Very convenient, thought PC Perrot. He felt surprise at this sudden shift into cynicism and wondered what had provoked it. Perhaps the notion that, if Hollingsworth was all that desperately in love with his wife, he would have surely wished to retain the sound of her voice.
“What was her state of mind when you last saw her?”
“Just as usual.”
“Do you have any idea why she chose to leave?”
Hollingsworth shook his head. Or rather rocked it from side to side in his hands.
“Is there another man involved? An affair?”
“I find that hard to believe, and not just for reasons of vanity. Where would they have met? She never went anywhere except with me and the chances of secretly carrying on in a place this size are practically nil.”
“You’re right there, sir.” It didn’t seem kind to add, as he truthfully could, that he would have been one of the first to know about it. “What did the message on your machine actually say?”
“Simply that she was going away and not coming back.”
“Did she go by car?”
“No. She doesn’t drive.”
“Would she be staying with a friend, do you think?”
“I doubt it. She dropped them all when we got married.”
“Mutual friends?”
“We didn’t socialise. I worked long hours—money was terribly important to Simone. I don’t mean she was selfish or greedy, she wasn’t. But she’d had a hard time before she met me. A very hard time. Both as a child and a young woman. I sometimes felt that, however much I put in the bank, she would never feel really secure.”
During this speech, the longest he had uttered, Hollingsworth seemed to have started to sober up. He was focusing now with a reasonable degree of accuracy on his interrogator and plainly gathering his wits. Perrot was unsure whether this would mean more intelligible information or a careful rein on the tongue. And, suspicious again, he asked himself why Hollingsworth might have any need to monitor his speech.
“You mentioned your bank, Mr. Hollingsworth. Did your wife use the same one?”
“No.”
“Where was her account, please?”
There had been a brief pause before Hollingsworth answered and when he did it was with an air of improvisation. “Lloyds.”
Perrot was convinced that Hollingsworth had seized on the first name that came into his head. Yet it seemed foolish to lie about something so unsinister, not to mention easily checkable. Why not just tell the truth?
“You’re sure about that, sir?”
Hollingsworth was looking at the clock again, his eyes slipping and sliding over PC Perrot’s shoulder. Then, belatedly aware that he had been spoken to, “What?”
The constable let it go. But he made a note of his impression that Hollingsworth was being deliberately evasive. PC Perrot’s reports were models of scrupulous recording, if a trifle long-winded. The comment had been made more than once at headquarters that here was another Perrot mini series, telling them more about whatever issue was in the air than any rational person would ever wish to know.
“So, Mr. Hollingsworth, I suppose—”
“Look, I’m not interested in your suppositions. I’ve answered your questions to the best of my ability and I have nothing else to say.” He got out of his chair in one fairly smooth movement, standing upright with comparative ease.
Constable Perrot wondered if the man had been as drunk as he first appeared or if his apparent lack of sobriety was merely a ploy, a cover behind which he could reasonably be excused from understanding the questions put to him. But he had answered them all but the last, albeit in a somewhat dazed manner.
Perrot started to feel a little out of his depth. Naturally, being a policeman, he had a suspicious mind but it was not usually engaged on matters of much psychological complexity. He concluded that he would get no further with Hollingsworth in his present mood and decided to call it a day. Putting away his notebook and retrieving his helmet from beneath the chair, he too rose to his feet and moved towards the door.
“Thank you for being so cooperative, sir.”
“Yes, yes.”
Plainly the man couldn’t wait to get rid of him. In the hall PC Perrot, about to don his helmet, halted and, with what even the most ungifted amateur would have recognised as stagily risible urgency said, “Oh dear. Um, I wonder if I might use your toilet, sir?”
“Oh, well. I’d rather you ... It’s a bit of a mess.”
“No problem, Mr. Hollingsworth.” Perrot had already set his foot on the stairs. “This way, is it?”
“There’s one in the hall.”
“Many thanks.” And up he went.
The bathroom opened off the master bedroom. PC Perrot lifted the lavatory seat making quite a clatter then checked the vanity unit, medicine cabinet and the jars and bottles standing on the rim of the bath, all the while congratulating himself on this spur-of-the-moment inspiration. He coughed loudly to show he was still in there and started to run the hot tap. Then, downstairs, the phone rang and was immediately answered.
Perrot seized his chance. Swift and silent, he stepped into the bedroom. He opened and closed drawers then checked out a large, white, fitted wardrobe decorated with gold. Then he returned to the bathroom, flushed the cistern and turned off the tap.
Halfway down the stairs he stopped and tried to listen to Hollingsworth’s side of the telephone conversation. Unfortunately the noise from the pipes and reflooding cistern made this difficult. But, though Hollingsworth was speaking quietly, at one point the tone of his voice became quite ferocious, rising almost to a hiss.
“What problem? For God’s sake, Blakeley. No, that won’t do! I need all of it, I told you ...” More vocal sounds of quiet desperation followed before the receiver was laid down with unexpectedly gentle precision.
Perrot reckoned this final gesture might have been in belated recollection that there was someone else in the house, perhaps presaging a foolish pretence that the call had never happened. He made a great deal of unnecessary noise running down the last half-dozen steps.
“Very good of you, sir.” He spoke in a bright, newly relieved manner. “I’ll be off now then.”
Hollingsworth was staring into space. The expression on his face was dreadful, the skin stretched drum-tight across the cheekbones, the eyeballs bulging. His lips, were drawn back in that savage grimace of anguish that, in the newspaper photographs of the victims of tragedy, seemed so cruelly to mimic radiant joy.
PC Perrot hesitated in the hallway. He said, “Is there anything I can do?” and was relieved when there was no reply. Knowing that he should persist and that Hollingsworth was actually in quite a bad way, Perrot made an excuse to himself (the bloke really needed a doctor, not a copper) and left.
His Open Text report, as always, left nothing out. Facts aplenty; descriptive notes in almost Proustian detail. His opinions as to the truthfulness, or not, of the interviewee. Times of arrival and departure correct to the minute. The result, Perrot felt sure, would lead to further and much more stringent questioning of Alan Hollingsworth.
Unfortunately it was another forty-eight hours before the attention of anyone with enough authority to order such an investigation was drawn to the report, by which time the owner of Nightingales was in no condition to help anyone with their inquiries.
The following morning at eleven o’clock Sarah Lawson came to collect her eggs. Avis Jennings, the doctor’s wife, had a cousin with a smallholding at Badger’s Drift where he kept free-range chickens and several ducks.
Sarah had accepted an invitation to stay and have coffee which was rare, though Avis constantly asked, for she thought Sarah the most interesting person in the village by far and longed to know her better. But nearly always Sarah just paid for the eggs and with the exact money. It was as though being drawn even into the briefest of conversations over change was either a nuisance or a waste of time.