Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

They were sitting in armchairs, but they had pulled out the chair from the writing desk for their interviewees to sit on. I slumped onto it.

‘Murder?’ I said. ‘I thought she drowned.’

‘So did the stalker who found her, but her neck showed signs of strangulation. We won’t know with a hundred-per-cent certainty until the post-mortem, but for the moment we are treating it as a murder.’

‘Where was she found?’

‘In the loch, snagged on the branch of a fallen tree, by the woods on the southern side.’

Just beyond the boathouse.

I tried to think. Think quickly. I couldn’t remember what had happened the night before. I had already lied about creeping out to see Sophie, and if I told them the truth about that, then I would instantly be their chief suspect. And I knew I hadn’t killed Sophie.

So — keep it simple. Keep it consistent.

‘Can you tell me when you last saw Mrs Trickett-Smith?’

I kept it simple: I lied again. I told them I had last seen Sophie when we had put Stephen to bed. I told them I had gone to bed myself. I said I was drunk and was suffering from an unusually severe hangover; I had not been woken by anything in the night.

Inspector Dewar listened closely. He had small bright-blue eyes that seemed to dance over my face, taking in everything. I felt wretched, worse than wretched. I was sure I looked it too, but actually, that might help my credibility.

‘Now, Dr Culzie. Were you having an affair with Mrs Trickett-Smith?’

A small part of my brain cleared. I needed to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, at least up to the point I had first gone to bed the night before. I had no idea what the others would say, what they knew, what they might speculate. Who knew what Stephen suspected? Or Madeleine for that matter; Sophie might have confided in her.

I took in a deep breath. ‘Do you want a short answer or a long answer?’

Inspector Dewar’s eyes darted all over my face before he answered. ‘Both.’

‘Well, the short answer is “no”.’

‘And the long answer?’

I spent several minutes describing how I had first met Sophie in Paris, about Normandy, about our disastrous meeting in Capri before the war, and about our return there in 1947. I implied, without being specific, that something had happened in the Villa Fersen. I explained how Sophie and I had gone twelve years without seeing each other, until just then. And how, on Ben Wyvis the previous afternoon, I had kissed her.

‘Nothing more than a kiss?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Didn’t you want to?’

I nodded. ‘I wanted to.’

‘But Mrs Trickett-Smith wouldn’t let you?’

I felt a flash of irritation at the way the policeman insisted on calling Sophie ‘Mrs Trickett-Smith’, as if emphasizing the fact she was first and foremost someone else’s wife, but I controlled it. I could tell Dewar had noticed, though.

‘No, she wouldn’t.’

‘Did that frustrate you?’

‘A little, yes. But I wasn’t surprised. Sophie had made me promise not to touch her.’

‘And then she touched you?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘That must have been frustrating. Didn’t you feel like insisting?’

Suddenly I understood what the inspector was suggesting.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I would never harm her. I respected her wishes after Capri. I respected her wishes on the mountain. She was never going to leave Stephen and I understood that.’

‘I see,’ said Dewar. I watched the policeman study me. I let him. I was telling the truth, at least in everything up to putting Stephen to bed, and I was pretty sure the policeman could see that.

‘What about Mr Trickett-Smith?’ Dewar asked. ‘Did he suspect there was anything going on between you and his wife?’

‘No. At least not that I am aware of. He knew how much she meant to me when he took her.’

‘Took her?’

‘Won her. I don’t know, wooed her. But Stephen thought he was the best man and he had won. He was always confident of his effect on women. I think he knew she liked me, but we saw very little of each other.’

‘What about here? At Wyvis?’

‘He didn’t seem too bothered that we climbed the mountain together. So, no, I don’t think he did suspect anything.’

‘And this morning?’

I glanced at the policeman. I didn’t want to drop Stephen into anything unnecessarily, but the others had all heard his accusation at breakfast.

‘This morning, Stephen asked whether Sophie was in my room. He said he had checked the whole house in the middle of the night and couldn’t find her, so that was the only place he could think of.’

‘So that suggests he was suspicious?’

I hesitated. ‘I suppose it does, doesn’t it?’ I admitted. ‘But that was just this morning.’

‘Is there anything that happened between last night and this morning to make Stephen jealous?’ Dewar asked.

That was a good question, and one that I was not prepared to answer. ‘I can’t think of anything,’ I said eventually.

The policemen let me go. The others were in the drawing room, and I knew I had to face them. At least my headache felt a bit better.

Stephen and Madeleine looked miserable, in their different ways. Tony was distraught. Only Nathan seemed calm. He remained at his wife’s side.

‘I’m sorry, old man,’ Stephen said to me. ‘For accusing you of having Sophie in your room. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Stephen,’ I said. ‘I’m just so sorry about what happened to her.’

We all looked at each other in silence. I could tell everyone was thinking the same thing, but couldn’t say it. We had been in this situation before, over twenty years before. This was so much worse, at least as far as I was concerned, as it was for Stephen and Madeleine. Although Madeleine had lost a husband in Alden, Sophie meant so much more to her.

At least this time the others didn’t have to worry about getting their stories straight. I did: I was lying, seriously lying, and I had to decide quickly whether that was a good idea. I could still change my mind. I probably should; the police deserved all the help they could get to find Sophie’s murderer. It would be tough for Stephen, who would inevitably find out from the police that I had slept with his wife shortly before she died.

But before I said anything, I needed to think.

‘I’m just going to get some air,’ I said.

Outside, the sun was glittering off the loch, and a trio of puffy little clouds drifted through the pale-blue sky. It was a beautiful day. I turned away from the loch and the boathouse, away from the police cars and the uniforms, and strode up the broad boulder-strewn glen along the River Glass. My head was clearer than it had been all morning.

Who had killed Sophie?

I had absolutely no idea.

How had I sustained the bump on my head?

Presumably the murderer had hit me.

Where? When?

I didn’t know.

I walked along the footpath beside the fast-running stream. Above me, about half a mile up the hillside to the right, just below an old sheep fold, I saw a stag and three hinds. One of the hinds raised her nose and sniffed the wind. Then she turned, spotted me and loped off, followed by the others.

Would the police believe me? That I couldn’t remember what had happened? It was the truth, so presumably they would. I could put my faith in the British justice system, surely. Not only could I, it was my duty to.

They might think I did it. That I had killed Sophie: forced myself upon her, perhaps, or lost my temper with her.

Well, if they thought that, so be it. The truth would out, I knew I hadn’t killed her.