As I neared the Serpentine Gallery, the blizzard became fiercer, suffocating trees and grass with white. Soon your flowers and Xavier’s bears would be covered, turned invisible. My feet were numb, my gloveless hand aching with cold. The vomiting had left me with a foul taste in my mouth. I thought I’d go into the Serpentine Gallery to see if they had a café with water. But as I approached the building, I saw it was in darkness, the doors chained. A notice on the window said the gallery was not opening again until April. Simon could not have met you there. He was the last person to see you alive and he’d lied. His lie played over in my head, like tinnitus, the only sound not muffled by the falling snow.
I walked along Chepstow Road back to your flat, holding on my mobile for DS Finborough, my pockets stuffed with the cards from teddies and bouquets. From a distance, I saw Todd outside, pacing in short anxious strides. Mum had already taken the train home. He followed me into the flat, relief mutating his anxiety into annoyance. “I tried to phone you, but you’ve been engaged.”
“Simon lied about meeting Tess at the Serpentine Gallery. I have to tell DS Finborough.”
Todd’s reaction, or rather lack of it, should have prepared me for DS Finborough’s. But just then DS Finborough came on the line. I told him about Simon.
He sounded patient, gentle even. “Maybe Simon was just trying to look good.”
“By lying?”
“By saying they met at a gallery.” I could hardly believe DS Finborough was making excuses for him. “We did talk to Simon, when we knew he’d been with her that day,” he continued. “And there’s no reason to think that he had any involvement in her death.”
“But he lied about where they were.”
“Beatrice, I think you should try to—”
I flipped through the clichés I imagined he was about to use: I should try to “move on,” “put it behind me,” even with a little flourish of clauses “accept the truth and get on with my life.” I interrupted before any of these clichés took verbal form.
“You’ve seen the place where she died, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Do you think anyone would choose to die there?”
“I don’t think it was a matter of choice.”
For a moment I thought he had started to believe me, then realized he was blaming mental illness for your murder. Like an obsessive compulsive who has no choice but to repeat the same task a hundred times, a woman with postpartum psychosis gets swept along by her mental tide of madness to inevitable self-destruction. A young woman with friends, family, talent and beauty who is found dead arouses suspicion. Even if her baby has died, there’s still a question mark about the end of her life. But throw psychosis into the list of life-affirming adjectives and you take away the question mark; you give a mental alibi to the killer, framing the victim for her own murder.
“Somebody forced her into that terrible place and killed her there.”
DS Finborough was still patient with me. “But there was no reason anyone would want to kill her. It wasn’t a sexual crime, thank God, and there was no theft involved. And when we were investigating her disappearance, we couldn’t find anyone who wished her harm, in fact quite the reverse.”
“Will you at least talk to Simon again?”
“I really don’t believe there’s anything to be gained by that.”
“Is it because Simon is the son of a cabinet minister?”
I threw that at him in an attempt to make him change his mind, to shame him into it.
“My decision not to talk to Simon Greenly again is because there is no purpose to be served by it.”
Now that I know him better, I know that he uses formal language when he feels emotionally pressured.
“But you’re aware that Simon’s father is Richard Greenly, MP?”
“I don’t think this phone call is getting us very far. Perhaps—”
“Tess isn’t worth the risk to you, is she?”
“So after DS Finborough said he wouldn’t interview Simon, you decided to do it yourself?” asks Mr. Wright. I think I detect a hint of amusement in his voice; it wouldn’t be surprising.
“Yes, it was getting to be something of a habit.”
And just eight days earlier, flying into London, I’d been someone who always avoided confrontation. But in comparison to the murderous brutality of your death, confrontation with words seemed harmless and a little trivial. Why had I ever been daunted by it before, afraid even? That seemed so cowardly—ludicrous—now.
