She said, “Don’t worry about Stephen Collinsby. Sharon will be looked after and given the help she needs, and he won’t be harmed.”

Chapter 6

6

Candace Westhall came into the front room of the Old Police Cottage in a jacket and scarf and wearing her gardening gloves. She seated herself, then took off her gloves and placed them, large and mud-caked, on the table between herself and Dalgliesh like an allegorical challenge. The meaning, if crude, was plain. She had been called from a necessary job once again to answer unnecessary questions.

Her antagonism was palpable and he knew that it was shared, if less openly, by most of his suspects. This he expected and in part understood. At first he and his team were awaited and greeted with relief. Action would be taken, the case cleared up, the horror which was also an embarrassment would be salved, the innocent vindicated, the guilty—probably a stranger whose fate could cause no distress—would be arrested and dealt with. Law, reason and order would replace the contaminating disorder of murder. But there had been no arrest and no sign of one. It was still early days, but for the small company at the Manor there was no foreseeable end to his presence or to his questioning. He understood their growing resentment because he had once experienced it, when he had discovered the murdered body of a young woman on a Suffolk beach. The crime was not on his patch, and another investigating officer had taken over. There had been no question of his being regarded as a serious suspect, but the police questioning had been detailed, repetitive and, it seemed to him, unnecessarily intrusive. An interrogation was uncomfortably like a mental violation.

He said, “In 2002, Rhoda Gradwyn wrote an article for the Paternoster Review dealing with plagiarism in which she attacked a young writer, Annabel Skelton, who subsequently took her own life. What was your relationship with Annabel Skelton?”

She met his eyes, hers cold with dislike and, he thought, contempt. There was a brief silence in which the antagonism crackled from her like an electric current. Without altering her gaze, she said, “Annabel Skelton was a dear friend. I would say I loved her except that you would misinterpret a relationship which I doubt I can make you understand. All friendships seem to be defined now in terms of sexuality. She was my pupil, but her talent was for writing, not classics. I encouraged her to complete her first novel and to submit it for publication.”

“Did you know at the time that parts of it had been plagiarised from an earlier work?”

“Are you asking me, Commander, whether she told me?”

“No, Miss Westhall, I’m asking whether you knew.”

“I didn’t, not until I read Gradwyn’s article.”

Kate intervened. “It must have surprised and distressed you.”

“Yes, Inspector, both of those things.”