‘I didn’t turn on her!’
‘According to Madame Briand you said …’ Sime looked down to consult the notes taken during her formal interview, ‘I’m not giving him up without a fight. And if I can’t have him, neither you nor anyone else will.’ He looked up again. ‘Are those your words?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘So she paraphrased you?’
‘It doesn’t sound like me.’
‘But was that the sentiment you expressed?’
Her embarrassment was clear. ‘Probably.’
‘Was it or wasn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ she snapped at him. ‘Yes, yes, yes! I lost it, okay? Drink, emotion …’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Whatever. I was coming apart at the seams. It felt like my life was over. Tied to this damned island. Alone. Almost nobody my own age left. No way I was ever going to meet someone else. All I could see stretching ahead of me were a lot of lonely years in an empty house.’
Sime sat back and let a silence settle between them again, like dust after a fight. ‘You realise, Mrs Cowell, that what you said to Madame Briand could be construed as a threat to kill your husband.’
‘Well, of course, you’d just love to give it that construction, wouldn’t you?’ She imbued the word construction with all the sarcasm she could muster.
‘You told me that on the night of the murder you didn’t know that your husband was coming back to the island.’
She gazed at her hands.
Sime waited for several moments. ‘Are you going to respond or not?’
She looked up. ‘You didn’t ask a question.’
‘All right, is it true that you didn’t know your husband was coming home that night?’
Her eyes drifted away towards the window behind him, and the view out over the cliffs. And again she made no response.
‘According to Madame Briand he received a short, fractious call on his cellphone earlier in the evening and left immediately afterwards. Did you make that phone call?’
Her eyes drifted back in his direction, but all the fight had gone out of them.
‘We can check the phone records, Mrs Cowell.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, without further prompting.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him I wanted to talk to him.’
‘To say what?’
‘All the things I wanted to have out with him the night before. Only I wasn’t drunk anymore. Just kind of cold, you know. Angry. Wanting to know stuff that we’d never had the chance to talk about, so I wouldn’t be wondering about it for the rest of my life.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘That we’d talked enough, and he had no intention of coming to the island. At least, not then.’
‘So how did you persuade him?’
‘I told him that first I was going to gather together all his clothes and make a nice big bonfire of them on top of the cliffs. And if he still didn’t come I was going to set his precious house on fire, his computer and all of his business records with it.’ She almost smiled. ‘That seemed to do the trick.’
He braced himself for a final onslaught. ‘So everything you told us about what happened that night was a lie.’
‘No!’
‘When you failed to confront him the night before at Ariane Briand’s house, you issued a veiled threat to kill him, and the following night lured him to the island by threatening to set his house on fire. When he arrived you fought, verbally at first, then physically.’
‘No!’
‘Whether it was premeditated or not, you grabbed a knife and in a frenzy you stabbed him three times in the chest.’
‘That’s not what happened!’
‘You immediately regretted it and tried to revive him. And when that didn’t work you made up a story about some intruder and ran off to tell it to your neighbours.’
‘There was an intruder. I did not kill my husband!’ She glared at him, breathing heavily, and he sat back in his seat, aware that his hands were trembling. He didn’t dare pick up the papers on his knee for fear that it would show.
She looked at him with hatred in her eyes. ‘I think the lion just got the gazelle.’
‘It’s only what you can expect from a prosecuting attorney if you ever go on the witness stand, Mrs Cowell.’ He knew that all the evidence was circumstantial, and accusations alone would not secure a conviction. But just one tiny piece of forensic evidence against her would be enough to tip the balance.
Her face was flushed. Whether from fear, or guilt, or anger it was impossible to tell.
‘Are you charging me?’