by M C Beaton
Annie turned paper white.
She opened her mouth, but it was like one of those horrible dreams where you try to scream and no sound comes out, where you try to run, but your feet won’t move.
The marquess turned around and looked at the window.
He gave a muttered exclamation and rang the bell by the fireplace.
“Sit down!” he said to Annie. “And put your head between your knees.”
The door opened and a liveried footman came in.
The marquess waved his hand at the window. “There is a body out there, hanging,” he said. “Be a good fellow and inform the police, the local hospital, and Mr. Winton, in that order.”
The footman stared at the horror that was turning slowly outside the window. The thinning fog revealed that it was the body of Miss Hammond hanging from the rope.
From the open door came the laughter and chatter from the ballroom upstairs. The orchestra was playing a polka.
“Very good, my lord,” said the footman.
“I never turned an ’air,” he told the kitchen proudly afterwards. “I went up to Mr. Winton and I said: ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘the Marquess of Torrance presents ’is compliments and says to tell you that there is a body a-hanging from a rope outside the ’ouse. I ’ave informed the Yard, sir, as per ’is lordship’s instructions.’”
“Come along,” said the marquess to Annie. “What a bloody, sickening sort of evening. The police will know where to find me if they want me.”
Annie silently allowed him to help her out of the house. She could not get the memory of that dreadful face out of her mind. Somewhere at the back of her mind was a growing fear. Somewhere, somehow, someone had said something. She knew something quite dreadful and yet she could not think of what it was.
The silence of her rooms at home weighed down on her. After Barton had made her mistress ready for bed, Annie sat in front of her dressing table, brushing her long red hair with automatic strokes of the brush. Barton had told her in a hushed whisper that two gentlemen from Scotland Yard had called to see the master.
The little gilt clock on the mantel chimed a silvery two in the morning.
The door opened and her husband stood there. His face was set in harsh, stern lines as he studied her reflection in the glass.
“They’ve gone,” he said curtly. “Go to bed.”
Now was the time to say she was sorry, but a dreadful, stubborn pride held her back.
Almost as if he knew what was going through her head, he said, “Oh, go to bed and dream of ruining Marigold’s life—and pray for the wisdom to realize you are ruining your own.”
The door slammed. Annie stared miserably at her reflection. Why did she always feel like a naughty child? Couldn’t he understand? He ought to know.
“But he’s not psychic,” said the cynical voice of her conscience. “And he’ll never know unless you tell him.”
But it was too late, tonight anyway, thought cowardly Annie. And—and she had seen a dead body. And—and he should have realized her feminine feelings were lacerated and have been proud of her, yes proud. For she had not screamed or fainted.
All at once, she remembered the feel of Harry Bellamy’s soft, hot mouth and writhed with shame. Then there was that lost, hurt look in Marigold’s eyes.
Oh, why couldn’t life be black and white?
Annie trailed miserably to bed.
But sleep would not come.
Every time she closed her eyes, the bloated, dead face of Miss Hammond rose before her inner vision.
Like a sleepwalker, Annie swung her legs out of bed and walked slowly out of her room and along to her husband’s door. She gave the door a jerk to open it and went inside.
Light was shining from the bedroom beyond his sitting room. Annie hesitated, longing to turn back and yet frightened of the nightmares that lay in wait for her, frightened of her own guilty conscience.
He was lying propped up on the pillows reading a book. As she entered, he put the book down on the covers and looked at her, his face rigid, his eyes cold.
Annie couldn’t help remembering his former lazy good humor, his smiling eyes, as she looked at the stem, handsome face against the whiteness of the pillows.
“What is it?” he said.
“I’m frightened,” whispered Annie.
“No doubt,” he said in a flat voice. “It is not every day one sees a dead body. I suggest you wake Barton and ask her to sleep in your room for the night.”
Annie dimly realized that he must have once had some feeling, some affection for her. Why else would she now notice the sudden lack of it?
“I want to sleep with you,” said Annie, trembling with the cold and nerves.
“Very well. So long as you don’t mind if I go on reading.”
Annie removed her dressing gown and placed it on a chair. She was wearing a white satin nightgown chosen for her by her mother. It covered more of her body than a ball gown. She walked around to the far side of the bed and pulled back the covers, noticing before she climbed in that her husband was naked.
She pulled the blankets up and lay very still. But she found that she had exchanged one sort of agony for another. She could feel the heat emanating from his body a few inches away from her own. Her whole being started to throb and ache for his touch. Her treacherous body started to shake and tremble.
“If you are cold,” he said, without raising his eyes from the page, “I will fetch some more blankets.”
“It’s not that,” said Annie miserably. “It’s…” At a loss for words, she turned on her side to face him and put one small, cold, trembling hand on his chest.
He twisted his head and looked at her. Her eyes were wide and pleading and bright with unshed tears. Her soft mouth trembled.
“Bloody, bloody hell!” said the marquess savagely. He threw his book on the floor and jerked the bedclothes down to the foot of the bed.
“Take off that repellent thing you’re wearing,” he commanded.
“Put out the light,” pleaded Annie. The room was lit by the soft glow of one oil lamp on the marquess’s side of the bed.
“No. I said, take it off.”
Blushing, Annie pulled her nightdress over her head.
“Now,” said the Marquess of Torrance. “Come here and kiss me.”
Annie threw herself on his chest and kissed him inexpertly on the mouth.
He gathered her into his arms and rolled over so that he was lying on top of her, propped up on his elbows.
“Do you want me to make love to you?” he demanded.
“Yes, Jasper,” whispered Annie shyly.
“Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
“How much?” he said. “Tell me how much!”
“Very much,” she said in such a low voice that he had to strain his ears to hear.
Then his eyes gleamed with laughter. He lowered himself down on top of her, the hard weight of his chest pressing against her breasts. “Prepare for a long night, my lady.” He grinned. “Let’s spend our first passion quickly so that I may explore this delicious body of yours at my leisure. I will stop only when I have discovered that your passion matches your temper.”
After the first violent lovemaking was over, Annie felt so exhausted that she thought she would sleep forever. But his lips were moving down her body and every nerve leaped in response until she buried her hands in his thick hair and cried to him to take her again. As the pale dawn light filtered into the room, Annie looked up into her husband’s eyes and saw that they were filled with tenderness and a sort of amazed gratitude.
Her last waking thought was that for the first time in her life she had done something right.
His caressing hands woke her some hours later. The birds were singing outside, and the noises of the street came to their ears.
But, for Annie, all worries and fears had gone. All of the busy world had gone away. All of the universe was reduced to the touch of his lips and the feel of his long fingers, s
troking her and turning her from one delicious position to another.
Mary Hammond, Mr. Shaw-Bufford, Marigold, and Harry Bellamy whirled and turned and disappeared from her mind as the Marchioness of Torrance proved over and over again that her passion could outmatch her temper.
Annie floated downstairs sometime in midafternoon, dressed and ready to face what was left of the day. She had retired to her own rooms to bathe and change after the long and exhausting night and morning in her husband’s arms.
A servant had told her that the marquess wished to see her downstairs as soon as she was ready.
A small smile curved Annie’s bruised mouth. He had not said he loved her during their exquisite, shared passion. Now she was sure he would.
She was therefore startled to find her husband waiting for her at the foot of the stairs with a grim look on his face.
Annie tilted her face up for a kiss and closed her eyes.
He seemed not to notice, for when she opened them again he was half turned away from her and saying, “Those two chaps from Scotland Yard are back. I put them in the study. They want to speak to you.”
All of Annie’s newfound esteem crumbled away. She did not care who was waiting for her in the study. All she cared about was that he had not kissed her. He did not care for her. Last night meant nothing to him. It did not dawn on her for a moment that her husband was very worried about something and had not even noticed her offered kiss.
“Well, if they’ve come to see me, I suppose I’d better see them,” she said in a brittle voice, sweeping in front of him toward the study.
Two middle-aged men rose at her entrance. Her husband followed her in and closed the door. “May I present Detective Inspectors Carton and Johns of the Yard. Mr. Carton, Mr. Johns, my wife.”
Annie gave them a chilly nod and took a seat facing them. The marquess stood behind her chair.
Mr. Carton was the spokesman. He was not like Annie’s idea of a policeman at all. He was very tall and distinguished-looking with a thin, intelligent face.
“We wish to ask you a few questions, my lady,” he began. “It concerns the death of Miss Hammond.”
Annie flushed guiltily. Suddenly it seemed terrible that she had not given one thought since last night to that poor woman’s death.
“I found Miss Hammond a trifle eccentric,” she said hesitantly. “But I would not have said she was the sort of lady to take her own life.”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Carton, in a level voice.
“But she seemed very worried… almost frightened… when I last saw her. Oh, dear!” Annie blushed miserably again. She remembered the look on Mary Hammond’s white face and how she had turned even whiter at the sound of a step on the landing above.
“You have remembered something,” prompted Mr. Carton gently.
“Yes, I…” Annie twisted her head and looked up anxiously at her husband.
His face wore a closed, shuttered look as he stared straight in front of him.
“Yes?” Mr. Carton prompted again.
“Well, it was at the ball. She said she wanted to speak to me about something.”
“And did she?”
“Well, no. You see, I was talking to my future brother-in-law, Mr. Harry Bellamy, so I said I’d see her later. Oh, she asked me if I had seen Mr. Shaw-Bufford.”
“I gather Mr. Shaw-Bufford arrived after the body of Miss Hammond had been found.”
“Perhaps,” said Annie miserably, “if I had given her the time, if only I had spoken to her, she would not have done this terrible thing.”
“You are under the impression that Miss Hammond committed suicide?”
Annie stared at the inspector, wide-eyed. “But of course she did. You can’t mean…?”
“It was made to look like suicide, yes, but in fact Miss Hammond was murdered. The autopsy was performed this morning and it revealed that Miss Hammond had been strangled by someone before the rope was put around her neck.”
“Oh,” said Annie weakly. Everything suddenly seemed unreal: the two detectives sitting so solemnly across from her, her husband standing rigidly behind her, the ticking of the black marble clock above the fireplace.
“We also found evidence in Miss Hammond’s lodgings that points to the fact that she may well have been the lady who tried to kill the prime minister yesterday. She bungled the job, so someone killed her. A powerful woman could do the job.”
Annie began to feel sick.
“So,” pursued Mr. Carton, “we want you to tell us about this society. Miss Hammond gave lectures, that we know. But she has no record of having undertaken any militant action before. We would have said she simply enjoyed public speaking. Can you think of any members of her society who might have killed her?”
Annie shook her head. “It’s silly, but I never really got to know any of them. She was a sort of one-woman organization when I first met her at Britlingsea. Then she called and asked if she could use this house for a committee meeting. I agreed. I knew some of the women who came, certainly Mrs. Tommy Winton, who gave the ball, and some of the other society ladies. But the ones I knew, well, I think they were simply using the whole thing as an excuse to have a sort of charity ball.
“The other women—there were about three—who seemed to belong to Miss Hammond’s new movement, I hadn’t seen them before, and I doubt if I would recognize any of them again.”
“Were the speeches—I assume there were speeches—particularly militant? Was there any mention of Mr. Macleod’s name?”
Annie passed a hand over her brow. “I can’t remember. I was coming down with influenza and I was already running a fever, you see, and I was out of the room most of the time Miss Hammond was talking.”
“Where did you go? To lie down?”
“N-no. Mr. Shaw-Bufford wanted to talk to me—in the study.”
Mr. Carton leaned forward. “What did he want to see you about, my lady?”
Annie stared at the floor.
“My lady,” said Mr. Carton, “this is a murder investigation. You must tell me why the chancellor wished to talk to you in private.”
“He wanted to ask me for money,” mumbled Annie.
She could almost feel her husband’s hands tightening on the back of the chair. She had lied to him. She had told him that Mr. Shaw-Bufford had not asked her for money.
“For himself?”
“No. For Miss Hammond’s society.”
“How much, my lady?”
“T-ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand pounds! That’s a great deal of money. A fortune!”
“I didn’t give it to him,” said Annie quickly.
“And that was the end of the matter?”
There was a long silence. The fog had cleared, but a dismal, gusty, blustery wind was howling through the streets of London. A torn newspaper danced an erratic ballet in front of the window. The window frame rattled. The fire crackled and the clock ticked.
“My lady,” said Mr. Carton, “the only way we are going to solve this business is by demanding complete honesty from all the people we have to interview. Now, I will repeat my question. Did the chancellor just let the matter drop?”
Oh, thought Annie, miserably, Jasper is going to find out how I have lied and lied again.
“I felt ill. I needed time,” she said wearily. “I told him to come back on Wednesday. He did. But I was too ill to see him. When I finally did see him, I said I would make out the check to the society. My husband had told me to do that. He said I was never to make a check out to an individual. Mr. Shaw-Bufford was… well, rather insistent. So I told him I had no money of my own. I lied. I said that he should ask my husband. And he left. He—he was angry.”
“Well, then, my lady,” said Mr. Carton. “Don’t distress yourself. We shall probably find that Mr. Shaw-Bufford wanted the money for the society and for no other reason. Now, is there anything else you can think of that might help us?”
There was. Annie was sure there was someth
ing there at the back of her mind, but, for the life of her, she couldn’t think of what it was.
She shook her head dumbly.
“I may as well tell you, my lady, that I spoke to Mr. Harry Bellamy this morning. He said that you were worried about the ball being a sham. That it was not really for something vague like Women of the World, but for a feminist society run by Miss Hammond. In fact, he called in person at the Yard to tell us. Were you, in fact, very upset by this deception?”
Poor Annie felt that she had told enough truth for one morning.
“Yes,” she said.
“I am afraid that was not the case,” came the voice of her husband from behind her. “My wife pretended to sprain her ankle so as to manufacture an opportunity of being alone with Mr. Bellamy. I think you will find that my wife doesn’t care two pins whether women get the vote or not. She merely wanted to make her sister jealous. Lady Marigold Sinclair is affianced to Mr. Bellamy.”
“Is this true, my lady?” asked Mr. Carton.
“Yes,” said Annie, in a stifled voice. In that moment she could have killed her husband. How dare he hold her actions up to ridicule?
“Then I think that will be all for the moment,” said the inspector, signaling to his colleague. “I hope I do not have to trouble you again. My lord, my lady, good day to you.”
After the policemen had left, Annie walked to the window and stared out at the dismal day.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” she said in a low voice.
“Yes,” came her husband’s infuriatingly bland voice.
“It was necessary to tell the police the truth. That way you cannot be suspected of murder.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Annie, whirling around to face him.
“It also cleared the air. There has been too much misunderstanding between us. I ask you not to lie to me again, Annie.”
“You pompous ass,” howled Annie. “How dare you stand there and pontificate? How dare you tell those coppers that I have no interest in women getting the vote? I care very much. I think women have a damn hard time time of it. I think I have a hard time of it being married to you.”
“On the contrary, you have a very easy time. You are very much your own mistress. You came to me willingly last night, or do I have to remind you of that?”