"Bar the identities of the two bodies, I doubt many of the other details in the newspaper are true," he finished quietly. "It reads to me as if Leo's father has made some sweeping statements in a moment of grief which he will probably come to regret, but I'm afraid we can expect another visit from the police and I didn't want you to hear about this from them."
She favored him with a tight little smile. "I've known since Sunday night. But you knew that already, didn't you?"
He nodded.
"Who told you?"
"Simon Harris. He phoned yesterday afternoon. He wanted to warn me that the story would break today."
A look of relief crossed her face. "Simon?" She searched his face. "Why would he bother to do that?"
"I think he and his father feel this sort of treatment"-he tapped the newspaper on his lap-"isn't justice. He talked about his mother and Sir Anthony whipping up a kangaroo court."
"Caroline doesn't like me at all," she said disconsolately. "For some reason she's always blamed me for Meg's behavior. She thinks Meg fell into bad company. I suppose she looked at Adam and decided, like father like daughter."
"It's not uncommon. We all blame other people for our children's failings." He paused. "Why didn't you tell me the police visit upset you?''
She rubbed her eyes. "I don't trust the police," she said, "but it's a form of paranoia that I'm not particularly happy about. I might have been imagining things. There was no sense in worrying you unnecessarily until I knew for certain."
"You could have told me yesterday."
"Yesterday I was paranoid about what my father was planning."
He raised his hands in a gesture of despair. "How am I supposed to help you if you keep everything to yourself?"
"You're a very arrogant man," she said without hostility. "Hasn't it occurred to you that I might not want your help?"
"Of course," he said curtly, "but that doesn't mean I have to stop offering it. Do you think my other patients want my help any more than you do? They begin with good intentions, but within hours, most of them are climbing the walls to get out for their next fix. The only arrogance I see is on your side, Jinx."
"Why?"
"You think you're clever enough to outwit me, the police, and your father combined."
She shifted her gaze back to his. "I'm certainly contemptuous of fools who shut themselves away in their ivory towers, and close their eyes to the madness outside," she snapped. "Russell was murdered. For ten years I avoided any sort of serious involvement. Then, when I thought the dust had settled, I let myself go and fell for Leo. Now he's dead too, along with the only real friend I've ever had. So precisely what sort of help are you offering me? Help in remembering the deaths of my husband, my friend, and my lover?" She looked very angry. "I like it the way it is. I don't want to remember anything. I don't want to know anything. I don't want to feel anything. I just want to be allowed to take surrealistic photographs where all my repressed fears and desires jostle for expression in an idiosyncratic juxtaposition of purity and corruption." She bared her teeth at him in a ferocious smile. "And that's a direct quote from a review of my work in The Sunday Times. It's pretentious rubbish, but it sounds great."
He shook his head impatiently.' 'You know perfectly well it's not rubbish. I've looked at some of your published work, and that same theme appears over and over again." He leaned forward. "You seem to see the world in extraordinarily stark terms. Black and white. Good and evil. For every kindness, a cruelty; for every positive, a negative. Why are there are no gray areas for you, Jinx?''
"Because perfection can only exist in an imperfect setting. In a perfect setting it becomes ordinary."
"So it's perfection that fascinates you?"
She held his gaze for a moment but didn't reply.
"No," he said, answering for her, "it's imperfection that fascinates you. You're more attracted by the black than by the white." He studied her face closely. "The backgrounds to your pictures are always more compelling than the subjects, except in the few instances where you've turned the idea on its head by making ugliness the subject and beauty the setting."
She shrugged. "I expect you're right. Black humor certainly appeals to me."
"As in Schadenfreude?"
"Yes."
"You're wrong, woman. You experience anguish on behalf of others while the only person you laugh at is yourself." He quoted her own words back at her. " 'My education was a waste of time.' 'The Sunday Times writes pretentious rubbish about my art.' 'I won't get out of bed in front of you because you'll turn me into a golfing club joke.' " He paused. "Are you laughing at Leo now? You should be if you enjoy Schadenfreude. There's no blacker joke than the timely comeuppance of someone who's done you wrong."
"I can think of several," she said flatly. "Like when you wake up one morning in a police cell and remember it was you who dealt the death blow. That's going to be a gut wrencher when it happens. Ho ho ho! We'll all be splitting our sides." She looked towards the window, cutting herself off, symbolically extending the space between them.
"I don't think that's very likely to happen."
"Somebody killed them. Why shouldn't it have been me?"
"I'm not quibbling over whether or not you did it, Jinx. I'm quibbling with your waking up in a police cell one morning and remembering it was you. That's what's unlikely. Amnesia doesn't vanish overnight, so you'll know long before the police arrest you whether they' ve got good cause to do it.'' He watched her.' 'Have they?''
She continued to stare out of the window for several seconds before finally, with a sigh, turning back to him. "I keep seeing Meg on her knees, begging," she said, "and last night I remembered going to her flat and feeling terrible anger because Leo was there. I have nightmares about drowning and being buried alive, and I wake up because I can't breathe. I can remember feeling strong emotions." She fell silent.
"What sort of emotions?"
"Fear," she said. "It hits me suddenly and I start shivering. I remember fear."
These revelations had come at him so suddenly that he wasn't ready for them, and he experienced a terrible sadness, for she seemed to be remembering an overwhelming guilt. "Tell me about Meg," he prompted at last.
"She was begging, holding her hands out. Please, please, please." Her eyelashes glittered with held-back tears.
"Was she begging from you?"
"I don't know. I just keep seeing her on her knees."
"Where were you?"
"I don't know."
"Was anyone else there?''
"I don't know."
"Okay, tell me what you remember about going to Meg's flat and finding Leo there."
"I just had this image of Leo opening the door to me, and I knew it was Meg's flat because Leo was holding Marmaduke. Marmaduke's a cat," she explained. "The funny thing is, I heard him purring, but the rest of it was completely static, like a photograph."
"But you remember feeling angry with Leo."
"I wanted to hit him." She pressed her lips together. "That's really what the memory was, not the picture so much as a sense of incredible rage. It came to me suddenly that Leo had made me furious and then I saw him in Meg's doorway."
"Do you know when that was?"
She pondered deeply. "It must have happened after June the fourth because that's the last thing I remember-saying good-bye to Leo. He came into the hall and said, 'Be good, Jinxy, and be happy'..." She lapsed into another thoughtful silence.
"What did you say?"
"I don't know. I just remember what he said."
He pulled forward a notepad and pen. "Give me a rundown of the day before. What sort of day was that?"
She spoke with confidence. "I was at work. We were doing some publicity shots of a new teenage band. It was tough to come up with anything original because they were deeply uninteresting and horribly pleased with themselves. Four clean-cut young men with flashing white teeth and hairless chests, who thought they were so pretty we could just take a few snaps
hots and every prepubescent girl in the country would swoon." She laughed suddenly. "So I told Dean to needle them a bit, and after three hours, we ended up with some brilliant shots of four extremely angry young men glowering into the lens."
Alan chuckled in response. "What did Dean say to them?"
"He just kept calling them his 'pretty little virgins.' They got pissed off very quickly, especially as we kept them hanging around for a couple of hours while we fiddled with lights and lenses. They really hated us by the end of it but we got some good pictures as a result."
"So you developed the film straightaway?"
"No. We had some location work in the afternoon and we were running out of time, so we grabbed some sandwiches and left." She paused in sudden confusion. "I went straight home afterwards." She stared at him. "So when did I see those photographs?''
"Well, let's not worry about that for the moment. Was Leo there when you got home?"
"No," she said slowly, "but he wasn't supposed to be." Her eyes lit with sudden excitement. "I remember checking the rooms to make sure he'd really gone, and then I felt a sense of absolute peace because I'd got the house to myself again." She clapped her hands to her face. "I remember. He wasn't there, and I was pleased."
Protheroe wondered why she hadn't noticed the glaring inconsistency. Or perhaps the inconsistency was part of the game. "So now did you celebrate?"
Her eyes gleamed with sudden amusement. "I drank two pints of beer, ate baked beans out of a tin, smoked ten cigarettes in half an hour, watched soaps on the telly, and had fried eggs and bacon in bed at half past ten."
He looked up with a smile. "That's very precise."
"I was making a statement."
"Because they were the things Leo disapproved of?"
"A mere fraction of them. His view of how women should behave was modeled on his mother, and she's kept herself in clover by constant appeasement of a chauvinistic husband."
He arched an interested eyebrow but didn't pursue the issue. "So what did you watch on television?"
"Wall-to-wall soap. One after the other. EastEnders. The Bill. Brookside." She smiled. "Then I couldn't stand it anymore, so I watched the news. Soap operas are pretty bloody boring when you haven't a clue what's going on."
"Why didn't you watch Coronation Street?"
"It wasn't on."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Positive," she said. "I went through the Radio Times and picked out the soaps deliberately. If it had been on, I'd have watched it."
He stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I'm not much of an expert, admittedly, but I'm sure Coronation Street goes out on a Friday, and you say you remember this as being Friday, the third of June." He eased gingerly out of his chair, his shoulder protesting at the movement, and went to the desk. "Hilda,'' he said into the intercom, "can you rustle up a Radio Times from somewhere and bring it in? I need to know which days of the week don't have Coronation Street, but do have EastEnders, The Bill, and Brookside.''
Her giggle rattled tinnily down the wire. "There now, and I always thought you preferred the intellectual stuff."
"Very funny. This is important, Hilda."
"Sorry, well, I can tell you without the Radio Times. Coronation Street is Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. EastEnders is Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. The Bill is Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and Brookside is Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, if you don't want Coronation Street but you do want the others, then that means Tuesday."
"Good Lord!" said Alan in amazement. "Do you watch them all?"
"Most days," she agreed cheerfully. "Anything else I can help you with?"
"No, that's fine, thank you." He returned to his seat. "Did you hear that?" he asked Jinx. "You appear to be remembering a Tuesday and not a Friday, and it does seem a little unlikely that Leo would have returned for breakfast immediately after he had packed his bags and gone."
She stared unhappily at her hands.
"I wonder if you're quite as clear about Saturday the fourth as you think you are. You remember saying good-bye to Leo and you're very specific about the day and the date, but do you know why? What happened to fix Saturday the fourth in your mind?"
"It was in my diary for ages," she said. "Week at the Hall, beginning June the fourth."
"And you were definitely leaving for the Hall when you said good-bye to Leo?''
"Yes."
"So how many suitcases were you carrying?"
She stared at him in confusion.
"Did you have any suitcases?" he asked.
"I know I was going to see my father," she said slowly.
He waited. "And?" he prompted at last.
"My bag was hanging on the back of the chair." She stared into the past. "It's a small leather pouch on a long strap. I slung it over my shoulder and said, 'I'm off now.' " She frowned. "I think I must have put the suitcases in the car the night before."
"Is that what you usually did?"
"It's the only thing that makes sense."
"I wonder if it is." He took a diary out of his jacket pocket. "Let's work forward," he suggested, "beginning with what you know to be true. Tell me about the first time you met Leo."
THE VICARAGE, LITTLETON MARY-12:15 P.M.
Simon Harris answered the door and looked in some dismay at Frank Cheever. "We-that is, my father and I-" He broke off as the sound of shouting erupted from the window to the right. "My mother's not very well, I'm afraid. She can't really come to terms with what's happened. We'd like her to see the doctor but she won't have him near her. The problem is she's making some very wild accusations, and we're worried-well, frankly, she's accusing Dad of some terrible things and we-that is I..."
He fell silent as Mrs. Harris's voice rose to a scream, her words carrying clearly through the open window.
"How dare you deny it? Did you think I didn't know how you lusted after her? Did you think she wouldn't tell me what you did to her? She couldn't wait to get out of this house, couldn't wait to get away from you. You made her what she was and you dare to accuse her now of weakness. You disgust me. You've always disgusted me."
Charles Harris said something in a murmur which wasn't audible.
"Of course I'll tell the police. Why should I protect you when you never protected her? You disgusting man." Her voice rose to a scream again. "CHILD ABUSER!" There was the sound of a door slamming, followed by silence.
Frank looked at Simon's shocked face. "None of that would be admissible in court, sir. I couldn't possibly swear that it was your mother I was listening to and not a radio program, so please don't worry unnecessarily. As you say, she's overwrought, and we all say things we don't mean when we're angry."
"But you heard it."
"Yes."
"It's completely untrue. My father has never abused anyone in his life, and certainly not Meg. It's my mother who has the problem." Anguish pinched his already drawn face. "This is so awful. I keep asking myself why. What have we done to deserve it?"
Frank was spared an answer by the door opening behind Simon's back and his father putting an arm round the young man's shoulder and drawing him inside. "Come in, Superintendent. You find us in turmoil, I'm afraid. Grief is often the most selfish of emotions."
THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC-12:30 P.M.
Alan smiled encouragingly as Jinx showed her first signs of faltering. "You're doing very well. We can check all this with Dean later, but you've taken me up to Friday, the twenty-seventh of May, without any hesitation at all." He consulted his diary. "The following Monday, May the thirtieth, was a bank holiday. Does that help at all? You're unlikely to have gone to work, so maybe you took the opportunity for a long weekend away."
"Friday was the last day of the Cosmopolitan fashion shoot." She spoke slowly. "Dean had tickets to a rock concert at Wembley and he had to meet his lover at five o'clock at the tube station, so he left me to develop the film. I wanted to get it done because-" She paused at the same place she'd paused before. "I know it was urg
ent," she said, "but I can't remember why."
"There were only four working days the following week because of the Bank Holiday Monday," he pointed out, "and you were spending the week after that at Hellingdon Hall. Perhaps you realized you were running out of time."
She stared into the middle distance. "Miles and Fergus came," she said suddenly. "It was after Angelica had left and they kept hammering on the studio door until I let them in. There was a cabdriver with them, demanding money. They were both pissed. They said they'd lost all their cash gambling, couldn't go home and needed beds for the night. I said why hadn't they gone to Richmond and waited for me there? And they said they had, but Leo had refused to pay the taxi fare and told them to come to the studio instead and make me pay for it. Which I did." She took out a cigarette and lit it, watching the blue smoke spiral from its tip for a second or two before going on.
"I can remember now," she said in a strange voice. "I made them some coffee and told them to wait in the reception area till I'd finished what I was doing, but Miles was so drunk that he barged in on me in the darkroom and let the light in."
"What happened then?"
"The film I was working on was completely buggered, so I did what my father does and beat the shit out of him.'' She gave a hollow laugh. "I chased him into the studio and started hitting him with a plastic chair. I was so angry. And then Fergus came lurching in to find out what was going on, so I hit him as well. But the person I really wanted to have a go at was Leo. It was the last straw, sending them on to me, when he knew I was up to my eyes in work."
"How did he know?"
"Because when Dean left I phoned to tell him. We were going to his parents for the weekend and he wanted to leave on the Friday evening. So I rang to suggest that he go on his own and leave me to follow on the Saturday, but he said he had things to do himself so it didn't matter."
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