‘How was it your fault?’
‘Oh, I was cold and distant, apparently.’ Accusations that were only too familiar to Sime. ‘And my biggest crime of all? Refusing to leave the island. Like he hadn’t known that from day one of our relationship.’ She was breathing hard now, and Sime could feel her pain and anger in the memory of the confrontation.
‘When did all this happen?’
She closed her eyes again, drew a deep breath, and it was as if a cloud of calm descended upon her. Her lids fluttered open and she looked at him candidly. ‘About ten days ago, Mr Mackenzie. He moved out and in with her last week.’
Evidently the wounds were still fresh. ‘Did you know her?’
‘Not personally. But I knew of her. Everyone knows of her.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Ariane Briand. She’s married to the mayor of Cap aux Meules.’
Sime gazed at her thoughtfully. Suddenly there was another jilted lover in the frame, and he wasn’t quite sure why he felt a sense of relief. ‘Why did your husband fly back to the island last night if he had already left you?’
‘Because there’s a ton of his stuff still in the house. He came to pack some cases.’
‘Did you know he was coming?’
She hesitated only briefly. ‘No,’ she said.
He glanced at the medical report on his knees. ‘You realise the fact that he’d just left you could be interpreted as a motive for murder.’
‘Not by anyone who knows me.’ It was a plain, simple statement of fact. He looked at her for a moment and realised that this was meant for him. And she was right. He knew not the first thing about her.
He lifted the medical report from his knees. ‘It says here there is ample evidence of bruising and scratching about your body, as if you’d been in a fight.’
‘I was in a fight! For my life.’ Anger flared briefly in her eyes. ‘It’s hardly surprising I’m scratched and bruised. And I have no motive for murder, Mr Mackenzie. If you want to know the truth, I’d grown pretty much to hate the man. I would never have wanted to see him hurt, but I was happy that he was gone.’
Sime raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Why?’
‘When we first met he pursued me …’ she searched for the right word, ‘relentlessly. I was his obsession. He sent me flowers and chocolates, wrote me letters. Phoned me a dozen times a day. He used his wealth to try to impress me, his passion to seduce me. And like an idiot I fell for it. Flattered by his attention, all the grand gestures. He swept me off my feet. I had just graduated from university. I was young, impressionable. And coming from the island, probably not very sophisticated, certainly not very experienced. So when he proposed to me, how could I refuse?’
She shook her head in sad recollection.
‘Marry in haste, they say, and repent at leisure. Well, I certainly had plenty of time for that. A real relationship’s based on trust and understanding, the sharing of little things. Moments of happiness and laughter. Realising you’ve both just had the same thought, or were about to say the same thing. James and I shared nothing, Mr Mackenzie, except the same space. And even that, less and less often. I grew to realise that his emotions were without substance. His obsession was with himself, not me. He’d be telling me about some big contract he’d signed, some export deal to the US, and I’d realise he was watching his own reflection in the window as he told me. Playing to his own imagined gallery. Posing for photographs that weren’t being taken. He was in love with the idea of me, but I was just another trophy in a life that was all about him. His image. His perception of how others saw him.’
Lightning forked out of the sky across the gulf, and the distant rumble of thunder punctuated the silence in the room. Sime waited for her to go on.
‘You must understand that when I found out that he was having an affair, my overwhelming emotion was one of relief. Of course I was hurt. How could I not feel some sense of betrayal? But when he left, it was as if I had got my life back again.’
And Sime remembered Marie-Ange’s words: Leaving you was the best thing I ever did. You have no idea how free I feel.
‘He was gone, Mr Mackenzie. Why would I want to kill him?’
*
After the interview Sime left Blanc to dismantle their equipment, and found Kirsty Cowell standing out on the stoop. The rain was blowing horizontally off the gulf and into the porch. But she didn’t seem to mind. She stood facing the wind and rain, something defiant in her stance, arms folded, face lifted slightly, rainwater running off it like tears. He stood beside her and felt the rain in his own face.