The Night Book (21 page)

The trouble now, Meriel reflected as she went through her front door, was that Seb would inevitably start to wonder if there were other things she hadn’t told him. After all, he was a
reporter. He was trained to follow a lead.

What was she to do? Make a clean breast of it? Tell him everything, starting with the reason she’d used the watch to lure Cameron to his death? In other words, tell him about
The Night
Book
? And that Cameron had found it? She’d have to, wouldn’t she, to explain her motive for drowning her husband.

Yes: drowning her husband. That’s what she’d done. Let’s not forget that, Meriel, shall we? You drowned him with a trick.

She shivered. She must be mad to even
think
about telling Seb the truth. What man could ever trust a woman who wrote such grotesque, violent fantasies about killing her husband? And
then went on to do precisely that, and in cold blood, too?

She walked slowly into the lounge with its views across Derwent Water, and felt a ripple of unease as she stared out at the lake. Its placid surface was darkening now that the sun had sunk
behind the mountains to the west, and Meriel felt almost haunted. Would she ever be able to look at any lake again without remembering what she’d done?

When she poured herself a Scotch from the drinks table, she noticed that her hands were shaking slightly.

She must pull herself together. Seb would be here soon.

She must have her story straight before then.

But as it turned out, Seb was circumspect. In fact, he had been lovely, Meriel thought as they finished their evening meal together. All he seemed concerned about was her state
of mind after being questioned so persistently, albeit politely, in court earlier.

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ she told him. ‘I
was
a bit thrown when he asked me why I hadn’t mentioned to the police that Cameron had asked me for the time . . .
and then all that stuff about his bloody watch.’

But Seb hadn’t taken the opening she’d given him, not straight away. He’d only replied that she’d probably simply forgotten. ‘After all, they were interviewing you
barely two or three hours after it happened. Your mind would have been all over the place. Anyway, who cares if he asked you the time? Or where the watch went?’

Meriel began to think that it was going to be all right after all.

But later, when they’d taken their drinks out onto the lawn and the warm dusk was falling, he’d asked her the question she’d been expecting.

‘Meriel . . . going back to that part about Cameron asking you the time . . . As I said, it’s easy to understand why you didn’t think to mention it to the police that
day.’

He turned from the lake to face her.

‘But why not tell me about it? After all, you said how horrible he was to you, threatening you with a ghastly divorce – and I quite see why you chose not to share that with the
coroner today. But why have you never told me about Cameron’s last words? They were pretty mundane by comparison.’

Meriel shrugged, as casually as she could.

‘Haven’t I mentioned it to you? Are you sure? I honestly thought I had done. But it’s hardly important, is it? I don’t regard someone asking “what’s the
time?” as a conversation, do you? If I haven’t remembered it before now it’s probably because it was so irrelevant. And completely overshadowed by the much nastier exchange we had
before he got into the water.’

Careful, Meriel. Don’t go on so much. Briefer is better.

Seb digested what she’d said, before saying: ‘Fair enough. But what about the watch? You showed me all his personal valuables the other day, when you were wondering what to do with
them. You never said anything about a Rolex, or that it was missing. I mean, come on, you don’t buy a Rolex from Woolworth’s, do you? It must have been worth a small fortune. Probably
as much as everything in that box put together. I can’t understand why you haven’t said anything about it.’

Meriel contrived to look embarrassed, even slightly ashamed.

‘Now
that
sin of omission I plead guilty to,’ she said. She reached for his hand, and he took it.

‘I
have
lost the damn thing and the reason I didn’t tell you was because I just feel so stupid about it. You’re right, it’s worth a great deal of money and I
can’t believe I could have been so careless. I just didn’t want to talk about it, that’s all. I suppose I didn’t want you thinking I’m some kind of . . . well, what my
father would have called a flibbertigibbet.’

Despite himself, Seb laughed.

‘A
what
?’

She smiled at him. ‘Flibbertigibbet. I suppose what today we’d call an airhead. A silly female with no idea of the value of anything.’

Seb shook his head, still smiling. ‘I could never think that about you. But listen, Meriel, you never have to keep secrets from me. Never. Certainly not something trivial like this, for
heaven’s sake. Everyone loses stuff. It’s hardly surprising you mislaid that watch, after what had just happened.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Anyway, I’ll help you find it. Might it still be on the boat?’

She shook her head. ‘No. As I told the coroner, I remember dropping it into my handbag before I went to the police station. I must have put it somewhere here in the house when I got back,
either that night or soon after. I just can’t for the life of me remember where.’

He reached for her empty wine glass. ‘Another?’

‘Mmm . . . please.’

Seb rose to go inside.

‘Well, not to worry – it’ll turn up. I bet I find it. I’m a good finder. Whenever my mother lost something she’d set me on the scent of it. She still does –
she calls me her bloodhound. Last Christmas she lost her engagement and wedding rings. Guess where I found them?’

Meriel shook her head.

‘In the butter dish,
in
the actual butter. She’d used it to ease them off her fingers because they were making them itch. She’d totally forgotten the next
day.’

Meriel knew there was no possibility of him or anyone else ever finding Cameron’s Rolex. As far as she was aware, bloodhounds weren’t much good under sixty feet of water.

Later, when they were in bed, he stroked her temple with the back of his forefinger.

‘I know it’s been a shitty day, but there’s something else we need to talk about.’

She sat up and pushed her hair back. ‘What is it?’ She tried to keep the anxiety from her voice. What now?

‘Jess – you know, the station engineer – took me to one side earlier. He told me . . . well, he told me that just about everyone knows about us. On the station, that is. Seems
they have for some time, almost from the start, in fact.’

She swallowed. ‘How?’

Seb took her through Jess’s account. When he’d finished, Meriel shrugged philosophically.

‘I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it, is there? Anyway, it isn’t a crime.’

‘No, but the papers might think it is. You know, the merry widow angle.’

She shrugged again.

‘I’d already accepted that I was going to have to admit my marriage had failed, remember? I was going to leave Cameron and that story would have got out soon enough. So if and when
the papers find out about us—’

‘It’ll be
when
, not if,’ Seb interrupted.

‘Fine.
When
they find out about us, I can truthfully tell them that I stuck by my husband right to the very end. That I kept up a cheerful front in public, despite everything
having gone wrong. And now I’ve found happiness.’

Seb stared at her.

‘You’ve come a long way from our night at the String of Horses, haven’t you?’

She nodded. ‘I have. Because of you. You stopped me being frightened that night, Seb. You showed me a way out of the living hell of my marriage. Now Cameron is dead and I’m free to
do what I want. And I’m going to, just you watch me. I don’t care what the papers say. I don’t care what
anyone
says.’

Seb kissed her before turning to switch out his bedside light.

‘Fine. But let’s just not rub their faces in it, OK?’

An exhausted Meriel was asleep in a couple of minutes; Seb could hear her slow, steady breathing beside him.

But he lay awake for a long time.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the missing watch.

And wondering why on earth she was lying about it.

Next morning was a Saturday. Seb was up early, not for work but to drive into Keswick and buy all the papers.

He parked in a corner of the medieval Market Place and carefully vetted first the tabloids and then the broadsheets.

Meriel’s photo, showing her arriving at court in her black-and-cream outfit, was splashed all over the front pages. No surprise there, Seb thought – she looked stunning. Editors knew
a circulation-booster when they saw one.

The
Sun
headline was:
PHONE-IN BEAUTY: ‘I COULDN’T SAVE HIM.’
The
Mirror
chose:
AGONY AUNT’S AGONY AS HUBBIE DROWNED.
The
Mail
went with:
THE LOVELY WIDOW WEEPS
even though Meriel hadn’t shed a tear. One or two of the stories on the inside pages briefly mentioned the matter of the missing
watch, but the majority ignored it. It was a quirk in the case that most news editors had obviously decided led straight up a blind alley.

Seb tossed the papers onto the front passenger seat beside him and tried to focus. He didn’t know it, but his thought processes were remarkably similar to the coroner’s the previous
day.

Something was out of joint, but he couldn’t say what. Last night, Meriel had given a perfectly logical explanation for not mentioning the Rolex business to him and – just like Dr
Young – Seb had felt he couldn’t reasonably push the issue any further.

But that didn’t mean it had gone away.

‘What’s the matter, Timothy? You’re not yourself this morning. In fact, you haven’t been since you came home from the inquest yesterday.’

Dr Young’s wife was looking at her husband with concern.

He smiled at her across the breakfast table.

‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m just a little preoccupied, I suppose.’

‘With this Cameron Bruton inquest? But you decided it was a straightforward case of misadventure, didn’t you?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Well, yes . . . up to a point. I didn’t really have any alternative, given the evidence. It’s his widow I can’t stop thinking about.’

Miriam Young rolled her eyes, stood up, and crossed to the little card table in the alcove by the bay window. Outside, less than a hundred yards below the house, Bassenthwaite rippled cheerfully
in the bright morning sun.

She picked up the folded copy of the
Telegraph
and shook it open.

‘I’m not surprised you can’t stop thinking about her,’ she said crisply, staring at the picture of Meriel on page one. ‘Quite the dish, isn’t she?’

Her husband laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, I didn’t mean like that. Anyway, I’m at least twice her age.’

‘Thanks. As am I.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘Bugger. I’m not expressing myself too well this morning, am I?’

His wife laughed in turn. ‘I’m teasing you, Tim. But seriously – what’s the matter? You look like you did in your barrister days after you lost the Coultrose case. That
was perjury, wasn’t it? He got away with it, didn’t he?’

The coroner nodded. ‘Yes, it was. And he did.’

He left the table and went over to join his wife. Together they looked at Meriel’s picture.

After a few moments, Dr Timothy Young gently tapped it with his fingernail.

‘You’re absolutely right, Miriam, as usual. That woman reminds me of Jeremy Coultrose. She was lying to me, just as he did. I don’t know why, and I don’t really even know
what about, either.’

He stared out, unseeing, at the lake.

‘But she was definitely lying.’

Meriel woke up in the grip of something approaching total panic.

Her stomach was in knots and her pulse was racing. She had never felt anxiety like it. Her instinct was to take a double dose of the sleeping pills her GP had prescribed her after
Cameron’s death, burrow deep under the sheets and fall into a chemically induced semi-coma as soon as possible.

She was reaching for the pills in her bedside cabinet when the phone on top of it began to ring.

She stared at it for a few moments before reluctantly picking up the receiver.

‘Hello . . . Meriel Kidd.’ She sounded OK. No hint of the agitation boiling inside. It must be the latent broadcaster in her, she decided, and she began to feel very slightly
calmer.

‘Meriel, it’s Peter here, Peter Cox. How are you?’

She liked the station manager. She owed her break in radio to him and he’d been a kind and encouraging mentor to her ever since.

‘Peter . . . honest answer? Terrible. I just woke up and I feel completely shattered. In bits. I’ve been fine up to now; ever since it happened, actually. I was fine all day
yesterday. But today . . .’ Meriel’s voice trembled and broke. ‘Today I can’t . . . I just can’t . . .’

Her voice gave out completely.

She heard her boss clear his throat before he spoke again.

‘Now look here, Meriel . . . we all think you’ve been holding up extremely well. Incredibly strong. Yesterday must have been a ghastly ordeal, simply ghastly, and judging by this
morning’s papers you came through it with extraordinary dignity and courage. I’m sure what you’re going through now is a reaction not just to the inquest but to everything, the
whole lot of it, ever since . . . since . . . well, since what happened to Cameron.’

Meriel managed to recover something of her voice.

‘Yes . . . It has been an unbelievable strain, Peter. I can’t begin to tell you.’

‘Of course. I just want you to know that you can take as much time as you need before you come back to work. Glenda can cover for you for as long as you like. And your loyal fans will wait
for you. You should see your postbag, Meriel. You’ve had literally thousands of letters of sympathy and support. It’s much the same with today’s papers, as I said. Have you seen
them yet?’