by B. A. Paris
I don’t know when it occurred to me that the wardrobe might have a key, but the thought that at any moment he could turn it in the lock and imprison me there made it impossible for me to breathe. If I couldn’t put the next part of my plan into action, there would be no saving Millie. Blind with panic, I flung myself against the doors. They burst open and I fell into a crumpled heap at Jack’s feet.
His rage as he pulled me up by my hair was tangible, and afraid that he might harm me physically I began screaming for mercy, telling him I was sorry and begging him not to take me down to the basement, gabbling incoherently that I would do anything as long as he didn’t lock me in there.
The mention of the basement had the desired effect. As he dragged me back along the hall I struggled so hard that he had no choice but to pick me up, and I let myself go limp so he would think I had given up. I used the time it took for him to carry me to the room he had prepared so carefully for Millie to focus on what I needed to do, so that when he tried to throw me down I held onto him as hard as I could. Enraged, he tried to shake me off and as he cursed me loudly, the slur in his voice was all that I needed. Still keeping hold of him, I allowed myself to slide down his body towards the floor, and when I reached his knees, I yanked them towards me as hard as I could. His legs buckled immediately and as he swayed above me, I used every ounce of strength I possessed to send him crashing to the floor. Stunned by the fall, his body heavy from the pills, he lay without moving for a few precious seconds and before he could recover, I fled the room, slamming the door behind me.
As I ran towards the stairs, I could hear him hammering on the door, yelling at me to let him out and the fury in his voice made me start sobbing with fright. Reaching the hall, I kicked the door that led to the basement with my foot, shutting it against the noise. Taking the stairs two at a time, I ran to my bedroom, retrieved the glasses from where we had thrown them and carried them down to the kitchen, trying to ignore Jack’s desperate attempts to get out of the room below by focusing on what I needed to do. With shaking hands, I washed the glasses, dried them carefully and put them back in the cupboard.
Hurrying back upstairs, I went to my bedroom, straightened the bed, removed the shampoo, sliver of soap and towel from the bathroom and carried them into Jack’s bathroom. Stripping off my pyjamas I put them in the laundry basket, went into the bedroom where my clothes were kept and got dressed quickly. I opened the wardrobe and took a couple of pairs of shoes from their boxes, some underwear and a dress, went back to the master bedroom and placed them around the room. On returning to the dressing room, I picked up the case that Jack had made me pack the night before and went downstairs.
I wasn’t worried about getting out of the house—I didn’t need a key to open the front door—but I was worried about how I was going to get to the airport without any money. I knew that Jack had probably hung the jacket he had worn that morning in the cloakroom, but I didn’t want to rifle through his clothes for money and hoped I would come across some while I was looking for my passport and tickets. I opened the door of his study and turned on the light. When I saw both passports and tickets lying neatly on his desk, I almost cried with relief. There was an envelope beside them and, opening it, I found some baht. With the sleeve of my cardigan over my fingers, I slid open one of the drawers, but I couldn’t find any money and I didn’t dare rifle through the other drawers. Taking my ticket, passport and the baht with me, I went back into the hall and, because I couldn’t get to the airport without money, I went into the cloakroom, found his jacket, opened his wallet as carefully as I could and took out four fifty pound notes. I was about to close his wallet when his business cards caught my eye and, remembering that at some point I would need to phone his office, I took one.
Realising that I had no idea what the time was, I went back to the kitchen and looked at the clock on the microwave. I was alarmed to see that it was already half past four, around the time I would need to leave for the airport on a Friday night for a check in at seven. In all my careful planning I hadn’t actually thought about how I would get to the airport—I suppose I’d had a vague idea of taking a taxi—so it was galling to realise that I had no idea what number I should call to order one. Public transport was out—the nearest train station was a fifteen-minute walk away and I was loath to draw attention to myself by wheeling a heavy case along the road and anyway, I doubted it would get me there in time. Aware that I was wasting precious time, I went back into the hall and picked up the phone, wondering if such a thing as an operator still existed. As I stood there wondering what number I should dial, Esther’s came into my head and, hardly daring to believe that I had remembered it correctly, I called her, praying that she would pick up.
‘Hello?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Esther, it’s Grace. Am I disturbing you?’
‘No, not at all. I was just listening to the radio actually—apparently, Antony Tomasin was acquitted.’ She paused a moment as if she wasn’t quite sure what to say. ‘I guess Jack must be disappointed.’
My mind raced. ‘Yes, I’m afraid he is rather.’
‘Are you all right, Grace? You sound a bit upset.’
‘It’s Jack,’ I admitted. ‘He says he can’t leave for Thailand tonight as he has too much paperwork to do. When he booked the tickets, he thought the case would be over long before now but because of the new evidence, about Dena Anderson having a lover, it overran.’
‘You must be so disappointed! But you can always go later, can’t you?’
‘That’s just it. Jack wants me to go tonight, as planned, and says he’ll join me on Tuesday, once he’s got everything sorted out. I’ve told him that I’d rather wait for him, but he says it’s stupid to waste both tickets. He’ll have to buy a new one for Tuesday, you see.’
‘I take it you don’t want to go without him.’
‘No, of course I don’t.’ I gave a shaky laugh. ‘But in the mood he’s in, maybe it would be better. I’m meant to be phoning for a taxi to take me to the airport—he can’t take me because he had a hefty whisky when he came in. The trouble is, I don’t have a number for one and I don’t dare disturb Jack in his study and ask him if I can use the computer to look for one, so I was wondering if you knew of a local firm.’
‘Do you want me to take you? The children are already home from school and Rufus worked from home today, so it wouldn’t be a problem.’
It was the last thing I wanted. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I can’t ask you to drive to the airport on a Friday night,’ I said hastily.
‘I don’t think it’ll be that easy to get a taxi at such short notice. What time do you need to leave?’
‘Well, as soon as possible, really,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘I have to check in at seven.’
‘Then you’d better let me take you.’
‘I’d rather take a taxi. If you could just give me a number?’
‘Look, I’ll take you—it really isn’t any trouble. Anyway, it’ll get me out of the dreaded bath-time.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Why won’t you let me help you, Grace?’
There was something about the way she said it that put me on my guard. ‘I just think it’s an awful imposition, that’s all.’
‘It isn’t.’ Her voice was firm. ‘Have you got all your stuff ready?’
‘Yes, we packed yesterday.’
‘Then I’ll just go and tell Rufus I’m taking you to the airport and I’ll be straight over—say, fifteen minutes?’
‘Great,’ I told her. ‘Thank you, Esther, I’ll tell Jack.’
I put the phone down, appalled at what I had just agreed to. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how I was going to be able to pretend to someone like Esther that everything was all right.
PRESENT
The air hostess leans towards me. ‘We’ll be arriving at Heathrow in about forty minutes,’ she says quietly.
‘Thank you.’ I feel a sudden surge of panic and force myself to breathe calm
ly, because I can’t afford to crack at this stage of the game. But the fact is, even though I’ve thought about nothing else since Margaret saw me through passport control at the airport in Bangkok almost twelve hours ago, I still have no idea how I’m going to play it when we finally land. Diane and Adam will be there to meet me and take me back to theirs so I need to think very carefully about what I’m going to say to them about my last hours with Jack, because whatever I tell them I’ll have to repeat to the police.
The seat-belt sign comes on and we begin our descent into Heathrow. I close my eyes and pray that I’ll end up saying the right thing to Diane and Adam, especially as it is Adam who has been liaising with the police since Jack’s body was found. I hope there aren’t going to be any nasty surprises. I hope Adam isn’t going to tell me that the police think Jack’s death is suspicious. If he does, I don’t know what I’ll say. All I can do is play it by ear. The problem is, there are so many things I don’t know.
The euphoria I felt when Mr Strachan told me that Jack had taken his own life—because it meant that my plan had worked and I had got away with murder—was quickly tempered by the fact that he’d used the word ‘seems’. I didn’t know whether he’d decided to be cautious off his own bat or if the police in England had intimated that there was room for doubt. If they had already started questioning people—work colleagues, friends—maybe they had come to the conclusion that Jack was an unlikely candidate for suicide. The police were bound to ask me if I knew why Jack had taken his own life and I would have to convince them that losing his first court case was reason enough. Maybe they would ask me if there’d been problems in our marriage, but if I admitted that there had been, even if I gave them all the details, they would surely consider murder, rather than suicide. And that is something I can’t risk. Mr Strachan told me that Jack had died from an overdose, but he didn’t give me any more details so I don’t know where his body was actually found and I hadn’t thought it appropriate to ask. But what if Jack had a way of getting out of the room in the basement, what if there was a switch hidden away somewhere that I hadn’t found, what if, before actually succumbing, he’d made it up the stairs and into the hall? He might even have had time to write a note implicating me before he died.
Not knowing means I’m ill prepared for what is to come. Even if all went to plan and Jack was found in the basement, the police are bound to ask me why the room existed, what its purpose was, and I can’t work out if it’ll be in my interest to admit that I knew about it all along or deny all knowledge of it. If I admit that I knew about it, I’ll have to make up some story about it being the place Jack used to go to before he went to court, to psyche himself up and remind himself of the worthy work he did as defender of battered wives. I’d rather deny all knowledge of it and profess shock that such a room could exist in our beautiful house—after all, as it was hidden away at the back of the basement it’s feasible that I hadn’t known about it. But then I’m faced with another dilemma—if, for some reason, the police have fingerprinted the room, they might have found traces of my presence there. So maybe it would be better to tell the truth—but not the whole truth because if I portray Jack as anything other than the loving husband everybody thought he was, if I tell them the real purpose of the room, they might begin to wonder if I murdered him to protect Millie. And maybe a court would be sympathetic—or maybe they would make me out to be some kind of gold-digger who had killed my relatively new husband for his money. As we begin our descent into Heathrow, the importance of making the right decisions, of saying the right thing, weighs me down.
It takes a while to get through passport control. As I go through the double doors, I scan the faces of the people waiting, searching for the familiar faces of Adam and Diane. I’m so tense that I know I’ll probably burst into tears of relief when I see them, which will be in keeping with my role as a bereaved wife. But when I see Esther waving at me, rather than Diane, a feeling of dread comes over me.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she says, giving me a hug. ‘I didn’t have anything to do today so I offered to pick you up and take you to Diane’s. I’m so sorry about Jack.’
‘I still can’t believe it,’ I add, shaking my head in bewilderment, because the shock of seeing her waiting for me has dried up the tears I’d been hoping to shed. ‘I still can’t believe that he’s dead.’
‘It must have been such a shock for you,’ she agrees, taking my case from me. ‘Come on, let’s find a café—I thought we’d go for a coffee before we start on the journey home.’
My heart sinks even further, because it’s going to be so much harder to play the grieving widow in front of her rather than Diane. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to go straight back to Diane’s? I’d like to speak to Adam and I need to get down the police station. Adam says the detective looking after the case wants to talk to me.’
‘We’ll only get stuck in rush hour at this time of the morning, so we may as well have a coffee,’ she says, heading towards the restaurant area. We find a café and she makes a beeline for a table in the middle of the room where we’re surrounded by noisy schoolchildren. ‘Sit down, I’ll go and get the coffees. I won’t be long.’
My instinct is to flee, but I know that I can’t. If Esther has come to pick me up at the airport, if she has suggested coffee, it’s because she wants to talk to me. I try not to panic but it’s hard. What if she’s guessed that I murdered Jack, what if there was something about my behaviour the day she drove me to the airport that aroused her suspicions? Is she going to tell me that she knows what I’ve done, is she going to threaten to tell the police, is she going to blackmail me? I watch her paying for our coffees and, as she heads back to where I’m waiting, I feel sick with nerves.
She sits down opposite me and places my coffee in front of me.
‘Thank you.’ I give her a watery smile.
‘Grace, how much do you know about Jack’s death?’ she asks, opening her sachet of sugar and tipping it into her cup.
‘What do you mean?’ I stammer.
‘I presume you know how he died?’
‘Yes, he took an overdose.’
‘He did,’ she agrees. ‘But that’s not what killed him.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It seems that he misjudged the amount of pills he would need and didn’t take enough. So he didn’t die—well, not from the overdose, anyway.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘Well, because he didn’t take enough pills to kill himself, he regained consciousness.’
‘So, how did he die then?’
‘From dehydration.’
I summon a look of shock to my face. ‘Dehydration?’
‘Yes, about four days after he took the overdose.’
‘But if he wasn’t dead, if he was still alive, why didn’t he just go and get a drink of water if he needed one?’
‘Because he couldn’t. His body wasn’t found in the main part of the house, you see. It was found in a room in the basement.’
‘A room in the basement?’
‘Yes. The worst thing is, it couldn’t be opened from the inside, which meant he couldn’t get out, even when thirst took hold.’ She picks up her spoon and stirs her coffee. ‘It seems that he tried to, though.’
‘Poor Jack,’ I say quietly. ‘Poor, poor, Jack. I can’t bear to think about how he must have suffered.’
‘Did you have any inkling that he would do such a thing?’
‘No, not at all. I would never have left him otherwise, I would never have gone to Thailand if I’d thought he was going to kill himself.’
‘So how was he when he came back from court?’
‘Well, he was disappointed about losing the case, of course.’
‘It’s just that it seems completely out of character for him to take his own life—at least, that’s what people might think. So he was probably a bit more than disappointed, don’t you think? I mean, wasn’t it the first case he’d lost?’
<
br /> ‘Yes, it was.’
‘So he must have been devastated. Maybe he even told you that he felt his career was over. But you thought it was just something he’d said in the heat of the moment so you didn’t really take any notice.’ I stare at her. ‘Isn’t that what he said, Grace? Didn’t he say that he thought his career was over?’
‘Yes.’ I nod slowly. ‘He did say that.’
‘So that must be why he wanted to kill himself—because he couldn’t stand failure.’
‘It must have been,’ I agree.
‘It also explains why he was so eager for you to leave. He wanted you out of the way so that he could take the pills—it seems that he took them not long after you left. Do you know where he got them from? I mean, did he sometimes take sleeping pills?’
‘Sometimes,’ I improvise. ‘They weren’t prescribed by a doctor or anything, he just bought them over the counter. They were the same ones that Millie was taking—I remember him asking Mrs Goodrich for the name of them.’
‘The fact that he knew the door to the room in the basement couldn’t be opened from the inside shows that he realised he might not have enough pills but was determined to kill himself,’ she says. She takes a sip of her coffee. ‘The police will almost certainly ask you about the room. You knew about it, didn’t you, because Jack showed it to you?’
‘Yes.’
She fiddles with her spoon. ‘They’ll also want to know what the room was for.’ For the first time, she seems unsure of herself. ‘It seems that it was painted red, even the floor and ceiling, and that the walls were hung with paintings of women who’d been brutally beaten.’
I hear the disbelief in her voice and I wait, I wait for her to tell me what I should say to the police. But she doesn’t, because she has no explanation to offer me, and the silence stretches out between us. So I tell her what I came up with on the plane.
‘Jack used the room as a kind of annexe,’ I say. ‘He showed it to me not long after we moved into the house. He said he found it useful to spend time there before he went to court, going through the files, looking at the photographic evidence. He said it took such an emotional toll on him that he found it difficult to prepare mentally in the house, which was why he had created a separate study in the basement.’