Woman with a Secret Read online

  The color scheme was one Simon couldn’t have lived with for more than a couple of days without wanting to set fire to the room: as many shades as possible, as bright as possible, all jumbled up together. One of the throws was an almost luminous tangerine orange. The cushions were red, turquoise, lime green. Bright pink for the curtains, yellow for the blinds. Confronted with a color clash on this scale, one could hardly blame the ancestors on the walls for their haughty, disapproving expressions; sallow-skinned and muted, they were the outsiders in the room, and Simon identified with them more than with any living person present.

  He put the wedding picture back on the mantelpiece. Paula didn’t seem to notice. She was ogling her husband appreciatively. “You should hear Fergus on the subject of photographers,” she said. “He can’t bear them, so they’re banned from the house. Making my husband happy is my new full-time job. I take it very seriously—as seriously as I used to take my political career.”

  “She does,” Fergus agreed enthusiastically. “She’s extremely conscientious.”

  Paula giggled for several seconds longer than was necessary.

  Mentally, Simon turned his back on the innuendo and the flirtatious laughter. He didn’t see why people couldn’t behave like grown-ups, especially when visited by the police. If Simon had owned an eight-bedroom farmhouse and 120 acres of Buckinghamshire, he would have conducted himself very differently. He hoped his straight face and lack of response had made it clear to Preece and Paula that he was here for a more serious purpose than to snigger at dirty jokes, though it was evident from their forthright, gregarious demeanor that they were used to setting the agenda, not having it set for them by a man whose only noticeable asset was half of a mortgaged row house.

  “Being a devoted wife is so much less stressful than politics,” Paula said so loudly that Simon flinched. “God, I’m glad I’m out of all that! I escaped at exactly the right time. Life for MPs is only going to get harder. These days, people want to hate politicians. I’m sick of hearing about lack of trust, disillusionment, hand-wringing, what can be done about it, blah, blah, blah. The electorate doesn’t want politicians it can believe in—God forbid anyone should be forced to abandon their cynicism! What everyone wants is a group of convenient patsies, to be sneered at and blamed. They’d find a way to hate whoever was in charge at the first tiniest suggestion of a policy that didn’t read as if it was drafted solely with them in mind.”

  “This is my wife’s idea of leaving all that nasty politics stuff behind.” Fergus chuckled. “You can see how detached she is, can’t you, DC Waterhouse? Oh, she couldn’t care less! That’s why she’s on Twitter all day long: Cameron this, Clegg that.”

  Paula smiled. “I’m afraid I have a serious Twitter addiction,” she said. “And, of course, I’m still interested in politics. I always will be.” She lifted her thick dark-brown hair with both hands, then let it fall, tilting her head back. Simon felt as if she were offering him, with this gesture, the opportunity to notice how stunning she was. For once when Charlie asked him, as she did about every woman he met, “How attractive was she?” Simon would be able to answer without equivocation. Paula Riddiough was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen close-up. Superhumanly attractive, even in scruffy jeans and a shirt that looked like a man’s and was clearly several years old. It was a bit like standing in a room with an alien; Simon didn’t feel he belonged to the same species and was keen to get away from his feelings of inadequacy as quickly as possible. First, though, he had questions to ask. Starting with Paula’s marriages past and present had been a mistake. Simon hadn’t realized it would lead to sentimental reminiscences and the showing of photos. He was keen to make up for lost time. “Shall we make ourselves comfortable?” he said. “There’s quite a bit more I’d like to ask.”

  Paula shrugged. She walked over to the sofa with the sleeping dogs on it and perched cross-legged on its thick, square arm, looking as if she might levitate. Fergus followed. He positioned himself more conventionally on one of the seat cushions, between his wife and his dogs.

  “Ask away,” said Paula.

  Simon was momentarily distracted by her multicolored toenails: red, pink, green, blue, silver—on both feet, but with the color order varying. “Where were you on Monday morning between eight thirty and ten thirty?” he asked.

  “Walking the dogs on Hankley Common in Surrey. We’d stayed with friends there the night before. Do you need their contact details?”

  “That would be helpful, yes.”

  “Stephanie Coates and Eva Patterson,” said Fergus. “The Old Butchery, Elstead. They’re in the phone book.”

  Simon made a note of it. “Thanks. Ms. Riddiough, I’m going to need to—”

  “Mrs. Preece,” Paula corrected him with a smile.

  “I’m going to need to ask you some quite personal questions. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk in private?”

  “We are talking in private, and please call me Paula. Fergus is my husband and this is our home. I’m happy for him to hear everything we say. I’m guessing your first question’s going to be, was I having an affair with Damon Blundy?”

  “Why do you think I’d want to ask you that?” said Simon.

  Paula grinned. “Everyone I’ve met since my very public war with Damon has asked me. A lot of people thought we’d be a match made in heaven: both good-looking, both shameless self-publicists. It was hilarious. We obviously hated each other, but no one let that put them off! They insisted on seeing sexual tension where there was none.”

  “So, are you going to answer the question, then?”

  “I thought I had, but if you want me to do so more explicitly: no, I did not sleep with Damon Blundy. Ever. We weren’t having an affair.”

  “Yet you met him at least twice,” said Simon. “In 2011, on October 26 and on November 11.”

  “I met him only twice.”

  “On those two dates, correct?”

  “I can’t remember. Didn’t you contact my assistant, Gemma?”

  “Yes. Those were the dates she gave me.”

  “Then those were the dates.” Simon heard a steel edge in Paula’s voice that he hadn’t heard before. Fergus Preece might as well have been a spectator at a tennis match; he was turning back and forth to look at his wife, then at Simon, as each one spoke. He would injure his neck if he didn’t watch out.

  “I don’t think you were entirely honest with me,” Simon said. “You told me you couldn’t remember exactly when you and Damon Blundy met, but I don’t think you’d have forgotten arranging to meet him on November 11, 2011. Particularly since the time of the meeting was eleven minutes past eleven A.M.”

  “Oh yes!” Paula laughed. “So it was. Well, you’re wrong, as you can see, because I did forget. Completely forgot until I heard you say it.”

  Simon gave himself a few seconds, wondering where to go next. Confident outright denial was the hardest kind of dishonesty to deal with. “I’m trying to imagine the conversation you and Blundy must have had,” he said. “One of you must have suggested continuing the elevens theme from the date to the time. Sounds like a memorable conversation to me—a memorable diary appointment. How often is it possible to make an arrangement like that? Once a year, maximum? This year, it’s not possible at all, is it? There’s no thirteenth month.”

  “That’s a good point,” said Fergus. “Let’s see, a setup like that wouldn’t work again until . . .” He broke off, scratched his head. “Hmph,” he concluded.

  “The first of January, 2101,” said Paula. “We’ll all have followed in Damon Blundy’s footsteps by then and shuffled off to oblivion. A dispiriting thought.”

  Simon was determined not to be sidetracked. “You only met Damon Blundy twice, you say. Once was at eleven minutes past eleven on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of this century, and you expect me to believe that that detail slipped your mind?”

  Paula inclined her head, raised her eyebrows and gave Simon a look
more patronizing than anything the Snowman had ever produced. “DC Waterhouse, when I was an MP, more details slipped my mind than didn’t, if they weren’t work-related. The job filled my head, to the exclusion of all else. My poor son never had anything he needed for school; I never had clean matching socks, or paid a bill on time; nothing ever got done in the house; I neglected my husband . . .” She shrugged as if to say, “Point proven.”

  “You didn’t neglect several other women’s husbands,” Simon couldn’t resist pointing out.

  “Yes!” Paula chuckled. “I did. The affairs were a by-product of the stress I was under from work, and, yes, I totally neglected those men. There was none of me left for a relationship, let alone several concurrent relationships. I was in danger of seriously burning out, and I couldn’t see it. I was a fool until Fergus saved me, DC Waterhouse. A very clever fool with a PhD, but no less a fool. I can’t tell you how much happier I am now.” Fergus reached over to squeeze her thigh with his thick-knuckled fingers. Paula stroked the back of his hand, smiling down at it as if it were a favorite pet that had leaped up onto her lap. Meanwhile, the larger of her two real pets had started to snore.

  Simon could see that nothing he might say would rile Paula. She had every corner of her polished act sewn up. He still didn’t believe her.

  “All right, so tell me about you and Damon Blundy,” he said. “I know he used his column and blog to attack you, and I know you fought back sometimes. Why the two meetings?”

  “Both were at my instigation,” said Paula. “His columns about me really upset me, and they upset Toby, my son, even more—that was the part I couldn’t live with. People at school were either teasing him or commiserating with him for having the worst mother in the country. I emailed Damon to ask him ever so kindly and politely to desist, and he replied saying he wasn’t prepared to discuss it via email. If I wanted to talk to him, I had to meet him, he said. He told me when and where. There was no consultation process; he issued me with an order. I turned up, tried to be as diplomatic and reasonable as I could. We got on better than I expected, actually, and when I left, I thought we’d agreed that he would lay off. There was only one problem.”

  “He didn’t lay off?” Simon guessed.

  “Got it in one. If anything, his attacks on me escalated—on his blog, on Twitter. So I repeated the process: emailed him again, asked him to stop, again. He pretended not to have noticed that he hadn’t stopped. Made me present him with evidence. Then he summoned me to another meeting. This time, he decreed that it had to be on November 11 at eleven minutes past eleven A.M. It was part of a very weird attempt to humiliate me. Probably makes no sense to you, but . . . that’s what he was trying to do.”

  Simon could see what she meant. It sounded plausible, therefore he didn’t like it; it played havoc with his theory that only lovers or prospective lovers would arrange to meet at that particular time.

  “It entertained Damon to make me behave in a ridiculous way. I shouldn’t have turned up—I should have told him to stick it up his arse, and write whatever he liked. It’s a common definition of madness, isn’t it: doing the exact same thing and expecting it to have a different result? He told me that if I arrived at ten past eleven, or twelve minutes past, he’d get up and leave. If I wanted to speak to him, I had to be bang on time. Absurd!” Paula ruffled Fergus’s hair. “If only I’d met Fergus sooner. You wouldn’t have let me pander to Damon Blundy’s ego, would you, darling?”

  “I’d have dealt with him,” said Fergus. “I’ve never known a man to behave in that way. I don’t know what he thought he was up to.”

  If Paula and Blundy had been romantically or sexually involved, wouldn’t she be visibly upset and shaken? If they’d been enemies, as she claimed, wouldn’t she sound angrier when she described how he’d tormented her? Wouldn’t she gloat about his death? Simon found her unruffled good humor disturbing.

  “So what happened at the second meeting?” he asked.

  “Same as at the first. Damon was charming. He apologized for having broken his word last time, he promised again not to eviscerate me in his column—and it was all lies. He did it again and again and again. Until he died.” Paula looked down at her wedding and engagement rings. She adjusted them, twisting them around on her finger. “At least I wised up after the second time. I didn’t bother appealing to his compassionate side again—I’d worked out that he didn’t have one.”

  “He was a brute,” said Fergus. “Wasn’t he, Loophole?”

  Simon didn’t immediately realize that Fergus was talking to the larger of the two dogs, now awake, whose ear he was stroking. Loophole? Strange name for a pet. Still, at least it wasn’t Fergus’s pet name for Paula, as Simon had initially imagined. “Does anyone call you Riddy?” he asked her.

  “Not anymore,” she said. “It was my nickname at school. Why?”

  “The password for Damon Blundy’s laptop was ‘Riddy111111.’”

  “Was it? Doesn’t particularly surprise me. The man was obsessed with me.”

  “Funny thing is, now Toby has the same nickname at his new school,” said Fergus. “Riddy! Complete coincidence, too—no one at Ashfold knows that Paula used to be known as Riddy.”

  “Ashfold?” said Simon.

  “Oh, here we go!” Anger flashed in Paula’s eyes. “Yes, Ashfold—the independent fee-paying prep school. Why did I move my son there from a state school? That’s my business and none of yours. Toby couldn’t stay at his old school after we moved in with Fergus. If you must know, I decided Damon was right about that one thing—nothing else. But . . . if I can afford the very best education for my son, it’s my duty to provide that, isn’t it?”

  “Your son’s surname is Riddiough, then?” Simon asked. “Not Crumlish like his father?”

  “You’ve done your homework. I’m flattered.” Paula smiled. “My son’s name is Toby Crumlish-Riddiough,” said Paula.

  And you sent him to a state school in Combingham, and expected him to survive his first day?

  Riddy111111. Was it possible the Riddy in Damon Blundy’s password was Toby? “How did Damon Blundy know your school nickname?”

  “Good question,” said Paula. “One of his hobbies was digging around looking for any dirt on me he could find. He probably unearthed one of my old classmates and got it from her.”

  “Or he had your son in mind,” said Simon. “Did you have Toby with you on November 11, 2011, when you met Damon?”

  “No. Of course not. Why would I take my son to what was likely to be a deeply unpleasant meeting?”

  “Did you ever refer to Toby as Riddy in Blundy’s presence?”

  “No. And . . . Damon wouldn’t have been interested enough in Toby to make a password out of him,” said Paula. “Damon’s one of those childless men for whom children barely exist. When I tried to explain to him how much his attacks on me were hurting Toby, he laughed and said, ‘Buy him a packet of Maltesers and he’ll be fine.’ And he had the nerve to call me a bad mother and say I only cared about my career and my sex life! If you added up all the times I’ve had sex since Toby was born and set that total against the number of times I’ve read Tiddler and The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child—my favorite books in the world!—I promise you sex would be the loser!”

  “Paula’s a brilliant mother,” Fergus announced loudly.

  “Thank you, darling.” She ruffled his hair again.

  A brilliant mother to whom, Simon wondered, Toby or Fergus? There was something maternal about the way she was gazing fondly at her husband.

  “Thanks for your patience, both of you.” Simon stood up. “I’ll get out of your hair now, but I’ll probably be back.”

  “Anytime,” said Paula. “I’ll walk you to the front door. Don’t want you getting lost on the way. It’s a bit of a maze. Are you coming too, Loophole? Sweet girl! Darling, you couldn’t stick the kettle on, could you? I think we deserve a cup of tea for getting through our first ever police interview!”

  Simon c
ould have done with a cup of tea, but at no point had one been offered.

  He, Paula and the dog walked to the front door in single file. Every wall had a mountain of miscellaneous items piled up against it—bicycles, Wellington boots, a watering can, two cans of paint—not Dulux’s Ruby Fountain 2, Simon noticed. Here were two kegs of beer, a wheelbarrow, several clear plastic containers with royal blue plastic lids. All of these things narrowed the usable space by about half. This was the domestic equivalent of a clogged artery.

  At the front door, Paula said, “I need to come and see you. In Spilling.”

  It was an admission. Unambiguous.

  “To tell me what you couldn’t say in front of your husband?” Simon asked.

  “How about Monday, ten A.M.? Or Tuesday afternoon—I’ve got another appointment in the Culver Valley on Tuesday morning, so I’ll be around anyway. No, I tell you what: let’s make it Monday at ten past ten. I think that would be appropriate, don’t you? And then I’ll stay over somewhere, for my Tuesday meeting.”

  “I’d rather say ten o’clock,” said Simon uncomfortably.

  “And I’d rather say ten past.” Paula raised one eyebrow provocatively. “If only to prove to you that two people can meet at a daft time of day and not be having a clandestine affair.”

  CHARLIE SMILED WHEN SHE heard Simon’s voice say, “What?” He sounded hassled. Normally he didn’t answer when she called him; he preferred to let her give up, then call her back.

  “Guess what I’ve just found waiting for me on my desk,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Copies of the pathologist’s report, the crime-scene report—”

  “Damon Blundy?” Simon talked over her.

  “—confirmation of several alibis: Rabbi Fedder, Verity Hewson, Abigail Meredith, Richard Crumlish, Lee Redgate, Nicki Clements, the neighbor whose daughter’s earlobe he wrote about cutting off. Yeah, Damon Blundy. Nice that someone thought to include me, isn’t it? Whoever it was kindly swept all my work to one side. Some of it fell off the desk onto the floor.”