Kathy interrupted, face grim. ‘We’re not quite ready to begin, Mr Ogilvie. Just some housekeeping first. Your full name, address and home telephone number, please.’
He complied, giving an address in Hayes.
‘Do you own or rent any other properties?’
‘No.’
‘What about your work address?’
‘Surely… surely you don’t need to involve them?’
‘Just routine.’
She left again, to make arrangements for a search warrant for Ogilvie’s home and office, then returned to the interview room and switched on the equipment, formally opening the interview. She spread the pictures out on the table. ‘I’m showing Mr Ogilvie eight prints of photographs found in his mobile phone camera, all of which show Marion Summers before and at the time of her collapse in the London Library on Tuesday last, the third of April, shortly before her death. Do you agree that you took these pictures, Mr Ogilvie?’
He bit his lip, a pained expression on his face, pudgy fingers fiddling with the corner of one of the pictures. ‘This is extremely embarrassing, but it’s not what you think. I had no… bad intentions.’
He gazed at her anxiously, searching for some glimmer of empathy, and saw none.
‘They gave me this phone at work, you see-insisted on it, so that they could keep in touch. My publishing director loves phoning me at odd times with his latest brainwaves-during dinner, on the train, at weekends. I hate the damn thing, but I did find the camera quite intriguing, once I’d worked out how to use it. I thought at first that I could take pictures of pages from the books I was studying-I’ve seen other people doing that-but I found the quality not very good, and decided to stick to photocopies. But I did find it amusing to record incidents of daily life.’
‘Of Marion Summers’ daily life, you mean. Not your wife and kids.’
‘I don’t have a wife and kids. Marion is, was, a very striking young woman. I find most of the people at the library rather, well, predictable, but she was an intriguing mystery. She was very beautiful, like the Pre-Raphaelite women she was studying. I liked to speculate about her life, but in the most innocent way.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I asked myself, did she have a husband? A lover?’
‘And did she?’
‘I don’t know. I never found out.’
‘Did you follow her home?’
He looked startled. ‘No.’
‘Do you know where she lived?’
‘No, no.’
‘How do you know she was studying Pre-Raphaelite women?’
‘Ah… I noticed the books she was reading and, er, I looked up her borrowing record on Gael Rayner’s computer when she was away from her desk.’
‘You were stalking her.’
Ogilvie winced. ‘No, please, it wasn’t like that. There was nothing predatory about it. I was just intrigued. She was so refreshing, a free spirit. And then, when she collapsed like that, it was so terrible, like fate…’
‘Fate?’
‘Yes.’ He reached for one of the last pictures, and drew it out with the tips of his fingers as if afraid it might burn him. It showed Marion on the floor, her red hair fanning out, surrounded by a sprinkling of wild blooms. ‘Don’t you see? Ophelia… You must know it, in the Tate, the Millais painting.’
Ophelia. Kathy remembered that the name had been on Tina’s word list. Ogilvie looked at her blank face, then his expression crumpled. ‘Oh my God, this is a nightmare.’
Kathy, her voice softening a little, as if in sympathy at his predicament, said, ‘Please understand, Nigel, that we will discover everything. It is important that you are completely frank with me from the start, or else things will go very badly for you. Now, what part did you play in Marion’s death?’
He shook his head so hard his whole body vibrated. ‘No, no, nothing!’
‘Was it a prank, to get her attention?’
‘I swear, no.’
‘You put something in her lunch during the morning, didn’t you? Perhaps you just intended to make her a little unwell, so that you could be a good Samaritan and take her home. Was that it?’
Ogilvie moaned, gasping his denials.
‘You know how she died, don’t you?’
‘I’ve read the newspapers. People in the library have been talking about it.’
‘What’s your understanding of what happened?’
‘Well, I believe she went out to have her lunch in the square, as I told you…’
He stammered his account, and all the time Kathy was willing him to say the word that hadn’t been in the papers: arsenic. That would clinch it. But he came to the end without a hint of it, and no matter how she probed, he repeated only, ‘Poison, that’s what I read.’
She showed him the picture of Rafferty, and watched a twitch of alarm cross his face. ‘Do you know this man?’
‘Is he… Is he…?’
‘You recognise him, don’t you?’
‘I think I may have seen him-in the square. I thought he was watching Marion.’
‘You know him, Nigel. Did he give you the poison to put in Marion’s lunch?’
‘Oh dear Lord, no, no, a thousand times no!’
Kathy gave a deep sigh. ‘You took other pictures of Marion, didn’t you?’
‘Um…’ He frowned at the photos, as if trying to recall.
‘Before last Tuesday,’ Kathy prompted.
‘No, no. I don’t believe so. Really, I wasn’t in the habit…’
‘We have a witness, someone who saw you in the square one day, taking pictures of Marion with your camera.’
His eyes widened in alarm.
‘I warned you, didn’t I, Nigel, about lying to me? It means I can’t believe anything you tell me.’
‘I swear-’
‘Do you own a computer?’
His face was now as white as the sheet of paper in Kathy’s pad.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is it?’
‘At… at home.’
‘In Hayes?’
He nodded, jaw locked.
‘And at work, you have the use of a computer?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘On your desk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you live alone?’
‘No. I live with my mother. She’s elderly, infirm. My father passed away, it was their home. I moved back when my mother became frail.’
‘I would like your permission to search your house.’
‘No!’
‘You refuse?’
A blush appeared on his cheek and he seemed to puff up a little in defiance. ‘Yes, I refuse. It’s out of the question. It would be far too distressing for my mother.’
‘Very well. I’m suspending this interview now. I’ll arrange for you to get a cup of tea.’
When they were outside, Kathy said to the PC, ‘I’m going to wait for the search warrant, but in the meantime I’d like you to go on ahead to his house. See if there’s going to be a problem with his mother’s state of health. Be gentle and reassuring. Say Nigel has given us some very helpful evidence and he’ll be along shortly. Get her talking. Has he had girlfriends? Does he experiment with chemicals? Does he have a lock-up somewhere? But don’t be too obvious.’
While she waited Kathy logged on to the Tate Britain website and looked up ‘Ophelia’. The image of the Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece came up on the screen, the demented young woman from Hamlet floating in the dark stream, russet hair spreading in the current, wild flowers in the water around her. He was right, Kathy thought. It was her. Apparently the model, Lizzie Siddal, later Rossetti’s wife and laudanum victim, nearly died of pneumonia posing for the painting in a bath. Sex and death, Kathy thought, imagining what Marion would have made of Lizzie’s story, suffering for her lover’s art.
•
When Kathy arrived at the house in Hayes, it was the constable who answered her knock. She shook her head, looking over Kathy’s shoulder at Ogilvie sitting ashen in the patrol car, the white van with the search team parked behind, and said in a murmur, ‘Alzheimer’s, I’m afraid. She’s cheerful enough, just can’t remember things. I had to remind her who Nigel was. She seemed to think he was still at school.’
The search of Mrs Ogilvie’s home made Kathy feel grubby. It was a small, anonymous detached house in a leafy suburban street, which gradually came to life at the intrusion of the police vehicles. The garden was meticulously groomed, the interior fastidiously tidy. If this is worthy of police time, it seemed to protest, then we’re all in trouble. And indeed the only guilty secret they found was a small and rather embarrassing collection of pornography in Nigel’s bedroom-he was something of a rubber fetishist, it seemed. Apart from that he seemed to lead a pretty boring life, Kathy thought; small wonder he’d found Marion Summers entrancing. They found no trace of chemicals, but there was the computer, of course, to be taken away and examined. Nigel watched from his bedroom window as it was carried out to the van, then abruptly turned to Kathy.