“I’m going to stick with you, Mark. I promise.”
I shut the door; I have no other choice, even though I feel sorry for her. My driver flings himself into the front seat, relief on his face. Claire Evans pounds the glass window that separates us.
“I’ll do the same, Claire. I will.”
I’m certain she didn’t hear the words he muttered under his breath just before he ran a hand past his wet eyes. We pull away with a roar; her anguished face slips out of sight. But Evans’s final words to his wife continue to ring in my ears during our short, silent journey to Parkside station.
This time, after dealing with the necessary paperwork, I take our suspect to the “conversation room” instead of my office. He has since procured a solicitor, an elderly man wearing a mustard-colored tweed jacket and thick circular spectacles. The spartan space is soundproof; it contains two digital recording devices, a metal table, and four chairs, all bolted to the floor. I flip on five ceiling lights, causing fluorescent glare to bounce off the room’s freshly painted white walls. Our suspect winces in response. As soon as he recovers, his eyes settle on the large one-way mirror behind my chair, taking in its shiny, reflective contours. Excellent. He’s aware of the possibility that someone outside the room may be scrutinizing his movements. The precise frame of mind I wish him to be in.
I point him and his solicitor to two neighboring chairs. Grapefruit-scented disinfectant wafts into my nostrils. Someone must have sprayed a liberal amount of it onto the floor tiles this morning; the room smells like a dentist’s lair. Now, if only our man will open his mouth. I should begin with the usual drill.
“Procedure compels me to state these points to you,” I say. “One: you have the right to remain silent. Two: this interview will be taped.”
Our MP-no-more does not respond. He merely examines his shoes with sudden interest. I flip on the digital recording device before resting back on my chair and clasping my hands in front of me.
“Interview with Mark Henry Evans at twenty-two twenty-five on the sixth of June 2015. What happened after Sophia Ayling fell unconscious in your study two nights ago?”
He shakes his head in silence. This tells me that dear Mr. Evans intends to be difficult.
“Did you fill up the pockets of your overcoat with stones before putting it around her shoulders?”
Muteness greets my words. This does not bother me in the slightest. Our pleasant “conversation,” after all, has only just begun. I reach into my briefcase. With a flourish, I pull out an evidence bag containing four black and white stones. This triggers a small, almost imperceptible widening of Evans’s eyes.
I set the sealed bag down on the table before pulling a fifth pebble from the pocket of my trousers.
“I picked this up from your garden earlier this morning,” I say, rolling the highly polished black stone between my forefinger and thumb. “While I waited for Mrs. Evans to get you from your study. I couldn’t help but notice that it was an exact match for the stones inside Miss Ayling’s pockets.”
I drop the stone onto the desk between us. A crack reverberates in the room; Mr. Evans reacts with a startled jump. The pebble bounces off the desk before skittering across the tiles and coming to rest against the bolted door. As Evans’s eyes follow the stone’s tortuous trajectory, I detect a small flicker of apprehension in their depths.
“You shouldn’t scare my client,” the solicitor says, disapproval burgeoning beneath his thick spectacles.
“Sorry,” I say. “It just fell from my hand.”
This is what I say next:
Let me describe what you did to Sophia Ayling two nights ago. You studied her body, realizing there were no obvious marks of injury on it. You then sat back on your haunches, a whirl of possibilities running through your mind.
A brain wave hit you. Fact: Virginia Woolf filled her pockets up with stones and waded into the River Ouse to kill herself. Suicide. Of course. And you might get away with it. Spurred by this delicious possibility, you picked up Miss Ayling’s body and stumbled down your garden path. You fumbled with the side door, the one that opens onto the footpath at the end of Grantchester Meadows. The path that runs alongside the nudist colony and leads down to the river. Thankfully, there was no one in sight. No nudists sunbathing at night. Groaning under Miss Ayling’s weight, you staggered down the path. The going was difficult, even treacherous, because rain had poured down earlier in the morning. The footpath was slippery, even boggy in places. It was also a cloudy, starless night. But you gritted your teeth and struggled onwards. Hoping that no one would see you. After all, you had everything to lose. Your hard-earned reputation. Your longed-for political career. Everything you had worked so hard for over the course of your lifetime. You knew that you didn’t have a choice, that you had to keep moving forward. Your choices, after all, became fewer and more difficult the day Anna May Winchester reentered your life, whether you realized it or not.
The bleak expression on our suspect’s face suggests that I have not exaggerated.
You reached the riverbank and placed Miss Ayling’s body down. Hoping she did not acquire too many postmortem cuts or grazes along the way. After all, it had to look like a suicide. You returned for your trench coat, filling its pockets with stones on your way back to the river. You fastened the coat around Miss Ayling’s shoulders before shoving her into the Cam. Her body made only a few ripples as it hit the water. Even the accompanying sound was muted. Her entrance was as discreet as that of a water vole plunging into the river. Which was exactly how you wanted it to be. You stared at her as she was swallowed up by the Cam, her hair forming a blond halo before it disappeared from sight. The current, you noted, was stronger than usual. A lot of rain had come down in the morning. You waited in the darkness, worried that she might resurface. But she did not. You heaved a deep sigh of relief before walking back to your study. The light shining through the windows seemed surreally welcoming in contrast to the horrors that had just taken place.
I pause to let it all sink in.
“You have a vivid imagination, Inspector,” our suspect says to my surprise, speaking for the first time since we entered the room. “Perhaps you should be a novelist, too-—”
“Mr. Evans,” the solicitor says in a stern, cautionary voice.