‘Why is she coming here? I’d have expected us – you, that is – to go to her.’
‘We would have. She volunteered, said she’d like to come here.’
Wexford laughed, said there was no accounting for tastes and thus contributing a cliche of his own. As he had always feared, it was catching. Rather belatedly, Tom asked after Sylvia and Wexford kept his reply as short as he decently could. A young WPC brought in coffee. The tray had just been removed when Ms Francine Withers was announced.
The same WPC brought her in. She was of medium height, a little overweight, with blonde hair, black at the roots and a broad, handsome, over-made-up face, full mouth, straight nose and the kind of staring eyes that look as if their owner has just seen something shocking. As he must have looked, Wexford thought, when he walked into Ben’s room and saw the hanged man. She had dressed carefully, that was apparent, but not very judiciously in a too-short skirt, tight jumper and the kind of cropped jacket that shows off the flaws in an imperfect waistline. Her boots were suitable for the depths of winter rather than a late summer day.
‘Good of you to come, Ms Withers,’ Tom said.
Francine Withers held out her hand, first to Tom, then to Wexford, and said she was pleased to meet them. ‘I had to take the day off work,’ she said, ‘and I don’t get paid if I do that. But I thought it was my duty to come. You have to be a good citizen, don’t you?’
Neither Tom nor Wexford replied to this. It is the kind of question that makes seasoned policemen distrust the speaker.
‘Now, Ms Withers,’ Tom began, ‘perhaps you’ll take us back to when you first met Mr Chiltern. That was his name, wasn’t it? Chiltern?’
‘That’s right. Keith Chiltern.’
‘You were living in High Wycombe at the time and so was he?’
‘Oh, no. I only went to High Wycombe when I got married. My husband came from King’s Langley. I used to live in London, in Battersea, and so did Keith. I was friendly with this girl and she introduced me to her brother, that was Keith, and we started going out. He was in the building trade, Keith was. It would have been 1996 we started going out.’
Wexford said, ‘Where was he living?’
‘In Clapham. I don’t remember the address, I only went there once. I had a room in Lavender Hill Road and he used to come there. I lived there till I got married in 2003. He was working on this Orcadia Cottage. It wasn’t very big but very posh. The people who owned it went away and he said we could go and stay there, they wouldn’t mind, while he did some work on the patio. There was a manhole thing in the patio and he was doing something to it. I don’t know what, I didn’t take much interest.’
‘Just a moment, Ms Withers,’ Wexford said. ‘When exactly would this have been? Nineteen ninety-six or later?’
‘I can’t remember dates like that. It was summer. I reckon it must have been ’96. The people who owned the place were called Merton, I do know that.’
‘Tell us about the house. It was a brick house. Did it have any creeper growing over it? Roses, ivy, that sort of thing?’
She hesitated. ‘There might have been a rose, I don’t remember. I only went there a few times.’
Tom interposed. ‘But you did go inside the house? You slept in the house?’
She nodded. Wexford noticed the little beads of sweat forming on her powder-coated upper lip. ‘This manhole you spoke of – there’s been a lot about it in the papers, hasn’t there? A lot of photographs of it and of the patio?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t read papers.’
‘And you don’t watch TV or look at pictures online?’
She didn’t answer.
‘And you never went into the manhole or the cellar? There was no way in from inside the house, was there?’
‘No, there wasn’t,’ she said.
‘No staircase down to the cellar in 1996?’
She blushed darkly. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Tell us about Keith – er, Chiltern, wasn’t it?’
‘Keith Chiltern, yes.’ Her voice had become petulant. ‘He had a car, a big American car. The detective on the phone asked me if Keith had a big American car and I said yes, he did.’
Wexford said with apparent lack of interest, ‘What colour was the car, Ms Withers?’
‘What colour?’ She was growing indignant. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember. It’s years ago.’
‘Do the words
She shook her head.
‘Now the house, Orcadia Cottage. You said it was posh. How was it posh? Very modern furnishing, abstract paintings, blinds at the windows, polished wood floors, that sort of thing?’
‘All that,’ she said. ‘Great big TV with a flat screen.’
‘So you and Keith split up. You quarrelled?’
‘I broke it off. I’d met Malcolm, that’s my ex-husband.’
