Nutshell(39)

Instead, the chief inspector wastes no time. ‘You might show me around when we’re done talking.’

More statement than request. Claude is eager, too eager, to comply. ‘Oh yes. Yes!’

A search warrant would be the alternative. But there’s nothing upstairs of interest to the police beyond the squalor.

The chief inspector says to Trudy, ‘Your husband came here yesterday about 10 a.m.?’

‘That’s right.’ Her tone is impassive, an example to Claude.

‘And there was tension.’

‘Of course.’

‘Why of course?’

‘I’ve been living with his brother in what John thought was his house.’

‘Whose house is it?’

‘It’s the marital home.’

‘The marriage was over?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mind if I ask? Did he think it was over?’

Trudy hesitates. There may be a right and wrong answer.

‘He wanted me back but he wanted his women friends.’

‘Know any names?’

‘No.’

‘But he told you about them.’

‘No.’

‘But you knew somehow.’

‘Of course I knew.’

Trudy allows herself a little contempt. As if to say, I’m the real woman here. But she’s ignored Claude’s coaching. She was to speak the truth, adding and subtracting only what was agreed. I hear my uncle stir in his chair.

Without pause, Allison changes the subject. ‘You had a coffee.’

‘Yes.

‘All three. Round this table?’

‘All three.’ This is Claude, worried perhaps that his silence is giving a poor impression.

‘Anything else?’

‘What?’

‘With the coffee. Did you offer him anything else?

‘No.’ My mother sounds cautious.

‘And what was in the coffee?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘He always had it black.’ Her pulse rate has risen.

But Clare Allison’s manner is impenetrably neutral. She turns to Claude. ‘So you lent him money.’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘Five thousand.’ Claude and Trudy answer in ragged chorus.

‘A cheque?’

‘Cash, actually. It’s how he wanted it.’

‘Have you been to this juice bar on Judd Street?’

Claude’s answer is as quick as the question. ‘Once or twice. It was John who told us about it.’

‘You weren’t there yesterday, I suppose.’

‘No.’

‘You never borrowed his black hat with the wide brim?’

‘Never. Not my sort of thing.’

This may be the wrong answer, but there’s not time to work it out. The questions have acquired new weight. Trudy’s heart is beating faster. I wouldn’t trust her to speak. But she does, in a constricted voice.

‘Birthday present from me. He loved that hat.’

The chief inspector is already moving on to something different, but she turns back. ‘It’s all we can see of him on the CCTV. Sent it off for a DNA match.’

‘We haven’t offered you any tea or coffee,’ Trudy says in her altered voice.

The chief inspector must have refused both for herself and the still-silent sergeant with a shake of the head. ‘That’s most of it these days,’ she says in a tone of nostalgia. ‘Science and computer screens. Now, where was – ah yes. There was tension. But I see in the notes there was a row.’

Claude will be making the same racing calculations as me. His own hair will be found in the hat. The correct answer was yes, he borrowed it a while ago.

‘Yes,’ Trudy says. ‘One of many.’

‘Would you mind telling me the—’

‘He wanted me to move out. I said I’d go in my own time.’

‘When he drove off what was his state of mind?’

‘Not good. He was a mess. Confused. He didn’t really want me to go. He wanted me back. Tried to make me jealous, pretending that Elodie was his lover. She put us right. There was no affair.’

Too much detail. She’s trying to regain control. But talking too fast. She needs to take a breath.

Clare Allison is silent while we wait to know the next direction she’ll take. But she stays with this and puts the matter as delicately as she can. ‘That’s not my information.’

A moment of numbness, as if sound itself has been murdered. The space around me shrinks as Trudy seems to deflate. Her spine slumps like an old woman’s. I’m just a little proud of myself. I always had my suspicions. How eagerly they believed Elodie. Now they know: nurse’s flowers will certainly not last. But I should be cautious too. The chief inspector might have her own reason to lie. She’s clicking her ballpoint pen, ready to move on.

My mother says in a small voice, ‘Well, I suppose I was the more deceived.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cairncross. But my sources are good. Let’s just say that this is a complicated young woman.’

I could explore the theory that it’s no bad thing for Trudy to be the injured party, to have corroboration for the story of her faithless husband. But I’m stunned; we’re both stunned. My father, that uncertain principle, spins yet further away from me just as the chief inspector comes at my mother with another question. She answers in the same small voice, with the added tremor of a punished little girl.