Echo

suspected that theories on the inexorability of fate would go down like a lead balloon with London and Hampshire's finest, particularly as Harrison already had his doubts about his and Barry's involvement with the damn woman. He thought of her pallor, and the way her eyes had watched his every movement. Was she afraid he would stumble across the corpse? How close had he come to it, for God's sake? And how the hell could she have been so calm and collected when the body of her dead lover was secreted in her house and on her conscience?

He rolled the stem of his wineglass between his finger and thumb, turning it in a slow circle on the tablecloth. 'If she had a dead body on the premises, then I'm surprised she complained to you about Barry,' he said to Harrison. 'She's either very cool or very stupid.'

'Cool,' said Harrison, recalling his own impressions of a woman who had calmly allowed the police into her house with a dead man in the garage. 'I'm guessing she wanted to find out how much he'd told us before deciding what to do next. Presumably the original idea was to abandon his car in Dover before disposing of the body somewhere else, but she did a bunk when she realized she couldn't discredit Barry's evidence.' He paused. 'It still gives us a logistical problem. Who drove the Rolls-Royce to Kent if its owner was lying dead in a London garage?'

No one answered.

'If Amanda took it there,' he continued, 'how did she get back in time for her neighbors to speak to her at nine o'clock and then watch her drive away to spend Christmas with her mother? She certainly couldn't have done it afterwards because she was in her mother's house at midday when Kent police informed her of Barry's arrest. Which makes the time frame too narrow to switch cars, drive the Rolls to Dover, and return for the BMW.'

'She could have left home at three o'clock in the morning and caught an early train to London from Dover,' Deacon pointed out. 'That would have got her back by nine o'clock, wouldn't it?'

The sergeant shook his head. 'The first train on a Sunday doesn't reach Waterloo until after nine o'clock.'

'She could have hitched a lift.'

'In the early hours of Christmas Eve? In the dark? Right to her doorstep in time to be bright-eyed and bushy- tailed for her neighbors?'

Lawrence was watching him closely. 'What's your theory, Sergeant?'

'We think there was someone else involved, sir. Admittedly this is pure speculation but let's say de Vriess was struck on the back of the head while he was making love to Amanda, which is the only sensible explanation for his nudity. Let's say then that it was the accomplice who collected de Vriess's Rolls-Royce from wherever he had left it-it certainly wasn't parked outside her house or her neighbors would have noticed it-and drove the Rolls to Dover. I think you'd agree that's a more likely sequence of events, given what we have.'

Lawrence smiled. 'I'm a lawyer, my dear fellow. You can't expect me to agree with any such thing. An equally likely sequence of events is that de Vriess was so aroused by Amanda that he forgot to lock his car, and it was subsequently hijacked by joyriders. Meanwhile, following their satisfactory session on the sitting-room floor, he took a shower, slipped on the tiles and killed himself accidentally. Amanda, appalled at what had happened, hid the body in the garage, and has now fled to think things over. Have you any evidence to disprove my version of events?'

Both policemen looked at Barry. 'Perhaps Mr. Grover can help us,' suggested Superintendent Fortune. 'How long did you watch what was going on in that sitting room, sir?'

Barry looked at his hands. 'Not long.'

'You left before they finished?'

He nodded.

'Are you sure about that, sir? Most men in your situation would have waited till the end. You were unobserved. You stumbled on it by accident. You said yourself it was exciting. So much so-' he glanced briefly at the other three, as if wondering how graphic he could be-'that you went back a few hours later for a second helping. Why leave before you had to?''

Barry licked his lips. 'I thought she'd seen me. She made him get up suddenly and pull the curtains.'

Fortune showed him a photograph of Nigel de Vriess. 'Was this the man?'

'Yes.'

'Why did you think Amanda had seen you?'

'Because he only got up after she looked at the window.'

'Was there anyone else in the room?'

Barry shook his head.

'Did you look in any of the other windows?'

'No. I was scared of being caught. I went straight back to the main road and took a taxi home.'

'You can't have been that scared,' Harrison said bluntly. 'You were there again in under eight hours.'

'He left his folder of photographs behind,' said Deacon reasonably. 'That's why he went back.' He looked thoughtfully across at Barry. 'She drives a black BMW which she always parks in her driveway. Was it there that night?'

Barry shook his head.

'Then it was premeditated murder and she didn't need an accomplice,' he said matter-of-factly. 'She made two trips to Dover. The first on Saturday in her own car which she left down there, returning to London by train, and the second early on Sunday morning in the Roller, returning in her BMW.' He fingered a cigarette from the packet on the table, wondering if she'd made the same round-trip five years ago. 'The interesting question is what was she planning to do with Nigel's body?' He held the lighter to the tip of his cigarette. ' 'She must have been very sure of her hiding place or she wouldn't have gone to the trouble of leaving his car near a ferry port.'

The superintendent was watching him closely. 'The only problem with that scenario, sir, is that her neighbors recollect her car being outside her house all Saturday.'