Chapter 31
Amelia Bentham wasn't much help, Wendy had to admit as the two of them sat in a café not far from Pembridge Mews. It was eleven in the morning, and Amelia was anxious to get away by midday for a photo shoot. The woman’s behaviour was out of character, Wendy thought, as in the past she had always been cooperative, willing to chat, wanting to assist as best she could, but now she was holding back.
‘It’s been a hard week,’ Amelia, as attractive as ever, said.
‘Amelia, she was your friend, and now my chief inspector’s got this bee in his bonnet that Matilda could have killed her brother.’ Wendy knew that Isaac wasn’t fixated on the woman’s guilt, had purely raised the possibility, but she wasn’t going to let Amelia know that. She wanted more from the woman, and she was sure there was more: the evasive answers, avoiding eye contact, both indicators that something was amiss.
‘I must go,’ Amelia insisted, rising from her chair, Wendy taking hold of her shoulder, pushing her back down again.
‘I’m sorry, but you’re going to tell me what you’ve been trying to avoid since we came in here.’
‘There’s nothing, honestly.’
Not good enough for Wendy. She had come to like the well-balanced woman from an aristocratic family who did not use that fact for her benefit, no more than her parents. She was willing to work hard, and to make her way in the world, successfully as it turned out.
Wendy had bought a magazine from her local newsagent two days previously, and there was Amelia on the front cover, standing on a sandy beach in a bikini. Definitely not the wear for today, as outside the café there was a steady drizzle and a cold bite in the air.
‘I’m not willing to let Matilda be labelled a murderer, are you?’ Wendy said, hoping to get through to the woman about the seriousness of the situation.
‘I’ve no more to say. I must go. I thought with her father’s death that would be the end of it.’
‘You thought wrong. He’s admitted that he was responsible for killing his son, also that he was guilty of his daughter’s suicide, his wife’s death. We know that two of the three are not correct, not the actual act. We’ve no proof that he was in Hyde Park either. But you, Amelia, have admitted to being in love with Barry, yet you’ve never said what Matilda thought of it.’
‘I’ve told you. She knew about my love for him, his neutrality towards me. Just someone to sleep with when he wasn’t whoring.’
‘You knew about that, didn’t you? Admit it now, or I’ll know you’re lying.’
‘I suspected that he was. There was a woman outside Matilda’s house once, someone I hadn’t seen before.’
‘New evidence? Why have you kept this secret?’
‘It was the day before he died. I didn’t think much of it at the time. She stayed for a few minutes and then left. It’s only with you asking questions, and then confirming that Barry was putting it about, that I’ve started to think more about it.’
‘Yet you still never came to me with this, knowing that I wouldn’t judge you and I would have followed through on it.’
‘I was frightened to tell you anything.’
‘Describe the woman.’
‘Blonde, mid to late forties, attractive, starting to put on weight. I didn’t look at her for too long, but I could see that she would have been a stunner in her day.’
‘Tall?’
‘Tall enough to have been a model. That’s what they want these days, tall, skinny, androgynous if they can.’
‘The person I have in mind wouldn’t qualify on the androgynous. You’d better make a phone call, tell the photographer that you’ll be late. Is this the woman?’ Wendy scrolled through the photos on her smartphone and showed the selected image to Amelia.
‘Her hair was longer, but yes, that’s her.’
‘That’s what I thought. I’m sorry, you’ll have to reschedule or cancel. This is serious.’
Amelia made a call. ‘We’ve rescheduled for tomorrow,’ she said to Wendy after she had finished the call. ‘It’s a nuisance, and the makeup artist and photographer will want extra money now.’
‘Your money?’
‘No, but that’s not the point. It’s my reputation that suffers. The models who get the work are the ones who turn up on time, healthy and able to pose.’
‘Some don’t?’
‘Some of them don’t eat, or they’ve got a love affair with recreational drugs.’
‘The same as you?’
‘A casual acquaintance, that’s all.’
‘We can either talk here or at your place.’
‘Here’s fine. The memories back there are starting to get to me. I’ve considered moving, but the price of the place will be down on account of what’s happened across the road.’
‘The truth, not the shortened version that you’ve been feeding me,’ Wendy said.
‘It doesn’t look good for me, I’m afraid.’
‘Why?’
‘Matilda knew about Barry and me. She accepted it when it was casual. But then it started to become more serious.’
‘Barry as well?’
‘He was more reticent, but with time, or maybe I was just hopelessly in love and deluded, I’m not sure which. I felt that he was coming out of his shell and that the two of us could have made a go of it.’
‘There’s still this bond between Barry and Matilda.’
‘It was sibling love, nothing physical. And back then, I never knew of the life the two of them had had as children. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have known how to react. I’d grown up in the country, the child of wealthy parents, a horse for my birthday, a stately home to live in.’
‘I had a horse,’ Wendy said. ‘It pulled a cart sometimes, not that it was much good for that. Sometimes I’d ride it, bareback.’
‘Our lives, so different, yet we
