She spoke as if Langley was still alive. Horton felt some sympathy for her. No one would have thought twice about them being seen together, but Langley had sewn seeds of doubt in Teresa Woodford's mind. He guessed that the real reason Langley kept Woodford away was because she didn't want her stumbling across her other lover: Leo Ranson. Was there only the one? Horton wouldn't mind betting not.
She continued. 'We had just got ourselves a drink when I had a call out. I didn't have to go of course, since GPs are no longer on call these days, but a patient I was very fond of was being taken to hospital; his wife telephoned me. I don't give all my patients my mobile number but this one I did, and it had to ring that night.'
'So you left Jessica on your boat.' But was she alive or dead? According to Woodford, alive. Could he trust her to be telling the truth though? 'What time?' he asked sharply.
Woodford looked distracted for a moment before she pulled herself together and said, 'It was eight twenty. I glanced at my watch and said I won't be long. I didn't know then that I would never see her alive again.' She shuddered and buried her chin lower into her jacket as if cold.
If she was telling the truth then she had an alibi for the night Langley was killed, and she couldn't have taken the body to the mulberry. She couldn't have killed Jessica Langley before the call-out because Dr Clayton said that Langley's death had occurred between nine and eleven p.m. Was Dr Clayton mistaken? Was yet another of his theories about to go up in smoke? He felt the bitter blow of disappointment. He had been so convinced that Woodford was his murderer. He pulled himself together as Woodford continued.
'My patient died in the night. I got home just after four a.m. In the morning I heard on the radio about the death of a head teacher. I tried to ring Jess but there was no answer, and they told me at the school that she hadn't come in and the police were there. I began to get really worried so I went round to the mortuary-'
'On the pretext of checking things out for your patient who died.' Horton groaned inwardly. This had the ring of truth about it, and it could easily be checked.
She said, 'Gaye told me who it was. I couldn't believe it. I had to see her.'
She pushed her hands further into her pockets. She was shivering and near to collapse. He should call for a car, but he didn't want to break the flow of her statement, besides he knew that she wasn't going to retract it. Far from it, she seemed relieved to be able to talk to someone. The marine unit would be here soon anyway. But what the hell was he going to charge her with? He'd try another question. 'How did you get her to mulberry?'
'I didn't. That's what puzzled me at first before I discovered that her killer had used my boat to take her there.'
Her killer? Who the blazes was that? He was rapidly running out of ideas. But he had detected a change in her tone of voice. It was harsher and her eyes narrowed. Quickly picking up on it he said, 'You know who killed her?'
'Timothy Boston. He told me before I killed him.'
And there it was. She hadn't killed Langley, but she had taken revenge on her murderer. How did she arrive at the conclusion that Boston had killed her lover?
'I didn't know that on Friday,' she went on, her voice sharper. 'After I'd seen Jess in the mortuary I hurried to my boat. There was no blood and nothing had been disturbed. I thought then that Jess must have been attacked while walking back to her apartment. I should have told you that I had been with Jess the night she was killed, but I was worried what you might think. And there was my husband and his career to think of. So I kept silent. I brought my boat back here. Then I heard on the news that her body had been found on the mulberry and I guessed that my boat had been used to take her there. I checked the log and the mileage showed I was correct. I couldn't think who had done such a terrible thing and why, until I began to suspect that maybe my husband had found out about our affair. But I really couldn't see him in the role of killer. I didn't know what to do until I received the letter.'
Her hands came out of the pockets. She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself.
'Boston wrote to you?'
'He was going to blackmail me. In his letter he told me to meet him on his boat in Gosport Marina and bring one thousand pounds. If I didn't show then he would go to the police and tell them exactly what happened on the night Jessica died, and that he would ruin my career. I had no choice. Of course, I knew he wouldn't stop there; blackmailers never do, or so I understand. He was an arrogant man, Inspector. Full of his own self-importance and I was sick of men like him.'
Horton recalled Boston's stance when he'd asked Susan Pentlow for an interview: the man's over protectiveness and pompousness.
'Boston seemed surprised at first that I'd obeyed his instructions. He was standing in the cockpit and I was on the pontoon. I made sure to bring a holdall with me but it didn't contain any money.'
No, thought Horton, only the syringe with a lethal dose of methadone. Why had Boston been surprised? Did he think Dr Woodford would dismiss the letter?
'What happened?' he asked, watching her closely. She seemed calm and in control.
'Despite his requests for me to climb onboard I stayed on the pontoon. That meant he had to climb off the boat, which was exactly what I wanted. He told me that he'd seen Jess and me together that night. We'd foolishly kissed on deck, and from that he must have seen we were in love. It wasn't a little peck on the cheek. I tried to call his bluff by saying that Jess had told me about finding him on a boat last week with a bag full of stolen antiques and that if he so much as said one word about my affair with Jess then I would go to the police.'
Horton had been right then. He felt chuffed about that at least. Boston had been at Town Camber that night to kill Langley and plant her body on the Martin's boat and that was why he had shopped Johnson and Goodall. But he'd seen Langley and Woodford and had a better idea.
Woodford said, 'Boston just smiled and said, 'Where's your evidence?' Of course, I didn't have any but I said I could make things difficult for him. 'Not half as difficult as I can make them for you,' I recall him replying. He told me that he'd taken Jess to the mulberry and dumped her there like rubbish. He put money wrapped in honey in her knickers.'
'Why?'
'He laughed when I asked him and made some flippant remark about a wise owl falling for not so sweet a pussy-cat. That's when I injected him with a massive and fatal dose of methadone. He stopped laughing then.'
Horton suppressed a shudder at the blandness of her words.
She said, 'I pushed him over the pontoon. I didn't know his clothes were going to get caught and he'd be discovered so soon. He deserved to die for what he did to Jess. And I don't mind going to prison for it. I'd do it again.' Her head came up defiantly. Her fair cheeks flushed. There was anger and pain in her expression.
'And Tom Edney? Why did you kill him?'
'I didn't.' She looked up surprised. 'Why should I?'
'Because he also saw you with Langley and you had to silence him.'
But she was vigorously shaking her head. 'No.'
There was a pause. Horton could hear the rain beating against the coach roof and pounding off the decks. If he believed her, who killed Edney? Was it Boston? Had Edney seen Boston kill Jessica Langley on Woodford's boat that night? But somehow Horton couldn't see Boston slitting anyone's throat, whereas a doctor and one skilled in surgery could have done. Again he had the vague notion he was missing something. He tried to recall what it was but annoyingly it refused to come to him, like a face you recognize but the name of the person eludes you.
He said, 'You should have come to us.' If she was speaking the truth then she had committed no crime until she had killed Boston, and they would have got the evidence to charge and convict Boston.
'I thought of the trial and the public exposure. I thought that I could make it look as if Boston had killed himself because he couldn't live with what he had done to Jess. If Gaye hadn't been so good at her job, if his body hadn't got caught, I might have got away with it. But I don't care now. I'm glad you've come, Inspector. I am quite happy to go with you and make a full statement. I want everyone to know how that wicked man killed Jess. I loved her and I don't care who knows it now,' she declared with a note of defiance in her voice.
Horton wondered what her husband would make of that. It was time for them to leave. Where was Sergeant Elkins? Was he on the pontoon waiting? Horton hadn't heard a motorboat entering the marina. He didn't think Woodford was going to protest though. He would call for a patrol car. The case was closed. He'd found Boston's killer and according to Teresa Woodford, Boston had killed Langley and he thought, probably Tom Edney. That would please Uckfield. And yet he still felt uneasy.
She stood up and he stepped back to allow her to ease her way out of her seat. There wasn't enough room for both of them to walk together, and he didn't think she was going to make a bolt for it.
