Sudden fear came into the woman’s face. ‘Glen said I should see you. But why are you here? You’re not about to tell the police who I really am?’
‘No, of course I’m not. You haven’t committed any crime. At least, as far as I know you haven’t. There’s no law against changing your name and starting a new life.’
‘No. No, there isn’t.’ But she didn’t sound certain about it.
‘I can assure you, I have no desire to upset you. If you want to continue being here as Mary White, that’s your business and not mine. All I’m interested in is establishing the circumstances of Harry Lasalle’s death. It would appear to have been suicide. That’s certainly the verdict of his wife Veronica. But there are rumours going around Fethering of murder.’
‘Always rumours going round Fethering,’ said the woman wryly. ‘One of the reasons why I left.’
Jude was desperate to know what the other reasons were, but she didn’t want to rush things. Mary White/Anita Garner was clearly highly strung and capable of clamming up at any moment.
‘Yes. Look, Mary’ – better to stick with her chosen identity – ‘I do want to ask you some questions, but if there’s anything that is too intrusive, or that you don’t want to answer for any reason … well, that’s fine with me. I’m not here to invade your privacy.’
‘No.’ The tone implied that Jude already had invaded her privacy. ‘I’m only seeing you because Glen said I should. He suggested that if I answered your questions, that would avoid a much more public enquiry into my life.’
Jude felt pleased – and just a little bit guilty – that her mendacious approach to Glen Porter had worked so well.
She was about to start on the few, inadequate questions she had been planning on her way from Lime Street Station when Mary came in with one of her own. ‘Where was my handbag found?’
‘As I said, it was in Footscrow House.’
‘Where in Footscrow House?’
‘It was hidden in a boarded-up alcove, in a room which, apparently, back when the place had been a care home, had been used as a staff bedroom.’
Mary White let out a little involuntary gasp. The colour left her face.
‘One thing intrigued me,’ Jude went on. ‘Well, many things intrigued me about your handbag, but the dominant one is the presence of your passport in it.’
‘Why particularly?’
‘Because, from all accounts, you’d never been abroad and had no intention of going abroad.’
‘Perhaps not, but a passport’s a useful thing to have … you know, as a proof of identity or …’ The argument sounded pretty feeble.
‘So, you weren’t secretly planning to go abroad at that time?’
‘No. Why would I want to do that?’
‘Possibly to meet up with Pablo?’
Her face turned what could only be described as a whiter shade of pale.
‘How on earth do you know about Pablo?’
‘I killed Harry,’ said Veronica Lasalle.
She sat upright on a kitchen chair in High Tor. The Aga spread warmth, Gulliver snored snugly in front of it, but the atmosphere was far from relaxed.
‘Why are you telling me?’ asked Carole. She wanted to know if it was the payoff to her plan, apart from anything else.
The response from Veronica confirmed it, very gratifyingly. ‘Because you’ve been spreading rumours in the Crown and Anchor, rumours about Roland.’
Not for the first time, Carole was astonished by the speed of the Fethering grapevine. She had chosen well in using Barney Poulton as a conduit for the false information.
‘I thought,’ Veronica went on, ‘I could get away with it. I thought everyone would accept the conclusion that Harry had taken his own life. But the gossip about it being murder started to spread. I hoped it’d die down. But it didn’t. And, once people – well, not “people” – you’ – she larded the pronoun with contempt – ‘once you started spreading accusations about Roly, I knew I had to confess the truth.’
Though Veronica Lasalle was furiously angry, she showed no other emotions which might be expected from a woman who had recently killed her husband. No regret, no contrition, no shock and certainly no guilt.
‘So, why did you do it, Veronica?’ asked Carole.
‘To save Harry the unhappiness which the inevitable investigation would have caused him.’
‘What investigation?’
‘All that business about Anita Garner suddenly getting revived. It would have destroyed him.’
Carole couldn’t help saying, ‘So you took it upon yourself to destroy him first?’
‘If you want to put it that way, yes. Though, personally, I see it as an act of mercy.’
‘Oh?’
‘Listen, I’m not pretending that Harry and I had a great marriage. Yes, early on it was good. We did everything together, spent all our spare time sailing, and he never looked at another woman. But, after Roly was born … well, I was busy with him and perhaps hadn’t got so much time to devote to Harry and … anyway, that was when he started to stray. The business was doing well, he was doing jobs further away from Fethering, sometimes he had to stay overnight … It’s a familiar pattern, has happened in many marriages, I’m sure. But Harry got into the habit of infidelity.
‘And I’m not saying there weren’t faults on both sides. I was preoccupied with Roland, and I think that made Harry feel excluded. And I hadn’t got the time to spend crewing for him on Harry’s Dream at weekends and … anyway, we drifted apart. And he drifted towards other women.’
‘And was one of those “other women” Anita Garner?’
Veronica Lasalle nodded grimly. ‘Yes. Yes, she was. And that hurt me more than all the others. I didn’t know any of the others. I knew about them but I didn’t know them personally. He met them when he was away from Fethering. He was a bastard in many ways, but at least Harry didn’t like to foul his own footpath, which was a kind of relief to me.
‘But with Anita Garner … well, he was bringing his dirty linen home and displaying it for everyone in Fethering to see. Harry and I were running Footscrow House as a care home together. And then suddenly he’s taking up with a member of the staff and, though they managed to keep it quiet at first, very soon everyone would know about it. It was appalling for me to stand by and witness what was going on.’
‘I can imagine it was,’ said Carole. ‘And, at the time of Anita Garner’s disappearance …?’
‘Yes?’ There was a note of resignation in the woman’s voice.
‘… you and Harry had an alibi. You were on a trip to France on Harry’s Dream.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that true?’
‘No. But,’ she asserted, ‘nobody questioned it. As I said, nobody at Footscrow House knew about the affair back then, so Harry wasn’t a suspect or anything. And the police very quickly lost interest in Anita’s disappearance.’
‘What do you think happened to her?’ asked Carole, quite harshly.
‘I don’t know.’ Veronica Lasalle spoke as if that was the only answer she would offer, whatever the provocation. Whether she did know or not, it was hard for Carole to judge.
But she had a go at getting more detail. ‘You hoped people would believe that your husband had killed himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘For that to be credible, he must have had a reason. Guilt for having killed the girl?’
‘No. Fear of all the gossip starting up again would have been sufficient.’
‘Hm. So if he wasn’t with you on Harry’s Dream on the way to France, where was Harry that Tuesday?’
‘Like an ordinary day off. Round the house. Doing ordinary stuff.’
‘You didn’t live in at Footscrow House?’