She smiled at him, slowly, propping up her chin with her hands, laughing at him perhaps, he neither knew nor cared.
‘Hmmm. Messages hidden in clothes, you mean, like sewn into clothes? What a nice idea, but not, I fear in these tiny, delicate seams. Nice, creative thinking borne out by history. I like it. I mean, it could be true, couldn’t it? Think of the Tsar’s family, fleeing Russia with their jewels sewn into their clothes. Think of royal messengers, with precious documents and written orders sewn into the inside of the cloak so they could walk around empty-handed. The stones from a ring set into a button. Think of a Turkish wedding, where the bride stands in her voluminous finery and the guests pin banknotes to the hem of her dress. Clothes as big, fat, hidden pockets for secrets. It’s been done, but it wouldn’t work with Lycra.’
‘No.’
‘Not that it’s far-fetched, not really, but why? I think you might have this the wrong way round. It’s not that the elusive Ms Shearer left clues in her clothes. The clue’s the clothes themselves.’
He was listening; he could have listened and watched for a long time. She drank that first glass as though it was water; so had he. She fetched the bottle.
‘What this woman is telling you by wearing this precious garment to her death is that she had another life. A life with entirely different priorities. If she was a woman who possessed an outrageously extravagant, beautiful garment like this, you can bet your bottom dollar that it wasn’t the only garment like that. You get used to them; you can’t wear lesser things. She’s telling you what she was. It’s a collector’s item, and I’ll bet she was a collector. I bet she had a collection of clothes, beautiful, spectacular clothes. Damn her eyes, damn her, damn her.’
She felt the hem of the skirt with the fingertips of one hand, and held on to her glass of wine with the other.
‘She damned herself.’
‘No, damn her, because I now find it impossible to hate her. I’ve sustained myself by hating her, to be honest. But to think of her jumping out, wearing this, I have to think of the other woman who wore this, and it’s tricky. I always wanted to be able to laugh at her, scorn her, and now I can’t. Because of this skirt. I wonder if she hated herself or loved herself, to wear it. Hell, you’ve got me hooked.’
She was smiling. A rueful smile, he noticed, but still illuminating. She was an appealing woman when she smiled. He had not noticed the smile in court, when there had been no place for it, but seeing it now confused him. She did not look like a woman who was capable of hatred, or not for long. She looked like someone who should smile more often. This time, he noticed what she was wearing. Businesslike black jeans, black polo-neck sweater and a rust-coloured waistcoat with large triangular buttons, no jewellery, but small silver studs in her ears. Simple but striking on her small, neat figure. It made him think of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He wondered who her friends were.
‘Did you hate her so much?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes. When I was standing up in court answering her questions, I hated that woman with every fibre of my being, because then I knew what she was going to do to Angel and I knew that she’d already destroyed so much of the case against him. I hated her because she believed him, and that made her capable of anything. And she hated me, because he did. She was like a wolf protecting a cub, all teeth and claws.’
‘It’s just one way of doing it,’ he said, lamely to his own ears. ‘Not my way. There’s no need to maul a witness to make a point. You don’t have to wrestle them to the ground and stab them to death to create a reasonable doubt.’
‘Don’t you? Surely you have to, sometimes, if it’s the only way of undermining the evidence? If the only way of casting doubt on what a witness says is to make them look a fool, sneer at them until they start doubting everything themselves, then surely you have to do it. I didn’t hate her for that in the end; I hated her for enjoying it.’
Yes, he understood that. Marianne Shearer had relished going for the jugular. She got high on the kind of interrogation that made a witness writhe with confusion. She was flushed with triumph afterwards, like a hunter with a wounded animal, not even wanting to watch the kill. Points scored by the wound, relationships ruined by unnecessary revelations; too bad. The witness stand was a lonely place and if you volunteered for it, you were fair game. Win, win, win. Sitting in this sterile room, he was suddenly glad he did not have the killer instinct and at the same time, he wanted to defend her, because the dead deserved defending, or at least understanding, and the mere existence of this garment, sitting there, filling the room, was a very significant sign that no one had understood Ms Marianne Shearer at all.
‘You’ve gone on to another planet,’ Hen said. ‘Can I look at the rest?’
‘If you’re sure… There’s bloodstains. It was really only the skirt I wanted you to see.’
‘Not so difficult to remove, blood,’ she said, briskly. ‘We all have some of it on our clothes. Usually in our pockets where we put our cut fingers. I’m always finding blood.’
She was rummaging, looking in the suitcase, talking to herself, picking at undergarments, removing the pair of boots last, reciting an inventory.
‘Rigby and Peller corsetry, basque, thick vest thing with sleeves, sixty-denier stockings, black panty girdle, laced, knee-length boots with three-inch heels. My, she was very well upholstered, wasn’t she? I suppose it was a very cold day. Glamorous stuff, but practical. Several layers. Oh dear.’
Hen put everything back but the skirt and closed the lid of the suitcase. She looked pale and reached for her glass of wine with an unsteady hand. Wine did not look as if it belonged on a steel bench. The glass made a noise when she put it down.
‘I wonder if you’re thinking what I’m thinking,’ Peter said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day and night. That she wore the layers to contain herself. Keep herself in when she imploded on the pavement. Soak up the spillage. Staunch the blood.’
‘Oh, really?’ Hen said. ‘I didn’t think she had much of that. No heart, no bloody veins.’
She drained the wineglass. Peter wondered if he was outstaying his welcome, and got up from the table.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Rather a tasteless remark, in the circumstances.’
‘Rather tasteless circumstances. Very tasteless of me to involve you at all.’
She smiled at him again, and he found himself smiling back.
‘But you have, and I am. Not that I was ever uninvolved, you see, not ever since I saw that photograph. Which is why I went to the inquest yesterday. Just to sort of make sure she was dead, and it wasn’t some elaborate hoax. Maybe I’m just addicted to inquests. The last one I went to was Angel’s. It only took ten minutes. She wasn’t important any more. An overdose, death while balance of mind disturbed. The postmortem report was interesting, though. I sent a copy of it to Ms Shearer at her chambers address. She didn’t acknowledge it. I don’t suppose that’s turned up amongst her things?’
He was taken aback by this conversational turn.
‘The point is, that her things haven’t turned up at all. She’s hidden them, or they’ve been stolen. Or lost. All we have is what she was wearing. Not even a mobile phone. Why on earth did you send Angel’s post-mortem report to Marianne Shearer?’
She looked away, stood to fold the precious skirt carefully, then unfolded it, and put it back where it was, reluctant to put it away out of sight in the suitcase.