Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [108]
She nodded again and rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
He laid the page on to the table in front of him. It was A5 size, and made from a flimsy cream paper, the sort that can sound like a crisp hundred decibels when it’s the only sound in an empty room. It had been written on by a dark-blue ball-point pen. The handwriting was angular and erratic, and had been applied with sufficient force to cause the imprint of the words subsequently written on the back of the page to interfere with reading the words on the front.
‘Do you recognize the writing?’
‘Read it,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll see.’
It started mid-sentence:
so drained. All these successive entries of ‘nothing to note, nothing to note’. I watched the hare and ignored the tortoise.
Alice was full of anger today. It is the same cold temper that she’s always had, but today was the first time I’ve noticed it directed at her own sister. I should have known, her love for Richard . . . Jealousy is a dark and irrational beast.
I have been obsessively documenting one scenario, thinking that I can contain the problem when, in reality, I may have given free rein to the genuine demon. Only circumstance, and not my intervention, has stopped further deaths occurring.
When I face God, I hope he forgives me, I have been so selfish.
Then there was a small gap before the writing continued.
Despite yesterday’s low, I have made the decision to continue this journal. I love them all, regardless of any flaws. I believe I have been right, and wrong, in equal measures.
Of course, I’m just as scared for Jackie as I’ve always been, but I will speak to Alice, because I’m sure she would never harm her own sister.
Goodhew read it twice. There were no dates and no clue to the author’s identity. ‘Your father?’ he guessed.
She nodded. ‘He was a compulsive list scribbler, one of those people that seemed unable to think without a pen in his hand.’
‘And this was the only page you’ve seen?’
‘Yes. I don’t know what it was torn out of either.’
‘How did you get it?’
‘I found it at the farm the day Colin Willis tried to kill me. I suppose I was in shock, but I still had to go over and see to the horses. It was in the stable, the one with the bales where we sat. I took Suze out for a couple of hours, and found it when I returned.’
‘You think someone deliberately left it while you were out with her?’
Jackie’s left elbow was resting on the table, and her left palm was propping up her head at the temple. He wondered whether her brain was starting to hurt. His certainly was.
‘It may have been there already, I really don’t know.’
‘What does he mean by further deaths? It implies someone had already died.’
She blew out a long, slow sigh. ‘I don’t understand that bit.’
‘OK. Are you saying that you think Alice may have hired Colin Willis?’
She dropped her hand away from her face and sounded surprised. ‘No, of course not. That’s not what I meant. The note implies that she hates me, and it’s true we’re not close, but I think it was just left there to frame her. If I had been killed, it would have been found there, and she would have been investigated, wouldn’t she?’
‘Undoubtedly, so the next question is who could have taken it from your father?’
Her eyes opened wider. ‘I don’t know about any casual visitors, but I’d say the main suspectswould have been the three of us—’
‘You, Richard and Alice?’
‘Yes, and Victoria.’
‘So you knew that your father dated Victoria?’
‘Of course. It was common knowledge.’ He saw a glint of amusement spring on to her face. ‘They even went out together in public.’
‘You never mentioned Victoria and your father.’
‘Because you were investigating Lorna’s background then – why would I?’
‘So how did you feel about her?’
‘In what way?’
‘She was only about your age and having an affair with your dad, wasn’t that weird?’
‘No, I barely knew her. In any case, my father would just have told me to mind my own business.’
‘And what about Richard and Alice? They actually worked with her.’
She shrugged. ‘I doubt they were much bothered