The Dark Room (31 page)

‘Was Leo the father?’

‘I don’t know. She never told me who it was, and I didn’t ask.’

‘Did you know about Leo before your parents did?’

‘Not by name. I knew she had a long-term lover who came and went between her other affairs. She was very fond of him, called him her old stand-by. I presume that was Leo if
she’d known him eleven years.’

‘Did she ever say why she didn’t marry him?’

Simon shrugged. ‘She said once that he was permanently broke, but the truth is I don’t think she wanted to get married. She certainly didn’t want children.’
He glanced towards his father. ‘She always felt that I fitted into our family better than she did, and she was afraid of bringing a child into the world who didn’t belong. She said it
wasn’t fair.’

‘It can’t have been Leo,’ said his father. ‘Surely she wouldn’t describe a man with a house in Chelsea as permanently broke.’

Frank Cheever tucked his notebook into his pocket. ‘In fact, sir, he had several properties both in this country and abroad, but no one knew about them, not even his parents.
He made a habit of pleading poverty when, according to his solicitor, he was worth a very tidy fortune. Miss Kingsley describes him as a parasite who was obsessively secretive about money. His
mother describes a disturbed young man with a pathological dislike of sharing. He wasn’t a straightforward character by any means, so it’s highly probable he did give your daughter the
impression he had no money.’

‘How very tragic.’ Charles Harris looked distressed. ‘One tends to think the type doesn’t exist any more, certainly not amongst the young. I suppose we must
blame Dickens for creating so extreme an example that the rest pass unnoticed.’ He saw the Superintendent’s perplexed expression. ‘Scrooge,’ he explained. ‘Misers.
People who need to hoard wealth but can’t bring themselves to spend it. You come across them in the newspapers from time to time, old people who’ve died in shocking squalor only to
leave a fortune behind.’ He folded his hands in his lap. ‘As I say, it’s not something one associates with youth, but presumably a miser is a miser all his life. Poor Leo. What a
sad, sad state of affairs.’

His wife began to scream. It was a piercing terrible sound that curdled sympathy and frayed nerves.

Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 12.45 p.m.

‘Let’s try a different tack,’ suggested Alan. ‘You said you and Leo were supposed to be staying with his parents for the weekend. Have you any recollection
of doing that or was the whole idea abandoned when you decided you weren’t going to marry him?’

Jinx’s expression cleared. ‘No,’ she said, ‘we did go. I had a row with them. I seem to have had rows with everyone that weekend.’

‘It’s not surprising. You were under a lot of pressure. The wedding was only a few weeks away and you were having second thoughts about going through with it.’

‘But why did I go down there with him if I knew I wasn’t going to marry him?’ It was a puzzle, but not one she thought Protheroe could solve.

He recalled her acceptance of Matthew Cornell’s invitation to lunch. ‘Presumably they were expecting you, so perhaps you thought it was the polite thing to do.’

‘Yes,’ she said in surprise. ‘I didn’t think it would be fair to Philippa not to go.’

‘Tell me about the row.’

‘I remember it so clearly,’ she said. ‘It was after lunch on the Monday and I blew my stack when Leo asked his father for some money and Anthony said he was a bit
short because he’d been forced to pay for some building work he’d had done.’ She shook her head. ‘The job had been completed six months before and he was angry because the
builder had gone to a solicitor.’ She pulled a rueful face. ‘I’d been holding myself back for twenty-four hours, and I went berserk. I called him every synonym for skinflint I
could think of, then turned on Leo and let rip at him. Poor Philippa looked mortified, and I was sorry about that because she’d always been so sweet to me.’ She sighed. ‘I wish
I’d had the sense not to go in the first place. It wasn’t a very dignified display. I kept spitting saliva all over the place because I couldn’t get the words out fast
enough.’

‘Was that when you told Leo it was all off?’

A look of irritation crossed her face. ‘I never got the chance. I just made an awful lot of noise, screaming and yelling and calling them names. I don’t know what I
thought I was doing really, except getting all the poison out of my system. It was Leo who said he wasn’t going through with it.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘He said he’d been
having an affair with Meg, and was planning to marry her instead.’ She looked at him. ‘I did tell you I wouldn’t have wanted to kill myself over Leo and Meg. Do you believe that
now? I can remember my relief when he said it. Thank God, I thought. I’m off the hook.’

‘But it must have been a shock.’

‘I suppose it was. I never thought she’d do it again, not after what happened to Russell.’

He was lost. ‘Do what again?’

She looked at him rather blankly. ‘It was history repeating itself,’ she said impatiently, as if it was something he ought to have known. ‘Meg was having an affair
with Russell when he was murdered.’

Chapter Sixteen

Tuesday, 28 June, Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 12.50 p.m.

ALAN PROTHEROE WIPED
a weary hand across his face, then pushed himself out of his chair and wandered restlessly towards the window. Could he, hand on heart, say he
believed anything Jinx told him?
When what she claimed to remember could be as fantastic as she chose because there was no one left to contradict her.
There were three dead people, and all
three were intimately connected with this one woman. Logic dictated that she must know something about their deaths. Logic also dictated that her father knew something, or why had he put her in
here with such very precise instructions concerning her care? Adam was as anxious as she was, it seemed, that her memories lie dormant.

‘I’m not sure I can believe that,’ he said with his back to her. ‘You described Russell to me only a couple of days ago as possessive and jealous. You said
your marriage was stifling. Now you tell me he and your best friend were having an affair. That doesn’t quite square, does it?’

‘Russell believed in double standards,’ Jinx said reasonably. ‘If he was capable of cheating the customs, do you not think he was equally capable of cheating his
wife?’

‘That’s hardly an answer, you know. Obsession with one woman doesn’t usually lead to philandering with others. Surely the two are mutually exclusive?’

‘It depends what sort of obsession you’re talking about. Russell was far more obsessed with himself than he was with me. I was little better than a trophy that he could
show off to his middle-aged friends, the child bride who adored him so much she forsook fortune and fame to marry him. Meg was a different kind of trophy, the one that proved to him he was still
sexually active and attractive at forty-plus. But we had no more value to him than the paintings in his collection. He liked owning things.’

He turned round. ‘My problem is I have to take your word for that. Sadly for Russell, the dead can’t speak for themselves.’

‘Is there a reason why you shouldn’t take my word?’ She said it without hostility but there was anger in her eyes. ‘Suddenly you’re a policeman, yet ten
minutes ago you only wanted to help.’ She made as if to get up. ‘This is just a professional exercise for you, and I’m hungry, anyway. I want some lunch.’

He refused to be intimidated. ‘Don’t be so childish,’ he said sharply. ‘Healthy scepticism and a wish to help are not mutually exclusive, Jinx. Arguably, the
one strengthens the other. Convince the sceptic and you will have a stronger ally for the future. Perhaps if you changed your mind-set
vis-à-vis
the police in that area, you could
shed your paranoia and make a positive attempt to help them find Meg and Leo’s murderer. Or are you as disinclined to do that as you were to have Russell’s murderer named?’

She looked at him with dislike. ‘I’ll phone Colonel Clancey and ask him to post Russell’s diaries and letters to you. I keep them in my bookcase at home. For what
it’s worth, the entry on the day we got married went like this: “Felt and looked great. Wore black velvet suit and white satin shirt. Speech afterwards was a triumph of wit and
erudition. What a pity there were so few guests to enjoy it.” I interpret that as self-obsession but then, admittedly, I’m an arrogant woman and I was put out that his bride
didn’t rate a mention.’

‘Still, I’m surprised you didn’t mention the affair before. It’s a little odd, don’t you think, that Meg should have slept with both Russell
and
Leo. Was she in the habit of stealing your men friends?’

‘If you want to be strictly accurate about it, I stole them from her. She had a six-month fling with Russell, got bored with him and introduced him to me. She did the same with
Leo, told me he was a business acquaintance and said he and I would get on like a house on fire. It was only later that I realized business acquaintance meant lover.’

‘Didn’t it upset you to get her cast-offs?’

‘Everybody’s somebody’s cast-off. In some ways it’s easier if you know your predecessor because then you know you’re not competing with
Superwoman.’

He resumed his seat. ‘You’re avoiding the question. Were you upset?’

‘Only in retrospect. Meg was a great deal more attractive than I am and completely careless of other people’s feelings, particularly men’s. She had no qualms about
taking up with someone, then dumping him two or three months later for somebody else. The trouble is, I’m less adept at that so I got lumbered with the jerks when it suited her.’

‘But she took up with them again later when
that
suited her.’ He shook his head in genuine bewilderment. ‘If this is true, Jinx, then I can’t
understand why you describe her as the only real friend you’ve ever had.’

‘I’m not doing this very well,’ she said, surprisingly sanguine about his disbelief. ‘You’d have liked Meg.’ She marshalled her thoughts.
‘Look, when I say I got lumbered with them that doesn’t mean I hold her responsible for what happened afterwards. She kept telling me not to marry Russell, said I was mad to tie myself
down at twenty-one, but by then it was too late. I couldn’t just abandon him after what Adam had done, and that wasn’t Meg’s fault.’

Alan was highly doubtful that Meg Harris was a woman he would have liked. If Jinx had said one thing that was true, it was her admitted inability to make sensible decisions about her
personal life, particularly where her choice of friends was concerned. She appeared to be completely blind to their character flaws, and he wondered if she realized that it was only the egocentric
personality that seemed to attract her. Was this because she found it difficult to differentiate between self-centredness and self-confidence? She had so many mixed feelings about her domineering
father that it wasn’t surprising she found people impossible to read. ‘I suppose it wasn’t Meg’s fault either that she had an affair with Russell after he was
married?’

She looked at him for a moment. ‘Not entirely, no. Presumably Russell had some say in it.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, they were very discreet. I didn’t find out
about it till after he was dead and by then it was water under the bridge.’

‘Who told you?’

‘No one. She wrote him some letters which he’d hidden amongst a stack of old exam papers in the attic at Richmond. They were rather sweet,’ she said, remembering.
‘The sad thing is, I think she really did love him, but she couldn’t bear the thought of being tied to one person. She was terrified of ending up in a country backwater like her mother
and being the dutiful wife.’

‘Did you ever talk to her about Russell?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I couldn’t see the point.’

‘Did the police know about it?’

‘If they did they never mentioned it.’

‘Why didn’t
you
mention it?’

‘Because I didn’t find the letters until a year later and by then the case was effectively closed.’ She plucked at her lower lip. ‘I don’t think you
realize what it’s like to be part of a murder inquiry. It’s not a very comfortable experience. I’d have needed something much stronger than a couple of faded love letters to make
us all go through that terrible mill again.’

He leaned forward. ‘So for the next nine years you pretended nothing had happened and then you learnt about her and Leo and you were afraid history was about to repeat
itself.’

She didn’t say anything. Perhaps she realized how thin it all sounded, and how odd her own behaviour must seem in the circumstances.

‘So what did you do, Jinx?’

‘I thought it would be better if no one knew, so when we got back to London, I told Leo to phone his parents and make sure they didn’t say anything until he gave them the
go-ahead. I said I needed to speak to my father first.’ She propped her chin in her hands and stared wretchedly at the carpet. ‘But I can’t remember if I spoke to Adam or not, so
I don’t know whether—’ She broke off abruptly.

‘You don’t know whether you gave him a reason to have them murdered.’