The Young Widow

by Cassandra Chan

  Marla put her head to one side and considered. “But if she’s guilty, as you seem to think, it would work in his favor. Arresting the woman he loves is certain proof of his belief of her guilt. In fact, the defense wouldn’t dare bring it up at all and there would be no point in the prosecution bringing it in.”

  “Public humiliation would be averted,” agreed Bethancourt. “But it would still ruin his career—Scotland Yard frowns on its officers becoming involved with murder suspects. The only hope is to get it all wrapped up quickly before things get out of hand. Which doesn’t look like happening. They pulled in the murdered man’s son today, but Carmichael failed to get a confession out of him.”

  “Well, naturally,” said Marla. “Why should the man confess if there’s the slightest chance he could get off? I wouldn’t.”

  “You’d be surprised how many people do, though,” said Bethancourt reflectively.

  “Well, they’re idiots, that’s all. So, has he slept with her yet?”

  “Who, Jack? No, I think not, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  “That’s all right then,” said Marla. “They can’t fire him for thinking about it. He’s just got to keep himself under control. Phillip, why are we walking? There were plenty of taxis back there and my feet hurt.”

  “Of course,” said Bethancourt, who had not hailed a taxi at once upon emerging from the hall because he knew Marla would have refused to share it with him, thereby giving him no chance to calm her down. “I wasn’t thinking. I’ll get one now.”

  Gibbons awoke from a sound sleep and was instantly alarmed. He hadn’t meant to sleep at all, but after a long day, two drinks, and making love twice, he had dropped off in spite of himself. A glance at the clock reassured him: it was not yet 3:30 A.M. There was still plenty of time to slip out quietly.

  Annette was asleep beside him, curled up like a kitten, but she stirred and woke when he eased out of the bed. He smiled down at her.

  “I was trying not to wake you,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” she asked sleepily.

  “I have to leave,” he said regretfully. “I must be back in London before morning and we can’t risk anyone seeing me go.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I wish you weren’t going.”

  “So do I.”

  She sat up to watch him dress. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t think I had better come down unless Carmichael sends me. But I’ll ring you.”

  “Good. Kiss me good-bye, then.”

  Gibbons grinned. “I always meant to.”

  He kissed her lingeringly, but broke it off before the kiss could turn into anything else, knowing he absolutely had to leave. He closed the bedroom door silently behind him and felt his way down the stairs in the dark. He let himself out the front door and took a deep breath of the chill night air. It had been foolish, he realized, to leave the car in so conspicuous a spot. Maddie Wellman’s rooms were at the back of the house, but what about Mrs. Simmons? Well, with any luck she had stayed asleep. The next time, he must remember to park down by the gate and walk to the house from there.

  It was that thought that stopped him cold, the full realization of what he had done washing over him. He had told Annette that nothing but love mattered, only now he found that it did. He sat in the car limply, staring at the steering wheel. He should go to Carmichael, confess everything, and ask to be taken off the case. But that would end his career as surely as being found out would. They wouldn’t fire him, but any hope he might have of promotion would be gone forever, and he had worked hard to ensure that he would rise in the ranks as quickly as possible. He could not quite face the fact that he had just thrown all that away.

  The Rover’s engine made a terrific noise in the quiet of the night as he started it up, and it seemed to him that the crunch of the gravel beneath the wheels was enough to wake the entire neighborhood. He left the headlamps off and glanced uneasily back at the house as he started down the drive, but the windows remained dark.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Where on earth have you been, lad?”

  Carmichael’s voice was more surprised than angry, but Gibbons flinched nonetheless. He had never been late to the office before—at least, not while there was a case on—and felt it keenly.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, rather stiffly. “There’s no excuse; I simply overslept.”

  Carmichael eyed his sergeant, who looked hollow-eyed and defeated. He had seen Gibbons looking better after spending most of the night at work, and said so.

  “Yes, sir. I just couldn’t seem to get to sleep.”

  And that, of course, thought Carmichael, was the problem. Gibbons hadn’t been doing anything constructive with his sleepless hours, only going over their failure to wring a confession from Paul Berowne.

  “Well, I’ve just been going over the statements again,” said Carmichael, dismissing the subject. “I want to have another hard look at our other suspects.”

  Gibbons was startled. “You think Paul Berowne is innocent, then?” he asked.

  Carmichael leaned back thoughtfully and rubbed at his upper lip. “I haven’t given up on him,” he replied, “but there’s no denying that yesterday has put doubts in my mind. You’ll go on with Berowne, lad, while I see what I can dig up about the others. I spoke to him this morning before we released him, but he hadn’t anything more to say. I tried to find out if he had ever suspected his wife of having an affair, especially of late, but he merely claimed he wouldn’t know whether or not she had been. He thought not.”

  “Even if she had,” said Gibbons doubtfully, “it wouldn’t give her much motive. I mean, she hadn’t as much to lose as her husband.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” mused Carmichael. “That bequest would come in handy if she was in love with a poor man. In any case, it’s a place to start. I’ll be looking at Maddie Wellman, too.” He turned back to the statement on his desk. “Now both Mrs. Simmons and Berowne claim to have heard the piano being played upstairs in the schoolroom at about eleven, but Mrs. Simmons was hoovering from time to time, which would have drowned out the sound.”

  “Yes,” said Gibbons. “I remember.”

  “Berowne is certain that he heard the piano when he came in, and later the hoover, but he has no idea how long he had been in the house when the hoover started. When I asked this morning, he couldn’t remember if he heard the piano in the intervals when the hoover was off. So I want you to have a word with Mrs. Simmons today, Gibbons.” Carmichael flicked his finger at the report. “This is all rather vague, really. Find out if she was running the hoover for any length of time—it would have taken Marion Berowne at least twenty minutes and probably half an hour to run over to the main house and get back again. And find out if she heard anything that might have been Berowne coming in or leaving—or whether there was an extra coffee cup used.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to talk to Mira Fellows again, too,” said Carmichael. “Get her to remember everything she can about Paul Berowne’s visit that morning and see if there’s anything we’ve missed there. I’m going to talk with Commander Andrews and Chief Constable Gorringe again. They both knew the family well, and I want their thoughts on Maddie Wellman.” He snorted. “It’s the least they can do for me, having saddled me with this mess.”

  Gibbons smiled. “Yes, sir. Do you have any angle on Miss Wellman?”

  “She’s a more difficult nut to crack,” admitted Carmichael. “It’s always been perfectly possible that she came downstairs, had a chat with Geoffrey, and poisoned his coffee. In fact, you’ll remember that Mrs. Berowne thought it most likely that Miss Wellman had replaced the flowers in the study.”

  “But what would have been her motive?” asked Gibbons. “Frankly, sir, it’s always seemed to me that if Miss Wellman were going to murder anyone, it would have been Annette.”

  Carmichael grinned at him. “I’ve always thought the same,” he agre
ed. “But people’s minds work in mysterious ways. As much as she disliked Mrs. Berowne, she may have felt even greater resentment of Geoffrey for bringing Annette into the house to begin with. You said she seemed honestly surprised that Paul Berowne was having an affair?”

  “It looked that way to me, sir.”

  “Then it’s probably true—Miss Wellman isn’t good at subterfuge. But Paul may well have spoken to her about the impossibility of his situation with his wife, how he felt it was even worse lately. In addition, there may have been quite a small thing—something Geoffrey said or did—that caused her to reach the end of her tether. It’s certainly not impossible that a person would snap after putting up with a bad situation for four years.”

  “True,” agreed Gibbons.

  “And we’ll have another look at Annette Berowne,” said Carmichael. Gibbons’s heart fell into his toes and he flushed, but Carmichael did not seem to notice. “After all, her motive remains just as strong as Berowne’s, and far stronger than either Maddie Wellman’s or Marion Berowne’s. Well, let’s get on with it, lad. I’ll drop you at the pub on my way to the chief constable’s office.”

  The day was as gray as Gibbons’s spirits. He failed to get anything more from Mira Fellows than had his cohorts, and it was past eleven o’clock when he finally gave it up and began his walk along the footpath to the estate. The clouds had rolled in, but the rain was holding off, and he walked briskly in an effort to make it to shelter before the rain started. He had only, he thought, to make it as far as Little House, as Mrs. Simmons would be working there as she had on the day of the murder.

  He had come halfway and without thinking he looked toward the cattle shelter that he and Annette had taken shelter in and was surprised to see someone sitting there. Gibbons stopped and stared.

  It was a heavyset man in his fifties seated on the edge of the feed trough and eating what looked like a muffin. A dog sat beside him, ears pricked and watchful eyes fastened on the sheep in the meadow.

  It was a long shot, thought Gibbons, as he climbed over the stile and began to make his way across the meadow. The odds that this man had been here on the Wednesday Geoffrey Berowne was killed were next to nothing, but it wouldn’t do to ignore him. Probably the interview would take just long enough to let the rain start.

  The man, noting Gibbons’s progress, came out to meet him, muffin in hand and sheepdog at his heels.

  “Can I help you?” he called when they were within a few yards of each other.

  Gibbons pulled out his ID and introduced himself, earning a surprised look from the man.

  “Don’t meet many Scotland Yard detectives in my sheep meadows,” he said. “I’m Harry Denford.”

  “These are your sheep then?” asked Gibbons.

  Denford nodded, looking quizzical. “There some problem with them?”

  “No, no,” said Gibbons. “Not at all. I was just wondering if you happened to look in on them at about this time on the fourteenth.”

  “If it were a Wednesday, I did,” said Denford. “I come round every Wednesday morning to make sure all’s well. And then I have my elevenses before I go on,” he added, gesturing with the half eaten muffin.

  Gibbons’s heart leapt at this matter-of-fact utterance. He had plodded across the meadow because it was his job to interrogate anyone in the area, but he had not really expected anything to come of it.

  “Did you happen to see anybody walking by on the footpath that Wednesday?” asked Gibbons eagerly.

  Denford frowned thoughtfully. “Don’t get many people up here as a rule,” he said, “but I did see some folk one day. Now whether it was that Wednesday or not, I can’t be sure.” He considered a moment and then went on. “It were a fair bit ago, maybe as much as a month.”

  “So you’ve seen no one in the last two or three weeks?” said Gibbons, trying to sort this out.

  “No. As I said, not many people come by this way. But this day—and a nice, bright day it was, too—it might have been Victoria Station.”

  “Really? How many people passed by?”

  “Well, only two,” admitted Denford. “First I saw Mr. Berowne, coming from the village.”

  “That would be Paul Berowne? You know him, then?”

  “I’ve seen him in the pub of an evening,” said Denford. “I don’t know if he saw me, since I was in among the sheep and didn’t notice him till he was passing. I waved, but he didn’t look my way.”

  No, thought Gibbons, Paul Berowne would have been thoroughly preoccupied, whether he was on his way to murder his father, or merely reflecting on his interview with Mira.

  “What time was this?”

  Denford looked doubtful. “After ten,” he said, “since that’s when I got up here. And before eleven, because that’s when I sit down to have my snack.”

  “Very well,” said Gibbons. “And the next person to come by?”

  “That would have been a lady,” answered Denford. “A pretty thing, she was. I was sitting down by then, so it would have been af ter eleven—no, I’m wrong. That was the day I found the dead lamb. I had to look for it, so I was late getting to my snack. It must have been at least eleven-thirty when the lady came by.”

  Gibbons nodded, jotting it all down in his notebook. “And which direction was she going?”

  “Toward the village.”

  Gibbons looked up, startled. “Just toward the village? You didn’t see her turn around and start back toward the estate?”

  “No. Why would she?”

  Gibbons was confounded. He turned to look at the footpath, which ran straight here and could therefore be seen from this vantage for a considerable distance in either direction. He remembered distinctly the spot where Annette had said she turned back; it was barely thirty yards from the stile and well within view from where he stood now.

  “So she just walked past on her way to the village?” he asked. “She didn’t stop or anything?”

  Denford was looking curious. “Not that I saw,” he answered. “I was sitting over there, eating my scone and enjoying the day when I saw her walking along. She was pretty and I watched her go past until she got to the bend over that way.”

  Gibbons did not know what to think. He did not believe Annette was lying, and yet Denford had not seen her.

  “Right about there,” he said, pointing, “the lady claims she remembered forgetting something back at the house and turned back. About ten minutes later she found she had it after all, and turned round again and made for the village. Would you have seen her if she did that?”

  Denford rubbed his chin. “Probably,” he said, “but I can’t be sure. It’s not like I was watching for her and I don’t recall exactly where she was when I noticed her.”

  It was a shock, just as he had thought he was on the verge of confirming Annette’s story in every particular, to have her alibi dissolve before his eyes. Gibbons was bitterly disappointed. He took down Denford’s address and phone number and proceeded on his way.

  When he reached the spot where Annette had turned back, he paused to survey the area. Over by the shelter, Denford was plain to be seen, packing a thermos back in his haversack in preparation for leaving. Ahead, toward the estate, the trees which would have hidden Annette from his view were still some distance away. Perhaps Denford had simply not noticed her until she had come into view the second time.

  Gibbons was extremely sorry he had noticed Denford at all. He remained firm in his belief that Annette’s story was true, but there was no question that Denford’s evidence hurt her alibi rather than helped it, and he was dreading having to tell Carmichael about it. He knew what it would look like to the chief inspector. He would, he told himself, have to do his best to emphasize Denford’s inability to be sure he would have seen Annette had she done as she said. But he was uncomfortable about it nonetheless.

  He made it to Little House before the rain, and could hear the hoover as he came up to the door. His watch said eleven-twenty-five, which tallied with what they kne
w so far of the morning of the murder. Rather than knocking, he lounged against the doorjamb and waited for the noise to stop, which it did in another ten minutes. Of course, he had no way of knowing when Mrs. Simmons had started.

  She opened the door to him when he knocked and immediately looked nervous. Gibbons sighed inwardly. No matter how unthreatening he tried to appear, his mere presence seemed to frighten this timid woman and it made getting information out of her very awkward.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Simmons,” he said, smiling. “How are you today?”

  She did not meet his eyes.

  “Mrs. Berowne’s upstairs,” she muttered.

  “That’s good,” said Gibbons, coming into the hall and letting her close the door behind him. “But I just want a word with you, first, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  She nodded and stood waiting, head bowed, for whatever questions he chose to rain down upon her. Gibbons sighed again.

  “I only want to get some times clear,” he said. “Perhaps we could sit down?”

  She led him silently into the living room and obediently perched on the edge of a chair. It looked like she was ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

  “I’d like to go over the day of the murder again,” said Gibbons. “You said you arrived as Mr. Paul was leaving, and Mrs. Marion and Edwin were in the kitchen. Is that right?”

  She nodded.

  “You cleaned the schoolroom,” continued Gibbons, “and then came downstairs. What did you do next?”

  “I cleared up the breakfast things,” she answered. “Just as usual. Then I did Mr. Paul’s study and the dining room after that. Then I came in here.”

  “And that’s when you heard the piano from upstairs?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her eyes firmly on her hands folded in her lap. “It was just eleven, because I’d heard the grandfather clock striking as I was coming in.”

  “But you didn’t hear Mr. Berowne come in the kitchen door? It would have been about the same time, perhaps a few minutes later.”

  She looked frightened that she couldn’t give him the answer he wanted. “You can’t hear much from the kitchen in the living room,” she said. “It’s at the opposite end of the house. I’d only hear if there was shouting.”