‘You’ve got my attention.’
‘It’s a question of how to put it. We linguists sometimes get tongue-tied, you’d be surprised to hear. D’you play golf, Mr Hardy?’
I shook my head.
‘There’s a phrase-paralysis by analysis-when you think about technique so much you can’t actually hit the ball. What I’m talking about is similar. I’ll just have to stumble through it. I might say I want you to find out who murdered my father, but I think I know who. What I really want is to find out how she did it and make her pay.’
2
She might have had trouble getting started, but she’d rehearsed her story well and got it up and running smoothly. Frederick Farmer had been a successful real estate agent with offices in the western and southern suburbs, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra. In his mid-fifties he’d sold out to one of the big franchises for several million dollars and spent the next fifteen years dabbling in the stock exchange and at his hobbies-gardening, fishing and golf. Elizabeth was his only child. His wife had died ten years ago and three years later Farmer, aged sixty-five, had married Matilda Sharpe-Tarleton, a divorcee twenty-five years younger than himself.
‘She calls herself Tilly,’ Elizabeth Farmer said. ‘That ought to tell you something. She’s about two years younger than me. Can you see me calling myself Lizzie?’
I could in fact. She was smooth-skinned and now that she was animated she looked younger and full of energy. I didn’t say anything because a reply wasn’t invited.
‘She married him for his money and led him a merry dance.’ ‘In what way?’
‘Tried to make him do things he was past doing- overseas trips, gym workouts, golf pro-ams. She even talked him into opening up another real estate agency when he swore he’d done with all that. She’s running it now with all his capital behind her and doing very well. I know what you’re going to say.’