“Your son,” she said. “Luke.”
“Leave him out of this.”
“He came home that day.”
“I said, leave him out of this. You seduced and then killed my husband, but you sit there like a . . .” She searched for a word. “Like a muddy little mole,” she said at last. Tabitha almost laughed at that. A muddy little mole. That wasn’t bad.
“I just need to know when he came home.”
“Stuart used to poison moles,” said Laura and she looked at Tabitha with a fixed, glittery gaze. “He was very proud of his lawn. I think he quite enjoyed poisoning them.”
“I always thought of Stuart as someone everyone liked,” said Tabitha after a pause.
“Did you like him?”
“Obviously ‘like’ isn’t really the right word.”
“There you are then.”
Again Tabitha couldn’t make proper sense of what Laura was saying. She felt a need to go away and think about this and get it straight in her head.
“Did you like him?” she asked.
“That’s a ridiculous question.”
“OK, did you love him?”
“I was his wife,” Laura said, almost dismissively. She made a motion to stand up and then stopped and sat back down. “They sent a police officer, a young woman of about ten, to see me. I think she was meant to be showing how sensitive they were to the widow. I made her tea and she sat next to me on the sofa and held my hand, which I didn’t enjoy. She told me that this was the worst time. But it would just be a couple of months and you would be tried and convicted and given a life sentence and that would give me closure.”
“But if I didn’t do it, would it give you closure?”
Laura’s gaze settled on her. “I might dig up the lawn,” she said. Then she stood up.
“You didn’t say you loved him,” said Tabitha.
“We were married for thirty-five years.” She turned away.
“That’s not really an answer.”
But Laura Rees was already out of earshot, walking briskly across the room, looking neither to the left nor to the right.
Twenty-Five
Galia, the librarian, had given her several sheets of A3 paper. Tabitha sat in her icy cupboard and spread one out on the table in front of her. She angled the lamp so it was in brightness, and picked up her pencil. Then she closed her eyes for several seconds, summoning the little village into her mind. First she drew the cliff that rose up like a wall behind the string of houses. Nobody could climb that wall: she had tried several times as a girl, hauling herself up by the stunted trees, grazing her hands and ripping her clothes, and always arriving at an impasse. The only way in and the only way out was by the single-track road that snaked its way down from the west, ending at the small shelf of land and the rocky beach. Tabitha scowled at the cliff for several minutes. Then she drew in Rob Coombe’s farmhouse on its top, high above the village, adding a miniature tractor and some sheep.
The road came next. Very carefully, she penciled its bends down the cliff and through the village, ending in a loop at the east of the village where cars could turn. Several times, she used the miniature eraser at the top of her pencil to rub out the faint lines before correcting them.
At the road’s loop, she added the track that led to her house and Stuart’s.
She stood up and looked down at what she had done. Then she laid a fallen tree across the road at the entrance of the village.
The sea was next, running all the way across the page. She added a little boat in full sail and a couple of gulls flying low across the waves. She shaded in places where you could reach it, including the rocky beach where every day she swam. Used to swim. She put in the flat rock where she undressed and dressed again, and she put in a tiny figure in the water. Her.
Next, starting at the fallen tree, she marked the buildings. There were several small houses on the right as you came into the village; one was apparently only occupied in the summer, and she was pretty sure another was the home of Pauline Leavitt, the old woman who claimed that Tabitha had threatened Stuart. After them, on the left, was the hotel that was closed for winter.
She couldn’t remember how many buildings there were until Shona’s bungalow on the right and a bit further on Andy’s tiny house, set back from the road. Perhaps twenty, she thought, maybe a few more.
More or less opposite Andy’s came the vicarage, which was smaller and shabbier than its name suggested. The church was next to it. Tabitha spent quite a long time getting the church right; its round tower and stunted spire.
A few paces on from that was Dr. Owen Mallon’s house.
Then the shop, which Terry lived above, and to its side the little annex that served as a café in the summer. Opposite the shop was the bus stop.
She drew the Reeses’ square house and then, remembering Laura’s words, added a sloping lawn and put a mole in its center.
Finally she made a miniature picture of her own crooked little house. She put smoke coming out of its chimney. She parked a tiny car at the front and then she drew in the shed where Stuart’s body had been found.
What had she missed? She was sure there was something. Yes, the camera. She drew an eye over the roof of the shop. A glaring eye.
Twenty-Six
Dana was lying as usual on her bed, almost invisible beneath her blanket. She heard a clattering from outside.
“It’s dinnertime,” Tabitha said.
No response.
She leaned up and touched the bulge in the bed. There was still no response so she pulled the blanket off.
“We’re going to get our dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Tabitha shook Dana. She told her
