by Jo Bannister
There was a general chorus of assent. But Richard, listening for it, missed a voice. ‘Will?’
Will was torn. He knew none of them was anxious to hear his opinion right now. But he was sure they were about to make another bad mistake. He said quietly, ‘I don’t think we should split up. Every time we do that someone gets hurt.’
Exasperated, Larry said, ‘It’s because people are hurt that we have to split up. You’re not going to be much use breaking down a door, are you? And Tessa’s had enough for one day. You’d be vulnerable hanging round in the corridor, and in the way if we have to fight him off.’
‘And if we can’t break through we’ll have to come back here,’ added Tariq. ‘I don’t like the idea of leaving the room empty.’
Tessa had neither forgiven nor forgotten. Her voice was a sneer. ‘Don’t worry, Will. We won’t let you come to any harm. I’ll take care of you.’
‘I know you’ll try,’ he murmured bleakly.
‘Oh dear God,’ Sheelagh exclaimed, ‘you’re not back to that again? What does it take to convince you – a maniac sticking your head down a lift shaft? I know: go sit in the corridor. If you’re right it’s the safest place in the building.’
‘What does she mean?’ asked Tessa sharply. ‘What did you mean?’
Sheelagh eyed him askance. ‘Will thinks—’
He interrupted. ‘Will thinks it’s time we heard the truth from you, Tessa. Because he thinks you’ve been rather economical with it so far, and he wonders why.’
The sharp surplus of breath all round was more eloquent than words. They were amazed that he’d say that to the woman’s savaged face when events of the last few minutes had so plainly proved him wrong.
‘Jesus, Will,’ groaned Tariq. ‘Can’t you just—?’
Tessa cut him off unceremoniously. ‘I know what this is about. It’s between me and Will, and it goes back way beyond this weekend.’ Her tawny head lifted, lion-like, her flecked eyes proud. She gave Will a little scornful smile that broadened as it took in the others, inviting complicity. Such was the power of her personality, so much stronger than his, that they found themselves smiling back before they’d heard what she had to say.
‘He’s right. I haven’t been entirely frank. I did know Cathy – as well as he did and better than the rest of you. We were lovers, for a year. She left him for me. I don’t know how he found out – discretion was important to us both – but he has and he can’t forgive me. If I was a man he’d punch my lights out.’ She gave a humorous little snort. ‘If he was.’
The darkness all around crawled with tension. Larry didn’t know where to point the torch. He ended up playing it between them so it captured both the rake of flesh down Tessa’s cheek and Will’s clenched jaw.
Some men might have sworn or struck her, or answered with insults designed to return hurt for hurt. Will responded, characteristically, with a scrupulous attention to the issue that cut through any amount of personal abuse and other distractions. He shook his head. His voice was oddly calm. ‘This isn’t about who Cathy preferred in her bed. It’s about the fact that Joe is missing and other people are lucky to be alive. You’re saying Joe’s responsible – that he tried to kill you too – but that makes no sense. I think you killed him, and tried to kill Miriam, to keep a secret so damning it could blow your world apart.
‘That you were in love with a girl? No. I may be the last person in the civilized world to be shocked by that. That you supplied her with drugs? Maybe – that could come back to haunt you, even this long after, if there was any proof: But why risk everything to hide something that can’t be proved?’ His voice was puzzled; he was thinking aloud, exercising the intellect that was his only impressive feature.
It was a rhetorical question but Tessa chose to answer. She said ironically, ‘Hard to credit, isn’t it?’ She seemed more exasperated than alarmed.
Richard was growing more and more uneasy about the hypothesis they’d constructed in her absence. She wasn’t behaving like someone with a terrible secret. She was behaving like someone who’d been cornered by a crackpot but trusted her companions would rescue her before things got nasty. ‘Go easy, Will,’ he muttered. ‘You’re not in court now. Anyway, I thought you didn’t do prosecutions.’
Will’s gaze was level. ‘I don’t. What I’m doing here is defending.’
‘What you’re doing,’ said Tessa, almost tolerantly, ‘is making an idiot of yourself. Everyone knows why. They may even sympathize. But they’re not going along with your make-believe any more. Why don’t you let it drop now?’
He sighed. ‘Because it matters too much. Because if I’m right you want to kill me, and if I’m wrong Joe wants to kill us all. It’s important to know which.’
She shook her head wearily but said nothing more.
‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘I agree, for the moment, I don’t know why you did it. But I’m pretty sure I know what you did.
‘When you realized what was going on you assumed Miriam knew everything and tried to silence her. When it turned out Joe was behind it you created a diversion, got him away on some pretext and stuck a hypodermic into him. That’s what he was trying to say when we found him – not that he needed an injection, that he’d had one. And we watched while you gave him another. God help us, we even held him for you. Was it insulin?’
‘I told you it was,’ Tessa said irritably.
‘Because it shouldn’t have been. Those weren’t the symptoms of a diabetic collapse. They were the symptoms of hypoglycaemia. Dry skin, diabetic coma – yes?’
‘No,’ she said, meeting his gaze. ‘Damp skin, diabetic coma.’
Taken aback, Will looked at Mrs Venables but the housekeeper couldn’t help. ‘Not as I remember it.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Tessa said caustically. ‘You’re getting your medical input from the lady who makes the tea!’
‘She made it for a diabetic. She had to know what to watch for.’
‘Well, I hope he never went off in front of her because she got it wrong.’
It wasn’t something they could clear up right now. When Miriam was awake she could give a casting vote. ‘Was the first shot insulin too? Wouldn’t an injection of insulin make a healthy person ill? And a second shot endanger his life?’
‘He was ill when I found him,’ Tessa said in her teeth. ‘I treated him and he recovered enough to pick up where he left off.’ She indicated her face. ‘Do you think I did this myself, for God’s sake?’
Will regarded the damage speculatively. ‘Perhaps. I don’t think Joe did it. He certainly didn’t hit you with the lemonade bottle. If he hit you first he’d have woken Tariq, and if he hit Tariq first the bottle would have been shattered. Then there’s the lift. Did it really just break up – generously waiting until no one was standing on it? Or did something hit it bloody hard?’
As with all trials, the room full of people distilled in essence to just these two: the defendant and the prosecuting counsel. The others were observers, witnesses, judges, but these two were the principals. Anyone else could have walked away and the thing gone on; but a backward step by either of these would signal victory for the other. Tessa knew it instinctively, Will because it was how he made his living. Accuser and defendant, mongoose and snake – there was no room for compromise. The only success for either lay in destroying the other.
‘Why are you lying, Tessa?’ Will’s voice was soft, persuasive. ‘All this must matter enormously to you – enough to kill for, more than enough to cut your face for. After all, you had your medical kit. With local anaesthetic and a scalpel you could have done it in a few moments. A scar isn’t too big a price for your safety.’ The glimmer of the torch showed his lips pursed, head tilted like a curious bird’s. ‘What is it, Tessa, that you can’t let anyone know? That’s worth committing fresh crimes, with all the risks of discovery, to conceal?’ The silence was profound: a dropped pin would have battered like gunfire.
It seemed then that on the very brink of succe
ss the mongoose stepped back, lost conviction, went off the whole idea. Will shrugged and his tone was almost apologetic. ‘Perhaps I was wrong about this. You’re right, it suited me to think the worst of you – to blame you for what happened to Cathy. You took her away from people who cared about her, gave her stuff that made a monster of her and then walked away. She probably wasn’t much fun by then, but I wouldn’t have left her like that. None of us would. I blamed you for her suicide.
‘And that was wrong, wasn’t it? Cathy didn’t commit suicide. You murdered her.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They may have believed it, they may not; they may have been waiting for proof. They may just have been too stunned to react. But no one spoke. No one objected, and to Tessa it seemed as if Will spoke for them all. As if she were surrounded by enemies.
She had never shrunk from her enemies. She met his gaze without flinching and her voice was diamond-edged with anger. ‘You’re a sick man, Will Furney, so maybe I should make allowances. But you’re not getting away with that! I know you hate me. I understand why. But nothing justifies what you’re doing to me. You’re piling lie on lie in the hope that, without any kind of evidence, the sheer weight of them will bring me down. Well, I have news for you. I don’t topple that easily.’
The tone of her voice changed as she appealed to the others. ‘You’re thinking I lied too and you’re right – I said I didn’t know Cathy when of course I did. I didn’t consider our relationship anyone else’s business. Maybe I was wrong. I wish I‘d told you everything from the start – we wouldn’t be in this mess if I had. But you must see what Will’s trying to do. He’s gambling that I can’t prove my innocence. He’s out to crucify me, because Cathy loved me more than she loved him.’
Will felt a ripple of empathy like a tide changing in her direction. It prompted a smile that barely made it to his lips. They were like a naive jury being swayed first one way, then the other by the heartstring arpeggios of opposing counsel. Disappointed in them he said tiredly, ‘When we leave here we’ll have all the proof you want. Either Joe will be alive and in a strait-jacket, or he’ll be a corpse full of insulin on the atrium floor. You and I will never have to battle for belief, Tessa, except here and now.’
‘But here and now is what matters,’ she retorted, circling the group with fierce eyes, ‘more than it ever will again. This fantasy of Will’s is dangerous – not just to me, to all of us. If you start listening to him, to even half-believe, you’ll start wondering if Joe’s still out there. You’ll get careless. A moment’s carelessness is all it takes. Miriam turned her back on him and he almost killed her. I nodded off by his bed and he almost killed me. He may not be responsible for his actions, but that’ll be no comfort if he gets his foot in that door. And if you stop thinking of him as a real and present danger, he will.’
Tariq found a voice that wasn’t much more than a croak. ‘Is she right, Will? You’ve no evidence for this? You’re guessing?‘
‘She’s right I have no evidence,’ Will conceded shortly. ‘But I’m not guessing. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Cathy wasn’t the suicide type – we all felt that. It’s why Joe never accepted her death, why it preyed on him. Maybe he didn’t know it himself, but what he was seeking from us was an answer to a question no one had thought to ask – not why did Cathy take her own life but did she?’
‘The inquest said she did. The post-mortem showed she died of drowning. The police found nothing to suggest that anyone else was involved.’
It wasn’t Tessa speaking; for a moment they couldn’t think who it was. Then Larry flicked the torch along the wall and Miriam was sitting on her mattress, her duvet tucked around her like an old Indian in his blanket, Mrs Venables fussing over her like a Buff Orpington. She sounded frail, but she was fully conscious and her mind seemed clear.
‘Welcome back,’ smiled Sheelagh. ‘We were worried about you.’
‘I seem to have missed rather a lot,’ complained Miriam weakly. ‘Do I gather somebody hit me?’
Larry gave a sour chuckle. ‘We were hoping you’d tell us.’
Tessa said, ‘Will thinks it was me. It wasn’t, it was Joe – he had a go at me too. I think the guy’s as near unhinged as makes any difference.’
‘Joe?’
They were wandering in circles when it was vitally important to stick to the point. Richard tried to bring the discussion into focus. ‘Miriam, what can you remember?’
She considered. ‘Best friends. We were playing the best friends game. That’s when you worked out why you were here.’
‘That’s right,’ he said encouragingly. ‘And you told us you were acting for Cathy’s father. Joe. You didn’t tell us that, he did, after you were attacked. Do you remember talking to him that night?’
‘Yes.’
The mood quickened. ‘In your room?’
‘No, his. I told him I’d gone just about as far with this as I was prepared to.’
‘Was he angry?’
‘A little. But I think he was expecting it.’
‘Do you remember going back to your room?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And did you see anyone after that?’
Again a pause while she thought. ‘Tessa.’
So many people caught their breath it sounded like a breeze. Richard kept his voice even. ‘In your room?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she want?’
For the first time Miriam’s voice stumbled. ‘I’m – not sure. Something to do with papers. She wanted to read the paper? I can’t remember.’
‘Try to remember this,’ he said. ‘This is important. Do you remember her leaving?’
She didn’t even have to think about that. ‘Yes. We talked a little and then she went. I’m sure she did.’
Another corporate sigh as the pent breaths were let go. They’d thought the answer within reach but it was only a will-o’-the-wisp after all: they looked on it and it was gone. Miriam had nothing useful to report. Joe could have come to her room later and carried out the attack; so could Tessa; so for that matter could Midge or any of them. She genuinely didn’t know. Perhaps she never saw her assailant.
Will said, ‘What papers, Tessa? Miriam may not remember but you must.’
He had her against the ropes of her own credibility: if she refused to answer, certain conclusions were inevitable. She sniffed. ‘The autopsy. Miriam said she had a copy of the post-mortem. I wanted to see it.’
‘Why?’
‘I wasn’t at the inquest. No one approached me and in all the circumstances I saw no reason to volunteer. But we were lovers once. I wanted to know how she died.’
‘It was in the newspapers. Admittedly I didn’t see it. I was—’ Will stopped abruptly, as if he’d blundered into a trap he’d dug and forgotten to mark.
Richard’s scalp crawled. ‘Abroad? That’s what you said.’ He hadn’t believed it then, wouldn’t believe it if Will repeated it now.
Will took a deep breath and slowly nodded. ‘I did, didn’t I? It wasn’t true. I spent four months in a psychiatric unit in Norfolk. A combination of depression and exhaustion, they said. I was off on the Planet Zog when Cathy died. The only papers I saw in that time had inkblot butterflies on them. But my secretary read about it. Cathy was famous once, there was a certain amount of interest in how she died. Linda – my secretary – broke the news once I got home.’
‘But not in much detail?’
His narrow shoulders etched an embarrassed shrug. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t deal with it. It was too late to do anything – I tried to put it out of my mind. Not altogether successfully. I don’t know how many times I picked up the phone and dialled Norfolk, and put it down again before they could answer. It’s funny. I bet you think I couldn’t wait to leave that place. But if it’s what you need, you stop thinking of it as an institution and start seeing it as a sanctuary. Literally, an asylum. The difficult part is breaking away when they tell you you’r
e fit to go. I think that’s why I came here – for another taste of sanctuary.’
Richard stared at him, appalled. They’d listened to him. They’d gone along with much of what he’d proposed. They’d seriously considered the possibility that Tessa had killed two people and tried to kill others, on the unsupported suspicions of a man who’d spent four months in a psychiatric institution. They might have left her with Joe in the corridor because of what Will said.
Tariq too was thinking. But he was considering not Will’s actions but Tessa’s. ‘What could you learn from the post-mortem report that you didn’t already know?’
She resented being quizzed but had better reasons for answering than staying silent. She didn’t want to leave any suspicion in their minds that she had something to hide. ‘In the event, nothing. Cathy drove into the river and drowned – it was that simple. Suicide.’ Her voice hardened. ‘So can we please see these wild allegations for what they are? Will’s a sad man with a history of mental illness set on punishing someone for his misery. Maybe he has cause to hate me, but he’s wrong about me harming Cathy. The only thing I did wrong was fall for someone with no sense of proportion. Cathy spent ten years trying to be the best. When she realized she wasn’t going to make it she preferred to crash in flames rather than make a new life for herself out of the spotlight. None of us is responsible for that.’
Trying to decide where the truth lay, Tariq was defeated by the dearth of facts. Neither version of events could be proved or disproved on what they knew for sure. But time alone would deliver a judgement and he saw no alternative to waiting. He didn’t even know who he wanted to believe. If Tessa was telling the truth it only meant that Will was mistaken; but if he was right then Tessa had killed two people. He said tiredly, ‘This is getting us nowhere. Can we leave it for now and concentrate on getting out of here?’
There was a general murmur of consent. No one wanted to judge, on ambiguous evidence, whether one of their number was paranoid or the other a murderer. With no facts they weren’t prepared, weren’t able, to make a choice.
