AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My words came out in a rush. “Are you the reason why Beth is going to Bangkok? Is she meeting up with you there?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What business is it of yours?”
Fear made me careless. “Because she’s my daughter and I don’t want you anywhere near her!”
He gave a grim laugh. “Maybe she is your daughter. But she isn’t Gabriel’s, is she?”
I could only stare at him, the horror in my eyes giving him the answer he was looking for. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was a struggle to speak. “Of course she’s Gabriel’s daughter.”
“Laure worked it out, but she convinced herself it couldn’t be true,” he said. “It was after she spoke to Beth on FaceTime the day Pierre asked her to go to Paris. She came to me in the garden after, and I could see she was upset. She said she’d just been speaking to Beth and that she had seen something of Pierre in her face, and in her mannerisms. ‘But it can’t be that, can it?’ she said. ‘Pierre said he wants to tell me everything, but it can’t be that Beth is his daughter. How could she be? We would have been on our honeymoon.’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, it’s not possible. I know Pierre, he wouldn’t have been able to live a lie for twenty years. It must be something else.’” He paused. “I had never seen Beth or Pierre, and anyway it was none of my business.”
“It’s still none of your business,” I spat.
“Oh, but it is, because Laure is dead, and not only is she dead, she’s been accused of Pierre’s murder. She would never have killed Pierre; if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to hide it. She wasn’t devious or spiteful. You, on the other hand, are.” He took a step toward me. “You know what I think, Iris? I’m fairly certain you killed Pierre, and I’m fairly certain that you killed Laure, and if I thought I could prove either of those two things, I’d go straight to the police.”
“You’re mad,” I said, backing away from him. “You didn’t know Laure, you’d only just met her. You don’t know what she was capable of. The fact that she thought Beth was Pierre’s daughter only shows how deluded and unstable she was.”
“You sound frightened, Iris.”
“I am, of you! You’re crazy.”
And I fled from the garden.
Another WhatsApp message comes in.Leaving Winchester now.I screw my eyes shut, remembering the absolute terror I felt when Gabriel told me he’d arranged to see Joseph the night before the christening. I was afraid of what Joseph might tell him if Gabriel said anything about Beth going to Asia. But when I questioned Gabriel, he told me he wouldn’t be mentionning Beth to Joseph at all. He had other things to discuss, he said. And in my relief, I didn’t ask what that might be.
I already knew that I’d have to kill Joseph. Even if he didn’t say anything to Gabriel then about Pierre being Beth’s father, he could tell him, or Beth, at any time. I couldn’t have that fear hanging over me, not when I had killed Pierre for that very reason. Remembering the story Esme had told me about him almost gassing himself to death, I decided to recreate the same scenario. The gas bottle would be my weapon, the day of the christening the time and place. First, though, I needed Beth out of the way because to have her at the christening would have only complicated matters.
The evening before the christening, I arranged for us to have a takeaway and, while I was unpacking it in the kitchen, I added a good doseof a laxative to the prawn curries that Beth and I had chosen. I made sure I ate just enough for the laxative to have a mild effect on me. Beth ate far more, and although I hated that she was ill, it was a small price to pay for her not to be involved in what was to come.
It worked. Beth was too incapacitated to go to the christening, and stayed home. At the reception in the village hall, I went into the toilets with a bottle of water, emptied it into the sink and filled it with vodka from a bottle I’d hidden in my bag, then served it to Joseph. I can still see him raising his glass to me when I came back from the buffet table and saying, “You’re not so bad after all, Goldilocks,” a reference not only to the alcohol I had just supplied him with, but also to him finding me in his bed. The fact that he’d arrived at the church already inebriated facilitated the job I had to do. I didn’t know then that I had Gabriel to thank for that. I only knew later that the previous evening, Joseph had tried to drink his guilt away because Gabriel had told him Charlie’s real message.
I had already planned how, once Joseph was drunk enough, I would ask Hugh or Marcus to help me get him back to his cottage. Afterward, once Joseph was dead, we would be each other’s alibis; we had taken him back to his cottage and had left him sitting at the table with a jug of water, and instructions to have something to eat. I made Hugh open the beans, tip them into the saucepan and put them on the stove so that it would be his fingerprints on the can. All I had to do, wrapping my fingers in a tea towel, was turn on the gas ring. And retrieve from my bag the bottle of whisky I’d taken from Esme and Hugh’s drink cupboard a few days before and push it into Joseph’s greedy hand.
I was counting on Joseph being gassed to death, and to avoid him being found too early, I invited Esme and Hugh back to ours straight from the christening. I thought that sometime in the evening, Esme and Hugh would go home and find Joseph dead in his cottage. The explosion came as a huge shock. But as I watched the smoke curl into the sky, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a more precise ending than the one I had planned.
I raise a languid arm, reach for my phone and check the time. Gabriel and Beth will be home soon, I need to prepare something for dinner. I move from the bed, smooth my dress down. In the bathroom, I turn on the light and look at my reflection in the mirror. I let my eyes roam over my face, pleased with the new serenity I see there. I lost my way for a while, and no longer knew who I was. Now, I know who I am.
I am Iris Pelley, wife, mother, and murderer.
