Free The Going Down of the Sun by Jo Bannister

to cope with than antagonism. Lack of practice, perhaps. His eyes dimmed, remembering. “She told me. Alison. She told me about the will.”
    I was startled. “You knew about Curragh then?”
    â€œOh aye,” he said; wearily, not even with much bitterness. “I knew she had a wee laddie for a friend. How old is he, do you know?”
    I shrugged and guessed. “About twenty-three?”
    â€œJesus wept.” There was a kind of despair in his voice. “Twenty-three years old, sound in wind and limb, with the next half-century at his disposal, and all he can think to do with his life is murder older women for a few thousand quid. Hell, I’d have given him the money to leave her be.”
    The difference in ages hadn’t struck me, although I suppose I knew she’d been older than Curragh. She must also have been considerably younger than her husband, to leave him with a new baby. “How old was Alison?”
    â€œThirty-one,” he said. He looked at me then, his eyes shrewd. “Twenty years younger than me. Go on, flatter me—tell me you can’t imagine why the bitch would jump over the wall.”
    â€œMaybe to escape the monotony of unfailing courtesy and inexorable good manners?”
    Immediately I regretted the jibe and started to apologise, but McAllister gave an improbable grin and nodded. “Aye, I think the humility got up her nose too, eventually.”
    We grinned together, the atmosphere easing all the time. McAllister went on. “No, she was still a young woman, I suppose she got to wondering if there was more to life than looking after a rich cripple. She was right, there was, but he didn’t leave her long to enjoy it.”
    â€œDo you know how long she knew him?” It was impertinent to be questioning him like this, but somehow it seemed to follow naturally from this unlikely conversation.
    â€œNo,” he said sharply, as if he too considered it impertinent. But after another moment’s thought he answered more fully. “No, not exactly. It might have been six months. It was February she told me about the will.”
    â€œCurragh said he’d only known her a few weeks.”
    McAllister shrugged. “The will will be dated.”
    And would prove that the boy had lied once again. I wondered if anything he had said had been the truth. But the violence of his grief said he loved her.
    I ventured, “Why did your wife tell you about her bequest to another man?”
    He stared at me. This interview was not going the way he’d expected. Then he sighed. “We were arguing. Something I said hurt her. She threw that back at me.”
    â€œDid it work—were you hurt?”
    Again he shrugged. “Not hurt so much; maybe a little disappointed. I wasn’t surprised that she had a lover. I thought she might have been more discreet about it.”
    I’d have thought so too. He might have been the most indulgent husband in the world—it seemed out of character but it was possible—but he was still a rich and powerful man. Hurling that at him in the middle of an argument suggested Alison feared neither his power nor the loss of his wealth.
    I said, “Do you really believe he killed her?”
    The first time he said it, storming into Alex Curragh’s hospital room, full of shock and rage at the news, it could have been the fury talking. He needed someone to blame and, whatever else Curragh had done, he had put himself in line by being on Mrs. McAllister’s boat.
    But that fury had mostly leached out of McAllister’s eyes by now. A good bit of it seemed to have gone in the few minutes we had been talking while his chauffeur drove us round the hospital car-park. There was more sorrow than anger there now, and I thought that if his outburst had been born of that anger he would tell me.
    He met my eyes without any shadows. At peace, his ravaged face had a kind of dignity. “I don’t