“No. I never heard. But I suppose that doesn’t discount there being someone.” Her fingers toyed with the charm on the gold chain encircling her neck. “I’d understand if someone was that enraged, though. It hurts when your dreams don’t come true.”
“And he didn’t help you that way.”
“No. I used to ask him for years, beg him to give me just one introduction, but he never would do. He said it wouldn’t look right, him handing out favors like that to family. He’d lose all credibility.” She gave me a hint of a smile, but her eyes remained serious. “I never could understand that. I used to lie awake nights trying to figure out why I wasn’t good enough, what had I done to make him so mad that he wouldn’t even help his own daughter when he seemed to help everyone else, including those who were leeches and clung to him. I’ve come to accept it, albeit slowly and with great pain. I understand the code he had, but it still doesn’t soften the hurt. Not when you want something so bad.” She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand, sniffed, and gave a slight shrug. “But that was Dad. Ethical and professional. And no matter how disappointed I was, I have to admit that he didn’t do things behind people’s backs like Uncle Edmund does.”
I sat up straighter, preparing myself for a bombshell. “What does your uncle Edmund do?”
The answer came quickly and with a burst of emotion that surprised me, considering her short stature. “He tried to talk Mum into leaving Dad. Dad hadn’t a clue.”
* * * *
Edmund Worrall, Reed’s half brother, also seemed to be spending his morning gardening. He was attacking a large hosta, breaking it into smaller pieces, when we called to him. A half-dozen holes, dug beneath a good-sized birch, already held what looked to be a mixture of peat moss and fertilizer. Edmund set the hosta pieces on the ground, brushed his soiled hands on his worn jeans, and eyed our warrant cards with some misgiving. He nodded when we said we’d like to talk to him about Reed’s death, and I joined him on a white painted wrought iron loveseat. Mark stood on Edmund’s opposite side and fired off the first question.
“I did not try to get Marian to leave Reed,” Edmund said, challenging Ilsa’s statement. “I suggested it. As a way out of her misery.”
“Her marriage to Reed wasn’t going well?”
Edmund snorted. “That’s one way of stating it.”
“And the other?”
“It was going to hell in a hand basket. Fast.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Yes. We talked several times a week, over morning coffee or after tea, when Reed worked late. Sometimes we’d walk in the wood—she loved the wood in any season, any weather. She still felt a link to it, having once been in her family. Our talks were important, if for no other reason than to think aloud. She’d ask for my opinion or advice, but not all the time. Mostly we’d just sit and talk. Late at night seemed an especially good time because no phone calls interrupted us. Oh, nothing inappropriate went on,” Edmund added heatedly, his face reddening. “Just get that thought out of your mind. I loved Marian as a friend. I couldn’t stand to see her hurt anymore.”
“Nice that she has someone to confide in.”
“Yes, well, she needed to think it over. Her marriage, I mean. I was a natural choice.”
“Because you’re Reed’s brother and knew their history?”
“That, sure, but also because we were close. Best friends close. It’d take weeks to explain everything to a marriage counselor. But I knew her and Reed, knew what had happened during their marriage. She’d confided in me for the last few years when their problems worsened.”
I asked, “Did you know Marian before she married your brother?”
“Sure. She’d come over to the house for family parties, she’d go on short trips with Reed.”
“How old were they when they began dating?”
“They were both twenty.”
“And how long have they been married?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“When did the problems in their marriage start? When did Marian begin confiding in you?”
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe five years ago. It’s been a while.” He ran his handkerchief around his neck, blotting up the perspiration.
“Is that when their marriage became shaky?”
“No. She said she’d had problems earlier than that, going back many years before she broke the news to me, but she never quite believed it. You know how you can talk yourself into imagining things.”
“What were these problems? Money? Workaholic husband? How to rear Ilsa?” I deliberately didn’t propose infidelity. I wanted Edmund to tell me without suggesting it. I needn’t have worried.
“Affairs.”
Mark caught my eye, shaking his head slightly. He said, “More than one?”
Edmund turned to face Mark, not an easy job considering Edmund’s bulk and the smallness of the loveseat. “Yes. Reed may be my brother, but that’s no reason to whitewash the truth. He was a womanizer, cheated on Marian during their marriage. Since before their marriage, if I’m completely truthful.”
“Did Marian know this when she married Reed?”
“No.”
“Did you know how your brother was like that when they dated?”
“No. He had a bunch of girlfriends, of course. Well, at twenty, you’d expect him to have dated a lot. But I never knew he’d actually slept with anyone. I found that out later.”
“In time to tell Marian before the wedding?”
“No. I wish I had. It would have saved her years of pain.”
“When did Marian first discover Reed was cheating on her?”
“I’m not sure. Like I said, she first started talking to me five years ago. She suspected he was sneaking around on her before that, but she wouldn’t admit it. If you deny the reality, however much you suspect it, it doesn’t hurt as much. Denial sometimes is a wonderful thing.”
“How did she finally find out?
Edmund leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs, and clasped his hands. “The usual thing. Several phone calls. The old ‘If a woman answers’ cliché. Except, it proved to be real enough. Marian would answer the phone and the minute she’d say something there’d be a click on the other end and the line would go dead. This happened several times and Marian started getting suspicious.”
“More coincidental than a wrong number.”
“Yes. Her doubt grew as Reed’s phone calls would end abruptly whenever she’d enter the room, his weekend work trips—though verified by his secretary and other co-workers—seemed disproportionate to the clients’ needs. She eventually caught him through a mobile phone number scribbled on a scrap of paper and a lie.”
“What was the lie?”
“That he’d been on a fishing trip with a client, trying to convince him to sign up with Reed’s agency.”
Mark shrugged. “Normal enough. On a par with wining and dining prospective clients, taking them to concerts or treating them to golf games.”
Edmund nodded. “But firstly, the client phoned Marian to ask a question. This was a Friday afternoon, when Reed supposedly had met the client for the fishing weekend.”
“Bad.”
“It gets worse. Marian, of course, was surprised and confused. She asked the client if he had an appointment with Reed, and the client said no. She asked if anything had been set up, for any time, at the Izaak Walton Hotel at Dovedale. He said no. By the way,” Edmund added, his voice lightening a bit, “Marian did find out Reed had been at the hotel at that time. But with a woman.”
“Nail in the coffin.”
“So, that’s bad enough. Then, when Reed returns home quite late Sunday night, he has a few trout with him. To lend credibility to his fishing weekend.”
“I suspect something was wrong with that.”
“This all happened on the nineteenth of October.”
I made a face. “Fishing season ends in that area four days earlier.”
“You have to give Reed po
ints for trying, even if he is a bastard.”
“Did Marian find out whose mobile phone number he had?”
“Oh, yes. She called it. A woman answered, of course, but wouldn’t reply to Marian’s question who she was speaking to. She thought the voice sounded familiar so she looked through Reed’s phone index. Voila, as they say. Clarice Millington.”
“Who’s Clarice? A relation to Jenny, I assume.” First time I’d heard the name.
“Clarice is Jenny’s sister, younger by three years. Twenty-two years old and acting like she’s sixteen. Clarice met Reed through Jenny, Jenny being Reed’s assistant.”
“When was this fishing trip/Clarice thing?”
“Four years ago. Marian thought Reed’s sleeping around would end because she confronted him with Clarice’s name.”
“But it didn’t.”
“Not as long as the sun rises each day.” Edmund sat up, his lips pressed together, his breathing loud and slow.
Mark said, “Did Marian know how many woman he’d slept with?”
“I doubt it. I doubt, too, that Reed knows. But it’s been dozens. Marian realized that when she found unfamiliar things in a box in his office.”
“What sort of things?”
“A few letters, a necklace, photographs. Souvenirs, if you want to call them that, of his conquests.” Edmund crumpled the handkerchief in his sweaty hand. “None of the affairs seem to last very long. But they don’t have to; the sheer number and the betrayal hurt.”
“Knowing all this, then, about Reed’s philandering, you didn’t physically try to break up their marriage? If you cared for Marian—”
“What was I supposed to do? Drag her off to a nunnery? I talked to her till I was blue in the face. She kept saying she needed to work things out in her own mind before she did anything as drastic as divorce.”
“Even with all these affairs thrown in her face, she felt like that.”
“I know she’d have been better off if she married me. I felt something for her when we first met, but she had eyes only for Reed at that time. As I learned about his affairs, I felt even more strongly that she and I should be together. Reed didn’t have enough time for Marian—work, sure, but how can you make time for your wife if you’re running around on her with this many women? But I didn’t actively try to destroy their marriage. She always knew that I’d be waiting for her should she decide to divorce Reed.”
“Do you think she came to a breaking point, that she couldn’t stand his cheating any longer, so she killed him?”
Edmund took a few seconds to answer, his gaze turning in the direction of Marian’s house. He said slowly, “I don’t know what people are capable of. I don’t know what happens when someone is pushed beyond her capacity to emotionally handle something. I only know about myself, about how I’d react to certain things. Don’t they say we all have the ability to kill if someone we love is in danger, if it’s a crime of passion?” His dark, serious eyes challenged me to contradict him. He added, somewhat as an afterthought, “Wouldn’t she have snapped before this, though? Why would she kill him now?”
TWENTY
Jenny Millington’s sister, Clarice, boarded with a family several houses down from Edmund, on the northern side of Old Church Lane. She reluctantly let us into her main room—a sitting room converted from a bedroom toward the back of the house—and sat on the edge of her chair. Her gaze shifted constantly from me to Mark, as if wondering who would actually speak to her.
After introducing us, I asked Clarice if she knew Reed Harper.
She cleared her throat, blinked, and clenched her hands together. When she spoke, her voice broke and she cleared her throat again. “Uh, sure. Yes. I know him. Knew him. He coordinated the well dressing fete. Why?”
“How else did you know him?”
“How else?” Her eyebrows raised and she glanced at the clock.
“Yes. In what other manner? Surely that’s not such a difficult question.”
“Oh, well, do you mean my sister, Jenny, worked for him? She was his assistant on a sort of part time basis for the fete.” She looked at me again, hopeful that she had answered correctly.
“You knew him another way, didn’t you?”
“Well, I knew he owned that ad agency in Buxton, but I never went there.”
Mark leaned toward her, cutting the space between them in half. “Quit wasting our time. You know what we mean. You and Reed had an affair. What about that?”
Clarice’s mouth dropped open but she produced only a faint squeak.
Mark gripped the edge of the coffee table with his left hand and pointed his right index finger at her. “Marian Harper found out about it, didn’t she? She phoned you, wanting to discover who her husband was fooling around with. When you wouldn’t tell her, she found out anyway, in another manner.” His voice lowered, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “What happened, Clarice? Did you confront Reed some time later? Maybe demanded that he choose between you and Marian?”
Clarice sank back in her chair, her eyes shining with fright. “No. It wasn’t like that! That’s not how it happened. Believe me.”
“We’d like to,” I said. “Tell us.”
She glanced at Mark, perhaps making sure he wasn’t going to spring at her, then told me, “We went away for the weekend.”
“When was that?”
“Four years ago. Seventeenth through the nineteenth of October. Friday through Sunday. Well, we left the hotel late Sunday. W-we stayed at the Izaak Walton Hotel.”
“Did Reed make any promises to you—either in regards to a career or marriage?”
“No. He treated me wonderfully. I-I’d never been treated like that before, not from any of my boyfriends. He made me feel special, like I was the only person he had ever loved or would ever love.”
“You knew he was married,” I suggested.
“Yes. But I’d seen the friction between him and his wife. Jenny, my sister, was aware of it, too. I should think that most everyone in the village knew they weren’t getting along. Marian—she tried to hide it, and she probably did fool some people. But those of us who worked with them or were really close to them knew they had problems.”
“Did you know what those problems were?”
Clarice nodded and bowed her head slightly as she said, “Reed was unfaithful to her.”
“You didn’t consider that you were compounding their problem?”
Her head jerked up and she stared at me as though I’d just slapped her. “How could I be compounding the problem when he told me he loved me, that he was never happier than when he was with me?”
“He never offered you marriage?”
“No. We never talked about it. Well, I said something once, but he changed the subject. He never brought it up again.”
Mark and I exchanged looks. Amazing how gullible some people were.
“When did Reed first approach you?” I asked. “How long had your affair been going on?”
“Oh, he didn’t start it. I did.”
Mark frowned. “Pardon? You started it?”
“I’d always been attracted to him—he was so dynamic, always knew how to get what he wanted in life, always took chances and won. I-I didn’t want anything for myself. Well, not what people usually plague him for. You know…introductions to agents, a try-out in front of some London theatrical producer, a recording session to make a CD demo. None of that mattered to me. I like being a receptionist in a car dealership. I didn’t care what I did as long as I could be with Reed.”
“But wasn’t that relationship rather tenuous? After all, you weren’t the first woman he’d had an affair with. Witness your sister, who was infatuated with him.”
“That had more to do with her job than with him.”
“Oh yes?”
“Reed made noises about making the well dressing and the fete larger next year. He wanted to best every village and town in the county. Jenny thought if the festival got too large she’d be swamped with work and she
wouldn’t have enough time for her freelance writing. She got paid something, of course, for being Reed’s assistant, but her real job was her writing. She didn’t want that to suffer.”
“So if the festival grew too much—”
“She’d see her writing career go down the tubes. Her feelings for Reed were mixed. She slipped into a depression when she found out he was seeing me.”
“Did that alter your relationship with her? You weren’t concerned you were hurting your sister?”
“No. She kind of shoved that behind her and concentrated on her job. Anyway, she probably knew she never really had a chance with him. I mean, he’s fantastic in bed and fun to be with, but Jenny’s not exactly the life of the party. Reed liked lively women. That’s why I thought we were so good for each other. Why I knew we’d end up together.”
“He never left his wife for anyone, though. And how long had he been having affairs?”
“But our love was different. He told me so. Besides,” she said, rather hesitantly, “I figured if he and Marian broke up, I would move in with Reed…either as a companion or as his wife.”
“But your affair was four years ago, by your own admission. Did you do anything to try to get him back, to leave Marian?”
“No,” she said, her voice tinged with grief. “I just thought he’d get around to it one of these days.”
* * * *
Mark and I were steps from the pub, needing lunch and needing to discuss that day’s developments. I had just commented on what would be the faster choice to appease my consuming hunger—salad and scone or ploughman’s lunch—when Clayton Warson walked up to us, calling our names.
When a copper connected however thinly to a case calls your name, it usually doesn’t fill you with all the fun of a fair. Mark and I waited near the door and greeted Clayton when he joined us. His face was flushed and he took several deep breaths before explaining that he had been on his way to see us at the incident room. “But then I saw you here.”
“You look rattled. Anything the matter?”
“No. I mean…well, yes.” He took a paper-wrapped package from his jeans pocket. The packet was perhaps an inch thick and about the size of a tea bag. Holding it tightly in his hand, he asked if we could go somewhere private. “I need to tell you something.”
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