Read Online A Narrow Margin of Error by Faith Martin - Free Book Online

room.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I liked making my own stuff – I’d always done so, and sort-of had ambitions to be a fashion designer when I was younger, until common sense took over and told me the chances of success in that cut-throat field were pretty low. Which is why I went to Oxford – to have a second fiddle to my bow. Glad I did, now, I can tell you. But back then, I was still really into it, and it was much cheaper than buying real designer gear. And Rowan didn’t mind my using his room. And again, I know what you’re thinking. The scissors that were used to … to … stab him, were the ones I used to make my outfits, but that didn’t mean it had to be me who killed him, did it? I mean, they would have been just lying around in plain sight for anyone to see. I’d been using them the night before, and I hadn’t packed the stuff away. I told all this to Inspector Gorman at the time.’
    She was becoming more agitated as she rambled on, so Hillary said smoothly, ‘Yes, and that’s a point well made. I’m here to take a fresh look at things, Mrs Pitt, not to go over the same ground as DI Gorman. Tell me about what you did that morning.’
    Darla ran a somewhat shaky hand through her red curls and sighed. ‘I went out about nine o’clock that morning, I think. I ran into Marcie on the stairs and we went down together. She was due to take the train back to her parents that afternoon, and had some paperwork to drop off with her tutor. We chatted a bit as we went, then parted company outside on the road. I had some last-minute gifts to get. It was Christmas. I went to Debenhams and bought some silver ear-rings and some perfume. When I came back, the police were already there. At the house. Wanda had found him.’
    Hillary nodded. Gorman had, of course, gone over Darla’salibi, such as it was, meticulously, but the results were inconclusive . It was Christmas, and Debenhams, not surprisingly, had been busy. Neither of the sales staff at the perfume and jewellery counters remembered her specifically, but there was no reason, in the crush of shoppers, why they should. The store’s CCTV picked her up a couple of times, proving that she did indeed buy the items she claimed to have done, but that in itself meant nothing. The store was only a few minutes’ walk from the house. Darla could have returned to the house unseen and killed Rowan at any time. Or indeed, he might already have been dead when she left.
    ‘When you left the house that morning, did you notice anyone hanging around?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Was Rowan nervous of anyone? Did he ever say that he was having trouble with one of his women, or the ex-boyfriends of any of the women he’d known?’
    Darla smiled grimly. ‘Not to me, but then he wouldn’t, would he? He always denied seeing other women after we got together, even when it was blindingly obvious that he was. He seemed to think that he could just give me one of his cheeky grins and somehow that would make all the hurt go away, or charm me into making it not matter. He could always make me laugh, too, like it was some kind of medicine. But the truth was, he didn’t really care if I liked it or not – me not having exclusive rights to him, I mean. If all else failed, and I called him on it, he’d just shrug.’
    She stared down at her hands, and gave a sad, twisted smile. ‘You know, I don’t think he would have cared if all the women he’d cheated had got together and ganged up on him in one big, hissing fury. He’d just have gone on to the next one with a blithe grin. And as for the boyfriends – forget it. He wouldn’t have cared a fig what they thought or felt about it. It was like it was all a big game to him: if they couldn’t hang on to their girlfriends, then that was their look-out, you know? If he saw an opportunity to sneak in and raid the hen-house, it was almost like he saw it as his duty to do so. He loved a challenge; he liked taking risks anddidn’t seem to care a toss