Free Love Him to Death by Tanya Landman Page B

can be surprisingly brave. He didn’t say a thing. Instead he swallowed hard, nodded, then swung a leg over the sill. He rolled onto his stomach and wrenched his other unwilling limb across before lowering himself down. He clung on by his fingertips for a moment, then let go. There was a loud splat as his bare feet hit the tiled floor of the balcony below.
    “You OK?” I called softly. He looked at me and gave a half-hearted thumbs-up. He was bent almost double as if the fall had winded him, and was rubbing his left elbow, but he moved over to make way for me.
    My turn. I did the same as Graham, landing awkwardly and feeling a bolt of pain shoot from ankle to knee. “Ouch!” I complained. “That hurt!”
    “It was your idea,” whispered Graham. “Let’s hope it proves worthwhile.”
    There were heavy net curtains hanging across the French windows so we couldn’t see into the room, but the door was open a fraction and it would be easy enough to get in. I took a deep breath to steel myself. I was pretty sure Angelica was innocent, but suppose I’d got it wrong? Josie had been stabbed to death with her own sandals. The viciousness of that attack made me feel suddenly nervous.
    “Well,” I said a little squeakily, “here goes.”
    I slid the door back, pulled aside the net curtain and Graham and I stepped through. It was dark inside compared with the sunlit balcony, and it took a few moments for our eyes to adjust.
    We didn’t have to go far in search of Angelica. She was sitting on the bed, staring at nothing, and as we approached she looked through us as if we were ghosts.
    “Angelica?” I said uncertainly. “Can we talk to you?”
    She made an effort to focus on me, wrenching her mind away from wherever it had been. She rubbed her eyes, shook her head and asked, “Me? You can’t. No one’s allowed to talk to me. Only Bill.” Her eyes slid away again. This was going to be even harder than I’d thought. I was just wondering how to bring her back to the real world when Graham decided to speak up.
    “Mrs Strummer?” he said. “We believe you’re being framed. We’d very much like to know more about the personal assistant Bill employed before Tessa Whittam. I understand he was called Mick. Can you tell us anything about him?”
    Angelica heaved the deepest sigh I’ve ever heard. It seemed to come up from the depths of the ocean. And then she said in a strange sing-song voice, “He wanted to see the bluebells.”
    The woman’s mad, I thought. Unhinged. Deranged. Barking. There was no way we would get any sense out of her.
    Then I recalled the photograph of her running through the woods, mouth open in a silent scream. Running through a bluebell wood, where the newly emerged flowers heads were just beginning to open.
    And all of a sudden I caught the clue I’d been missing. It was like being doused with ice-cold water. I’d been so disconcerted by the embarrassing glimpse of her bra that I’d failed to see what was really wrong with that photo. Those bluebells were the key to everything.
    I mean, you can’t have a landscape gardener for a mother and not know that bluebells flower in the spring. And it had come unusually early this year. They’d started blooming the first week of April and had gone by the end of the month. Bill hadn’t met Josie until June, which had to be at least six weeks after that photo was taken.
    So why had Angelica been running through the woods screaming?
    My mind went into overdrive, frantically recalculating. This changed everything. Before I had a chance to say anything, Graham pressed on.
    “Mrs Strummer, we believe Tessa Whittam may be in love with your ex-husband.”
    “I’m sure she is,” Angelica said in the same dreamy voice. She rocked backwards and forwards. “The whole world adores him. Everybody loves Bill. Everybody but me…”
    My mouth dropped open but no sound came out. Everything had suddenly snapped into place. Graham didn’t notice.
    “We’re