The Peacock Emporium(124)

He would have to come.

Suzanna smoothed back her hair, feeling the familiar clench of her stomach, the winding coil of excitement and fear that had possessed her for the last twenty-four hours. Twice, to comfort herself, she had stared into her bag at her trove of peculiar treasures. There was the label from the plant that had arrived that first day; then, addressed to her at her parents’ house, a paper butterfly sent in an unmarked envelope, which Ben, an amateur enthusiast in his teens, had identified only as Inachis io. She had written the name on the back. Yesterday, when she had gone to the shop to complete her final task before handing over the keys, she had found an oversize feather pinned to the door frame. It now stuck incongruously from the lip of her shoulder-bag. There had been no messages. But she had known they had to be something to do with him. That there must be some meaning.

She tried not to think too hard of the possibility that they might have come from Neil.

The coroner had finished with the postmortem report. He leaned solicitously over his bench and asked Cath Carter if there was anything she would like clarified. Cath, sandwiched tightly between Father Lenny and an unidentified middle-aged woman, shook her head. The coroner returned to the witness list in front of him.

It would be her turn next. Suzanna gazed down at the bespectacled reporter in the corner, faithfully scribbling shorthand in his notebook. Suzanna had spoken to Father Lenny earlier of her fears that if she told the coroner everything she knew, Jessie would be painted as a domestic-abuse victim in the newspapers. She hadn’t wanted to be seen as a victim, Suzanna had told him. Didn’t they owe her that small dignity at least? He had told her that Cath had similar concerns. “But there is a bottom line here, Suzanna,” he had said, “and that is where you’d rather see Emma growing up. Because although there won’t be a criminal verdict in this court, you can bet that what gets said here will go on to be used in any criminal case. I think even Jessie wouldn’t mind sacrificing her privacy a little for the sake of her daughter’s . . . stability.” He had chosen the word carefully.

That had then made it a pretty straightforward decision. Suzanna heard her name called and stood up. Under the surprisingly gentle prompting of the coroner, she told him in measured tones of Jessie’s injuries during the time she had worked for the Peacock Emporium, of the sequence of events that had led to the evening on which she died, and of the gregarious, generous personality that had inadvertently led to her death. She had been unable to look at Cath as she spoke, feeling still as if she were betraying the family’s trust, but as she stepped down she had caught the older woman’s eyes, and Cath had nodded. An acknowledgment of sorts.

He had not come in.

She sat down in her seat, feeling herself deflate.

You okay? Father Lenny mouthed, turning in his seat. She nodded, trying not to let her eyes drift again to the wood-paneled door, which threatened to open any minute now. She smoothed her too-short hair for the fortieth time.

Three other people gave evidence: Jessie’s doctor, who confirmed that in his opinion Jess had not suffered from depression but had intended to leave her partner; Father Lenny, who, as a close friend of the family, told of his own attempt to remedy what he called her “situation,” and of her fierce determination to sort it out herself; and a cousin whom Suzanna had not met. The latter had burst into tears and pointed an accusatory finger at Jason Burden’s mother: she had known what was going on and should have stopped it, stopped the bastard. The coroner suggested that she might like to take a break to compose herself. Suzanna listened with half an ear wondering at what point she could legitimately leave the court again.

“We now turn to our sole witness,” said the coroner, “a Mr. Alejandro de Marenas, an Argentinian national, formerly resident at Dere Hampton hospital, where he was working in the maternity ward . . .”

Suzanna’s heart stopped.

“. . . who has provided a written statement. I will pass this to the court clerk to read aloud.”

The court clerk, a plump woman with enthusiastically dyed hair, stood and, in a flat, estuary accent, began to read.

A written statement. Suzanna slumped forward as if winded. She heard almost nothing of Alejandro’s words, the words she had heard whispered into her ear on the night of Jessie’s death, words uttered through tears and kisses, words she had stopped with her own lips.

Then she stared at this woman, who should have been Alejandro, and tried to stop the wail of exasperation that was building inside her.

She couldn’t sit still. She fidgeted in her seat, feverish and despairing, and when the woman stopped reading, she slid rapidly along the bench and, with a nod of apology, fled to the hallway where two of Jessie’s aunts, her cousin, and a friend from school were already seated on the bench.

“That murdering bastard,” said one, lighting a cigarette. “How can his mother show her face in here?”

“Lynn says the boys are going to have him if they let him out.”

“It’s not Sylvia’s fault,” said the other. “You know she’s devastated.”

“She still visits him, doesn’t she? She still goes to see him every week.”

The older woman patted the girl’s arm. “Any mother would,” she said. “He’s blood, isn’t he? Whatever he’s done.” She called to Suzanna, “You all right, love? Found it too hard to listen to, did you?”