Dark Room

'I wish I knew.' She smiled suddenly. 'It seems very out of character for someone with extraordinary composure.' She flicked ash from her cigarette. 'So out of character that I don't think I did.'

'You were drunk and you drove your car at full speed towards the only structure of any substance on a deserted airfield. What other explanation is there?'

'But I didn't kill myself,' she pointed out.

'Because you were lucky. You were thrown clear.'

'Perhaps I threw myself clear,' she said. 'Perhaps I didn't want to die.'

'Meaning what, precisely?'

Her eyelashes grew damp but she held the tears in check. 'I don't know, but I've had far more time to think about this than I have about Leo and Meg, and it seems to me that if I wasn't trying to kill myself, then the only other explanation is that someone else was trying to kill me.' She abandoned any attempt to persuade Maddocks and turned instead to Fraser's more open face. 'It would be so easy. My car was an automatic. All anyone would have to do was aim it at the post, put it into drive, wedge the accelerator at full throttle, and then release the hand brake. If I was unconscious and belted in, I'd have been crushed in the wreckage. That might have happened, don't you think? It's a possibility, isn't it?'

'If you'd been belted in, how could you have been thrown clear?'

'Then maybe I wasn't belted in,' she said eagerly. 'Maybe the idea was to have me go through the windshield. Or maybe I came round in time and released myself.'

He would have liked to believe her, but he couldn't. 'Then this hypothetical murderer would have seen what had happened and finished you off. He couldn't afford to leave you alive if he'd just tried to kill you.'

From her pocket she took the newspaper clipping that Betty had given her and pressed it into his hands. 'According to this, I was found by a young couple. He wouldn't have had time to finish me off if he saw them coming.'

'Look, Miss Kingsley,' said Maddocks, 'I hate to be cruel but facts are facts. According to your neighbors in Richmond, this wasn't the first time. Your first attempt was on the Sunday. Whether you like it or not, indeed whether you remember it or not-and by your own admission you have a habit of blocking out anything that disturbs you-something so terrible happened that you primed yourself with Dutch courage and then had a second go at finishing it all.'

Something terrible happened... 'I've never been drunk in my life,' she said stubbornly. 'I've never wanted to be drunk.'

'There's always a first time.'

She shrugged. 'Not as far as I'm concerned, Inspector.'

'You had consumed the equivalent of two bottles of wine when you had your accident. Miss Kingsley. The bottles were found on the floor of your car. Are you telling me you can absorb that amount of alcohol without being what the rest of us would term drunk?'

'No,' she said. 'I'm saying I would never have wanted to drink that much.'

'Not even if you had done something you were ashamed of?'

She fixed him with her steady gaze. 'Like what?'

'Been party to a murder perhaps?'

She shook her head. 'Do you not see how illogical that argument is? As I understand it, Meg's and Leo's bodies were found near Winchester, which means that whoever murdered them must have worked out some fairly complicated logistics. I can't find out from the newspapers whether they were killed in the wood or taken there after they were dead, but whichever it was, someone went to a great deal of trouble to get them there. But why would anyone go to those lengths if they were so ashamed of what they'd done that they then tried to kill themselves? It doesn't make sense. On the one hand you're describing a very calculating personality who set out to get rid of two people; on the other, you're describing a weak personality who may have struck out in a moment of anger but was then so appalled by what he'd done that he tried to make amends by killing himself.''

'You really have given this a lot of thought, haven't you?'

The huge black eyes filled again. 'As you would have done, if you were in my place. I'm not a fool, Inspector.'

Maddocks surprised her by acknowledging this with a nod. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, Point taken, but he checked himself in time. 'There's no logic to murder, Miss Kingsley, not in my experience anyway. It's usually the last people you'd expect who do it. Some of them show remorse early, some of them show it when they're convicted, and some of them never show it at all. Believe me, it is not uncommon for a calculating individual to plan a murder, carry it out, dispose of the body, and then have an attack of conscience. We see it over and over again. There's no reason why this case should be any different.'

'Then you might as well clap the handcuffs on me now,' she said, 'because I can't defend myself.'

Nothing would give me more pleasure, sweetheart. 'There's no question of that,' he said affably. 'As Sergeant Fraser said, we are pursuing various lines of inquiry, and this is just one of them. However, I'm sure you realize how important it is that you give us some indication of what went on in the two weeks prior to your accident and the deaths of Leo and Meg. Unfortunately, you seem to be the only person left who can shed any light on the matter.'

She drew on her cigarette with a worried frown. 'What about Meg's friends? Have you spoken to any of them? Surely they can tell you something.'

'Acting on the information you gave us, we spoke to Josh Hennessey yesterday. He told us that the first he knew about Leo and Meg getting together was a phone call from Meg on Saturday, June the eleventh. She told him your wedding was off, that she and Leo were leaving for France but that she would pop into the office before she left to bring him up to date with her side of the operation. She never showed and he has never heard from her again. He also gave us the names of some of Meg's close friends. We spoke to a couple of them, Fay Avonalli and Marian Harding, and they told us the same story.'

'But didn't you ask Josh about her and Leo's relationship before that? I mean, he and Meg have worked