Madlyn was silent. She regarded Havers, and if she wondered what a representative from New Scotland Yard was doing dressed like a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, she did not say it. Havers took out a tattered notebook as Madlyn watched her, and she jotted down a note. It was likely a reminder to buy a pasty before leaving Casvelyn for the Salthouse Inn that evening, but that didn’t matter to Bea. It looked official and that was what counted.
“I don’t appreciate being lied to,” Bea told Madlyn. “It wastes my time, it forces me to go over old ground, and it throws me off my stride.”
“I didn’t-”
“Save us all some time during this second round of the boxing match, all right?”
“I don’t see why you think-”
“Need a refresher? Seven and a half weeks ago, Santo Kerne ended your relationship and, according to you, that was that: It was all you knew, full stop, no window dressing included. But as it turns out, you knew a bit more than that, didn’t you? You knew he was seeing someone else and something about that made you sick. Does any of this sound familiar to you, Miss Angarrack?”
Madlyn’s gaze shifted. Her brain was clearly engaged in calculations, and her expression said that the calculations were of the Who’s the bloody grass? variety. The suspects were probably not innumerable, and when Madlyn’s glance took in the Blue Star Grocery, satisfaction played her face like a keyboard. Resolution followed. Will Mendick, Bea Hannaford decided, was likely burnt toast.
“What would you like to tell us?” Bea asked. Sergeant Havers tapped her pencil against her notebook with great meaning. It was a chewed-up pencil, but that was no surprise, as possessing a writing utensil in any other condition would have been wildly out of character in the woman.
Madlyn’s gaze came back to Bea. She didn’t look resigned. She looked avenged, which, to Bea’s way of thinking, was not the way a suspect ought to be looking when it came to murder.
“He broke up with me. I told you that and it was the truth. I didn’t lie, and you can’t make it out that I did. And I wasn’t under oath anyway, so-”
“Save the legal wrangling,” Havers spoke up. “Far as I know, this isn’t an episode of The Bill. You lied, you cheated, or you danced the polka. We don’t much care. Let’s get to the facts. I’ll be happy, the DI’ll be happy, and-trust me-you’ll be happy as well.”
Madlyn didn’t look appreciative of this advice. She made a moue of distaste, but it seemed to be an expression that served the purpose of jockeying for position because when she next spoke, she told a completely different tale from the one she’d told earlier. She said, “All right. I broke up with him. I thought he was cheating, so I followed him. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I had to know. When I knew, I ended it. It hurt to do it because I was stupid and I still loved him, but I ended it anyway. That’s the story. And it’s the truth.”
“So far,” Bea said.
“I just told you-”
“Followed him where?” Havers asked, her pencil poised. “Followed him when? And how? On foot, by car, on bicycle, on a pogo stick?”
“What about his cheating on you made you sick?” Bea asked. “Just the fact of it, or was there something else? I think ‘off ’ was your choice of description.”
“I never said-”
“Not to us, no. You never said. That’s part of the current problem. Your problem, that is. When you say one thing to one person and another thing to the coppers, it all comes back to bite you in the end. So I suggest you consider yourself bitten and do something to get the teeth out of your bum, in a matter of speaking.”
“Rabies being rabies and all,” DS Havers murmured. Bea stifled a smile. She was starting to like the disheveled woman.
Madlyn’s jaw tightened. It seemed that the full reality of her situation was beginning to dawn upon her. She could remain obdurate and accept the threats and the ridicule of the other two women, or she could talk. She chose the option that seemed likeliest to effect their imminent departure.
“I think people should stick to their own,” she said.
“And Santo didn’t stick to his own?” Bea asked. “What’s that mean, exactly?”
“Just what I said.”
“What?” Havers asked impatiently. “He was doing altar boys on the side? Goats? Sheep? The occasional vegetable marrow? What?”
“Stop it!” Madlyn cried. “He was doing other women, all right? Older women. I confronted him when I knew about it. And I knew because I followed him.”
“We’re back to that,” Bea said. “You followed him where?”
“To Polcare Cottage.” Her eyes were bright. “He went to Polcare Cove and I followed him. He went inside and…I waited and waited because I was stupid and I wanted to think that…But no. No. So I went to the door after a bit and I banged upon it and…You can work out the bloody rest, can’t you? And that’s all I have to say to you two, so leave me alone. Leave me bloody well alone.”
That said, she pushed between them and stalked back towards the bakery’s door. She rubbed at her cheeks furiously as she walked.
“What’s Polcare Cottage?” DS Havers asked.
“A very nice place to pay a call on,” Bea said.
LYNLEY DIDN’T APPROACH THE cottage at once because he saw immediately that there was probably going to be no point. She didn’t appear to be at home. Either that or she’d parked her Vauxhall in the larger of the two outbuildings that stood on her property in Polcare Cove. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel of his hired Ford, and he considered what his next move ought to be. Reporting what he knew to DI Hannaford seemed to top the list, but he didn’t feel settled with that decision. Instead, he wanted to give Daidre Trahair an opportunity to explain herself.
Despite what Barbara Havers might have thought once they parted at the Salthouse Inn, Lynley had taken her comments to heart. He was in a precarious position, and he knew it although he hated to admit or even think about it. He wanted desperately to escape the black pit in which he’d been floundering for weeks upon weeks, and he felt inclined to clutch just about any life rope that would get him out of there. The long walk along the South-West Coastal Path hadn’t provided that escape as he’d hoped it would. So he had to admit that perhaps Daidre Trahair’s company in conjunction with the kindness in her eyes had beguiled him into overlooking details that would otherwise have demanded acknowledgement.
He’d come upon another of those details upon Havers’ departure earlier that morning. Neither pigheaded nor blind when it came down to it, he’d placed another phone call to the zoo in Bristol. This time, however, instead of enquiring about Dr. Trahair, he enquired about the primate keepers. By the time he wended his way through what seemed like half a dozen employees and departments, he was fairly certain what the news would be. There was no Paul the primate keeper at the zoo. Indeed, the primates were kept by a team of women, headed by someone called Mimsie Vance, to whom Lynley did not need to speak.
Another lie chalked up against her, another black mark that needed confrontation.
What he reckoned he ought to do was lay his cards on the table for the vet. He, after all, was the person to whom Daidre Trahair had spoken about Paul the primate keeper and his terminally ill father. Perhaps, he thought, he had misinterpreted or misunderstood what Daidre had said. Certainly, she deserved the chance to clarify. Didn’t anyone in her position deserve as much?
He got out of the Ford and approached Daidre’s cottage. He knocked on the blue front door and waited. As he expected, the vet was not at home. But he went to the outbuildings just to make sure.
The larger one was empty of everything, as it would have to be for a car to be accommodated within its narrow confines. It was also largely unfinished inside and the presence of cobwebs and a thick coating of dust indicated that no one used it often. There were tyre tracks across the floor of the building, though. Lynley squatted and examined these. Several cars, he saw, had parked here. It was something to note, although he wasn’t sure what he ought to make of the information.