base all your appreciation of objective reality on what you read in that rag. Let me see.’
He handed it over, feeling like a small boy caught reading a comic under his desk.
A snarl of fury animated her features as she glanced at the back page.
‘So you’re not Mr Verity’s secretary?’ said Sixsmith tentatively.
‘No, I am not. Au contraire, as they say. He is my secretary. He was accompanying me to a business conference in Manchester. I should be giving a paper there at this very moment.’
‘You could send it by special messenger, it won’t get there too late,’ suggested Sixsmith.
She rolled her eyes upward and said, ‘I’m beginning to have serious doubts about this, Mr Sixsmith. One thing is certain. We will get on much more speedily if you refrain from further interruption.’
Sixsmith, relieved that the spectre of the battering husband had receded, nodded agreement. Things were beginning to sound much more interesting. His second guess was that she was going to tell him the plane crash wasn’t an accident, but had been arranged by some business rival to get rid of her or at the least keep her away from the Manchester conference.
She said, ‘The first thing to understand is that the plane crash wasn’t an accident. I’m sorry?’
Sixsmith’s inner triumph and regret at letting himself be browbeaten out of a chance of showing her he wasn’t an erk, had expressed itself in a plosive grunt. He turned it into a cough and smiled apologetically.
She went on.
‘The pilot’s illness was induced deliberately with the sole purpose of bringing the plane down and causing my death. Does that cat always stare like that?’
Whitey hadn’t followed his usual practice of opening the lowest desk drawer and climbing in, but was sitting upright as an Egyptian artefact, apparently rapt by Ms Baker’s speech. Sixsmith felt the direct question entitled him to speak.
‘I’m sorry. Is he bothering you? Whitey, get in your drawer. You can listen just as well there.’
‘What do you mean, he can listen just as well there?’ demanded the woman in some agitation, her hand at her throat.
‘Just a manner of speaking,’ said Sixsmith. ‘You know cats. Sometimes I get the feeling Whitey thinks he runs the business!’
‘And you find that remarkable?’
‘Not so remarkable as you’d find it if I put him on your case,’ laughed Sixsmith.
She smiled thinly, but the answer seemed to reassure her and she let go of the pink brooch which she’d been clutching like a talisman and took a thin gold cigarette case out of her purse.
‘Do you mind?’ she said, lighting up.
No, but the cat does, thought Sixsmith. He nudged the drawer shut with his knee. Whitey would have to suffer a little discomfort in the interests of business. A potential paying customer was entitled to a bit of atmospheric pollution.
Talking of paying, he speculated how high he dared pitch his fee. Depended what her line of business was. She dressed expensive. Maybe she was in ladies’ fashions, nice little earner at the class end of the market, he guessed. One way to find out—the subtle questioning.
He said brightly, ‘Why don’t you tell me about your business, Ms Baker?’
She said, ‘What on earth for? I run an automotive electronics firm, if you must know. But that has nothing to do with the case.’
‘It’s why you were in the plane, isn’t it?’ said Joe defensively.
‘Yes, of course. But she didn’t need access to my company records to know my schedule, did she? No, I’ve no doubt Gerald told her.’
‘Gerald?’
‘My husband, Gerald Collister-Cook.’
Sixsmith sighed. He knew he was delaying the dénouement, but he also knew that if he didn’t get things straight as he went along, you could dénoue all you liked and it would still be French to him.
‘So Baker is your maiden name?’
‘And my professional name. I saw no reason to lumber myself with that double barrelled monstrosity in business. I’ve just about got the bastards conditioned to dealing with Gwen Baker on level terms. They’d need another decade to come to terms with Gwendoline Collister-Cook, and I can’t say I blame them. Can we get on, Mr Sixsmith?’
‘I’d like that,’ said Joe sincerely. ‘You were saying that Gerald probably told her. Who is her, Ms Baker?’
‘Who is her? I’ll tell you who her is, Mr Sixsmith.’
Eyes flashing, mouth stretched taut in a rictus of hate, Gwen Baker grabbed the Present-from-Paignton paperknife out of Sixsmith’s desk tidy and swung it high. His arms shot up to ward off the blow. But he wasn’t the target. The knife plunged down with such force it passed clean through the tabloid spread out on the desk and dug deep into the woodwork.
‘That’s her!’ spat Ms Baker. ‘That’s the bitch who’s trying to kill me.’
Joe’s gaze slid down the still quivering knife and saw that its point had neatly sliced through the cleavage of raven-haired beauty Meg Merchison (29).
It got worse.
Ms Baker quickly regained control, but the return to her cool, rational manner only heightened the craziness of what was to come.
‘She’s been having an affair with Gerald. Affair! For him, it was a one-night stand, nothing more. Meaningless. We accept such things in our marriage. We don’t exchange notes, nothing so louche as that. But we’re two adult people, leading lives which often set us far apart, and we both have strong needs. But that bitch wanted more. In fact she wanted everything. But it soon dawned on her that she wasn’t going to get it without a fight. Well, I was a match for her there, I tell you. I was well ahead on points. But I didn’t realize just how far she’d go, if pushed.’
‘The plane crash, you mean?’ said Joe, who was beginning to wonder what Butcher’s resentment would do if this was what her gratitude sent him. ‘She arranged for the pilot to be taken ill?’
‘Of course. How the hell else did she happen to be sitting out there with a video camera ready to record it all for her scrap book?’
‘You’ve told the police this, have you?’ said Joe hopefully.
‘Don’t be stupid! How much notice do you imagine they’d take?’
‘Well, I mean, they could find evidence, things I can’t begin to do. Presumably you suspect the pilot was poisoned and they can get a full medical examination, analyse samples …’
‘Poison? Who said anything about poison? She’d probably used a poppet.’
‘A poppet? Like a lathe-head?’
‘A lathe-head? What the hell’s that?’
‘It’s something to do with a lathe,’ said Joe cautiously. He usually felt it best to keep details of his past employment away from potential clients, though why he should be worried about alienating Ms Baker he didn’t know. He felt a strong pang of nostalgia for the tumult of the tool room, the smell of oil and hot metal, the shouted jokes and laughter of his workmates.
‘Is it? Very interesting, I’m sure. But this poppet I’m talking about, Mr Sixsmith, would be a small doll, made out of clay or wax or even rags, looking as much like the pilot, Arthur Bragg, as possible, and incorporating some of his hair or nail