Faith - Lesley Pearse [165]
Angie shrugged. ‘I was surprised the first time she came in, and a bit uncomfortable about it too. But some women don’t like to sell their clothes too close to home.’
‘Did she talk about Laura and the trial?’
Angie blushed and dropped her eyes. ‘Yes, but that was to be expected. She was grieving for her sister and I knew her.’
Stuart sensed she wasn’t going to open up about what Belle had said to her, so he gave her a card with his Edinburgh address and phone number and asked her to contact him if anything occurred to her later that might be useful to him.
∗
‘I thought Belle might have eaten you alive,’ Stuart joked as David came into the Smugglers Inn on the harbour in Anstruther at twelve noon the following day. ‘How’s it been?’
‘Let’s just say that two days was far too long,’ David sighed. ‘I’ve never been so glad to leave a place.’
Stuart thought he looked tired and stressed. ‘That bad, eh? Will a pint ease the pain of it?’
David smiled. ‘It’ll help. By day it was okay, but the two evenings! They both drink like fish and there was this atmosphere of imminent crisis all the time.’
Stuart got David a pint and he drank it like a man dying of thirst.
‘Did a crisis arise?’
‘No.’ David laughed. ‘But I can tell you there’s a lot of muddy water flowing about between them, so much barely suppressed hostility and bitterness. I felt I had to keep my back to the wall at all times. No wonder they don’t get any return visitors. I got chatting to the woman in the tea shop today, and when she knew I’d been staying there she said people have booked in there intending to stay for a week and they’ve left after one night.’
‘But did you find anything useful?’
‘Maybe. First we’ll have to check on Charles’s driving record, and if he’s ever been charged with dangerous driving.’
David explained what had been said. ‘Belle’s actual words were, ‘It’s only a matter of time before you hit someone again.’ Without the ‘again’ tacked on it’s just a reproach. With it, it means he’s definitely hit someone. They wouldn’t have reacted the way they did either, if it was just a minor prang.’
Stuart frowned. ‘He’d have lost his licence if he was drunk at the time.’
‘Quite. That’s if he was caught.’
‘You think he might have hit and run?’
David shrugged. ‘He’s the kind of weasel who would save his own skin. And Belle’s the kind that would cover it up for him if she thought it was going to affect her.’
‘Just a minute!’ Stuart’s eyes were wide with horror. ‘You aren’t thinking he was the driver who killed Barney?’
‘It struck me that it was possible, I mean, they can’t get that many hit-and-run accidents out there.’ David shrugged. ‘They’d only recently bought Kirkmay House when the accident happened. Belle said she regretted buying it before they’d even repainted the front door. Suppose Jackie knew it was Charles, but didn’t tell the police out of sisterly loyalty to Belle?’
‘I can’t see Jackie concealing that. She loved Barney,’ Stuart said thoughtfully. ‘She would have wanted the guilty person punished, even if it was her brother-in-law.’
‘Maybe she would, but by doing so, she would also bring trouble down on her sister’s head,’ David said. ‘That’s Hobson’s Choice.’
Stuart looked pensive. ‘But if Charles did do it, and got away with it, surely he would have upped sticks and moved away? I wouldn’t hang around in a place after something like that. Would you?’
‘No, but then neither of us would have run off from an accident. Nor would we continue to drink and drive like he’s doing,’ David said. ‘You said he’s always been a slime-ball, so maybe Jackie thought she could make him toe the line and become a decent person by holding this over him?’
Stuart rubbed his chin reflectively. ‘Are you trying to say that eleven years of guilt, and the pressure of being stuck in a place he didn’t want to be, might make Charles mad enough to kill her?’
David chuckled nervously. ‘I don’t know that I’d go as far as to say that. But last night I lay awake for hours thinking about it, and it seemed possible. And there could be more to it.