Blanc showed no surprise. ‘It is our understanding that Cowell was still living with your wife at the time of his murder. His belongings were still in her house.’
Sime remembered the man’s coat that seemed too big for Cowell hanging by her door.
‘If he’d come back that night he’d have found them on her doorstep.’
‘And how would you know that?’ Sime said.
‘Because I put them there.’
Both detectives were caught by surprise and there was a momentary hiatus. ‘You were at your wife’s house on the night of the murder?’ Blanc said.
‘I was.’
Sime said, ‘I think you’d better explain.’
Briand sighed heavily and crossed the room to open French windows on to the view of the river. He took a deep breath and turned to face them, his face semi-obscured by the light behind him. He was a man used to finding the power position in a room. ‘If you’ve never lived on an island,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t understand how rumours and half-truths grow into full-blown lies.’
‘Happens in any small community,’ Blanc said. ‘Which particular rumour or half-truth are we talking about here?’
Briand was unruffled. ‘Contrary to popular opinion, my wife did not kick me out. We had a bust-up, yes. It happens in marriage. We agreed a temporary separation. A sort of cooling-off period.’
‘And your wife’s affair with Cowell began when?’ Sime said.
‘After our separation. She’s since told me she only really did it to make me jealous.’
Blanc said, ‘So that was her only motivation in asking him to move in with her?’
‘She didn’t.’ Briand sounded defensive. ‘Cowell invited himself. Turned up one night on her doorstep with a suitcase and said his wife had found out about them.’ He ran a hand over the smoothly shaved contours of his jaw, clearly uncomfortable discussing what had undoubtedly been a humiliating experience for him. ‘Ariane and Cowell had a fling, yes, but she and I were in the process of making up. She’d been about to end it with him when he turned up that night with his suitcase. It caught her off balance. She didn’t know how to deal with it. He was obsessive, she said. Almost creepy. And it had got to the stage she was kind of scared of him. I persuaded her that she had to confront him with the truth. That she and I were getting back together and it was over with him. We were going to face him with it that night. The two of us. The night he was murdered. I came to the house after he left, and we waited and waited, but he never came back.’
Sime said, ‘You’re saying you spent all night at your wife’s house the night Cowell was murdered.’
‘Actually, it’s my house,’ Briand said, his voice tight with annoyance. ‘But yes, Ariane and I were home together all night.’
‘That’s a very convenient alibi,’ Blanc said. ‘I wonder why your wife never mentioned it to us.’
‘Maybe because you never asked her.’ His voice was laden now with sarcasm.
‘Oh, we will.’ Blanc’s tone betrayed his annoyance.
Sime said, ‘And you both, coincidentally, flew here the next morning.’
‘There was no coincidence about it,’ Briand said. ‘We left together. We’d already planned that, just so she could escape any heat from the break-up with Cowell. I booked the flights and hotel myself just to keep things discreet. I didn’t have any meetings until yesterday, so we knew we’d have a couple of days together before she went back.’
Sime was reluctant to admit to himself that there was a ring of truth to all this. The photograph of Ariane and Briand had probably been reinstated to its place on the sideboard the night they planned to break the news to Cowell. The coat left hanging by the door was Briand’s. And Ariane hadn’t packed Cowell’s suitcase on her return from the airport. It had been packed the night he was murdered. But in any event, husband and wife each provided an alibi for the other. And one thing was certain. As he had pointed out to Blanc, it wasn’t Briand who attacked Sime on Entry Island. He had been here in Quebec City when it happened.
‘When did you hear about Cowell’s murder?’ he asked.
‘Not until Ariane got home. She called to tell me.’
Blanc said, ‘It’s been all over the news.’
‘We weren’t watching the news, detective. We were putting our marriage back together. Finding ourselves again. No one knew where we were. We’d turned our cellphones off. It was just us. A hotel room, a couple of restaurants. The world didn’t exist.’
‘And how did you feel,’ Sime said, ‘when you heard that Cowell had been murdered?’