Free The Far Side of the Sun by Kate Furnivall Page B

emptied the gold from the wretched ivory box he was carrying, I wouldn’t have had to stab him.’

‘What? Tilly, no!’

‘Hector recognised what the ivory box was and I persuaded Morrell into our car but when he was so uncooperative about everything, I had to threaten him with a knife and… well, we struggled and… that was it.’

‘My God, Tilly,’ Ella gasped, ‘you must go to the police at once, tell them the truth. That it was an accident.’

Dodie put a hand on Ella. ‘Can’t you see? That’s what this is all about for Hector Latcham? Not just the land deal. It’s about protecting his wife.’

The boat creaked and lurched as the wind turned suddenly. Darkness in the islands fell fast and Dodie was certain that Tilly would want to leave quickly before the seas grew too rough for the rowboat.

‘Mrs Latcham,’ Dodie strove to keep her voice calm and reasonable, ‘Ella is right. You must go to the police. You can’t let Flynn Hudson hang for a crime you committed. You have to tell them.’

‘My dear Miss Wyatt, why on earth would I do that?’

This woman wants me to die.

The realisation sent a shiver of revulsion through her and she glanced at Ella to see if she realised it too, but saw no signs.

‘So why,’ Dodie asked, ‘did you save me so dramatically from kidnap in the car in Nassau if…⁠’ She halted. Instinctively she drew back from the table, further away from the lawyer’s wife, as if she were contagious. ‘Of course, I should have realised. You set it up in the first place, didn’t you, so that you could come riding in to save me.’

The scarlet slash of a mouth smiled, pleased with itself. ‘Cunning, wasn’t it? I hoped you would confide in me and tell me what dirty little secrets you know about where the gold is.’ She shrugged. ‘It almost worked.’ She popped open her leather bag, removed a cigarette case and lit a Dunhill for herself. The hand that held the lighter was rock steady. She exhaled a plume of smoke that hung from the beams overhead like old cobwebs in the stagnant air.

‘The foolish man. He should have cooperated.’

Dodie did not want to hear Morrell called a foolish man.

Tilly shook her head with frustration. ‘He’d buried the coins somewhere on Sir Harry’s estate, but he wouldn’t reveal where.’

Dodie pictured the big bear of a man, Johnnie Morrell, bargaining desperately for his life, with a knife doing the arguing for the Latchams. It made her want to seize this preened and pampered woman by the throat.

‘That is why,’ Tilly confided in a sudden rush of intimacy, ‘Sir Harry caught us digging in his grounds the other night and everything turned nasty.’

Ella stared at her, aghast. ‘You? Are you saying you are the one who shot Sir Harry?’

‘Oh Ella, it wasn’t meant to happen.’

‘Tilly!’

‘Well, the bloody man was going to hand us over to the police and I had to stop him. Poor old Hector had the devil’s own job covering it all up in that ghastly storm, what with Christie there as well. And he even scattered those stupid feathers on the body, for heaven’s sake.’

A low visceral moan issued from Ella and she rose menacingly to her feet.

‘It was you. All this was because of you. You’re the reason Dan is dead on that beach out there. You. Not Hector.’

‘How was I to know the stupid detective would get in the way, darling? That’s why I’ve come all the way out here to see you. I wanted to explain. I didn’t intend for him to die.’ She pulled a face at Ella. ‘Anyway we’ve been good friends, you and I, and I wanted to say goodbye.’

‘You are not my friend.’

‘Darling, don’t be so rude. Hector was right. He told me not to come, but I insisted. He was even willing to row me out, but I wouldn’t let him. This moment is between just you and me, darling.’ She blew a kiss to Ella.

Ella tried to seize Tilly, one-handed across the table, but despite the drink inside her, Tilly was faster. She