Behind Closed Doors: A Novel

The air hostess leans towards me. ‘We’ll be arriving at Heathrow in about forty minutes,’ she says quietly.

‘Thank you.’ I feel a sudden surge of panic and force myself to breathe calmly, because I can’t afford to crack at this stage of the game. But the fact is, even though I’ve thought about nothing else since Margaret saw me through passport control at the airport in Bangkok almost twelve hours ago, I still have no idea how I’m going to play it when we finally land. Diane and Adam will be there to meet me and take me back to theirs so I need to think very carefully about what I’m going to say to them about my last hours with Jack, because whatever I tell them I’ll have to repeat to the police.

The seat-belt sign comes on and we begin our descent into Heathrow. I close my eyes and pray that I’ll end up saying the right thing to Diane and Adam, especially as it is Adam who has been liaising with the police since Jack’s body was found. I hope there aren’t going to be any nasty surprises. I hope Adam isn’t going to tell me that the police think Jack’s death is suspicious. If he does, I don’t know what I’ll say. All I can do is play it by ear. The problem is, there are so many things I don’t know.

The euphoria I felt when Mr Strachan told me that Jack had taken his own life—because it meant that my plan had worked and I had got away with murder—was quickly tempered by the fact that he’d used the word ‘seems’. I didn’t know whether he’d decided to be cautious off his own bat or if the police in England had intimated that there was room for doubt. If they had already started questioning people—work colleagues, friends—maybe they had come to the conclusion that Jack was an unlikely candidate for suicide. The police were bound to ask me if I knew why Jack had taken his own life and I would have to convince them that losing his first court case was reason enough. Maybe they would ask me if there’d been problems in our marriage, but if I admitted that there had been, even if I gave them all the details, they would surely consider murder, rather than suicide. And that is something I can’t risk. Mr Strachan told me that Jack had died from an overdose, but he didn’t give me any more details so I don’t know where his body was actually found and I hadn’t thought it appropriate to ask. But what if Jack had a way of getting out of the room in the basement, what if there was a switch hidden away somewhere that I hadn’t found, what if, before actually succumbing, he’d made it up the stairs and into the hall? He might even have had time to write a note implicating me before he died.

Not knowing means I’m ill prepared for what is to come. Even if all went to plan and Jack was found in the basement, the police are bound to ask me why the room existed, what its purpose was, and I can’t work out if it’ll be in my interest to admit that I knew about it all along or deny all knowledge of it. If I admit that I knew about it, I’ll have to make up some story about it being the place Jack used to go to before he went to court, to psyche himself up and remind himself of the worthy work he did as defender of battered wives. I’d rather deny all knowledge of it and profess shock that such a room could exist in our beautiful house—after all, as it was hidden away at the back of the basement it’s feasible that I hadn’t known about it. But then I’m faced with another dilemma—if, for some reason, the police have fingerprinted the room, they might have found traces of my presence there. So maybe it would be better to tell the truth—but not the whole truth because if I portray Jack as anything other than the loving husband everybody thought he was, if I tell them the real purpose of the room, they might begin to wonder if I murdered him to protect Millie. And maybe a court would be sympathetic—or maybe they would make me out to be some kind of gold-digger who had killed my relatively new husband for his money. As we begin our descent into Heathrow, the importance of making the right decisions, of saying the right thing, weighs me down.

It takes a while to get through passport control. As I go through the double doors, I scan the faces of the people waiting, searching for the familiar faces of Adam and Diane. I’m so tense that I know I’ll probably burst into tears of relief when I see them, which will be in keeping with my role as a bereaved wife. But when I see Esther waving at me, rather than Diane, a feeling of dread comes over me.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she says, giving me a hug. ‘I didn’t have anything to do today so I offered to pick you up and take you to Diane’s. I’m so sorry about Jack.’

‘I still can’t believe it,’ I add, shaking my head in bewilderment, because the shock of seeing her waiting for me has dried up the tears I’d been hoping to shed. ‘I still can’t believe that he’s dead.’

‘It must have been such a shock for you,’ she agrees, taking my case from me. ‘Come on, let’s find a café—I thought we’d go for a coffee before we start on the journey home.’

My heart sinks even further, because it’s going to be so much harder to play the grieving widow in front of her rather than Diane. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to go straight back to Diane’s? I’d like to speak to Adam and I need to get down the police station. Adam says the detective looking after the case wants to talk to me.’

‘We’ll only get stuck in rush hour at this time of the morning, so we may as well have a coffee,’ she says, heading towards the restaurant area. We find a café and she makes a beeline for a table in the middle of the room where we’re surrounded by noisy schoolchildren. ‘Sit down, I’ll go and get the coffees. I won’t be long.’

My instinct is to flee, but I know that I can’t. If Esther has come to pick me up at the airport, if she has suggested coffee, it’s because she wants to talk to me. I try not to panic but it’s hard. What if she’s guessed that I murdered Jack, what if there was something about my behaviour the day she drove me to the airport that aroused her suspicions? Is she going to tell me that she knows what I’ve done, is she going to threaten to tell the police, is she going to blackmail me? I watch her paying for our coffees and, as she heads back to where I’m waiting, I feel sick with nerves.

She sits down opposite me and places my coffee in front of me.

‘Thank you.’ I give her a watery smile.

‘Grace, how much do you know about Jack’s death?’ she asks, opening her sachet of sugar and tipping it into her cup.

‘What do you mean?’ I stammer.

‘I presume you know how he died?’

‘Yes, he took an overdose.’

‘He did,’ she agrees. ‘But that’s not what killed him.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It seems that he misjudged the amount of pills he would need and didn’t take enough. So he didn’t die—well, not from the overdose, anyway.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘Well, because he didn’t take enough pills to kill himself, he regained consciousness.’

‘So, how did he die then?’

‘From dehydration.’

I summon a look of shock to my face. ‘Dehydration?’

‘Yes, about four days after he took the overdose.’

‘But if he wasn’t dead, if he was still alive, why didn’t he just go and get a drink of water if he needed one?’

‘Because he couldn’t. His body wasn’t found in the main part of the house, you see. It was found in a room in the basement.’

‘A room in the basement?’

‘Yes. The worst thing is, it couldn’t be opened from the inside, which meant he couldn’t get out, even when thirst took hold.’ She picks up her spoon and stirs her coffee. ‘It seems that he tried to, though.’

‘Poor Jack,’ I say quietly. ‘Poor, poor, Jack. I can’t bear to think about how he must have suffered.’

‘Did you have any inkling that he would do such a thing?’

‘No, not at all. I would never have left him otherwise, I would never have gone to Thailand if I’d thought he was going to kill himself.’

‘So how was he when he came back from court?’

‘Well, he was disappointed about losing the case, of course.’

‘It’s just that it seems completely out of character for him to take his own life—at least, that’s what people might think. So he was probably a bit more than disappointed, don’t you think? I mean, wasn’t it the first case he’d lost?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘So he must have been devastated. Maybe he even told you that he felt his career was over. But you thought it was just something he’d said in the heat of the moment so you didn’t really take any notice.’ I stare at her. ‘Isn’t that what he said, Grace? Didn’t he say that he thought his career was over?’

‘Yes.’ I nod slowly. ‘He did say that.’

‘So that must be why he wanted to kill himself—because he couldn’t stand failure.’

‘It must have been,’ I agree.

‘It also explains why he was so eager for you to leave. He wanted you out of the way so that he could take the pills—it seems that he took them not long after you left. Do you know where he got them from? I mean, did he sometimes take sleeping pills?’

‘Sometimes,’ I improvise. ‘They weren’t prescribed by a doctor or anything, he just bought them over the counter. They were the same ones that Millie was taking—I remember him asking Mrs Goodrich for the name of them.’

‘The fact that he knew the door to the room in the basement couldn’t be opened from the inside shows that he realised he might not have enough pills but was determined to kill himself,’ she says. She takes a sip of her coffee. ‘The police will almost certainly ask you about the room. You knew about it, didn’t you, because Jack showed it to you?’

‘Yes.’

She fiddles with her spoon. ‘They’ll also want to know what the room was for.’ For the first time, she seems unsure of herself. ‘It seems that it was painted red, even the floor and ceiling, and that the walls were hung with paintings of women who’d been brutally beaten.’

I hear the disbelief in her voice and I wait, I wait for her to tell me what I should say to the police. But she doesn’t, because she has no explanation to offer me, and the silence stretches out between us. So I tell her what I came up with on the plane.

‘Jack used the room as a kind of annexe,’ I say. ‘He showed it to me not long after we moved into the house. He said he found it useful to spend time there before he went to court, going through the files, looking at the photographic evidence. He said it took such an emotional toll on him that he found it difficult to prepare mentally in the house, which was why he had created a separate study in the basement.’

She nods approvingly. ‘And the paintings?’

I feel a surge of panic—I had forgotten all about the portraits Jack had forced me to paint for him. Esther looks steadily at me, forcing me to focus.

‘I didn’t see any paintings. Jack must have hung them later.’

‘I suppose he didn’t show them to you because they were so graphic he didn’t want to distress you.

‘Probably,’ I agree. ‘Jack was wonderfully caring that way.’

‘They might ask if you knew the door couldn’t be opened from the inside.’

‘No. I only went down there once, so it wasn’t something I would have noticed.’ I look at her across the table, needing confirmation that it would be the right thing to say.

‘Don’t worry, Grace, the police are going to go easy on you. Remember, Jack told them you were mentally fragile so they know they have to be careful.’ She pauses. ‘Perhaps you should play on that a little.’

‘How do you know all this—about how Jack died, where his body was found, the portraits, what the police are going to ask me?’

‘Adam told me. It’s going to be all over the papers tomorrow, so he thought you should be prepared.’ She pauses a moment. ‘He wanted to tell you himself but I told him that, as you and I were the last people to see Jack alive, I felt it should be me who came to get you at the airport.’

I stare at her. ‘The last people to see Jack alive?’ I falter.

‘Yes. You know, last Friday, when I picked you up to take you to the airport. He waved goodbye to us after we’d put your case in the boot. He was at the study window, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I say slowly. ‘He was.’

‘And, if I remember rightly, you told me that he didn’t come out to the gate to wait with you because he wanted to get straight down to work. But what I can’t remember is whether he was wearing his jacket or not.’

‘No—no, he wasn’t. He wasn’t wearing his tie either, he’d taken it off when he came back from court.’

‘He waved us goodbye, and then he blew you a kiss.’

‘Yes, yes he did.’ The enormity of what she’s doing, of what she’s offering to do, hits me and I feel myself starting to shake. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper.

She reaches across the table and covers my hands with hers. ‘It’ll be all right, Grace, I promise.’

Tears well up from deep inside me. ‘I don’t understand—did Millie say something to you?’ I mumble, aware that even if she had, even if Millie had told Esther that Jack had pushed her down the stairs, it wouldn’t be reason enough for her to lie for me.

‘Only that she didn’t like George Clooney,’ she smiles.

I look at her in bewilderment. ‘Then why?’

She looks steadily back at me. ‘What colour was Millie’s room, Grace?’

I can barely get the word out. ‘Red,’ I tell her, my voice breaking. ‘Millie’s room was red.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ she says softly.