He’d sat down in the living room, exhausted. Trials wore him out. He’d sat there for some time, thinking about how things had gone in court that day, how they might go tomorrow, and then about his life, how hard things were with Barbara. He was too depleted even to get up and go into the kitchen to pour himself a drink. Which, as things turned out, was very bad for him. But eventually he got up and made his way through the dark living room and dining room to the kitchen. It was only when he was almost there that the little hairs on the back of his neck began to stir. He still doesn’t know why. He suspects that he could smell the blood – on some level, even though he was not consciously aware of it. Then he made it to the kitchen door and saw her—
She was crumpled on the kitchen floor in her nightgown. It looked as if she’d been struck down while making herself a cup of herbal tea. There was a cup on the counter, an opened packet of tea beside it. But she was on the floor, soaked in her own blood. She’d been bludgeoned to death. Her head smashed in, her face beaten to a pulp. One arm was splayed beneath her, obviously broken.
Through his paralysing horror, one of his first thoughts was to wonder if she’d suffered. Whether the first blow had caught her by surprise, and whether it had killed her. But he knew Barbara, and he suspected she fought back tooth and nail. There was blood everywhere. Of course she’d fought back. Barbara had never been meek. Her arm had indeed been broken. And it turns out – they told him later – that her back had been broken as well. She had been kicked viciously after death. That’s another thing that made them suspect him – it looked like a crime of passion. But perhaps it was just made to look that way. That’s what David thought at the time. Someone had tried to set him up.
He finally speaks. ‘Most of what you say is true. I was working late that night. When I got home, the house was dark. I assumed Barbara, my wife, had already gone to bed.’ He takes a deep breath, exhales. ‘We hadn’t been getting along; we’d talked about separating. It wasn’t a secret. She’d told some of her friends, I’d told a friend or two at work. It’s also true,’ he says, looking directly at Riley, ‘that she had a life insurance policy for a million dollars. As did I. We’d both had those policies for many years, from early in our marriage.’
He looks around the group, his eyes resting finally on Gwen. He tries to read her expression, but he can’t; it’s too dark. She is leaning back against the sofa across from him, in shadow. ‘I didn’t kill her. She was already dead when I got there. I found her lying on the kitchen floor, covered in blood.’ He hesitates. ‘I switched on the overhead light. It was the most horrible moment of my life.’ He pauses for a moment, to recover himself. ‘I thought she’d been stabbed repeatedly, there was so much blood. But there was no knife there. She was so badly beaten …’ He covers his face with his hands.
Slowly, he brings his hands down again and continues speaking. ‘I called 911 immediately. I said that I’d come home from work and found her. My mistake was that in that 911 call, I didn’t mention that I’d been sitting alone in the living room for almost an hour before I found her. I didn’t think to mention it. I was very distressed – I wasn’t thinking clearly. And then my next-door neighbour told the police that he had noted the time that I drove in the driveway and parked the car. He’d seen the lights, and knew the exact time. Then, when they asked me about the discrepancy between the time I got home and the time of the 911 call, I immediately told them the truth, but they were suspicious. They arrested me. After all,’ – he gives Riley a bitter look – ‘I was the husband. People knew our marriage was in trouble. Then somebody made a big deal about the insurance policy.’
He takes a deep breath and exhales. ‘It was a living hell. An unbelievable nightmare. My wife had been murdered and I was arrested for it – put in jail, denied bail – and I hadn’t done it.’
There’s a long silence while everyone tries to digest what they’ve just heard.
‘But they dropped the charges,’ Gwen says, her voice low.
He looks back at her. She’s leaned forward a bit. ‘Yes. They didn’t have any evidence against me. They assumed I had a motive, but there wasn’t one scrap of physical evidence to pin the crime on me. If I’d done it, I would have had blood on me, on my clothes. They tried to figure out how I could have killed her and cleaned myself up and destroyed any evidence in that hour. But they didn’t have anything. They didn’t even have the murder weapon.
‘The most damning thing was that I didn’t have an alibi. I was sitting alone for that hour, in my own living room. They determined that the time of death must have been very close to around the time I arrived home. I must have missed whoever did it by a few minutes. The investigating officers asked the neighbour if he’d seen anything, but he’d been out at his bridge game up until just before he saw me arrive, so he was no help. And the neighbour on the other side of us was out of town, and the ones across the street go to bed early. No one saw anything.’ He looks intently at the small group seated around him, listening with wide eyes. ‘Anyone could have parked on the street and walked up to the front door – or sneaked in the back. Nothing was stolen. There was no sign of forced entry, but Barbara might have let someone in if she knew him. She wasn’t afraid of anyone. Maybe she was having an affair. I don’t know. I never suspected such a thing. They didn’t find anything like that.’
David shakes his head slowly. ‘Someone obviously wanted her dead – or was setting me up,’ he says. ‘I’d like nothing more than to find out who.’ He frowns deeply. ‘They had to drop the charges. But this – stigma – has become part of my life. I wish I could say I’ve got used to it, but I haven’t. I don’t think I ever will.’
He looks at each of them in turn. ‘I can’t make any of you believe me. I’ve told the truth, but I’ve found that people believe what they want to believe. I can’t help that.’
Chapter Twenty-four
GWEN HAS LISTENED to both sides of David’s story with a feeling of horror. She is much colder inside her blanket now than she was before.
It sounds worse than she expected. She thought at first that maybe they’d arrested him simply because he was the husband, and had quickly realized their mistake. But this sounds so inconclusive. Unsatisfactory. There hadn’t been enough evidence to send him to trial – but does she believe him? Riley is right about one thing – he would have had the best possible defence lawyer.
It’s very disturbing, the admission of the missing hour between his arriving home and calling 911. And he’s a criminal defence attorney. He would know what to do – how to destroy evidence, or get rid of it. She doesn’t know what to believe.
Henry squirms uncomfortably in his seat. His breathing is shallow. This entire situation is becoming more and more surreal. All these revelations are bizarre – Riley with her stories of being held hostage, of having a gun held to her head, of severed limbs in the streets – no wonder she’s so peculiar. And this thing about David has given him a nasty jolt – my God, did he murder his wife?