My heart sinks even further, because it’s going to be so much harder to play the grieving widow in front of her rather than Diane. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to go straight back to Diane’s? I’d like to speak to Adam and I need to get down the police station. Adam says the detective looking after the case wants to talk to me.’
‘We’ll only get stuck in rush hour at this time of the morning, so we may as well have a coffee,’ she says, heading towards the restaurant area. We find a café and she makes a beeline for a table in the middle of the room where we’re surrounded by noisy schoolchildren. ‘Sit down, I’ll go and get the coffees. I won’t be long.’
My instinct is to flee, but I know that I can’t. If Esther has come to pick me up at the airport, if she has suggested coffee, it’s because she wants to talk to me. I try not to panic but it’s hard. What if she’s guessed that I murdered Jack, what if there was something about my behaviour the day she drove me to the airport that aroused her suspicions? Is she going to tell me that she knows what I’ve done, is she going to threaten to tell the police, is she going to blackmail me? I watch her paying for our coffees and, as she heads back to where I’m waiting, I feel sick with nerves.
She sits down opposite me and places my coffee in front of me.
‘Thank you.’ I give her a watery smile.
‘Grace, how much do you know about Jack’s death?’ she asks, opening her sachet of sugar and tipping it into her cup.
‘What do you mean?’ I stammer.
‘I presume you know how he died?’
‘Yes, he took an overdose.’
‘He did,’ she agrees. ‘But that’s not what killed him.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It seems that he misjudged the amount of pills he would need and didn’t take enough. So he didn’t die—well, not from the overdose, anyway.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘Well, because he didn’t take enough pills to kill himself, he regained consciousness.’
‘So, how did he die then?’
‘From dehydration.’
I summon a look of shock to my face. ‘Dehydration?’
‘Yes, about four days after he took the overdose.’
‘But if he wasn’t dead, if he was still alive, why didn’t he just go and get a drink of water if he needed one?’
‘Because he couldn’t. His body wasn’t found in the main part of the house, you see. It was found in a room in the basement.’
‘A room in the basement?’
‘Yes. The worst thing is, it couldn’t be opened from the inside, which meant he couldn’t get out, even when thirst took hold.’ She picks up her spoon and stirs her coffee. ‘It seems that he tried to, though.’
‘Poor Jack,’ I say quietly. ‘Poor, poor, Jack. I can’t bear to think about how he must have suffered.’
‘Did you have any inkling that he would do such a thing?’
‘No, not at all. I would never have left him otherwise, I would never have gone to Thailand if I’d thought he was going to kill himself.’
‘So how was he when he came back from court?’
‘Well, he was disappointed about losing the case, of course.’
‘It’s just that it seems completely out of character for him to take his own life—at least, that’s what people might think. So he was probably a bit more than disappointed, don’t you think? I mean, wasn’t it the first case he’d lost?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘So he must have been devastated. Maybe he even told you that he felt his career was over. But you thought it was just something he’d said in the heat of the moment so you didn’t really take any notice.’ I stare at her. ‘Isn’t that what he said, Grace? Didn’t he say that he thought his career was over?’
‘Yes.’ I nod slowly. ‘He did say that.’
‘So that must be why he wanted to kill himself—because he couldn’t stand failure.’
‘It must have been,’ I agree.
‘It also explains why he was so eager for you to leave. He wanted you out of the way so that he could take the pills—it seems that he took them not long after you left. Do you know where he got them from? I mean, did he sometimes take sleeping pills?’
‘Sometimes,’ I improvise. ‘They weren’t prescribed by a doctor or anything, he just bought them over the counter. They were the same ones that Millie was taking—I remember him asking Mrs Goodrich for the name of them.’
‘The fact that he knew the door to the room in the basement couldn’t be opened from the inside shows that he realised he might not have enough pills but was determined to kill himself,’ she says. She takes a sip of her coffee. ‘The police will almost certainly ask you about the room. You knew about it, didn’t you, because Jack showed it to you?’
‘Yes.’
She fiddles with her spoon. ‘They’ll also want to know what the room was for.’ For the first time, she seems unsure of herself. ‘It seems that it was painted red, even the floor and ceiling, and that the walls were hung with paintings of women who’d been brutally beaten.’