Black Widower

by Patricia Moyes

  In fact, hurrying as she did, Emmy quite soon reached the center of the maze—a circular clearing embellished by a small fountain and stone benches for relaxation. The red cord led her out on the other side, and before long she rounded a corner to find herself at the exit, facing the back gate. She reckoned she could not be more than a few seconds behind Prudence now, for the older woman had been walking with a slight limp, presumably due to her arthritis. The back gate—a simple wooden affair—was open, and unattended by hostesses. Emmy ran through it.

  She found herself in a concrete-paved alley, not wide enough for motor traffic, and bordered on either side by high walls. The back gate of Maycroft House was about midway along the alley, which stretched for half a block in either direction. At each end, Emmy could glimpse the passing traffic on the busy north-south streets. The only other gateway giving on to the alley belonged to the vast mansion to the south of Maycroft House. It was secured by a rusty but very stout padlock, which had obviously not been opened in years. And the alley was completely deserted.

  Emmy stood still, baffled. She had really been expecting to catch up with Prudence in the maze, given her greater rate of speed. It was simply not possible that Mrs. Barrington could have been so far ahead of her as to have traveled the length of the alley and reached the street by now. She could not have been picked up by car.

  There was only one answer. Prudence was still in the maze. But she certainly had not taken the officially marked route. She must have tried to take a short cut, and by now was probably lost. And neatly isolated from her group and everybody else. Well, there was nothing for it but to try to find her. And where on earth was Henry? Miserably, Emmy went back through the gate and into the maze again.

  This time, she was going against the stream, and also against a barrage of well-meant information that she was going the wrong way.

  “Sorry . . . have to go back . . . yes, I do know, thank you . . . forgotten something . . . yes, you’re very kind, but I do know . . .”

  A side alley turned off to the left, and momentarily Emmy had the short, grassy corridor to herself. She dodged under the red cord and into the unknown.

  As the notice had predicted, within a very few minutes she was hopelessly lost. The path turned sharply right, then left, doubled back on itself and ended in a T-junction. Emmy turned left, and soon found herself at a dead end. She retraced her steps—but somehow the path from which she had come seemed to have disappeared. The voices of the visitors were almost inaudible now— she seemed to be getting farther and farther from the official path, and was by now quite incapable of telling in which direction she was going.

  Then, suddenly, she heard footsteps. Somebody else was wandering in the forbidden part of the maze. Henry? Prudence? Or . . . ? She dared not call out. She quickly turned up a side alley and round a bend, and then peered cautiously back to see who was coming. She was too late. The running figure was past the end of the alley before she could identify it. All she could see was that it was a tall person, wearing a beige raincoat. Definitely not Prudence, definitely not Henry.

  All at once, the ludicrous side of the situation occurred to Emmy, and she nearly laughed out loud. The whole area of the maze could not have been much more than an acre, and much of it was occupied by Episcopal Ladies and other visitors, strolling and enjoying themselves. And yet, in this confined space at the bottom of somebody’s garden, were four people—herself, Henry, Mrs. Barrington and the unknown—stalking and seeking each other, and so far, apparently, failing to make contact.

  “Oh, God, for a helicopter,” Emmy said aloud, and set out to try to follow the running figure.

  A moment later, she froze in her tracks. A voice was coming from the other side of the dense boxwood hedge. It was Prudence Barrington’s voice, and it was saying, “What on earth are you doing here, Mr. Tibbett?”

  18

  Henry had reached the maze well ahead of Prudence Barrington’s party, and entered it along with a small group of unlabeled visitors. As soon as the coast was clear, he had left the main route and escaped into a side alley, from which he could—at the price of considerable discomfort, for the hedges were intentionally bristly and impenetrable—watch the passing tourists on the red-corded path without being seen.

  He had been exasperated but not really surprised to see Prudence coming into the maze alone, ahead of her flock, and hurrying as much as her stiff leg would allow. Emerging onto the official route once more, and keeping at a safe distance, he had tailed his quarry.

  It was obvious that Prudence knew the maze intimately. She did not hesitate for a moment, but made her way confidently down the main alley for some time, until she reached a point where a path led off to the right. Here she dawdled, letting the party of South Alexandria Horticulturists get ahead of her. Henry dodged out of sight. When he looked again, a moment later, Prudence had disappeared. She could only have taken the right-hand pathway. It was clear that Mrs. Barrington had a rendezvous somewhere in the maze, and that she was on her way to keep it.

  Henry glanced at his watch. Twenty-past-three. The appointment was probably for three-thirty. Prudence would be early—or perhaps her watch was wrong. Anyhow, it gave him a breathing space, a small gift of time in which to find her in this madhouse of a maze. Hoping that Prudence’s friend was not also early for the appointment, Henry began his search.

  Like Emmy, he soon discovered that the maze was far from simple, but had been specifically designed to confuse the sense of direction. By the time Henry reached the alley which Prudence had taken there was, of course, no sign of her. Round every corner was a baffling choice of paths. Henry was lost.

  At one point, he found himself divided by only one hedge from the official route and its chattering voices, and among them he heard Emmy’s. “So sorry . . . forgotten something . . .”

  “You’re going the wrong way, you know!” broke in a high-pitched female voice.

  “Yes, I know . . . must go back . . .”

  Poor Emmy. Prudence must have given her the slip, and now she, too, was involved in the merry-go-round. Nothing to be done about it. Henry pressed on, and soon the voices grew faint, and the oppressive silence of the maze blotted out all sound. By now, Henry’s only hope was that, like boats drifting in a fog, he and Prudence must inevitably collide. True, Prudence was not drifting, but. . . He came to a T-junction. Right or left? What the hell does it matter? He turned right, followed a zig-zag path, rounded a comer—and there, in a small dead end clearing, was Prudence Barrington. She was sitting on the grass at the foot of a small bronze statue of goatfooted Pan, which leered wickedly from its stone pedestal. She had removed her shoes, and was wiggling her naked toes in patent satisfaction under the thin spray of a little fountain. She looked up, saw Henry, and said accusingly, “What on earth are you doing here, Mr. Tibbett?”

  “Looking for you,” said Henry.

  “For me? What a bizarre idea. In any case, your wife told me you had abandoned the tour.”

  “I abandoned it to find you, Mrs. Barrington. Unfortunately, you obviously know this maze and I don’t. I got lost trying to follow you.”

  Prudence Barrington smiled. “I don’t suppose anybody outside the family and staff knows this garden as well as I do,” she said. “You see, Eunice—Mrs. Schipmaker—knows of my interest in flowers and . . . but we are wasting time. I’m so sorry, Mr. Tibbett, but I must ask you to leave. I have an appointment at half-past three.”

  Henry said, “Mrs. Barrington, please, you must listen to me—”

  Prudence sailed serenely on. “Did you know that Eddie Ironmonger was back from Tampica? The talks seem to have broken down—such a pity, but Matthew says it’s all part of Eddie’s policy. I’m afraid politics are above my head, but I do know that the base gave my girls a chance to meet such nice young men. However, that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at, Mr. Tibbett, is that I had a phone call from the Embassy this morning—Eddie wants to talk to me urgently. I said I couldn’t aba
ndon my ladies—at least not until I’d got them this far—so we came up with the bright idea of the maze. I explained very carefully how he could find the Pan statue, and there couldn’t be a more secluded spot for a chat. I don’t know what Eddie wants to see me about, but it’s obviously confidential and he’ll be here any minute, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  Henry said, rudely, “Shut up, for God’s sake!”

  Prudence looked at him, openmouthed: but she shut up.

  There was a full minute of silence. Then, panting slightly from his exertions, Winston Horatio Nelson came around the hedge and into the little clearing.

  He said, “Mrs. Barrington . . .” and then, seeing Henry, “Tibbett! What in hell—?”

  “I was expecting you, Mr. Nelson,” said Henry.

  “Well, I certainly wasn’t,” said Prudence. “Where’s Eddie?”

  “Sir Edward knows nothing about this,” Henry said. “It was Nelson you spoke to on the telephone, wasn’t it?”

  “Well—yes. He’s Eddie’s right-hand man, after all, and now that Dorabella—”

  “Mrs. Barrington,” said Henry, “do you still have your husband’s old watch—the one that he thinks he’s lost, and that the watchmaker said must have been running slow for—”

  “Why, yes. Certainly I do.”

  Nelson’s hand went to the pocket of his raincoat, and Henry caught a glint of steel. He said, “No, Mr. Nelson. You can’t get away with it. Mrs. Barrington, perhaps. No alarm would have been raised until she failed to come home this evening. Even then it would have taken time to find her here. You, of course, will have arranged an unbreakable alibi back at the Embassy. You might have brought it off—but now you can’t. There are two of us—no, I’m sorry, there are three of us. My wife is at this moment on her way to the Embassy to fetch Inspector Bartholomew.”

  “Bartholomew?”

  “I brought him back to Washington. I thought you would rather face trial in Tampica than in the United States.”

  Prudence was looking from one man to the other in utter amazement. She said, “I don’t understand any of this—”

  Henry said, “Think back to the evening of the Tampican reception, Mrs. Barrington. You and your husband lingered in the garden, forgetting the time, and then suddenly you thought you would be late for your appointment with Nelson.”

  “That’s right. Matthew’s watch said five past seven, so we hurried in—”

  “And found that, in fact, you were dead on time, according to the clock in the library. It was just striking seven, I believe.”

  “Yes. Matthew’s watch was wrong—but there’s nothing unusual about that.”

  “Ah—but that would have meant that his watch was fast. Later that evening, you wanted to watch television news, and you almost missed it, although he assured you that it was only just starting. In fact, his watch was slow—had been for years. Mrs. Barrington, it was after quarter-past seven when you and your husband got to the library.”

  “But. . . the clock . . .”

  “Which normally keeps perfect time, had been set back by fifteen minutes. Later in the evening it was keeping perfect time again. Somebody had moved the hands back—and then on again. Hadn’t he, Mr. Nelson?”

  Winnie said, “This is a perfect rigmarole. Who would go around altering clocks?”

  “It was a mistake to produce that knife,” said Henry. “Please don’t do it again. You went around altering that particular clock so that you could leave the reception room just before seven, give yourself a quarter of an hour to see Mavis Ironmonger collapse and be bundled up to her room, go up after her and shoot her. And still appear to leave the Embassy just after seven.”

  Prudence stood up. She had replaced her shoes, and she looked like the bastion of Empire. She put her arm round Nelson’s shoulder, and said, “Don’t you worry, Winnie. This man is obviously mad, and nobody will listen to him. We all know that we left the Embassy at seven, or just after—you and me and Matthew. We’ll support you, Winnie. You’ve nothing to worry about.” Winnie looked down at the small, determined figure, smiled and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Barrington. This Englishman is some sort of a crazy guy. He can never in a million years prove something from an old broken watch. What an idea!”

  “Mrs. Barrington,” said Henry, “you must listen to me. This man came here this afternoon to kill you—just as he killed Mavis Ironmonger and Dorabella Hamilton. You must believe me.” Again, Prudence looked from one to the other. Her arm tightened round Winnie’s shoulder. She said, “Well, I still have that old watch, whatever it proves or doesn’t prove. But you’re certainly not going to use it against Winnie.”

  “I don’t need to,” Henry said. “You see, I have an independent witness.”

  Nelson shouted, “That’s not possible!”

  “Oh yes, it is. Do you remember the demonstration outside the Embassy that evening?”

  “I remember,” said Prudence, “that we had to step over some people on the pavement. . .”

  “Well, I have the testimony of their leader, Franklin D. Martin, who will swear that Mr. Finkelstein left the Tampican Embassy before Mr. Nelson and his party.”

  Prudence had never looked so imperial. “Franklin D. Martin? Are you going to take the word of a well-known troublemaker and drug addict against that of a fine young diplomat? Shame on you, Mr. Tibbett.”

  Henry said, “It’s not a question of taking his word. Mr. Finkelstein arrived at the Embassy too early to shake hands with Lady Ironmonger, which was why he was being formally introduced later on. When he got to Oxford Gardens, the demonstrators hadn’t even arrived. Yet Martin saw Finkelstein, and described him and the car he was driving. He could only have seen him leaving, not arriving. And he is quite definite that your party was the last to come out of the Embassy before the police arrived and arrested him.”

  “But Mr. Tibbett, it’s all so senseless!” Prudence exclaimed. “Why on earth should Winnie do such terrible things? Now Dorabella—I don’t say it’s easy to understand, but I can believe that she might have killed Mavis. I know she hated her—and Alfred says the Alcodym was hers. You’re not disputing that, I hope?”

  “No, no. It was hers. You got it from her, didn’t you, Nelson? Of course, she didn’t know how it was to be used. I suppose you told her that Sir Edward wanted to give it to his wife, to make sure she didn’t drink on the evening of the reception. In fact, you must have asked her to administer the normal dose—she would have done anything if she thought it was for Sir Edward. That’s what she meant when she said, ‘I did it’ just before she died. Of course, she didn’t know that you had taken pills from the bottle and put a double dose in Lady Ironmonger’s drink, together with the vodka.

  “All you had to do then was leave the reception and await developments. You turned the clock back, and waited in the hall— you knew Mavis Ironmonger would collapse in a matter of minutes. You had taken the gun earlier in the day. The rest was easy. I don’t know when you set the clock right again—probably while Mrs. Barrington was getting her coat.”

  Prudence said, “That’s all very well. You haven’t explained why.”

  “Ah,” said Henry, “now we get to the heart of the matter. Mr. Nelson is deeply involved in an enterprise known as the Tampica Research and Development Company.”

  This seemed to galvanize Nelson. “That’s a lie!” he shouted. “I don’t own a goddam share!”

  “Not in your own name. But you should have chosen a more reliable nominee than Fletcher. When he realized murder was involved—”

  Suddenly, Nelson’s control seemed to snap. “I’ll kill him!” he yelled. “I’ll kill that no good son-of-a-bitch if he said that! It’s Michael that’s up to his neck in that racket, not me! Okay, I killed her—I killed her for Tampica! I killed her for Eddie, for his own good! You say I’m in that Development company, by God I’ll kill you—” There was a flash of steel as he whipped the knife out of his pocket and lunged at Henry.

  “Get out, Mr
s. Barrington!” Henry shouted. He managed to grab the wrist that held the knife, but he knew he could not fend Nelson off for long. All sense of reality and even self-preservation had deserted Winston Nelson. All he wanted was the wild catharsis of violence and revenge.

  “Run!” Henry shouted again.

  Prudence Barrington did not run. Instead, she walked calmly up to the two struggling men, and laid her hand on Nelson’s arm.

  “Now, Winnie, dear,” she said, “be a good boy and give me that knife. It’s very dangerous, you know, and your mother would be upset if anybody got hurt.”

  Nelson was grunting and struggling, and Henry felt his own grip growing weaker. Sharply, Prudence said, “I shan’t tell you again, Winnie. Give me that knife. Then you can go home.”

  It was the word “home” that did it. Nelson quite suddenly collapsed onto the ground, his whole body heaving with great sobs. Words were just distinguishable. “I did it for Tampica, Miz Barrington . . . not for money . . . no money . . . poor Dorrie . . . for Tampica . . .”

  “That’s right, Winnie,” said Prudence. “I believe you.”

  Winnie continued to sob, his face buried in the soft grass. Slowly he held out his right hand, offering the knife to Prudence. She took it.

  “Thank you, dear,” she said.

  Then there was the sound of running feet, and Emmy arrived with Inspector Bartholomew and a member of the house staff who had led them through the maze to the Pan statue.

  Henry rubbed his wrist. He said, “He’s unarmed and he won’t be any trouble. I suggest you take him back to the Embassy and make the arrest there. Then you can fly him back to Tampica on the night plane.”

  Inspector Bartholomew reached down a vast hand, took Nelson by the shoulders and pulled him to his feet. “C’mon, man,” he said, gently. “C’mon Winnie. Come take a walk.”