“Would you like a tissue?” asked the policeman.
“No, I’m fine. Really.”
“So you made tea and took it up. And then?” asked the policeman.
“I dialled 999,” said Margaret. “An ambulance came at once, but it was too late. Too late! A heart attack, they thought. At first, anyway. Until the autopsy report.”
“So you now know the cause of death?”
“Sleeping pills...” Margaret fingered the top button of her blouse and bit her lip.
“Do you know where he might have got them?”
“I checked the bedside table and mine were all gone. Lionel must have found them and taken them.”
“He must have taken a large number of them. Is it possible that he was trying to commit suicide? Had he ever expressed any suicidal thoughts?”
Margaret considered this. A simple ‘yes’ was tempting. On the other hand a brief discussion with any of Lionel’s friends would contradict that. Lionel’s joviality had been one of the more irritating of his characteristics. To lie quite so blatantly at this stage might attract suspicion. And the idea that he might have died trying to kill her was so much more appropriate.
“No. That’s the odd thing. He didn’t. I wondered, though... You see, that last evening he made omelettes for the two of us. And I did notice sort of little white specks in one of them. I mean — what if he’d crumbled my pills into one of the omelettes intending to kill me, then mixed them up...?”
The policeman looked at her oddly. “Why would he do that?”
“Well, we had had a bit of an argument...”
“What about?”
She told him. The policeman shook his head. “Hardly enough to justify murder,” he said.
“On the contrary,” she said indignantly.
The policeman flicked through his notebook. “Your neighbour reported overhearing an argument that evening,” he said. “But we thought—”
“He was an irritating troublemaker?”
“That had occurred to us.”
“Well, yes, he is. But he can be trusted on that. There was an argument.”
“Your neighbour’s evidence was that you had threatened to kill your husband.”
“Really? I doubt he heard that distinctly.”
“He says he did.”
“He’s a bit deaf.”
“He told us he happened to have his ear pressed up against the wall, for some reason he can no longer remember. He heard every single word. It’s just that it seemed a bit improbable, until now...”
“Look,” said Margaret, “we had an argument, then Lionel tried to poison my omelette. Any idiot should be able to see that.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t the other way round?”
“Of course not,” said Margaret.
“Would you like to phone your lawyer now or later?” asked the policeman.
“It would,” said the barrister, “be ridiculous to suppose that the argument that you had would cause you to poison your husband.”
“It wasn’t exactly what we argued about that was so important,” said Margaret, “so much as the fact that Lionel refused to see that it was actually a problem of any sort. Typical man.”
The barrister was pensive for a moment. “Well,” he said, “for my part, I can’t imagine that any sensible jury would see it as a motive for murder.”
“But it may conversely have been enough to make him try to murder me,” said Margaret. “You see, I have this theory...”
“I know you do,” said the barrister. He had a patronising manner not entirely unlike Lionel’s. “That’s why we’re where we are. Please leave this to me. I think we should stick to the facts, which are that there is no evidence that it wasn’t suicide. That was what the police thought. That is what they would still think if you hadn’t talked so much about omelettes.”
Fine. Suicide then, if that’s what he reckoned.
“Which of course it was,” said Margaret.
“Precisely,” said the barrister.
The barrister was scarcely much older than her son, Margaret thought. “Anyway,” she said, “if any reasonable jury — I mean a jury of women — knew what Lionel had done and what he said, they would never convict me. Can we fix it so that I get a jury made up entirely of women?”
“No,” said the barrister.
“That seems very unreasonable.”
“The law sometimes is.”
“But I might just get an all-woman jury by pure chance?”
“The odds are two to the power of eleven against.”
“Sounds good enough to me,” said Margaret.
Margaret counted the jurors as they were sworn in. Nine women and three men. Hopefully the women would keep the three men under control.
The prosecution barrister outlined the case for the Crown. Margaret could see his heart wasn’t really in it. Being a man too, he couldn’t really see that what Lionel had done was worth killing anyone for. A lot of his questioning was perfunctory.
Margaret’s neighbour gave evidence (after which he could forget any chance she’d ever take in a parcel for him again or warn him when the parking wardens were on the prowl). Yes, he’d heard the argument. They often argued. On this occasion she’d definitely threatened to kill him. It wasn’t the first time he heard her say that. At this point, one or two of the female jurors glanced at Margaret sympathetically. She smiled back when she hoped the judge wasn’t looking.
During the lunch break on the second day she got a text message from somebody claiming to be a member of the jury. Hang in there, sister, it read. She deleted it at once, but it gave her a comfortable glow all afternoon. When her turn came to be cross-examined she watched the jury carefully and noticed several women nodding in agreement with her answers. The male jurors looked less certain but, she was pleased to notice, they already had a beaten expression. They had been spoken to. Firmly.
“I think that went well,” said her barrister, removing his wig and easing his collar. “Other than your raising that idea that he might have been trying to poison you. Could you please not do that?”
“It was worth a try.”
“No, it wasn’t. You will kindly allow me to decide what is and isn’t worth a try.”
“You are arguing the case very cogently.”
The barrister nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
That night she had another text message — goodness knows how they had found her phone number, but everything is out there on the internet if you look. It read: Lionel was completely in the wrong. You have the full sympathy of nine out of twelve of the jury.
Margaret deleted it. You couldn’t be too careful. It would be a shame if they had to go for a retrial just because she had been chatting harmlessly to the jury.
On the third day she listened to the evidence of various expert witnesses with varying degrees of indifference. Let them pontificate on the effects of barbiturates. Let them quote statistics on suicides. Let them talk about the unlikelihood of blah, blah, blahdy, blah. This jury was never going to convict her. It would have been pleasant to show that professor of toxicology the texts she had received and to see his face when he realised how futile his words were.
She scanned the jury to see if she could guess who had sent her the messages. A young-ish woman in a batik dress, no make-up and hair tied in a bun looked both sympathetic and capable of locating her on the internet.
Margaret spent much of the afternoon working out what Lionel’s clocks were worth and what she could do with the money once the trial was over. She’d always wanted to go to Bhutan.
That evening the text read: Your barrister doesn’t have a clue, does he? Still, we understand, though we did have to explain it to the men on the jury. We’re with you all the way.