Dying in the Dark (30 page)

Elizabeth Driver lurched slightly. ‘But it
wasn't
my fault, was it? Whether I told Maria or didn't tell Maria has nothing to do with anything. She'd have been dead whatever I'd said. So no harm done, and it's a case of all's well that ends well.'

No harm done! Woodend repeated bleakly to himself.

A baby had been left without a mother, a husband without a wife. Monika and Bob would be carrying around their guilt for the rest of their lives, not because they were wholly – or even partly – responsible for a lot of what had happened, but because that was what decent people like them did.

He couldn't lay any of that at Elizabeth Driver's door, but there was one thing he
could
blame her for.

‘
I hit her on the back of the head, as hard as I could
,' Derek Higson had said. ‘
She probably didn't feel a thing
.'

But that was where he was wrong. For the last week of her life, Maria had been carrying around with her a burden of unhappiness, brought on by knowledge of her husband's affair. And
that
had been unnecessary.

‘Say it!' Elizabeth Driver demanded.

‘Say what?'

‘Whatever it is that's going on in that head of yours.'

‘All right, I will,' Woodend agreed. ‘If somebody
had
to be in the park to overhear Pamela Rainsford and Derek Higson, then I wish that somebody had been
you
.'