Rafferty was beginning to regret the murder charge. He had discussed it with the Crown Prosecution briefs earlier and they had agreed that it might now be wise to change the charge to one of manslaughter. What would they say in view of the latest evidence? he wondered, though he had a fair suspicion they would want to drop the case altogether.
Maybe, he thought, several days' experience of being a prisoner might have delivered the short, sharp shock that would trigger greater recall. Especially when she learned that they now knew about her ex-husband.
Felicity Raine, seated across the table from Rafferty and Llewellyn, looked slimmer and paler than ever. She seemed fragile, full of nerves, and jumped at the slightest sound. Prison could do that to people, Rafferty knew. And the delicate Felicity Raine, who had the appearance of not being present at all half of the time, didn't appear particularly well equipped to cope with the worst of life's downsides. Altogether, her air of ethereal fragility had increased worryingly. She seemed to have no more substance than a will-o'-the-wisp that might vanish if he blinked. He was surprised she had agreed to see them without her legal representative being present.
He started gently. ‘Why didn't you tell us you'd been married before?’ he asked after they'd exchanged a few strained pleasantries.
She blinked and looked at him as if she didn't understand the question. But as she realised what he had asked, the ethereal look turned to one of watchful wariness, followed by a brief explanation. ‘I'm sorry, but I don't understand what relevance my previous marriage has to my present situation.’
‘Do you not?’ Rafferty sat back, folded his arms and contemplated her for a few moments. ‘It struck me that it might have a lot of relevance, especially as your ex-husband seems to have taken to watching you and the late Mr Raine.’
‘Watching me? Peter?’ She shook her head. ‘You must be mistaken.’
‘No mistake. He was seen, sitting in his car behind that little copse of trees opposite your house, on several occasions just before your husband's death.’
Strangely, Rafferty noted he had shied away from using the word ‘murder’. It seemed altogether too brutal a word to use in Felicity Raine's fragile state. ‘Surely you noticed him?’
‘No.’
The brief reply, without any further curious questions, made Rafferty think he might be on to something with regard to her ex-husband's possible connection to the murder of her latest spouse. Was her previous ready confession an attempt to protect Dunbar? One prompted by feelings of guilt for having left him for Raine?
‘Now, I have to say that I find it strange that you failed to spot him. Your neighbour and her husband noticed him on several occasions; Mrs Enderby even noted the part of his registration number that she could see and was still thinking about calling the police when she was distracted from this all too belated intention by the police activity outside your house.’
‘Well I didn't see him inspector. I think I might notice if my ex-husband was stalking me. It seems unlikely.’
‘Stalking? I don't think I said anything about stalking, Mrs Raine.’
She gave the faintest of shrugs. ‘What you said, the way you said it — what other inference could there be?’
‘Funny, because that's what I wondered. Perhaps it wasn't you he was watching — or stalking, to use your own word. Maybe it was your husband he was stalking?’
She tried to laugh off his remark as absurd, but her laugh sounded shaky. She glanced at him under her lashes, quickly, like a fawn fearing the hunter is getting too close, then looked quickly away again.
‘Is it such a funny idea, though? After all, Mr Raine had stolen his wife.’
‘Stolen?’ She had the nervous habit of repeating his words back at him, he noticed. ‘I wasn't stolen inspector. No one steals another human being unless they're kidnappers or terrorists and I can assure you that Raymond was neither. I went with him of my own free will. I divorced Peter of my own free will. No coercion was used.’
‘All right then. Not stolen as such, but enticed away.’
This time her laughter was merrier and more convincing. It sounded like the treble of a small and delicate bell or the chuckle of a brook over smooth pebbles.
‘You make Raymond sound like some fairy or goblin,’ she told him, still smiling. ‘He wasn't. I wasn't lured away by hypnotic spells or some pied piper's haunting tune, but by a man, a strong man I thought would take care of me better than—’ She broke off.
‘Better than your first husband had managed? Was that what you were going to say?’
‘I suppose.’ Again, she glanced quickly at him then away again. She admitted, 'I was weak. When my first husband's business went under, he found it difficult to cope. He felt a failure; he felt ashamed, I suppose, but mostly he felt angry. I didn't know what to do. I felt a failure too, you see. I couldn't help him. Not that he wanted my help. He seemed to feel that the fact that he might need it was even more degrading than his business failure.
‘We drifted for weeks, months, making each other more and more unhappy. Then Raymond came along and made it clear he wanted me and wouldn't take no for an answer. It was as if a weight had been lifted from me. Suddenly, I didn't feel crushed by life, by demands and responsibilities I couldn't meet. I'm not a strong person, inspector.’
This time she met his gaze squarely, without looking away. ‘I need someone beside me who is stronger than me. Not all women, even today, can be confident career types.’
Rafferty nodded. Tell me — I know you didn't have any form of employment during your marriage to Mr Raine, but, given your ex's business downturn, did you work at all during your first marriage?’
She nodded. ‘I had a part-time job when I was with Peter. Nothing very grand. I tried to get more hours, go full-time, when Peter's business failed, but although I did increase my hours, my earnings were never going to make up for the loss of his. The fact that I had even sought more hours in order to bring in a greater income seemed to anger him more than please him. I felt I was in an impossible situation.’
Rafferty, like a dog after a particularly juicy bone buried he couldn't recall just where, returned to one of his earlier areas of exploration. ‘You said before that you didn't notice your ex-husband sitting in his car watching the house you shared with Mr Raine?’
She shook her head.
‘What about Mr Raine?’
‘What?’
Rafferty was interested to note that the wary look was back in her eyes. ‘I know you said that he hadn't noticed him either, but Mr Raine was a busy man, in and out of the house every day, following his business interests. I find it hard to believe that a man as sharp as Mr Raine wouldn't have noticed his love rival parked suspiciously behind the trees.’
‘Well, if he did, he didn't mention it to me, which strikes me as unlikely.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I rather think he'd have noticed him, whether or not he chose to keep such information from you. Maybe he didn't want to upset you and thought he'd deal with your ex himself?’
Felicity Raine didn't attempt to agree or disagree. All she said was, ‘As I told you, I don't know if Ray noticed him or not.’ She gave a grim little smile. ‘Do you know something, inspector? With you trying to blame my ex-husband for Ray's death, I'm beginning to wish my solicitor hadn't persuaded me to retract my confession.’ She sighed. ‘I must have killed Ray. No other explanation makes sense. Maybe I should retract my retraction. Accept my guilt for Ray's death and speed up the punishment of the court and my own period of atonement. At least, if I did that, I'd save Peter and others the trauma of being suspects in a murder investigation.’
‘It's never a good idea to make such critically important decisions when you're upset,’ Rafferty advised her. ‘Speak to your solicitor again. Listen to his advice. Promise me you'll do that?’
She hesitated for some seconds. Then she nodded and said, ‘Very well. But we both know what his advice will be, don't we? And I'm really not sure that it's ad
vice I either want or should take any more.’
After an involuntary little shiver, she said, ‘If you've nothing more you want to ask me, if I may, I'd like to go back to my cell now.’
‘Certainly, but before you go, perhaps you'd satisfy my curiosity on something?’
For the briefest second she hesitated, before she gave a quick nod.
‘You've retracted your confession, which is, of course, your right. But I wondered why you let yourself be persuaded to do so. You seemed sure enough of your guilt at first.’ Though, even as he said it, Rafferty remembered it wasn't true; but Felicity failed to contradict him and he plunged on. ‘What's happened to make you change your mind?’
She gave another little shrug. ‘It's nothing that I can put a finger on, exactly. I can't really explain, beyond saying it's just that it's all so vague. When I told my solicitor that I'd suffered a period of unconsciousness before I came to and found myself and Ray — like that, he managed to convince me that it brings in a large element of doubt that I did kill him.
‘In fact the further away I get from that day, the more the whole thing seems like a dream. Or a nightmare. It's certainly seemed as if all this has been happening to someone else. Sometimes,’ her voice cracked, ‘sometimes, I don't feel real.’
Maybe it was truly just a nightmare for her and she hadn't killed her husband at all.
Since the lab had discovered that the two pints of milk that had been delivered on the morning of Raine's death had been tampered with and a quantity of crushed sleeping tablets inserted into both, the question of whether Peter Dunbar might have had a hand in this tampering was increasingly on Rafferty's mind. After delivery, the milk had probably sat on their doorstep for some minutes; long enough for anyone to tamper with it. And Dunbar had been there, on the spot, and with who knew what black thoughts curdling his soul.
Llewellyn, of course, had pointed out that Felicity might well have tampered with the milk herself in order to render her husband unconscious so she could kill him.
The post-mortem had revealed around a pint of milk in the dead man's stomach and Felicity Raine had openly revealed when questioned earlier that her husband invariably drank a pint of milk every morning. She told them he liked to line his stomach in preparation for the boozy lunches that were a regular feature of the fashion industry. She had also admitted that she didn't follow her husband's custom, having no boozy business lunches to attend. Her morning beverage was black coffee with either toast or cereal.
Certainly, as he had pointed out to Llewellyn, the blood test had revealed Mogadon in her system, sufficient to render her slight figure as unconscious as that of her husband. Though she might as easily have taken them after the deed, which, again, Llewellyn hadn't been slow to point out.
‘Inspector?’
Rafferty roused himself from his internal debate. ‘Sorry?’
‘You said I could go if I satisfied your curiosity. Have I satisfied it?’
Not really, he felt like saying. But after staring at her for several seconds, his gaze locked with hers, he nodded and gave his unwilling consent for her departure.
Rafferty watched as, with a forlorn slump to her shoulders, Felicity Raine walked to the door and waited for the warden to unlock it and take her back to her cell.
He sat for several minutes after she had left, then, with a sigh of regret for he knew not what, he pushed back his chair and said, ‘Come on’ to Llewellyn. ‘Let's get back. Maybe Jonathon Lilley's managed to unearth something from his email search.
‘Even if he hasn't, at least now I can free you up to take some of the load off him. But before we see what Lilley's managed to unearth from the bowels of assorted computers, I think it's time we had another chat with Stephanie Raine. Like Michael, the victim's cousin, they both now stand in line for much improved inheritances. And, like him, she's another one who hasn't been totally honest with us.’
Chapter Ten
Michelle Ginôt answered the door as before. And as Rafferty glanced at the subdued au pair, he caught the glint of gold at her throat. It was a piece of jewellery that looked familiar. But before he could recollect why this particular bauble should strike a chord, she had adjusted the delicate scarf at her neck, turned away and invited them into the drawing room, where she left them while she went to find Stephanie.
Did Michelle have a rich lover? Rafferty wondered as they waited for Stephanie to put in an appearance. She must have, he thought. Even though his glimpse of it had been brief, he thought the necklet had looked a costly piece; and, as they had discovered on checking Michelle's background, her family were not wealthy enough to buy her such a gift; and as an au pair, Michelle would scarcely have sufficient income to treat herself to jewellery.
Rafferty's gaze was drawn to the place where Ray and Felicity's wedding photograph had taken pride of place. The photo was no longer there, and now Rafferty found himself wondering what Felicity had looked like as Dunbar's bride. They hadn't found any photographs of her first wedding at their home; perhaps she'd tactfully discarded the photographic reminders so as not to offend Raymond if he should come across them?
Whatever the true depth of her grief for her murdered stepson, as soon as Stephanie appeared in the doorway, she wasted no time in polite conversation, but in a sharp voice immediately demanded what they wanted.
Rafferty took great delight in telling her. And after he had asked her why she had thus far signally failed to clarify her true relationship with Raymond or mention that his death would increase her income from the trust substantially, it quickly became clear that wounded innocence was her best ally.
‘Really, inspector,’ she protested, ‘surely you understand that it never occurred to me to mention it? I was upset, naturally. You had just told me that Ray was dead — murdered by his own wi—’
Stephanie Raine's lips tightened on the bitten-off word ‘wife’, as if she couldn't bring herself to accord Felicity the status of Raymond's spouse. She sat down, without inviting them to do likewise, and stared up at them with a hint of defiance.
'I was in shock, naturally, as I'm sure my doctor would confirm. Besides, apart from anything else, I have always loved Raymond as if he was my own. He might have been almost a man grown when I first met him, but that's how I've always thought of him — as my boy. I suppose that's because, right from the first, we hit it off so well. It simply didn't occur to me to mention that he wasn't a blood relative.
‘And even if it had occurred to me, for all I knew the police investigating his death would instantly seize on the wicked stepmother stereotype once they knew I would be financially better off after his death. Which is exactly what you're doing.’
Her carmine lips thinned. ‘Of course, it was a possibility that played on my mind. Step-parents invariably seem to be cast in the worst possible light. How many times have we all watched as one or another step-parent of a murder victim appears at press conferences to appeal for the public's help, only to end up being charged with the murder? Besides, you must acknowledge that being told a member of one's own family has been murdered is not the sort of information one has broken to one every day. That is something you have to experience yourself to understand how deep the effect goes. It certainly doesn't increase one's clarity of thought.’
‘Obviously not,’ Rafferty agreed. Though I would have thought the fact that days have now passed since I broke the news of Mr Raine's death might have brought a little more clarity. And then, of course, you also failed to mention that your income from the trust your late husband and his brother set up increased substantially on Raymond's death.’
Stephanie bridled. ‘I'm not sure I like your tone, inspector. Maybe we should be having this conversation in the presence of my solicitor?’
Before Rafferty could say anything, Llewellyn broke in.
‘That's your choice, of course, Mrs Raine. But I think I can speak for Inspector Rafferty as well as myself when I say that we've found that most people with nothing to hide prefer
to clear any confusion up as quickly as possible. Particularly in view of your stated fondness for the late Mr Raine.’
She looked a bit discomfited at Llewellyn's statement of the obvious and proceeded to backtrack.
‘Well, of course I want to do that. But it seems to me you would be better advised in speaking to Felicity about her confusion. I'm not the one who confessed to murdering Ray in cold blood — she is. And Raymond is undoubtedly dead, yet here you are questioning me about our relationship and my possible motives for murdering him. Why are you trying to find a scapegoat when she's already admitted she did it?’
She turned back to Rafferty. ‘Has she mesmerised you with her pretty face as she mesmerised Raymond and—’ She bit off whatever else she had been going to add.
Rafferty suspected it would have been something along the lines of ‘and the foolish, gullible first husband whom she was glad enough to leave as soon as the money ran out’.
Clearly, she had known about Felicity's first marriage, but, like her own true relationship with Raymond and her increased inheritance, had chosen not to mention it.
He thought he could guess why — so Felicity's embittered ex-husband wouldn't distract them from what she obviously considered Felicity's certain guilt.
‘I don't think, in fairness, that it is quite that simple any more, Mrs Raine,’ Rafferty quietly observed.
‘Do you not?’ Stephanie Raine's lips twisted in a contemptuous smile. ‘It seems you really are as gullible as I suspected.’
As this was something that Llewellyn and Abra had also implied during the course of this investigation, albeit more subtly, Rafferty, unwilling to allow Stephanie to goad him into losing it, nevertheless found himself struggling to control his temper.
‘Nor do I think this case is quite as clear-cut as you seem to think it. It's usual, in a murder investigation, for the investigating officer to ask some basic questions — such as who benefits from the victim's death.’
Even as he voiced the words, he felt shame edge into his conscience that he should find a malicious satisfaction in making clear to Stephanie that she could certainly begin to number herself amongst the suspects. But he didn't allow his overactive Catholic conscience to prevent him from making the next observation.
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