Dark Room

'Certainly,' he said, 'but you're asking for miracles if you expect us to take everything you say on trust. For example, explain this to me. How come you never resorted to petty theft as a way of getting back at your father? Surely I'm right in thinking you, too, have always believed he was guilty of Landy's murder? What was your revenge, Miss Kingsley?''

'Rather too subtle for you to understand,' she said curtly before returning to her previous point. 'If you're willing to be objective, then why were you so dismissive of everything I told you yesterday?'

His smile didn't reach his eyes. 'I don't recall being dismissive. I do recall challenging some of the statements you made. But then you're a suspect in this case, too,' he pointed out, 'which means that anything you say will be subject to scrutiny. Is that unreasonable, do you think?'

'No, but I'd be interested to know if you've pursued any of the suggestions I made to you. For example, have you looked for another link between the three murders? Have you examined the possibility that someone was trying to kill me on the day of my accident?'

'These things take time,' he said. 'We can't work miracles, Miss Kingsley.'

'But are you even trying, Inspector?' She turned to Cheever. 'Is anyone?'

The Superintendent, who was ignorant of both suggestions because they had not been relayed to him, answered honestly. 'Not to my knowledge, no, but if you can persuade me they are worth pursuing, then I shall certainly do so. Why do you think someone was trying to kill you?'

She glanced towards Protheroe, seeking support, but he was staring at the floor. 'Because of a series of negatives,' she said flatly. 'I'm not the type to kill myself. I didn't want to marry Leo. I never get drunk. I didn't kill Russell, so I can't imagine I'd have killed Leo or Meg either. And the car crash clearly wasn't an accident. I can't think of another explanation for what happened to me bar attempted murder. And I keep thinking, what if I had died? Would you have looked for anyone else in connection with Leo's and Meg's deaths? Wouldn't you all just have said to yourselves: 'That explains everything, she must have killed Russell as well'?'

'Do you remember anything at all about the crash, Miss Kingsley?'

She looked away. 'No,' she said, her face devoid of expression.

He studied her for a moment, unsure if he believed her. 'Well, I'm quite happy to go through all the documents relating to it to see if there's anything we've missed, but I should warn you I'm not very optimistic. Even if you're right, I don't see how we'll ever be able to prove it.'

'I realize that, but the important thing is that you don't dismiss it as a possibility. You must see what a different light it sheds on the whole thing. I keep coming back and back to it in my mind. If someone tried to kill me, then that means I'-she pressed her hands to her chest-'must know who murdered Leo and Meg, even though I can't remember it. And it also means that that someone is the missing link, because whoever the person is probably murdered all three.' She regarded him anxiously. 'Do you follow?'

'Oh, yes,' he said, 'I follow very well. It's an interesting hypothesis, but it doesn't help us very much unless you can suggest a name.'

And if I suggest a name. What then?-Do you have any proof, Miss Kingsley? 'What good is a name if I can't give you any evidence?''

The Superintendent shrugged. 'It would give us a starting point.'

But she was only interested in the endgame and she doubted whether the police could ever deliver a result. Truth is a disturbingly elusive phenomenon ... Presumably you can't prove that ... Policemen accumulate the available facts and weigh them in the balance ... What was your revenge, Miss Kingsley?

'Yesterday,' Maddocks reminded her, 'you argued that it was Meg who linked the three murders.'

'And I still believe that's right,' she said, turning back from long corridors that led nowhere. 'Look, I spent all last night thinking about it.' She drew on her cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. 'I haven't been sleeping too well,' she explained. 'I don't blame you for seeing my relationship with Russell and Leo as the focus for what's happened, but Meg's relationship with them was just as strong. Last night, I kept coming back to the thinking at the time of Russell's murder, which was that my father killed him because he didn't like him. I remember one of the policemen saying to me that whoever killed him hated him, because it was done with such rage. And that set me wondering if the rage was jealous rage.' She gave her troubled smile. 'But not jealousy over me,' she said. 'Jealousy over Meg.'

There was a short silence.

'We've read her diaries,' said Frank Cheever. 'At a rough estimate, she slept with fifty different men in the last ten years. Even by today's standards, she would be described as promiscuous.'

'Only because she had a very hedonistic view of sex. Why say no, if you both want to do it? In some ways she had a very masculine approach to life. She could love them and leave them and never turn a hair while she did it.'

'But surely you must see the flaw in your argument? If someone was so jealous that they were prepared to kill her lovers, then we should have fifty corpses on our hands instead of two.'

It was Alan Protheroe who answered. He had stood with bowed head, listening intently to Jinx's reasoning, but now he looked up. ' 'Because Russell and Leo were the only two lovers she really cared for,' he pointed out. 'By the sound of it, the rest meant nothing at all. Jinx told me the letters Meg wrote to Russell were very moving, and the newspapers talk about an eleven-year relationship between her and Leo. If someone else was in love with her, then it's those two men who represented the threat, not the fifty or so others who came and went as regularly as clockwork.'

'Why kill Meg as well?'

'For the same reason jealous husbands kill their wives when they find them in flagrante delicto with other men. On the face of it, it's illogical. If you love a woman enough to be jealous, then how can you summon the hate required to kill her? But emotions are never logical.'

'Then why wasn't she killed when Russell was killed? Why only kill her over Leo?''

Alan shrugged. 'For any one of twenty reasons, I should think. A desire to give her a second chance. A belief