Black Widower

by Patricia Moyes

  “Isn’t there anybody else?” Emmy persisted. “In connection with Dorabella Hamilton, I mean?”

  Henry was thumbing through reports. “The only other person who gave evidence was the housekeeper from Exeter Place . . . Mrs. . . . where is it? . . . Mrs. Belinda Drayton. She’s the one who heard the scream and called the police.”

  “You don’t think she might help?”

  “I can’t think how,” Henry said. “I’ve got a transcript of her evidence here, and it couldn’t be clearer. She was in the garden of the Exeter Place house, heard the car and the scream, and ran to investigate. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You don’t think she might have seen or heard something more —something she didn’t think of mentioning to the police?”

  Henry smiled at his wife. “No, Emmy, I don’t. But since you are obviously determined not to let me off the hook, I’ll walk around to Exeter Place in the morning and have a word with the lady, just to make you happy. And then we’ll get on the next plane and go home.”

  Thirty-twenty-one Exeter Place was a house so imposing that Henry would have been tempted to classify it as a mansion, had it not stood across the street from 3018, which was surrounded by acres of garden and boasted a curved carriage drive, a classical portico, graceful bow windows, clusters of coach houses and garages, and fifteen bedrooms (if you don’t count the guest annex). 3021 was a more modest establishment, built of rose-red brick in the latter half of the eighteenth century. About half an acre of garden protected the house from prying passers-by, and the garden in its turn sheltered behind a tall, ivy-covered wall. In the wall w-ere two gates—the main entrance, a pair of finely wrought iron gates giving onto a graveled drive leading to the front door; and the tradesmen’s entrance, around the comer on 30th Street, which was a stout wooden door, painted black. Henry made for the tradesmen’s entrance.

  A narrow paved path led up to the kitchen door. Before Henry had time to ring the bell, the door opened and a sturdy black woman in her sixties came out, vigorously shaking a small rug. She stopped when she saw Henry, and said politely, “May I help you, sir? The front entrance is right around the comer, on Exeter Place—but I’m ’fraid Mrs. Blair isn’t home right now. She’s in Europe.” Her voice had the soft, pleasant lilt of the South.

  Henry said, “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for Mrs. Drayton.”

  “Drayton? Why, that’s me, sir. What can I do for you, then?” Mrs. Drayton smiled, revealing a blaze of white teeth.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Drayton,” Henry said, “but I’m a policeman, working with Officer Stanton. I believe you made a statement to him about the accident in Exeter Place on Tuesday.” Mrs. Drayton’s merry face clouded. “That poor girl,” she said. “I can see her now, lying right there in the street. I’ll not never forget that, I tell you, sir. And I can still hear it . . . the way she did scream. I didn’t sleep all night, thinking of it.”

  “But you weren’t able to tell Officer Stanton anything about the car?”

  “No, sir. He was off too quick for me. Beside, I couldn’t think on nothin’ ’cept the poor young lady.”

  “But you heard the car?”

  “I sure did. And like I said, if I’d bin watchin’ that car instead of the girl in the road, I’d like as not have seen him ’fore he got off roun’ the corner. Enough to see his color, anyways.”

  “Well,” Henry said, “it’s a pity, but it can’t be helped. It was perfectly natural for you to give all your attention to Miss Hamilton. We appreciate how promptly you called for help.”

  Mrs. Drayton shook the rug again. “If I hadn’t have happened to be out in the garden,” she said, punctuating her words with vigorous shakes, “that poor chile might’ve laid there in the road a long, long time. But there I was, gathering some parsley for dinner, so I heard her and come runnin’. But I was too late.”

  “She was unconscious when you got to her? She didn’t say anything?”

  “Not nuthin’, sir. Not nuthin’.”

  “And that’s all you can tell me?”

  “I tole Officer Stanton all I knows, and now I tole you, sir.”

  “You noticed that Miss Hamilton wasn’t carrying a handbag?”

  “I didn’t see no handbag, that’s true. Never thought about it at the time.”

  Henry sighed. “Well, that seems to be that. Thank you very much, Mrs. Drayton.”

  “Y’all welcome sir, I’m sure. Have a good day now.”

  Mrs. Drayton went back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. Henry was walking slowly back down the path to the tradesmen’s entrance when his eye was caught by a patch of bright green, down the garden to his right. A fine crop of curly parsley, planted out neatly in a bed of other herbs, convenient to the kitchen. So Mrs. Drayton had been there, picking parsley, when . . . Henry stopped dead. Then he ran back and knocked on the kitchen door.

  Mrs. Drayton opened it almost at once. “Y’all forget somethin’?”

  “Mrs. Drayton,” said Henry, “that’s your parsley bed over there, isn’t it?”

  The black woman looked puzzled. “Sure is.”

  “So that’s where you were when you heard the scream. Now, that’s well away from Exeter Place, on the 30th Street side of the garden. I don’t know how fast you can run, Mrs. Drayton, but I can’t see any way you could have got to the front gate from there, and out into Exeter Place, in time to hear and very nearly see the hit-and-run car. Do you think there might have been two cars?”

  Mrs. Drayton was regarding him with a gentle smile, nodding to herself, her arms crossed. “You got it wrong, sir. Surely I was out to pick parsley, but when the young lady scream, I was on my way to the front already.”

  “You were? Why?”

  “I don’t hear so good these days as when I was a girl,” Mrs. Drayton admitted. “I just done make a mistake. I done think I hear somebody callin’ my name out in Ex’ter Place. I think maybe it’s Walt—he’s the chauffeur from 3018, over the street. So I come over to see what he want—and then there’s the scream, and the car, and no sign of Walt, so I just made a mistake, like I said.”

  Hardly daring to breathe, Henry said, “You thought you heard a voice calling your name?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “A voice calling ‘Mrs. Drayton’?”

  Mrs. Drayton beamed. “Lordy, no, sir. We’re all good friends round this block. We don’t use no Mister and Missus.”

  “So you thought somebody called ‘Belinda’?”

  “Belinda’s my name, sir, sure enough, but folks find it bothersome long. No, sir—what I’m called around here is Bella.”

  Henry said, “You thought it was a man’s voice. Would you recognize it again?”

  “There wasn’t any voice, sir. Like I said, my ears aren’t what they were. Stand to reason nobody done call me, ’cause nobody was there in the street excepting the poor young lady. Must have been that old mockingbird—he can imitate ’bout any sound you can name.”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “Yes, you’re right. It must have been the mockingbird. I’d forget all about it if I were you.”

  “That’s just what I aim to do, sir. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, if you hadn’t brought it up. I wouldn’t like folks to know an ole mockingbird can make a fool out of me.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” said Henry. “I promise I’ll keep my mouth shut. And you do the same.”

  “Sure will, sir. That ole mockingbird . . .” Shaking her head, Mrs. Drayton went back into the house. Henry beat a decorous retreat through the garden gate, and then sprinted for the nearest public telephone booth.

  Dr. Miles was not at all surprised. In answer to Henry’s question, he said, “She had severe concussion, you know, as well as internal injuries. It’s highly unlikely that when she regained consciousness in the hospital she had any recollection at all of the accident. She would probably remember nothing after leaving the Embassy for her meeting with you.”

  Officer
Stanton agreed. “That’s the trouble with these hit-and-run cases. Even if the victim survives, after concussion he usually has a permanent memory blank covering the actual accident. He can’t help us with descriptions of the car or the driver. Of course, in a suicide case like this, one wouldn’t expect the lady to do anything except try to make her confession, if that’s what it was. But if it had been an accident, I doubt she’d have been able to tell us anything about it.”

  The telephone rang in Sir Edward Ironmonger’s study. The Ambassador broke off the discussion on the upcoming conference which he was holding with Michael Holder-Watts, picked up the receiver, and said, ‘Ironmonger.’ ”

  “Oh, Sir Edward, I’m so glad I got you. I keep getting wrong numbers.” The young Tampican filing clerk who was now occupying Dorabella’s office sounded near tears. “There’s a Mr. Tibbett on the line for you. Shall I put him through—if I can, sir?”

  “Yes, put him on,” said Ironmonger gravely. He put a hand over the mouthpiece and twinkled a smile at Michael. For the moment, at least, his animosity towards the Counsellor seemed to have disappeared. He said, “I think our policeman may have had second thoughts about Pirate’s Cave.” Into the telephone, he said, “Chief Superintendent? What can I do for you? . . . You have? Well, I’m very glad to hear it. . . no, no trouble at all. . . yes, of course you and Inspector Bartholomew should be together for the writing of the report . . . yes, that’s correct, he left this morning . . . no, no, I think it is an excellent decision, and I hope you’ll find time for a little play between working sessions . . . Our party leaves for Tampica tomorrow morning . . . I’ll arrange seats on the afternoon plane for you—that’ll give us time to get things organized at the other end . . . there’ll be a car to meet you and Mrs. Tibbett at the airport . . . think nothing of it, old man, it’s our pleasure and privilege . . .”

  He rang off and grinned hugely at Michael, who remarked, “I didn’t think he’d be able to resist it. Poor devil, he’d never be able to afford a holiday at Pirate’s Cave if he worked overtime for a hundred years. You really can’t blame him.”

  Thoughtfully, Sir Edward said, “He seemed very definite about refusing yesterday.”

  “Maybe,” said Michael, “but in the meantime he probably mentioned your offer to his wife. Hence the change of heart. How does it feel to be Father Christmas, Eddie?”

  Ironmonger said, a little stiffly, “He deserves our gratitude. It’s tragic about Dorabella, but at least the matter is settled and we can concentrate on the conference. By the way, Michael, you’d better call Tampica and fix up the hotel and the car for the Tibbetts. Winnie will be too busy, even though he’s on the spot.” He paused, and added, “I’m sorry you’re not coming with us, Michael, but I really don’t feel there’s anybody else I can leave in charge here. That’s why I sent Winnie on ahead to Tampica and why he’ll be my aide at the conference. You do understand?”

  “Of course, Eddie.” Michael lit a cigarette and gave the Ambassador a quizzical stare. “We ex-British are secure enough not to carry chips on our shoulders. I’m sure Winnie will be very useful to you.”

  Ironmonger grinned. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “However, I like to think that you’ll be at the end of a telephone line, if necessary. Meanwhile, I’d like to go over those figures again . . . this is the sum I’m suggesting to Sam that he should demand over a five-year period, and it’s essential that he shouldn’t weaken his case by . . The dark head and the fair one came close as the two men pored over the document. Murder is murder, personal dislike is personal dislike, but politics is something else again.

  When Henry got back to the little blue frame house, it appeared deserted, and he assumed that Margaret and Emmy were both out; but then, through the French windows of the drawingroom, he saw his wife in the garden. She was standing on tiptoe, reaching up to the top of the fence to stroke and converse with the excessively handsome Siamese cat from next door. Around her, forsythia blossomed in a golden cascade, a camellia tree blazed with dark red flowers among thick, shiny leaves, and the ground at her feet was blue with violets. She turned at the sound of the opening door.

  “Oh, hello, darling. I was just making a new friend.” The cat gave Henry a disdainful look, and jumped down on his own side of the fence. Emmy said, “How did you get on? Don’t tell me. If you’d found out anything useful, you wouldn’t be home so soon. Oh, well. It was worth a try. I suppose I’d better start packing.” She looked around the little garden. “I shall miss Georgetown. I hope we can come back one day.”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “I’ll miss Georgetown, too. And certainly we should start packing. But first of all, we’ve some shopping to do.”

  “Shopping? Oh—you mean, presents for people back home?”

  “I mean,” said Henry, “that we’ll both need at least one swimsuit, and some shorts and light shirts, not to mention dark glasses and suntan oil and—”

  “Henry, have you gone completely bananas, as Margaret says? What on earth are you talking about? Swimsuits and dark glasses in London in April—?”

  Henry grinned. “If you’d allowed me to get a word in edgewise,” he said, “I’d have told you that we’re not going to London. We’re going to Tampica.”

  “To Tampica? Whatever for?”

  “To have a free holiday at one of the world’s most famous hotels, as guests of the Tampican government.”

  Emmy’s face clouded. “Oh, don’t be silly, Henry.”

  “What d’you mean—don’t be silly?”

  “Well—we agreed we couldn’t possibly accept. I’m not saying I wouldn’t adore to go—I’m only human—but obviously we can’t put ourselves under that sort of an obligation, and you know it.” Henry said, “Where’s Margaret?”

  “Out shopping. What has that to do with it?”

  “Come inside and I’ll tell you.”

  Emmy looked quickly at her husband’s face, but she said nothing until they were both inside the drawing-room, and the door was closed. Then she said, “So you did find something.”

  Henry said, “Yes. That is, something happened to make me change my mind about the Tampican invitation. Now, listen, Emmy. Nobody—but nobody—must know that we’re in Tampica for anything except a holiday. Since I turned down the offer very firmly yesterday, the implication must be that you talked me into going after all. You won’t deny it—just giggle and say that you may have had something to do with it. Fortunately, some people are always ready to believe that any woman is selfish and stupid, whatever the evidence to the contrary. O.K.?”

  “Of course. But what did you find out?”

  Henry hesitated. Then he said, “Darling, you know my rule— what you don’t know can’t hurt you. I really would rather not tell you what I’ll be looking for in Tampica.”

  Emmy sighed, then smiled, and put her arms round Henry’s neck. “O.K. I should have known better than to ask. Come on—let’s go to Wisconsin Avenue and buy those swimsuits.”

  Henry and Emmy arrived back from their shopping expedition to find Margaret cooking lunch, and a message for Chief Superintendent Tibbett to call Officer Stanton at the M Street Station.

  “Tibbett? Stanton here. Just to let you know we’ve got the results in on that pocketbook that Inspector Bartholomew turned over for fingerprinting . . . yeah, the Hamilton girl’s pocketbook . . . Well, all I can tell you is that there was just one set of prints . . . no, no, it had been extensively handled, but by just one person . . . nothing to match anything in our files . . . no, definitely not Miss Hamilton herself . . . yes, quite positive . . . I dare say you’ll be wanting to collect the pocketbook . . . yes, surely, why don’t you come along to the station this afternoon . . . be glad to see you . . .”

  Officer Stanton’s office was just like every other office in every other police station in the western world. It occurred to Henry that a number of governments must simultaneously have ordered large surplus quantities of green and cream semi-gloss paint, which they proceeded t
o unload on their law enforcement establishments. On Stanton’s desk lay a new-looking, shiny black patent leather handbag. Stanton welcomed Henry genially.

  “Good to see you, Superintendent. Well, there it is—just about perfect for fingerprints.” He paused, ripped the paper off a slice of gum, and began to chew reflectively. “Funny they weren’t her prints. Got any idea whose they could be?”

  “I know whose they are,” Henry said. “A First Secretary at the Embassy found the handbag in her office, and pawed all over it before I could stop him. We’ll have to check, of course, but there’s not much doubt—”

  “Then why weren’t her prints on it as well as his?” Stanton demanded.

  Henry said lightly, “Oh, I expect she’d been polishing it. It’s obviously very new.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Stanton said, with a grin. “Every time an ordinary cop like me gets a bright idea, it turns out there’s an obvious explanation that he’s too goddam stupid to see, right under his nose. Well, it’s all yours . . . excuse me a moment . . .” He broke off to answer the insistent buzz of the desk telephone. “M Street, Officer Stanton . . . who? . . . ah, dammit, not again . . . why can’t that guy keep his nose out of trouble, for Chrissakes? . . . O.K. bring him along here and book him . . . sure, I’d like him off the back of my neck, he’s nothing but a pain in the ass . . .” He hung up and looked at Henry, shaking his head sadly. “Some guys. . .” he said.

  “What was all that about?” Henry asked. He really did not care, but Stanton was clearly about to unburden himself, or burst.

  “Franklin D. Martin,” said Stanton. “Demonstrator without a cause. Boy, does he get in our hair. Just been arrested for streaking outside the White House, wearing a white mask—he’s black, of course—and carrying a banner saying ‘Impeach Ralph Nader.’ ” He shook his head. “Boy, oh boy, oh boy. I wish I’d seen it.” He looked up. “Come to think of it, last time we busted him, it was outside the Tampican Embassy, the night Lady Ironmonger got shot.”