“Oh God.” Suddenly so many things click into focus. April’s frequent red-eye essays, her seemingly superhuman ability to act all week and then study all night. Hannah remembers her own complaints about her essay, April holding out her hand, two pills in her palm, Hannah’s puzzled What are they—like, NoDoz or something? And the way April laughed, and said dryly, NoDoz for grown-ups.
“What do they look like?” she asks Geraint, and he googles for a moment and then holds out his phone. Hannah’s heart sinks. It’s them. It’s the capsules filled with little beads that April offered her so long ago.
“I knew she was taking those,” she says. “I just didn’t know what they were. But—that doesn’t have anything to do with her death, does it?”
November shakes her head.
“I don’t think so. I assume that’s why it never came out at the trial. The pregnancy stuff, though… I mean, I’m surprised Neville’s defense lawyer never brought it up.”
“I think they thought it was too risky,” Geraint says. “I mean, they had a good shot with reasonable doubt—there wasn’t anything concrete to tie him to April’s death apart from having been seen coming out of the building around the time she was killed. But he did badly in the witness box.”
Hannah nods. She remembers hearing about this. First, Neville had denied being in the room at all—had claimed that he had simply been checking something in the building. But halfway through cross-examination he’d become flustered and changed his story—confronted with fingerprints on the inside doorknob, he had abruptly admitted that he had been in the room. But he said that he had simply been bringing up the weekly parcel from Hannah’s mum, and that April had let him in. He claimed they’d had a pleasant chat, which Hannah found implausible in itself, and that he had left her alive and well just a few minutes later.
That had sealed his fate. By John Neville’s account, he had seen April alive at 11:00 p.m. Hannah and Hugh had discovered her dead body just a few minutes later—and they’d had a clear view of the entrance for the whole time. There had been absolutely no opportunity for anyone else to enter staircase 7. It was Neville, or no one.
Or… was it?
Hannah is frowning, trying to puzzle something out, when she realizes Geraint is speaking again.
“The thing is, being devil’s advocate for a moment,” he is saying, “even if April was pregnant, it’s hard to see what that’s got to do with the case. It’s not Victorian England. No one was going to force anyone into a shotgun marriage. There’s the sexual jealousy angle”—he shoots Hannah an apologetic look, knowing that he is tacitly pointing the finger at Will here—“strangulation typically points to a domestic murder, usually a crime of passion—but April’s boyfriend was never in the picture, he was away from college the night of the murder. Pregnancy just isn’t much of a motive.”
“Well, you say that,” November puts in. “But there’s pregnancy and there’s pregnancy. What if it was someone who couldn’t afford to be found sleeping with a student? Someone whose job or marriage might be at stake?”
“You mean a member of staff?” Geraint asks. November shrugs and Geraint looks intrigued. “It’s certainly a possibility,” he says.
“Oh my God,” Hannah says. Her hands have gone suddenly cold. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Geraint asks, and then frowns. “Are you all right, Hannah?”
Hannah shakes her head, but she’s not sure if she means I’m not all right, or That doesn’t matter right now. She knows her face has gone pale, and from Geraint’s expression she can tell that she must look as stricken as she feels.
“Dr. Myers,” she whispers, more to herself than to them.
“Who?” November says. Geraint is frowning.
“That tutor who lived on your stairwell?”
“Yes.” Hannah’s heart has started pounding, sickeningly hard. She feels unutterably stupid. She cannot believe this never occurred to her before. “Yes. Oh my God, he’s the one person who could have accessed April’s room between Neville leaving and me and Hugh arriving. He wouldn’t have needed to enter the building, he was already there.”
“But are you saying—” Geraint frowns, and then starts again. “He couldn’t have got April pregnant, surely? He wasn’t even her tutor.”
“No, he was mine—but April knew him. She went to a party he threw. He had this reputation.” Hannah feels sick. There is a buzzing in her ears. “He used to invite students—female students—out for drinks. They were all April’s type, very beautiful, very—”