Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

‘Yes, I was going to ask you about that.’ Hannah made a show of scratching her head. ‘I know it’s a small world, but … it does seem amazing, that, of all the places where she might have found a roof over her head, she finished up with your ex-wife and her new husband?’

‘The Lakes is a small world, Chief Inspector, haven’t you noticed? Thirty miles across, and a population less than Bolton.’

‘Even so.’

Jeremy sucked in a breath. ‘Vanessa and I met and married not long after I qualified as a teacher. She was a librarian, full of ideals about educating the disadvantaged, people who had never opened a book in their lives. I taught at a comprehensive on the Furness Peninsula. Plenty of deprivation in that neck of the woods, since the steelworks closed and shipbuilding went out of fashion. When you meet Vanessa, Chief Inspector, you see a middle-aged woman with an unsightly birthmark on her face, so you may find this difficult to understand — but I found her passion thrilling.’

‘No, I don’t find that so difficult to understand,’ Hannah said softly and for a moment, despite everything, she warmed to him.

‘Within weeks, we were walking down the aisle. Looking back, it was a mistake. I was young, naive. Vanessa and I could have been such good friends, but … when I met Karen, I realised she was the woman for me.’

‘Love at first sight,’ Karen said with a complacent smile. ‘It knocked the breath out of both of us.’

‘Vanessa took our break-up very hard. She blamed Karen for seducing me, but that was unfair. It was my fault, if you like. My decision, I take full responsibility.’

He gave a defiant nod and then lifted his head, so Hannah could see that the nobility of his profile matched his character. The admiration in Karen’s eyes depressed her. It wasn’t his adultery that made her cringe, it was his conceit.

Jeremy cleared his throat. ‘I was thrilled for Vanessa when she met Francis. He sounds a decent chap and he’s certainly made her happy. Even given her a child, the one thing I could never achieve.’

You patronising sod . But Hannah could do hypocrisy too and she coated her smile with sugar.

‘I gather their boy is a pupil at Grizedale.’

‘We call them students.’ He corrected her with a little laugh. Hannah would have found it less offensive if he’d rapped her on the knuckles with a steel rule. ‘At present he’s a year off senior school, so our paths don’t yet cross. When they do, it won’t be a problem. Vanessa is a decent woman, I’m sure he’s a fine lad.’

Hannah gritted her teeth, and Jeremy sailed on.

‘Unfortunately, I suspect Vanessa resents poor Karen to this day. As for taking in Emma as a lodger, well, I don’t wish to be unkind …’

‘But?’

‘I suspect that it suited her to make friends with Emma.’

‘Why?’

‘Evidently she found out that Emma and Karen were far from close.’

‘Are you suggesting there was an attraction between her and Emma?’

‘Good grief, no.’ He was genuinely amused. ‘Vanessa is voraciously heterosexual in her appetites, I can assure you of that.’

Hannah cast a glance at Karen. Could a smirk be coy? If so, hers was.

‘What, then?’

‘You wish me to be frank?’

‘Please.’

‘Very well, if I must. I have no wish to be unkind to Vanessa, but in my opinion, she wanted to hear bad things about Karen, to make her feel better about losing me.’

Hannah noticed that, while her husband was talking about his first wife, Karen yawned and stretched out her legs. A woman at ease with herself, confident that she’d got her man exactly where she wanted him.

‘Darling, this is old news. None of it matters any more.’

‘Don’t forget,’ her husband said with an unexpected stab at humour, ‘my subject is history.’

‘And cold case work involves exploring the past,’ Hannah said. ‘After she left the Goddards, Emma bought her bungalow. How could she afford it?’

‘She told us she’d had a big win on the lottery. It was only after she disappeared that we found out from your people she’d lied about that. Goodness knows why.’

‘So where did the money really come from?’

Jeremy coughed. ‘As it happens, I have an idea.’

He sounded so proud that Hannah had to force herself not to mime applause. She could tell that Maggie was close to bursting with suppressed laughter.

‘I’d love to hear it.’

‘Well, once Emma’s relationship with Alexandra Clough ended, she fell ill. Depression, stress, one of those ailments fashionable among people who don’t want to go into work. The Cloughs are wealthy, perhaps she threatened to sue them.’

‘They deny it.’

‘Is that surprising, if they’d mistreated her?’

‘Did Emma tell you that they had?’

‘We didn’t see anything of her while she was ill. A quick word on the phone was as close as we came. She may have been poorly, but I’m sure she wasn’t at death’s door. And of course, she got better.’

‘You visited her bungalow?’

Karen nodded. ‘The week after she moved in. She was pale, but she told me she’d lost a stone and a half and she was looking all the better for it. I hadn’t even known she was interested in reflexology. But that was Emma. She was prone to fits of enthusiasm, but they never lasted. Look at the way she kept changing jobs. That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when she upped sticks and left the district without a word.’

‘Without her car and her passport?’

‘She didn’t consult me before she moved to Liverpool, either. So she had form, isn’t that the word detectives use? And it wasn’t so strange if she wanted to start a brand new life. Travel, see the world. After paying out on the bungalow and a new car, there wasn’t much cash left. The building society repossessed the house, you know, because she wasn’t around to keep up the monthly payments.’

Hannah had already found that out. Pity, it removed a possible motive. She’d wondered if Karen had planned to have Emma declared dead so that, as nearest living relative, she would inherit her sister’s estate. But there wasn’t much left to inherit.

‘Surely she would have contacted you during a period of ten years?’

‘Emma could be frustrating. Unreliable. And don’t forget, she’d had the benefit of listening to Vanessa Goddard’s opinions of me. Views based on prejudice and envy. Could I help the fact the poor woman had a disfigurement?’

Hannah noticed Maggie’s eyes narrowing, sensed her DC was losing patience. Easy to believe in Vanessa’s bitterness over the betrayal, but was it credible that she’d poisoned Emma’s mind to such an extent that she would break off all contact — not only with Karen but with Vanessa herself and everyone else?

‘You saw her the day before she disappeared, Mr Erskine?’

‘You’ve read my statement. It was an entirely innocent visit.’

‘Of course. You had a bad back.’

His lips pursed, but if he detected irony, he was too smart to make an issue of it. ‘I’ve been a martyr to my vertebrae over the years. The legacy of an old rugby injury, it flares up every now and then. Karen mentioned it when she called on Emma and Emma reckoned she could help. Admittedly, for a few days after my visit, I felt better. But she didn’t achieve a lasting solution. These days I see an osteopath in Keswick, he’s first class.’

‘What did you talk about while you there?’ Maggie asked suddenly.

‘Good grief, Constable, you can’t expect me to remember a casual conversation at this distance of time.’

Maggie gave him the sort of baleful look her father might reserve for a mongrel worrying sheep. ‘She was your sister-in-law and it was the last time you spoke to her. Wouldn’t the conversation stick in your mind?’