‘You’re not saying he couldn’t have had the irritation, the nerve, the strength to strangle her?’
‘No, I’m not, though I don’t think he did it. What I’m saying is that he wouldn’t have taken her out into the woods. He told you himself he moves a mattress into the boathouse on such occasions. If he’d strangled her on impulse it would have been there, and he could have slid her weighted body into the river, no one the wiser.’
Doone listened with his head on one side. ‘But what if he’d deliberately planned it? What if he’d suggested the woods as being far away from his own territory?’
‘I wouldn’t think he’d need to cover his sins with strangulation,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows he seduces anything that moves. He would pass off an Angela Brickell sort of scandal with a laugh.’
Doone disapproved, saying, ‘Unsavoury,’ and maybe thinking of his assailable daughters.
‘We haven’t got very far,’ I said, looking at his list. All my own assessments were a cross except the question mark against Nolan. Not awfully helpful, I thought.
Doone clicked his pen a few times, then at the bottom wrote LEWIS EVERARD.
‘That’s a long shot,’ I said.
‘Give me some Fors and Againsts.’
I pondered. ‘Against first. I don’t think he’s bold enough to have set that trap, but then...’ I hesitated, ‘there’s no doubt he’s both clever and cunning. I wouldn’t have thought he would have gone into the woods with Angela Brickell. Can’t exactly say why, but I’d think he’d be too fastidious, especially when he’s sober.’
‘For? Doone prompted, when I stopped.
‘He gets drunk... I don’t know if he’d tumble Angela Brickell in that state or not.’
‘But he knew her.’
‘Even if not in the biblical sense,’ I agreed.
‘Sir!’ he said with mock reproach.
‘He would have seen her at the races,’ I said, smiling. ‘And For... he is a good liar. According to him, he’s the best actor of the lot.’
‘A question mark, then?’ Doone’s pen hovered.
I slowly shook my head. ‘A cross.’
‘The trouble with you,’ Doone said with disillusion, looking at the column of negatives, ‘is that you haven’t met enough murderers.’
‘None,’ I agreed. ‘You can’t exactly count Nolan Everard.’
‘And you wouldn’t know a murderer if you tripped over one.’
‘Your list is too short,’ I said.
‘It seems so.’ He put away the notebook and stood up. ‘Well, Mr Kendall, thank you for your time. I don’t discount your impressions. You’ve helped me clarify my thoughts. Now we’ll have to step up our enquiries. We’ll get there in the end.’
The sing-song accent came to a stop and he shook my hand and let himself out, a grey man in grey clothes following his own informal, idiosyncratic path towards the truth.
I sat for a while thinking of what I’d said and of what he’d told me, and I still couldn’t believe that any of the people I’d come to know so well was really a murderer. No one was a villain, not even Nolan. There had to be someone else, someone we hadn’t begun to consider.
I worked on and off on Tremayne’s book for the rest of the morning but found it hard to concentrate.
Dee-Dee drifted in and out, offering coffee and company, and Tremayne put his head in to say he was going to Oxford to see his tailor, and to ask if I wanted an opportunity to shop.
I thanked him and declined. I would probably have liked to replace my boots and ski-jacket, but I still hadn’t much personal money. It was easy at Shellerton House to get by without any. Tremayne would doubtless have lent me some of the quarter-advance due at the end of the month but my lack was my own choice, and as long as I could survive as I was, I wouldn’t ask. It was all part of the game.
Mackie came through from her side to keep company with Dee-Dee, saying Perkin had gone to Newbury to collect some supplies, and presently the two women went out to lunch together, leaving me alone in the great sprawling house.
I tried again and harder to work and felt restless and uneasy. Stupid, I thought. Being alone never bothered me: in fact, I liked it. That day, I found the size of the silent house oppressive.
I went upstairs, showered and changed out of riding clothes into the more comfortable jeans and shirt I’d worn the day before and pulled on sneakers and the red sweater for warmth. After that I went down to the kitchen and made a cheese sandwich for lunch and wished I’d gone with Tremayne if only for the ride. It was the usual pattern of finding something to do — anything — rather than sit down and face the empty page, except that that day the uneasiness was extra.
I wandered in a desultory fashion into the family room which looked dead without the fire blazing and began to wonder what I could make for dinner. Gareth’s ‘BACK FOR GRUB’ message was still pinned to the corkboard, and it was with a distinct sense of release that I remembered I’d said that I would go back for his camera.
The unease vanished. I found a piece of paper and left my own message: ‘I’VE BORROWED THE LAND ROVER TO FETCH GARETH’S CAMERA. BACK FOR COOKING THE GRUB!’ I pinned it to the corkboard with a red drawing pin and a light heart, and went upstairs again to change back into jodhpur boots to deal with the terrain and to pick up the map and the compass in case I couldn’t find the trail. Then I skipped downstairs and went out to the wheels, locking the back door behind me.
It was a good day, sunny like the day before but with more wind. With a feeling of having been unexpectedly let out of school, I drove over the hills on the road to Reading and coasted along the unfenced part of the Quillersedge Estate until I thought I’d come more or less to where Gareth had dropped the paint: parked off the road there and searched more closely for the place on foot.
No one had driven the paint away on their tyres. The splash was dusty but still visible and, without much trouble, I found the beginning of the trail about twenty feet straight ahead in the wood and followed it as easily through the tangled trees and undergrowth as on the day before.
Gareth a murderer... I smiled to myself at the absurdity of it. As well suspect Coconut.
The pale paint splashes, the next one ahead visible all the time, weren’t all that marked the traiclass="underline" it showed signs in broken twigs and scuffed ground of our passage the day before. By the time I came back with the camera it would be almost a beaten track.
Wind rattled and swayed the trees and filled my ears with the old songs of the land, and the sun shone through the moving boughs in shimmering ever-changing patterns. I wound my slow way through the maze of unpruned growth and felt at one with things there and inexpressibly happy.
The trail strayed round and eventually reached the small clearing. Our improvised seats were frayed by the wind but still identified the place with certainty, and almost at once I spotted Gareth’s camera, prominently hanging, as he’d said, from a branch.
I walked across to collect it and something hit me very hard indeed in the back.
Moments of disaster are disorientating. I didn’t know what had happened. The world had changed. I was falling. I was lying face down on the ground. There was something wrong with my breathing.
I had heard nothing but the wind, seen nothing but the moving trees but, I thought incredulously, someone had shot me.
From total instinct as much as from injury I lay as dead. There was a zipping noise beside my ear as something sped past it. I shut my eyes. There was another jolting thud in my back.
So this was death, I thought numbly; and I didn’t even know who was killing me, and I didn’t know why.