on Saint-Marie?’
‘That’s right,’ Camille said, already knowing where Richard was going with this. ‘As was Lucy.’
‘There’s a story there,’ Richard said.
‘You could be right, sir,’ Camille agreed.
‘Then what have we got on Lucy?’ Richard asked. ‘What do we know about her?’
‘Well, sir, she’s pretty interesting,’ Camille said, picking up another set of notes. ‘Because she left Notre Dame school when she was seventeen years old without finishing formal education, and since then she doesn’t seem to have done much of anything. She doesn’t have a job at the plantation as far as I can tell, she doesn’t file tax returns – even though she’s twenty-eight years old. But better than that, I found two hits for her on the Police computer.’
‘You did?’
‘First, she was pulled in for shoplifting when she was twenty years old. She’d been caught stealing a dress from the market in Honoré, but was let off with a caution.’
‘And the second time?’
‘It was shoplifting again. When she was twenty-three. This time, it was a silver necklace that she was caught stealing from the Caribbean Sands hotel.’
‘And was she charged?’
‘That’s the thing, sir. She wasn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve no idea. Seeing as it was her second offence. But you should know, sir, Charlie Hulme was the arresting officer.’
Charlie Hulme had been the corrupt Detective Inspector who’d preceded Richard’s arrival on the island, and Richard could well imagine how the Beaumont family might have leant on him to make sure he didn’t press charges.
‘Ah, I see,’ Richard said. ‘But there’s a streak of criminality in her, is that what we’re saying?’
‘That’s what it seems like to me.’
‘Now that is interesting,’ Richard agreed, going to look at the names that he’d written up on the whiteboard that acted as the focus for all of his investigations.
‘So, in summary,’ he said, ‘we’ve got Hugh Beaumont running the family plantation with a gentle hand on the tiller. He’s married to the one-time holiday rep Sylvie, who now thinks herself something of a grand dame of the island. And as for their three children, we’ve got something of an enigma in Lucy, although we know she’s been light-fingered in the past; a popular party animal in Tom who just happens to have a heap of qualifications including an Agricultural degree; and the eighteen-year old Matthew, who’s only just returned to the island having been educated at one of the most privileged schools in the world. Something of a mixed bag, then.’
‘And none of them has a clear alibi for the time of the murder,’ Camille added.
‘Not so,’ Richard corrected. ‘None of them has a clear alibi for the time of the murder apart from Lucy. Because, no matter how criminal her past might have been, you and I were with her when the two gunshots were fired, so she’s the only member of the family who can’t be our killer.’
‘And we still don’t even know the identity of our victim,’ Camille added.
‘Or how the killer then escaped from a locked room afterwards,’ Richard agreed. ‘Or whether the three-wheeled vehicle that was up at the plantation before it rained was part of the murder or not. So we’re going to have to redouble our efforts. And I suggest we focus on our victim’s identity, because I don’t see how we’re going to get anywhere with this case until we work out who he was. So, let’s snap to it.’
As the afternoon wore on, Richard and his team made steady progress, but none of it seemed to take them any closer to uncovering the identity of the victim.
Richard even realised that he couldn’t presume that the victim – if indeed he were a Brit travelling on his own – had even arrived on the island by plane. What if he’d arrived by boat? So he put in a call to the Harbour Master in Honoré and learned that while it would theoretically be possible to get a list of every solo Brit who’d arrived by boat and cleared customs in the last month or so, there were so many bays on Saint-Marie that there was nothing stopping any potential solo sailor from dropping anchor in a quiet cove and illegally accessing the island from there. When Richard asked if the Harbour Master knew of any boats who’d recently arrived unannounced like this, the man had just laughed at how naive the question was.
Richard was left deeply frustrated. If their victim had arrived by plane, it was going to take until the following week to get a list of British arrivals. And if he’d arrived by boat, it would have been possible to sneak onto the island past customs and immigration anyway. How were they going to work out who the victim was?
It was Dwayne who made the first breakthrough.
‘Okay, sir, the weapon we found in the victim’s hand is a Glock 19,’ he reported back to Richard. ‘It’s not listed on the gun register of the island – meaning it must have been acquired illegally. And although I’ve been able to lift three partial fingerprints from the handle, they all belong to the victim. As for the rest of the gun, it’s been wiped clean. So, whoever carried out this murder must have worn gloves. Or wiped the gun of fingerprints before putting the victim’s hand around the handle after he was dead to make it look like suicide. But the fact that the gun has been obtained illegally – and has been wiped of prints, sir – suggests we’re dealing with a killer who knew what he or she was doing.’
‘I’d agree with you there,’ Richard said.
‘But the big news is, I’ve been able to lift a fingerprint from one of the bullet casings we found at the scene. And the fingerprint
