“He’s not stupid,” said Mimi. “I imagine he does.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“But are you sure?”
“No,” said Mimi. “I’m not.”
“Sometimes when things concern us intimately, we don’t see the obvious.”
“We don’t,” said Mimi. “Often we don’t.”
There was silence as each waited for the other to say something. It was Isabel who spoke. “Go and ask him if he’s done something about his will,” she said. “He said that he had made arrangements after the engagement.”
“He must have done something about that,” said Mimi.
“He has his advisers. I can’t imagine that sort of thing would be left.”
“But it can be,” Isabel protested. “You’re always hearing about people who don’t bring these things up to date. Then they die and their first wife gets everything and the second nothing.”
Mimi sounded doubtful. “But is it our business?”
“Yes,” said Isabel firmly. “It is. But, if you like, I’ll call him.
Just give me his number.”
“I’ll speak to him,” said Mimi.
“And tell him to tell Angie,” added Isabel.
“To tell her what?”
“To tell her that the provision he made has been unmade.
That’s very important.” She paused. “Of course it may have nothing to do with it. It may just be a settling of scores. She feels rejected. A fire might restore her
“It’s unlikely that they will be able to prove anything,” said Mimi. “And anyway, even if he has an idea that it’s her, would he want to take matters further? Probably not.
“You may be right, though,” Mimi continued. “Anything else?”
T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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“Just an observation,” said Isabel. “A question for us. How wrong can you be?”
“Perhaps we should trust our intuitions,” said Mimi.
“Of course, there are other reasons for arson,” said Isabel, as an afterthought. “Especially in the country. Local issues. Local jealousies. Resentment over boundaries, trees, livestock. Anything.” One just could not tell. And until there was proof, nothing was clear, which was the way that so much of life was—vague, ambiguous, by no means as simple as we imagine it to be.
“And people set fire to their own property,” said Mimi.
“That’s very common, apparently. And not just for insurance purposes.”
Isabel said nothing. She remembered a conversation she had had with Tom on their walk up the hill, about something to do with a house not being in the right place. They had talked about it. But she could not remember exactly what had been said, and after puzzling for a few moments, she stopped thinking about it.
She rang off. In her mind there was a counting rhyme, one of those rhymes one learns as a child, and which stays in the mind for ever. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo: he lies, she lies, he lies, she lies, he lies . . . And the finger ended up pointing at the child who was in the wrong place when one finished counting. Liar!
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E
E
THE CONVERSATION with Mimi took place on a Monday; the next two days were days of activity and revelation. By Wednesday she knew that she had to talk to Jamie. He had gone to Glasgow to take part in a musical workshop organised by the chamber orchestra in which he occasionally played. That was due to finish on Friday afternoon and he would return, he said, on Saturday afternoon: there were friends he wanted to meet in Glasgow. Isabel said to him, “You don’t think that you would be able to come back for Friday evening? We could have dinner.”
“What about Saturday evening? Are you doing anything on Saturday evening?”
She was not, but she needed to talk to him. It could wait, of course—most things can wait—but she wanted to talk to him as soon as possible.
“There’s something we need to discuss,” she said, trying not to sound too insistent, but fearing that she did.
Jamie’s hesitation was very brief, but enough to convey anxiety. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come round on Friday evening. We can discuss whatever it is. What is it, by the way?”
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“Do you mind waiting?”
A note of irritation crept into his voice. “No, not really.
But . . .”
