that was likely to cause a very serious injury.’
‘I didn’t mean to hit him with it.’
‘Come on, Joan. It was on the table. You picked it up and brought it down on his head. How high did you raise it? This high?’ I held my hands level with my face, palms inwards.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she protested.
‘Then tell me what it was like.’
She was ringing a handkerchief between her fingers, twisting it around them. ‘I…I just picked it up. It was there on the table, where he’d left it.’
It had been the only piece of greenery in the house. All else was dark colours, mainly shades of grey, and the only other non-geometric shapes in the place were the curves of the nymphs and bodybuilders that adorned his walls and low tables.
‘What do you mean by “Where he’d left it,” Joan?’ I asked. ‘Did you buy him the plant?’
She sniffed and nodded.
‘Go on, please.’
She realised that she’d strangled the hanky lifeless and put it away. ‘His house needed brightening up,’ she began. ‘I gave him the Dieffenbachia about a fortnight earlier, as a little present. Thought it might encourage him to buy a few more. When I saw it on the table, right where I’d left it, I realised he cared for that about as much as he cared for me.’
‘So you saw his neglect of the plant as reflecting his attitude to you. The plant was a symbol.’
Mrs Bannister shuffled in her chair, but didn’t speak. I was earning her fee for her.
‘Yes,’ Joan confirmed.
‘Go on, please.’
‘I picked it up. I only intended emptying it on his head. I turned it over and the plant pot fell out of the bowl. I hadn’t realised it was in a separate pot. It landed on his head and he fell sideways. I dropped the bowl — the planter — and waited for him to sit up, but he didn’t. I looked at him, and realised he was dead. I’d killed him. I was quite calm. There was no pulse. I was on my way out when I thought about fingerprints. I took the tea-towel and wiped everything I’d touched, just like you said.’
Mrs Bannister sat back in her plastic chair, a why-am-I-always-the-last-to-know expression on her face.
‘Were you and Hartley having an affair?’ I asked Joan.
She nodded, but I let it go. ‘For how long?’
‘About three years, I think.’
‘Since before you went on the cruise?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Joan, what happened when you left York and Durham? Did you lose your job?’
She jerked upright, staring at me. Mrs Bannister chipped in with ‘Is this relevant, Inspector?’ because she realised she’d completely lost control.
‘I think it might be in your client’s interest to answer the question, Mrs Bannister. Were you sacked, Joan?’
She heaved a huge sigh, as if sloughing off all her worries. ‘Yes, I was.’
‘Could you tell us why?’
‘I suppose it has to come out. I was caught copying the files of some of our wealthier clients. Hartley — Mr Goodrich — asked me to do it.’
‘And then he would approach them with a view to offering alternative investments. More lucrative ones.’
‘Yes, something like that. I couldn’t see any harm in it, but it was dishonest.’
Not really, I thought. The bank would have sold them to him without a second’s hesitation, if there’d been anything in it for them. Disloyal, maybe. ‘And they sacked you,’ I said.
She nodded and gave the tiniest hint of a smile at the memory. ‘Escorted me from the premises. It was very embarrassing for Derek.’ Notoriety can be fun, she’d discovered. I’ve known it for years.
‘Go on.’
‘That’s when my marriage collapsed. I left Derek and found a flat. Soon after, I took a job at the hospital and moved to Leeds.’
‘But you stayed friends with Goodrich?’
‘Yes. He was very supportive.’
I should think so. He’d only destroyed her career and her marriage. I said, ‘And when you received your share of the marital home, he invested it for you.’
‘Yes.’
‘In an investment diamond?’
‘Yes.’
‘So he lost you your money, too, or most of it.’
‘Yes. Hartley said he was trying to recover it for me, but I’m not sure.’
‘Mmm. You might be interested to learn that when we found Goodrich he was clutching a three-carat diamond. I’ve a suspicion that it was yours.’ I turned to Maggie and suggested we check it. ‘Unfortunately,’ I continued, ‘it will only be worth a fraction of what you paid for it.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Mrs Bannister looked at her watch. ‘Could we speed things up, Inspector? I’ve another appointment at twelve.’
She brings in a client to confess to a killing and worries about missing lunch. ‘Joan, you said you and Goodrich were going away. For a holiday or for ever?’
‘No, just a few days together. We…I… We’d considered moving in with each other. Well, I had. He went along with the idea at first, then changed his mind. Said he’d been on his own too long — it wouldn’t work. We decided to go away as a sort of trial, I suppose.’
‘So, come Sunday evening, you finished work and were waiting for him with your bags packed, but he didn’t show up.’
‘No. I mean, yes, that’s right.’
‘And first thing Monday morning you went round to see him. He was calmly watching telly, and something inside you snapped.’
Mrs Bannister stirred in her seat, wanting to object to my putting words in her client’s mouth, but couldn’t see anything wrong with what I was suggesting.
‘Yes,’ Joan agreed.
Mrs Bannister said, ‘We intended offering a plea of guilty to causing GBH, Section Twenty, but in the light of what we’ve just heard I’d suggest a Section Forty-seven assault might be more appropriate. May I have a copy of the tape and hand my client over to your custody, Inspector?’
I had some thinking to do. Section Forty-seven is actual bodily harm, but you can’t commit it against a dead body. Technically speaking, a charge of attempting to commit ABH was possible, if Mrs Eastwood hadn’t realised he was already dead. Attempting to commit a crime is still an offence. If someone puts his hand in your pocket, not realising it only contains fluff, he is still guilty of attempted theft.
Trouble was, she had a good defence. Mrs Bannister would claim that her client only wanted to embarrass Goodrich, cause him discomfort, and who could prove otherwise? If she’d known he was already dead we could have done her for an offence against the coroner’s legislation, but she didn’t, and although it might be a crime to conceal a dead body, there is no compulsion to report one. I felt the case go wriggling through my fingers and back into the river, like the eels I caught when I was a kid. But now, like then, I didn’t mind.
‘No,’ I said.
‘No?’
‘No. I think we’ll let her go home.’
‘What do you mean, go home?’
‘Exactly that. Mrs Eastwood, Mrs Bannister, Hartley Goodrich died of a heart attack, sometime on the Sunday evening. When you saw him, Joan, on Monday morning, he had already been dead for about ten hours. You struck a dead body with that plant pot. You didn’t kill anybody. What I propose to do is pass the file to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider. I feel certain that they will deem it unlikely that it is in the public’s interest
