“Do you know why I’m here?”
She avoided his eyes. “Yes, I know. God, I’m so dumb. Mona knew. She realized you didn’t want me to identify that man in the picture. You just wanted my fingerprints, didn’t you?” She began blinking back tears and withdrew a damp handkerchief from her pocket. “Who was he? The man in the picture? Not that it matters. I’m just curious.”
“My partner, Ollie Schantz,” McGuire said. “It was taken on his honeymoon. He’s the one who figured out what happened.”
She looked directly at him for the first time since he had sat down. “Everything?”
“Enough. We know you killed Jennifer. Out of anger or frustration.”
“Try humiliation.”
“Whatever. I’m no lawyer, but I would say the charge is more likely to be manslaughter than murder.”
She shook her head sadly. “Do you know, I actually persuaded myself that I had gotten away with it? Me, this little mouse.” She laughed dryly. “There were times I wanted to tell the world about it. Look at me, Frances O’Neil. Exschool teacher, ex-librarian, ex-waitress. I killed a woman in the Fens and fooled the entire Boston Police Force.”
“Did Mona know?”
“Of course she knew.” The smile faded and Frances turned back to the harbour view. “Mona knew,” she nodded. “She’s at her lawyer’s now. Or maybe they’ve already left his office for the police station, I don’t know.”
“To turn you in?”
“No, to turn herself in. To explain what . . . why she killed . . . why she pushed Henry Reich down the stairs.”
McGuire sat back abruptly. “Your sister killed Reich?”
She turned to him, her expression almost coy. “So you didn’t know everything after all.”
“I suspected it wasn’t an accident.”
“It practically was. He was so drunk.”
“He knew about it, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
“And he was blackmailing you. To have sex with him.”
Turning her back to him, she answered “yes” in a choked voice. An aircraft passed low overhead, the noise of its engines drowning the sound of her voice. In the silence it left behind she faced him again, with tears flowing freely down her cheeks, and sobbed, “You don’t know what he made me do. He was . . . he was horrible . . . an old man like that. Old enough to be my father. Making me do things down in that cellar and out on the fire escape. Warning me that if I didn’t he would tell the police and I would go to jail.”
“And when Mona found out, she killed him.”
Frances nodded. “I was to meet him in the Fens one evening. That day I broke down completely and told Mona what happened. I was ready to go to the police but Mona said no. She said she could get him to stop, so she went instead. When he pulled up in a cab and got out carrying a case of whisky, she followed him into the apartment building, just to talk to him, to insist that he leave me alone. She was behind him in the corridor, and when he almost stumbled at the top of the stairs, she pushed him.”
“He saw you leaving Jennifer’s apartment the night she died.”
Frances nodded, and McGuire continued.
“You were going down the back stairs carrying Andrew Cornell’s belongings when Henry Reich came out to see what was going on. He thought it was prowlers or addicts shooting up on the fire escape. And somehow he recognized you.”
“He’d been in Pour Richards a few times. I think he fancied Jennifer. He would try to talk to her there. That’s how he remembered me.”
“What were you doing with Andrew Cornell’s belongings?”
She shrugged. “Getting rid of them. Everything. I wanted it all to disappear—his clothes, shoes, jewellery. I didn’t want anyone to know what really happened. Who he really had been. I put everything in plastic garbage bags and was carrying them down the back stairs when Henry Reich came out. He grabbed the bags from me and demanded to know what was in them. I panicked. I dropped them and ran.”
“So he hid them,” McGuire said. “He found the watch later and sold it. Probably burned the rest in the incinerator. And all you left in the apartment were your fingerprints.” McGuire rested his hand on her shoulder. “She was one hell of an actress, wasn’t she?”
Frances studied his hand before placing hers on it lightly. “Do you know what she did?” she asked, leaning to rest her cheek on her shoulder, cushioned by their hands. “She wore elevator shoes to look taller and taped a stone inside one to make her limp. I saw it when I gathered everything together. She had sewn padding inside the sports jacket to conceal her bust. That’s what made Andrew look so muscular. She would stuff cotton in her cheeks and put something on her hands to make the skin feel rougher. She cut her hair short and wore a man’s hairpiece and tinted contact lenses. It must have taken her an hour to make herself up.”
“There were clues all over the place,” McGuire said. Frances watched sadly as he removed his hand from under hers. “Running from the fight with Milburn. Telling Fleckstone she’d prove to him she was a good actress.”
“He was the cause of it.” Frances was staring out at the harbour again. “Fleckstone told her she could never be a convincing actress. She became obsessed with proving him wrong. So she was going to arrive at his office as her brother. I really believe, when she was dressed and made-up as Andrew, I really think she became him. She modelled herself after him so completely. If you had seen her, you would understand. It wasn’t just a woman in men’s clothing, talking like a man, gesturing like a man. She carried herself differently. She became him. And she loved it. She loved fooling the world, even those who knew her. She revelled in it.”
“Tell me what happened the night she died.”
Frances breathed deeply and stared at the base of the stone wall. She swung her feet back and forth, striking the wall with the heels of her shoes: the nervous mannerism of a frightened little girl.
“I was enjoying the walk so much. I even suggested we sit together near the Fens and look at the stars. It was a beautiful night and Andrew . . . Jennifer as Andrew . . . You know, I still think of him, that person I walked with, I still think of him as someone else, another person, somebody who wasn’t Jennifer but was everything she might have been. And she said, in Andrew’s voice, ‘Wait here and I’ll come down with a surprise.’ I was a little frightened, waiting all alone there. There was some traffic on the street but you know the Fens isn’t safe at night. It can be dangerous for a woman alone. So I waited, for almost an hour, watching the lights in the apartment. And finally it was Jennifer who came out. She took my arm. She seemed edgy, nervous. I was confused. Where was Andrew? But she said she had something to say to me and there was someone around, near her apartment, she didn’t want to meet.”
“Milburn,” McGuire offered.
“Is that who? Anyway, we went down into the ravine by the water and under the bridge. I was afraid. I thought she was going to tell me to stay away from Andrew. I kept asking where he was. ‘Where’s Andrew?’ I kept pleading. And then she said, in Andrew’s voice, ‘Right here.’”
McGuire watched her silently, waiting for her to continue. She wiped her eyes with her hands and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
“I thought she was just imitating him,” she began. “I laughed. I said she was being silly. Maybe she was drunk. I could smell alcohol on her breath. I think she had a drink in the apartment while I waited. And I asked where Andrew was again. And then she began limping towards me and I saw that sweet smile on her face like Andy used to have. And, oh my God, I got hysterical. Because I knew what she had done.”
“Did she apologize?”
Frances shook her head angrily. “No, no, no, no. She was proud of it. She taunted me. She laughed and laughed and said, ‘You were ready to kiss me on the way here, weren’t you?’ And she laughed again and said how much she had fooled ever
yone at the bar and how she was going to prove something to Fleckstone. Then she would go back to Pour Richards and tell everyone. Tell them everything, including how she had deceived me. And I was crying and angry because all of my life people have been making a fool of me and using me. I wanted to hurt her. Not kill her. Not really. Just hurt her because she had hurt me. So I picked up a piece of wood. She had her back to me, looking into the water and telling me about her audition with Fleckstone. And while she was talking, I swung it at her head.”
Another aircraft passed overhead, flaps and landing-gear lowered, engines screaming.
“Did you know you had killed her?” McGuire asked.
“I did later. When I struck her, I dropped the wood and ran away, under the bridge. I stood there and cried until there were no tears left. Then I returned and saw she’d fallen in the water and hadn’t moved.”
For the first time, she looked at McGuire with fear in her eyes.
“Honestly, I didn’t mean to kill her. But when I saw she was dead, I picked up the keys from the ground . . .” She froze, looking over McGuire’s shoulder.
He turned to follow her eyes. An unmarked detective car, police cruiser and taxi were rolling slowly around the curve towards them from the direction of the chocolate-brown house.
“Are they for me?” she asked.
McGuire nodded and took her hand in his. “I don’t know how this will turn out,” he said gently. “But it will probably be a relief just to get it all over with.”
Her face, inches from his, began to crumble. Behind him, car doors opened and slammed shut and footsteps walked briskly in their direction. McGuire turned again to see Tim Fox and Bernie Lipson leading two police officers, one male and one female.
McGuire stood and nodded to Fox and Lipson. “See you in a week,” he said as he walked past.
At the detective car he opened the rear door and extended his hand.
Janet Parsons stepped out, a small carry-on bag over her shoulder. Together, she and McGuire walked to the cab while behind them, still seated on the low stone wall, Frances O’Neil watched them silently as Tim Fox read her legal rights and Bernie Lipson fastened her hands behind her back in cuffs.
The last of Fox’s words were lost in the roar of a descending aircraft gliding low overhead, returning to earth reluctantly on extended wings.
About the Author
John Lawrence Reynolds is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction. He has previously written six mystery novels—most recently, Beach Strip—and is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award (for The Man Who Murdered God and Gypsy Sins). His many non-fiction books include Leaving Home, Free Rider (winner of the National Business Book Award), The Naked Investor and Bubbles, Bankers & Bailouts. Shadow People, his bestselling book on secret societies, has been published in sixteen countries. A former president of the Crime Writers of Canada, he lives in Burlington, Ontario. Visit him online at johnlawrencereynolds.com.
Copyright
And Leave Her Lay Dying © 1990 John Lawrence Reynolds
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EPub Edition May 2015 ISBN: 9781443443678
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published by Penguin Books Ltd in 1990. First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this ePub edition in 2015.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are use fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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