Faithful unto Death

by Caroline Graham

  He recognised the drink of water ploy for what it was, a device to provide a necessary break in the questioning and, sure enough, once the glass arrived, Simone ignored it.

  Barnaby became aware of a deepening tension in the room and then became aware that the tension was not within the room but in himself. There was a tightness in his breast and his breathing was shallow. His concentration, which had not faltered since the interview began, now narrowed to a degree where he felt it must be almost visible, like a pinpoint of brilliant light at the end of a dark tunnel.

  “So, Mrs. Hollingsworth. You now find yourself on your way home to Nightingales.”

  “To my amazement and distress, Chief Inspector.”

  “What happened when you arrived?”

  “Alan drove straight into the garage. I stayed very still, holding my breath. I thought, once he’d gone into the house, I could maybe get out of the car and somehow work my way round into the back garden. Hide there till it was really dark. But then he leaned over the back seat to check the door, saw there was something underneath the blanket and that was that. He was overjoyed to see me, almost hysterical with relief but at the same time there was something black and despairing about him. He wrapped the rug round me and—”

  “What happened to this rug?”

  “Sorry?”

  “It was not in the sitting room when the police broke in.”

  “Oh, he took it upstairs, I think. Later.”

  “Right. Carry on, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

  “We got in the house and he started rambling wildly on about how the whole business had nearly killed him. And that it would happen again or that I would leave or meet someone else and his life would be over. I tried to calm him down and it seemed to work because he suddenly went very quiet. Said he was sorry he’d frightened me and that I wasn’t to worry any more because from now on everything would be all right. I suppose I should have been suspicious at such a quick change but I was just so relieved he’d stopped raving. By this time—”

  Barnaby interrupted her. He had a terrible premonition as to where all this was leading and a cold foreboding gripped his heart. He longed to stop the immaculate and callous recitation, if only for a minute.

  “As you yourself have introduced the word suspicious I suggest it might be more likely to apply to your husband. Surely, once he had seen you really close to, he would know he’d been duped.”

  “I only switched one lamp on.”

  “Even so—”

  “And he’d have had to touch my face which I’d already told him was extremely painful. That was when he went upstairs—to get me some Panadol, he said, though he came down without it. Told me we’d run out.”

  “Then what happened?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

  Barnaby drew in his breath sharply with irritation. He had wanted to explore that scene a little further. But before he could put a question of his own, she was off again, speaking now in an intense, gasping little voice as if short of breath.

  “He talked and talked about how he’d missed me and asked a lot of questions but I said the whole experience was so awful I couldn’t bear to talk about it and he seemed to accept that. After he’d run down he went very quiet for some time. Then he got up and made us both a drink. Whisky. It’s not something I like but Alan said it would help me sleep. Then he went to get some water from the kitchen though there was already a siphon on the tray. He sat on the settee and started to knock it back. I just sipped mine but he kept urging me to drink up so I swallowed a bit more. He was terribly pale and sweating. I got quite alarmed. Then, when he leaned back and closed his eyes, I tipped the rest of the stuff away.”

  “Where?”

  “Into the ice bucket. The drinks table was next to my chair. When he looked at me again he smiled and seemed really content. He said, ‘Good girl.’ Then ‘Forgive me, my darling. We’ll always be together now.’ I didn’t understand what he meant.”

  The hell you didn’t, you lying bitch. Barnaby saw the brilliance of her solution now. Understood the final twist, in all its cruel clarity. He saw poor Hollingsworth beside himself with happiness from the moment his wife decided to reveal herself. Touched perhaps almost to tears when, despite her injuries and all that she had gone through, it was he to whom she showed concern. Mixing him a drink with her own fair hands; settling him on the settee. Making sure he drank it all.

  Prove it.

  “And when did you discover, Mrs. Hollingsworth, that your husband had not simply fallen sleep?”

  “But I didn’t! After I’d washed up my glass—”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I’m a tidy person.”

  “The mess that kitchen was in,” said Sergeant Beryl, “I wouldn’t have thought one glass would make a lot of difference.”

  “Also the smell of whisky in the room was most unpleasant.”

  “Mrs. Hollingsworth,” said Chief Inspector Barnaby, “there was no trace of spirits in the ice bucket.”

  “I rinsed that out as well before I went.”

  “Did you not simply, once your husband had finished his lethal potion, throw your own undoctored drink down the kitchen sink?”

  “Undoctored?”

  “And if you were about to leave anyway,” said Sergeant Beryl, “why worry about the smell?”

  “Look, do you want to hear this story or don’t you? Because I am just about getting—”

  “You are harassing my client, Chief Inspector.” Jill Gamble had placed a restraining hand on Simone’s arm. “And if you persist I shall be forced to advise her against assisting you so comprehensively.”

  There was a brief silence during which Sergeant Beryl chewed his bottom lip, Simone once more ran round the eye area, this time with a pink tissue, and Barnaby tried to stifle the feeling that he was driving along the edge of a cliff in a car he couldn’t control.

  “Shall I continue?”

  “Please do, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

  “Not that there’s much more to say. I left the house—”

  “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Before you left you went upstairs—”

  “I never went upstairs!”

  “And typed a message on your husband’s computer. What did you use to cover the keyboard? One of your many scarves perhaps? I noticed a couple of near transparent ones in your bedroom.”

  Simone was utterly mystified. “What did the message say?”

  “It was a farewell note.”

  “There you are then!” She turned to her solicitor and seized her arm. Exultant, vindicated. “Ohh, isn’t that . . . He left a note!”

  This was unbearable. For a moment the Chief Inspector felt so enraged he could have thrown up. It was three or four minutes before he felt able to speak and move the interview on. Then he said, “Tell me what time you left the house, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

  “Around eleven, I suppose.” She still hadn’t simmered down. Everything about her sparkled.

  “And which way did you go?”

  “Through the front. There were a couple of false starts till I thought of switching the halogen off. Mr. and Mrs. B next door kept peering out of the bedroom window. And then, of course, I had to get back to High Wycombe.”

  “But why?” asked Barnaby, in mock puzzlement. “With Bay Tree Cottage just two minutes away.”

  “There was no one there. I knocked and knocked.”

  “Wasn’t it more the case that you could not afford to let Sarah or anyone else know you were in Fawcett Green the night your husband died?”

  “But I didn’t know he’d died then” sighed Simone with an ever patient, sweetly resigned expression.

  If Barnaby was disappointed that the trap he had cunningly placed in his suspect’s path had been so neatly circumvented, he showed no sign of it.

  “And anyway, I couldn’t risk running into anyone while I was still supposed to be kidnapped.”

  “So how did
you get back to High Wycombe, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

  “I decided to walk to Ferne Bassett and ring from there for a taxi. It’s only about a mile.”

  “A bit risky,” suggested Sergeant Beryl, “walking along a country road at that time of night.”

  “You’re not the only one to think so,” replied Simone. She started to laugh in a merry, uncomplicated way. “This old guy in a Morris Minor picked me up. He was actually going through High Wycombe and I thought, great! But when he saw my face he wouldn’t drive me home, insisted on taking me to a hospital. So we ended up in casualty.” She could hardly speak now for laughter.

  The two policemen watched, their faces expressionless.

  Jill Gamble said, “Calm down, Mrs. Hollingsworth,” and offered the glass of water.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” said Simone and her shoulders shook. “It’s all right, I’m OK. So I had to hop out the back way and grab a cab from the rank. And far as I know,” more peals of merriment, “he’s still there.”

  “You’re lucky you were picked up by someone so considerate,” said Sergeant Beryl.

  “I’m a lucky person.”

  By the end of the third session, weaponless in the face of such calm, bland resolution, Barnaby knew himself defeated.

  There had been more tea and this time Simone, no doubt more relaxed now that the trickiest corner of all had been successfully turned, really tucked in. She ate a cheese and tomato sandwich and two Jacobs Club biscuits (fruit and nut). Her pearly little teeth were speckled with chocolate. She licked her handkerchief and daintily wiped her lips.

  “Right. Tell me about the Athertons, Mrs. Hollingsworth. Where do they fit into this elaborate fairy story?”

  “I shouldn’t use the word fairy in front of Ronnie—”

  “Will you answer the bloody question!”

  “I’m sorry.” Simone shrank away, blinking in distress. “It was just a joke.”

  Barnaby, furious that he had allowed her to provoke him, struggled to swallow his anger.

  “I think my client has had more than enough bullying in her life already, don’t you, Chief Inspector?”

  “We are trying to find the truth here, Mrs. Gamble, about the death of your client’s husband. She seems to regard this extremely serious matter as a bit of a giggle.”

  “I don’t, I don’t!” cried Simone. “But different people react to nervous strain in different ways. And I get a bit hysterical. I always have.”

  “If you say so. Are you ready now to answer the question?”

  “Of course I am. I always was.” She patted her hair and briefly rested her fingers on her brow, smoothing it gently.

  “Renee Atherton is my mother-in-law—ex, that is. We’ve always got on really well. Even after Jim and I split I kept in touch—went to see her and everything. Before I remarried, naturally. I used to ring her up from the box sometimes when stuffy old Fawcett Green got unbearable. Jimmy’s brother—well, he’s always fancied me but I only like him as a friend.”

  “Someone you can turn to in time of trouble?”

  “That’s right.” She beamed happily, delighted at how quickly he had got the hang of the situation. “So as soon as I got back to Flavell Street, I gave them a bell.”

  “At that hour?”

  “They’re late birds. I knew they wouldn’t mind. Explained I had to have somewhere to stay for a week or two, dead urgent.”

  “So why the sudden need to move?”

  “I dunno, premonition maybe. I just felt a bit panicky. Ronnie wanted to drive straight over.” She smiled, shaking her head in tender recollection. “Talk about keen.”

  “But that wouldn’t have done at all, would it, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Not much point in leaving empty handed.”

  “If he’s going to be spiteful,” said Simone to her brief, “he can whistle for the rest.”

  Jill Gamble murmured something conciliatory; Sergeant Beryl favoured the polystyrene ceiling tiles with a hard stare; Barnaby ground his teeth.

  Eventually Simone, with a much put-upon air, condescended to continue. “I told him best thing was to time it for around two o’clock the next day. Park in the multistorey and I’d give him a buzz on the mobile when the coast was clear.”

  “I see. And where does your first husband come into all this?”

  “Jimmy. He don’t come into nothing. He’s in Australia.”

  “We’re aware of that. But, even so—”

  “He’s hardly kept in touch with his family so he’s not likely to have kept in touch with me.”

  “Right.” One more cherished theory gone to pot. “So Ronnie picked you up. And, presumably, put you down.”

  “Don’t.” Simone gently touched the bruise on her forehead. “We wanted to make it look convincing but he pushed me a bit too hard.

  “Sarah turned up about one. And, honestly, Inspector if I’d ever had any doubts about running away . . .” Here Simone stopped speaking and trembled slightly. Her eyelids fluttered and one hand rested on her breast as if to ease her breathing. “That woman seemed to think because she’d brought the money she’d bought me. She tipped it out on the bed and started throwing it into the air and laughing. I thought she’d gone a bit mad, to tell you the truth.”

  “I can imagine,” said Barnaby, able to picture Sarah, now that the whole traumatic law-breaking procedure was safely accomplished, dancing around the room in joy and relief.

  “She said, ‘Here, here—have some,’ and started stuffing it down my dress, trying to undo the buttons. Well, I weren’t having none of that. I reminded her she’d promised we’d just be friends. I’d hardly got the words out when she started kissing me and pushing her hand up my skirt. It was bloody disgusting.”

  Barnaby tried to imagine that also and failed. But he could see how powerfully such a scene would come across in a court of law. Especially when embellished by a few even more salaciously inventive details.

  “She went out to get some things for lunch. Oh, what we weren’t going to have. Salmon, foie gras, lovely cakes, champagne. She said when I’d had a few glasses I’d change my mind about going to bed. The minute she’d gone I rang Ronnie.”

  “And left.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Taking the money.”

  “I took my share.”

  “Which was?”

  “Straight down the middle. I know it was all Sarah’s plan but without the photographs it wouldn’t have even got off the ground. So I reckon I’m entitled.”

  “Our information is you took the lot.”

  “Only Sarah knows what I took and she wouldn’t make up a lie like that.” She smiled at both policemen, her confidence impregnable. “Even if she is an old dyke.”

  Barnaby thought of Sarah Lawson slowly fading from the light in her prison cell and Alan Hollingsworth in the cold ground. But he would not allow his anger to get the better of him a second time. Not when he was handling something as slippery as a basket full of cobras. Unkindness, well, that was something else.

  “Quite a contrast between the pair of you, isn’t there, Mrs. Hollingsworth?” Simone stared at him. “Here’s you calling Sarah all the names under the sun. Yet she’d die rather than speak a word against you.”

  “I should hope so too!” She blushed all the same. Just a shade.

  “But you’ve known that all along, haven’t you? Known that she loved you so much you would always be safe?”

  Simone turned to her solicitor and said, “All this is a mystery to me.”

  She decided then, in the face of the ungrateful way all her efforts to help were being received, that she had nothing further to add. Shortly after this, the interview was terminated. Simone was taken downstairs. Barnaby sat on in the room with the pale blue walls and metal chairs and poster of the Colorado beetle. He sat with his head in his hands and his eyes closed. He was seeing, as vividly as if she was standing a few feet in front of him, Simone Hollingswo
rth in the dock.

  Wearing flat shoes she would appear very small indeed inside the witness box. Slender though she was, he would not put it past her to lose weight before the trial began.

  Her hair would have been allowed to revert to its true colour and she would be wearing the sort of make-up which, though remaining indiscernible, emphasised her fragility. Her clothes would be plain and inexpensive. Perhaps even a trifle shabby. There would be no jewellery apart from a wedding ring.

  She would have an outstanding defence lawyer but would give her evidence throughout so shyly that the judge would frequently have to ask her to speak up.

  The tale unrolled would be a tragic one. Abandoned after a brief marriage to a man she truly loved, she then fell under the spell of a cruel exploitative neurotic who watched her like a hawk. Though generous if she behaved exactly as he wished, this man responded with violence if she made even the slightest attempt to have any sort of interest outside the home. Mrs. Hollingsworth’s doctor would testify to this.

  An offer of friendship from a local artist was seized on with gratitude by this lonely and, yes, we admit it, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, perhaps rather simple and naive woman. A friendship which was to prove fatal to Simone’s future wellbeing. For Sarah Lawson, an articulate, highly educated and extremely forceful personality, was also a lesbian. A woman who, having persuaded the now unprotected and deeply vulnerable Mrs. Hollingsworth to leave her home, attempted to rape her.

  Fleeing from this new oppression Mrs. Hollingsworth found herself accidentally entrapped once more with her brute of a husband and this time was lucky to escape with her life.

  And so on and convincingly on . . .

  You could forget all about a murder charge. What evidence would the Crown Prosecution Service have been able to offer? That the prisoner had washed up a glass and an ice bucket? They’d be laughed out of the Old Bailey, all the way down to Blackfriars and over the river to Southwark.

  If the more-sinned-against-than-sinning defence came off she might get away with three to four years. And as anything under four was automatically halved all the red blooded males in the country could have a shot at the pleasure of her company in a mere eighteen months’ time. The lucky bastards.