‘I see,’ the widow said again. She looked quickly up at Rose, then back at the dog; she stayed motionless for several seconds, until suddenly she stood up. ‘Would you excuse me for a few minutes?’ she asked. ‘I think I need to be alone for a bit.’ Her cheeks, pink when she had opened the door, had a pale yellowish tinge to them.
‘Of course,’ Rose agreed. ‘Would you like us to wait in our car for a while? We don’t mind.’
‘No, no. You stay here with Blue. I’ll just go upstairs and,’ she paused, ‘compose myself.’ She frowned. ‘Or better still,’ she said, with an attempt at briskness, ‘I’ll go through to the kitchen and make us all a cup of tea. They say it’s called for at a time like this.’
Steele would have preferred coffee, but he decided not to ask for it. Instead he stood silently to one side as she left the room. ‘Should we be doing this?’ he asked. ‘Leaving her alone, I mean. If this is a murder inquiry. . and it bloody well is. . she might be a suspect, for all we know at this stage.’
‘She couldn’t have got him up there,’ the superintendent pointed out.
‘Maybe she had help. I mean. .’
‘I know, I know. Stranger things have happened, but in the absence of proof, let’s just be kind, and assume that we’ve broken the worst news this lady’s ever had in her life, and let’s help her handle it the best we can.’
Steele smiled grimly. ‘I suppose so. You’re right, of course. Listen to me, for Christ’s sake, quoting the book at you. It must have been exposure to Manny English this morning that did it.’ He crouched down beside the dog and scratched it behind the ear; the animal rolled on to its side. He played with it for a while, and it was still licking his hand when Mrs Whetstone came back into the drawing room. She was carrying a tray with three mugs, a sugar bowl and a milk jug. Her face was still as pale, and the rattling of spoons on the tray told the detectives that she was trembling. Steele jumped quickly to his feet and relieved her of her burden.
She asked for no milk, one sugar; having been brought up to believe that hot sweet tea was a remedy for everything from shock to shingles, the inspector gave her two. She sipped the brew as she settled back into the armchair. The two detectives took their mugs and sat on the settee, part of a traditional suite.
‘You understand that there are some questions we must ask you, Mrs Whetstone,’ Rose began.
‘Of course.’ Her voice was strong and steady, but the officers could tell that it needed an effort to keep it that way.
‘It doesn’t have to be now, though. I can put that off for a bit, if you wish.’
The woman shook her head. Reflections of the room’s central light sparkled in her hair. ‘No, I’ll deal with that now. I have some questions of my own first, if you don’t mind.’
‘What can we tell you?’
‘You can tell me what happened to Ivor. Was he attacked? Was he mugged?’
Rose took a deep breath. ‘He was found hanging from a tree,’ she replied quietly.
Virginia Whetstone flinched; her hand shook violently for a moment, spilling some tea into her lap. ‘Oh dear,’ she whispered, pawing absently at the marks. ‘Had he been there long when he was found?’ she asked.
‘All night; at least, that was the police doctor’s preliminary view.’
She frowned, as if that would help her make sense of what she had been told. ‘Are you telling me that Ivor killed himself?’ There was incredulity in her tone. She looked from one detective to the other.
‘No,’ Steele replied. ‘We’re not telling you that.’ He caught Rose’s quick glance, and her message. ‘The circumstances were such that we have to regard his death as suspicious,’ he concluded cautiously.
‘So he was attacked?’
‘That’s a strong possibility,’ said the superintendent. ‘When did you see your husband last, Mrs Whetstone?’ she continued quickly, not wanting to be questioned any further herself.
‘Yesterday morning, when he left for the office.’
‘Did he use public transport? I notice that there are two cars in your drive.’
‘Sometimes he used the bus, but quite often he walks.’ The present tense registered with her at once; she bit her lip awkwardly. ‘It’s his main form of exercise, now he has less time for golf, although he hasn’t been doing it as much lately.’
‘So the MO was right, and he didn’t come home last night.’
‘He was right.’
‘Didn’t this alarm you?’ The question was put softly.
‘No.’
Rose was puzzled. ‘It didn’t? Weren’t you expecting him?’
‘No, because he called me in the afternoon, after the fog had closed in, when it was really very bad. He said that he could hear buses crawling along Lothian Road, and bumping into each other, and that the streets just weren’t safe. He told me that if it hadn’t lifted, or at least got a bit better by the evening, he might well take a room in the Caledonian Hotel. I assumed that he had.’
‘So he didn’t phone to confirm that?’
‘No.’›
‘And you didn’t phone the Caley?’
‘No. I spent the evening with a neighbour, Connie Dallas. She’d just bought a DVD of the extended version of The Two Towers and she invited me to watch it with her. I didn’t get back here until after eleven.’
‘Did you think to check your answering service,’ Steele asked, ‘to see if your husband had called?’
‘We don’t have an answering machine, Inspector, and we don’t use the BT service. Ivor has a mobile,’ she flinched again at her mistaken tense, ‘and that’s all.’
‘Did you try to call him at his office this morning?’
‘No,’ she said, stiffly. ‘Why should I? I have never interrupted him at work, unless it was absolutely necessary.’
‘Were you surprised that he didn’t call you?’
‘A little,’ she confessed. She sniffed, and added, ‘Enough for me to decide to get my own back. When the fog cleared a little I called a taxi and went to Jenners for some retail therapy. It’s always been my way of letting Ivor know when I’m displeased.’ As she spoke, her voice became a whisper, and her gaze dropped. ‘Isn’t that right, Blue?’ she murmured to the dog. Finally, tears began to roll down her cheeks; she reached out to a side table and ripped a handful of tissues from a box, roughly, as if she was annoyed by her weakness.
Rose let the silence last for a few seconds, giving Virginia Whetstone time to gather herself, and to drink some of her tea. ‘How was your husband’s state of mind recently?’ she murmured eventually.
‘Robust!’ The answer was fired back in an instant. ‘Ivor has never been more successful in business, and we are both. . have both enjoyed being back in Edinburgh.’
‘He’s never mentioned any worries?’
‘None.’ The widow knitted her brows. ‘There were a few concerns at first, I suppose; he didn’t care for the woman he had to report to, for instance.’ There was something in Mrs Whetstone’s tone which hinted that she had shared his dislike. ‘The new approach to business came as a surprise to most of the managers, and as a terrible shock to some who couldn’t adapt. Ivor could, though, as Vernon Easterson anticipated. After some self-doubt, his new post began to stimulate him far more than Kelso had in recent years. To be frank he’d become a bit of a boring old sod down there; he was just filling in the years to retirement. The change was a challenge and he embraced it very quickly. It made a new man of him.’
‘Did he talk about his work at home?’
‘When we were in Kelso, never; I knew many of his clients and so it would have been difficult. But here, since he took over the new job, he’s spoken much more of what he’s been doing. Why? Do you think this might have had something to do with. .’ As she looked across at Rose, it was clear that her emotional strength was all but spent.
‘We don’t think anything at this stage, Mrs Whetstone,’ she answered. ‘We’re a few hours into our investigation, that’s all. I think that we should end this conversation now. You’ve had terrible news, and we should help you to deal with it. You have a son, I believe.’