Paloma cried out in pain, winced and closed her eyes. The two women were backed into a corner against the bookshelves, Sally almost hidden behind Paloma, looking over her right shoulder.
Briefly he locked eyes with Paloma. ‘For God’s sake don’t try anything, Paloma. We can resolve this.’
Sally fixed Diamond with a glare that was more about him than her hostage. Her words were steeped in bitterness. ‘Damn you, I should have known you were on to me when you asked me about the wedding dress I made. “You don’t do it professionally any more,” you said — the killer phrase. I thought I’d closed off that part of my life.’
She wanted dialogue and so did he.
‘You did,’ he said. ‘You closed off your past, no question.’ The theory of negotiating with a hostage-taker starts with active listening, agreeing with everything, demonstrating empathy by picking up things they say and repeating them. Aim to achieve a rapport and treat their situation as a problem you both need to solve.
The theory — if you can hold your nerve enough to use it.
She asked him, ‘So where did I go wrong?’
‘Go wrong? You didn’t. Do you want to know how I found out?’ he said, latching on to her curiosity while trying to think what the hell he would say next. The object was to keep her talking, get her confidence. He knew it shouldn’t be rushed.
Excellent in theory. But this wasn’t in the abstract. Across the room from him was Paloma with a lethal weapon to her throat and he was terrified of what might happen. Sally looked terrified, too, but terrified of him. ‘Put down the scissors,’ he told her, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
‘I’m not that stupid.’
The words burst out like machine-gun fire. He’d provoked her. As a negotiator he’d messed up already.
He could see Paloma’s rapid breathing. He could practically hear her heartbeats.
This was all too personal to manage by the book. He was going to wing it.
Sally wouldn’t have lured Paloma up here to attack her. She’d dropped her guard to share her interest in dressmaking. Both women must have felt relaxed until he came charging upstairs. Precisely what had been said between them he could not know. She was unlikely to know how important Paloma was in his life.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what made me suspect you, but you’d better understand those scissors could be pressing on an artery. You don’t want to take an innocent life.’
Her slaughterhouse stare didn’t change and neither did her grip.
‘There were reasons for the other deaths,’ he said. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to kill again.’
It didn’t seem to register.
‘We dug up the garden at Twerton,’ he told her with a huge effort to keep his words from provoking her, ‘and we found various things that confused us, but one small item that got me thinking — a triangle of chalk.’
Mistake. Far from taking the heat out of the revelation, the chalk came as a shock to her. She drew in her breath with such force that he thought she would stab the scissors into Paloma’s neck.
He waited, uncertain whether to go on.
After a pause he decided he couldn’t do anything but continue in as low key a delivery as possible. ‘Tailor’s chalk is often shaped like that, isn’t it? Made me think it must have belonged to someone who lived in the murder house at some stage. A tailor perhaps, or a seamstress. The tenant at the time we’re talking about, 1997, wasn’t a tailor. Harry Morgan drove taxis. But there was a woman called Sarah who lived with him and left suddenly after the killing and we didn’t know much about her. Could she have used the chalk in her job? I asked myself. And now you’re wondering how we discovered the woman in Twerton was you, the wife of a highly successful businessman.’
At least she was listening. She hadn’t denied a word of it.
‘In any investigation it’s a process of collecting information and it happens that one important clue is lying on the floor in front of you.’
‘Don’t move,’ she warned him. ‘Don’t you dare move.’
‘The hat,’ he said. ‘The nice big hat that you wore to the meeting. Beautifully made. Your own handiwork, I’m sure. For a long time you kept your dressmaking a secret, for obvious reasons. Your new husband knew nothing about it at the beginning. He had to make do with a ready-to-wear costume run up in some sweatshop in the Far East — even though you could have made one for him. But years later, when you felt safer and confident enough to equip this room and enjoy the needlework again as a hobby, you made the hat for yourself and your sense of humour came into play.’
Her sense of humour was a memory now.
‘You couldn’t resist topping off the bonnet with a Bath bun made of fabric. I’m no dressmaker, but I think I know what that little item was originally — a pincushion.’
She gave an impatient sigh that told him he was right.
‘You came to the Beau Nash Society wearing a hat with a cloth Bath bun. Sarah the seamstress is Lady Sally the beautician. After all, the name Sally is a short form of Sarah.’
She said, ‘Is that a crime?’
‘On its own, no. Together with all the other evidence stacking up it led me to speculate why the victim, the man who was finally reduced to a skeleton because his body was hidden in the loft for years and years, might have come to a humble house in Twerton.’
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she said.
‘Care to tell me?’
‘No. I’ll hear your version.’ The scissors were still poised at Paloma’s throat. Nothing he said was going to break Sally’s concentration.
He kept talking. ‘The man who died wasn’t a nice man at all. He was a con artist. He conned a rich old man out of some of his property, valuable items of furniture. More importantly, he took possession of an eighteenth-century costume the old man, Lord Deganwy, had worn because he was president of the Beau Nash Society. By then — I’m speaking of 1997 — this con man known to most people as Sidney Harrod had so far insinuated himself into the society that he was being tipped as the next Beau. Lord Deganwy was suffering from dementia and it was inevitable they would need to find someone else. Harrod helped himself to the costume and wanted it altered so that he could wear it. He’d heard of a skilful seamstress in Twerton and he came to you. Am I making sense?’
She said nothing. Through all this he was trying not to look into Paloma’s terrified eyes. Her ordeal had to continue.
‘I’m guessing now,’ he told Sally, ‘and only you can say exactly what happened. There would have been more than one fitting. You and Sidney Harrod alone in that small terraced house. We know he had a reputation, fancied himself as a ladies’ man even though he was getting on in years. You were young and attractive and the job of measuring and touching him, getting close, got him sexually excited. Is that the truth?’
A tightening of her mouth told him it was. The revulsion lingered, a stain that couldn’t be removed.
‘He made a pass at you, this grotesque old man, and you were shocked and tried to step away, but he grabbed or groped you and in panic you reached for your scissors in self-defence and thrust them towards his chest. We know they can be razor sharp. He put up his hand to defend himself and got cut to the bone in the process. But one more frenzied lunge from you got past, straight through his ribs. Fatal.’
His depiction of the scene made such an impact on her that a sound more sob than threat came from her throat when he described the moment of death.
‘Call it self-defence, unintentional, an involuntary act,’ he said. ‘Any decent lawyer would argue it wasn’t murder. But you were there with a dead man, appalled at what you’d done. I can scarcely imagine the horrors you suffered in the hours that followed, the discussion you had with your partner Harry when he came home. You didn’t report the death to the police for sure.’