Page 129 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

“You murdered Peggy Hackett because she was closing in on the story about the pornographic films, didn’t you?”

“I had to get rid of her. I broke into her house and waited for her upstairs in a hall closet. I couldn’t believe my luck when she had a couple of martinis and then decided to take a bath.”

“The fireplace poker was missing. That’s what you used to kill her.”

“She heard me at the very last instant but by then it was too late.”

“Why did you murder Gloria Maitland?”

“She got too close to Nick,” Claudia said. “They had an affair. He got drunk and made the mistake of telling her about those early films. After he dumped her, she started hounding him. Ogden paid her to go away but she didn’t.”

“Why did she follow Nick to Burning Cove?”

“She told Nick she would give him one last chance to resume their affair. They quarreled.”

“That was the fight that the hotel housekeeper witnessed.”

“Nick has a temper. He lost it and told Gloria he never wanted to see her again. I kept an eye on her. No one ever notices the star’s personal assistant. The next night she spent the evening drinking alone in the lounge. That wasn’t like her. Gloria liked to have people around. When she left, I followed her. When she went into the spa, I knew something was up. I confronted her. She laughed at me. Told me that you would be there any minute. She said that if I came up with more money thanWhispers, she’d keep quiet.”

“What did you use to hit her?”

“A rock from the garden,” Claudia said.

“You shoved her into the water to drown, and then you tried to murder me.”

“I didn’t know how much you knew at that point or what you’d seen. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. When you escaped, I got scared. The next morning the story of Gloria Maitland’s drowning was on the front page ofWhispersand you had implicated Archie. Ogden called, demanding to know what was going on.”

“You knew you had lost control of the situation. Ernie Ogden took over. He sent someone to search my apartment. He got me evicted. He even got me fired.”

“That should have been enough to silence you but you didn’t go away,” Claudia said. “Ogden said there was no need to worry but I knew he was wrong.”

“So you cooked up the scheme to make me disappear in a fire. Was Ogden in on that plan?”

“No. He had no way of knowing how high the stakes were, you see. He thought that with you off the Gloria Maitland story, everything was under control. But I knew you weren’t going to stop.”

“You were afraid that eventually I’d make the connections between the murders and those two early pornographic films. You used poor Daisy Jennings to lure me to that warehouse. You killed her. If Ernie Ogden wasn’t involved, how did you arrange to send Springer and Dallas to set the fire?”

“It’s no secret at the studio that Ogden uses Hollywood Mack when he wants some muscle work done. I made the call to Mack. Told him that Mr. Ogden wanted Springer and Dallas to throw a real scare into a nosy reporter. I told him I knew exactly where you would be that night and that Mr. Ogden wanted the warehouse set on fire.”

“But you weren’t going to take any chances, were you?” Irene said. “You were going to make sure I was dead first.”

“I waited for you in the old boathouse. But everything went wrong.”

“Because Oliver Ward showed up first and you knew that he was probably armed.”

“I realized that if he had accompanied you, he suspected a trap. So I stayed out of sight and waited for Springer and Dallas to arrive. I hoped that I’d get lucky and that you and Ward would both die in the fire.”

“But that didn’t happen.”

“Things kept going wrong.” Claudia’s voice climbed in an unstable wail of frustration and rage.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Irene said. “You murdered Betty Scott at the start and then you killed three more people to cover up your crime. I think that’s all I need to write my story. You’re going to make headlines in the morning, Claudia Picton. Congratulations.”

“Shut up.” Claudia made a jerky motion with the gun. “Outside. Move.”

Irene glanced at the crowbar in Claudia’s hand. “Are you planning to bash me over the head and dump me in the lap pool? You have got to be kidding me. How will you explain poor Henry Oakes’s death?”

Claudia smiled. “You’ve got it all wrong. Again. Everyone will think this is Henry Oakes’s gun. They’ll assume that he’s the one who shot you. And then he will put the gun to his own head. It will turn out that all the murders were committed by a crazed fan.”