The Young Widow

by Cassandra Chan

  “That’s right.” Bethancourt leaned back and reached out to scratch Cerberus’s ears. “It’s not that I firmly believe Annette to be innocent,” he said, “but the timing does concern me. From the very first it was clear that Maddie loathed Annette and believed in her guilt more firmly than in God. Then the police come up with a motive for Paul Berowne and Maddie blows a gasket. The police have to release him, but Maddie had to know it wasn’t over, and that Carmichael wasn’t concentrating solely on Annette. And suddenly she remembers that it was eleven-fifteen when she said good morning to McAllister.”

  Kitty frowned and rubbed the tip of her nose. “Put like that,” she said, “it does seem suspicious. But I honestly don’t know, Phillip. Maddie’s smart; it’s not as though she couldn’t think of it. But would she do it? I don’t know. I guess I can’t rule that out, though lying isn’t like her.”

  Bethancourt nodded and sipped his coffee. “Tell me something else, then,” he said. “Have you noticed any changes in Mrs. Berowne in the last few months, before her husband died?”

  “Changes? Changes how?”

  “I mean did she seem any different than she did when you first came to work here? Was she any less happy, or less bright and cheery? Did she drink more, or did she seem bored? Did she spend more time out shopping, or did she and Geoffrey have more frequent arguments?”

  “They never had very many,” Kitty answered. “And she certainly wasn’t drinking more—I buy the liquor and I’d have noticed.” She paused thoughtfully and looked off into space. At last she shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Certainly I never noticed a change in her. Why do you ask?”

  “Because if she’s guilty, one would rather expect some sign that she was tired of her husband, however small. On the other hand, perhaps she’s just a superb actress and kept whatever she felt to herself.”

  Kitty was silent again, thinking this over. Then she sighed. “If there was any sign, I missed it,” she said. “Even going over the past with that in mind, I can’t pick out anything about her that seemed different.”

  Bethancourt was disappointed, though he kept it to himself. He had very much been hoping that Kitty, her memory jogged, would come up with something that would settle his conscience. Instead, all she had done was, in essence, to say that Gibbons’s view of the case was perfectly possible.

  Gibbons’s nerves were on edge. Carmichael had determined that the best way to begin was to persuade Annette to admit that Berowne’s money had been a factor in her decision to marry him. He had been leading up to this point gradually, and Gibbons had inwardly winced to see the wariness fade from Annette’s face as the questions remained innocuous. But he knew, as she did not, that the interrogation would not remain innocuous for long.

  It was dawning on her even now as Carmichael’s questions became more pointed.

  “So,” the chief inspector was saying almost casually, “it was only four months after you began dating that Geoffrey Berowne proposed to you. And how long was it before you realized that he was a very wealthy man?”

  Annette looked suddenly uncertain.

  “I—I don’t know,” she faltered. “I suppose—I knew he was well-off by the places he’d take me. And, of course, when I saw the estate, I realized that he must have money.”

  “And that no doubt influenced your decision to marry him.”

  “No!” she answered, stung. “It did not. I would never marry a man I didn’t love, no matter how rich he was.”

  “And yet you seem to only fall in love with wealthy men,” said Carmichael evenly.

  Her eyes pleaded with him, but she did not answer.

  “It’s rather curious, that. All three of your husbands were not only well-off, but many years older than yourself. Why is it, do you think, that you are only attracted to older men?”

  Her eyes went to Gibbons involuntarily, but she looked away again at once.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “It just happened that way.”

  “So if Geoffrey Berowne had been a younger man, a man your own age, for instance, do you think you would still have fallen in love with him?”

  “I suppose so.” She looked up. “It’s what’s inside a person that counts, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly,” agreed Carmichael, “but in love, the outer package is generally assumed to play a role as well. Were you sexually attracted to Geoffrey Berowne?”

  Annette flushed scarlet. “I loved him,” she muttered.

  “Yes, so you’ve said, but did you want to go to bed with him?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “How long was it after your first date that you did sleep with him?”

  She was obviously embarrassed, and answered in a low voice, her eyes on the table before her.

  “It was the night he proposed. Six weeks before we were married.”

  “I see. So you dated him for two and a half months and although you lusted after him, you couldn’t manage to get him into bed? I find that difficult to believe.”

  “He never asked me,” she said desperately. “I never thought it strange—he had very conservative morals.”

  “Yes, a highly religious man, according to your vicar. So you never tried to seduce him because you were afraid of offending him?”

  “I—I thought he would ask when he wanted to.”

  Gibbons clenched his fists and looked away. He knew it was only the beginning.

  Bethancourt knocked on the door of Maddie Wellman’s room with trepidation. He had not seen her since the day she had thrown him and Gibbons out, and he was unsure of what his reception might be. He was counting on the fact that she would probably be pleased at the opportunity to gloat over him and thus would tolerate his presence.

  She looked surprised to see him, but immediately set aside the book she had been reading and motioned him in.

  “I certainly didn’t expect to see you,” she said. “Come in and sit down.”

  “Shall Cerberus come in, too?” he asked. “I brought him up because you seemed to like him.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  She held out her hands to the great dog, who padded over to sniff them politely and allow his chest to be petted.

  “Yes, you’re a beautiful boy, aren’t you?” she cooed.

  Bethancourt lowered himself into a chair and reflected that the conversation might be all right after all.

  “I came,” he said, “to take my leave of you and Kitty, now that the case seems to be wrapped up.”

  “Ha!” she said, so sharply that Cerberus started. “And no thanks to you lot.”

  “No,” admitted Bethancourt. “Thanks to you, as I understand it.”

  “Really,” she said, “if the police would just tell a body things instead of endlessly asking impertinent questions, they might solve their cases sooner. I’d no idea that McAllister had seen Annette leaving the house that day. If I had, I could have solved the whole thing half an hour after that ass Gorringe got here.”

  She was obviously still greatly annoyed with the police performance, but she was equally obviously enjoying herself. Bethancourt began to relax a little.

  “I’d no idea you didn’t know,” he said. “I suppose we all just assumed, since you’d seen McAllister out there, you would realize he had seen Annette.”

  “Never occurred to me,” she said. “Usually McAllister’s completely oblivious to anything other than the job at hand. And besides, he was nowhere near the side door when I saw him.”

  “But you knew the police had been questioning him?”

  “Of course, I’m not blind. But I thought they were just trying to jog his memory, make sure he hadn’t seen anything. I was rather amused,” she admitted. “Having tried to have a conversation with McAllister myself, I could just imagine the grunts the police were getting instead of the information they wanted.”

  Bethancourt was exceedingly glad to hear that he and the police had apparently been separated in her mind.

 
“Gwenda was the only one he ever talked to,” she added reminiscently. “I always thought he must have been a bit in love with her, the way he’d listen to whatever she said and run off and do it, while the rest of us could talk a blue streak and he’d just go along and do whatever he’d meant to in the first place.” She sighed. “If I saw more of him, I might have known earlier what he’d seen. Apparently he’d complained to Kitty about the police, but she never realized I didn’t know. When I came back from talking to him yesterday morning, I was all excited and I burst in on Kitty in the kitchen with the news that McAllister had seen Annette leaving. Quite a triumph, I thought it. And she just stared at me and said, ‘Yes, I know.’” Maddie chuckled.

  “How did he come to mention it to you?” asked Bethancourt.

  “Well, it all started over these tomato seeds Kitty’d bought,” said Maddie, not at all displeased to be asked to tell the story again. “They’re a different sort from the kind McAllister usually grows and I can’t tell you why she’s so keen on them, but she is. She’d given the packet to him and asked him to start them for her, and then discovered he’d never done it. She asked him again, and then they had an argument about it, and finally she came to me. So I went down yesterday morning early and said to him, ‘Look here, McAllister, I know it’s probably foolishness, but Kitty’s got her heart set on these tomatoes. Can’t you just indulge her?’ And he started in on how he might be able to do extra things like planting extra tomatoes we didn’t need if the police would stop pestering him about Mrs. Berowne, but as it was the apple trees were long overdue for spraying. So I said, rather sharply as I recollect, ’Really, McAllister, the police are hardly taking up all of your time. And why should they be bothering you about Mrs. Berowne anyway?’ He said he didn’t know, and if he’d realized they were going to hound him for the rest of his life, he’d never have told them he saw her leaving that day.”

  “You must have been very surprised,” said Bethancourt.

  “Completely taken aback,” Maddie agreed. “I just stood there staring at him while he ranted on.” She chuckled. “Of course, what he was really trying to do was divert me from Kitty’s tomatoes, and it worked beautifully. We never mentioned them again—although I’ve promised her to have another go at him tomorrow.”

  Bethancourt grinned. “Good luck with it,” he said.

  “Oh, I think he’ll give in eventually, especially since he won’t be able to get me off the subject again so easily. I have to admit that when he said he’d seen Annette leaving, all thoughts of tomatoes fled my mind completely. At first I was furious, thinking the police were trying to cover up for her, and then I realized it was a matter of when he’d seen her leave. So almost at once I asked him whether it was before or after I’d called down to him, and he looked very surprised and said, ‘That’s right, you said good morning. I’d forgotten.’ Which,” she added exasperatedly, “is just like him. It’s a wonder he didn’t forget seeing Annette as well.”

  “And of course you remembered perfectly well what time it was.”

  “I did. Because I recollect thinking it was taking me longer than I thought to answer those letters, and wondering if I’d have them done before lunch at the rate I was going.”

  If she was lying, Bethancourt could not tell. Her eyes met his without hesitation and he could see nothing in them beyond glee at having been proved right in the end.

  “Well,” he said, “whether McAllister ever plants them or not, Kitty’s tomatoes have already served us all well.”

  Gibbons rubbed his hands down his pant legs. He could not remember ever having sweaty palms before, but then he had never felt so awful. The effort to keep his expression blank while emotions more powerful than any he had ever felt before raged inside him was coming near to breaking him.

  Annette was crying now, answering Carmichael’s questions in a choked voice while the tears streamed down her cheeks and her eyes held the hurt, bewildered look of a wounded animal.

  Gibbons was not far from tears himself and he wondered how much more he could take before he, too, broke down. He looked at the clock and was appalled to find they had only been at it for two hours. It seemed an eternity.

  Bethancourt stood at the edge of the terrace and stared across the expanse of the flagstones at the side door. He crouched down beside the tulips, riotous with color in the sunlight, and peered up between the balusters of the terrace railing. The door was still visible, but no one coming out of it would notice him here. He sighed and sat down abruptly in the grass. From what he could see, the story McAllister and Maddie told fit perfectly. Maddie had reason to lie about the time, and she might have done so. But she equally well might be telling the truth. There was no help here for Gibbons.

  “Here!” McAllister’s shout broke into Bethancourt’s thoughts and he turned to see the gardener waving wildly at Cerberus, who was engaged in sniffing along the hedge. The dog’s head jerked up and he cocked it to one side, apparently trying to make sense of McAllister’s energetic gesticulations.

  Bethancourt rose hastily and called his pet to heel.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. McAllister,” he said, going to meet the gardener. “Was he bothering something? I should have kept a better eye on him.”

  McAllister was eyeing the dog suspiciously.

  “Dogs don’t belong in gardens,” he said truculently. “They piss all over and kill the plants.”

  Bethancourt privately doubted that such a green and robust hedge would die quite so precipitously, but he merely reiterated his apology and said he would keep Cerberus close.

  McAllister grunted and transferred his suspicious gaze to Bethancourt. “I remember you,” he said. “You’re one of them police. I suppose you’ve come to hear the whole thing again.” He drew a deep and long-suffering sigh and, before Bethancourt could respond, strode over to the tulip bed, stopping not far from where Bethancourt had been sitting. “I was working here,” said McAllister rapidly. He pointed up at the house. “That’s Miss Wellman’s window there. She opened it and called down good morning. I waved back and then finished spreading the last of a bag of mulch. I stood up to get another bag, which was lying handy, right there.” He pointed again, this time to a spot on the grass. “As I turned around with it, I see Mrs. Berowne coming out of the door there and going off down those steps. And that was it,” he finished, glaring at Bethancourt. “That’s what happened and that’s all that happened and I’m sorrier than I can say that I ever mentioned it.”

  “It’s all very clear,” said Bethancourt soothingly. “Maddie waved to you and a few moments later you saw Annette leaving.”

  McAllister gave him a disgusted look. “Not her,” he said witheringly. “It was t’other one.”

  For an instant, Bethancourt’s mind failed to understand what McAllister had said, and he stared at him blankly. Then, “What did you say?” he demanded sharply. “The other one? You mean it was Marion Berowne you saw come out of the house and not Annette?”

  “That’s right. And that’s what I’ve always said,” he added stubbornly.

  Bethancourt’s mind fled back to that first interview with the gardener. He could not remember clearly, but he thought the man had simply said, “Mrs. Berowne.” Kitty and Mary Simmons always said, “Mr. Paul” or “Mrs. Marion” to differentiate the younger Berownes from the older, but apparently McAllister did not bother, letting the context of his remarks make the distinction for him.

  Bethancourt felt as though he were in a dream. It was totally impossible that a whole series of police detectives had simply assumed McAllister was referring to Annette. And yet, he had himself made the assumption because he knew that Annette had indeed left the house by that door.

  “You’re sure?” he said. “You’re sure it was Marion Berowne, the dark-haired one who lives in Little House and is married to Paul?”

  McAllister looked at him as if he had gone mad. “Of course I’m sure,” he said indignantly. “There’s nothing wrong with my sight. I need s
pectacles for reading, but not for anything else, and it’s not as if those two look alike.”

  “No,” agreed Bethancourt, still in a daze, “they don’t.”

  McAllister was frowning. “Did Miss Wellman think I meant Mrs. Berowne?”

  “Yes,” said Bethancourt, abruptly recovering. “Yes, I believe she did. Thank you, Mr. McAllister—I’ve got to go. Come, Cerberus.”

  And he took off at a run, leaving the gardener staring after him.

  It was an enormous relief to Gibbons when the constable came and beckoned him surreptitiously out of the interview room. Relief mixed with guilt that he must leave Annette to struggle on alone. He knew she was watching him as he left.

  Outside, he passed his hand over his face and drew a deep breath.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “A phone call, sir,” said the constable, clearly a little nervous at having interrupted such an important interview. “I wouldn’t have intruded, but he said it was urgent. A man named Bethancourt.”

  “All right,” said Gibbons, pushing away from the wall. “I’ll take it over there.”

  Bethancourt’s voice was excited, but to Gibbons’s weary brain it seemed to come from a great way off.

  “Phillip?” he said. “I can’t talk long—I have to get back there.”

  “What I’ve got changes everything,” said Bethancourt. “McAllister never saw Annette leave the house at all.”

  “What?” said Gibbons, sounding only vaguely puzzled. “But he said he did, Phillip—he’s said so from the very beginning.”

  “No, he didn’t,” insisted Bethancourt. “He only said he saw Mrs. Berowne. But he didn’t mean Annette, Jack. He meant Marion Berowne. It was she he saw, not Annette at all.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line.

  “Jack? Did you hear me?”

  “Marion Berowne?” repeated Gibbons. “Oh, my God. Where are you, Phillip?”

  “At Hurtwood Hall. I’m calling from the car.”