‘What happened?’ Tibbot’s voice crackled down the line an hour later.
I tapped my fingernails on the hall mirror. ‘He came in.’
‘Right.’
‘Frank,’ I said. ‘I’m going to confront him. About Lorelei.’
‘Oh, Jane,’ he said, frustrated. ‘What do you think will come of it? He’ll tell you the truth? I spend days in rooms questioning people who have killed, raped, stolen. They don’t confess even then. He’s just going to tell you that you’re imagining things.’
‘I’m not imagining things.’
‘He’ll say you are.’
‘What else do you suggest?’ He was silent. He had to admit that he too could see no other move. ‘Frank, I can’t go on like this, wondering if he…’ I broke off, unable to continue, and leaned against the wall, with the handset by my side. ‘Can you come here by eleven thirty?’ I asked.
He relented. ‘Look, it’s not easy today,’ he said. ‘There’s some trouble: the Teddies are kicking off a bit, having a go at the coppers. Revenge for Liberation Day, that’s the word.’
‘I’ll do it all. You can just sit in Hazel’s room and listen.’
He disliked the idea, but I had known that he would. This would be the last time he would humour me, I suspected. ‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can get away.’
‘Thank you.’
He hung up and I dialled again.
‘The consulting rooms of Nicholas Cawson, Charles O’Shea speaking.’
‘Hello, Charles, it’s Jane Cawson. Can you put me through to my husband, please?’
‘I’m sorry, he’s with a patient.’
‘Charles, this is urgent,’ I said. ‘Absolutely urgent.’
‘All right,’ he replied. He lowered his voice. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Yes. Thank you. Just put me through, please.’ Perhaps he would eavesdrop, but there was little that I could do about that.
The line went quiet for a minute, then there was a click as it was picked up in Nick’s room. His voice came on. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got something to tell you. Show you, really. I don’t want you to be shocked.’
‘What?’ he sounded surprised.
‘It’s about Lorelei. Her death.’
‘What are you talking about? What’s it got to do with you?’ He was trying to control a burst of anger. It just made me more resolved. ‘I had to get rid of a patient for this.’
‘It’s about her death, Nick. I know something about it.’
He paused. I could picture him struggling with all the possibilities. ‘What do you know?’
‘I’ve found something.’
‘Then spit it out.’
‘She was drugged. By the time I got there, she was already dying.’
Silence again. Longer this time. His voice was slow and measured. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘She was blind when I got to her and she was dying. She hadn’t been beaten up, though, so she must have been drugged.’
‘How?’
‘The bottle of Champagne. It was on the floor beside her when she died. I think it was in there. They sent over a box of things of hers today and the bottle was in it – they checked it for fingerprints but they won’t have tested it for drugs. So it might have some traces in it.’ Then I asked a question – a lot was riding on it. ‘Do you think I should call the police and tell them?’
I waited. The line hissed and I heard him breathing. If he said yes, I would know he had had nothing to do with her death. If he said no, well…
‘Take it to the police?’ he repeated.
‘Yes.’ My nerves strained under my skin. ‘Do you think I should?’
He paused again. I heard him working it through – what it would mean, how he should answer. Outside, two people were screaming at each other. Just another of the daily disputes we seemed to have these days. Then Nick spoke. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No, I think it would be best to wait.’
‘All right,’ I said, my body collapsing a little. And I saw her again, under the water, her eyes as bright as coral. ‘I’ll just give it to you.’
‘Yes. That’s probably best.’
‘You will test it, won’t you?’ Even then I felt a flicker of hope that maybe I was wrong.
He hesitated. ‘I can’t do it myself, but I know a toxicologist,’ he replied slowly.
‘And there’s her hairbrush,’ I said. ‘She used it while she was in the bath. Lots of women do that because hair straightens if it’s brushed while it’s wet. There are hairs still in it – hairs soak up chemicals, don’t they?’
‘Some. I don’t know which. It’s not my field.’
‘So that’s also proof that she was drugged.’
He was being cagey now, instead of angry. ‘Yes. Perhaps.’
‘Good. Then meet me here at twelve thirty.’
‘All right. Have you told anyone else?’
‘No. I wanted to keep it between us for now.’
‘Good. Yes, that’s best. I don’t want NatSec grabbing either of us again,’ he said. No, I was sure he didn’t. ‘What first gave you the idea?’
‘It just seemed so strange that someone would break into her house, kill her and run away without taking anything.’
‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said.
And what was he thinking now? I wondered. Was he regretting the weeks that had passed? Perhaps he too was picturing her with the locks of her hair drifting out like threads in a stream. We were on each end of a line, trying to fathom what was in the mind of the other. ‘Did she have anything worth killing her for? I mean, did she have anything stored from before the War or anything like that? Jewellery?’
‘I don’t think so. But she kept so much hidden from me it was impossible ever to tell what Lorelei was doing. So it’s not out of the question.’
‘No. Well, I’ll see you here?’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘I love you,’ I said. There was a pit in my chest where those words sounded but didn’t resonate.
‘I love you too.’
I put the telephone down and went to the kitchen. I knew that I should eat something but couldn’t. I sat at the table, surrounded by all his possessions, none of them mine, and wondered if he had ever meant any of it. I had. I had meant it all. I felt ill with my thoughts now. The smog had come down heavily enough to seep into the house through cracks in the plaster; you could taste the sulphur at the back of your throat.
One of the old pre-War magazines from the bottom of my wardrobe lay on the table. I opened it at the most-thumbed page to see a review of a play Lorelei had been in. It was some light comedy in which she had fallen in love with someone unsuitable – a writer of comic songs – and she had had to convince her father to approve of their marriage. It came off in the end, of course. According to the critic, the play was mediocre but Lorelei blazed ‘like a firework’. So he was in love with her too. The review was printed below a photo of her and her co-star dancing in eveningwear.
I had to keep the nerves down – actors went through the same thing before they went on stage, I knew. Stage fright. I gazed again at Lorelei’s face, made up of tiny dots on a page that from a distance looked like her but that, when you got closer, turned into nothing. I tried to pick out a shadow of uncertainty there, a sign that one day it might all fall apart. It had – but not in a way that anyone could have predicted.