“But I told you—”
“You can’t have imagined we wouldn’t check your story.”
“You thought Jo would protect her sister, didn’t you?” said Gemma, pulling up the chair that had sat in front of the gateleg table. “Was that the way it always was, Jo protecting Annabelle?”
“Yes—No—I mean … I can’t think anymore.”
“Then I’ll help you, shall I?” said Kincaid. “You didn’t know that Annabelle had had an affair with Martin Lowell until Harry blurted it out that night. But their affair happened before you and Annabelle became involved, so why were you so furious? Were you afraid she’d kept seeing him after she took up with you? Or was it because she hadn’t told you the truth?”
“She said it wasn’t anyone else’s business—” Abruptly realizing his admission, Mortimer stopped and looked from Kincaid to Gemma.
“You argued about it after you left Jo’s, didn’t you?” asked Gemma. “You must have wondered what else she hadn’t told you.”
For a moment, Mortimer tensed as if he might deny it. Then his shoulders sagged. “How could Annabelle have betrayed Jo and the children that way? And if she could do such a thing to Jo …”
“Then she could betray anyone,” Gemma finished for him. “Even you.”
“It was too humiliating—I couldn’t bear it. How could I tell you? And I didn’t see how it could possibly matter —”
“You can’t know what matters,” Kincaid interjected sharply. “An investigation fits together like a puzzle—you can’t know how your piece falls in with someone else’s.” He scowled at Mortimer and added, “Unless, of course, your piece is the only one that counts. Let’s say that Annabelle added insult to injury. You were enraged with her already, angrier than you had ever been. You accused her of sleeping with someone else—” A look at Mortimer’s stricken face told him he’d hit home, and he felt a pulse of excitement. “You demanded to know who it was. And she told you—didn’t she, Reg?”
Through the flat’s open windows came the hoot of a tug’s horn, then the amplified voice of the tour guide on the Thames Ferry, extolling the architectural features of the riverside buildings in an exaggerated Cockney accent.
Reg Mortimer gaped at Kincaid like a rabbit mesmerized by a car’s headlamps, his eyes wide and dilated, his breathing shallow. Then he clamped a hand over his mouth and bolted from the room.
A moment later they heard the sound of retching coming from the bathroom. Kincaid made a grimace of distaste.
“You certainly got a reaction,” Gemma said softly. “The guv’nor is going to love you.” She nodded towards the walls. “Have a look at those while we’ve got a moment.”
The toilet flushed, then water ran. Kincaid stood and went to examine the paintings he’d only glanced at from a distance. Two of them echoed the limes and tangerines of the sofa cushions in more muted tones. The images were surreal, a bit jarring, but fascinating. Silvers and golds were predominant in the third canvas, an abstract study of amoeba-like shapes. When Kincaid saw the signature, his eyes narrowed. He went back and looked more carefully at the first two paintings. Again, the artist’s name was one he recognized. If these canvases were original, he thought, they must have cost a pretty penny indeed.
Just as he moved to the gateleg table, he heard the water shut off in the bathroom. He only managed a swift look at the papers spread out on the tabletop before Mortimer came back into the room.
“I’m sorry,” Mortimer said. His face glistened with perspiration. “I think I must be ill. Since Annabelle … I can’t seem to keep anything down.”
“It’s very stressful, keeping things to yourself, Reg,” Gemma said softly. “Why don’t you tell us what Annabelle said that night?”
Reg sat down, clutching his middle protectively, then with a grimace he sat up straight and clasped his hands between his knees. “All right. She said she’d been trying to make up her mind to tell me for months. She’d fallen in love with someone else. She hadn’t known, until she met him, what it was like to feel that way about someone— and she’d realized that even if he wouldn’t have her, she could never be satisfied with less.
“And then she stopped, in the tunnel, with an astonished look on her face—you’d have thought she’d seen the Second Coming. She told me to go, but I said no, we had to talk, so she said she’d meet me at the Ferry House in half an hour, if I would just leave her for a bit. So I walked away, and it was just like I told you—when I looked back I saw her talking to the busker. But I’d no idea she even knew him, much less … Was it him she meant? Gordon Finch?”
“We can’t be certain, but Finch says he broke off their relationship several months ago, and in the tunnel that night she pleaded with him to resume things. He says he refused her.”
“Refused her? But why?”
Gemma didn’t answer his question. “Did Annabelle tell you she wanted to end your engagement?”
“Not in so many words, no. But I suppose that’s what she meant—I thought if I just gave her time to calm down, she’d change her mind.”
“Did you wait for her?”
“No. I just walked for a bit, and the more I thought, the more it seemed that she couldn’t really have meant those things she said. When I got to the pub I thought she’d be waiting to tell me it was all a mistake.”
“And when she didn’t come?”
“I’ve told you.” Mortimer drew a breath. “I rang her, then went to her flat, but she wasn’t there.”
Kincaid regarded him with irritation. They knew Mortimer had gone to the pub, had rung Annabelle from there, just as he said. Forensics had not yet found any evidence that Annabelle’s body had been moved in her car, Reg didn’t own an automobile, and Kincaid couldn’t come up with any believable scenario in which Reg had persuaded Annabelle to go with him to the park, then strangled her.
