Celia arrived without ordering tea for either of us. She put her bag on the empty chair and sat facing me, her hands flat on the table.
“He knew about the money,” she said.
I waited.
“Not every detail. Enough. He had something from a supplier and he kept saying there would be more if anybody looked properly.”
“What did he want?”
“Beth’s arrangements. Where she’d gone. Who was helping. He wanted me to persuade her to speak to him.”
She looked towards the counter, then back at me.
“He said if I helped, there was no reason for it to become a scandal.”
The waiter approached. We ordered. Celia waited until he was gone before continuing.
“I’ve given my account to the police. My solicitor knows. I’m not asking you to solve it.”
“Why ask me here?”
“Because Beth won’t answer me. She’ll answer you.”
I drew my hands back from the table.
“I’m not carrying an apology for you.”
“You could tell her what he was threatening. She thinks I gave him the address because I took his side.”
I thought of the envelope of receipts, the returned coat, the ordinary kindnesses that could not explain away a payment or a death.
“Tell me what you want me to understand.”
She said she had begun using money she intended to replace. Household pressures, an expense she had delayed telling Andrew about, then another. She did not give me an account I could verify, and I did not ask for bank details. She described reimbursements that had not represented the expenditure written beside them.
“I thought if I put it back before anyone needed it—”
She stopped.
“People did need it,” I said.
“I know.”
It was the first time she’d answered that without telling me how much she had done for them.
When Martin confronted her, she believed exposure would take everything: her work, Andrew’s trust, her standing on the street. He offered silence in exchange for information that belonged to somebody else.
“I gave him the old guesthouse details because Beth said she was changing things. I told myself it wouldn’t hurt her.”
“He used them to frighten her.”
“I didn’t know he would.”
I let the silence answer that. She had known enough about why Beth was leaving to help her leave.
Celia pressed her palms harder against the table.
“Then he wanted more. The new place. What she was doing. He said I couldn’t give him useless information and expect him to keep quiet.”
“Did you have the new address?”
“No.”
“And the meeting at the hall?”
She looked down.
“He wanted to talk about the papers. About what he would do next. I wanted him to stop.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said.
I had not asked the question aloud.
“You know I’ve said I tried to help.”
“I know that’s what you’ve told me.”
“You always leave that little space.”
“Because I wasn’t there.”
Our drinks arrived. Celia picked up her cup immediately, found it too hot and put it down again. The small failure seemed to break something. She began crying without covering her face.
I passed her tissues and waited.
After a while she said Andrew knew more now. He was frightened and angry. She had a solicitor, and somebody had encouraged her to seek support for how she was coping. She had not slept properly for weeks.
“Does Andrew know you’re here?” I asked.
“He drove me. He’s waiting round the corner.”
“Then let him take you home.”
She looked at the wet tissue in her hand.
“I haven’t finished.”
When we left, she asked if I would tell Beth she had never wanted Martin to find her.
“You can tell Beth what you intended if she wants contact. I won’t ask her to treat that as undoing what happened.”
Celia nodded, exhausted.
I recorded the conversation afterwards and passed the relevant account to the police. It was Celia’s explanation, not a verified reconstruction of Martin’s demands.
Yet something had become clearer.
He had named a price for silence.
She had tried to pay it with another woman’s life details.