Peter was the only one who said nothing at all. He stared straight ahead, pale but stoical.
“I said, I want to see John Bennett,” I reiterated. The burly desk sergeant was ignoring me, talking to one of the constables who had brought us in. The calm impersonal attitude of all these uniformed people was maddening. “I said—”
“Yes, Madame, I did hear what you said, there’s no need to shout,” said the desk sergeant firmly. “D.S. Bennett’s not in the building at present.”
“Somebody has to tell me what we’re doing here, and why my son-in-law, a respected lecturer at Mercy College, is being treated like Jack the Ripper!”
“You and the victim’s wife are here as material witnesses. Mr. Peter Tyler is at present our prime suspect in a murder investigation, as I’m sure the officers informed him at the scene. That’s all I can tell you, Madame. Things would go a lot easier if you’d take a seat and wait until someone’s ready to interview you.”
“I’m going home,” Perdita cried out, “back to Tyneford. We were happy there. Let go of me,” she commanded the female constable who held her arm. “I want to go home!”
“I’m going to call my daughter,” I told them, “not only is she Peter’s wife, she’s also Mrs. Stone’s therapist, and it looks like you’re going to need her.”
Nobody objected. Perdita had started slapping at the constable, fighting to free herself. The desk sergeant sent another officer down the corridor at a brisk trot as I went over to the public phone. When Emily answered I tried to explain, but it wasn’t easy.
“I’m at the police station, darling. Your patient Mrs. Stone is giving them a hard time, and Peter—it’s outrageous, and I told them so, but they think he murdered Edgar Stone!”
A gasp, a few seconds’ silence, then she said, “Murdered?”
“Yes, somebody stabbed him, it was awful, there was blood all over! Of course there’s no way Peter could have done such a thing, but they say he’s their prime suspect, can you imagine? You have to come right down.”
“Wait a minute—what are you doing there?”
I blew out my breath in exasperation. “Does it matter at this point?”
My heart sank as I heard Quin’s voice in the background asking what was wrong. Now he would be sticking his nose in!
“I’ll be right there,” she said and hung up.
When I turned back I saw Perdita Stone sitting off to one side, still talking feverishly, her hand in that of a middle-aged woman wearing the same kind of power suit my daughter wore. She was listening quietly, stroking the hand, occasionally putting in a few words. I figured she must be their resident therapist, letting the poor woman ramble on to calm her down.
Peter was gone.
“Where have you taken my son-in-law?” I demanded of the desk sergeant. “I won’t have him interrogated until John Bennett is here to do it!”
“Madame,” he said with forbidding courtesy, “it is not police policy to offer suspects their choice of interviewers. D.S. Bennett is occupied on another investigation and is not expected in tonight.”
“Do you think he’s gone home by now?”
“I have absolutely no idea!”
I hurried back to the phone and called Fiona.
I explained the situation and waited while she expressed the predictable shock and disbelief. Then I asked whether John was home yet. When she said he wasn’t, I implored her to send him over as soon as he got there, and she promised she would.
I turned from the phone and saw a pudgy, bald detective with a little mustache waiting for me. He identified himself as D.S. Parker and asked me to accompany him to one of the rooms down the corridor, a little larger than a walk-in closet, furnished with a metal table and two folding chairs.
“Now, then,” he said when we were seated, “I’d like to hear about what brought you to Mr. Stone’s house and what you saw there.”
He sat back and listened intently as I told my story, nodding dismissively at my protestations about the impossibility of Peter having killed anybody.
“All right, Madame,” he said when I stopped for breath, “that’s very helpful. So you entered the house because you heard Mrs. Stone screaming, and you saw Mr. Tyler standing over the body, is that correct?”
“No, that is not correct,” I answered snippily. “He wasn’t ‘standing over’ him, he was at least a foot away from him. And has anybody noticed there’s no blood on Peter, while everything else in the vicinity is sopping with it?”
“That can happen, depending on the angle of attack,” he said. “Don’t worry, Madame, our technicians will be looking into those things. Did you happen to notice a handkerchief lying on the floor beside the desk?”
“Handkerchief? No,” I said, “but you have to understand, Peter is the most—”
“Or the broken lock on the door into the study?”
“No. How do you know Peter didn’t just come in because of the screaming, like me? And how did your police know to come there, anyway?”
“We had a telephone message, which I can’t discuss with you, I’m sure you’ll understand why.”
“I don’t understand anything! What evidence could you possibly have?”
“Look, I understand your faith in your son-in-law and your desire to help him. Not sure my mother-in-law would react quite the same.” He smiled at his little joke, but I only continued to glare at him. “We’ll be needing to talk to you further, but for tonight you’re free to go home. Now, come along.” He stood up and opened the door. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to help us later.”
I was certainly not going home. I planted myself in one of the hard metal chairs bolted to the wall in the lobby to wait for Emily. Mrs. Stone and the therapist were gone. I set myself to mulling over everything I could about that evening’s events, and suddenly I remembered something crucial that had been knocked out of my mind by the shock. I jumped up and hurried over to the desk sergeant, who looked up from his papers with controlled irritation.
“I just remembered I saw someone else coming out of Edgar Stone’s house this evening! Get that sergeant back, I’ve got to tell him. She must have done it, she’s definitely capable of murder!”
“Who was that?” he asked skeptically.
“This—woman my ex-husband’s traveling around with. She came out of the Stones’ about half an hour before the police and I arrived. And she looked really upset!”
Before he answered, the street door opened and Emily entered with her father. She wore her usual housedress, a caftan bought on her honeymoon in Morocco. Her blonde hair flowed over her shoulders, and her face looked quite bloodless.
“It’s all right, darling,” I said quickly, “I think I can clear him.” I turned to Quin and spoke to him, though it was like hitting myself in the chest. “Where’s your girlfriend?” I demanded.
“Mother, this is not the time to start—” Emily began, but I went right on.
“Where is she? Do you know? Hiding from the police, isn’t she?”
“Kit, for God’s sake calm down!” he answered angrily. “What difference does it make where Janet is? Can’t you get your mind off her even at a time like this?”
“Not when I saw her fleeing from the scene of the crime!”
“What are you talking about? God, you’re in one of those hysterical fits of yours, I should have known—”
“Just tell us where she is right this minute,” I said, deliberately keeping my voice steady to prove him wrong.
“She’s at the hotel,” he finally answered. “She was tired, she wanted to go to bed, and I went to Emily and Peter’s to visit awhile. Peter got a phone call and had to go out, and a little while later you called to say he’s been arrested! Are you going to tell us what’s happened, or do I have to find a cop who’ll tell me?”
“Pardon me,” the desk sergeant put in, “am I to understand you’re Mrs. Tyler?”
“Yes,” Emily answered, stepping over to him. “Please, could you tell me wh
at’s happened, Officer?”
As he gave her the few facts they were willing to divulge, I turned back to Quin.
“I was driving past the house where the murder happened,” I said in a low voice, “and I saw that woman come running out looking all upset. That was a good while before I went back by and heard Mrs. Stone screaming, and found Peter there with the body. So she’s every bit as likely a suspect as poor Peter—who obviously only went in because he heard the screaming, just like me.”
“Janet? Why would she go to see a guy she’d only met for the first time that evening?”
“I’m supposed to understand the motives of a person like that? But I told this policeman about it, and I’m not leaving until they bring her in and find out what she was doing there.”
“Wait a minute. This is just too convenient —you, of all people, were the only one who happened to be passing by when she ran out?”
“Are you calling me a liar? You—the grand champion of liars?”
“Mom, Dad, stop it! Stop it!” Emily said, her voice cracking with strain. “Look, just go away, both of you—I can’t deal with your problems right now!”
We both fell silent, shamefaced at having made things worse for her.
“There’s really no reason for you to stay,” the sergeant said quickly, “and it might be better for all concerned if you did go home.”
“Absolutely not! I won’t leave her alone in this mess,” I burst out, and at the same moment Quin said firmly, “I’m here to support my daughter, and I’m going to stay.”
“I’d really rather you both go,” Emily said. “I’m quite capable of handling things, and you two are only complicating them.”
That hurt, but I persisted. “Sergeant, didn’t you hear what I told you about that woman coming out of Stone’s house?”
“Yes, Madame, but we’re going to be concentrating on Mr. Tyler just now. We shan’t be questioning any other witnesses until tomorrow at the soonest.” He still sounded skeptical.
“How can you just wait around, when she might be—”
“That’s enough,” Quin said, tight-lipped. “This is so like you, throwing wild accusations around, going off half-cocked and causing trouble. Man, do I remember thirty years of that!”
While struggling to contain my fury for Emily’s sake, I noticed that she was gone. I looked down the corridor and saw her disappear through the door of one of the interview rooms, D.S. Parker holding it open for her and then shutting it behind himself.
“Listen,” I heard Quin saying, more calmly, “I wasn’t going to let things get like this. I was going to convince you we shouldn’t be enemies, with all the years we’ve got—”
“Oh, right,” I retorted, “as you just told me, thirty years of that!”
“But, if you’ll let me finish one sentence,” he snapped, “I’m not going to let you make up fantastic tales to try to get Janet in trouble. One thing I didn’t think you could be was vindictive, but obviously I was wrong.”
“I am not making this up! All right—she was carrying a tote bag with a picture of Big Ben on it, and she didn’t have that at the party, so how would I know about it if I hadn’t seen her when I said I did?”
Doubt crossed his face for the first time. “You might have seen her somewhere else.”
“I thought she was in bed at the inn. If I saw her at all, she must have lied to you about where she was going.”
He frowned, unable to refute that. “I’m going back to our room and ask her about it,” he finally said. “She’ll be able to explain everything.”
“Darn right she will, after you’ve coached her! I’ll just come along, and see how she explains everything with me there listening.”
He only shrugged, but I followed when he went out the door, staying a few steps behind so there was no question of my being with him. His considerably longer legs strode so fast up St. Aldate’s that by the time we reached St. Giles Street, six long blocks on, I was pretty winded, and when we walked into a very large and obviously expensive hotel a few doors beyond, I had to stop for breath. He didn’t glance back until he reached the staircase, and then he waited, tapping his fingers on the banister, while I glared at him across the luxuriously appointed lobby, holding my side and heaving with each exhalation. After a couple of minutes I crossed to the stairs with what dignity I could and climbed behind him to the next floor.
She obviously had him living pretty extravagantly these days. I knew, vaguely, that his clients paid him well, but we’d never been big spenders. That was how we’d discovered Far Wychwood. It had a great old inn, The Longbow, which didn’t cost nearly as much as one like this, in the heart of Oxford. We had stayed there when Emily was married, and again when Archie was born, and I’d loved the village so much that when Quin told me he was leaving, I’d gone back there to lick my wounds in rural peace.
He put a key into the lock of a door, and stood back to let me precede him into the room.
She was sitting at a small desk near the window, writing a postcard. She looked up, then turned in her chair, the brown eyes widening in astonishment when she saw me. Without makeup, her square jaw and rather rough complexion were more noticeable. She had a bathrobe on over a satiny beige slip, and travelers’ fold-up terry cloth slippers. She got to her feet, smiling uncertainly.
I wasn’t going to put up with any “civilized” behavior, if that was what she had in mind. I started barking at her, “I’m only here because I know you were—”
But Quin, taking advantage of his louder voice as he had his longer legs, drowned me out. “Something awful’s happened, honey. That guy we met at the college this evening, that Edgar Stone? Somebody’s killed him, and they’ve arrested Peter for it.”
“My God.” She sat down again. Her voice was low-pitched, throaty, probably sexy if you happened to be male. “But, Tib, why would Peter do such a thing?”
Tib? I stared at Quin, unable to believe he’d let anyone give him such a nickname. He did have the grace to look embarrassed. I turned back to her.
“Peter didn’t,” I said in a voice dripping with scorn. “You did.”
“Me?” She looked bewildered. “I didn’t even know him!”
“Then what were you doing in his house this evening?” I shot back before Quin could interfere. “I drove past around nine o’clock, and I saw you running out of the place. You were the guiltiest-looking slut I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s enough, Kit!” Quin ordered. “Why can’t you—” He broke off and went over to the girlfriend. His face was furrowed in an uneasy frown as he looked down at her. “She says she saw that tote bag you got in London, so I guess she’s not making it up.” I snorted derisively. “Was that where she saw you?”
She didn’t turn a hair. In her place, I would have been giving as good as I got, either blustering to cover my guilt or loudly indignant at being accused of something I hadn’t done. I’d wondered what he saw in her, and now my triumph at having caught her out was dulled by the realization that he must like her because she was nothing like me.
“You were talking to him at the party,” Quin went on, as she sat there staring at me without speaking. “I wondered at the time what that was about.”
Now she looked up at him adoringly, took hold of one edge of his Windbreaker, and slowly ran her hand down it.
“It was about you,” she said. “I wanted to surprise you, but now—”
She went to the closet, lifted the Big Ben tote bag from a hook, and pulled a large leather-bound book from it. She held it out to Quin.
“I saw how excited you were when you heard about it,” she said, “so I asked the man if he would sell it to me. That’s what we were talking about.”
As he took the book his frown changed to an expression of amazement.
“It’s the Blackstone!” he exclaimed. “The first volume of the original edition—my God, Janet, this must have cost you a mint!”
“No, I was surprised at the reasonable price he off
ered me. He said anytime I wanted to come to his house I could have it, and he gave me directions. When you were going to your daughter’s after the party I thought it was a good chance, so I said I was coming back here, and instead I went to buy your book. I was going to keep it for your birthday, but…” She glanced over at me, and Quin turned to look at me too.
“There you are,” he said with satisfaction. “It was nothing like you thought. Just the latest example of you jumping to conclusions from inadequate evidence.”
“When I saw her,” I said stubbornly, “she was practically running out of the place, looking back over her shoulder. Why would buying a book make anybody that upset?”
“All right, I told you his price was low,” she said, still imperturbable. “Well, I found out why. After I had the book he kept talking, not wanting me to leave, and finally he made a crude pass at me. He—put his hands on me, and tried to make me do the same to him. I had to hit him to get away. That’s why I was hurrying, and a little upset.”
“Maybe you had to do more than hit him,” I said doggedly, knowing my case had pretty much collapsed.
She threw me a pitying smile. “It wasn’t my first experience of something like that. You don’t have to kill them to get them off you.” She turned back to Quin, dismissing me. “Tib, I tried to read some of that book but I couldn’t understand it, not even the first page! And you know I have a pretty good legal vocabulary. You are so brilliant, to want to read a book like that! I mean, I knew you were, but it’s not your mind I think of first anymore…”
She gave him a little secret smile and then dropped her gaze, as if modesty prevented her from elaborating on that, in front of an outsider. The big brown eyes flickered to his face again for a second, then down to his hand, now caught in hers. Damn, she was good.
I could see by his besotted little smile that he was eating it up. Much as the performance turned my stomach, I had to admit I believed her story. Being felt up was not a credible motive for murder, especially for somebody as unflappable as this one.
Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow Page 5