The Other Woman (30 page)

‘We know where Mr Whitworth was when Sharon was in that car,' said Lloyd. ‘We want to know where you were, Mr Evans.'

The moment's euphoria at their mistaken assumption left him as suddenly as it had come. It didn't get him off any hooks. And he might as well be accused of Sharon's murder. It was his fault it had happened. If he hadn't gone along with Parker's plans, if he hadn't wanted whatever it was that Parker seemed to be offering him, then Sharon would still be alive, because she would never have been at the football ground in the first place.

‘I was here,' he said.

‘Can someone confirm that?'

He smiled, calmer now than he had been for the last two days. ‘My wife. But I don't suppose that's good enough for you.' Certainly not if they knew her, it wouldn't be. She would say he was there at any time he cared to name. He wondered where his marriage had all gone wrong. He hadn't been sleeping with his secretary, not like Whitworth. Frances didn't have to ring people up to check on where he was when he said he was working late. Then he remembered.

‘Melissa Whitworth,' he said. ‘She can confirm it. She rang me here not long after nine o'clock.'

Lloyd's eyes widened.

‘You know how long it took you to get here, Chief Inspector,' he said. ‘ I can hardly have been strangling Sharon at nine o'clock and back here by ten past.'

Lloyd picked up his tea and drank it thoughtfully. ‘So you are saying that Mr Whitworth was having an affair with Sharon Smith, that Mr Whitworth has to have been responsible for any discrepancies in your accounts, and that Mr Whitworth in all probability murdered Sharon when she discovered this, and unwisely told him what she'd found?'

He ought to agree. He ought regretfully to agree that was indeed what he thought. Parker had said that if Whitworth really had killed her it would strengthen his hand. But he didn't want his hand strengthening. It had offended him; he wanted to cut it off.

Lionel closed his eyes. It was an odd way in which to see things clearly for the first time, but that was how it was. It had to have been Parker himself who had told them what Sharon had discovered. This had always been going to happen. Parker had had to initiate the investigation himself because of what had happened to Sharon, but that was the only difference. Whenever and however it had come about, Lionel would have been on his own.

Parker had always been going to sit back and watch Lionel jump through hoops. Of course Lionel couldn't incriminate Simon. He had neither the guile nor the sheer wickedness, and Parker had known that. He had simply employed Lionel to do all his dirty work, and then he would have skipped with the money.

It gave Lionel some satisfaction to know that since Parker had had to make the allegations himself, rather than waiting until the money had been laundered into safe and secret accounts, the proceeds would all be impounded, and Parker wouldn't get a penny either. And Lionel could at least make an attempt to have him put where he belonged.

‘Parker says she was having an affair with Simon,' he said, his voice expressionless. ‘It is perfectly possible, but I have no personal knowledge of the situation. Whitworth was not involved in the fraud. I have no idea who killed Sharon, and I want to make a statement,' he said. ‘Parker was just as involved in this fraud as I was.'

‘Not my pigeon,' said Lloyd, putting down his cup. ‘This needs people who can read balance sheets and spot errors. Fraud squad stuff. I've no doubt you'll be hearing from my colleagues very soon. I am only concerned with it in as much as it precipitated the murder of Sharon Smith. If it did.'

Lionel stared at him. ‘You don't still think that I did it, surely?' he asked.

‘I don't know, Mr Evans. That rather depends on who else has been lying to me.'

They left, and Lionel closed the front door, on the foggy night, squaring his shoulders, and preparing himself to tell Frances what was about to happen to them.

Lloyd eased out of the Evanses' driveway, and settled in for the long, tiring journey back to Stansfield. ‘The Whitworths?' he said.

‘It's getting very late,' said Judy. ‘And we really only have the word of two very doubtful witnesses as to what Whitworth was doing – you've already arrested his wife today.'

Lloyd smiled. ‘The Whitworths,' he said. ‘ We have to find out if Mrs Whitworth confirms Evans's alibi, don't we?'

Judy sighed. ‘They might be in bed by the time we get there,' she said.

Lloyd grinned. ‘It'll make a change for them to be in bed with one another if they are,' he said.

‘And if she does confirm his alibi?' asked Judy.

Lloyd blinked, as though that would clear his vision, but the damp clouds of fog remained. ‘Then first thing tomorrow, we get Drummond back in,' he said grimly. ‘And ask him why we have been chasing all over the countryside in search of his phantom bloody car!'

There was no car, he was sure of it. Drummond had been lying from the start. And if that was the case, then Lionel's alibi was no good to him, because Sharon Smith had been murdered before she ever left the ground.

Judy yawned. ‘When we've seen the Whitworths, we call it a day – yes?'

‘Yes,' said Lloyd.

They drove for a few minutes in silence, as Lloyd tried to push the theory that was evolving to the back of his head. If Whitworth wasn't involved in the fraud – and there seemed little doubt that he had been selected as the fall guy – then Judy had been right all along, and it was a domestic. Why had Sharon said she would be home at seven? Her appointment with Melissa Whitworth was at seven. And had she seen Whitworth at the match? If so, he might have seen her. And what had he seen? Sharon in deep consultation with his wife. And did she tell him what she had just done?

Perhaps they could wrap it all up tonight, and he could forget the little voice that nagged him about Drummond, and the police who had it in for him, and the coincidental rape of Parker's girlfriend.

‘I spy,' said Judy, boredly, ‘ with my little eye, something beginning with F.'

Lloyd smiled.

‘Talk to me,' she said. ‘I hate it when you're strong and silent.'

‘I'm trying to see where I'm going! What about?'

‘Anything.'

‘The occult? Gardening. The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. South Africa – is apartheid truly dead? Flemish art. Charles Edward Stuart – how valid was his claim to the throne? Astronomy. Simone de Beauvoir—'

‘She'll do,' said Judy.

He had told her everything he knew, and made up a great deal that he did not, about Simone de Beauvoir before the orange lights of Stansfield were close enough to penetrate the fog, and they were on the bypass on which the Whitworths inexplicably chose to live. Both the Whitworths' cars were parked on the grass verge; garages were a thing of the future when the cottage had been built, and its preservation order prohibited building. Lloyd drove on to the lay-by, and pulled in behind another car.

He frowned. ‘No one else lives within miles of here,' he said.

‘Probably broken down,' said Judy. ‘It's a bit beaten up – maybe it had an accident.'

Probably. He couldn't let his wild theory take him over, he thought. But he made a mental note of the number, all the same.

‘Come in,' said Whitworth, looking strained and anxious, as did his wife, who hovered anxiously at the living-room door.

The room was untidy; there was evidence on one of the cushions on the armchair of a cat's presence, but the cat itself wasn't to be seen. The television was on, with the sound too low to be of any use; that always irritated Lloyd. In fact, he thought that the Whitworths were the most irritating couple he had ever met. And even the cat had had enough of them, or Lloyd might have had someone sensible to talk to.

‘Did you speak to Mr Evans at all on Friday evening, Mrs Whitworth?' Judy asked.

Lloyd had become convinced, during his impromptu and wildly unreliable lecture on the French lady of letters, that this whole thing was a waste of time. Time that he was once again spending with people whose selfish lives really didn't interest him.

There had been no car; Drummond had wasted even more of his time.

‘Yes,' said Mrs Whitworth. ‘I telephoned him to see if he knew where Simon was.'

‘Can you remember what time that was?'

‘Nine, or so. I can't remember to the minute.'

Judy took him a little by surprise then. ‘Where did you ring from?' she asked.

‘Here,' she said, guilelessly.

Judy consulted her incredible notebook. Whatever it was, she hadn't forgotten it – it was doubtless what
she
had been thinking about all through the lecture, but her dependence on note-taking had given her a prop, too, like his glasses had given him. They all did it, unconsciously acting, using power-play and body language to gain the upper hand.

‘But in your last statement you said that you had left Sharon Smith going into the match just before the kick-off, and gone home,' said Judy.

‘Yes,' said Mrs Whitworth, still quite unaware of the snare that Judy was holding open for her to walk into. Lloyd was unsure of the nature of the snare, but he recognised one when he saw it, unlike Mrs W.

‘And that you must have just missed your husband,' said Judy.

‘Yes – look, I'm not too sure what all this is about,' she said.

Neither was Lloyd.

Judy looked up from her notes, her expression politely puzzled. ‘It's about when exactly you left this house, Mrs Whitworth,' she said. ‘You see, you said that you left here and went to the hotel.'

Melissa Whitworth looked at Lloyd then; Lloyd couldn't help her. All he could do was look as though he knew what Judy was getting at.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I left at about ten – quarter past nine, I suppose. Right after I'd phoned Lionel.'

‘And got to the hotel at nine thirty?'

‘You know I did.'

‘But Sergeant Woodford rang your husband at this number at eight forty-five, Mrs Whitworth. And later, your husband said that you hadn't come home at all, so I must assume that you weren't here then.'

‘No, I …'

‘Where were you between seven thirty and eight forty-five?' Judy asked.

‘I don't know! I must have …' She tailed off. ‘I don't know,' she said.

The silence that followed was tangible; Simon Whitworth sat on the arm of the sofa, his eyes on his wife. Judy waited, pen poised, for a reasonable answer to her question. Lloyd was wondering how he had missed that discrepancy in her statement, and knew that it was because of his obsession with Drummond.

‘All right,' Mrs Whitworth said, almost huffily. ‘I did come home when I said I did, after I'd left Sharon Smith. I was very upset – and I thought at least Simon would be here, because for once I knew he wasn't ‘‘ working late'', which is his unoriginal euphemism for screwing his secretary.' She shot a look at her husband.

Whitworth had the grace to blush, and look down at the arm of the sofa, on which he seemed to have found something that required his earnest attention.

‘But he wasn't here,' she said, her eyes still resting on her uncomfortable husband. ‘I waited for ages, but he didn't come home. I tried the office, and there was no reply. So I decided to go there. If she had gone back to the office, I might even catch them in the act of working late.'

Whitworth was a painful brick-red.

‘I drove down towards the village. Then … I saw her. Walking down to the office, presumably. So I drove alongside her, and wound down the window.'

Lloyd stared at her.

‘I offered her a lift – she didn't want to take it, obviously, but I just crawled along beside her. She had to get in. I was embarrassing her.'

‘Where did you go?' Judy asked.

‘She asked me to take her back up to the football ground,' said Melissa.

‘Did you ask why?'

‘No, but she volunteered the information that there had been a bit of a fight, and she had left. She wanted to go back because she had to speak to someone.'

She glanced at Lloyd, who was busily trying to reorganise his thoughts on Drummond, who had been telling the truth, blast him.

‘When we got there, the place was in darkness,' she said. ‘And I told her what I thought of her.'

Whitworth looked up at his wife, who turned and addressed him directly.

‘I knew as soon as she'd gone that it hadn't even been an honest mistake! She did it quite deliberately! How you could possibly have wanted to have anything to do with that unprincipled little bitch—' She blinked away tears. ‘She pretended not to know what I was talking about, and that just made me angrier. Then she said that my husband obviously didn't want me, and he did want her, though she used rather more basic language than that. I told her to get out.'

Whitworth was staring at her now, his mouth open. ‘That isn't true!' he shouted. ‘She wasn't like that – she wasn't!'

‘What happened then?' said Judy, ignoring Whitworth's protestations.

‘I drove away. I came back here. I didn't understand where Simon had gone, so I rang Lionel. Then I didn't want to be here when Simon did condescend to come home, so I picked up a change of underwear and my toilet bag, and I went straight to the hotel.'

‘Is there some reason why you didn't tell us this in the first place?' asked Lloyd.

‘I wasn't terribly keen to tell anyone! I got drunk – I made a fool of myself, all right?' She turned to her husband. ‘And don't flatter yourself that it was because of you!' she shouted. ‘I'd nearly run over some idiot on a motorbike – I was shaken up, and. I drank too much. And what happened at the hotel,' she said, bringing Lloyd back into her line of fire, ‘was completely unplanned – and I might add, entirely unprecedented, whatever you may think of me!'