Who Killed Mr. Garland's Mistress?

by Forrest, Richard;

“That? That’s my Beethoven sweatshirt.”

  “God, with that hair I thought it was a self-portrait.”

  “Listen, Gussie Moran, I wouldn’t talk.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A girl who let her lace panties show.”

  “Mine aren’t lace, they’re nylon.”

  “Even worse.”

  The other couple finished their set, waved, and started off down the path. The children jumped up and ran onto the court.

  “Hey, doubles,” little Rob yelled.

  “You know what time it is?” Will said.

  “Oliver’s having his afternoon constitutional,” she replied. “I think he does that for us on purpose.”

  “Let’s not disappoint him.” Will stood and pulled her to her feet. “You kids go ahead and play without us.”

  As they started back to the cottage, hand in hand, they heard faint murmurings of disappointment from the children which quickly faded with the whack of the tennis ball.

  “You know, Tavie,” Will said. “I think I’m happy. Now, that’s something that should never be articulated. The gods hear and it greatly angers them. The next thing you know, swoop, the Furies descend.”

  She put her arm around his waist as they walked. “You big jerk, you’ve been unhappy so long, you’re scared to death of anything good coming along.”

  In the dim bedroom they removed their clothes with urgency. Still standing, Will grabbed her, and she felt his passion rising with her own. As they fell to the bed, one of the old wooden bed slats gave way, and the mattress tilted forward toward the floor. They lay entwined together as they slowly slid down the inclined bed, under the headboard, to the wall.

  “This isn’t in the marriage manuals,” Will said.

  She looked up at their feet now inclined at a forty-five-degree angle above their heads. “There ought to be something we can do with it,” she answered.

  “You got me. I’m a get-around-the-floorshift-in-a-car man, myself.”

  “You’re lousy in cars.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I gave a girl Spanish fly, and while buying a pack of Trojans, she screwed herself to death on the gearbox of my Ferrari.”

  “You never had a Ferrari.”

  “O.K,” he said. “On three. One, two, three.” Laughing, they scrambled over the side of the bed, Will knocked the other slats off, and the whole mattress fell to the floor. She jumped over the side of the bed and bounced up and down on the mattress.

  “Catch me if you can,” she said.

  He stepped over the side of the bed and reached for her. They lay down on the mattress to consume each other with hurried and urgent love.

  She must have dozed, and as consciousness returned she felt him at her side. Out the window, trees swayed gently, and in the distance she could hear the ferry’s whistle as it approached the landing. It was all the same—nothing had changed. She turned and put her arms around Will.

  He opened his eyes. “Not again.”

  “No. I just wanted to talk.”

  “So talk.”

  “Do you think we’ll make a lot of money from the book?”

  “I knew if I scratched hard enough I’d find a mercenary broad around here. Money? I don’t know, it’s an interesting study, it ought to sell moderately well. Hell, who knows, two murders for the price of one.”

  “Have you talked to Captain Hubert yet?”

  “Big Hugh. Sure. He’s always cooperative.”

  “Did I ever tell you that the last time he questioned me, he made an innuendo that I’d been in it with Rob?”

  “I know. He told me about that.”

  “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I did it myself. Bet you never thought of that?”

  Will laughed. “Remember the first time we met? You asked me a question about Helen. Was she capable of it, you asked. I said she was. And she was. Are you capable of it—no. There’s not a doubt in my mind. And, if there was, well, the last time I looked, which was about ten seconds ago, you were still a woman—the evidence makes it highly unlikely that you were capable of …”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “All right, you’re sure.”

  “Sure. And after talking to your nutty husband—he is capable.”

  “What’ll happen to Rob?”

  “When the doctors think he’s rational, he’ll be released to the court. They may or may not try him. If he’s in there several years they’ll probably drop it.”

  Tavie thought about several years. How long was several? Three, five, or more? Well, there’d be time enough to face that when it arose.

  “Listen, Tavie,” Will said. “You are sure about this book?”

  “It’s too much a part of our life, let’s get it over with.”

  “O.K.”

  Tavie climbed over the bed railing and began to dress. “You nap. I want to get things lined up for dinner. I’m going to serve you and Sir Oliver one fine meal.”

  “Satiated, I await your call.” Will smiled and turned over.

  The day before, in town, she had purchased a large, succulent-looking piece of London broil, and had decided to cook it with red wine. They had converted the small cottage dining room into a combination study for Will and temporary storage area. What she wanted would probably be in one of the cartons stacked against the wall.

  The first two cartons she opened contained Will’s books. Piled next to the books was his fishing equipment and gun case. Her hand tentatively brushed across the leather of the gun case and quickly withdrew. The desk facing the window overlooked the bay. Not too unlike her old desk, she thought. His old, upright typewriter and tape recorder stood neatly aligned near the window.

  She sat at the desk. The wind had died in the bay. The racing sailboats sat ducklike, with slack sails in the calm water. It would soon be a year since she had sat in the house a few yards from here, fingers poised over the typewriter, listening to Helen’s voice on the cassette.

  Helen’s tapes were burned and Helen was gone. It was her voice on these tapes. She had triumphed, won, and prevailed. She smiled.

  In the distance she saw Oliver on the cliff; he walked, stopped and looked across the water. Upstairs, a man who loved her dozed. She was back in the place she loved. The circle was complete.

  Will was reducing his notes to file cards, and she picked up the neatly stacked pile and rifled through them. She noted that they were arranged in chronological order, with brief notes that related to other portions of his research. The last card of the stack had her name in caps and she read it with curiosity.

  TAVIE—Day after Helen’s Murder—9/19/72

  1. Rob lv for wk—See Con Cas file

  2. Bys dog (a pencil note)? Wrong sequence chk with Tav

  3. Call from me

  4. Call from J Warren—See JW file.

  Wrong sequence—check with Tavie. What did that mean? She thought back to that morning. The card was right, that was the correct sequence. Rob went to work, the children to school, and she’d called about buying the dog. When she came back with the dog she called Will and he’d told her about Helen.

  He had been a fine dog, she thought. He was all that the breeder had said he would be. Loyal, good with children, and quite a watchdog. His only problem had been his mammoth size in a suburban home. Gas men and telephone men had been frightened to death of him, and he was too large for the children to walk. The children had been awfully upset when she’d given him away, but they finally accepted the fact that he’d be happier out in the country where he could roam.

  She knew why the sequence was wrong.

  There was no way for her to know of Helen’s death until she talked to Will, and yet she’d told several people that she’d bought the dog for protection—because of Helen’s death.

  She put a blank file card in the typewriter and retyped the notes exactly as he had them, but changing the order to put the buying of the dog last. The file card, with Will’s note, she ripped in several pieces and stuffed in her je
an’s pocket. She realized that the file cards were only a distillation of his other research. Tavie—day after. Where would that come from? The tape. Was it this week or last that they’d recorded that particular sequence?

  The cassettes were all neatly labeled in a desk drawer. She picked out the one entitled, “Tavie—day after”, and inserted it into the small recorder.

  Her own voice rang out across the room, she shivered, and turned the machine off. She found earphones in the desk, inserted them into the machine, and pressed the play button.

  Octavia Garland’s voice issued from the cassette in a drone with an occasional nervous laugh. Tavie felt herself immersed in something she didn’t understand, and pressed the stop button of the recorder. Her hands were shaking. She looked at the small machine, and the black plastic took on a life and personality of its own. The circle. She put her hands against her head and wanted to scream.

  No. There was enough Maggie left to do what had to be done. She pressed the fast forward button and ran the tape toward the end. She turned the play button and listened to herself again. It seemed an interminable time until she heard Will’s voice ask, “Now, tell me what you did the next morning.”

  She stopped the machine and tried to remember the mechanics of erasure. All you had to do was record right over the old material, that erased the old, and insert the new in its place. It couldn’t be easier. She’d listen to that portion already on tape, time it, try to remember her exact words and repeat the same material, merely changing the dog sequence. It was perfect.

  She listened, rewound to Will’s opening, and inserted the microphone into the recorder. She thought a moment, and then began to speak into the microphone.

  One of Will’s hands closed over hers and the other shut off the machine. “What are you doing?”

  “You startled me. I didn’t hear you come downstairs.”

  “My bare piggly-wigglies. What’re you doing, Tavie?”

  “Oh, I came in here to get a cooking utensil and stopped to look through your note cards. You had a note that said check with Tavie. So I checked with myself and corrected it.”

  “I thought I heard the typewriter.”

  “It was a minor thing, but I know you’re a fiend for accuracy.”

  “You changed the card and were going to change the tape.”

  “I guess I needn’t have bothered about the tape.”

  “No, the card’s the important one.”

  She began to rummage through a carton until she found what she wanted, and went into the kitchen. Will sat at the desk and looked across the bay.

  They were going to have one of Will’s favorite meals. London broil cooked on the barbecue, salad with heavy Roquefort dressing, and mushrooms with sour cream. Tavie was outside pouring starter fluid on the charcoal briquettes with Oliver sitting near her on a lawn chair. From the kitchen she could hear Will and the children. The salad was his specialty, and he had two pairs of helping hands. She expected that the children, who were presently shaving the cucumbers, would eat more than ended up in the salad.

  She put a match to the briquettes and stepped back as the fire blazed up. Picking up a cocktail from the picnic table, she took a sip and turned to Oliver.

  “You know, we’ve really got to do something about Will.”

  “How’s that?” Oliver said.

  “These pink ladies are coming out of my ears.”

  “I know, a Tom Collins would be a nice change of pace.”

  “Somewhere during our relationship he got the idea I loved pink ladies. Now, I swear, I think he’d serve them to me for breakfast if I’d let him.”

  “Don’t belittle it, Octavia. Relish each and every one.”

  She laughed. “I guess I will. Oliver, when Will was a student of yours, was he a good one?”

  “One of the best. I had great hopes for him. I always felt he had a natural talent. After the breakup of his marriage, he could never seem to concentrate on any sustained work.”

  “But he worked at the newspaper all those years.”

  “And did the job half-drunk during those years. He’s healthier now than I’ve seen him since his student days. You’re good for him, Octavia.”

  “He’s good for me.”

  “Need anything out there?” Will called.

  “Yes, bring me the red wine from the cupboard,” she answered.

  Will and the children came out of the house carrying piled-high salad bowls. Little Rob gave her the wine.

  “I’m hungry,” Karen said.

  “It won’t be long now.” Tavie put the meat on the grill and filled the hypodermic syringe with red wine while Will poured himself a cocktail and sat in a chair next to Oliver.

  “What’s with the syringe?” Will asked.

  “My special secret,” she replied. “You fill it with wine, thusly, press it into the meat, thusly, and voila, permeated meat.”

  “Another quaint custom gleaned from island natives,” Will said.

  “I learned it years ago, does wonders for meat flavoring.”

  Will tilted his chair back on two legs. “I was looking at that stuff you were fooling around with this afternoon. Why did you buy that dog?”

  She turned the meat over slowly with a large grill fork. “For protection, silly.” She turned back to him. “You know, in September when we return to Hartford, we should get another dog. The kids just loved Neal. This time a small variety. Real small.”

  “When are you two going to get married?” Oliver asked.

  “Eugene Gordon tells me the divorce will be final in September. You’ll have to stay here as chaperone, Oliver; Otherwise we’ll scandalize the island,” Tavie smiled.

  “For protection from Helen?” Will asked.

  “My home is in a secluded area, many of my neighbors bought watch dogs after the killing,” Oliver said.

  “Then protection because of Helen’s death,” Will said.

  “Yes. If you remember, at first they said it was a sex crime. Rob was traveling a lot at the time, and I didn’t like being left alone.”

  “But Jack Warren told you Rob was arrested. If you bought the dog after that …”

  Tavie laughed. “You’re being silly.” She poured a few drops of her drink on the top of his head, but he didn’t smile. “I don’t remember exactly—that was a trying time for me, in a lot of ways.”

  “I know. Tavie, afterwards when you came to my apartment, you had scratches.”

  “From that beast Neal.”

  She refilled the syringe with wine and went over to the grill. “Are you reneging on me, you lummox? You told me just this afternoon that I wasn’t capable.” She jabbed the needle deeply into the meat. “That Helen was capable, oh yes, Helen was.” She jabbed the meat again. “That Rob was capable.” Gripping the needle tightly in the palm of her hand, she stabbed the meat again. “They were capable … but I wasn’t. You said I wasn’t!”

  Tavie turned to the two men. Will was standing, the lawn chair on its back behind him. They looked at each other, and then his eyes moved downward to the hypodermic syringe still clutched in her hand. It dribbled droplets of red onto the grass.

  The hypodermic dropped to the grass between them, and his eyes never left it. Tavie started to run. She ran past the partially framed house, and through the bushes onto a strawberry hill. Her chest heaved and a faint cry seemed to come from someone else.

  In the deserted naval base, voices called from gaping windows. A thousand gray men surrounded her and she pushed through them. Drums rolled on the parade ground and then changed to distant thunder.

  She held onto a small branch and scrambled down the short cliff to the small cove. The branch broke in her hand and she fell, to roll over and lie face down in the sand. The heaving began to subside and her cry was muffled. Slowly, she got to her feet and walked along the beach.

  Light from a low, red sun splayed across the smooth water. Tavie sat near the water’s edge and pulled her knees up to her chin. Tiny waves reache
d the edge of her toes. She heard the sound of small pebbles being scattered behind her as someone climbed down the cliff, and then the crunch of footsteps, and finally his heavy breathing as he stood near her.

  “I thought you’d be here,” Will said.

  “There was no place else to go. I suppose that’s a problem with islands.”

  He sat next to her and their knees touched. They were silent as the sun disappeared and shadows lengthened over the water. In the distance a fishing boat moved toward the sea, too far away for engine sounds to reach them.

  “It was you,” Will said.

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Her voice was low, almost inaudible.

  “No, I guess not. You zonked me that night.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was one hell of a hangover. My gun too.”

  “Yes. Do you like it here at the cove? I thought that perhaps tomorrow we could bring a picnic.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “We’ll give up writing about it. We’ll forget about them, both of them. They didn’t deserve to live.”

  “I guess not.” He stood up and kissed her on top of the head.

  She heard him slowly walk back to the cliff, climb up, and then he was gone. The water before her shimmered as a cool breeze came in from the sea, and she hugged her knees tightly.

  The boom of the shotgun rolled over the island and faded across the water.

  With Will gone, Tavie began to think about Oliver—and how Oliver couldn’t swim—for there was always an answer if you thought about it long enough.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Richard Forrest (1932–2005) was an American mystery author. Born in New Jersey, he served in the US Army, wrote plays, and sold insurance before he began writing mystery fiction. His debut, Who Killed Mr. Garland’s Mistress (1974), was an Edgar Award finalist. He remains best known for his ten novels starring Lyon and Bea Wentworth, a husband-and-wife sleuthing team introduced in A Child’s Garden of Death (1975).

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