Murder in the Raw

by C. S. Challinor

“They had to abandon it, but we got her on our yacht, and she was able to get dry.”

  “I don’t know why she left two weeks ago without saying goodbye!” Elizabeth broke down again.

  Toni Weeks gently pulled her from Paul’s arms and assisted her to the bedroom. Glancing around the open-plan room, Rex noticed the von Muellers installed at the kitchen table with Pam Farley and Nora O’Sullivan. A pot of tea and a half-demolished apple strudel stood on the pine surface.

  “Would you like a cup?” Nora asked. “You look blue.”

  “Aye, I would. I’m just beginning to thaw out. It’s the wind chill factor makes a difference.”

  “How brave of you to go out on the water in this weather.”

  “Daft,” Sean corrected his wife.

  “The worst of the storm has passed,” Duke Farley commented from the glass sliders. “Wasn’t Brook with you?”

  “I think he wanted to speak with Sabine alone.”

  “To think we’d given her up for dead,” Nora exclaimed.

  “When can we see her?” Paul asked from the sofa.

  “I have no wish to see her,” Penny Irving said, filling the kettle. “She murdered her husband.”

  “You think that’s what really went down, Rex?” the Texan asked, pulling a cigar from his pocket. “Hell, I can’t believe my racquet ball partner is lying dead in a morgue somewhere. Here’s to you, buddy,” he said, knocking back a tumbler of liquor.

  Rex looked across at the Austrian doctor, who sat gravely silent at table. “Ms. Durand mentioned he took a barbiturate with his rum.”

  “Ah, I see.” Von Mueller tugged his white beard thoughtfully. “Ja, a barbiturate administered with alcohol would have a compound effect, especially if the person is not used to the drug. It can take effect within twenty minutes.”

  “And cause death?”

  “In a large enough dose. Some barbiturates are very potent. Pentobarbital is used to euthanize animals. Thiopental, another barbiturate, is one of three drugs used in the United States to execute inmates on death row.”

  “Mein Gott!” his wife exclaimed. “Max, you are scaring people! My husband gets carried away,” she apologized to the guests.

  “I didn’t find any drugs in the medicine cabinets next door,” Rex assured her.

  Gaby was busy scribbling away in a notebook. “How does it work, Vater?” she addressed her father.

  “An overdose causes heart and respiratory failure, und then the person falls into a coma und dies.”

  “Would pentobarbital be used to treat horses?”

  The doctor nodded. “For anesthesia und euthanasia, ja.”

  Rex thought it quite possible Sabine had been the one to break into the Sundown Ranch dispensary and had gotten hold of a drug like pentobarbital before she left for St. Barts. Jean-Luc could have kept it until she joined him on the catamaran. Hard to know how deep her leading man was implicated in all of this. Perhaps he was just acting the part of a spineless twerp.

  “Poor Vernon,” Winslow said. “I wonder when she decided to murder him.”

  “She didn’t bring her best clothes or jewellery to St. Martin,” Rex stated. “So it’s my guess she planned it ahead of time, before she even left the States. There’s little question of culpable homicide.”

  “Culpable homicide?” Duke Farley asked.

  “Our term for involuntary manslaughter. No, it was definitely premeditated. On the trips to Philipsburg to see a make-believe chiropractor, she purchased clothes willy-nilly, sometimes in a size too large, to explain away the time she’d been spending with her boyfriend. I found such clothes in her closet.”

  “Is that when you began to suspect she was alive?” Pam inquired.

  “No, although I did think another man might be involved at that point. I thought perhaps she was pregnant and was seeing another sort of doctor. It was my friend from the cruise who suggested that the name of the chiropractor might be a ruse for a secret lover, used to dupe the husband.”

  “Is that the man we saw on the dingy?” Penny Irving asked, sipping tea at the counter. “He seems very young.”

  “He’s a French actor. They worked together.”

  “She kept very quiet about it.”

  “She always was a secretive one,” Nora noted.

  Penny shook her head. “None of this really surprises me.”

  “It does make sense when you view it objectively,” Rex agreed. “Who had more motive to kill Vernon than his wife? It was the only way she could get his money. Not content with simply leaving him, she wanted to embarrass him with the taint of scandal, perhaps even incriminate him. But to be completely free of him she had to come back and finish him off.”

  “Sweet Jesus, it sends chills down my spine,” Nora said.

  “It was Gaby who gave me the first real clue that she was still alive, though I did wonder how a murderer could have carried or dragged a body over all that soft sand when the tide was out.”

  “So lucky we went to St. Barts,” the doctor agreed.

  “We wouldna have her in custody now if you hadna, and if the maid hadna returned unexpectedly to Vernon’s cabana. No one would have been the wiser until Sabine Durand reentered public life months later, when it might have been too late to prove that she had caused her husband’s death.” Rex set down his empty cup. “I should like to find out a bit more if I can before Lieutenant Latour takes her in. I’ll see Elizabeth on my way out. If you’ll excuse me …”

  This was the hard part. Confronting a mother’s grief suddenly struck him as worse than facing a storm at sea.

  Rex knocked on Mrs. Winslow’s bedroom door and, upon being invited in, found her stretched out on the bed, in conversation with Toni Weeks.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Toni said, slipping off the bed.

  “How are you feeling?” Rex asked Elizabeth.

  “Calmer now. Max prescribed a sedative.”

  “Vernon told me Sabine took Luminal for anxiety. Did she tell you?”

  “I suggested she get on one of the newer types of medication. Barbiturates are potentially addictive. But I suppose she wanted to stick to what she was familiar with.”

  You got that right, Rex thought. Seemed that Sabine was quite the expert on the subject of barbiturates.

  “I thought I’d take her some clothes. You could come with me.”

  “Do you think she wants to see me?” Elizabeth asked hopefully. “Do I look an absolute mess?”

  The usually soignée Mrs. Winslow did look ravaged. “This must be verra hard on you,” he murmured. “Sabine told me you were her mother. And now that I’ve met her in person I can see a resemblance.” The greenish eyes, the hair color, though Elizabeth’s was redder.

  “She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” she said with a sigh that ended in a sob. “It’s not been easy, pretending to be just a caring friend all these years, but we decided it was for the best, to save our families any embarrassment—even though it happened such a long time ago.”

  “I understand.”

  “I never forgot her, not for a minute. Every day since I gave her up, I’ve said a little prayer for her. On her eighteenth birthday, I returned to Switzerland to look for her. The Maison de Lausanne was an institute for young women of society who found themselves in trouble,” Elizabeth explained in a voice laced with irony. “It was run by a Madame Bossard. We weren’t even allowed to read novels, which were considered to be corrupting. Surprisingly, the director was still alive all those years later, although she was in a wheelchair and a bit senile. Her establishment had reverted to a private house and she was taking in foreign students.”

  Mrs. Winslow took a deep breath, as though drawing the stamina to continue. “An English girl who was studying French at the university was sympathetic to my plight. She said she’d seen piles of old boxes in the cellar. We went down there. That part of the house hadn’t changed one little bit. I was transported in time. It still had the same stone sinks where we used to scrub the bloo
dy sheets by hand in cold water until our knuckles were raw. Most of the deliveries were done on the premises, you see. It may have been an establishment for respectable young women in trouble, but Madame Bossard made us contribute to the running of the household. I think deep down she wanted to punish us for our sins. The memory made me all the more determined to find my baby!”

  Fresh tears streamed down her face. Rex reached for the box of tissues by the bedside and waited for her to continue.

  “She had kept all the records of the unmarried mothers,” Elizabeth said, after composing herself. “I found my file and discovered that Sabine, whom I’d named Alice, had been placed with a banker and his wife at a smart address in Paris.”

  “And that was your next destination.”

  “Yes. I caught the next train out of Lausanne, tracked Sabine down in Paris, and told her everything. She took it very well. We were in a café on the boulevard St. Michel. I remember her saying, ‘I knew my mother couldn’t really be my real mum. We never got on.’ Of course, I should have been sad that she hadn’t had a better relationship with her adoptive mother, but I was thrilled. Naturally, she was at a rebellious age, so the idea of our secret communication between Paris and London must have appealed to her creative imagination. Soon after, she came to London. I suggested she try for a job at David’s restaurant and then I arranged for her to come and live in our basement flat.”

  “You confided all this in Paul?”

  “Oh, yes. I told him all about the adoption before we were married. We’d been married ten years before Sabine reappeared in my life. I never felt right about having other children. Paul has been so wonderfully supportive.”

  “That’s why you were so eager for me to come to St. Martin and help find out what happened to her. She was so much more than the friend you said she was …”

  “We felt the truth would have compromised the investigation. We were sure Vernon had killed her, but you might have felt we were biased if you knew that he was, in effect, our son-in-law. You might have thought we were being over-protective.”

  “The truth is always best, Elizabeth. It might have saved time. Tell me about Vernon’s phone.”

  “You know everything, don’t you? I took it from his cabana while he was out diving. Sabine had asked me to get hold of it if I ever got the opportunity. She said she wanted to get some information off it. I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity while he was out on the boat, but I didn’t see her all afternoon. I kept the phone in my purse that evening. It rang while we were on the beach searching for her, an incoming call from abroad. The guards were approaching. I managed to switch it off, then I chucked it onto the rocks. By that time I had a feeling something was terribly wrong. I left it on the beach to point the police in the right direction, to lead them to Vernon.”

  “You accidentally took a picture of yourself. Fortunately, the police didn’t notice.”

  Elizabeth shook back her mass of red hair. “I’d laugh if it wasn’t so pathetic. I was so convinced Vernon had murdered her. I absolutely had no idea it was she who had planned his murder all along. She did murder him, didn’t she? I wish to God she’d listened to me and not married him. Now her life, her bright future are ruined!”

  “They say hindsight is 20-20.”

  “They also say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If I knew who ‘they’ were, I’d tell them to go to hell.”

  “Well, I can tell you for a fact Sabine inherited some of her mother’s character.”

  Elizabeth blew her nose and gave a proud sniff. “You had someone taken away from you too, didn’t you?”

  “My wife, Fiona. She died of breast cancer. She still had so much life left to live. I think the hardest thing for her was knowing she would never see our son grow to manhood.” Rex rubbed Elizabeth’s shoulder in sympathy. “Are you ready to see her now?”

  Elizabeth nodded and accomplished a quick repair of her makeup. “I should go and splash some cold water on my eyes,” she said, scanning her face in a compact. “I don’t want her to see me in this state.”

  Paul Winslow stepped into the hall as they were leaving.

  “I’m going with Rex to see Sabine,” his wife told him. “I wanted to slip out without the others knowing, so I could have some time alone with her.”

  “Send her my love.” Paul took her face in her hands and kissed her forehead. “Chin up.” He turned to Rex. “Don’t be too hard on the girl.”

  Rex nodded in understanding. The Winslows had brought him out here to solve a mystery and he had accomplished his mission. The trouble was, it had not turned out the way they had expected. Yet from the moment he suspected Sabine was implicated in her husband’s murder, he had had to pursue the case to its bitter conclusion in the interest of justice—which he was morally bound to do by his profession.

  He opened the front door for Elizabeth. The rain had stopped, clearing the air and leaving the landscaped grass and tropical plants fresh and invigorated. He, by contrast, felt jaded and in need of a beer. They stopped by Sabine and Vernon’s cabana, where Mrs. Winslow picked up a change of clothes for her daughter, and proceeded to the main building. Lieutenant Latour had not yet arrived. The portable TV mounted on the wall at the reception area showed pictures of a fatal pile-up outside Grand Case, caused by the earlier rainstorm. Pierre stood guard outside the small office, watching the news at the same time.

  Rex explained his business and, leaving Elizabeth outside the door with a promise to be quick, went in to speak with Sabine.

  “Where are the police?” she demanded, leaping from her straight-back chair.

  “Are you that impatient to see them?”

  “The sooner I’m arraigned, the sooner I can be set free on bail.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on it. It’s too easy to disappear off this island.”

  “It wasn’t when I tried earlier. Jean-Luc is such an imbecile. I hope his cell is more comfortable than mine.” She indicated the small bare office with a brush of her slim hand.

  “The officer in charge was called to an emergency. Then he will see to you.”

  “I phoned my father in Paris. He’s very wealthy, you know. He will hire me the best lawyer and see to it that my séjour in prison will be as comfortable as possible. The French will never pronounce the death sentence on me!”

  “France abolished the death penalty in 1981, as I’m sure you’re aware. If they find a drug like pentobarbital in your husband’s system, it will look very bad for you, considering your connection to the stables where the drug was stolen.”

  Sabine tossed back her head in defiance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Tell me what you know about Monsieur Bijou and perhaps we can work something out.”

  “What has he to do with this?”

  “Nothing specifically, but I suspect him of other murders.”

  “That cold fish?” She shivered in the bathrobe Hastings had brought her. “Are you referring to the two girls who were found bound and tortured on the island a few years ago?”

  “And perhaps others in Amsterdam.”

  “I have met him a few times. A few weeks ago, he contacted me about doing some publicity for his Diamonds are Forever Club in Marigot and asked me to meet him. I would have gone had I not had a prior engagement with Jean-Luc.”

  “You’re lucky. You may not have left the meeting alive. You’re just his type.”

  “Didn’t they find jewels in the victims’ sodomized bodies?”

  “You seem well-informed.”

  “The paper said ‘raped.’ I’m just reading between the lines, knowing what I do about Bijou. But the mayor issued a statement at the time saying the police had reason to believe the murderer had left the island.”

  “It was wishful thinking. I’d love to put an end to Bijou and his jewel fetishes.”

  “What would I get out of it?”

  “Face space. Every time his name came up in the international news, your photograph wo
uld be right there alongside it.”

  Sabine pouted prettily. “I don’t know if I want my name connected to his. It makes me so sick—what he did—what he is.”

  “There’s no bad publicity in your business, you know that. You would be cited as being instrumental in securing his conviction. But I need something solid.”

  “Well, he did tell me something personal, which is unusual for him because no one really knows anything about him. When he found out my real name was Alice, he said that was his mother’s name and that she bore a striking resemblance to me. I looked into his eyes then and it was like staring through the gates of hell. I was fascinated and frightened at the same time.”

  “His mother’s name was Alice Frankel. She married a Henrick van Bijhooven.”

  Sabine collapsed in her chair. “God! I tried to get Vernon to buy a condo at Marina del Mar. Of course, he was such a cheapskate he wouldn’t consider it.”

  “When news of this gets out, it’ll become Marina del Nightmare.”

  “You are quite funny. Vernon had no sense of humour.”

  “You don’t seem to have a lot of remorse. A jury will want to see tears.”

  “Don’t worry. They will.”

  Rex had no doubt she would play to the jury. The story of her adoption and insecure childhood would come out, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Duke Farley appeared in court to testify to Vernon’s physical abuse of her at his Texas ranch, while her biological mother made an impassioned plea for leniency. The French loved drama. “I’ll leave you with your mother now,” Rex said and he called Elizabeth in. “Ten minutes,” he told her.

  “Mummy!” Sabine cried, throwing herself into Elizabeth’s arms.

  “My darling child,” Elizabeth said, stroking her long copper-colored hair. “What have you done!”

  Standing outside Greg Hastings’ office, Lieutenant Latour fondled his mustache with smug satisfaction. “You see, I was right about Mademoiselle Durand not being dead.”

  “You said she was eaten by sharks,” Rex reminded him.

  “But not murdered, monsieur. Ze alleged murder victim turned out to be ze murderer. We were both right,” the gendarme concluded magnanimously.