The Cat of the Baskervilles

by Vicki Delany

  If Leslie was charged, I’d truly be in a pickle. I’d removed evidence from a crime scene. Should I confess now or wait to see what happened next?

  I reminded myself that the person I needed to worry about right now was Jayne. Jayne and her mum. Any pickle I might find myself in would be incidental.

  At that moment, we heard voices coming from the inner sanctum. Jayne and I leapt to our feet. Detectives Ashburton and Estrada walked on either side of Leslie. Ryan was six foot three, and Estrada not much under six feet. Leslie looked like a schoolgirl between them. A very frightened schoolgirl.

  The door opened and she rushed into Jayne’s arms.

  “What brings you here, Ms. Doyle?” Estrada said. “I don’t see that this is any of your business.”

  “Of course it’s my business,” I said. “Jayne’s my friend as well as my business partner. I am here to provide support. I assume Mrs. Wilson is free to go.”

  “For now,” Estrada said. I didn’t care much for the tone in her voice. I glanced at Ryan. He returned my look, but I could read nothing in his face. And that, I feared, was not a good thing.

  “Mrs. Wilson has been told she’s not to leave the town of West London,” Estrada said, “as we will no doubt have further questions for her.” She turned and walked away. She pointedly held the door for Ryan. “Detective Ashburton, a moment of your time, please.”

  “If I know what the problem is, perhaps I can be of help,” I said.

  “If I want your help,” Estrada snapped, “I’ll ask for it.”

  “Stay out of it, Gemma,” Ryan said, his voice low. The last time murder had struck our little town, Ryan asked me for my unofficial help. He trusted me and my observations, even if his partner and his chief did not. I searched his face, looking for a sign that he didn’t mean what he was saying now, but I didn’t see it. He turned and walked away.

  “Let’s go home, Mom,” Jayne said.

  We walked outside, Jayne’s arm around her mother’s shoulders. The inside of the police station was so cold, literally as well as figuratively, that I was momentarily taken aback when the hot sun hit our faces. I pulled my sunglasses out of my bag. “I brought my car, so I can drive you home, Leslie.”

  “Thank you, dear. It was good of you to come down.”

  “There isn’t room for the three of us in the Miata,” Jayne pointed out.

  “You have to get back to work anyway,” I said. “Isn’t Sunday morning one of the busiest times of the week at Mrs. Hudson’s?”

  “Well, yes. Tourists like to stock up on treats to take on the road or indulge themselves with a nice breakfast before leaving. But . . .”

  “As the Emporium doesn’t open until noon today, I have the time.”

  “I can’t ask you . . .” Leslie began.

  “Of course you can. I’m happy to help,” I said. Jayne held one of her mother’s arms. I took the free one and pulled. Jayne held on, and I feared we were about to get into a tug of war with Mrs. Wilson as the rope.

  “Gemma’s right,” Leslie said. “You need to get back to work, honey, and stop worrying about me. The detectives had a few questions about what I might have seen yesterday. That’s all. They’ll want to talk to everyone. I can imagine Rebecca Stanton’s face when she’s asked to report to the police station.” She laughed. It came out more like a strangled howl, and Jayne didn’t look entirely convinced.

  “That’s settled then. See you later, Jayne.” I had to stop myself from breaking into a run, dragging Leslie Wilson behind me.

  “I . . .” Jayne’s feeble protest faded behind us.

  As the Miata roared out of the police station parking lot, I caught a glimpse of a tall, lean figure standing at the window of one of the offices watching us. Ryan Ashburton.

  The top of the car was up, but Leslie didn’t seem inclined to engage in conversation. She sunk low in her seat and stared out the window at the passing scenery. I doubt she was appreciating the view or the beauty of the day.

  Her house was about ten miles outside of town on a residential street not far from Nantucket Sound. The house had been built sometime in the 1960s, a small home on a big piece of property.

  I pulled into the driveway.

  “Thank you, Gemma.” Leslie unbuckled her seat belt. “You’re a good friend to Jayne.”

  “I hope I’m a good friend to you too.”

  She touched my hand, and then she opened the car door and swung her legs around. She had not invited me to come in. I’d have to handle that myself. “I’d love a cup of tea.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I ran out of the house when I got Jayne’s call and didn’t have time for so much as a mouthful of water, never mind a cup of tea. I’m absolutely parched.”

  Good manners. How I love them. I watched the struggle on Leslie’s face. She didn’t want to talk to me, but she couldn’t bluntly tell me to go away.

  I opened my own door.

  “Do come in, Gemma,” she said. “I’d enjoy a cup also.”

  The side door of the house opened directly onto the kitchen. A dog—a big, shaggy, drooling, friendly mutt—ran to greet us. I gave him a hearty pat.

  “That’s Rufus,” Leslie said. “Don’t let him jump on you.”

  “What breed of dog is he?” I asked. He sniffed at my legs, catching traces of Violet.

  “Heaven only knows. There might be a standard poodle in there somewhere. Maybe some labrador or golden retriever. He was a rescue dog. Take a seat, and I’ll get the tea.”

  The room was spotlessly clean, everything neat and tidy, but it was seriously out of date. Linoleum flooring, turning up slightly at the edges, a scarred round pine table with matching chairs, laminate countertops, tiles on the backsplash featuring pictures of Dutch windmills and fields of tulips. The decor in this room might be old, but it was lived in, far more than Rebecca Stanton’s cold, forbidding, ultramodern kitchen. I found it comforting; this was the sort of kitchen in which you knew you’d be served a good, satisfying meal along with plenty of laughter and intelligent conversation.

  I sat on one of the pine chairs, and Rufus wandered away to see what Leslie was doing. The kitchen wasn’t intended to be stylishly retro. It needed some money spent on it. I hadn’t been concentrating too much on the outside of the house, but I had noticed leaking downspouts, paint chipping from window frames, weedy cracks running through the driveway paving, and the edges of tiles lifting off the roof of the detached garage.

  Leslie plugged the kettle in and bustled about with mugs and milk and sugar. I sat back and let her bustle. “If you haven’t had breakfast, can I make you some toast?” she asked. “A boiled egg?”

  “No, thank you. Tea will be fine.”

  Tea was eventually made and served, and Leslie couldn’t put it off any longer. She sat down opposite me and sighed. Rufus dropped to the floor beside her.

  “‘Double, double toil and trouble,’” I said.

  “‘Fire burn, and cauldron bubble,’” she replied automatically.

  “So it would seem. The police are not bringing everyone who was at the tea yesterday down to the station to take their statements,” I said. “That would take far too much time. Why you?”

  “It’s all a mistake.” She kept her eyes on the contents of her teacup.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You know the police took people’s cameras and phones to check pictures that had been taken over the afternoon?”

  “They confiscated Jayne’s camera, which I used to photograph the table settings.”

  “Someone had taken a picture of me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Of me and Nigel.”

  “Nigel talked to a lot of people. Working the room was the only reason he had for being there. Therefore something had to be very significant about this one picture.”

  She lifted her head. For the first time, Leslie looked me in the eye. “We . . . he and I . . . were . . . going into the woods. The background showed that the tea had
finished, meaning it was . . . shortly before he . . .”

  “Were you wearing your apron in this picture?” I asked.

  She studied her tea again. “What do you mean?”

  “Just asking. Were you?”

  “Yes. It was after he’d embarrassed himself by not remembering his lines. I hadn’t taken my apron off yet.”

  “Who suggested this walk in the woods? You or him?”

  “It was my idea. I . . . admired him. As an actor, I mean. I wanted the chance to tell him so privately. The tea was over; our job was finished. I took the opportunity to tell him how much I love his acting. I told the police that. It was nothing. Really, it was nothing! Anyone there would have done the same. It was nothing but sheer bad luck that I was the one caught on camera.”

  “You wanted to talk about the old days. Your days together on Broadway. Maybe discuss some unfinished business between you.”

  Her blue eyes, so like Jayne’s, stared at me. “How do you . . . ?”

  “Jayne told me you’d been an actress in New York. You had a small speaking part in a Broadway production of Shakespeare. But you left the stage abruptly, came home to Cape Cod, and married Jayne’s dad. It was obvious, to me anyway, that something lay between you and Nigel. The way you told him your maiden name, as if expecting him to react, how his casual insults and rebuttals offended you on what was obviously a deeply personal level. You and he are of the same generation, although you’re few years younger. I read the other night that he appeared on Broadway in the early eighties. He played Macduff in a hugely successful production of Macbeth. Macbeth has few minor female speaking parts, three of which are the witches.”

  “‘Something wicked this way comes . . .’” she mumbled. She twisted her mug in her hands. “Jayne says you’re very smart.”

  “I can put two obvious facts together, that’s all.”

  “Why did you ask about my apron?”

  “I noticed yours was torn. I was wondering when that happened.” I hadn’t noticed any such thing. I hadn’t even seen Leslie between observing her and Nigel at the patio table, when she was wearing the apron, and then her joining the crowd at the cliff without the apron. I sipped my own tea and waited.

  She said nothing for a long time. “I must have snagged it on a bush or something. I didn’t notice until I came back to the house to get ready to leave.” She shuddered, and then she began to spill her secret, as I knew she would if I waited long enough.

  “You’re right, Gemma. Nigel and I. . . . I thought of him as my boyfriend during that run of Macbeth. I played the part of the third witch. I was incredibly lucky to get the role. My first time in a major production. I can’t tell you how exciting it was. All my dreams were coming true. And to top it all off, I fell in love with Nigel. Best of all, to have Nigel, the great Nigel Bellingham, fall in love with me. He wasn’t a knight then, but he was incredibly famous after Roman Wars. Could anything have been more perfect?”

  I didn’t bother to reply. She snorted. “Of course it could. I knew he was married, but he told me they were in the process of getting a divorce. The line every innocent young actress with stars in her eyes wants to hear. One day, his wife arrived unexpectedly in New York. Surprise, darling! He was married to Georgette Raeburn at the time. She was making a movie in Morocco. The desert set was flooded out during unexpected rains, disrupting filming, so she took the opportunity to hop a plane to New York and drop in on darling Nigel.”

  “There was no pending divorce.”

  “No. Georgette showed up at the theater during Sunday matinee. Nigel made such of fuss of being absolutely thrilled. He totally ignored me. At first, I thought he was pretending, keeping up a front with Georgette, not wanting her to make a scene. When I tried to speak to him the next day, he wouldn’t let me into his dressing room. He wouldn’t answer the phone if I called. I was frantic. I desperately needed to know what was going on. I needed him to tell me he loved me and we were going to be together forever. There are no scenes between Macduff and the witches, so we were never so much as waiting in the wings together. I caught some of the cast and crew exchanging snickering glances when I passed, but I thought they were just jealous. Then one night, I managed to find out where Nigel and Georgette were going for dinner after the show with the major actors and the producers.” Her voice trailed off.

  “You followed them.”

  She nodded. “I can’t believe I was ever so young and naïve. So stupid. My plan was to arrive after they were seated and ask the maître d’ to summon Nigel to the phone. This was the time—seems so long ago—before cell phones. When Nigel saw me waiting for him, he’d declare his undying love for me, reassure me that it was all a pretext with Georgette, and we’d be together as soon as she went back to Morocco. Nigel didn’t come out. He sent Georgette in his place. It wouldn’t have been so awful if she’d been angry. Instead, she laughed at me. She said Nigel had a habit of collecting silly little actresses when they were apart, but most of the girls knew how the game was played. She really did think it was terribly funny.” A single tear dripped down Leslie’s cheek. She made no move to wipe it away.

  “He’s been married several times since,” I said. “I assume their game ended soon enough.”

  “Oh, yes. Last I heard of Georgette, she married an earl and is now Lady Something-or-other. No loss to stage or screen, I’m sure.”

  “Did you finish the run of the play?”

  “No. Like so many foolish girls before me, I walked for hours that night, thinking about throwing myself into the East River after leaving a dramatic note tucked under a rock on the grass. Instead, I left New York the next morning and came home.”

  “Because you were pregnant.”

  She stared at me. “How did you know?”

  “That happened thirty-five years ago. You’ve got a nice life here, I think.” I held out my arms to indicate this kitchen, the house, West London. “You have great children—Jayne, anyway. I’ve never met your son. From what Jayne tells me, you had a happy marriage before your husband’s death. But simply thinking about what happened between you and Nigel still has the ability to bring you to tears. We’ve all been there. Bad relationships, bad men. I left my husband five years ago because he was a lazy, cheating, no-good layabout, but I’ve gotten over it. I accepted his friendship on Facebook a few months ago, although it came as a surprise that he wanted us to be virtual friends. If you’re still upset about what happened all that time ago, it has to be because you were left with something to constantly keep the affair fresh in your mind.”

  As I talked, I’d done the math. Jayne was thirty-two, the same age as me. The Broadway run of Nigel’s Macbeth had ended thirty-five years ago. Nigel Bellingham was not Jayne’s father. That came as an enormous relief to me. That was not a secret with which I wanted to be burdened. Jayne had an older brother, however.

  The dog sensed something of Leslie’s distress. He sat up and laid his big head on her lap while she cried silently. A steady stream of fat tears spilled out of her eyes. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose. “He doesn’t know.”

  “You mean your late husband?”

  “No, I mean Jeff, my son. I was pregnant with Jeff when Rick and I married. Rick knew it wasn’t his child. He knew about Nigel. He always said it didn’t matter. He was a good husband and a good father. Better than I deserved.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said sharply. “You did nothing wrong, but it seems to me that you were badly wronged. You never had any contact with Nigel again?”

  She shook her head. “Never. Rick and I had dated in the last year of high school. He wanted us to stay together, to make plans to get married in a few more years, but I was convinced I was destined for bigger things than marriage to a West London boy. I broke it off the summer after graduation. He went to college and got a business degree, and I hit the footlights and greasepaint. When I came back to West London, pregnant, ashamed, despondent, we ran into each other. He was still in love wit
h me, he still wanted to marry me, and I”—the edges of her mouth turned up ever so slightly—“discovered that, wonder of wonders, I was still in love with him. We were very happy together.”

  “And then, all these years later, Nigel, now Sir Nigel, arrives in West London.”

  “The worm in the apple. Don’t get me wrong, Gemma. I had no feelings for Nigel any more. I wasn’t about to suggest we run away together and live happily ever after in our declining years. Perhaps all I wanted was for him to acknowledge that he’d hurt me. I wasn’t planning to tell him about Jeff. What possible good would that do? If he’d so much as said, ‘Nice to see you again, Leslie, as beautiful as ever,’ I’d have been content. At first he didn’t recognize me. We all age, don’t we? Some better than others, and some of us have better memories than others, so I didn’t mind too much. I sought him out at the tea, before most of the guests arrived, and I told him who I was. Even then, he didn’t remember me at all. He didn’t even pretend to remember me. He sneered and said something like, ‘One in a long line.’”

  “He was not a nice man.”

  “I was hurt, Gemma. All the horrible, terrible pain that man caused me came rushing back. I cornered him after he made a fool of himself at the tea. I told him we had things to discuss, and I demanded he listen to me. He was drunk; anyone could see that pretty clearly. I saw him for the mess of a man he’d become, but I wanted him to acknowledge that I was more than ‘one in a long line.’”

  Her attempt at keeping herself composed burst apart, and Leslie began to cry. Great gulps of air, racking sobs, cascading tears. I sipped my tea and waited quietly and patiently for her to compose herself.

  Eventually she blew her nose and wiped at her face. “I wasn’t going to say anything about Jeff. I didn’t even want to. But I did. I threw it in his face. The son he’d never known he had. His only child, who he’d never get to know. You can understand why I wanted us to go into the woods, get away from prying ears, particularly that strange little man who followed him around everywhere.”

  “Gerald, the PA.”

  Leslie nodded. “Nigel and I walked into the woods. It was cool, and it was quiet. Nigel listened to what I told him and seemed to sober up right before my eyes. He told me he hasn’t had a good life. Four marriages, too many affairs to count, no children. His parents are long dead, and he’s estranged from his only sister. Now at the end of his life, he’s left with nothing. A dying career, no wife, no family, not even the respect of his peers. I felt sorry for him.”