Faithful unto Death

by Caroline Graham

  Here Barnaby paused and glanced at the familiar face of his watch. Just on six thirty. Time to draw the briefing to a close. Time to have a wash, a cup of tea and a quiet reflective fifteen minutes in his office. Because for the next encounter he knew he would need to be very much on his toes. And that was putting it mildly.

  Accompanied by Sergeant Beryl, DCI Barnaby entered the same interview room that was used when he had talked to Sarah Lawson. He had no particular course of action in mind. Nothing up his sleeve, no rehearsed rhetoric or cunning verbal games. Just prepared to play it as it lays.

  Simone and Jill Gamble broke off talking as the detectives went in and Barnaby got the feeling that they had been in discussion for some time.

  Simone was looking very composed. Obviously deciding to split the difference between the flamboyant splendour of her last public appearance and the milkmaid demureness of all previous ones, she wore a grey silk shirt dress, polished silver triangles in her ears and a carved coral bracelet. Discreet make-up lay on her skin like a natural bloom and her perfume was light and flowery. Barnaby was relieved to discover it was not Joy.

  He shook hands with Jill Gamble whom he knew quite well. Sergeant Beryl set up the tape and the interrogation began. The solicitor spoke first.

  “I should say straightaway Chief Inspector, that my client denies the charge that has been brought against her. She does not, however, deny that she was at Nightingales on the evening of her husband’s death and is willing to answer frankly any questions that you might wish to put to her regarding this whole case.”

  “That’s very encouraging,” said the Chief Inspector. “So, Mrs. Hollingsworth—”

  “Oh, Inspector Barnaby!” cried Simone. She leaned forward, clasping her hands. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that it’s all over. At last.”

  “I’m sure we’re all—”

  “You’ve no idea how unhappy I’ve been. I’d got to the stage where I was saving up the tablets I’d got from the doctor . . .” She looked anxiously at her brief who nodded encouragingly. “I felt I’d rather be dead than go on living the way I was. I’d asked Alan for a separation, so I could go back to London and make a new life. But he said he’d never let me go. And if I ran away he’d find me wherever I was and . . . kill me . . .”

  “So, you decided to get your retaliation in first?” The phrase reminded him sharply of Troy and his voice was harsher than it might otherwise have been.

  “It wasn’t like that. If you’re going to make everything sound so calculated—”

  “If pulling open thirty capsules, disposing of the casings, mixing the powder that was left with whisky and persuading someone to drink it isn’t calculating I don’t know what is.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “So tell me.”

  “It’s difficult.” Simone pulled a little silk square from her bag, dabbed at her eyes, slid the hanky through her bracelet and sighed. Then she said something so outrageous that Barnaby thought at first his ears were deceiving him. “The thing is, I don’t want to get Sarah into trouble.”

  “Miss Lawson has already been arrested and charged, as you are well aware,” said the Chief Inspector when he’d got his breath back. “She has also made a full confession as to her part in the conspiracy. Now, tell me about your relationship.”

  “Well . . .” Simone settled herself comfortably, folding her hands in her lap. “It all started shortly after I moved to Fawcett Green. She started asking me round for coffee. And I did go sometimes, out of sheer loneliness. But it was ever so embarrassing. All talk about art and music and stuff, showing me books with paintings in and trying to get me interested. Then she started putting her arm round my shoulder, moving in close, that sort of thing. She wanted to sketch me and I gave it a go but it was so boring. Just sitting there, not able to move, staring into space.”

  “What sort of drawings were these?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

  “I didn’t take nothing—anything off, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “If you felt like this about Miss Lawson,” said Barnaby, “how on earth did you come to be doing her course?”

  “She kept on and on about how art could change my life. Naturally I never believed that. But in the end I thought, why not give it a whirl? I’d get out of that poky hole and meet a few new faces. But the car journeys were that tense I couldn’t stick it. She never actually did anything but I got all this hassle about women’s friendships and how we were really sisters in heart, mind and soul. I thought, do me a favour. Then, after the third or fourth class, things really came to a head.”

  Simone broke off here, took a sip of water and sat quietly for a moment before continuing. Barnaby understood the pause which he was sure would be the first of many, for although there had been plenty of time to work out both the plot and emotional subtext, the telling of the story was bound to be extremely complex.

  “On the way home Sarah turned off into a little lane near Hellions Wychwood. I got quite twitchy—I was sure she was going to make a grab at me—but she was really calm. She just said she loved me more than anything in the world and wanted me to leave Alan and come and live with her. I was knocked sideways. She promised she would never make any demands on me. Well,” Simone gave a coarse chuckle, “we’ve all heard that one.

  “She said she’d sell the cottage and buy a house wherever I liked. I said I liked the Smoke and she’d be lucky to get a one-bedroom flat in Walthamstow in exchange for that old Bay Tree dump. She told me she had a bit of money put by and some things of her parents she could sell. It was all a bit pathetic, to tell you the truth.”

  That’ll be the day, thought Barnaby.

  “So was that the last time you went to the class?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

  Simone hesitated, frowning.

  Barnaby said, “It must be difficult, Mrs. Hollingsworth.”

  “What?”

  “Trying to remember what comes next.”

  “I don’t know why you’re being so sarcastic.” Her soft rosy bottom lip started to tremble.

  “Perhaps I can jog your memory.”

  “Please don’t put words in my client’s mouth.” Jill Gamble spoke with some annoyance. “Perhaps you have forgotten that she is doing her very best to cooperate with you in every way.”

  Sergeant Beryl bridged the following chilly pause by repeating his question.

  Eventually Simone said, “That’s right. Alan discovered I’d been going. He was very jealous and could be violent. So I had to give up.”

  “And he was so grateful,” said Barnaby, “that he bought you a diamond necklace worth nearly a quarter of a million.”

  “Alan loved giving presents. It was almost the first thing that attracted me to him.” She looked puzzled when both detectives laughed and murmured something to her solicitor.

  Jill Gamble shook her head. “It’s all right. You’re doing fine.”

  “You know what he did to raise the money?” Barnaby said.

  “Vaguely. But, me and business . . .” Simone lifted her slender shoulders and sighed. Her pretty brow wrinkled with incomprehension. Plainly she was as a child in these matters.

  “Why do you think he took such desperate measures?”

  “Heavens, I don’t know.”

  “I suggest that, far from your husband being the forceful and domineering partner, all the power in that marriage lay in your hands, Mrs. Hollingsworth. And that you told Alan, not for the first time, that if he didn’t buy you exactly what you wanted you would leave.”

  Simone shrank slightly at this and looked more waifish then ever. She remained silent but her response was written clearly in those ravishing eyes. Prove it.

  And, of course, he couldn’t.

  “It was after this painful episode that the plan for your escape was conceived?”

  “That’s right. Sarah didn’t give up. She came round to Nightingales several times and got that worked up at Alan’s brutality she threatened to have a go
at him.”

  “Awkward,” commented Sergeant Beryl.

  “Anyway, one day she turned up with the kidnap plan. She knew I’d worked in television; I’d told her all about making up actors as road accident victims and corpses and that. Her idea sounded really simple. I’d disappear, we’d mock up some piccies, collect the money and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “And afterwards?” asked Barnaby.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Did you lead her to understand that you would then be on the brink of a glorious new future together?”

  “I suggested we just took it a step at a time.”

  “How wise.”

  “And I told her I couldn’t possibly leave without my darling Nelson. So we arranged that I put him in a box on the patio and she would pick him up. I put one of the tranquillisers Dr. Jennings gave me into his breakfast so he’d stay nice and quiet. Poor sweetie.”

  “You told me on Tuesday the box held Kilner jars.”

  “But Inspector, on Tuesday I was still very confused.”

  “So. On disappearance day you took the bus and Sarah took the cat.”

  “She drove over with him at tea time to that absolutely foul flea pit she’d rented. She brought the stuff for my face—I’d given her a list earlier—food for me and Nelson, some magazines and a litter tray. Then she went back to Fawcett Green to make sure she was seen around the place. Sort of an alibi during the time I was banged up. She just came back here to collect the letters and take them to the post.”

  “Your timing’s a bit cockeyed on that one, isn’t it, Mrs. Hollingsworth?” suggested Barnaby. Aware of having caught her out, he felt the first glimmer of satisfaction since the interview began. “We know from talking to Penstemon that you rang your husband at five fifteen the day you disappeared. How could you do that if you were already incarcerated at Flavell Street?”

  She didn’t even hesitate. “Sarah bought me a sweet little mobile. We needed a phone, you see, to give instructions about the ransom though that first call to Alan was entirely my own idea. I thought it would get us off to a good start.”

  Barnaby remembered the drunken anguish of Simone’s husband as described by Constable Perrot. “It certainly did that.”

  “In fact the whole thing went like a house on fire. Sarah made all the other calls, disguising her voice, naturally, while I cried and kept shouting. ‘Don’t hurt me’ in the background.” She made it sound like a jolly jape. When no one responded in kind, let alone gave any sign of admiration for such resourcefulness, Simone frowned again, this time somewhat peevishly.

  It occurred to Barnaby then that a way through that impregnable composure might be found by the application of flattery.

  “I must say the whole plan seems to have been very cunningly worked out.”

  “I thought so.” The shadow of guileless petulance lifted.

  “Especially the set-up at Heathrow.”

  “Oh, that was fabulous.” For a moment he thought she was going to clap her hands. “Sarah came over around four o’clock on Monday, bringing some shabby clothes she’d picked up in a jumble sale. I made her up to look like an old woman—quite brilliantly if I might say so—and around half past six, off she went.”

  “We know all about what happened when she got there.”

  “Do you really?” Simone looked both genuinely impressed and slightly alarmed.

  “I presume she changed back into her own clothes before collecting your husband’s briefcase?”

  “That’s right. She took them with her in a string bag plus a pot of removal cream.”

  It was so obvious once you knew the trick. Barnaby felt he was being led around backstage by a magician. Shown the false fronts and distorting mirrors and concealed trap doors. And still to come was the grand finale.

  “And what were you doing while all this was going on?”

  “This is going to sound really awful,” began Simone.

  “Come to a bad bit, have we, Mrs. Hollingsworth?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

  Barnaby couldn’t help laughing again and Jill Gamble gave an irritated little cough.

  “Sarah’s a very dominant personality,” continued Simone. “This was her plan, she was running everything and I was just a pawn in the game. I thought what if, once she’d got the money, she never came back? There wouldn’t be nothing I could do about it.”

  “Surely her feelings for you would have brought her back,” suggested Barnaby. He was finding it more and more difficult to keep his temper at this heartless reversal of the truth.

  “Oh, feelings! All they mean is somebody’s all over you till they get what they want then you don’t see ’em for dust.”

  “So you decided to keep an eye on her?”

  “Yes. There was a scarf of hers in the flat. I wrapped it round my face as well as I could—”

  “What on earth for?” asked Sergeant Beryl.

  “Because I was all bashed up, why do you think?”

  “Why didn’t you clean it off?”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “I would have thought,” suggested Barnaby, “that as the last photograph must have been despatched on Saturday and this was now Monday evening, you would have had ample time.”

  Simone stared at him, her lovely face so blank she could have been dreaming. Her shimmering hazel eyes opened very wide, reflecting what they saw like pools of liquid light. Behind them he knew her mind was racing.

  “A really complicated make-up such as I was wearing can take a long time to construct. Two or three hours at least. We had one last photograph to take and I didn’t want to start again from scratch.”

  “You were going to ask for more money?”

  “No, no.” Perish the thought. “But Sarah believed, and I’m sure she was right, that Alan would never give up looking for me while he thought I was still alive. After his first wife left he made her life such a misery she had to take a court order out against him. He didn’t give up till she remarried. So, I was to become a corpse. Throat cut, probably. I do a very realistic knife job.”

  It had taken her all of five seconds to come up with a completely convincing answer soundly based on an accurate assessment of her husband’s character. Barnaby, who had been sure he knew the real reason for the non-removal of the make-up, felt his confidence slipping slightly. Not his belief in her guilt, never that. But in his ability to lay this guilt out, pin it down supported by scrupulous evidence, before a judge and jury. And prove it.

  “So I rang for a cab and told him the airport. I’d no idea where Sarah might’ve parked but I knew exactly where Alan would be because he’d been given strict instructions. So I decided to check him out arriving with the money, wait till he came back and drove off, then go and find Sarah and give her a lovely surprise.” She chirruped with pleasure, sounding like an excited little bird. “But it all went horribly wrong.”

  Barnaby interrupted her there. Partly because the interview had already lasted over an hour and he needed to change the tape. Partly because he sensed that control of it had somehow slipped from his hands and he was determined to get it back.

  He ordered some drinks and sandwiches to be brought up from the canteen. Simone sipped half-heartedly at a cup of very weak lime tea and said she couldn’t possibly swallow a thing. The men dove in and all the edibles quickly disappeared.

  Then the two women went to the loo and Sergeant Beryl stepped out of the building for a cigarette. Barnaby was left alone with his thoughts which were not comfortable. So far he hadn’t managed to make even the slightest dent in Simone, Hollingsworth’s slippery but totally convincing performance as a victim of bullying and gross injustice.

  Feeling suddenly stiff and awkward in his chair, he got up and walked around. He flexed his shoulders and turned his head from side to side to loosen up the neck muscles. He felt the need of a sharp gust of fresh air to stir his sluggish mind but knew the atmosphere outside to be warm and humid. The complete silence in the room pressed upon him. There
was not even the hiss of the tape for company. He should have gone outside with Beryl.

  On her return, Simone picked up precisely where she had broken off. The taxi having put her down near the Short Stay Car Park, she made her way to the top level in the lift and walked to the far end. Barely minutes later the Audi convertible turned up. Simone ducked down behind a Lan-drover. Alan parked any old how, got out slamming the door and raced off without even bothering to lock it.

  “And thank God he didn’t because who should drive in then but that weird girl from The Larches. She got out of her Mini, crouched down behind the other cars and started creeping along by the wall! I scrambled into the back of the Audi just in time. I pulled a travelling rug over me in case she looked through the window. I waited—oh, I don’t know, ten or fifteen minutes—and I was just wondering if it was safe to climb out when Alan came back!”

  “Oh dear,” said Sergeant Beryl.

  “There was shouting, quite near. Then, when Alan started the car up, the passenger door opened and someone tried to get in. I couldn’t see any of this you understand, but I could hear the voices. She kept saying, ‘You’re ill’ and “Let me help you.” He told her to get out and I think he pushed her. Then he drove off but I could still hear her calling to him to stop. I think perhaps she was hanging on to the door handle or maybe her dress was caught up. Then there was this terrific bump and she screamed and he stopped the car. “I heard him swearing. He got out and then there was another sound. More of a bang followed by a thud. Then he got back into the car and drove away.”

  Here Simone paused, turned a fresh, untroubled profile to Jill Gamble and asked if she could possibly have a fresh glass of water as this one had got rather tepid in the heat. She listened gratefully to her solicitor’s murmured encouragement. Then she tugged her grey silk handkerchief free of the confining bracelet and dabbed at her dry eyes.

  Barnaby watched her, his hands resting lightly on the edge of the metal table. He was pleased to see that, whatever else she could do, Simone Hollingsworth could not cry to order. As he waited he was aware of a certain melancholy satisfaction that he would now be able to inform the Brockleys that the loss of their daughter was due to a tragic accident. After all, there was little point in raising a charge of manslaughter against a man already dead.