‘Do you have children?’ asked Jude.
‘No. Possibly one of the many reasons why our relationship didn’t work out.’ She was still brusquely unsentimental. ‘Anyway, would you mind telling me about when you found his body?’
‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ said Carole.
‘Never mind. Any detail you can remember. I thought I had firmly closed the book on the chapter of my life that involved Amos, but since I heard of his death, it seems to have opened itself up again.’
So Carole and Jude told her exactly what they had seen. At first, out of sensitivity, they did not describe the state of the corpse as they had found it. But Janice wanted every last detail. And remained unflinching as they supplied them.
At the end of their narrative, she said, ‘Thank you. I wonder whose husband he’d pissed off this time.’
Carole looked at her curiously. ‘Are you suggesting that he might have been killed by a jealous husband?’
‘Of course that’s what I’m saying. Amos had antagonized a good few in his time. More than one of them had come after him. A couple even beat him up. So I assume there was one who took rather more extreme measures.’
‘You don’t buy the police’s suicide theory?’
She shook her head firmly. ‘No. And surely the ropes that were found round his ankles would knock that on the head. They must have been fixed to something to weigh the body down.’
‘That was the conclusion we had come to,’ said Carole.
‘Apart from anything else, nobody who knew Amos would ever believe that he’d kill himself. As I said, far too much self-esteem. Amos thought he was God’s gift … not just to women but to the entire world.’ For the first time a note of exasperated affection came into her voice. ‘And he did have a lot of charm. Most people were bowled over when they first met him. I certainly was. He was a difficult man to dislike.’
‘Unless you were the husband of one of the women he went after?’ Jude suggested.
‘Yes.’ A grin. ‘Or unless you were married to him. As I say, a charmer. Had that wonderful self-deprecating Jewish humour. Always bouncing upright again after every setback, like one of those Wobbly men. Great to be with, great to have a fling with, very poor husband material.’
‘Did you tell the police,’ asked Jude, ‘that you didn’t believe he’d committed suicide?’
‘Oh yes. And they clearly thought it was just another distraught widow unable to come to terms with the fact that her husband had felt miserable enough to do such a thing. Which was not the case at all. As you see, I’m far from distraught. Just curious.’
‘Mm,’ said Carole, still a little surprised by the woman’s lack of emotion. ‘You’ve talked about your husband’s private life. What about work? Was he successful there? The paper said he was a chartered surveyor.’
‘Yes, he scraped through the exams and then proceeded to do as little work as possible for the rest of his career. He travelled a lot, working on different projects round the country, and became a past master at fiddling his expenses.’ She checked herself. ‘I may be being slightly unfair there. I think when he first qualified he did have some principles – aspirations, even. I hadn’t met him then, but from things he said I think he did have some ideals about ecology, sustainable development, that kind of stuff. But it didn’t last. Contact with the real world of wheeler-dealing and back-scratching soon made him cynical and selfish.’
Jude came in, ‘The paper also said he used to be a local councillor. Surely you have to have some sense of public duty to do that?’
‘Maybe Amos started out with that too. He became a councillor very young. By the time I met him, he’d given it up and was only out for what he could get.’
‘Were you his first wife?’ asked Carole.
‘Yes. And in retrospect I don’t for the life of me know why he wanted to get married. He seemed to be having a very good time flitting from flower to flower – and the amount of travelling he did made that all the easier. Maybe he thought marriage would settle him down. Well, if that was his plan, it didn’t work.’ Again there was no self-pity in her voice. ‘Anyway, it soon became clear to me that he wasn’t going to let the existence of a marriage licence curtail his extramarital activities.’
‘How long ago were you married?’ asked Jude.
‘Twenty-three years. Amazing we lasted that long, isn’t it? As I said, it soon became clear that Amos was going to be a serial adulterer. And I was faced with the choice of putting up or shutting up. Maybe if I’d found someone else, I might have felt the need to get divorced. But that didn’t happen, so we continued to cohabit.’
‘Until four years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was there a particular reason why he walked out?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like,’ suggested Jude, ‘Amos meeting someone new; someone he really fell for?’
Janice shrugged. ‘Possibly. He did retain a romantic streak. He still embarked on each new relationship as if it was going to be the big thing, the real thing. But after a few weeks he always started looking elsewhere.’
‘Did he have any children?’ asked Carole. ‘You know, out of wedlock?’
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘And over the years, with his multiple infidelities, were you aware of any that really got through to him, that hurt him, perhaps, when the woman broke it off?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of thing he confided in me, obviously. And I think he generally made a point of ending things himself before the woman had the opportunity to get tired of him. He was a very shrewd operator,’ Janice concluded with grudging admiration.
‘But was there any time when Amos seemed particularly on edge while you knew he was having an affair?’
‘Not really.’ Janice Green looked thoughtful. ‘Well, there was a time, way back, just after we got married, when he did seem particularly tense. I’d forgotten about it till you asked, but yes, he was in quite a state. A worse state than I’ve seen him in since. In retrospect I think he was probably just tense because it was the first time he’d been unfaithful since we’d got married, and he was waiting to see how I’d react. And I was terribly upset at the time, so my recollection may not be completely accurate. But after that I kind of reconciled myself – not enthusiastically but effectively – to the kind of man I had married and let him go his own sweet way. And once Amos realized that he’d got away with it once, he didn’t get so uptight about his subsequent dalliances.’
‘And do you know who the woman was, that first time?’ asked Carole.
‘No idea. I fairly quickly came to the conclusion that the only way I was going to cope with an adulterous husband was by shutting my mind to all the details of his affairs.’
Jude nodded and said, ‘I understand that.’ Prompting immediate suspicion from Carole that her neighbour had once experienced a similar situation. Jude’s love life was much more extensive and varied in Carole’s imagination than it ever was in reality.
‘Anyway …’ Janice Green reached for her handbag. ‘I’ve taken up quite enough of your time. Thank you for talking to me.’
‘I hope it’s helped,’ said Jude.
‘I think it has, in a way. I think it will help me finally to close that chapter I talked about.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And if we get any more information, you know, about what happened to your husband … would you like us to keep you informed?’
Janice Green sighed wearily. ‘Do you know, I don’t think I’m that bothered. I talked about “closing a chapter”, and somehow I think coming here this morning has helped me do that. It’s reinforced the feeling that I never did really know anything about Amos. And I think for the time being, I’ll leave things like that. I’m not keen to open the chapter again.’