Dark Room

by Minette Walters

"It must have upset you when you finally found out about it," said Fraser.

  She turned to him with visible relief. "I know it sounds callous, but in fact it made me feel better. Russell and I hadn't been getting on for months before he died, and I'd always felt guilty about it. It's awful to have someone die on you when you know you've made them unhappy. I kept thinking, if only I'd done this, or if only I'd done that"-she gave a troubled smile-"and then I was let off the hook by a couple of love letters."

  Maddocks watched her performance with cynical objectivity. The story was too pat and too well polished and he saw Dr. Protheroe's hand at work behind the scenes. "So let me get this straight, Miss Kingsley," he said acidly. "Number one: At the time of Russell Landy's death, you and he were not getting on but you told the London police you were. Number two: You believed your father was capable of putting out a contract on your husband but defended him anyway. Number three: Russell and your best friend were having an affair but you knew nothing about it, and she did not reveal it to the police. Number four: She aborted the child she had conceived either by your then husband or the man who later became your fiance, but neither you nor the London police were ever told about it. Number five: When you discovered your friend and your husband had been having an affair, you kept the information to yourself. Number six: Your best friend, who knew she'd had an affair with your husband and knew also that your husband had been murdered, nevertheless proceeded to resurrect an old affair with your fiance and so persuade him to abandon you for her. Number seven: He and she were subsequently murdered in an identical fashion, though in a different location, to the way your husband was murdered." He arched his eyebrows. "Is that a fair summary of what you've told us?"

  "Yes," said Jinx honestly. "To my knowledge, that is accurate-assuming the abortion and the way Meg and Leo were murdered to be true. Those are the only two things I didn't know."

  He nodded. "All right, then I have one last question on the Landy murder before we talk about Wallader and Harris. According to the reports we have, you were ruled out of direct involvement because you had a cast-iron alibi? Who gave you the alibi?"

  "It was Meg," she said. "I spent the afternoon and early evening with her and then she drove me to the restaurant for seven-thirty. I waited there about an hour, and when Russell didn't show, I took a taxi to the gallery. Isn't that in the report?"

  Maddocks ignored the question. "Wouldn't it have been simpler to phone the gallery?"

  "I did. There was no answer. So I phoned home but there was no answer there, either."

  "Then why assume he was at the gallery? Why bother to take a taxi there?"

  "Because it was on the way home."

  "But you paid off the taxi before you went inside."

  "It was nine o'clock at night and the driver wouldn't let me leave the cab without paying. I think he was afraid I was planning to leg it down the nearest alleyway. He said he'd wait five minutes and if I wasn't back by then, he'd go. As it was, I was back within two, screaming my head off. The driver dialed nine-nine-nine while I sat with Russell, then he waited outside till the ambulance arrived. That's why the police had no trouble tracing him afterwards to support my story."

  Maddocks chuckled softly. "You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

  She studied him with a remarkably cool gaze. "All I'm doing is telling you the truth, Inspector."

  "And let's face it, girl, you've had ten whole years to get it right."

  One of the security staff at the clinic, Harry Elphick, after learning about the assault on Dr. Protheroe, made a detour on his departure to check the outbuildings near the staff parking spaces. He remembered some weeks back seeing a sledgehammer in one of them, and it occurred to him that it might be worth a second look. He reasoned, quite logically, that the most likely person to take a swipe at Dr. Protheroe was one of the more aggressive junkies in his care, and he went on to reason that because the Nightingale was not a prison, then any observant patient had the same opportunities as he to notice the sledgehammer. Harry would have considered it naive rubbish to assume that none of them would bother to attack Dr. Protheroe because they knew he didn't carry drugs in his car. Harry, ex-Army and past his middle years, had little time for the sort of overprivileged dregs that Dr. Protheroe treated, and it was with some satisfaction that he opened an outbuilding door and, after a cursory search, found a sledgehammer with red Wolseley paintwork ground into its head.

  "When did you first discover that Leo and Meg were having an affair?"

  Jinx stared at her hands for a moment before reaching for her cigarette packet. "When I came round a few days ago. My stepmother told me."

  Maddocks frowned. "Are you saying that's the first you knew about it?"

  She leaned back in her chair to light a cigarette. "I don't know," she said. "I can't remember anything much from before the accident."

  "What do you remember?"

  She stared at the ceiling. "I remember saying good-bye to Leo at breakfast on the morning of June the fourth. I was coming down to Hampshire to stay with my parents for a few days."

  "That's a very precise memory."

  "Yes."

  "When did you find out they were dead, Miss Kingsley?"

  She toyed with another lie, then thought better of it. She was too fond of Dean to drop him in this bastard's shit. "Sunday," she said. "I knew you were lying about what had happened to them, so I asked a friend to phone the Walladers. Anthony told him they were dead and the friend rang me back to tell me."

  "Which friend?"

  "Is that important?"

  "It depends whether you want me to believe you or not. This friend might confirm that you were genuinely shocked when you heard the news. Otherwise I'm having some difficulty trying to understand how a woman whose best friend and fiance have been brutally butchered can retain such extraordinary composure."

  "My number two at the studio. Dean Jarrett."

  "Thank you. Were you upset when your stepmother told you Leo had left you for Meg?"

  She shook her head. "Not particularly. I was more relieved than upset. I think I made it clear to you on Sunday that I had severe doubts about Leo. I am sure in my own mind that I had no intention of marrying him, irrespective of whether he was having an affair with Meg."

  "Then why did you try to kill yourself?"

  "I wish I knew." She smiled suddenly. "It seems very out of character for someone with extraordinary composure." She flicked ash from her cigarette. "So out of character that I don't think I did."

  "You were drunk and you drove your car at full speed towards the only structure of any substance on a deserted airfield. What other explanation is there?"

  "But I didn't kill myself," she pointed out.

  "Because you were lucky. You were thrown clear."

  "Perhaps I threw myself clear," she said. "Perhaps I didn't want to die."

  "Meaning what, precisely?"

  Her eyelashes grew damp but she held the tears in check. "I don't know, but I've had far more time to think about this than I have about Leo and Meg, and it seems to me that if I wasn't trying to kill myself, then the only other explanation is that someone else was trying to kill me." She abandoned any attempt to persuade Maddocks and turned instead to Fraser's more open face. "It would be so easy. My car was an automatic. All anyone would have to do was aim it at the post, put it into drive, wedge the accelerator at full throttle, and then release the hand brake. If I was unconscious and belted in, I'd have been crushed in the wreckage. That might have happened, don't you think? It's a possibility, isn't it?"

  "If you'd been belted in, how could you have been thrown clear?"

  "Then maybe I wasn't belted in," she said eagerly. "Maybe the idea was to have me go through the windshield. Or maybe I came round in time and released myself."

  He would have liked to believe her, but he couldn't. "Then this hypothetical murderer would have seen what had happened and finished you off. He couldn't afford to leave you alive if he'd just tr
ied to kill you."

  From her pocket she took the newspaper clipping that Betty had given her and pressed it into his hands. "According to this, I was found by a young couple. He wouldn't have had time to finish me off if he saw them coming."

  "Look, Miss Kingsley," said Maddocks, "I hate to be cruel but facts are facts. According to your neighbors in Richmond, this wasn't the first time. Your first attempt was on the Sunday. Whether you like it or not, indeed whether you remember it or not-and by your own admission you have a habit of blocking out anything that disturbs you-something so terrible happened that you primed yourself with Dutch courage and then had a second go at finishing it all."

  Something terrible happened... "I've never been drunk in my life," she said stubbornly. "I've never wanted to be drunk."

  "There's always a first time."

  She shrugged. "Not as far as I'm concerned, Inspector."

  "You had consumed the equivalent of two bottles of wine when you had your accident. Miss Kingsley. The bottles were found on the floor of your car. Are you telling me you can absorb that amount of alcohol without being what the rest of us would term drunk?"

  "No," she said. "I'm saying I would never have wanted to drink that much."

  "Not even if you had done something you were ashamed of?"

  She fixed him with her steady gaze. "Like what?"

  "Been party to a murder perhaps?"

  She shook her head. "Do you not see how illogical that argument is? As I understand it, Meg's and Leo's bodies were found near Winchester, which means that whoever murdered them must have worked out some fairly complicated logistics. I can't find out from the newspapers whether they were killed in the wood or taken there after they were dead, but whichever it was, someone went to a great deal of trouble to get them there. But why would anyone go to those lengths if they were so ashamed of what they'd done that they then tried to kill themselves? It doesn't make sense. On the one hand you're describing a very calculating personality who set out to get rid of two people; on the other, you're describing a weak personality who may have struck out in a moment of anger but was then so appalled by what he'd done that he tried to make amends by killing himself.''

  "You really have given this a lot of thought, haven't you?"

  The huge black eyes filled again. "As you would have done, if you were in my place. I'm not a fool, Inspector."

  Maddocks surprised her by acknowledging this with a nod. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, Point taken, but he checked himself in time. "There's no logic to murder, Miss Kingsley, not in my experience anyway. It's usually the last people you'd expect who do it. Some of them show remorse early, some of them show it when they're convicted, and some of them never show it at all. Believe me, it is not uncommon for a calculating individual to plan a murder, carry it out, dispose of the body, and then have an attack of conscience. We see it over and over again. There's no reason why this case should be any different."

  "Then you might as well clap the handcuffs on me now," she said, "because I can't defend myself."

  Nothing would give me more pleasure, sweetheart. "There's no question of that," he said affably. "As Sergeant Fraser said, we are pursuing various lines of inquiry, and this is just one of them. However, I'm sure you realize how important it is that you give us some indication of what went on in the two weeks prior to your accident and the deaths of Leo and Meg. Unfortunately, you seem to be the only person left who can shed any light on the matter."

  She drew on her cigarette with a worried frown. "What about Meg's friends? Have you spoken to any of them? Surely they can tell you something."

  "Acting on the information you gave us, we spoke to Josh Hennessey yesterday. He told us that the first he knew about Leo and Meg getting together was a phone call from Meg on Saturday, June the eleventh. She told him your wedding was off, that she and Leo were leaving for France but that she would pop into the office before she left to bring him up to date with her side of the operation. She never showed and he has never heard from her again. He also gave us the names of some of Meg's close friends. We spoke to a couple of them, Fay Avonalli and Marian Harding, and they told us the same story."

  "But didn't you ask Josh about her and Leo's relationship before that? I mean, he and Meg have worked together for years, he knows everything about her, so presumably he knew about the affair."

  It was Fraser who answered. "He gave us the name of one man who featured seriously for two or three months at the beginning of this year but he said Meg had hardly mentioned Leo at all, and he was surprised when she phoned to say they were planning to get married. He said Leo had been around for years, and they had an off-and-on relationship which resurrected itself whenever they were both at a loose end. But he'd never known them to stick together for more than a month or two because Meg always got so irritated with Leo's"-he sought for a suitable word-"selfishness. He said he told her she was mad to think it would be any different this time, and gave the relationship a month to run. He also told her she was a prize bitch and that the only reason she wanted Leo was because he was marrying you." He smiled sympathetically. "According to him, Meg was jealous of you. Apparently, she resented you inheriting Russell's money on top of the money you will inherit from your father. She said you always landed on your feet, while she ended up in the cesspit."

  "Which is true in a funny sort of way. All Meg ever wanted was enough ready cash to give her the good times. She said it was so unfair that she had a vicar for a father when penury was the one thing she loathed. She couldn't understand why I didn't touch Adam for money at every opportunity."

  Fraser echoed Protheroe's skepticism of earlier. "I'm surprised you liked her."

  "I didn't have many friends. In any case, she was fun. I suppose it was a case of opposites attracting. I take life too seriously. She gloried in it. She's the only person I've ever known who lived entirely for the present." A tear fell onto her cheek. "I was far more jealous of her than she was of me."

  "So would you say your jealousy extended to anger over her stealing of your men friends?" asked Maddocks.

  Jinx stubbed out the butt of her cigarette. "No," she said tiredly, "it didn't. I'm sorry, Inspector, but I really don't think there's anything more I can tell you."

  Alan Protheroe was waiting by their car when they rounded the corner of the building. "I trust, gentlemen, that you showed Miss Kingsley rather more courtesy than you showed me when you pushed your way into my office." His eyes narrowed. "I have extreme reservations about these bully boy tactics of yours."

  "We had a little chat, sir," protested Maddocks, "which you could have joined at any time, had you or Miss KingsJey wished it."

  Alan shook his head in irritation. "You're a type, Inspector, and it's not a type I admire or even believe should be in the police force. Do you really need reminding that Miss Kingsley was in a coma less than a week ago? Or that your colleagues at Fordingbridge believe she has twice tried to kill herself?"

  "It's a funny business, that suicide attempt." Maddocks nodded towards Fraser. "She told the Sergeant here she thought someone was trying to kill her. What's your reading of it, Doctor? Attempted suicide or attempted murder? Does Miss Kingsley strike you as the suicidal type? I can't see it myself."

  "But attempted murder convinces you?"

  Maddocks grinned. "I'd say that was a clutching at straws to lay the blame on someone else."

  "So what are you left with if it was neither?''

  "A little piece of theater, I think. She's one hell of an actress, this patient of yours, but then I'm sure you know that already."

  Alan nodded abruptly towards the front doors. "One of my security staff has something to show you. My view is it should be handed to the Salisbury police, who I understood were dealing with the assault on me, but they appear to be passing the buck to you." He led the way inside and gestured towards the sledgehammer which was lying on top of the reception desk with a plastic bag neatly attached to its head. "Harry Elphick," he said, intr
oducing the security officer. "He found it in one of the outbuildings. It has flakes of red paint on the metal which might have come from my Wolseley."

  Maddocks smiled appreciatively. "Good man, Harry. What made you go looking for it?"

  Harry, who prided himself on his judgment, recognized a good'un when he saw one. "Well, sir, it was like this. Begging the doctor's pardon, I don't set as much store by the youngsters here as he does." He launched into a rambling account of his reasoning processes, finishing with: "So, as I always say, when you're looking for an answer, look for the obvious, and the obvious in this case is that one of the little tykes on the premises thought he'd chance his arm."

  Maddocks glanced towards Alan with a malicious smile. "Or her arm," he murmured. "I hadn't realized until Miss Kingsley stood up in your room just how tall she is. Five feet ten would be my guess."

  THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC-10:00 P.M.

  Veronica Gordon heard the commotion from the front hall as she was sipping her cup of tea in the staff sitting room. She walked out and frowned angrily at the sight of Betty Kingsley trying to wrestle free of Amy Staunton. "BLACK BITCH," Betty was shouting. "Get your hands off me. I want to see my daughter."

  "What on earth is going on?" Veronica asked icily, laying a hand on the older woman's collar and yanking her back with surprising strength. "How dare you speak to one of my nursing staff in those derogatory terms. I won't tolerate it, not from anyone, and most especially not from a drunk." She looked very angry. "What a disgraceful exhibition. Just who on earth do you think you are?"

  Betty's face grew sullen as she shook the hand off. "You know who I am," she said aggressively. "I'm Mrs. Adam Kingsley and I've come to see my daughter." But she was wilting visibly in the face of the sister's sobriety and superior aggression.

  "That's out of the question," Veronica snapped. "It's ten o'clock at night and you're in no condition to talk to anyone. I suggest you go home and sober up, and come back again tomorrow morning in a rather more presentable state than you are in at the moment."