The Night Book (19 page)

‘How did it go?’

She closed her eyes. ‘You know, I used to think I’d married Ebenezer Scrooge. But now I reckon he was more like Jacob Marley.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well . . . there was no one today to mourn Cameron, just as Dickens wrote that there was no one to mourn Marley. Oh, a few of Cameron’s commercial contacts showed up but I’m
sure they were only there to do a bit of business . . . again, exactly as Scrooge did at Marley’s funeral.

‘I, of course, the unloved and unloving wife, was there to go through the motions . . . but that was it. Honestly, Seb, it was so
sad.
What a horrible way for a person to end up
– utterly alone. Spiritually, I mean. Not a soul in the world who gives a damn about you. I almost felt sorry for him. In fact, I’d rather not talk about it any more, if you don’t
mind. It’s too depressing.’

Next morning Meriel made another exhaustive search of Cathedral Crag for the hidden photocopies. Again, she drew a blank. She knew they had to be somewhere in the house, but she’d
completely run out of ideas. She could only hope inspiration would strike her at some point. If she ended up selling Cathedral Crag before finding them, she’d simply have to trust that they
would remain hidden indefinitely. Anyway, there was nothing more that she could do, and she told herself she had more pressing concerns.

Such as the inquest.

Dr Timothy Young arrived in his little office behind the courtroom before nine that morning; earlier than usual for him on the day of an inquest. He didn’t want any
surprises unfolding in front of a massed media today. Not in his courtroom; not if he could help it.

He wanted to go over the case notes one more time before opening the hearing into Cameron Bruton’s sudden death. This inquest was going to be crammed with newspaper, radio and television
reporters. The previous evening John, his clerk, had installed a temporary row of plastic chairs in front of the venerable polished oak press bench.

Now the coroner carefully sifted through the various witness statements, until he came to the wife’s account of what had happened on the day of the drowning.

He carefully read through the neatly typed paragraphs. This must be the third or fourth time he’d done so, he reflected. So what
was
it? What was niggling him, nagging at the
edges of his consciousness like a restless question mark?

He shook his head. However hard he tried, he just couldn’t put his finger on it. The woman’s statement seemed clear and logical enough. There were no gaps or contradictions that he
could see.

And yet . . . and yet . . . a lifetime’s experience in medicine and then the law was whispering to him, telling him something was out of joint. But what?

The coroner sighed and pushed the documents away. Perhaps whatever it was that troubled him would somehow crystallise later, when the widow – he noticed she had signed her witness
statement in her maiden name of Kidd, and dammit,
that
was somehow odd, too – presented her evidence from the witness box.

Meanwhile, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that there was another itch he wanted to scratch and it was nothing whatsoever to do with the facts of this case. He had a thoroughly
unprofessional impulse to simply set eyes on this woman. By all accounts she was a beauty.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his clerk tapping on the door.

‘Come in.’

John Armstrong entered carrying a small tray with two mugs of steaming coffee and a little silver jug of hot milk.

‘Just time for a bevvy, sir, before we start. You said you wanted to open proceedings at nine-thirty sharp.’

The coroner nodded. ‘Yes, I know that’s a bit ahead of our normal start time but I’d like to wrap this case up by close of play today, John. I think there’s a risk of it
turning into something of a media circus and I’d really rather it didn’t carry over into another day, in this case Tuesday – it’s the bank holiday weekend tomorrow
let’s not forget.’

His clerk gave a short laugh. ‘You’re right about it being a circus, sir. It’s packed to the rafters already. Most of Fleet Street’s finest are here, squabbling over who
sits where. I’ve had to intervene twice now to restore order.’

He added milk and sugar to their coffees. ‘Mind you, it’s even worse out there on the pavement – I’ve never seen so many photographers, and there must be at least three
TV camera crews. I had to order them all back from the entrance. They’re a bolshie lot and I was obliged to get quite salty with them, as my old man would’ve said, before they’d
shift.’

Dr Young grinned. He didn’t think even the most hard-boiled news reporter would be impervious to the salty quality of Armstrong’s tongue.

‘What about the witnesses?’ he asked, stirring his coffee. ‘All present and correct?’

‘Yes sir, all here, safe and sound. The couple who were on the tourist boat, the police officers on the launch, and that GP who happened to be passing and who pronounced the gentleman
dead. The widow too – she’s just arrived. My word, I must say that Miss Kidd’s quite a looker, if you’ll pardon my saying so. No wonder we’ve got so many press
photographers here. They’re like bees round a honeypot. She looks more like a film star than an agony aunt.’

The coroner nodded, sipping his coffee.

‘Yes. So I’ve been told.’

Seb had managed to grab one of the chairs that now formed the temporary front row of the press bench. It was insufferably hot in here; outside the sun continued to burn
unblinkingly from a cloudless sky. The little dais where the witnesses would sit had been provided with a small electric fan and a jug of iced water, as had the coroner’s raised desk. The
rest of them were simply going to have to sweat it out.

Seb had been with Meriel at Cathedral Crag the night before. She had been awake for most of it, full of anxiety about today’s hearing. She had told him almost everything that had happened
that fatal day on Ullswater – all except the part about the Rolex, and her calculated delay in throwing Cameron the lifebelt.

Seb had done his best to soothe her.

‘Of
course
you’re in a state,’ he’d told her at around five o’clock that morning after she’d woken him yet again, sliding her arms around his body
and clinging to him for comfort. ‘You’re about to relive the whole ghastly thing in front of a roomful of strangers.

‘But remember –
I’ll
be there too, reporting for the network. When you’re describing it all, just imagine you’re speaking to me, me and no one else.
I’ll only be a few feet away from you – it’s a really small courtroom. And inquests aren’t like big trials or anything, honestly – I’ve covered loads of them.
Coroners are usually incredibly kind and thoughtful, and do their best to get people like you through it. You mustn’t worry. You’ll be fine, I promise. Just say what happened, and
it’ll all be over and everything will be truly behind you – inquest, funeral, the lot of it. Then we can start building our lives together.’

She had hugged him even closer.

‘You always make me feel so much better. I adore you, Seb.’

To their slight surprise, they had made love.

The pathologist today was the same diffident young man who had given testimony earlier in the summer, at the inquest into the Buttermere drowning. If anything he was more
nervous and hesitant than he had been then, unsettled now by the large media presence in court.

His summary was virtually identical to the one he had previously delivered from the same witness box.

‘. . . my conclusion is that Mr Bruton suffered death due to cardiac arrest caused by the inhalation of water.’

‘In other words, he drowned,’ Dr Young prompted him, exactly as he had done a few weeks before.

The pathologist closed his eyes in self-reproach.

‘Er . . . sorry, sir. Yes, I mean to say, he drowned.’

‘Thank you, Dr Bullen. You may stand down. Clerk of the court will call the next witness, please.’

Armstrong shuffled the papers in front of him and stood up.

‘Call Mrs Meriel Bruton.’

A few moments later Meriel walked into the courtroom. She was dressed in a fitted black jacket and a matching knee-length pencil skirt. The cuffs and collar of a cream silk blouse were at her
wrists and throat, and she was in black patent court shoes. Her make-up was minimal and her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

She looked sensational.

The watching press pack stirred and whispered to each other.

Seb managed to catch Meriel’s eye as she stepped into the witness box, and he gave her a nod of encouragement. She smiled faintly at him, and then turned to face the clerk of the
court.

‘You are Meriel Bruton, also known as Meriel Kidd, widow of the deceased?’ Armstrong asked her.

Meriel nodded. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘The coroner here would like to ask you some questions. You may sit down if you wish.’

Meriel gave a quick shake of her head.

‘Thank you . . . I’d prefer to stand.’

Dr Young leaned forward, trying not to be dazzled by the young woman in front of him. She was certainly, as his clerk had told him, ‘a looker’, even though the extraordinary heat in
the cramped, stuffy courtroom was already beginning to fray Meriel at the edges. The collar of her blouse was curling inwards and her forehead was beginning to shine a little as perspiration broke
through the powder she had applied only minutes earlier.

‘Good morning, Miss Kidd, and thank you very much for being here today. I do appreciate how difficult this must be for you and I assure you I won’t detain you for any longer than is
necessary.’

Meriel smiled gratefully at the coroner. ‘Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.’

He couldn’t help smiling back at her. God, she was quite adorable.

‘Very well . . . We have already heard testimony from Mr and Mrs Briggs, the couple in the boat who came to your assistance on the afternoon in question, and from the police officers who
arrived shortly afterwards. We have also heard from the pathologist, who confirms the cause of your late husband’s death as drowning.

‘What I would like to do now, Miss Kidd, is firstly to go through the events immediately prior to that tragic event. Would you begin by telling us what you were both doing out on Ullswater
that Sunday afternoon?’

Meriel paused a moment to collect her thoughts before replying.

‘Well . . . we’d decided to have lunch on our motorboat, a kind of picnic. Cold chicken, that sort of thing. My husband had prepared it himself. We often spent our Sundays like that,
out on the lake, especially during this incredible summer. We usually took the Sunday papers with us and browsed through them.’

The coroner nodded. ‘We’ve heard that a small amount of alcohol was found in the deceased’s blood. Can you tell us how much your husband had had to drink?’

‘Only about half a glass of wine – white wine. Cameron wasn’t a big drinker.’

The coroner nodded again.

‘I’d like you to tell me what transpired on the boat in the minutes before Mr Bruton went for his fateful swim. What did the two of you talk about? What were you doing?’

Meriel glanced involuntarily across at Seb. She had told him as much as she dared about her conversation on the boat with her husband. Seb was the only person other than her who knew that
Cameron had promised her a very messy, public divorce if she left him.

But Seb didn’t know that the warning had been backed up by a threat to produce her diary as grounds for divorce. Seb had no idea
The Night Book
even existed.

Meriel turned back to the coroner and, trying to keep her voice as calm as she could, she told her first calculated lie.

‘It was just an afternoon out on the lake, much like any other. I remember that we chatted about how hot it was again . . . Cameron read a few things aloud to me from the
Sunday
Times
’ business pages . . . there was nothing at all out of the ordinary.’

‘How soon after eating did your husband enter the water?’

‘Quite soon. About fifteen minutes or so. But he’d only had a small piece of chicken and some salad. I don’t think either of us was concerned about him getting cramp or
anything like that. And of course the water was very warm, at least on the surface.’

‘Hmm.’ Dr Young looked thoughtful. ‘Was your husband aware of the recent spate of drownings in our region’s lakes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he aware that experts are of the opinion that these drownings are often occurring when swimmers go beneath the surface and encounter the near-freezing layer of water below?’

‘Yes.’

‘And were you aware of this too?’

‘Yes.’

‘So were neither of you concerned that your husband might stray into the extremely cold conditions just beneath him, and get into difficulties?’

Meriel shook her head. ‘No . . . you see, Cameron didn’t like going underwater. He hated getting it in his ears. I don’t think I ever once saw him really having to dry his hair
after swimming in the lake.’

‘I see. So do you have any theory as to why Mr Bruton went so completely beneath the surface on this occasion that he disappeared from sight for . . .’ the coroner consulted his
notes ‘. . . approximately half a minute?’

Meriel lied again.

‘Absolutely none, no. As I told the police, one moment he was there, swimming around and speaking to me, the next he had vanished.’

Timothy Young frowned. ‘Speaking to you? Just a moment, please, Miss Kidd.’ He perched a pair of reading glasses on his nose and carefully examined the documents on the desk in front
of him.

‘Ah yes, here we are.’ The coroner slid a sheet of paper from the file.

‘This is your witness statement to the police. You told them, as you just told me, that you saw your husband swimming around the vessel before he vanished. But I can find no mention here
of him speaking to you.’

He removed his glasses and looked quizzically at her.

‘Could you explain why that discrepancy might be, please?’

Meriel hesitated. ‘Well . . . no, not really. I mean, I thought I had told the police that.’