Barnaby interrupted her. He had a terrible premonition as to where all this was leading and a cold foreboding gripped his heart. He longed to stop the immaculate and callous recitation, if only for a minute.
“As you yourself have introduced the word suspicious I suggest it might be more likely to apply to your husband. Surely, once he had seen you really close to, he would know he’d been duped.”
“I only switched one lamp on.”
“Even so—”
“And he’d have had to touch my face which I’d already told him was extremely painful. That was when he went upstairs—to get me some Panadol, he said, though he came down without it. Told me we’d run out.”
“Then what happened?” asked Sergeant Beryl.
Barnaby drew in his breath sharply with irritation. He had wanted to explore that scene a little further. But before he could put a question of his own, she was off again, speaking now in an intense, gasping little voice as if short of breath.
“He talked and talked about how he’d missed me and asked a lot of questions but I said the whole experience was so awful I couldn’t bear to talk about it and he seemed to accept that. After he’d run down he went very quiet for some time. Then he got up and made us both a drink. Whisky. It’s not something I like but Alan said it would help me sleep. Then he went to get some water from the kitchen though there was already a siphon on the tray. He sat on the settee and started to knock it back. I just sipped mine but he kept urging me to drink up so I swallowed a bit more. He was terribly pale and sweating. I got quite alarmed. Then, when he leaned back and closed his eyes, I tipped the rest of the stuff away.”
“Where?”
“Into the ice bucket. The drinks table was next to my chair. When he looked at me again he smiled and seemed really content. He said, ‘Good girl.’ Then ‘Forgive me, my darling. We’ll always be together now.’ I didn’t understand what he meant.”
The hell you didn’t, you lying bitch. Barnaby saw the brilliance of her solution now. Understood the final twist, in all its cruel clarity. He saw poor Hollingsworth beside himself with happiness from the moment his wife decided to reveal herself. Touched perhaps almost to tears when, despite her injuries and all that she had gone through, it was he to whom she showed concern. Mixing him a drink with her own fair hands; settling him on the settee. Making sure he drank it all.
Prove it.
“And when did you discover, Mrs. Hollingsworth, that your husband had not simply fallen sleep?”
“But I didn’t! After I’d washed up my glass—”
“Why did you do that?”
“I’m a tidy person.”
“The mess that kitchen was in,” said Sergeant Beryl, “I wouldn’t have thought one glass would make a lot of difference.”
“Also the smell of whisky in the room was most unpleasant.”
“Mrs. Hollingsworth,” said Chief Inspector Barnaby, “there was no trace of spirits in the ice bucket.”
“I rinsed that out as well before I went.”
“Did you not simply, once your husband had finished his lethal potion, throw your own undoctored drink down the kitchen sink?”
“Undoctored?”
“And if you were about to leave anyway,” said Sergeant Beryl, “why worry about the smell?”
“Look, do you want to hear this story or don’t you? Because I am just about getting—”
“You are harassing my client, Chief Inspector.” Jill Gamble had placed a restraining hand on Simone’s arm. “And if you persist I shall be forced to advise her against assisting you so comprehensively.”
There was a brief silence during which Sergeant Beryl chewed his bottom lip, Simone once more ran round the eye area, this time with a pink tissue, and Barnaby tried to stifle the feeling that he was driving along the edge of a cliff in a car he couldn’t control.
“Shall I continue?”
“Please do, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”
“Not that there’s much more to say. I left the house—”
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Before you left you went upstairs—”
“I never went upstairs!”
“And typed a message on your husband’s computer. What did you use to cover the keyboard? One of your many scarves perhaps? I noticed a couple of near transparent ones in your bedroom.”
Simone was utterly mystified. “What did the message say?”
“It was a farewell note.”
“There you are then!” She turned to her solicitor and seized her arm. Exultant, vindicated. “Ohh, isn’t that ... He left a note!”
This was unbearable. For a moment the Chief Inspector felt so enraged he could have thrown up. It was three or four minutes before he felt able to speak and move the interview on. Then he said, “Tell me what time you left the house, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”
“Around eleven, I suppose.” She still hadn’t simmered down. Everything about her sparkled.
“And which way did you go?”
“Through the front. There were a couple of false starts till I thought of switching the halogen off. Mr. and Mrs. B next door kept peering out of the bedroom window. And then, of course, I had to get back to High Wycombe.”
“But why?” asked Barnaby, in mock puzzlement. “With Bay Tree Cottage just two minutes away.”
“There was no one there. I knocked and knocked.”
“Wasn’t it more the case that you could not afford to let Sarah or anyone else know you were in Fawcett Green the night your husband died?”
“But I didn’t know he’d died then” sighed Simone with an ever patient, sweetly resigned expression.
If Barnaby was disappointed that the trap he had cunningly placed in his suspect’s path had been so neatly circumvented, he showed no sign of it.
“And anyway, I couldn’t risk running into anyone while I was still supposed to be kidnapped.”
“So how did you get back to High Wycombe, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”
“I decided to walk to Ferne Bassett and ring from there for a taxi. It’s only about a mile.”
“A bit risky,” suggested Sergeant Beryl, “walking along a country road at that time of night.”
“You’re not the only one to think so,” replied Simone. She started to laugh in a merry, uncomplicated way. “This old guy in a Morris Minor picked me up. He was actually going through High Wycombe and I thought, great! But when he saw my face he wouldn’t drive me home, insisted on taking me to a hospital. So we ended up in casualty.” She could hardly speak now for laughter.
The two policemen watched, their faces expressionless.
Jill Gamble said, “Calm down, Mrs. Hollingsworth,” and offered the glass of water.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Simone and her shoulders shook. “It’s all right, I’m OK. So I had to hop out the back way and grab a cab from the rank. And far as I know,” more peals of merriment, “he’s still there.”
“You’re lucky you were picked up by someone so considerate,” said Sergeant Beryl.
“I’m a lucky person.”
By the end of the third session, weaponless in the face of such calm, bland resolution, Barnaby knew himself defeated.
There had been more tea and this time Simone, no doubt more relaxed now that the trickiest corner of all had been successfully turned, really tucked in. She ate a cheese and tomato sandwich and two Jacobs Club biscuits (fruit and nut). Her pearly little teeth were speckled with chocolate. She licked her handkerchief and daintily wiped her lips.