“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Burdall, but she was laughing.
Bethancourt chuckled, too. “I take it,” he asked, “that your family passed muster?”
“Only because we’d known Miranda longer than Rose,” said Mrs. Burdall. “Those of us who predated her were accepted as trustworthy.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Neil. “She always seemed suspicious of poor Ned Winterbottom.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Burdall, “she thought he was trying to marry Miranda for her money. She was quite wrong of course—Ned had been in love with Miranda from the time he was fifteen.”
“Mr. Grenshaw did mention,” put in Bethancourt, “that Mr. Winterbottom and Miss Haverford had once been romantically linked.”
Both Nicky and Dylan were looking rather stunned; apparently it had never occurred to them that even someone as old as Miranda Haverford had once been young and very likely had fallen in love.
“That’s putting it too strongly,” said Mrs. Burdall. “As I said, Ned has been in love with Miranda all his life, and when he moved back to London several years ago and found her still single, I don’t say that he didn’t try again. And she might even have been tempted. But she never cared for him in that way, and that was that in the end.”
“I believe you told me she never got over Andrew Kerrigan’s death,” said Neil.
This time Bethancourt recognized the name. “That’s why it was so familiar,” he said aloud, and all the Burdalls looked inquiringly at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “It just came together in my mind. When we were looking through the house, we found an old address book with a list of names and dates at the back—birthdays, we assumed.”
“And Andrew Kerrigan’s name was in it?” asked Mrs. Burdall, surprised. “It must have been quite old—Andrew died in the war.”
“I expect it was,” replied Bethancourt. “It turned out Miss Haverford had used his birthday as the combination to her safe.”
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Burdall. “I never knew that. It’s rather sad, really.”
Bethancourt raised a brow. “Is it?” he asked.
“They were engaged, you see,” she explained. “Andrew Kerrigan was a very handsome, dashing young man back then and everyone was quite jealous of Miranda for landing him. But she worshipped the ground he walked on, as we used to say, and she was devastated when his plane went down and he was killed. I don’t believe she ever looked at another man after that.”
“That’s tragic,” said Nicky. “You never told us that.”
“Well, I haven’t thought about it in a long time,” said Mrs. Burdall.
“But,” said Bethancourt, “wasn’t one of Miss Haverford’s beneficiaries named Kerrigan as well? I knew the name sounded familiar when Mr. Grenshaw mentioned it, but I couldn’t think where I’d heard it before.”
“Oh, yes, that would be May,” said Mrs. Burdall. “May and Miranda were at school together, and they were very close all their lives. Andrew was May’s older brother, but the girls were friends before he and Miranda got engaged. May’s up north now; her children live up in Derbyshire and as she got older they decided it would be best to have her closer to them. She’s not in very good health—we all thought she would be the first of us all to go, but instead it was Rose who was a good fifteen years younger than anyone else.”
“Gran,” protested Nicky. “That’s depressing.”
Mrs. Burdall shrugged. “It’s just life, Nicky.”
Bethancourt was quite enjoying this stream of reminiscence—the background was giving him a far more favorable view of Miranda Haverford than he had previously had—but he didn’t think the Burdalls had much more to tell him and although he had not met Nicky and Dylan’s parents, he was having difficulty believing they had stolen a fortune in jewels. Still, it did no harm to ask.
“One last thing I wanted to know,” he said. “Were you all aware that Miss Haverford kept the jewelry collection in her study safe?”
Neil looked toward his mother, who spread her hands.
“I never thought about it,” she said. “I suppose I would have assumed it was either there or at the bank. I do know when she was much younger, it often used to be kept in the safe as she used to wear some of it occasionally. Not the more elaborate pieces, of course, but a couple of the brooches and bracelets.”
“I do remember,” put in Neil, “the last time she lent it out, they picked it up from the house in an armored truck.” He grinned. “It’s not the kind of thing you see much in this neighborhood.”
“No,” agreed Bethancourt, “I imagine not.”
He excused himself shortly thereafter, thanking the Burdalls for their time and trouble, though in fact they seemed quite pleased with his visit, happy to add another investigator to their roster.
16
An Interview in Hospital
It was somewhat unfortunate for Dawn that her visit to the hospital occurred shortly after Gibbons had finished his daily physical therapy. The therapist today had refused to return him to bed and had insisted on settling him in one of the chairs. Gibbons found it excruciating.
He tried to put the best face he could on things when his visitors arrived, but his mother sensed at once that he was both tired and cross, and it was not long before she collected the children (who were giving Gibbons a headache in any case) and her husband and left him alone with Dawn. His father, Gibbons noticed, looked utterly confused by this maneuver but acquiesced as usual to his wife’s silent signals.
Dawn sensed something was in the wind, and tried to leave with them, but Gibbons’s mother squelched that firmly.
“Well,” said Dawn brightly when they were left alone, “I’m so glad you’re making good progress, Jack.”
“Thanks,” said Gibbons, sizing up her demeanor. At the moment, all he wanted was to get back into his bed and see if he could find a position that would make the raging pain in his stomach abate. Since that had been ruled out by the medical staff, he supposed it was just as well that he had someone to take his temper out on. He had never been all that fond of Dawn.
“So,” he said before she could trot out another inanity, “would you like to tell me what you were doing last Tuesday night?”
She managed to keep the bright smile in place. “I was home with the girls,” she answered. “I nearly always am at night.”
“Not according to Chief Inspector Carmichael,” said Gibbons, and that name wiped the smile from her face at once. “Or according to your neighbor,” he continued. “She claims you asked her to babysit while you went out for an hour or so.”
“Oh, that’s only Mrs. Carlson being forgetful again,” said Dawn with a nervous little laugh. “She’s quite elderly, you know. I did ask her to sit with the girls, but that was Monday, not Tuesday.”
“Do come off it, Dawn,” said Gibbons, annoyed. “You’re lying and you know it. You rang me on Tuesday afternoon, and I apparently rang you back that night while you were out doing whatever it was. Just tell me what the hell’s going on, can’t you?”
At that point, Dawn burst into tears, protesting her innocence and accusing Gibbons of being insensitive to a struggling single mother.
“Oh, put a sock in it, Dawn,” said Gibbons unsympathetically. “You may have got round Carmichael with that crap, but I’m not having any. I’ve been effing shot, woman. I nearly died, and if they had found me much later, I would have. At the moment I couldn’t care less about your petty little problems.”
This actually seemed to have some effect on her, though it did not stem her tears altogether.
“Oh!” Dawn hiccuped. “I’m so sorry, Jack. Truly I am—I wasn’t thinking. I know you’ve had an awful time—”
“I don’t need you to be sorry,” interrupted Gibbons. “I just need you to tell me the truth. Let’s start with why you rang me that day.”
“It wasn’t anything important,” she assured him earnestly, dabbing at her eyes. “I was only thinking you might come out wit
h me that night if you were free. We hadn’t caught up in a while.”
“In that case, why didn’t you leave a message?” demanded Gibbons.
She looked hurt and bewildered. “You didn’t answer,” she said. “So you were busy.”
Gibbons held on to his patience with both hands. “Just because I was busy at one o’clock in the afternoon doesn’t mean I would inevitably be busy for the rest of the day and night,” he pointed out.
“But I wasn’t sure,” she explained, looking on the verge of tears again. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. So when I didn’t get you, I took that as a sign.”
“A sign,” repeated Gibbons, quite incredulous at this piece of specious reasoning, if reasoning it could be called. “You needed a sign from above to decide whether or not you could have a drink with your own cousin.”
“Oh. Oh, well …” Dawn made a fluttery little gesture.
“I see,” said Gibbons in a moment. “You weren’t sure you wanted to tell me whatever you rang about, and when I didn’t answer, you decided that meant you’d made the wrong decision in trying to consult me.”
Dawn did not meet his eyes, but the tears began to roll down her cheeks again, this time silently.
“And,” continued Gibbons, working it out, “wherever you went that night, that was what you wanted to ask about. Perhaps you even wanted me to come with you.”
She remained silent, eyes averted, but nodded her bent head.
“But what did you say when I rang you back?” asked Gibbons. “Did you just put me off?”
For a moment he thought she would not answer, and was even prepared for the sobs to start up again, but instead she said shakily, in a very low voice, “I had my mobile switched off. I didn’t know you had rung. I really didn’t.”
Gibbons considered this. “But my phone records show I must either have spoken to you or left a message,” he said, half to himself. “And if I had left a message, your mobile would have alerted you when you turned it back on. When did you?”
Dawn looked up, confused. “When did I what?” she asked.
“When did you switch your phone back on?”
She frowned, trying to remember. “I was tired,” she said. “And I hardly ever have the phone off. I don’t think I remembered to turn it on after I got home. I just had a cuppa and went to bed.”
“That’s good,” said Gibbons encouragingly. “So the next morning, when you got up—did you ring anybody then?”
She had stopped crying now and, so far as he could tell, was making an honest effort to recollect what she had done.
“Wednesday morning …” she said. “Oh, yes, of course, I woke rather late. I remember now. The girls were already up and watching the telly, and I was hurrying to get them breakfast when Diane rang me. Oh! Oh, dear.”
“What?” demanded Gibbons impatiently.
“I think it must have been Mandy,” she said, her tone tinged with pride at her eldest’s accomplishment. “Because when Diane rang, I had to fetch the phone from the sitting room—and I know I didn’t go in there the night before. Mrs. Carlson was in the kitchen when I came in, and I went straight there and had a cuppa with her before she left. Then I went in to bed. Mandy must have got the phone out of my bag when she woke up in the morning and turned it on. And that’s how I missed your message.”
She beamed at him as if she had been very clever.
“Splendid,” said Gibbons, trying to sound encouraging rather than sour, which was how he felt. “So that just leaves what you were doing on Tuesday night and why it’s such a secret.”
“Well …” she said uneasily. “It’s just that … well, it’s just a spot of bother, really.”
Gibbons interpreted this as meaning that she was in trouble.
“What bother?” he asked.
“Well … you won’t tell Aunt Margery, will you?” she asked anxiously.
“No,” promised Gibbons, and when she still hesitated, “Good heavens, Dawn, I don’t tell my mum everything.”
“No, no, of course not.” She took a deep breath. “Well, it’s just that Danny owed a bit of money.”
Danny, as Gibbons recollected, was her ex-husband.
“Right,” he said.
“It was a little bit more than I thought,” she admitted.
Gibbons raised a brow. “So?” he said. “You’re divorced now, and as I recollect, all his debts were settled when you sold the house.” In fact, he was guessing at that; his mother had told him all about it at the time, but Gibbons had not really been listening.
Dawn shifted uncomfortably and her eyes fell away from his face.
“Danny’s had a hard time of it,” she said.
Gibbons remembered his mother’s earlier comment on the phone. “Oh,” he said. “Were you meeting Danny that night?”
“It was just for a minute,” she said earnestly. “And I didn’t give him much.”
“I see,” said Gibbons, the light dawning at last. “By all rights, he should be giving you money, and you didn’t want anyone in the family to know it was going the other way. But then why the devil did you ring me? You couldn’t have thought I was going to approve of the transaction.”
“I’m not quite such a fool as that,” retorted Dawn, with the first sign of spirit Gibbons had seen in her. “I didn’t mean to tell you anything about it. I just thought if I could get you to go with me, then Danny wouldn’t have a chance to ask for any money. He wouldn’t, you know, in front of you.”
This was such a poor solution to her problem that Gibbons was left speechless. He thought about it for a moment, decided being shot meant he didn’t have to bother about it, and said, “There’s a pad and a pencil on the table there. Write down Danny’s current phone number and address.”
Dawn obliged, once again extracting a promise from him that he would not tell his mother of her indiscretion. Gibbons personally thought a good dose of common sense from his mother would do the woman a world of good, but gave his promise anyway; he took note, however, that she was shortsighted enough not to include her own mother in the ban.
Then he sent her off to fetch the others back. Left in solitude for the moment, he curled himself round the pain in his abdomen as best he could in the chair. He had been holding himself together so tightly in order to get himself through the interview that giving into the pain was almost a relief. A tear oozed silently down his cheeks.
“You’ve overdone it, haven’t you?”
Nurse Pipp’s voice was soft.
“Could be,” grunted Gibbons from his bent-over position.
“I think we’d best get you back into bed,” she said.
Gibbons did not think he could move, but she eased the chair over close to the bed after lowering it so he would barely have to stand to make the switch. Then, with a gentle hand and an arm of steel for him to lean on, she maneuvered him out of the chair and into the bed. It hurt less than Gibbons could credit.
“Cheers,” he gasped once he was settled.
She drew the blankets up over him and smoothed the pillow.
“You lie still for a bit,” she said. “Have you dosed yourself? Good. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”
Gibbons nodded soundlessly while she left the room, closing the door behind her.
When he woke again an hour later, he felt as though he were swimming up toward consciousness from the bottom of a very murky pond. Even once he had opened his eyes, he lay very still, blinking, for some minutes before he remembered what he had been about and that he really ought to ring Carmichael.
But his belly still throbbed and he did not think he had the strength of mind to force himself up again. And then he realized that the object he was blinking at was the phone, sitting within reach on the tray table; Nurse Pipp must have placed it there. Cautiously, he worked an arm out from under the blankets, and in the interest of moving as little as possible, he tugged at the cord until the receiver pulled out of the cradle and landed on the bed by his kn
ee. He was smiling faintly as he picked it up and dialed Carmichael’s mobile.
As the day wore on, various officers dropped by to contribute what they could to the translation of Gibbons’s notebook. At one point in the afternoon, Carmichael’s office became quite crowded with people trying to help and mostly getting in the way. Inspector Davies was the one person who had really had anything illuminating to say; he had been able to explain several things on the pages that dealt with the jewels themselves.
Not that Carmichael really cared much, although he tried to hide that. Gibbons, he was sure, had not been shot on account of the technical details of the stones and their settings.
So he was almost annoyed when at last he had managed to clear everyone but himself, Lemmy, and Davies out, and the three of them were just settling in to work on Gibbons’s notes of his interview with the Colemans, only to be interrupted by the ringing of Carmichael’s mobile.
“Bugger it,” he muttered under his breath, grabbing it and checking the caller ID. But the exasperation vanished at once when he saw the University College Hospital number, and he answered the call at once. He was relieved to hear Gibbons’s voice, however weak he sounded.
“How are you, lad?” he asked, full of concern.
“I’m fine, sir,” answered Gibbons. “I spoke with my cousin this afternoon, and wanted to let you know what she said.”
“Ah!” said Carmichael, pushing himself back from the desk. “Did she talk to you? Or did she just cry?”
“There was crying,” admitted Gibbons. “But she came across with the story eventually, and I believe she was telling me the truth.”
He related Dawn’s story to Carmichael, who grunted and said, “She’s the most feather-brained female I’ve ever met. I hope you don’t mind my saying that, Gibbons.”
Trick of the Mind Page 25