Entry Island

‘You told me that you were glad to discover James was having an affair. That it brought to an end a situation with which you were deeply unhappy.’

‘I know what I told you.’

‘But that wasn’t true.’

‘It was!’ Indignation flared briefly in her eyes.

‘Then how do you explain your behaviour? Turning up at Ariane Briand’s door, rampaging about her house looking for James?’

‘Rampaging? Is that how she described it?’

‘How would you describe it?’

She let her eyes drop to her hands in her lap. ‘Pathetic,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s what it was. What I was. Sad and pathetic. Everything I told you about the way I felt was true. But I also felt hurt, and humiliated.’ She looked up again, and he thought he saw an appeal for understanding in her eyes. ‘I’d been drinking that night.’ And now he saw her shame. ‘It’s not something I’m in the habit of doing. So it didn’t take much to tip me over the edge. You know, sitting alone here in the dark, thinking about all the wasted years, remembering every little thing he’d said, all his grand gestures and promises, and wondering if Ariane Briand was the first, or just the latest in a long succession. All those business trips away. I wanted to know. I wanted to confront him.’

‘So you took the boat that you keep at the jetty below the cliffs?’

She nodded. ‘It was pure madness. I’m not great with boats at the best of times. But the alcohol had me all fired up and I didn’t really care. If the weather had been worse I’d probably never have made it. James would still be alive, and my body would have been found washed up on a beach somewhere.’ She was looking in his direction, but he doubted that she saw him. She was somewhere else, reliving the madness. ‘I was, literally, unravelling.’ And suddenly she jumped focus and her eyes seared into him. ‘I’m not proud of myself, Mr Mackenzie. God knows what was going through my mind, or what kind of emotional state I was in. I just wanted to have it out with him. Face to face. Clear the air. I just wanted to know. Everything.’

‘And when he wasn’t there you turned on the next best thing. His lover.’

‘I didn’t turn on her!’

‘According to Madame Briand you said...’ Sime looked down to consult the notes taken during her formal interview, ‘I’m not giving him up without a fight. And if I can’t have him, neither you nor anyone else will.’ He looked up again. ‘Are those your words?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘So she paraphrased you?’

‘It doesn’t sound like me.’

‘But was that the sentiment you expressed?’

Her embarrassment was clear. ‘Probably.’

‘Was it or wasn’t it?’

‘Yes!’ she snapped at him. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I lost it, okay? Drink, emotion...’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Whatever. I was coming apart at the seams. It felt like my life was over. Tied to this damned island. Alone. Almost nobody my own age left. No way I was ever going to meet someone else. All I could see stretching ahead of me were a lot of lonely years in an empty house.’

Sime sat back and let a silence settle between them again, like dust after a fight. ‘You realise, Mrs Cowell, that what you said to Madame Briand could be construed as a threat to kill your husband.’

‘Well, of course, you’d just love to give it that construction, wouldn’t you?’ She imbued the word construction with all the sarcasm she could muster.

‘You told me that on the night of the murder you didn’t know that your husband was coming back to the island.’

She gazed at her hands.

Sime waited for several moments. ‘Are you going to respond or not?’

She looked up. ‘You didn’t ask a question.’

‘All right, is it true that you didn’t know your husband was coming home that night?’

Her eyes drifted away towards the window behind him, and the view out over the cliffs. And again she made no response.

‘According to Madame Briand he received a short, fractious call on his cellphone earlier in the evening and left immediately afterwards. Did you make that phone call?’

Her eyes drifted back in his direction, but all the fight had gone out of them.

‘We can check the phone records, Mrs Cowell.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, without further prompting.

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I told him I wanted to talk to him.’

‘To say what?’

‘All the things I wanted to have out with him the night before. Only I wasn’t drunk anymore. Just kind of cold, you know. Angry. Wanting to know stuff that we’d never had the chance to talk about, so I wouldn’t be wondering about it for the rest of my life.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘That we’d talked enough, and he had no intention of coming to the island. At least, not then.’

‘So how did you persuade him?’

‘I told him that first I was going to gather together all his clothes and make a nice big bonfire of them on top of the cliffs. And if he still didn’t come I was going to set his precious house on fire, his computer and all of his business records with it.’ She almost smiled. ‘That seemed to do the trick.’

He braced himself for a final onslaught. ‘So everything you told us about what happened that night was a lie.’

‘No!’