“And here’s the ‘something.’ Daisy thought Annie would have the terrible burden not only of her own death, but of her daughter’s abandonment because Annie wouldn’t be able to go to the hospital ever again. Her girl would be left alone. So Daisy said not to worry, she’d go in Annie’s place. Annie told me before she died she couldn’t believe that a perfect stranger would do this for a person. That doctors told her her daughter, after all, was unreachable and that, of course, it made no difference whether she, Annie, was in the hospital room with her or not. Daisy told her not to believe that, that her daughter was alive and therefore reachable and if she could be reached, Daisy would try to do it.

“So, every day, every day, Jury, for the next three months, Daisy Brownell got on a Skybus or the ferry and went to Penzance and talked to and read to Annie’s girl. To me, that’s mind-boggling. Did this until, finally, the poor girl died. Now, does that sound like a woman who’d kill herself?”

“No, I guess not.”

“When Daisy died, I didn’t go into headquarters for three days. Just couldn’t do it.”

That was certainly testament to something.

“If Daisy Brownell has your back, you don’t need anything else. She’d do anything for you.”

Jury noticed he was using the present tense.

And then Macalvie rang off.

22

The room, like the rest of the house, was narrow and uncluttered, its furniture strategically placed. Chairs sat on either side of the electric fireplace, each with its own little table holding, now, a drink for each guest and a coffee table sat between them. On it sat a stack of magazines and on the magazines a box of chocolates. Jury leaned toward it. Rive Gauche.

“I expect I must seem rather indifferent to Flora, I mean, not being there for her.”

But Frank Flood gave no reason as to why he hadn’t been there.

“No. At least, it’s not my job to gauge indifference. But I am curious as to where she manages to get the money to retain such a legal team as she has. There’s no better firm than Treadwell’s in all of London.”

“Oh, that’d be Eleanor paying for that. Flora was like a daughter to them. I expect that’s why I’ve not, you know, always been there myself.”

“Police were baffled about motive until they learned that Flora’s accident happened when her husband was driving. The car crashed into an embankment.”

“It was no accident.”

“That’s what DCI Brierly told me. But why would her husband have tried to kill her? And in such a way that he could have been killed or at least seriously injured himself?”

“Something she knew about him or at least whoever he was working for.”