‘Do you think he’s flaky?’
‘As a bowl of All-Bran. But I don’t know if he’s a killer as well.’
Dr Sentinel had finished speaking to his parents-in-law when Hen returned to him. ‘One of the most difficult calls I’ve ever had to make,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine.’
‘Actually I can,’ she said. ‘I had to break the news to you.’
‘So you did.’
‘And it wasn’t my first time. Every copper has to do it.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Feel ready to answer some questions? Not here. We’ll use an interview room.’
He frowned. ‘Shouldn’t you be going after the monster who did this?’
‘I am. You offered to help. I’m asking for information.’
‘Is there anything we haven’t already covered?’
‘Quite a bit.’
In Interview Room 2, with DC Gary Pearce at her side, Hen explained that it would streamline the process if they videoed what was said. Sentinel commented that in modern Britain you never knew when you were being secretly videoed anyway, and he had no objection. He didn’t require a solicitor. Why should he?
For the record, Hen spoke the preliminaries, and then told him, ‘I want as much as you can give me about your wife. Her personality, likes, dislikes, interests, friendships. It’s our job, with your help, to work out what she was doing in Selsey.’
‘That’s a closed book to me,’ he said. ‘Let’s try, but I don’t hold out much hope that I can be of use to you. Personality-wise, Merry was charming in the way American women are, or most of them. She charmed me, anyway. We first met in the late nineteen eighties when she was an undergraduate at Brighton and I was a visiting lecturer attached to the geology department. I led a course in palaeontology for a couple of terms there.’
‘And she was on it?’
‘No, it wasn’t that old cliche.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tutor seduces student. She wasn’t even my student.’
‘So what was she reading?’
‘Zoology. Got a first, in spite of me. Merry could have excelled in any of the sciences, including my own. She had that sort of brain.’
‘“In spite” of you?’
‘She could so easily have been sidetracked. Academically, I was bad news for her. You see, I was on attachment from Brunel, twenty-five years of age, full of myself, not bad-looking. She was eighteen, a fresher.’
Not a million miles from that old cliche, Hen mused.
‘The ratio of women students to men at Brighton was outrageous compared to what I was used to. I was the proverbial kid in the sweetshop. For me it was ideal, but not for Merry. I came along at a critical stage in her studies and took far too much of her time. It’s a measure of her ability that she still got the best degree going.’
Something in his favour. He had a conscience.
‘When did you marry?’
‘Nineteen-ninety-two, after she graduated. The wedding was in Louisville, where they have the Kentucky Derby. Her father owns a string of racehorses. It was a society do. And they do their best to convince you America has no class system. You wouldn’t believe the hats. Like that scene in My Fair Lady.’
‘But you chose to live in England?’
‘My career. I was hoping to get the chair at Imperial. I’m still waiting. I worked damned hard establishing myself, writing books and so forth. Merry was a huge support.’
‘Did she continue her studies?’
‘She took her doctorate at University College, but she wasn’t cut out for lecturing, so she didn’t stay in education.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Various things. She worked mornings at the Natural History Museum in South Ken, classifying bones and fossils. Yes, I know it sounds like the ultimate dead end, but the work had a link with her zoology, you see. And once a week she was doing what she really believed in, helping living species as a volunteer for the World Wildlife Fund.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Stuffing things into envelopes mainly.’
Hen had pictured her bottle-feeding baby pandas. ‘And she found that fulfilling?’
‘She valued the animal kingdom above mankind.’
Was that what irked him?
‘The whole ecology, in fact,’ he added.
‘Flora as well as fauna?’ A new thought came to Hen. ‘She wasn’t, by any chance, a campaigner for trees?’
‘Not unless they were homes to one-toed sloths.’
‘She must have made some friends in these jobs she did.’
‘I expect so.’
A vague answer. ‘You didn’t meet any of them?’
‘She didn’t bring them home, no.’
‘You’re private people?’
‘We gave the occasional dinner party for colleagues of mine.’
It seemed equality hadn’t penetrated the Sentinel household.
‘Did she ever mention names?’
‘Of her friends? If she did, I wouldn’t recall them. I have more than enough going on at Imperial to occupy my attention.’
Hen felt some sympathy for Meredith Sentinel. Marriage to this self-serving man must have been a pain. ‘Enemies, then?’
‘None that I heard of. She was difficult to dislike. I can see where you’re going with that question, but I can’t help, I’m afraid.’
‘You mentioned the work she did at the Natural History Museum. Did she go on field trips?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Parts of the coast down here are well known for deposits of fossils.’
‘I’m aware of that. They aren’t short of specimens at the museum. She hasn’t been here since her student days.’
‘She was here last month when she was murdered.’
‘And you’re suggesting she came fossil-hunting? I don’t think so.’
‘So why did she come to Selsey as a student?’
‘That was the woolly mammoth.’
‘The what?’
‘Twenty years ago some large bones were exposed in the clay after an unusually low tide and they turned out to be the complete skeleton of a young mammoth. My lucky day. This happened during my lecturing stint at Brighton-what is it? — thirty miles up the coast, and I was the obvious person with the skills and knowledge to supervise the excavation.’
‘You were in charge?’
‘The man on the spot. Palaeontologists don’t grow on trees.’
‘Neither do mammoths, I guess.’
‘Not in nineteen-eighty-seven, anyway,’ he said, causing Hen some puzzlement. She didn’t interrupt. ‘The dig had to be done swiftly because of the tidal conditions. And this was towards the end of September, before the university session began. I’d come up early to prepare and I recruited all the help I could, local volunteers and students from anywhere and everywhere, including Merry.’
‘So that was the start of your romance?’
