“No need for a boyfriend?”
The look she gave him was her response and he was convinced by it. Moreover, he’d seen inside her husband’s bedside drawer.
“In that case, we have to consider what used to be called unrequited love. To put it crudely, some nutter who fancies you. You see what I’m driving at, don’t you? This man obsessed by you murders your husband to have you to himself.”
She sighed like a scythe and said, “I can’t listen to these serpent-words.”
“No secret admirer you’re aware of? Let’s look at another possibility. Did your husband have any enemies?”
The change of tack brought a more measured response. “Glenn didn’t have enemies.”
“Then did he have friends? Encouraging him in bad habits, perhaps?”
She said, “I can do without your sarcasm.”
“These are friends, presumably?” He took from his pocket the photo taken at Minehead, the piggyback picture. “Were these people in the printing trade?”
She snatched it possessively. “You were the one who stole them, then. My photos are personal.”
“Who are the people?”
The resentment remained in her voice. “The Porterfields. Friends of ours. We had a day out with them.”
“Is Mr Porterfield a printer?”
“No. Basil is a businessman. He sells car-parts.”
“And the lady?”
“His wife Serena. She’s an art teacher.”
“That’s Serena mounted on your husband’s back?”
She gave him a cold stare. “That was for a silly photograph.”
“At Minehead?”
“Yes.”
“For a wayzgoose?”
She frowned. “I beg your pardon.”
“Look on the back. My dictionary says that a wayzgoose is a works outing for those in a printing house. A silly photo at a wayzgoose makes sense to me.”
She glanced at the words on the back of the photo and shrugged. “It doesn’t make any to me. Basil and Serena had nothing to do with Glenn’s job. Besides, he was already redundant when we went to Minehead. He’d been out of work for over a year.”
“I noticed an art book in your living room. French painter.”
“Delacroix?”
“Yes. Was that a gift from Mrs Porterfield?”
“No. Glenn bought it himself.”
“So he was interested in art?”
“Only in Delacroix.”
“Are the Porterfields local?”
“They live up by the golf course.”
“What’s the address?”
“I don’t want them troubled. They’ve got nothing to do with this. They’re decent people.”
“In that case, they’ll want to help me find your husband’s killer.”
She said openly, “I can’t believe this is happening. I thought I killed him. I was sure of it.”
If she is playing the innocent, Diamond thought, she’s doing it with style. He tried to resist making up his mind. First impressions were so misleading. In his time he’d made more mistakes over women than King Henry the Eighth. And this one with her martyred eyes was taking the steam out of his workover.
“After you hit him with the teapot and he fell off the chair, what did you do? Tell me precisely.”
“I went to him at once. I could tell from the way he fell that he was out cold when he hit the floor. I found he’d stopped breathing, so I tried to revive him. Tilted back his head and drew the chin upwards. I don’t have to go through the drill, do I?”
“Mouth to mouth?”
“Of course.”
“Think carefully. While you were doing it, did you hear any extraneous sounds?”
“What do you mean?”
“If anyone else was in the house, in that kitchen, even, they may have picked this moment to run out.” It was a wily suggestion. He couldn’t have handed her a better opportunity of shifting the suspicion to some mythical intruder.
She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t notice a thing.”
Innocent, or refusing to be drawn? He couldn’t tell.
“After the resuscitation had no result, what did you do?”
She bit her lip. “It’s difficult to remember. It’s just a blur. I was deeply shocked.”
“Did you stay in the kitchen?”
“For a bit, I think.”
“You didn’t go upstairs, or in the other rooms?”
“I don’t think so. I was horrified by what I’d done. I got the shakes. I think I ran out of the front door and wandered up the street asking the Lord to forgive me. It took Him a long time to calm my troubled spirit. In the end I walked all the way to Bath to confess to you.”
“Did you speak to anyone between leaving the house and coming to us?”
“No.”
“See anyone you knew?”
“I wasn’t noticing other people.” She made it all sound plausible.
“If there was anyone,” said Diamond, becoming reasonable in spite of his best efforts to be tough, “it would help us to account for your movements.”
“I’ve told you my movements.”
“And we only have your word for them.”
“That was after he died. Why do you want to know what I was doing after he died?”
He declined to answer. “Is there anyone you can think of who ever threatened your husband?”
“No.”
Julie looked up from her notes and said unexpectedly, “Was he seeing a woman?”
Trish Noble blinked twice and flicked nervously at her hair. “If he was...” she started to say, then stopped. “If he was, I’d be very surprised.”
“The wife usually is,” Diamond added, privately wishing he’d remembered to ask. Smart thinking on Julie’s part. “Anyone you can think of who may have fancied him?”
“How would I know? Look, you’re talking about the man I loved and married. He isn’t in his grave yet. Do you have to be so cruel?”
Julie said, “You want us to find the person who stabbed him, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“There is someone, isn’t there?” said Julie.
“I don’t know.”
“But you had your suspicions?”
She looked down and fingered her wedding ring. Speaking in a low, scarcely audible voice, she said, “Sometimes he came home really late. I mean about two in the morning, or later. He was exhausted. Too tired for anything.”
“Drunk?”
“No. I would have noticed.”
“How long was this going on?”
“When it started, it was once every two months or so. Lately, it was about every ten days.”
“Did you question him about it?”
“He snapped my head off when I did. Really told me to mind my own business. It made me think there might be someone, but I had no way of finding out. He didn’t smell of scent, or anything.”
Diamond told her to collect her coat.
She looked seriously worried. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home. Julie will take you home. I want you to look at the scene and tell Julie everything you remember.”
“Aren’t you going to be there?” A question that might have conveyed disappointment was actually spoken on a rising note of relief.
“I may come later.” He turned to Julie. “On the way, you can drop me off at the hospital.”
Trish’s anxiety flooded in again. “The hospital? Do you mean the RUH? You don’t have to talk to them. They can’t tell you anything.”
“It isn’t about you,” said Diamond. “It’s another matter.” And it wasn’t about his weight problem either.
5
“Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to admire your sewing,” Diamond told Jack Merlin.
There was no reaction from the pathologist.
“May I see the other side?”
“Not my sewing. My assistant Rodney does the stitchwork.” In the post-mortem room at the Royal United Hospital, Merlin had the advantage of familiar territory. No visitor was entirely comfortable in the mortuary. Attendance at autopsies is routinely expected of detectives on murder cases. Diamond ducked out whenever he could think up a plausible excuse. On this visit he arrived late. The gory stuff had already been got over. With only a sewn-up corpse to view, he was putting on a good show of self-composure, but it didn’t run to treating these places like a second home.