“Hi, Gavin.”
Troy turned and walked back to the landing. He leaned over the stair rail feeling sick with betrayal and unhappiness. He felt his longing, poisoned beyond redemption, curdle in his heart.
From the bedroom he could hear Barnaby start to speak but the words seemed to come from a great distance and echo strangely. Troy wondered if, for the first time in his life, he was about to faint.
“Simone Hollingsworth,” began the Chief Inspector, “you are under arrest on suspicion of the murder of your husband, Alan. You do not have to say anything ...”
He was taken at his word. Simone had now been in custody for just under two hours and had remained silent apart from making a single telephone call to Penstemon’s solicitor who was unable to get to the station until seven o’clock that evening.
Awaiting Jill Gamble’s arrival, Barnaby organised a debriefing at thirty minutes’ notice, inevitably garnering, in the incident room, only the immediate shift of men and women who had worked on the Hollingsworth case.
Audrey Brierley was present; Gavin Troy was not. He had cried off and Barnaby thought for once the term not inappropriate. Naturally, though perilously close to breaking down, Troy would have died rather than be seen weeping. He had turned the keen edge of his distress against himself and fallen on it like a defeated warrior upon his sword, mutilating his emotions, furiously attempting to kill what had been so newly born. Wounded and a fool for love, he was fit for nothing and Barnaby had sent him home.
People were scattered around the room, popping cans or queuing for the kettle to make coffee filters. Some peeled confectionery wrappers others tore open crisps. The lines were diverted to the separate office and a couple of civilian telephonists detailed to take the calls. There was a slight air about the place of getting dug in.
The Chief Inspector had so far just given them the bare bones of the matter. They all knew that Simone Hollingsworth had been arrested and why. It was the sordid details, what someone had once called the “shitty gritty,” that now closely engaged their attention.
Naturally, as the subject of Barnaby’s disquisition had yet to speak, his narrative would be in the nature of an imaginative re-creation rather than a straightforward listing of acknowledged facts. But he still looked forward to unravelling the tangled web in which they had all been ensnared. Like his daughter, he had been born to the sound of a drum roll. And now, ladies and gentlemen, before your eyes, before your very eyes ...
But—Barnaby shuffled his notes—where to begin? No crime takes place in a vacuum and he had the feeling that this one had been in the making for a long while. Certainly since the beginning of the marriage and maybe even earlier. Perhaps since the very first moment the black widow spider spotted such a big juicy fly.
“So what made you first think to put her in the frame, Chief Inspector?” Sergeant Beryl kicked off.
“There was never one specific thing. Rather an accumulation of signs, scraps of information, conversations that meant nothing at the time but, viewed in retrospect, became significant.”
Perhaps that would be a good starting point. The village itself, Fawcett Green. And its opinion of Alan Hollingsworth’s second wife.
“The first unusual thing I noticed about Simone was that everyone I spoke to described her in exactly the same way. Now, this is very odd. Usually, if you ask half a dozen people’s opinion of someone, you’ll get six varying replies. But the same adjectives turned up again and again in this case. Mrs. Hollingsworth was wistful, lonely, childlike and not too bright. Easily bored, she remained a docile and loving wife even in the face of her husband’s apparent cruelty.”
“Don’t know about apparent, sir.” Audrey sounded a bit bullish. “We’ve got the interview with her doctor to bear it out.”
“I’ll come to that. The point I’m making now is that unlike the rest of us, who adjust our behaviour according to the situation and who we’re with, Simone gave a rubberstamp performance. So, what does this tell us?”
“That she was playing a part?” suggested PC Belling hesitantly, tugging at his curly moustache.
“Just so. The boredom I’ve no doubt was genuine. But apart from that, she was playing a part. And biding her time. She married for the cash and, as a quick look around her bedroom will show, very quickly got through a great deal of it. But, though this case appears to be all about greed, it is also all about love.”
“Love?” Sergeant Beryl rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Seems to me she took him for all she could get then did him in.”
“Oh, she didn’t love Alan! No, we’re talking here about husband number one.” He flicked through his notes and found the lines relating to the man dragged up in Cubitt Town. “ ‘She was mad about him and he was mad about her and both were mad about money.’ But Atherton, or so the story goes, found a likely mark and disappeared.”
“So, you reckon she followed his example and found a mark of her own,” suggested Alan Lewis, a plainclothes inspector.
“And plotted her own kidnapping?” PC Belling sounded incredulous.
“With his help, yes. I don’t believe they ever really lost touch.”
“Hang on, sir,” said Audrey. “I’m not with you at all on this one.” There was a general murmur of agreement around the room. “Surely Sarah Lawson and this bloke we’re calling Tim were responsible.”
“That’s right.”
“Lawson confessed.”
“And there’s proof—she rented the flat where Simone was held.”
“We found the camera at her cottage.”
“You said she recognised the photographs.”
“Besides, Simone was infatuated with her boy friend. That’s how it all began.”
“Everything you say—the last remark aside—is true,” granted the Chief Inspector.
“Then I don’t see what you’re driving at, guv,” Audrey finished where she had begun. “Either Lawson and her boy friend set it up or Simone and her ex-husband set it up. All four of them couldn’t have been involved.”
“But they were,” said Barnaby. “Except it was all three.” He waited for a second baffled murmur to subside. “However, only two knew what was really going on. I spoke of love a moment ago. The love of Jimmy Atherton and his wife. But I suspect this will prove to be a poor thing in comparison to that of Sarah Lawson. Unfortunately I didn’t bring her in for questioning when I should have done and she was left with plenty of time to dream up an alternative scenario. A cover to protect the woman who so cruelly betrayed her. And I have not the slightest doubt she will stick to her story to the very end. For she has nothing to lose and, it seems now, nothing to live for.”
“Are you saying,” asked Inspector Lewis, “that this man ‘Tim’ doesn’t really exist?”
“That’s right.”
“When did you discover this?”
“The last time I spoke to Lawson. I told her he’d been seen going up the back steps at Flavell Street and into the flat. She was completely mystified. Just didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about.” In his mind Barnaby ran the scene again. Saw Sarah finally understand the true extent of her betrayal and watched her efforts, even as the knife plunged home, to protect the woman she loved.
“So why was it necessary to make him up?”
“It wasn’t at first. Getting Hollingsworth to believe that someone had kidnapped his wife was a doddle. Locking her away, taking the photographs and posting them—no problem. But once the pictures had been dug up, things rapidly got much more complicated. And when the flat in Flavell Street was discovered, Sarah Lawson was really up against it.