Kissed a Sad Goodbye

by Deborah Crombie

  “You bastard! No one’s accused me of anything. If anyone should be suspected of murdering Annabelle, it’s you. Everything that happened that night started with you and the things you told Harry. It was you Annabelle was furious with—” Reg lunged at him.

  William and Sir Peter started to their feet, but Jo was already up and shouting, “Stop it, both of you! You’re like two jealous dogs fighting over a bone, and she’s dead, goddamn it! Just leave it alone—”

  “That’s enough, all of you.” The others turned to look at Sir Peter. Martin had stayed in his seat, but his color was high; Reg was white and shaking with fury; tears streaked Jo’s face. “This is difficult enough for everyone without indulging in this sort of histrionics,” Sir Peter continued, loudly and firmly. “And Martin, I don’t believe making unfounded allegations about my son benefits anyone.”

  Lowell nodded but didn’t apologize. Reg had opened his mouth as if he meant to defend himself, when his father cut him off. “Reg, you and Teresa are both under consideration for this position. You may vote your shares now, but you’re aware your percentages are too insignificant to affect the outcome—”

  “Then why bother?” Reg’s face was still pinched with anger.

  “As you wish,” Sir Peter said smoothly. “But in that case, I think it would be best if you both left the room until we can come to a decision. Why don’t you wait for us in your office.”

  Teresa stood up, catching sight of the grief and shock etched on William’s face as she did so. A wave of weakness invaded her knees, and she suddenly realized how desperately she wanted out of the room, away from emotions so raw they seemed to rip the air.

  Straightening her spine, she crossed the office with deliberate steps; at the door she turned and waited for Reg.

  He took one last look round the room, as if defying anyone else to speak, then he turned and joined her.

  They walked down the catwalk to his office in silence, and as he shut the door behind them, he said, “It’s a bloody farce—may the best man win and all that. I’m fucked without this job, well and truly fucked—did you know that, darling Teresa?”

  “I don’t want—I never meant to take anything from you,” she said hotly, angry tears smarting behind her eyelids. “You—”

  “Then why wouldn’t you talk to me? You had bloody Fiona ring me to tell me they meant to crucify me—”

  “That had nothing to do with this. It was you—you lied to me about what happened with you and Annabelle that last night. You were furious with her because you found out what she’d done with those other men—and then with me.… You used me to pay her back, didn’t you? Even though she was dead.”

  Reg stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  “You … you made love to me because you knew Annabelle cheated on you, and I was the first thing that came along after …”

  “That’s daft, Teresa. It never even crossed my mind. I wanted you. I wanted someone who wouldn’t turn away—but you did.” Moving a step closer, he said, “You believe them, too, don’t you? You think I killed her.”

  “No, I—”

  Reg grabbed her, his thumbs digging painfully into the soft flesh of her arms. “Don’t bloody lie, Teresa. I can see it on your face. You—”

  The door swung open and Jo exclaimed, “What the—”

  Slowly, Reg let Teresa go. “What’s the verdict, then?” he demanded. “Banishment from the kingdom?”

  “Reg, I’m sorry.” Jo shook her head. “We’re asking Teresa to step in as acting director.”

  He gave a strangled laugh that was almost a sob. “Not you, too, Jo?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jo repeated. “It’s not because I think you murdered Annabelle—I don’t believe that. But I think it’s the best thing for the company. You’re out of control, Reg. You need—”

  “All you Hammonds can go to hell, so just shut up, Jo. Don’t you dare tell me what I need.” He turned away from her, back to Teresa, and his eyes were bright with tears. “They’re right, you know. If anyone can salvage what Annabelle sowed, it’s you—but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the consequences of throwing your lot in with the Hammonds. They’ve a bloody talent for betrayal.”

  JANICE LOOKED UP FROM HER DESK at Kincaid and Gemma conferring in the corridor. There was a tension between them this morning, subtle but evident if one was aware of the signs. If Gemma was trying to juggle the personal and the professional, as Janice now strongly suspected, she didn’t envy her the task—although she supposed that even if Kincaid was a bit of a prat sometimes, he was not bad as far as men went.

  Of course, everyone’s frustration level was running high—it had been six days since they’d found Annabelle Hammond’s body, and they weren’t much further forward. So far, forensics had not turned up anything of significance in either Annabelle’s flat or her car, and they were still processing the samples from the warehouse.

  Kincaid had had another meeting with his chief superintendent that morning, and Janice knew the brass was pressuring him to come up with something. She still had her money on Mortimer—he was the obvious suspect with the clearest motive—but they’d not been able to put together enough evidence to justify searching his flat. It was too bad—

  Her phone rang. She picked it up quickly, reaching for a cigarette. A distressed female voice asked for Sergeant James, and cupping her hand over the mouthpiece, Janice called out, “Gemma! Phone.”

  Coming into the office, Gemma took the receiver and sat on the edge of the desk, listening. “Right,” she said. “We’ll try the flat first. We’re on our way.” She passed the phone back. “That was Teresa Robbins. She says Reg Mortimer left Hammond’s after the board meeting this morning, and he seemed so upset and irrational she’s worried for his safety.”

  REG MORTIMER ANSWERED THE DOOR ON the first ring, holding it open for them without speaking. Kincaid thought his face looked blotchy, as if he’d been weeping, and as they followed him into the sitting room he wiped the back of his hand across his nose.

  “Teresa rang us,” said Gemma. “She was concerned about you.”

  “How magnanimous of her.” He stood with his back to them, looking out the window at the river, gray under the scudding clouds.

  In the few days since they had last seen it, the flat seemed to Kincaid to have acquired an aura of neglect. A fine coating of dust lay on the furniture, in the kitchen he could see dirty dishes piled in the sink, and the warm room held the faint smell of spoiled food.

  Nor had Mortimer fared well. His clothes looked wilted, his skin was sallow, and his once-shiny chestnut hair seemed lank and lifeless.

  When he didn’t face them again, Gemma said to his back, “Can you tell us what happened at the meeting this morning, Mr. Mortimer?”

  “They made Teresa managing director, with encouragement from Martin Lowell. You’d think he might have displayed a bit of solidarity, the two of us having been through the same war, so to speak.”

  “Surely she’s capable—”

  “Of course she’s capable,” Mortimer said impatiently. “And deserving. It’s not that.”

  “Then what’s the problem? You worked happily enough for Annabelle—why not Teresa?”

  “No.” Mortimer’s voice sharpened as he turned round at last. “You don’t understand. I needed that promotion. There’s a big jump in salary. With Annabelle gone, it was the only way I could keep the vultures at bay a bit longer—that, and the hope that in that position, I could’ve salvaged the deal—” He broke off abruptly.

  “What vultures?” Kincaid asked.

  Reg stretched his lips in a smile. “I’m afraid I got in a bit over my head.”

  Kincaid nodded towards the canvases on the walls. “The paintings?”

  “Very perceptive,” Reg acknowledged. “Yes, among other things. Managing cash flow has never been my strong suit, and I was counting on a rather large sum that never … materialized.”

  “I think you had better s
it down and tell us about this deal.” Kincaid gestured towards the sofa.

  Reg Mortimer came round and slumped onto the white cotton cushions, putting his head in his hands as if his exhaustion had finally overwhelmed him. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Nothing does, much,” he said through his splayed fingers. Then he dropped his hands to his lap and looked up at Kincaid and Gemma.

  “It was a commission—a sort of finder’s fee, I suppose you might call it. We came to the conclusion quite some time ago—Annabelle and Teresa and I—that the only way to keep Hammond’s solvent was to sell the physical plant and use the proceeds to move the business downriver into more modern and cost-efficient premises.

  “I knew a chap—a developer—who would pay any price for the property … if Annabelle could be persuaded to go against her father’s wishes. So I brought them together.”

  “Hence the commission,” Kincaid said, thinking aloud. “Paid only if the sale was completed?”

  Mortimer nodded. “But that wasn’t the only catch. The deal was only feasible if we could get a majority of the shareholders to vote against William, and the only way Annabelle would agree to move against her father was if she were convinced that the warehouse itself would be saved as an integral part of the development. She thought it might mollify William, make him feel that Hammond’s still had its place in posterity.”

  “This developer …,” said Gemma. “It was Lewis Finch, wasn’t it?”

  As Mortimer nodded again, Kincaid frowned. “You said, ‘If Annabelle were convinced.’ Was that not the plan, then—to incorporate the existing building into the new structure? I thought Lewis Finch had a reputation for doing just that.”

  “He does. But he didn’t intend it in this case. Something about ‘structural flaws in the warehouse.’ But Lewis and I agreed not to tell Annabelle, hoping she wouldn’t insist on having a preservation clause written into the contract.”

  “What did you think would happen when Annabelle found out?” Gemma sounded incensed. “You were engaged to be married, and you were colluding against her.”

  “I was desperate. And I suppose I thought that once the deal had gone through, it wouldn’t matter so much—that perhaps William would have come to see reason.”

  Kincaid thought he’d begun to see where this was leading. “And then you learned that Annabelle was no stranger to lies and betrayals. What happened that night, after you found out about Annabelle and Martin Lowell?”

  “We were arguing when we left Jo’s. One thing led to another. I said that if she would do such a thing to her own sister, and if she’d kept that from me, what else had she done?”

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t know what got into me that night. I’ve always hated jealousy—thought it was uncivilized. But she’d been pushing me away for months, refusing to talk about our wedding, making excuses not to stay with me … and suddenly it all seemed to make sense. I accused her of … things. Whatever came into my head. And then I thought of Lewis Finch, and of all those ‘business’ meetings she’d claimed they’d had. I accused her of sleeping with him. I said … I said Lowell was right, she was no better than a whore, sleeping with Finch to get what she wanted.”

  “What happened then?” Gemma asked softly.

  “She laughed. She stood there and laughed at me. She said I didn’t know the half of it … that it had cost her his son, and that she’d only learned too late what it meant to really love someone. I yelled at her, said it had cost her more than that—served her bloody right, too—and then I told her what Lewis meant to do. The instant those words left my mouth, I knew I’d gone too far—queered everything—and I said I hadn’t meant it. We had an appointment with my father the next morning, to put the plan to him, and we were supposed to have talked to Jo after the party that night. I thought we could smooth it over, somehow, go on with things.… But she went very quiet, like she was listening to something … then she laughed again. ‘The gods have given me a sign, Reg. So sod off,’ she told me. I argued—begged her, even—until finally she said she’d meet me at the pub.”

  “And you walked away,” said Gemma.

  “Yes. And the terrible irony is that I didn’t know—I never knew, until you told me—that Lewis Finch’s son was the busker in the tunnel.”

  L EWIS FIRST SAW I RENE B URNE -J ONES ON a July evening in 1942, when Edwina sent him in the pony trap to fetch her from the station. Irene was actually her second cousin, Edwina told him, her husband’s brother’s granddaughter, but always one for simplifying, Edwina merely referred to the girl as her niece. Her family’s house in Kilburn had taken a direct hit from a stray bomb, and Irene would be staying with them while her parents sorted things out.

  This information Lewis absorbed with some trepidation. William was away, having been allowed to visit his parents for a few weeks now that the bombing had lessened considerably, and as Lewis missed his company he thought it might be nice to have someone about for the short term—but on the other hand, he wasn’t sure he could imagine a girl fitting in with their usual summer routine of walks and bathing and fruit-picking. His intimate knowledge of girls was based on his sister, and Cath had never shown the least inclination to do the sorts of things boys did.

  He had hardly recognized his sister when he’d gone home to the Island for a visit in April, his first in more than two years. Cath had got a job in a shell-making factory, and she looked an alien creature when she came home in her bright-colored overall and turban; then within a few minutes she was gone again in a cloud of scent and the click of high heels. Whenever her name was mentioned, Lewis saw a look pass between his parents, and once or twice when he walked into the room, he’d had the feeling he’d interrupted a discussion.

  But Lewis had been much more interested in roaming the neighborhood, trying to adjust to the sight of piles of rubble, or cleared, weed-covered lots where his house and the homes of his mates had stood. It had made him feel quite odd and hollow, and at the end of a week he’d felt a secret bit of relief at the thought of returning to Surrey.

  A snort from Zeus brought his attention back to the road, and he tightened up the reins automatically, clucking to the horse soothingly. John Pebbles had taught him that, and the memory reminded him, as did so many things, of how much he missed his friend.

  In the spring of 1941, John, against the pleas of both his wife and Edwina, had joined up, and was now serving as a sergeant with the 8th Army in North Africa. Lewis had taken over many of his jobs by default. The care of the horses had become solely his responsibility, as William was rather frightened of them, and as William was not mechanically inclined, Lewis maintained the seldom-used automobiles. But he and William tended the garden and chopped firewood together, and they helped Edwina with other tasks round the house and the estate to the best of their ability, as there was no one else.

  To Lewis, it seemed as if the war had gone on forever. He could hardly recall the days before rationing, and even the enormous portions of meat Cook had fed him when he first arrived at the Hall were now a dim memory. They were still luckier than some, he supposed, with their garden, and in the winter of ’41 Edwina had bought pigs and chickens, so that they had at least an unlimited supply of fresh eggs and the occasional rasher of bacon. Of course, the feeding and care of the animals had fallen on Lewis’s head as well, but he didn’t really mind except for the slaughtering of the pigs, with whom he was inclined to make friends.

  Did girls like pigs? he thought, and then he wondered what on earth he would say to her on the ride back from the station. A glance at the angle of the sun told him that it was later than he’d thought, and he clucked again at Zeus to hurry him up. Edwina would have his hide if he daydreamed along until he was late.

  • • •

  S HE STOOD ON THE PLATFORM BESIDE an enormous suitcase. Lewis looked up and down to be sure, but there was no one else, and he breathed an inward sigh of relief. The girl looked about his own age, and seemed quite ordinary and not as frighten
ing as he’d expected. She wore a red and white gingham dress with socks and sandals, and had hair the color of old pennies pulled back in a neat plait, but the best thing was that when she saw him looking at her uncertainly, she smiled and waved.

  “Are you Lewis?” she said when he reached her. “Aunt Edwina said you’d meet me. I’m Irene.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” Lewis picked up her bulky suitcase and maneuvered it into the back of the trap. “What have you got in here? Stones?”

  Irene gave him her warm smile again and jumped up into the trap unassisted. “Just about everything I own, or at least everything we could salvage from the wreckage. And I didn’t mind that you were late, except I was trying to think what I’d do if you didn’t come at all. I’ve never tried hitchhiking, and I didn’t know if anyone would be brave enough to pick me up with this monster of a suitcase.”

  Lewis glanced at her, surprised. He and William had never quite got up the nerve to try hitchhiking. “You could have telephoned,” he pointed out. “There’s a call box just next to the platform. This isn’t exactly the wilds of Africa, you know.”

  “How old are you?” Irene asked, apparently unperturbed by his sarcasm.

  “Fourteen in January,” he answered, sitting up a bit straighter as he backed up Zeus and got them started in the opposite direction.

  “I’ll be fourteen the week before Christmas. So I’m older than you.” Irene’s triumphant grin was so infectious he couldn’t help smiling back.

  It was a perfect July evening, the air still soft and smelling of newly mown hay. The road ran through leafy, light-dappled tunnels, and there was little sound expect for birdsong and the soothing clip-clop of the horse’s hooves.

  “How far is it to the house?” asked Irene when they’d ridden in silence for a bit.

  “A couple of miles. It will take us about three-quarters of an hour.” Lewis suddenly remembered how great the distances had seemed to him when he’d first come to the country, and how he hadn’t been able to imagine a stretch of road without a house or shop in sight.