Isabelle started to speak, but Deacon held up a hand to stop her.
They themselves would prepare for a counter press conference - he referred to it as a preemptive strike - and they would hold it in exactly ninety minutes.
At this, Isabelle felt a sudden dryness develop in her throat. She said, "I expect you want me there?"
Deacon said they did not. "We want no such thing," was how he put it. He would give out the relevant information that he'd just gathered from the superintendent. If she was wanted further, he said, he would let her know.
She was thus dismissed. As she left the room, she saw the two men lean towards each other in the sort of huddle that indicated an evaluation being made. It was an unnerving sight.
"WHAT ARE YOU doing here?" Bella McHaggis demanded. She didn't like surprises in general, and this one in particular disturbed her. Paolo di Fazio was supposed to be at work. He was not supposed to be coming through her garden gate at this time of day. The juxtaposition of Paolo's being there in Putney with her having just discovered Jemima's handbag caused a frisson of warning to run through Bella's body.
Paolo didn't answer her question. His eyes were fixed - they were absolutely paralysed, Bella thought - upon the handbag. He said, "That's Jemima's."
"Interesting that you know," was her reply. "I myself had to look inside." And then she repeated her question. "What are you doing here?"
His reply of, "I live here," did not amuse. He then said, as if she hadn't already told him,
"Have you looked inside?"
"I just told you I looked inside."
"And?"
"And what?"
"Is there ...Was there anything?"
"What sort of question is that?" she asked him. "And why aren't you at work, where you're supposed to be?"
"Where did you find it? What are you going to do with it?"
This was the limit. She began to say, "I have no intention - " when he cut in with, "Who else knows about it? Have you phoned the police? Why are you holding it that way?"
"What way? How am I supposed to be holding it?"
He fished in his pocket and brought forth a handkerchief. "Here. You must give it to me."
That sent the alarm bells absolutely clanging. All at once Bella's mind was filled with details, and rising to the top of them was that pregnancy test. That fact floated there with others equally damning: all of Paolo di Fazio's engagements to be married, that argument Bella had heard between him and Jemima, Paolo's being the one to bring Jemima to her house in the first place ...And there were probably more if she could gather her wits and not be put off her mental stride by the expression on his face. She'd never seen Paolo look so intense.
She said, "You put it there, didn't you? With everything for Oxfam. You play the innocent now with all these questions, but you can't fool me, Paolo."
"I?" he said. "You must be mad. Why would I put Jemima's bag in the Oxfam bin?"
"We both know the answer to that. It's the perfect place to stow the handbag. Right here on the property." She could, indeed, see how the plan would have worked. No one would look for the bag so far from the place where Jemima had been killed, and if someone found it by chance - as she herself had done - then it could easily be explained away: Jemima herself had discarded it, never bloody mind the fact that it held her essential belongings! But if no one found it prior to its being carted off to Oxfam, all the better. When the bin was emptied, it would doubtless be months after her death. The contents would be taken away and perhaps the bag would be opened wherever things were gone through for distribution to the shops. By that time no one would know where it had come from or, perhaps, even remember the death in Stoke Newington. No one would think the bag had anything to do with murder. Oh, it was all so clever of him, wasn't it?
"You think I hurt Jemima?" Paolo asked. "You think I killed her?" He ran his hand over his head in a movement she knew she was meant to take for agitation. "Pazza donna! Why would I hurt Jemima?"
She narrowed her eyes. He sounded so convincing, didn't he? And wouldn't he just, him with his five or fifteen or fifty engagements to women