I shook my head to bring myself back into the real world. Khan was still talking. “Mr. Dixon said he’d suspected an affair for a long time. He said on the night of the accident he’d had a lot to drink and he passed out almost as soon as he got back to Langley Hall. So, he can’t be a witness to what you did next, but he knows that when he fell asleep his Audi was in the garage and when he went to get it, to go to work the next morning, it was gone. A lot of people remember him driving a classic Rolls Royce that day.”
Tarquin and I sat in silence.
“Did he report it as stolen?” Tarquin asked.
“Not straightaway, the garage hadn’t been broken into, so he knew it wasn’t thieves. He said he knew immediately that it was Daisy. He didn’t want to get her into trouble for what he thought at the time was a domestic matter. Later, he helped her by falsely reporting it as stolen. Foolish of him, but the things we do for love. Then he heard the news reports.”
DS Khan sat back, triumphant, while DC Parker picked up the narrative.
“So, Daisy, we believe that you and your unknown beau arranged a rendezvous once your husband was asleep that night. Somehow, what was probably initially an accident occurred and Mr. Green came to grief. Instead of helping him, for reasons best known to yourselves, you decided to finish him off. Then you took him back to your estate to dispose of the body.”
I’d once heard that when you’re telling a lie, you should try not to deviate too far from the truth, and it sounded as if James had heard that same advice. Well done.
“Is that what happened, Daisy?” Khan asked me. “Or is there anything you want to tell us?”
I looked at them, wondering what I might want to tell them. Parker spoke next.
“Because there’s another death to take into account and a version of events that means it may have been six of one and half a dozen of the other.”
“What?” Tarquin said.
“In a nutshell, we think Daisy was responsible for Mr. Green’s death, but who killed Mr. Newman? That is a different question. Who might have had a motive? A lovers’ tiff between him and Daisy or a crime of passion committed by someone else?”
This was my chance to tell a load more lies, to say that, yes, I was having a fling with Mr. N and point the finger at James.
“How well did you know Doug Newman, Daisy? Did he come up to Langley Hall often?”
I opened my mouth to say, yes, I was Mr. Newman’s other woman. We met at Langley Hall when James was at work, we christened every room, as well as Mr. Billings’s shed. We fantasized about running away, just us and Meg, we laughed at the ignorance of James and Jo. We were the Romeo and Juliet of Upper Iffley.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit there and say I’d had an affair and make up scenarios in which we met and tell them about the things we did. For a start, how explicit would they want me to be?
“I don’t know what happened to Mr. Newman,” I said. “I don’t know how he died.”
DS Khan reached behind her for a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside the bag was a phone.
“Do you recognize this, Daisy?” she asked.
“No,” I said, but I could make a good guess at what it was. Whose it was. Khan confirmed my suspicions, and more.
“It’s Mr. Green’s phone,” she said. “Your husband gave it to us. He said he found it on your side of the lounge.”
James had it. No wonder he wasn’t worried when I said it was missing. And I thought Mrs. B had taken it. I’d plotted to kill her because of it. Now I remembered I’d lost my hairbrush that day. Was that what she’d pinched? James must’ve taken the phone at the same time as he killed Lennie.
Now it was Parker’s turn to reach behind and bring out a much larger item in another clear bag. Lennie’s satchel.
“Do you recognize this, Daisy?” he asked.
Out of habit, I shook my head, but I knew what they were going to say.
“Mr. Dixon gave it to us. He says you had it.”
“No comment,” I said, my answer of last resort.
“What’s more, a witness says that a satchel, the contents of which point to it having been the property of Mr. Green, was seen at Langley Hall on the morning after his disappearance, but it never appeared again.”
He made it sound as if it had been glimpsed making its own way through the copse. The witness must have been Mrs. Billings.
I was outwitted. I began to hyperventilate, and they fetched me a paper bag.
