‘I didn’t rush,’ replied Felix pedantically. ‘You never knew Jane. She would have fibbed. She would have told me she was all right, even if she wasn’t. I told you. I needed to see for myself.’
‘All right, so you say you were in your house with Jane for about fifteen minutes. What did you do during that time?’
‘Do? Well, I asked her how she was. She said she was fine and wanted to know what I was doing there. She said I had nothing to worry about. The children were in bed, sound asleep. But she would stay up until I got home.’
‘Why wouldn’t she go to bed?’
‘Well, she didn’t want to have a bad dream without me there to comfort her. Neither of us wanted that.’
‘And so, after about fifteen minutes you headed back for the club.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you meet anyone on the way, see anyone at all?’
‘No. I don’t think so. There was nobody about on the hill, I don’t think. I crossed the main road and then cut through Bridge Lane to get down to the parade, like I always do. There may have been cars on the main drag, I didn’t see anyone on foot though. But then, I didn’t see John Willis and his bloody dog on the way up, either.’
‘And it seems likely that nobody at the dinner noticed your return, because nobody had been aware of you leaving. Is that what you believed to be the case?’
‘I don’t know, do I, you’d have to ask them.’
‘We are doing so, I can assure you, Mr Ferguson, but so far we have drawn a complete blank.’
‘Well,’ said Fergus, sounding a tad desperate, ‘if nobody noticed that I was gone, doesn’t that indicate that I wasn’t gone for very long, not nearly long enough to commit murder and then try to cover it up?’
‘The trouble is it seems that very few of your fellow members were likely to have been sober enough to notice.’
‘I was sober,’ remarked Felix obliquely.
‘Yes, indeed, you were, in spite of the fact that, by your own admission, you have been drinking heavily lately.’
‘I had a speech to make, I always watch my drinking before I have to make a speech. And I wanted to nip home. So I kept sober.’
‘That doesn’t really help your case, Mr Ferguson,’ remarked Vogel. ‘Neither does the fact that upon your return to the club you drank so much that by the time you returned home for the second time, at three o’clock in the morning, you were so drunk you couldn’t walk straight, and were promptly sick over my crime scene. Now you tell me, would you have behaved like that if you were still worried about your wife and children? Indeed, would you have behaved like that if you hadn’t known that your wife was already dead?’
Felix lowered his head into his hands again. Vogel waited patiently. Eventually Felix straightened up. His face was ashen.
‘I can see how it looks,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t like that. Honestly it wasn’t. Jane had seemed so positive about everything, so in control of it all, and she insisted that I go back and enjoy myself. As I had hoped she would, I suppose. I’d never intended to stay home, if I could possibly avoid it. I’d been enjoying myself too much. And, to tell the truth, I wanted a proper drink. I, well, I suppose I have been developing a bit of a drink problem lately. Jane did point it out once or twice, but I always turned it around on her, told her that if it wasn’t for her and her damned stupid dreams I wouldn’t need to drink. Not very nice, Mr Vogel, but then drunks aren’t very nice, are they? And most of us take a damned long time and have to sink pretty low before we admit that we are drunks. You know what, I think this is the first time I’ve ever admitted it. But you don’t sink much lower than being arrested for murdering your wife, do you?’
Felix gave a short bitter laugh.
Vogel decided to ignore the confession of habitual drunkenness, for the moment.
Instead he merely said, ‘You haven’t explained why, if you were so worried about Jane, and her bad dreams, you then stayed out until three a.m., have you, Mr Ferguson?’
‘Yes, I have actually,’ replied Felix. ‘When I get drunk I do the job properly, you see. Sober, I am a responsible and loving father and husband. And yes, I do worry about my family. Drunk, I barely remember I have a wife and children. And that’s what happened on Saturday night. I went back to the club, relieved that Jane and the twins seemed fine, found myself some drinking mates, and got stuck in. I was out of my skull, Mr Vogel, and I think your officers would vouch for that. I didn’t have any idea how long I’d been drinking for. I didn’t have a clue it was three o’clock in the morning, and I wouldn’t have given a damn if I had known. That is the gospel truth, Mr Vogel.’
‘I see,’ responded Vogel. ‘So why didn’t you tell us before about your little trip home in the middle of the club dinner?’
‘Would you, if your wife was found dead in suspicious circumstances? Everybody knows the spouse or the partner is always the first suspect.’
‘You lied to a police officer, Mr Ferguson, which is a very serious matter under any circumstances. And you told us you were convinced your wife had taken her own life. If that was the case why would you feel the need to lie?’
‘Look, when I got back from the club and those officers told me Jane had been found hanged, of course I thought it was suicide. In fact, I could swear they told me it was suicide. But I was drunk. Very drunk. When you came round, well, it was only six or seven hours later, wasn’t it? I was probably still drunk. And Mum had given me that damned stupid sleeping pill. I can’t believe she gave it to me considering the condition I was in. And I can’t believe I took it either. As soon as you said Jane’s death was being treated as suspicious, I thought, they’re probably going to think I did it. And if I tell them that I went home, left the dinner and went home, around the time she must have died, they are definitely going to think I did it.’
Vogel had to admit there was some truth in that.
‘Didn’t it occur to you that lying to the police was a highly dangerous thing to do? That sooner or later you would be found out.’
‘I told you, Mr Vogel, I wasn’t thinking straight. Then when my head cleared a bit, well, I’d already done it, hadn’t I? In any case, I honestly thought the only person who knew that I’d gone home was my poor Jane. And she was dead. So, I had the alibi I knew I needed. I would have been right too, wouldn’t I? If it hadn’t been for bloody John Willis walking his bloody dog.’
‘There is almost always a John Willis,’ remarked Vogel mildly. ‘That is why every year the police solve between seventy-five and ninety per cent of murders across the country.’
‘Look, Mr Vogel,’ Ferguson continued almost as if Vogel hadn’t spoken. ‘You have to believe me, I didn’t kill my wife.’
‘The thing is, Felix, if you didn’t kill Jane, then someone else certainly did, and they did so within a very tight timescale — between just before eleven p.m. when you say you left your house to return to the club, and just before one a.m. when the Barhams returned and found Joanna out in the road. Now how likely is that?’
Felix looked down at the table.
‘It doesn’t sound likely at all, I know that,’ he replied quietly. ‘But I promise you I’m telling you the truth now.’
‘All right, let’s say for the moment that I accept that. When you went home did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary at all? Did you see anyone hanging around outside your home for instance? In your garden even? Or think you did?’
Felix shook his head.
‘No, nothing. Certainly not in the garden. The lights at the front of the house go on automatically as you approach. I used the torch on my phone to make my way along the pavement, like I always do, so I was shining it in front of me, and looking down, I suppose. Even if there had been anyone there, I doubt I’d have seen them. I was just concentrating on getting home as quickly as I could, making sure everything was all right, and then getting back to the do.’