Amber was plain from the start of the interview. Unasked, she took a high moral tone. âI always thought it was wrong her going clubbing. I said so often enough to Ben, but he wouldnât see it my way. She had a year-old baby at home, for Godâs sake. I mean, never mind the ins and outs of whether anyone
ought
to get pregnant at just seventeen, she did and sheâd got the baby and she ought to have got a better sense of responsibility, donât you think?â
Neither Barry nor Lynn had the least intention of saying what they thought and Barry believed in never stopping a possible witness when in full flood.
âI know you shouldnât speak ill of the dead, but thereâs nothing Iâm saying I hadnât said to her face. I believe in speaking my mind. Those parents of hersâwell, her dad. He acted like he was broken-hearted when she told them she was pregnant. He didnât even like Brand. Iâm not saying her and himâd have been unkind to him, but would you leave your baby boy with people who didnât care for him? To go clubbing? And it wasnât just once in a blue moon, it was every week. But everything goes right for some people, doesnât it? You have to admit. I mean, getting the offer of a flat to live in! In London! I should be so lucky. Iâd just love to live away from home. Me and Benâd move in together if we could get a place, but not a hope. Not for years and years with prices the way they are.â
Finding a brief second or two of silence in which to intervene, Lynn asked her to tell them about the evening in question.
âWhatâs to tell? Ben picked me up and we went to Bling-Bling. She came after around half an hour or a bit after that. She was later than normal, I donât know why. We all three left together, which actually I never liked. I mean, Ben might have been her friend but heâs my
boy
friend and you donât want a third person there with her ears on stalks when youâre saying good night, do you?â
âWhat time was that?â
âMaybe one-fifteen, one-twenty. Itâs no distanceâwell, you can see. Iâd walk it but not at that hour, no thanks. Besides, why leave those two together? I had to for the drive to Brimhurst, but I didnât like it, I can tell you. Actually, I may as well be honest with you, I couldnât wait for her to move into that place of the Hillands.â
âShe died before she could do that,â said Barry and if there was admonition in his tone he didnât care. The interview left him with a strong feeling that the motive for Amber Marshalsonâs murder had something to do with the Crenthorne Heath flat.
Wexford, alone in his office, was having much the same idea. He had phoned Vivien Hilland and in the light of what he had learned of the road crash on June 24 , asked her when the offer of the flat was first made.
âI donât know exactly when. But wait a minuteâyes, I do. It was some time in June, two or three weeks before Amberâs birthday. Amber was going to be eighteen in July. You know how these days they must have a party when theyâre eighteen and probably another when theyâre twenty-one. Weâd been talking about it and then my husband came in and whispered something. I went out of the room with him and he said to me, why not offer her the flat when Mr. and Mrs. Klein go in October. Well, I went straight back in there and made the offer and she was absolutely ecstatic, said I couldnât have given her a better birthday present.â
âWhen was her birthday, Mrs. Hilland?â
âLet me see. July the first, I think. No, July the second.â
âSo your conversation about the flat was mid-June?â
âIt must have been.â
âBefore the car accident Amber was involved in?â
Light dawned. âOh, yes, of course! It was about a week before.â
So was the attempt to kill her on June
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