The Young Widow

by Cassandra Chan

  “Well …” began Mira, and then trailed off.

  “Mira!” exclaimed Kitty. “You didn’t!”

  “He’s really rather sweet, Kitty,” said Mira. “And awfully good in bed.”

  Kitty groaned. “You have a genius,” she said, “for choosing losers. Sexually skillful ones, no doubt, but losers nonetheless.”

  “Paul’s not a loser,” said Mira, “just unhappy.”

  “Mira, the man could be a murderer.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that,” said Mira defensively. “I thought Annette Berowne had done it. You said she had.”

  “So you’ve seen him since the murder,” said Bethancourt.

  “Oh, God,” said Kitty.

  Mira nodded. “He didn’t come in for over a week after it happened,” she said, “but he’s been in several times since then, and he’s spent the night, which he didn’t before.” She hesitated, and took a deep swallow of her beer. “Look,” she continued, “the reason I’m telling you this is because of something he said the day of the murder. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but when Kitty rang and said it wasn’t certain Mrs. Berowne was the killer, well, I got worried.”

  “The day of the murder?” asked Bethancourt, surprised. “He was here then? At what time?”

  “He rang early and woke me up,” said Mira. “He wanted to come round at once, but I told him to give me an hour. So I guess it would have been about half nine when he got here.”

  “And how long did he stay?”

  “Not long. Less than an hour, because I had to start preparing to open.”

  Bethancourt breathed again. He had been fearing that Paul Berowne, on the verge of becoming the prime suspect, was about to be given an alibi.

  “He wasn’t,” he asked delicately, “here to continue the activities of the night before?”

  Mira flushed. “No,” she answered. “He came because he was afraid he’d been seen leaving then. Ken Mills had been in that night with Patty Dobson—I told you about that, Kitty—and she lives at the other end of town. Apparently when Paul left here, Ken was just coming back from seeing Patty home. Paul dodged him, but he thought Ken might have seen him anyway and he wanted to warn me that it all might be coming out. I was worried for him, but he seemed calm enough about it and just said, ‘It had to come to an end sometime. This is as good a time as any.’ I thought then that he meant our affair and was just being fatalistic. But now, well, it’s occurred to me he could have been referring to his situation with his father and that he’d decided to end it.”

  The look in her eyes appealed to him to tell her she was wrong, but Bethancourt did not see it. He was thinking rapidly, seeing how it all might have come about. Paul Berowne, unquestionably a beaten man, well-mired in one of life’s deeper morasses, suddenly found not, perhaps, hope or love, but at least a reminder that life could be different. It might well have been enough to ignite all the passions the man had kept bottled inside him for so many years. And just at this opportune moment, he would have noticed the lilies of the valley Annette had placed in her husband’s study. He must have known what they could do, and had carefully replaced them when they withered to strengthen the poison in the water. Whether his course had been unalterable at that point, Bethancourt was not sure, but then had come the fear of discovery, the knowledge of what Geoffrey would do if Ken Mills were not discreet enough. The obvious solution was to kill his father before he could learn of it.

  It was an enormous motive, one equal to the millions Annette Berowne had inherited along with her freedom. For the first time, Bethancourt began to see a glimmer of hope in the case.

  Bethancourt was buoyant as he escorted Kitty back to the car and drove the short distance to the estate. They were laughing as they drove up the drive and followed the curve to the offshoot that led to the servants’ entrance. The Jaguar’s headlamps swept the front of the house as they passed and Bethancourt’s laughter died. Parked off to one side, he had seen a police Rover.

  “What is it?” asked Kitty, who apparently had not noticed the car.

  “Nothing,” answered Bethancourt, pulling up into the little paved space outside the kitchen door.

  “Do you want to come in and have some coffee?” she asked. “I think you probably should.”

  Bethancourt agreed automatically, so preoccupied with Gibbons’s presence here that he did not notice the look in her eyes. It was possible, of course, that something had happened, that both Carmichael and Gibbons were in the house, attending to a new development in the case. But Bethancourt did not believe it. When the police arrived late in the evening in the pursuit of their duties, there was normally a blaze of light and noise. He had seen only a single light in the windows of the drawing room, and the house was quiet. And he could think all too easily of another explanation for Gibbons’s presence here. In all his worrying, it had somehow not occurred to him that Gibbons might have taken things so far. The thought depressed him.

  His thoughts were so far away that he was taken by surprise when they entered the kitchen and Kitty pressed against him, running a finger down his shoulder, and asked playfully, “Do you really want coffee?”

  Bethancourt looked down at her, not unaware of the irony of the situation. Here he had been fretting over Gibbons’s possible indiscretions and now he was offered the opportunity to commit one himself. Kitty, however, was not a suspect, and he was not a police officer. But neither was he a free man.

  “Oh, Kitty,” he said regretfully, “I really, truly never meant to mislead you. I already have a girlfriend, you see.”

  “Well, I wasn’t asking to try out for the part,” she retorted, drawing back a little. “Besides, I already knew that. I asked Sergeant Gibbons.”

  “Oh.” Bethancourt was surprised.

  “But it was worth asking anyway,” she continued. “Not everyone is faithful all the time.”

  Bethancourt’s surprise had turned to amusement. “So what you’re saying,” he said, “is that you would like to use me for sex.”

  She was delighted with the phrase; her eyes sparkled and she chuckled, leaning into him again. “Exactly,” she agreed. “I don’t suppose you would care to … ?”

  Bethancourt knew he had no business accepting such an invitation and on any other night he would have refused. In fact, he began to say that he really had to be getting back to London, when he suddenly had a vision of exactly what he would be going back to: a night spent pacing his flat and gnawing over the problem of Gibbons and Annette Berowne.

  His mind warred with temptation while Kitty pressed herself against him, smiling up into his face as she reached out to touch his cheek.

  “I really shouldn’t,” he said rather weakly.

  “Of course not,” she murmured, sliding her hands behind his head to bend his face down to hers. Her lips touched his lingeringly and Bethancourt found that somehow his arms were around her. It was not until several minutes later, however, that he realized he had given up the struggle.

  Gibbons had returned to London late that day. At the close of the first really nice weekend of spring, thousands of other people were also on the road to Town, and he muttered imprecations at them as he nudged the police Rover through the traffic. When he finally arrived back in his neighborhood, it took him an additional hour to find a parking space, even one several blocks from his flat.

  But his sunny mood returned as he entered his flat, stripping off his working clothes and heading for the shower. True, Mrs. Simmons’s children seemed above reproach and he had garnered nothing that would give their mother a motive for murdering her employer, but he hadn’t really expected to. And they had made at least one step forward in exonerating Annette—which was, if only he had admitted it to himself, the only step he really cared about. It remained, of course, to clear her name, but he was certain that too would come.

  Emerging from the shower, he thought of ringing Bethancourt before he remembered that his friend would by this time be off to take Kitty Whitco
mb to dinner. Gibbons grinned. He didn’t really expect Bethancourt to learn anything useful and he didn’t think Bethancourt expected it, either; this was merely a good excuse to take a pretty girl out while Marla was away. Left to himself for the evening, he pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and sallied forth to collect some Indian take-away for his supper.

  He watched television as he ate, choosing a program he had seen once before and liked. Unfortunately, he had no idea of how the plot had progressed since he had first seen it weeks ago and found himself merely confused. He watched until the end nevertheless and it was not until he rose to clear the table afterward that he noticed there was a message on his answering phone. There had been nothing when he came in, and he cursed himself for not checking it again on his return from the Indian restaurant. If Carmichael was looking for him urgently, he would not be pleased.

  But it was Annette Berowne’s voice that greeted him when he pressed the play button. She sounded distressed and unsure of herself.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at home. It’s just I felt I couldn’t wait— oh, but probably it would be better if I had. I wanted to know … If you do come in, could you ring me?”

  Gibbons rang back at once and she answered on the first ring.

  “Oh, it is you,” she said, and he thought she sounded tearful. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have rung you. It’s not the kind of thing to discuss on the phone …”

  “Has something happened?”

  “Yes. Oh, nothing really to do with my husband’s death, but I couldn’t think who else to call.”

  “What is it? What can I do?”

  “Nothing. I can’t talk about it over the phone, that’s why I said I shouldn’t have rung. I just wasn’t thinking—”

  “Do you want me to come down?”

  Annette hesitated. “No,” she answered. “That’s too much to ask of you.”

  “Nonsense,” said Gibbons. “I’d be very happy to come if you want to see me. It’s not a long drive.”

  Again she hesitated and then, almost in a whisper, she said, “If you truly shouldn’t mind …”

  “I don’t mind at all,” said Gibbons firmly. “I’ll leave straightaway.”

  He rang off, grabbed a jacket and the keys to the Rover, and fairly sprinted the distance back to the car.

  When he arrived at Hurtwood Hall, Annette opened the door to him herself. Her heart-shaped face was tear-streaked and she clutched a handkerchief in one hand, although she seemed composed at the moment.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” she said softly, closing the door behind him. “It was very good of you to humor me so.”

  “Not at all,” said Gibbons. “I told you I didn’t mind in the least.”

  She led the way into the drawing room, but did not sit. Instead she paced down and back and then stopped a few feet from him. She examined her handkerchief carefully as she said, “There’s a dinner party tonight. Lilian Danforth is giving it; she and her husband are probably our closest friends down here.”

  Gibbons, a little puzzled, said nothing and she continued.

  “I only found out about it because Maddie was going and I was a little surprised I hadn’t been invited. I don’t know if I would have gone—Geoffrey hasn’t been dead very long, after all, but I thought it odd that Lilian hadn’t rung me anyway. I said so to Maddie and she said—” her voice faltered, but she raised her chin and went on, “she said that everyone thought I had killed Geoffrey and there was talk that I had killed Bill Burton, too.” She looked at him directly, her eyes dark pools of anguish. “I knew the police suspected me—it’s your job, after all. But that everyone else thought—Tell me, Jack. Is it true?”

  “Well,” temporized Gibbons, “there’s bound to be—”

  “Just tell me!”

  Her plea was so impassioned that Gibbons could not help but respond to it.

  “Yes,” he said, “it is.”

  She turned away from him and began sobbing, clutching the back of a chair with white knuckles.

  “Not everyone believes it,” said Gibbons. “Reverend Oakley doesn’t. And neither do I.”

  He stepped toward her and touched her arm. She turned to him readily, burying her head on his shoulder and weeping unrestrainedly. Gibbons wrapped his arms about her and stroked her hair.

  “There’s bound to be rumors like that,” he said. “Murder cases are the very worst for that kind of thing. But it will pass, I promise you. Once we’ve solved the case—”

  “But will you?” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “Daniel Andrews couldn’t. And they’ll all think I did it, they think so already.”

  “Spouses are always suspect,” said Gibbons. “And we will solve it. We’ve already made progress and it’s only been a couple of weeks. Give us a little time.”

  She nodded and sniffed, her sobs seeming to lessen. Without thinking, Gibbons planted a kiss on her head and with that action became abruptly aware of her body against his, of her hand on his chest.

  She looked up and gave him a tremulous smile; his own was no less shaken in reply. He found he was holding his breath.

  “Thank you,” she said, reaching up to kiss his cheek.

  Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl. Her kiss landed close by the corner of his mouth and he followed the impulse to turn his head just that little bit so that their lips met while alarms sounded in his brain.

  She responded to his kiss, shifting against him and in that moment, when his emotions washed over him in a flood of desire, he drew back abruptly, horrified at what he had been about to do, and put her from him. He was shaking violently.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I can’t do this. It’s wrong.”

  She stood back from him, rejected, her brown eyes hurt and confused.

  “I didn’t mean—” she began and stopped herself. “You’ve been such a comfort. I didn’t expect that you would …” Her voice trailed off and her eyes fell from his. “It was just the moment,” she said more clearly. “I didn’t mean it to lead to anything, either.”

  Gibbons found his breathing was still ragged, though he was reassured by her words. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I think I’d better go.”

  She nodded and followed him toward the door. She seemed so desolate that he paused.

  “You were right,” he said. “It was just the moment. I’ll be back to see you later and in the meantime you must try to keep up your spirits. Just remember that things will come right in the end.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thank you.” She stood aside while he opened the door and then asked hesitantly, “I know that under the circumstances we couldn’t possibly, well, you know. But you didn’t stop because you think I killed him, did you?”

  The last phrase was almost a whisper.

  “God, no,” said Gibbons fervently, but he knew as he turned away that there was only one way he could prove the truth of his words to her and unless he did so the suspicion would remain between them.

  He heard the door close behind him as he walked to the Rover, his footsteps crunching in the gravel of the drive. He fumbled the keys into the ignition, his hands still trembling, and wondered what madness had come over him. He had wanted women before, but never like that. Even now, his heart raced at the memory of Annette in his arms and a part of him wished he had not remembered his duty, wished he had been drunk or had any excuse to forget and make love to her. The terrifying thing was he knew, if he had had such an excuse, he would have made use of it. It would destroy the case—any evidence he uncovered would be nullified by the fact that he wanted to exonerate his lover—and with the case would go his career. They would probably sack him, and even if they didn’t, he would never rise beyond sergeant. Yet there was a corner of his mind that whispered that no one need ever find out, and it was not stilled by even the horrifying picture of being cross-examined in court as to his relationship with the widow of a murdered man.

  He let in the clutch too abruptly and the tires spun briefly
as he shot away from the house, racing down the drive.

  CHAPTER 10

  Bethancourt was awakened in the dark before dawn by Kitty’s movements in the bedroom. He blinked and stretched.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  Kitty turned from the closet and smiled at him. “Nearly six,” she answered. “I’m just getting ready to go for my run. There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

  “I could use a cup,” he said, propping himself up on the pillows. “When will you be back?”

  “By seven.”

  Bethancourt considered. “I should probably leave before that,” he said. “I have to get back to London and report to Jack before he leaves for the Yard.”

  Kitty nodded and sat on the edge of the bed to put on her shoes. “There’s fresh towels in the bathroom,” she said. “And the coffee will keep warm.” She tied the laces efficiently and then leaned over to kiss him. “It was a lovely night,” she said.

  “It was,” he agreed. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’m sure I’ll see you again in the next day or two.”

  “All right.”

  She rose, waved good-bye from the doorway, and was gone.

  From the kitchen windows, Bethancourt could detect a glimmering in the eastern sky. He poured himself a cup of coffee, savoring the aroma, and took a deep draft before lighting a cigarette. In the cold light of morning—what there was of it—he was inclined to feel ashamed of himself. He wondered if he had been drunker the night before than he had believed himself to be, but shook the thought away impatiently. Drunkenness was no excuse for doing something he had acknowledged at the time was wrong, but had gone ahead with anyway.

  He sighed and rubbed his face, feeling the stubble on his cheek. Nothing, he reflected, looked very good at this time of day. Even what he had learned about Paul Berowne did not seem very exciting now. It was not, after all, proof of anything, though no doubt Gibbons would take it as further evidence of Annette’s innocence.

  That thought depressed Bethancourt further. He drank deeply from his coffee cup and tried to shake off his mood. Perhaps he was wrong about Gibbons, he thought stoutly, perhaps there had been a perfectly legitimate reason for his visit last night. Bethancourt did not believe it, but he repeated the idea firmly to himself as he stubbed out his cigarette and drained his cup. Yes, and what he had discovered about Paul Berowne might well lead to the solution of the case. As for himself, he would simply have to try to be less selfindulgent in the future.