‘Did Tom send you?’
So she knew young Standforth. And well enough to call him by his first name.
She expected an answer, so he gave one. ‘Not exactly, but I know him. Shall we talk in the cottage?’
‘I don’t wish to talk.’
He took a small step to his left, meaning to move around the car, and she took a step of her own the other way. They were like a pair of kids playing chase — a game he certainly couldn’t win.
Keep her talking, he told himself. Hen will be back shortly. ‘You’re living in a cottage that doesn’t belong to you.’
‘Is that any business of yours?’
She had to be told. ‘It is — because I’m a police officer.’ He turned his head and yelled, ‘Hen, we’re over here, by the car.’
Instead of running off, she put her hands to her face and sobbed, shaking convulsively.
When Hen appeared round the side of the cottage, he was already steering the distressed woman towards the open door.
‘Christ, Peter, did you give her a clout?’
‘I told her we’re police, that’s all.’
She took the woman’s hand and helped her inside. ‘It’s all right, my love. He’s not going to do you for cracking him over the head. He’d be a laughing stock. I’ve often felt like clonking him and you’ve beaten me to it. Let’s all have a friendly chat in the front room.’
‘Friendly’ would have been overstating it and the chat had to wait some minutes, but Hen dusted off three chairs and brewed some tea and the woman dried her eyes.
The homely touch was working.
‘He’s Peter and I’m Hen and we’re not here to evict you or anything. What shall we call you?’
She hesitated before saying, ‘I’m Constance.’
‘Then I know who you are,’ Diamond told her. ‘You’re the missing schoolteacher — Miss Constance Gibbon.’
She blinked twice and said nothing.
‘So do we call you Connie?’ Hen asked as she filled the three mugs.
‘No one calls me that,’ Miss Gibbon said with disdain.
Connie or Constance, it didn’t bother Diamond. He’d worked out her identity. And he felt more comfortable seated. ‘So this is a sort of grace and favour home for you, is it?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ she said. ‘It’s more of a refuge. I’m not ungrateful, but that’s what it is.’
‘You didn’t want anyone to know you’re here?’
‘That was the intention. I’ve been in a dreadful state of mind for weeks, close to a breakdown. I needed privacy, a place to shut everything out and Tom kindly suggested here.’
‘So you leave the mail on the mat to make it look as if it’s still empty?’
‘Nobody except Tom knew until you came along.’
‘Something must have gone badly wrong for you.’
‘That’s an understatement. I was lured into a situation that was dishonest and impossible to cope with. I was so cruelly treated that I almost lost my sanity.’
Almost lost it? Diamond was asking himself if she’d already gone beyond. ‘What happened?’
She closed her eyes for some seconds as if the memory was too painful to recall. Finally, she spoke in an expressionless voice. ‘It goes back three years, to a time when I was unemployed. I’m a trained teacher, but there weren’t any jobs where I was, in Fulham. I lived alone in a bedsit. It was so depressing. I was in debt, but I just had to get out sometimes and go for a drink. When I say “a drink” I mean exactly that, a single glass of red wine. I’d visit a gay and lesbian bar in Soho — that’s the way I am, in case you hadn’t realised.’
Diamond wasn’t in realising mode. He had given no more thought to Miss Gibbon’s sexuality than to her size in shoes.
‘One Saturday evening,’ she went on, ‘I met this woman called Olivia who unexpectedly took an interest in me. She was strong and attractive and I thought she was out of my league. She was dressed in the latest clothes and wearing jewellery that was clearly the real thing. She didn’t seem to mind that I couldn’t pay for drinks. She took me to a club I’d never heard of and we danced and had more drinks and spent the night together. She paid for everything. In the morning I thanked her, thinking that would be the end of it, but to my astonishment she said she’d like to do the same thing the following weekend. I told her I felt uncomfortable not paying my share, but she brushed that aside.’
‘Had you told her your situation?’ Hen asked.
‘Oh, yes. But she didn’t say much about her own, simply that she had a well-paid job and money to burn. She charmed me. I had more compliments from Olivia the first two evenings we were together than I’ve had in the whole of my life. I was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? I’m not promiscuous. I’ve been with two other women — brief affairs — and I’m almost forty now.’
‘How old was Olivia?’
‘Forty-seven. She didn’t say, but I found out later. To be fair, she looked marvellous. She went to beauticians and the best hairdressers and of course her clothes were superb. My worry was that I was so drab beside her. I had one black dress, basically, for nights out, and the only changes were scarves and shawls I bought from a trader in the North End Road market. Olivia didn’t complain. That second weekend she gave me a present, beautifully wrapped in a giftbox, and it was... clothes.’
‘Intimate clothes?’ Hen said.
Miss Gibbon turned sunset red.
Diamond stared into his tea.
‘They were exquisite. Our Saturday meetings in the West End went on through the spring. Blissful, but soon both of us were finding it a strain meeting only at weekends. We wanted to be together all the time. Then Olivia asked me to move in with her. She said she had plans for me. I felt I knew her so well by then that whatever she was thinking of could only be something wonderful.’
‘A civil partnership?’
‘It crossed my mind, but I didn’t like to ask. She made the decisions in our relationship and I wanted it to stay that way. It’s my nature.’
‘Did you take her up on the offer?’ Diamond asked.
‘I did. I moved in at the end of the week. She had a large house in Bosham overlooking the harbour.’
‘Down here?’
‘It’s a lovely spot.’
‘I know it well,’ Hen said. ‘Bit different from the gay scene in London.’
‘Different from a Fulham bedsit, too,’ Constance Gibbon said. ‘I loved it as soon as I saw it. She made me very welcome. The house is palatial inside, Scandinavian in style and beautifully furnished.’
‘Did you discover where her money came from?’
‘She said it was from a legacy, but I found out later it wasn’t. Anyway, I had no intention of being a kept woman, so I thought I’d look for a teaching position in a local school, in the hope that there were some openings here in Sussex. I went online and started actively searching, wanting to surprise Olivia by announcing that I’d joined the employed once again. It was midsummer and the schools were recruiting for the new session.’
‘Were jobs more plentiful here than in Fulham?’
‘Not really. The government is always saying there’s a shortage of maths teachers, but when it comes to finding a school that wants one, it’s a different story.’
‘Maths?’ Diamond said. ‘But you teach art.’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘That’s where I went wrong. I was persuaded to teach art, but no, all my experience is in maths. Where was I? I’m telling this in the wrong order. Olivia caught me leafing through the Times Educational Supplement one morning and asked what I was up to, so I had to tell her I’d put several applications in, but hadn’t been shortlisted. She gave me a hug and said she had been secretive, too, but now she was compelled to tell me the plan she’d mentioned before I moved in. To my utter amazement she told me she was the head of a private school for girls in Chichester.’