She said, “So you knew about Madlyn Angarrack, that she was involved with Santo Kerne.”
“Yes. That’s how I met Santo in the first place. Madlyn worked for me here, in the jam kitchen. Santo fetched her at the end of the day several times, and I saw him then. Everyone saw him. It was most difficult not to see Santo. He was a highly attractive boy.”
“And Madlyn’s a rather attractive girl.”
“She is. Well, of course, she would be. And so am I, if it comes to that. An attractive woman. I find that attractive people are drawn to each other, don’t you?” Another glance in the direction of the police made it obvious that Aldara Pappas didn’t consider this question to be one that either of them could answer from personal experience. She said, “We took note of each other, Santo and I. I was at the point of needing someone very like him?”
“Someone with attachments?”
“?and I thought he might do, as there was a directness to his gaze that spoke of a certain maturity, a frame of mind that suggested he and I might speak the same language. We exchanged looks, smiles. It was a form of communication in which like-minded individuals say precisely what needs to be said and nothing more. He arrived early one day to fetch Madlyn, and I took him on a tour of the farm. We rode the tractor into the orchards, and it was there?”
“Just like Eve beneath the apple tree?” Havers said. “Or were you the snake?”
Aldara refused to be drawn out. She said, “This had nothing to do with temptation. Temptation depends on innuendo and there was no innuendo involved. I was forthright with him. I said the look of him appealed to me and I had been thinking what it would be like to have him in bed. How pleasant it might be for us both, if he was interested. I told him that if he wanted more than only his little girlfriend as a sexual partner, he was to phone me. At no time did I suggest he end his relationship with her. That would actually have been the last thing I wanted, as it might have made him rather too fond of me. It might have led to expectations of there being something more than was possible between us. On his part, these expectations, that is. On mine there were none.”
“I can see it might well have put you in a ludicrous light had he expected more and had you been forced to give it to him in order to keep him,” Bea noted. “A woman your age going public?as it were?with a teenage boy. Trotting down the aisle in church on Sunday morning, nodding to your neighbours and all of them thinking how…well, how lacking in something you must be to have to settle for an eighteen-year-old lover.”
Aldara moved to another pile of manure. She fetched the shovel and began to repeat the process she’d followed for the first vegetable bed. The earth within became rich and dark. Whatever she intended to plant within the borders of the bed, it was going to flourish.
She said, “First of all, Inspector, I don’t concern myself with what other people think, as what other people think about me?or anyone else or any thing for that matter?does not rob me of a single eyelash. This was a private matter between Santo and me. I kept it private. So did he.”
“Not exactly,” Havers noted. “Madlyn found out.”
“That was unfortunate. He wasn’t careful enough, and she followed him. There was one of those dreadful scenes between them?the accosting, the accusing, the denial, the admission, the explaining, the pleading?and she ended their involvement on the spot. That put me in the very last position I wished to be in: as Santo’s sole lover.”
“Did she know you were the woman inside the cottage when she turned up there?”
“Of course she knew. There was such a scene between them that I thought she might do violence. I had to emerge from the bedroom and do something about it.”