This time Felix’s smile was more of a grimace.
‘There was a couple from Chelmsford, neighbours, and two old college friends, that I knew vaguely, and they all came to our wedding,’ Felix continued. ‘But I don’t think Jane kept in touch with them.’
‘Do you know where Jane was born?’ asked Vogel.
‘Yes. She was born in Chelmsford, and lived there all her life until she came down here.’
‘Have you ever seen her birth certificate?’ asked Vogel as casually as he could.
Felix looked at him quizzically.
‘You’re beginning to sound like my mother,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course I’ve seen Jane’s birth certificate, when we got married for a start. And it’s still in the safe at home. What are you getting at, Mr Vogel?’
‘Just routine,’ murmured Vogel. ‘We do need to look into your wife’s early life, though, not least to try and find out the cause of those extreme nightmares she suffered.’
‘I told you, she and I went over it again and again. There was nothing. In any case, what could there possibly be that might be relevant to her death?’
‘That’s what I keep asking myself, Mr Ferguson,’ said the DCI. ‘Meanwhile, do you know when your wife last attended a therapy session with Dr Thorpe in Exeter?’
‘Uh, what?’
Ferguson seemed momentarily nonplussed by Vogel’s abrupt switch in his line of questioning.
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ he said eventually. ‘She was going weekly. Tuesdays. Every Tuesday. I would take the twins to Mum’s in the morning in the holidays, or to school in term time, and she would drive to Exeter. Been doing it for about a year. So last Tuesday, I suppose.’
‘You never went with her?’
‘The first couple of times I did. Just to suss it out really. But after that she said she was quite happy going on her own. I do have two businesses to run, you know.’
Vogel noted the tetchiness in the other man’s voice again, but did not comment on it.
‘Mr Ferguson, your wife hadn’t been to see Dr Thorpe for over a month before she died,’ he said instead. ‘Were you not aware of that?’
Felix looked genuinely surprised.
‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘She went somewhere every Tuesday. Sometimes I would go back to the house. She was never there... ’
‘I see. Well, I can assure you she didn’t visit Dr Thorpe. Were you aware that Dr Thorpe had embarked, or tried to embark on, a series of regression therapy sessions with your wife in order to try to find the cause of her nightmares?’
‘Yes. Jane told me so. She told me she’d had regression sessions, in fact. Was that not so?’
‘She had one session with Dr Thorpe. It ended with your wife becoming extremely distressed. Did she tell you about that?’
‘No. She didn’t mention anything like that.’
‘According to Dr Thorpe, Jane became hysterical and had to be brought around from hypnosis prematurely. She then vomited on the floor of Dr Thorpe’s consulting room. And that is a matter of medical record.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Felix.
‘Dr Thorpe suspected that she may have relived something which caused her so much distress,’ Vogel continued. ‘Do you really have no idea at all what that could have been? Something extreme enough to cause Jane to vomit?’
‘No, I don’t. She said that she remembered nothing under hypnosis about her childhood that she wasn’t already aware of, and that I didn’t know about. Everything you are saying is news to me, detective chief inspector.’
Felix looked thoughtful.
‘Of course, it might explain why she became suicidal,’ he remarked suddenly. ‘Or have you completely ruled out that possibility, Mr Vogel?’
Vogel blinked rapidly behind his spectacles. Felix had sounded disingenuous enough, but Vogel was not oblivious to the barb which undoubtedly lay behind his remark.
‘I haven’t ruled anything out, Mr Ferguson, not totally, anyway. But I have already explained that unless further evidence is revealed indicating the contrary, we are treating your wife’s death as murder.’
Ferguson lowered his head into his hands, wrapping long fingers around his forehead. Vogel watched. After a few seconds the man looked up.
When he spoke his voice was surprisingly calm.
‘And I’m your number one suspect, however much you deny it, isn’t that right?’ he queried.
‘That is not right, Mr Ferguson,’ responded Vogel levelly. ‘You are a person of interest, obviously. I have already told you that—’
‘And what other “persons of interest” do you have?’ interrupted Ferguson, his voice still calm.
‘Mr Ferguson, our investigation has only just begun. But I can promise you that it will continue until we have found out exactly what happened to your wife, and apprehended her killer. Whoever that might be.’
Twelve
After Vogel and Saslow left the Bay View Road house, Felix asked his mother if she would look after the twins whilst he took the dogs for a walk.
He told her he needed to clear his head.
And that, thought Felix, as he set off along Abbotsham Cliffs, the dramatic coastal heathland which stretches for miles to the west of Westward Ho! could be the single most true thing he had said since his wife’s death.
He so needed to clear his head.
Through all the years of their marriage, until very recently, Felix had managed to cope with his wife’s nightmares. He and Jane had both coped. Or he’d thought so, anyway. The nightmares had been the sole blot on a bright horizon. And only in the last months had the dreams which, in spite of what he had told Vogel, had grown more and more frequent and extreme, gradually become his nightmare too.
He realized he’d probably been naïve in thinking that Jane’s death would bring them both release. The horror of it all seemed even bigger now. And the fear too. How could he have even hoped for anything else, he wondered.
He had been kidding himself to ever allow the possibility that everything would turn out all right. In any case, he’d never really believed it, had he? After all, his excessive drinking bore testament to that.
Felix didn’t think he was a bad man. He knew, however, that he was lazy, and that he was a coward.
Two thriving businesses with trusted staff had been offered him on a plate. Felix had never had any ambition for anything else. Why would he? He’d led a privileged childhood, and sailed through a minor public school where little or no pressure was put on him to succeed academically, certainly not beyond a pretty lowly average.
Felix knew that he did have his talents. His easy manner and generally relaxed demeanour meant that, both in business and in his personal life, he was often able to deal successfully with tricky people and situations where a more focused and driven man would probably fail.
Felix’s father had always recognized this. In addition, the self-made Sam Ferguson was a control freak. And this suited equally well both father and son. There was none of the friction between them, common amongst successful fathers and their sons. Felix had never been competition to his father nor had any desire to be. He had remained content to run his side of the business according to his father’s wishes, and to reap the considerable rewards for so doing. And his father was content to let him do so, leaving him alone in the areas in which he was able, whilst stepping in when a firmer hand was needed at the helm. Felix never minded. Why would he? That was how he had been brought up. A privileged unstressful childhood had drifted into a privileged unstressful adulthood.
He was also protected. If stress threatened, in almost any form, his mother clacked and his father acted. Again, both father and son exhibited complementary characteristics. Both accepting, and indeed actively enjoying, their roles as protected and protector.