the seal, and poured himself a tumbler. For at least a minute, he drank without speaking, fortifying himself for what he would ultimately have to say.
"You followed Hannah when she left the flat that night," Lynley guessed.
Darrow wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. "Aye. She was to help me and one of the local lasses in the pub, so I'd gone upstairs to fetch her, and I found a note on the kitchen table. Only, wasn't the same note as you've there in the file. Was one telling me she was leaving. Going with some fancy nob to London. To be in a play."
Lynley felt a stirring of affi rmation and with it a nascent vindication that told him that, in spite of everything he had heard from St. James and Helen, Barbara Havers and Stinhurst, his instincts had not led him wrong after all. "That's all the note said?"
Darrow shook his head darkly and looked down into his glass. The whisky gave off a heady smell of malt. "No. She took me to task...as a man. And did a bit of comparing so I'd know for certain what she'd been up to and what'd made her decide to leave. She wanted a real man, she said, one who knew how to love a woman proper, please a woman in bed. I'd never pleased her, she said. Never. But this bloke...She described how he did it to her so, she said, if I ever fancied having a woman in the future, I'd know how to do it right, for once. Like she was doing me a favour."
"How did you know where to fi nd her?"
"Saw her. When I read the note, I went to the window. She must've only just left a minute or two before I went up to the fl at because I saw her down at the edge of the village, carrying a big case, setting off on the path to the canal that runs through Mildenhall Fen."
"Did you think of the mill at once?"
"I thought of nothing but getting my hands on the bloody little bitch and beating her silly. But after a moment, I thought how much tastier it would be to follow her, catch her with him, and have at them both. So I kept my distance."
"She didn't see you following her?"
"It was dark. I kept to the far edge of the path where the growth is thickest. She turned round two or three times. I thought she knew I was there. But she just kept walking. She got a bit ahead of me where there's a bend in the canal, so I missed the turn to the mill and kept going for...perhaps three hundred yards. When I finally saw I'd lost her, I fi gured where she must be heading-there was little else out there-so I doubled back quick and made my way along the track to the mill. Her case was lying some thirty yards down the way."
"She'd gone on without it?"
"It was dead heavy. I thought she'd gone on to the mill to have that bloke come back for it. So I decided to wait and have at him right there on the path. Then I'd go on and see to her in the mill." Darrow poured himself another drink and shoved the bottle towards Lynley, who demurred. "But no one came back for the case," he went on. "I waited some five minutes. Then I crept up along the path to have a better look. Hadn't got as far as the clearing when this bloke come out of the mill at a run. He tore round the side. I heard a car start and take off. That was it."
"Did you get a look at him?"
"Too dark. I was too far away. I went on to the mill after a moment. And I found her." He set his glass on the table. "Hanging."
"Was she exactly as the police pictures show her?"
"Aye. Except there was a bit of paper sticking from her coat pocket, so I pulled that out. It was the note I gave to the police. When I read it, I saw how it was meant to look like a suicide."
"Yes. But it wouldn't have looked like suicide had you left her suitcase there. So you brought it home with you."
"I did. I took it upstairs. Then I raised a cry, using the note from her pocket. The other note I burned."