A Perfect Crime

by Peter Abrahams

  “I wonder, then,” he said, closing the notebook, “how she found out about the cottage.”

  “So do I,” Francie said.

  “And what she was doing up there.”

  Francie said nothing, was sure she knew the horrible answer to that question, lacked only the steps in between. Was silence the same as a lie? In some cases, like this one, yes.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Saturday night. We went to dinner, the four of us, after tennis.”

  “How was she?”

  “In what way?”

  “Her mood.”

  Francie thought of the scene in the locker room. “A little upset, at first.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “We’d just lost the match.” Was a partial truth the same as a lie? Ditto.

  “Is that enough to upset a grown woman?”

  “Ever play competitive sports, Mr. Savard? It was the club championship.”

  Savard gave her a quick look; for a moment she thought he was about to smile, but he didn’t. “Who else knows about the cottage?”

  “You mean that Brenda has it? Lots of people.”

  “And were any of them acquainted with Anne, to your knowledge?”

  Besides Ned, there was only Nora. Francie gave Savard her name and number. Why not? Nora knew Brenda, so he would have found her eventually.

  Savard wrote Nora’s name and number in his notebook and said, “Then there’s your husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “I assume he knew about the cottage as well.”

  Had Roger known? Francie had never told him: at first, for no particular reason other than the kind of marriage it had become-he wouldn’t even have expected to hear a detail like that-and later because of Ned. She gave Savard a careful answer: “Roger didn’t know Anne-they met for the first time on Saturday night.”

  His eyes went to the sculpture, were still on it when he said,“What was Anne like, Mrs. Cullingwood?”

  “She…” Francie got a grip on her emotions; if she was going to get through this, whatever this was and whatever getting through it meant, she would have to keep them well capped. “She was wonderful, Mr. Savard.”

  He gave her a sharp glance. “Do you want to sit down?” he said. “A glass of water?”

  “I’m fine. Anne was… good. There was no meanness in her, if you’re thinking about enemies, or something like that. She was good.” Francie, realizing she had raised her voice, lowered it, went on: “She was talented, she was loving.”

  “In what way talented?”

  “She was a fine tennis player, for one thing. And a very good painter.”

  “Painter?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mean an artist? The kind you evaluate in your job?”

  How did he know about her job? Roger, of course. “I didn’t evaluate Anne. She was my friend.”

  “I’m just making sure I understood what you meant by painting, that’s all,” Savard said. “The fact that she painted could be important.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s sit down.”

  “I told you I’m fine.”

  “Whatever you say,” Savard said, but he returned to the window seat. Francie followed, leaned again on the armchair, feeling manipulated in some way. “It doesn’t surprise me to learn she was an athlete, Mrs. Cullingwood.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s evidence of a tremendous struggle last night.”

  Francie felt faint, might have fallen had it not been for the chair; had he foreseen that? Savard’s image began to dissolve, almost did, then slowly returned to normal, as though some director had changed his mind about ending a scene. Savard was watching her closely.

  “Go on,” she said, her fingers digging into the fabric of the chair.

  He folded his massive hands in his lap, a gesture that seemed ceremonial to her, even religious. “Before she died, she managed to write a word on the floor. Very small. She must have changed her position slightly after that, because it was covered by her arm and we didn’t see it at first. The word she wrote was painting.”

  “Painting?”

  “Yes. Do you have any idea what she could have meant by that?”

  “No.”

  “But you must know something about her work-in order to have made the judgment that she was good.”

  “I’ve seen some of her paintings.”

  “Do any stand out in your mind?”

  That was easy: the portrait of Ned. But nothing about you and me. “No one more than another,” Francie said.

  “Do you know of any painting she might have been working on recently?”

  “No.”

  “Or something she wanted to try in the future?”

  “No,” Francie said. “Do you think she meant to… to tell us who killed her?”

  “Perhaps not the actual attacker.”

  “The actual attacker? I don’t understand.”

  Savard unfolded his hands, rubbed them together slowly. “How would you characterize her marriage, Mrs. Cullingwood?”

  “In what way?”

  “Were they happy together?”

  “I rarely saw them together.”

  “Meaning you saw them separately?”

  He was so quick; didn’t look like he would be, but was. “Meaning I didn’t see them together enough to form an opinion about something like that,” Francie said as calmly as she could.

  “Did Anne ever say anything that led you to believe they had problems?”

  Yes, in the locker room. “No,” Francie said. A lie: total, direct, inescapable.

  “How would you describe her self-confidence?”

  “That’s a strange question.”

  “There’s not much to go on, Mrs. Cullingwood, as I mentioned. Getting a picture of her in my head will help.”

  “Self-confidence. It’s not easy to know something like that about a person.”

  “I disagree,” Savard said. “In my experience, it’s one of the first things you notice.”

  They looked at each other. He was right, of course. Quick, and there was more to him than that. “Not as high as it should have been,” Francie said.

  “On a scale of ten,” Savard said.

  “Isn’t that a rather brutal method for measuring something as abstract as self-confidence?” Francie said.

  “No,” Savard replied. “Brutal was what happened to her in your friend’s cottage.”

  It finally hit her. “What did she use to write with-the word painting?”

  “I think you’ve figured that out.”

  Francie didn’t speak; for a moment she couldn’t even breathe.

  Savard rose, came closer. “I need your help,” he said. “And so does she, if you accept that rationale.”

  “Three,” Francie told him. “The answer to your question is three.”

  “Any reason a woman of such qualities would have a self-confidence level like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have thought about it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He opened his mouth, said, “You’re,” then stopped. “I’ll withdraw the question.” A beeper went off. Savard took it from his pocket, read something on its screen, put it and his notebook away. He moved toward the door, then stopped and turned. “Sometimes women unhappy in their marriages have affairs,” he said.

  Francie again felt the upsurge of blood in her neck and face.

  “If she was,” Savard continued, “what’s to be gained by hiding that now?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “When a wife is murdered, we always check the husband first, Mrs. Cullingwood.”

  “I thought you said there was no suspect.”

  “I misspoke. We have no evidence pointing to a specific suspect. But Mr. Demarco has no alibi for last night.”

  “No alibi?”

  “No convincing explanation of his whereabo
uts during the period when his wife was killed.” He handed her a card. “Call if you can help.”

  He went into the hall; Francie followed. “But there was a struggle, you said.”

  “I did.”

  “Then wouldn’t there be signs of that on the attacker?”

  “There would. On the actual attacker.”

  Savard opened the door. Roger was outside, sprinkling a handful of salt crystals on the walk. He looked up. “Safety first, Chief,” he said.

  “You’re so right,” Savard said. “I meant to ask if you’ve ever been to Brenda’s cottage, Mr. Cullingwood.”

  “Never. The fact is, I’d forgotten all about it, if I ever knew in the first place. Did you ever mention it, Francie?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Roger spread his hands. “It was Francie’s baby, Chief.”

  Savard glanced back at Francie, then got in his car, not an official police cruiser but an old Bronco, and drove away. Francie and Roger looked at each other. “Close the door, Francie,” he said. “You’re letting in all the cold.”

  Roger went inside a few minutes later. He didn’t see Francie in the kitchen, the hall, the living room. He walked over to the plant in the corner, a dieffenbachia. Pausing to pick a few dead leaves from the base of it as he went out! Who could compete with brilliance of that magnitude? He plucked the digital recorder that Francie had given him from behind the stem and dropped it in his pocket.

  31

  Francie had no distance from what she was doing, no inner watchfulness, no control. This, life after Anne, or at least in the first few hours after Anne, had all the intensity of loving Ned, an inverse intensity that now served to heighten pain, not pleasure. From her bedroom, Francie dialed Ned’s number, heard his mother’s voice on the machine: “You have reached the Demarco residence. Please leave a message at the tone.”

  She had to see him. Francie hung up, realizing as she did that he might not be home yet-might still be in New Hampshire, or on his way back. Had to see him. On his way back: she was thinking car keys, coat, Dedham, was turning from the phone-had to see him-when it rang. She snatched it up.

  “Francie, is it true?” Nora, not Ned.

  “About Anne, you mean?”

  “What else would I mean?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Oh, God. What happened?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “But she was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “At Brenda’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she doing up there?”

  “They don’t know.”

  Pause. “I’m coming over.”

  “Not now, Nora. I’m on my way out.”

  “Where?”

  “Please.” Had to see him. “There are things I have to do.”

  “Like what, Francie? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “But-”

  Francie hung up.

  She drove back to Dedham under a sky that was one low sagging cloud from horizon to horizon. Ned’s garage door was open, no cars inside. Francie parked on the street and waited.

  The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. Francie stared at it for a while, then at the snowman with the ski pole over one shoulder. She noticed that he wore a name tag, frozen into his chest, with writing on it too distant to see. After a minute or two, she had to get out of the car, walk up the path, read it: Mr. Snowman, VP Xmas Productions. Anne humor. Francie dug the tag free with her fingernails, put it in her pocket, went back to the car. She had pulled it out three times for another look when Ned drove up at last. He wheeled into the driveway, braked in front of the garage, hurried toward his front door. Had he not noticed her?

  Francie jumped out of the car. “Ned.”

  His head snapped around. He saw her, began to speak, stopped himself, glanced back at the house, then came toward her, cutting directly through the knee-deep snow in the yard, ice balls clinging to the tassels on his loafers.

  Then he was on the sidewalk, and she got a good look at his face. Had to see him. But what had become of her beautiful man? This blue-lipped gray face, red around the eyes, had all his features but was not him, and the eyes themselves, fugitive, blinking, burrowing things, were not him either. Francie wanted to wrap him in her arms, somehow make him better, settled for holding out her hand.

  After a moment or two, he took it and then held on tight. “Oh, Francie, it hurts so much.”

  Francie, determined not to cry, to hold it all in, almost did.

  “I’ll never ever be the same,” he said. His voice had changed, too, lost its richness and musicality, now did no more than deliver the words. “And what about Em? Tell me that? What about Em? I’m going to have to go in there now and tell her… tell her.”

  “She knows.”

  “She knows?”

  “Your mother told her.”

  He dug a knuckle into his forehead above the right eye, hard. “Are you sure?”

  “I was here.”

  “You were?”

  “Don’t you remember? We talked on the phone.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them. “What is happening to me?”

  She stroked his hand. He withdrew it, looked back at his house. “But you can’t come here, Francie. People will suspect.”

  “Suspect what?”

  “About us, of course.”

  “What difference does it make now?” Francie said. Over his shoulder she saw a curtain part, Ned’s mother peer out. Their eyes met. The curtain closed.

  “How can you say that? It makes all the difference. I don’t want Em to ever know, ever to think that everything wasn’t… wasn’t just the way it seemed.”

  That made no sense to Francie, not anymore, but the intensity of her reaction surprised her. “Is that what your life’s going to be from now on?” she said. “Preserving some past that never was?”

  Ned’s arm twitched. For a moment Francie almost imagined he was going to hit her. An unworthy thought, beneath them both, contemptible-until she happened to glance down and catch his hand uncurling from a fist. But a fist could mean tension, not violence, and she knew there was no violence in Ned, had never seen the slightest sign, so he couldn’t possibly have been involved in Anne’s death, no matter what this man Savard suspected. Francie could barely allow her mind to articulate the thought. Could she have known him that little? No. Savard was far off course. She didn’t believe it, not for a second.

  Ned took a deep breath. “You’re tough, Francie. That’s one of the things that… attracted me to you. But your timing’s not always on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He came a little closer, lowered his voice. “What do I mean? What’s the matter with you? How can you say what you just said about my marriage? My wife is dead. Where are your feelings?”

  “Where are my feelings?” Francie, who had never struck a human being in her life, did it now. Her scarlet handprint took shape on his washed-out face. She walked away.

  He followed. “Wait, Francie. I take that back. I’m not myself. Please.”

  He touched her shoulder; she halted. Even at a moment like this, his touch sent that familiar, irresistible feeling down her back. The man for her; it was inescapable. She swung around and asked him, “Where were you last night?”

  He seemed to jerk back, almost as if she’d hit him again. “What kind of question is that?”

  “Savard’s question.”

  “You’ve talked to him?”

  “He came to the house.”

  “What did he want?”

  “To know what I thought of your marriage.”

  “My God. What did you tell him?”

  The mark she’d made on him was already fading, but it sickened her to see it. “Don’t worry about me, Ned.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I won’t let you down.”

  Ned’s eyes met hers at last. “Oh, I know t
hat, Francie. I wish I could hold you now, so much.”

  “So do I.” She wanted to kiss that redness on his cheek, dared not. Was there somewhere they could go? Was that an evil thought? What was she made of?

  “But it doesn’t really answer my question,” Ned said. “What exactly did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t know enough to comment on your marriage.”

  “And nothing about us?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “Perfect as always. I’m sure that’ll take care of it.”

  “It won’t, Ned, because Savard thinks she was the one having an affair.”

  “That Anne was?”

  Francie nodded.

  “And I followed her out there?”

  “Or paid someone to do it.”

  He laughed, a strange, barking laugh, almost like Roger’s but lower in tone. “That’s idiotic.”

  “Then why not tell him where you were last night?”

  “Please, Francie, not the third degree.”

  “You think this is the third degree? Why can’t you tell him? You said on the phone that it was work related. Is there a patient confidentiality issue, or something like that?”

  “Something like that. Please don’t ask me more.”

  “I won’t,” Francie said. “But he will.”

  “He’s just a small-town cop, nothing to be concerned about.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s trying to find out how she-how Anne knew about the cottage.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe not how. But we can both guess why she went out there.”

  “She didn’t know anything. There has to be some other explanation.”

  “Like what?”

  He had no answer.

  “It must have come from you, Ned.”

  “Impossible. You know how careful I’ve been.”

  Had he? Careful maybe about the cottage, but not careful the one night at her house, the night of the milk run and the invented flat tire, the night he discovered she didn’t like irises. Francie, remembering the pressure gauge, turned to Ned’s car in the driveway.

  “What are you looking at?” Ned said.

  “Maybe she found something in your trunk.”