Holdsworth ignores her and instead speaks directly to Kathryn. ‘Is there somewhere we can sit?’
Kathryn leads them into the sitting room and offers to take their wet coats. She can just imagine her mother’s wrath if any rain gets onto her expensive velvet chairs. She leaves the room to hang their overcoats in the cupboard as Elspeth continues down the stairs slowly, as if every step is painful, gripping so tightly to the banister that her knuckles turn white. ‘Where is Willow? She’s usually getting me up by now.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got more important things on my mind,’ she snaps. ‘Like why two cops have come to speak to me at this time in the morning.’ When Elspeth has reached the last step, Kathryn escorts her across the hallway and into the sitting room where she settles her in her favourite chair. Kathryn takes the one next to her. The two officers are on the sofa, sitting at either end. The younger one has a notebook in her hand and is chewing the top of her pen.
‘So what is this about?’ Kathryn asks, crossing her legs. She remembers she’s only got a T-shirt on underneath her dressing-gown. She pulls it around herself.
‘I just wanted to ask you a bit more about the day of thenineteenth of December when you last saw Jemima Freeman,’ begins Holdsworth.
‘I’ve told you all this before.’
‘We’d like to hear it again, please.’
Kathryn suppresses a sigh. ‘I wasn’t even here. She was supposed to go to the gallery with my mother, wasn’t she?’ She turns to Elspeth, who nods. ‘But she stayed behind because she had a migraine. My mother told you all this last time.’
Holdsworth sits up straighter and pushes her shoulders back. ‘So, let’s get this straight. On the afternoon she left here, you were both out? The last person to see her was you, Mrs McKenzie, and that was just after lunch? When you returned home around five she was gone, taking all her stuff with her?’
‘Yes. That’s right,’ agrees Elspeth.
Holdsworth smiles tightly. ‘So why did you have Jemima’s passport, Kathryn?’
Kathryn’s heart feels like it’s about to stop. ‘What?’
‘A bag of clothes containing Jemima’s passport was handed into the station. It was found at the gallery. The gallery you run.’
Elspeth flashes Kathryn a questioning gaze.
‘Care to explain?’ adds Holdsworth. ‘Or would you rather do it down at the station?’
Kathryn sags against the cushions. What’s the use? She might as well tell the truth. Or, at least, her version of the truth. ‘Okay … The bag … it belonged to Viola. She was my sister.’
Holdsworth sits up straighter. Kathryn notices she has a crease down each trouser leg and imagines hergetting up at the crack of dawn to iron them. ‘Your sister?’
‘She left home when she was eighteen. Back in 1988. It was just some old clothes she left behind. We never got around to getting rid of them.’
Holdsworth glances at Elspeth but she doesn’t say anything. Elspeth turns to Kathryn. ‘You had Viola’s bag?’
‘Yes, Mother.’ She tuts. ‘Just clothes we had packed away together years ago. Don’t you remember?’
‘No,’ says Elspeth. ‘I thought she’d taken everything.’
Kathryn waves her hand impatiently. ‘I’m sure the police aren’t here to discuss Viola.’
Holdsworth frowns, then reaches inside her suit jacket to retrieve her notebook. She flips it open with one hand. ‘Why did you have Jemima’s passport?’
‘She left it behind after we argued,’ says Kathryn, not missing a beat.
Elspeth hangs her head but says nothing. Kathryn notices strands of white hair have come out of her chignon. She’s never seen her anything but composed and immaculate – except just once.
Holdsworth’s face is grim. ‘So what really happened?’
‘Do I need a solicitor?’
‘We’re not arresting you, Kathryn. This is just an informal chat.’
‘Okay. Well, I met my mother at the gallery as she wanted to talk to one of the artists who was going to sell their work through us. Anyway, she’d forgotten to bring the paperwork so I said I’d pick it up. I drove over here to collect it and that’s when I found Jemima. She was rummaging in my mother’s desk, going through her things.We argued. I told her I’d have her fired … Yes, I know, not my finest moment, but you have to understand that these –these girlsare usually only after my mother’s money.’ She ignores Elspeth’s protests. ‘I don’t trust them. Anyway, Jemima was crying, begging me not to tell Elspeth and making some, quite frankly, ludicrous excuse as to why she was in the study. I’m not going to lie, I did shout at her and accuse her of all sorts, and she ran upstairs crying. The next thing I knew she was leaving the house with a backpack.’
‘And you never saw her again?’
