He often wondered what he was going to be like when Bella started to grow up and ventured out by herself into the big, bad world. A world that was clearly becoming more dangerous and more deadly with every passing year.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

As James drove away from the hotel, the weather was starting to close in with predictable ferocity. The trees along the side of the road swayed and snatched at the sky, and gathering clouds forewarned of snow to come.

He pulled his thoughts away from his daughter in order to concentrate on the case but it wasn’t easy because his head was crowded with so many questions.

Was Rachel Elliott killed by one of the people he had spoken to? Or was it her Italian boyfriend, the man she’d been hoping to start a new life with in another country?

There seemed little doubt that the pair had argued in Rachel’s room soon after the wedding ceremony ended but what had caused it and could it have triggered a chain of events that led to her death on the jetty?

There were other questions that needed answering in relation to Mark Slade. He and Belinda Travers had obviously been involved in an incident in the garden not long before Rachel was killed but which of them was telling the truth about who did what to whom? Both James and Abbott believed Belinda’s version of events, in part because of Slade’s recorded history of violence against women, but could it be proved that he had acted untoward with Belinda?

And why was Greg Murphy so sure that his best man wasn’t the aggressor and that he did not go on to kill Rachel? James wasn’t convinced that they’d never left each other’s side during the two hours between five thirty and seven thirty as Murphy would have been speaking to other guests, eating dinner in front of everyone in the main room, and spending intimate moments with his bride. Surely, he and his best man would have become separated on more than a few occasions, if only briefly. And if so, why was he insisting that wasn’t the case?

The other pre-murder incident that involved Libby and Ethan Prescott also raised questions. When James first spoke to Libby, she had said that the last time she saw her sister was at the bar in the hotel’s Garden Room. But that wasn’t true as she and Ethan were seen confronting Rachel.

And what was it Libby had said when James had brought up her omission? ‘I was in shock. I wasn’t thinking straight and I just forgot.’

It was yet another issue that struck James as implausible. No way would she have forgotten the last bitter exchange of words between her and her sister. So why had she chosen not to mention it?

But the questions didn’t stop there. Was it Rachel’s former fiancé Douglas Hannigan who sent her the birthday card with the threatening message? And if so, did he follow up on the threat and sneak into the hotel knowing she would be there so he could exact revenge?