‘Well that’s the thing,’ Phil said. ‘After I saw the argument in the garden, I went back to my work. I didn’t want whatever was going on between Claire and Polly to distract me. And I carried on working in my room until I saw an ambulance arrive at the front of the house about half an hour later. That’s when I came downstairs and finally heard the terrible news.’
‘I see,’ Richard said, realising that, putting aside which of the two men Sophie saw at the window when she looked back at the house, Max now had a definite alibi for just before the time of death—when he was seen going up the stairs by Sophie—and just afterwards as well—when he was seen coming down the stairs by Claire. As for Phil, seeing as Sophie’s view of the person at the window just beforehand had been so vague, he didn’t seem to have a definite alibi for before the time of death, or for the minutes immediately afterwards.
‘But I don’t understand why you’re asking where we all were,’ Max said nervously. ‘Or wondering who this man in the yellow coat was. None of it’s relevant, because we know what happened. Polly said she’d end her life, she went down the steps and then she threw herself to her death.’
‘Indeed,’ Richard said. ‘And you raise an important point, so can I ask, how surprised are you all that Polly would end her life like this?’
Richard could see the witnesses exchange glances. He’d struck a nerve.
‘If someone could answer the question,’ Richard asked again.
‘Well maybe I should take this,’ Max said. ‘As her agent. Because, if we’re being honest, Polly’s been depressed for some time. So one minute she was up, up, up, and the next, everything had crashed around her and she’d get destructive. She’d want to hurt you until she felt better.’
‘That’s what I meant when I said it was more that she didn’t get on with me,’ Claire said. ‘She was difficult and wilful at the best of times.’
‘But she didn’t do herself any favours, either,’ Max said. ‘Because you should know, Polly was also a recovering drug addict, and that caused terrible mood swings as well.’
‘And when you say drugs?’ Richard asked.
‘Heroin,’ Claire said. ‘She’d been using for years.’
‘Your sister was a heroin addict?’
‘But she checked herself into rehab earlier this year,’ Phil said loyally. ‘She’s been clean since then.’
‘And when was she in rehab?’
‘It was six months ago,’ Max said. ‘Just after Christmas. She spent three months in a clinic in Los Angeles. And since she came out, she’s been clean. I’m sure we’d have known if she wasn’t.’
Max looked around the room, and no one disagreed with him.
‘The point is,’ Phil said, speaking for all of them, ‘we can all imagine that if Polly wanted to end her life, this is the sort of crazy mad-arse way she might go about doing it. She always loved melodrama.’
Richard looked at the witnesses and realised he’d probably got enough from them for the moment. Although there was one loose end he needed to tie up before he could leave.
‘Then thank you all for your time,’ he said to the room, closing down the topic of Polly’s drug addiction for the moment. ‘But one last question. If you don’t mind? Claire, are you really saying you didn’t have your mobile on you when your sister died?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Claire said.
‘Only, in my experience, people who have issues with mobility always have their mobile phones on them. Or some other form of emergency communication or panic button.’
‘Well … that’s true,’ she conceded. ‘I do normally have my mobile with me. I keep it in here.’
Claire indicated a fabric pouch that hung from the armrest of her wheelchair.
‘But your phone wasn’t in your pouch this morning?’
‘I thought it was,’ Claire said, increasingly confused that Richard was following this line of questioning. ‘But when I looked for it on the cliff top, it wasn’t there. It’s why I had to go back to the house to phone for an ambulance. Like I said.’
‘Can you tell me, where is your mobile phone right now?’
‘Really?’
‘If you could just answer the question?’
Claire huffed. ‘Well, as it happens, I’ve not been able to find my mobile since then. To be honest, it’s not been a top priority.’
‘You’re saying it’s still missing?’ Richard asked, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice.
‘That’s right. I can’t find it.’
‘Then could someone phone Claire’s phone at once,’ Richard asked the room urgently. ‘Then, if we can hear it ringing in the house, I want to locate exactly where it is.’
No one could quite see why this was important to Richard, but Phil pulled his smartphone from his pocket with a sigh.
‘Very well,’ he said sceptically, as he scrolled through his list of contacts. ‘I’ll ring it.’ After pressing the screen, he waited a few seconds, and he then said, ‘Right, then. It’s connecting.’
After a moment, everyone could hear a phone ringing.
It was somewhere in the room.
And then, they all realised where the noise was coming from and looked up at the ceiling.
The chandelier in the middle of the ceiling was ringing.
Claire’s phone was hidden in the chandelier above their heads.
What the hell was it doing there?
It took a few minutes to liberate Claire’s mobile from the chandelier. In the end, it involved Richard scraping a coffee table over to the middle of the room so that he could stand on it and fish into the chandelier with one hand, his other hand clamping his hankie over his nose against the clouds of dust he was creating in the process.
Once he had Claire’s phone in his hand, Richard asked the assembled witnesses if they knew how it had got into the chandelier, but they were just as flummoxed as he was. It didn’t even begin to make sense.
As Richard put the phone into an evidence bag for processing back at the station, he saw an old Citroën estate car pull up in the driveway with a crunch of wheels on gravel. He then saw a man and a woman get out.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked the room.
‘That’s Juliette and Alain,’ Phil replied. ‘Polly’s staff. I think they’ve been at church.’
Going to the windows, Richard could see that Alain was perhaps in his forties, was of average height, and had short-cropped hair. He was wearing khaki trousers, smart black shoes, a long-sleeved white shirt—and, as he carefully closed the door to his car, Richard got the impression that he was a man who liked everything to be precise and neat. As for Juliette, Richard could see that she was of a similar age to her husband, had a cascade of dark hair that was constrained by a pink bandana, and she was wearing figure-hugging grey Lycra running clothes with bright lime green flashes down the side. It was pretty clear that if Alain had just returned from church, Juliette had been out doing exercise of some sort.
Richard told the witnesses that Camille would take their formal statements in due course, but first he had to break the sad news of Polly’s death to Mr and Mrs Moreau. If they hadn’t already heard.
Once in the