The Telling Error

by Hannah, Sophie

  Three cups of tea were slammed down on the table like heavy auction hammers. Uzma retreated and started to load the dishwasher; if he’d closed his eyes, Simon could have convinced himself that he was listening to a dangerously out-of-hand bottle fight.

  Hannah had produced a tissue from the pocket of her jeans and was dabbing at the corners of her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You’d think I wouldn’t be too fussed about him being dead, in the circumstances.’

  Right. You’re only his wife. Proximity to Widow Weirdo was making Simon’s flesh itch. He knew he was being unfair, but the fact that Hannah was so suspicious of her late husband, and not in the least ashamed of being so, made him suspicious of her.

  ‘Of course you’re upset about Damon’s death,’ Sam said gently. ‘You … loved him?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Very much. I got hooked on the fake stuff, that was the problem. I responded with the real thing.’

  ‘Fake … love?’ Sam asked.

  Hannah nodded. ‘No man had shown an interest in me for some time, so I succumbed to the pull of the phony. My love for Damon was as real as his for me was a sham, but the sham nourished my spirits more than an absence of authentic love would have. I was happy for long spells sometimes. Then it would hit me again: he’s acting. I tried telling my heart it had been tricked and mustn’t fall for it, but it didn’t listen to me any more than any heart ever does to wise advice.’ She looked doubtful suddenly. ‘I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t so wise. Fake love’s better than no love. It must be, or else why do the majority of my patients stay in non-nurturing romantic relationships?’

  ‘In your work as a psychotherapist, have you ever come across a situation like yours with Damon?’ Sam asked her. ‘People claiming their partners don’t love them but are just … convincingly pretending?’

  ‘No, never,’ said Hannah. ‘Don’t worry – the irony isn’t lost on me. I’m excellent at my job – sorry, I don’t do false modesty. I’ve never failed to get to the bottom of a patient’s relationship issue. Never. Sometimes it takes a while, but the moment always comes when things slot into place and I think, “Aha, that’s what’s going on here.” With Damon, I never got there, never found my answer. Maybe I was too close to see it.’

  Simon’s impatience had started to tick inside him. It was time to confront her. ‘Hannah, sorry if I’m being slow, but … if Damon’s act was so flawless, how can you be sure he didn’t really love you?’

  ‘Because he said it too quickly. On our second date. He was – he pretended to be – too besotted too soon. So I suppose what I said before wasn’t strictly true: there was a flaw in his act, at the beginning. If he’d seemed to like me only a bit at first, to find me interesting enough to want to see me again … If he’d gone for a more gradual build-up and let me see his enthusiasm growing as he got to know me better, that I might have believed in. If he’d waited a few months before telling me he loved me for the first time—’

  ‘So it was the speed of his love that you didn’t trust?’ Simon interrupted her.

  Hannah gave him a pointed look to let him know she’d noticed. ‘At that stage, yes. Later on, there were other things. He never got angry or irritable with me, never missed an opportunity to be kind to me, never pretended to listen to me while secretly tuning out, the way all husbands do. With Damon, it was as if he was … I don’t know, trying to commit every word I said to memory. Like people are at the very beginning, when they want to drink in as much information and detail of a new partner as they can. Damon was like that permanently, from the moment I met him. It’s so hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. It was as if he was sucking up to me the whole time, but not pathetically, not off-puttingly.’

  ‘I’d kill for one like that,’ Uzma chipped in undiplomatically from across the room. Hannah didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Hannah, just to play devil’s advocate for a moment,’ Sam began hesitantly. ‘Isn’t it possible that … well, that it was love at first sight for Damon?’

  No. Not this woman. Simon felt guilty for thinking it and was pleased no one but him would ever know he had.

  Sam was persisting with his romantic fantasy. ‘I can imagine that if you’re swept off your feet and if that feeling lasts …’ he said to Hannah. ‘I mean, maybe that explains why Damon thought you could do no wrong, and why he listened to you properly. Everything you’ve described, it sounds to me as if it could be … well, love. Not a fake.’

  Hannah smiled at him. ‘That’s sweet, if a little naïve,’ she said. ‘Do you listen to every word your wife says?’

  ‘Maybe not every word, but—’

  ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’

  ‘I do, yes,’ said Sam.

  ‘You?’ She turned to Simon.

  He shook his head. ‘Something that feels like it, maybe,’ was the most he could manage. A lust-fuelled delusion, a form of insanity. He’d experienced it only once and hoped never to again, preferring the kind of love he had for Charlie, the slow-to-start sort that you added to gradually, that ended up being worth so much more; love that was more like a savings account than a spending spree.

  Alice Fancourt. Simon would never forget that name. It passed through his mind at least once a day.

  ‘You mean the frenzied obsessive attraction that sweeps through people like forest fire?’ said Hannah. ‘That I-must-devour-you urge that we call love because it’s the most powerful word we have?’

  Simon made a non-committal noise.

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant when I said Damon lied about loving me on our second date. I’m not saying he was infatuated or in a pre-love state that he mistook for love. I’m saying he felt nothing for me beyond a desire to use me for his own ends, whatever they might have been.’

  ‘How can you know that for sure?’ Sam asked.

  Hannah glared at him. ‘It should be obvious to you,’ she said. ‘There are some people who inspire passionate love-at-first-sight feelings and some who never have and never will – women like me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Sam. Simon knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘Look at me, Sergeant Kombothekra.’ Hannah pushed back her chair and stood up so that he could see more of her. ‘What man would take one look at this face and this body – or even two looks, or three – and decide he had to have me or he’d go mad? This isn’t self-pity talking. I’m not secretly hoping you’ll both tell me how gorgeous I am. I know I’m not physically attractive. A long way from hideous, yes, but not actively good-looking, and not even ordinary. I look odd. My face is asymmetrical; my body’s out of proportion—’

  ‘Hannah, you’re being way too hard on yourself,’ Sam interrupted gallantly. Simon said nothing. Having listened to her assessment of her own appearance, he was inclined to take her tales of Damon Blundy’s phony love more seriously.

  ‘I’m being hon-est.’ Hannah elongated the last word as if she thought Sam might not have heard it before. ‘Realistic. I know lots of men love women who aren’t pretty, but at first sight? When you look like me, and when it’s a man as handsome as Damon, who could have anyone he wanted, assuming they didn’t loathe him from reading his column? No. I don’t buy it.’ She fell heavily into her chair, as if the effort of standing had drained all her energy. ‘I’m not saying I’m unlovable. I think lots of men might love me if they had the chance to get to know me – intelligent men who care about more than looks – but that sudden at-first-sight kind of love? No. That’s rooted in the superficial. We see an object that, physically, fits some kind of pre-existing fantasy archetype that we harbour, and we start to project onto it – inappropriately strong feelings that have nothing to do with the person within.’

  ‘And you think that, physically, you couldn’t have been Damon’s ideal fantasy type?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Exactly.’ Hannah sounded satisfied.

  ‘Why not? You said it yourself: you’re odd-looking.’

  ‘Simon …’ Sam muttered.

 
‘It’s OK,’ said Hannah. ‘Let him speak.’

  ‘Your appearance is unusual,’ said Simon. ‘Lots of men, maybe even most, would prefer a supermodel type, but not everyone’s the same. You must know that from your patients – aren’t some of their problems unique? And Damon … from a quick look at some of his writing, he doesn’t strike me as having been an average man.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ said Hannah. ‘And thank you for not saying what everyone else I’ve ever discussed this with has said: that I’m beautiful in my own way, that men are just as likely to fall in love with me as they are with a stunning model. Of course they aren’t!’

  ‘Stunning models often don’t look as if they’d be very interesting if you got to know them,’ said Sam.

  Hannah ignored him and addressed Simon instead. ‘You mentioned my patients. You’re right. Most psychological problems and relationship issues are as common as physical attraction to pretty faces and hourglass figures, but every now and then someone turns up with a completely new one, and I think, “Wow. I really ought to write a paper about this case and publish it in a journal.” I had a patient recently who had a pathological terror of train and bus drivers, taxi drivers, aeroplane pilots. She was neurotically convinced that all the people who might conceivably drive her anywhere were in league against her, conspiring to take her to some unspeakably frightening destination that she couldn’t even imagine. She really believed that if they succeeded in getting her there, she’d be destroyed. I mean, she knew logically that it couldn’t be true, but she couldn’t get over her phobia.’

  ‘I feel that way every time I get the number forty-five bus from Rawndesley to Spilling in the morning,’ Uzma called out from the other side of the room. ‘The speed of some of those drivers, tearing round corners.’

  Hannah looked sharply at Sam as if to say, Isn’t it bad enough that my husband’s been murdered? Did you have to send me this idiot as well?

  ‘So maybe Damon had outlandish taste in women,’ said Simon, enjoying Sam’s discomfort at his frankness. ‘Maybe odd-looking was his thing.’

  ‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘There might be a rare man somewhere on this earth whose perfect fantasy woman looks as if she’s been assembled from odd parts found at a car boot sale, but not Damon. You’d know that if you’d read his columns. He wrote in one that he could never love an ugly woman. When I asked him about it, he said, “You’re not ugly, darling,” as I knew he would. His two ex-wives are both beautiful: Princess Doormat and Dr Despot.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Sam.

  ‘That’s what Damon called them, in his column.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to them. What are their real names?’

  ‘Verity Hewson, doormat, and Abigail Meredith, despot.’

  ‘Why “Princess Doormat”?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Damon thought she was spoiled by her father – that’s who she was a doormat for, not Damon. She always tried to persuade him to do whatever her father thought they should do: buy the house he wanted them to buy, tone down his column so as not to embarrass Daddy at the golf club. That’s if you believe Damon,’ Hannah added. ‘I did, actually, about that. I don’t think he lied to me much about anything else – only about loving me.’

  ‘Were Verity and Abigail still on decent terms with Damon?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No, terms of pure hatred, in both cases,’ said Hannah. ‘He was vile to both of them, during and after the marriages. There you go: concrete proof that he’s not a man who’s nice to his wives – so why was he to me? What was he hoping to achieve?’

  Simon didn’t know, but he wanted to. He reminded himself that Hannah might be lying. That struck him as more likely than her being honest but wrong.

  Why dream up such a bizarre lie?

  ‘Do you think Verity or Abigail might have hated Damon enough to kill him?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Either, yes, easily,’ said Hannah. ‘But that applies to dozens of people. Every time Damon published a column, he made between three and ten new enemies.’

  ‘A list of names would be helpful,’ Simon said. ‘The ones you know.’

  ‘It’d make more sense to give you a list of people who didn’t hate him,’ said Hannah. ‘Me. There, that was quick. He should have pretended to be kind and caring with more people the way he did with me. He might still be alive.’

  ‘Going back to this morning …’ said Sam. ‘You said Damon went up to his study at eight thirty?’

  ‘Yes, after breakfast. I didn’t see or hear from him until ten thirty when I took him up a cup of tea and found him.’ Hannah stiffened in her chair at the memory. ‘What does “He is no less dead” mean?’ she asked suddenly, as if the strangeness of the words had only just struck her. ‘Why would someone put that on the wall?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘You can’t think of anything it might mean?’

  ‘No. It makes no sense to me.’

  ‘Between eight thirty and ten thirty, did you hear the doorbell?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No, and I would have. It’s loud down here. No one rang the bell.’

  ‘I’m wondering, in that case, how the killer got into the house without breaking in.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hannah.

  ‘And you didn’t hear Damon talking to anyone, any footsteps, laughter?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No, nothing. But I had the radio on, so nothing that wasn’t really loud would have filtered through. Only the doorbell would have.’

  ‘The phone?’ Sam asked. ‘The landline, I mean.’

  Hannah shook her head.

  Simon wanted to ask her which radio station she’d been listening to, and what programmes she’d heard, but now wasn’t the moment.

  She loved her husband. But she didn’t trust him. So she also hated him.

  She killed him because she’d got nowhere trying to solve the mystery of his secret on her own. If she wanted police help, a murder was the way to get it …

  No. Far-fetched.

  ‘Did you have any contact with Damon between eight thirty this morning and when you found his body at ten thirty?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No. None. He went upstairs after breakfast. I switched the radio on … That was it.’

  ‘Before you found his body this morning, when was the last time you’d been in his study?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Yesterday evening – I went in to put some books back on his shelves. He leaves them lying around all over the house.’

  ‘And when you went in there yesterday, the room looked normal? Nothing there that shouldn’t have been, nothing out of place?’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Nothing. Just Damon’s study, the way it always looked until … today.’

  ‘Hannah, can I clarify something?’ Sam cut in. ‘Between eight thirty and ten thirty this morning, you didn’t go upstairs at all? Didn’t catch sight of Damon, didn’t get any text messages or emails from him?’

  ‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘Nothing. Damon writes in the mornings and resurfaces at lunchtime. I steer clear so as not to interrupt his chain of venom. That’s what he calls it.’

  ‘But this morning you didn’t steer clear,’ Simon pointed out. ‘You went up with a cup of tea for him at ten thirty, you say.’

  ‘Yes.’ Hannah’s mouth twitched. ‘Sometimes in moments of weakness, I’d do that: try and catch him in the act.’ She said this as if it were perfectly normal.

  ‘Catch him doing what?’

  ‘How can I answer that when I don’t know why he pretended to love me? It wasn’t a carefully thought-out strategy; it was just something I did from time to time. If someone’s keeping something from you and you want to find out what it is, it’s worth walking in on them every now and again when they least expect it. Who knows what you might find?’

  ‘And?’ Sam asked.

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Nothing. Whenever I surprised Damon, he was writing his column. Thinking about it now, maybe he anticipated that I’d turn up in his study unannounced from time to time. Maybe he was extra
vigilant during those times. Oh, who knows, who cares! I want to stop caring! I need to stop.’ She pulled at her hair with both hands. ‘But I can’t, even now he’s dead, because he didn’t just have a heart attack or a fatal car crash – he was murdered. That means people more powerful and effective than me suddenly need to know all his secrets as much as I do. Which means new hope for me, and new dread, because now I might find out the truth. It’s horrible. You being here means I can’t let myself give up. It prolongs the torture. Can you understand that?’

  ‘You think Damon’s murder was directly linked to his … pretending to love you, or to whatever made him feel he had to do that?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hannah. ‘Maybe I’m imagining a pattern or shape that isn’t there, but when someone lives a lie – makes a lie of their entire life the way Damon did – aren’t they tempting fate in a very specific way?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Simon.

  ‘They’re issuing a challenge, to death and to the truth: “Come and get me.” Well, one of them turned up this morning,’ Hannah said matter-of-factly, as if she were talking about an actual visitor rather than an abstract concept. ‘I think they both did,’ she added quietly after a few seconds. ‘I think they arrived together.’

  From: Nicki

  Date: Tue, 2 July 2013 09:19:13

  To:

  Subject: Distress signal

  Hi Gavin,

  Something strange and upsetting has happened. Why am I telling you this, when I’m not supposed to be writing to you at all? I don’t know. There’s no one else I can/want to tell. Have you heard of the journalist/columnist Damon Blundy?

  N x

  -----------------------------------------

  From: Mr Jugs

  Date: Tue, 2 July 2013 09:23:08

  To:

  Subject: Re: Distress signal