Entry Island

‘No.’ Her tiny laugh was facetious. ‘Like a fool I believed him. I had no inkling of the truth until a neighbour returning on the ferry from Cap aux Meules one day told me she had seen him there.’

‘And he was supposed to be somewhere else?’

‘Montreal. He had phoned me just the night before. From his hotel, he said. The one he always stayed in. He wanted to warn me that he was going to be delayed for a couple of days in the city and wouldn’t be home until the end of the week. So when I heard he was just across the water I knew he’d been lying to me.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I waited until he got home, and I asked him how it had gone in Montreal. Wanting to give him every chance to tell me a change of plans had brought him back to Cap aux Meules and he just hadn’t had the opportunity to tell me.’

‘But he didn’t.’

She shook her head. ‘He even told me about the meal he’d had the previous night in his favourite Montreal restaurant, La Porte in Boulevard St-Laurent.’ She closed her eyes and for just a moment Sime felt released from their hold. When she opened them again they were burning like ice. ‘I told him I knew he’d been on Cap aux Meules, and I watched the colour drain from his face.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was pathetic. Floundered around trying to find some excuse, some reason to explain why he’d been in one place when he said he’d been in another. And then suddenly he just gave up. Knew it was hopeless, I suppose. Admitted that he’d been lying. That there was someone else. That he’d been having an affair for months. And that somehow it was all my fault.’

‘How was it your fault?’

‘Oh, I was cold and distant, apparently.’ Accusations that were only too familiar to Sime. ‘And my biggest crime of all? Refusing to leave the island. Like he hadn’t known that from day one of our relationship.’ She was breathing hard now, and Sime could feel her pain and anger in the memory of the confrontation.

‘When did all this happen?’

She closed her eyes again, drew a deep breath, and it was as if a cloud of calm descended upon her. Her lids fluttered open and she looked at him candidly. ‘About ten days ago, Mr Mackenzie. He moved out and in with her last week.’

Evidently the wounds were still fresh. ‘Did you know her?’

‘Not personally. But I knew of her. Everyone knows of her.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Ariane Briand. She’s married to the mayor of Cap aux Meules.’

Sime gazed at her thoughtfully. Suddenly there was another jilted lover in the frame, and he wasn’t quite sure why he felt a sense of relief. ‘Why did your husband fly back to the island last night if he had already left you?’

‘Because there’s a ton of his stuff still in the house. He came to pack some cases.’

‘Did you know he was coming?’

She hesitated only briefly. ‘No,’ she said.

He glanced at the medical report on his knees. ‘You realise the fact that he’d just left you could be interpreted as a motive for murder.’

‘Not by anyone who knows me.’ It was a plain, simple statement of fact. He looked at her for a moment and realised that this was meant for him. And she was right. He knew not the first thing about her.

He lifted the medical report from his knees. ‘It says here there is ample evidence of bruising and scratching about your body, as if you’d been in a fight.’

‘I was in a fight! For my life.’ Anger flared briefly in her eyes. ‘It’s hardly surprising I’m scratched and bruised. And I have no motive for murder, Mr Mackenzie. If you want to know the truth, I’d grown pretty much to hate the man. I would never have wanted to see him hurt, but I was happy that he was gone.’

Sime raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Why?’

‘When we first met he pursued me...’ she searched for the right word, ‘relentlessly. I was his obsession. He sent me flowers and chocolates, wrote me letters. Phoned me a dozen times a day. He used his wealth to try to impress me, his passion to seduce me. And like an idiot I fell for it. Flattered by his attention, all the grand gestures. He swept me off my feet. I had just graduated from university. I was young, impressionable. And coming from the island, probably not very sophisticated, certainly not very experienced. So when he proposed to me, how could I refuse?’

She shook her head in sad recollection.