‘Even although you knew your lover had just been murdered?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I had no idea until I flew into the Madeleines this morning.’
Sime nodded towards an expensive oxblood leather suitcase sitting against the island on the floor of the kitchen. ‘Is that your suitcase?’
She glanced over her shoulder, but her hostility remained intact. ‘That’s James’s. It’s the stuff he brought with him when he moved in.’
‘And when was that, exactly?’
‘Just over a week ago. The Thursday, or the Friday. I can’t remember.’
Blanc said, ‘And he never unpacked?’
She appeared momentarily discomposed. ‘I’ve just finished packing it. You can take it with you, if you like.’
Blanc scratched the bald patch on his head. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Madame Briand, you don’t exactly sound like the grieving lover.’
She set her fine jawline and thrust it in his direction. ‘Grief takes many forms, Sergeant.’
During this exchange Sime let his eyes wander around the room. A man’s coat hung on the coatrack beside the front door. A big coat that seemed too large to be Cowell’s. But even if it was, why had she not packed it with the rest of his things? On the sideboard stood a large, framed colour photo of Ariane and a man whom he did not recognise. He had an arm around her waist, and both were laughing freely at the camera, sharing a joke with whoever was taking the picture.
He heard Blanc ask, ‘Do you have any thoughts about who might have a motive for murdering Monsieur Cowell, madame?’
She shrugged, her arms still folded. ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ Sime said.
‘Of course it is. Kirsty Cowell, who else?’
Blanc said, ‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because she as good as threatened it.’
The ensuing seconds of silence seemed embarrassingly long, before Sime said, ‘Explain.’
Ariane Briand set her feet slightly apart as if preparing to stand her ground and defy them to challenge her. ‘She turned up at my door the night before the murder.’
Sime felt the shock of her words prickling across his scalp. ‘Kirsty did?’
She looked at him, fleeting incomprehension in her eyes. The Kirsty had sounded too intimate ‘Yes.’
Blanc said, ‘According to everyone we’ve spoken to she hasn’t been off the island in ten years.’
‘Well, she was off the island that night.’
‘How did she make the crossing?’
‘You’d have to ask her that. But I know that she and James kept a small boat at the jetty below their house. And there’s a tiny harbour just down the road at Gros-Cap. Presumably that’s where she berthed it. She must have walked up in the rain. She was soaked to the skin when I answered the door.’
Sime pictured her standing in the dark at the door, hair wet and hanging in knots over her shoulders, just as he had seen her that first day after she came out of the shower. But it was not an image he wanted to contemplate.
‘What did she want?’ Blanc asked.
‘James.’
Sime frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She was looking for her husband, that’s what I mean. Very nearly hysterical she was, too. And wouldn’t believe me when I said he wasn’t here. She forced her way into the house and rampaged around the place shouting his name. There was nothing I could do to stop her, so I just stood here until she realised I was telling the truth.’
Sime was shocked. This picture the Briand woman was painting of Kirsty conformed to none of his perceptions of her, or to any of the things she had told him during their several interviews. Nor to the impression that Jack Aitkens had given of her. Serene was the word he had used. Like she had some kind of inner peace. If she has a temper, then I’ve never seen her lose it, he’d said. But, then, he had also confessed to barely knowing her.
‘When she finally accepted that he wasn’t here she went dangerously quiet.’ Ariane Briand was lost in a moment of recollection. ‘Her eyes were quite mad. Staring. Her voice was little more than a whisper when she told me she had no intention of giving up James without a fight. And that if she couldn’t have him she was damned sure no one else would.’
Sime caught sight of his reflection in the mirror above the sideboard and saw how pale he was. And for the first time he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that maybe Kirsty Cowell had killed her husband after all.
‘The night of the murder,’ Blanc said. ‘Did you know that Cowell was flying back to Entry Island?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He was here earlier. But he took a call on his cellphone. I have no idea who the caller was, but it was a fractious call, and he hung up in quite a state of agitation. Said he had something to take care of and would be back in a couple of hours.’
Blanc glanced at Sime, but Sime was lost in a confusion of thoughts. Blanc said, ‘You’ll have to come to the police station with us, Madame Briand, to make an official statement.’ He pushed past her to pick up Cowell’s suitcase. ‘And we’ll take this with us.’
Sime turned to lift the coat from the hanger by the door. ‘And the coat?’
Her hesitation was almost imperceptible. ‘No, that’s not his.’
II
Ariane Briand had repeated her version of events in the interrogation room at the police station. Thomas Blanc had conducted the interview while Sime watched on monitors in the office next door. Under Blanc’s forensic questioning she had provided further detail that painted an even more graphic picture of Kirsty’s unexpected visit.
Now, as he sat on the edge of the bed in his room at the auberge, Sime found himself sinking into a depression. He had painted a picture for himself of Kirsty Cowell, carefully constructed, layer upon layer, that had been erased in a single wash that coloured her a liar. She had left the island. She had threatened her husband’s lover, and implicit in that was a threat to Cowell himself.
The boat which had brought Sime and Blanc across to Cap aux Meules had returned to Entry with more volunteers to help in the search for Morrison. So they had an hour to kill before they could make the return crossing themselves. Sime had declined Blanc’s suggestion of a coffee in the Tim Horton’s across the road and retired to his hotel room instead, drawing curtains on the world and retreating into semi-darkness.
He kicked off his shoes and swung his feet up on to the bed. He sat up against the headboard, propped by a pillow to support his back, and took out his cellphone. A growing sense of guilt crept over him. It was time, he knew, to phone his sister. There was no one else he could ask about the ring or the diaries.
He had not spoken to her in such a very long time. Not even on the phone. How long was it? Five years? More? Poor Annie. For some reason he had never felt close to her. Of course there was an age gap. She was four years older. But it was more than that. He had always been a loner, a solitary boy, self-sufficient and never interested in his sister. Even when she had reached out to him after the death of their parents.
As soon as he left school he had gone his own way, heading for the big city. While she stayed behind and married a neighbour, a boy who had been in her class. A French-speaker. And bore him a baby boy and then a little girl. Teenagers now, who spoke no English.
He had been back only once, for their parents’ funeral.
The last time he and Annie had met was when she came to his wedding. Without her husband. She had made excuses for him, but Sime knew that Gilles resented the way his brother-in-law had neglected her.
Guilt washed over him again, cold and reproachful. Maybe Marie-Ange was right. Maybe he was all those things she had called him. Selfish, self-centred. They were not pleasant reflections, and he veered away from them, just as these days he avoided his reflection in the mirror.