The Young Widow

by Cassandra Chan

  “Well, was he looking off toward the village?” asked Dottie, ever practical.

  Carmichael shrugged. “He doesn’t know. How should he?”

  Dottie tapped her cards against her chin. “So you’ve got the son, with both opportunity and motive, and now the wife with both as well.”

  “She’s always had both,” said Carmichael. “Don’t forget that it was very unusual for her to walk to the village.”

  “So will you bring her in for questioning?”

  Carmichael took out a cigar and removed its wrapper thoughtfully.

  “Not just yet,” he answered at last. “I’ll wait a day or two more and hope something else turns up. After all, we don’t really have any more on her than we did to begin with. I do wish that farmer could be more positive.”

  He looked very downcast and Dottie bit her lip, but could think of nothing encouraging to say. This looked like being one of the few cases in her husband’s career that would end in failure. They had lived through the others and they would live through this, but it was never good.

  Bethancourt spent the evening pummeling his brain for some kind of lead to follow, though he was well aware that any lead, however slim, would already have been pounced on by Gibbons and Carmichael. And following leads was not really his strength; when he had been helpful in previous investigations, it had usually been through insight into the characters of the people involved. That was what interested him primarily, but he found he no longer cared who had killed Geoffrey Berowne so long as it could be proved in short order and save Gibbons from the noose that he was rapidly weaving for himself.

  Near midnight he decided that sleep would prove impossible and took Cerberus out for a hopefully exhausting walk across the Albert Bridge to Battersea. It was more than an hour later when he returned, but his brain was still buzzing uselessly. He hesitated and then rang Marla, who was luckily at home and still awake.

  “I’ve just got in from a nightclub, actually,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he answered. “Could I come round?”

  “Yes, I think that might be nice.”

  “Good. I’ll be there in half a tick.”

  Marla was blessedly understanding. She had caught his mood over the phone and said nothing at all when she opened the door to him, only gathering him into her arms eagerly, and, after an hour or two of urgent and arduous passion, Bethancourt at last fell asleep at her side.

  CHAPTER 14

  Gibbons woke early the next morning, his hazy mind still full of the night before. For two hours he and Annette had made love and talked of inconsequential things, and the only blight on his pleasure was her necessary departure. That and the guilt that was hammering at his conscience. The guilt made him rise at once, although he could have had another hour’s sleep, and push off for the Yard after a single cup of coffee. He was there well before Carmichael, and so took the call that came in from Maddie Wellman.

  He had not spoken to her since she had ordered him out of her room and he tried now to inject a conciliatory note into his voice. But she was too full of her own business to care that they had last parted on less than amicable terms.

  “I happened to speak to McAllister this morning,” she announced. There was a note of triumph in her voice. “We’ve discovered something that I think the chief inspector will want to know.”

  “That’s wonderful, Miss Wellman,” said Gibbons. “He should be in shortly and I’ll let him know. Could you tell me what you’ve found out?”

  “We now know when Annette left the house,” she answered.

  Gibbons’s grip on the receiver tightened in sudden fear. “Yes?” he said. “And when was that?”

  “I think it would be best if you came down and spoke to McAllister,” she said firmly. “You can tell Chief Inspector Carmichael that my solicitor will be present.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Gibbons, keeping his voice level with an effort. “The chief inspector will be very interested in this news. I expect he’ll want to leave for Surrey right away.”

  “Very well, then. We’ll expect you sometime in the course of the morning.”

  She rang off and Gibbons slowly replaced the receiver, stunned. If Maddie Wellman had discovered that Annette had left the house a minute or so after eleven, she would never by any chance offer up the information. She was too firmly convinced of Annette’s guilt and too vicious in her hatred of the other woman. Therefore, she must believe she had uncovered evidence to show that Annette had left the house considerably later. But what on earth could she have discovered? Both he and Carmichael had spoken time and again to McAllister, who had staunchly maintained that he did not know what time it had been when he had seen Annette. Could he have simply been playing the loyal family retainer, his scruples now overcome by Maddie?

  A sudden qualm came over Gibbons. For an instant he saw all of Annette’s actions and conversations with himself as the ploy of a clever murderer. But his mind rejected the notion at once. The passion she felt for him was real, he was sure of that; no one was capable of counterfeiting such deep emotion.

  Probably Maddie Wellman, in her zeal to have Annette arrested, was making a mountain out of a molehill. Gibbons glanced at the clock; Carmichael would already be on his way in so there was no point in ringing him. Instead Gibbons telephoned Bethancourt, but his friend was not home. He left an agitated message and then sat back to wait for his superior.

  It was clear from the way she sat and the slight crease between her brows that Maddie Wellman’s arthritis was troubling her this morning. But no pain could mask the excitement and defiance in her eyes.

  In a chair drawn up beside her sat a rotund, balding man with wire-rimmed spectacles whom she introduced as her solicitor, Mr. Nailes. He regarded the police with a jaded and suspicious eye.

  “Miss Wellman,” he said, enunciating his words precisely, “wishes to make an additional statement about her actions on the morning of Mr. Geoffrey Berowne’s murder.”

  Nailes had a very prim manner, thought Carmichael, taking an immediate dislike to the man.

  “Yes,” he said aloud, “we understood that.” He turned a carefully bland face to Miss Wellman; though any break in the case would be heaven-sent, he had a natural suspicion of a sudden remembrance of important evidence. “If you would care to proceed, Miss Wellman? Sergeant Gibbons will take your statement down.”

  Maddie appeared to take no umbrage at Carmichael’s attitude toward her solicitor. She leapt into the conversation eagerly.

  “It’s about when I saw McAllister from the window there,” she said.

  “Yes, I recall,” said Carmichael, who had carefully reviewed her statement on the ride down. “You saw him working below in the tulip beds when you opened your window.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed. “I just called a ‘good morning’ down to him.”

  Carmichael frowned. “I don’t believe you mentioned speaking to him.”

  Maddie shrugged. “I may not have,” she admitted. “After all, whether or not I said ‘good morning’ seemed completely irrelevant at the time. The point is that McAllister remembers it, and after I’d opened the window, I sat down to write a letter and happened to notice the time. I keep a little clock there on the desk.” Her eyes glittered. “It was eleven-fifteen.”

  Long experience kept any excitement from showing in Carmichael’s face, and he was still suspicious, but this was certainly the sort of thing that might have been overlooked.

  “And I expect,” he said, “that McAllister saw Mrs. Berowne leaving the house after this incident?”

  “That’s right,” said Maddie triumphantly.

  “I’m very glad to have this information, Miss Wellman,” said Carmichael. “Still, I would like to know why you never mentioned it before.”

  “Why should I?” she retorted. “What difference did it make what time I’d seen McAllister? We all knew he’d been working out there all morning. You never told me he’d seen Annette l
eaving.”

  “I see. Presumably you discovered that this morning?”

  She was impatient now. “I woke early and went down to have a word with him about the vegetable garden. He was complaining about being pestered by you lot and that’s how it came out that he had seen Annette leaving, but didn’t know the time. Naturally, I asked if it had been before or after I had wished him good morning. He looked surprised and said he’d forgotten that and after thinking about it, he said it had been afterward.”

  “Very well,” said Carmichael. “We’ll want to speak to Mr. McAllister, of course, to confirm this. I take it he’s working in the grounds?”

  “Yes, in the rose garden, I believe. Mr. Nailes will show you.”

  “I’m sure we can find it ourselves,” said Carmichael, who had no wish to be saddled with Nailes.

  “Nonsense, Chief Inspector,” said Maddie sharply. “You don’t think, after what you put poor Paul through, that I’m going to let anyone speak to you without a solicitor present, do you? Except,” she added vindictively, “Annette, of course. You can do what you like with her.”

  Carmichael clenched his jaw to prevent himself from replying to this. He nodded curtly, and left the room, trailed by Gibbons and Nailes. The silence as they went down the stairs and out into the gardens was tangible. Carmichael saw that Gibbons’s blue eyes were blazing and thought that his sergeant was even more incensed than himself. But in Nailes’s presence it was impossible to let off any steam.

  Nailes proceeded at a slow, dignified pace, which did nothing to improve the detectives’ tempers. Eventually they reached the rose garden, where McAllister was deadheading the early roses. It was apparent from the look he gave Nailes that he liked the solicitor no more than Carmichael did, and this for some reason raised the chief inspector’s spirits.

  “Good morning, Mr. McAllister,” he said, jumping in before Nailes could say anything. “We’ve just come to confirm something Miss Wellman told us. It won’t take long.”

  Heaving an exaggerated sigh, McAllister turned from the roses.

  “It’s just as she said,” he said. “I was mulching the tulips when she called down to me, and it were after that I saw Mrs. Berowne leaving.”

  “How long afterward?”

  McAllister shrugged. “Not long. Five minutes maybe.”

  “And was this before or after you had fetched the new bags of mulch?”

  “After.”

  “How long after?”

  McAllister looked unsure. “Don’t know,” he answered.

  “Ten minutes? Fifteen?”

  “Summat like that,” agreed McAllister, but Carmichael had the impression that he would have agreed to virtually anything if by doing so he could shorten the interview and get back to his work.

  “Perhaps more like half an hour?” suggested Carmichael.

  McAllister scowled. “Don’t think it was that long, but I don’t really know. I never seen such a lot of fuss about the time before. You people must run your lives on stopwatches.”

  Carmichael took a breath to explain the importance of time in the investigation, but then let it out without bothering. He was sure McAllister wouldn’t even listen. Already the man’s eyes were straying back to the roses.

  “That’s very helpful, Mr. McAllister,” he said instead. “Now, I’ve read your original statement over, as well as what you told me the other day. At neither time did you mention seeing Miss Wellman.”

  “I forgot it.”

  “I see. So the other day when we were going over exactly what you’d done, fetching the mulch and so forth, you didn’t remember that Miss Wellman had called down to you?”

  “I just said not,” answered McAllister testily.

  “But you remembered it when Miss Wellman reminded you?”

  “That’s right. She asked did I see Mrs. Berowne before or after she said good morning, and then I remembered her opening her window and waving at me, and that was after I fetched the mulch and before I saw Mrs. Berowne leaving.”

  He stared at Carmichael like a frustrated schoolteacher trying to impress a point on a dim-witted student.

  “That’s very clear,” said Carmichael. “I don’t think there’s anything more I need from you just at the moment, Mr. McAllister. Thank you.”

  Nailes had said nothing during the entire interview, but as they left the rose garden, he announced he would see them back to their car.

  “As you wish,” said Carmichael cheerfully, and, remembering their stately walk through the gardens, he proceeded to set the fastest pace he could himself manage. Nailes was obviously displeased, but helpless to do anything about it. When he slowed down, the detectives simply drew ahead and he was forced to trot to catch them up. He bid them a truculent good morning at the edge of the drive and returned to the house. Carmichael watched him go with satisfaction mixed with a faint feeling of guilt at having behaved childishly.

  “Thank God,” muttered Gibbons and swung into the car. “Do you think any of it’s true, sir?” he asked as Carmichael joined him.

  “It could be,” said Carmichael, settling the case file on his lap. “I’m always suspicious when witnesses start remembering things long after the fact, especially when it’s something that indicts a person they’re known to have a grudge against. But this is just the kind of thing that might get overlooked. Ah, here’s Miss Wellman’s original statement. Kitty Whitcomb came up to see her about nine-thirty, and stayed for perhaps an hour. Miss Wellman says she then began writing her letters. Asked by Commander Andrews if she stayed at her desk all the time until Kitty came to tell her about Mr. Berowne, she at first said yes, and then corrected herself and said she had gotten up once to open the window. Andrews asked if she saw anyone on the terrace, and she replied that the only person she had seen was McAllister, working just off the terrace in the tulip beds. No mention of the time, and Andrews didn’t ask.”

  “He should have,” said Gibbons bitterly.

  “He probably saw no reason for it,” answered Carmichael, “since McAllister freely admitted he’d been there the entire time. Now here’s what McAllister told me the other day. Nothing, of course, about Miss Wellman. But McAllister’s got no grudge against Mrs. Berowne—there’s no reason for him to lie about having said good morning to Miss Wellman and seeing Mrs. Berowne after that.”

  “No, sir,” said Gibbons, “but I’d be happier if we weren’t depending entirely on Miss Wellman for the time. She’s had it in for Mrs. Berowne from the start, and even if everything occurred just as she and McAllister say, there’s nothing objective to show that it all didn’t happen much earlier.”

  “True,” sighed Carmichael. “Since she’s so convinced Mrs. Berowne is the killer, I wouldn’t put it past Miss Wellman to fudge a bit on the time.” He frowned thoughtfully. “On the other hand, I doubt she knows exactly how much extra time Mrs. Berowne took getting to the village—we didn’t know ourselves until you timed the walk with her. And this does fit in beautifully. If Miss Wellman is telling the truth, McAllister would have seen Mrs. Berowne leaving twenty minutes after she said she did, and twenty minutes is just the amount of time she can’t account for. Plus there’s Denford’s testimony. If she left at eleven-twenty, that would put her on the path by the meadow at about eleven-forty, and he said it was past eleven-thirty when he saw her. And it accounts for the fact that he didn’t see her earlier—she wasn’t there.”

  Gibbons felt as if the noose was closing about his own throat. He was numb with panic and unable to say anything.

  “I still don’t like it, sir,” he managed at last. “It’s true that it all works out, but it’s still completely dependent on Miss Wellman. If she’d said it was eleven when she saw McAllister, we’d be telling ourselves that Mrs. Berowne was definitely in the clear. Denford’s statement isn’t firm—he isn’t certain whether or not he would have seen Mrs. Berowne the first time.”

  “That’s the damnable part of it,” agreed Carmichael. “They all have motive and oppor
tunity. Still, this is the closest we’ve come to making a case, and I do think the coincidence of the timing is notable.”

  Gibbons swallowed. “Do you want to bring Mrs. Berowne in for questioning?” he asked.

  “Let me just look over her statement,” answered Carmichael, shuffling the papers in his lap.

  While Carmichael read, Gibbons sat in agitated silence. He could not quite believe the turn things had taken and his mind was filled with the horror of entering the house and taking Annette in for questioning without any opportunity of reassurance. He glanced sideways at Carmichael who suddenly looked like an enemy, solemnly reading Annette’s statement and weighing her guilt. It was as if he could see the logic falling into place in Carmichael’s brain, tipping the scales against Annette.

  “There’s nothing here to get hold of,” said Carmichael at last, frowning. “Her story’s too simple to trip her up on any point. And unless I’ve lost my judgement of character altogether, she’ll never confess. Still, I suppose there’s nothing else for it. She might let out something. Yes, we’ll take her in.”

  Gibbons felt as if there were a weight pressing on his chest. He said nothing, but climbed out of the car slowly and followed Carmichael back to the house. His mind seemed to have gone numb.

  Carmichael rang the bell and they stood on the steps until Mrs. Simmons opened the door. She looked surprised to see them.

  “Is Mrs. Berowne in?” asked Carmichael. “We’d like a word with her.”

  “No, sir,” Mrs. Simmons replied and Gibbons breathed again. “She’s gone shopping in Town. I don’t expect her back until after lunch.”

  Carmichael frowned, disappointed, and glanced at his watch. “It’s no good our waiting then,” he said. “We’ll call again later, or perhaps tomorrow. Thank you, Mrs. Simmons.”

  Gibbons was light-headed with relief as they returned to the car, but he knew it was only a temporary respite. His hands were shaking as he started the engine.