Resort to Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  I thought I understood. “But if a man means it…”

  “Things get difficult.” She spooned brown sugar over her oatmeal.

  “Was it difficult with Roddy Worrell?” I wondered if Mrs. Worrell was near and what she would think about this conversation.

  Marlow sighed. “None of it would have happened if Daddy had been here…But he wasn’t here. Roddy was pressing her. He knew she was rich. He wanted to go back to America with her. He didn’t understand.”

  No, I doubted he understood a woman who beckoned, but was always out of reach to those who followed.

  “It was awful…” Marlow put down her spoon, her face heavy with remembered pain.

  “When he fell?” I imagined the shock had been enormous.

  Marlow blinked. “Oh, that. Yes, of course.” She sighed. “They didn’t find him until daylight. Somebody went for a walk in the garden. If Mr. Worrell cried out as he fell, no one heard him.” She frowned. “That yell last night was dreadful, just the way you’d think someone might cry out if they fell and knew they were falling, but we didn’t hear anything the night he died. It was the next morning—Mrs. Worrell screamed and screamed. I remember that. I was coming up the steps from the pool and so I saw her—Mrs. Worrell—she was on her knees beside him. I didn’t know it was him. It looked like a bunch of clothes or a heap of trash. Nothing live. But he wasn’t alive. Later they said he’d been dead for hours, that he must have fallen out of the tower not long after he left the bar. He slammed away, yelling that Mother was…It was hateful. And of course that’s what she remembers. When we got home to Atlanta, she didn’t want to come out of her room. She huddled there. She said he—Roddy—had told her she was cruel and that if anything happened to him, she would have to bear the blame in her soul forever.”

  “A bit extravagant, I think.” My tone was dry.

  Marlow looked at me eagerly. “You see that, don’t you? It’s the kind of thing a man says to make a woman feel bad. He doesn’t mean it, not really.”

  Not unless he intended to commit suicide and wanted to make his lover suffer. Was that the kind of man Roddy Worrell was?

  Marlow pushed her hands against her hair. “Mother was absolutely distraught. She withdrew. I was frightened for her. It was awful.”

  This was what Marlow found awful, Connor’s depression after Roddy Worrell’s death, not the fact of his death.

  “Lloyd helped.” Marlow’s tone was grudging. “Of course, Lloyd was part of the problem with Roddy. Lloyd went after Mother the minute he saw her. That really ticked off Roddy. But after Roddy died, Lloyd was really kind and gentle. Still, when we got home, Mother had nightmares and she holed up in her room and wouldn’t talk. I could scarcely get her to eat. Then Lloyd started coming to visit and she was more and more like her old self. I encouraged him.” Her tone was bitter. “God, what a fool I was.”

  “Why do you dislike Lloyd so much?” That dislike made all she said suspect. If she wanted her mother’s happiness, why was she opposed to a man who obviously adored Connor?

  “I don’t dislike him.” Her tone was dismissive. “But he’s all wrong for Mother. He absolutely doesn’t have a clue. I mean, he insisted they come here for the wedding. He kept going on and on about how romantic it was that he and Mother met here and that Aaron and I met here and it would be so much fun for all of us to come here for the wedding. All because this is where they met. He seemed to think it had some kind of cosmic significance that Aaron and I met here on spring break instead of at school. He went on and on about how he’d wanted to stay at the Southampton Princess but came here instead and met Mom, and Aaron was only here because his roommate had planned to come here on a spring-break trip but couldn’t and Aaron took his place at the last minute. I mean, people have to meet somewhere! But to Lloyd, it’s part of some divine plan. I mean, he is really a sentimental ass, all without having any real empathy! He didn’t give a thought to how Mother might feel about coming back here. And anybody who looked back at last year should have known that it would be an awful mistake. Anybody but good old Lloyd. Doesn’t he have any imagination—”

  Lloyd had good qualities. He was honest, steady, and kind. But imaginative? No.

  “—at all? Mother kept saying no and finally he booked everything without telling her and showed up with the tickets, looking like a lovesick calf. I honestly think she felt sorry for him. But she never should have come back here. Never, never, never. But that’s not the big problem.” She looked at me, her eyes desperate. “Listen, you must know him really well. I mean, he was married to your daughter and he asked you to come to the wedding. He must think a lot of you.”

  I understood her reasoning. But she was wrong on all counts. I never lived in the same town with Emily and Lloyd and so had very little close contact with Lloyd over the years. I was his mother-in-law and therefore treated with respect and thoughtfulness. But my conversation with Lloyd on the terrace here in Bermuda might have been the most in-depth communication we’d ever had. Moreover, I was sure he’d invited me because Emily had asked him to do so and perhaps he felt, too, I’d be a buffer between him and his children.

  I shook my head. “Marlow, I have scarcely ever spent a moment alone with Lloyd—”

  “Oh, God.” Her voice was ragged with despair. “Somebody has got to talk to him. I can’t. Maybe Uncle Steve…But that won’t work. Lloyd’s jealous of him. And that scares me. And I don’t think he’d pay any attention to Aaron. I thought maybe you…”

  “Talk to Lloyd about what? Roddy Worrell?” Talk to a man I’d exchanged pleasantries with over the course of twenty-some years about the woman he was going to marry, a woman too attractive to too many men?

  “Roddy. No. Not really.” Marlow’s eyes widened. She clapped her hands together sharply. “Or maybe that’s exactly what Lloyd needs to know about. Roddy Worrell. And all the men before him.” She ticked them off on her fingers: “Bob Simpson at the tennis club and Coley Howell at church and George Fisher in Daddy’s office and”—she drew a deep breath—“all the others. And maybe about here and now and that jerk from Texas. Lloyd was furious when he—”

  Oh, yes, the big redhead, Curt Patterson.

  “—tagged along yesterday. If Lloyd will understand about him, it will be all right. Because there will always be men tagging along.” She managed a smile. “So please, if you can, if you will, talk to Lloyd, try to explain that men come after Mother and it doesn’t do any harm, but he can’t be jealous. If he’s jealous, it will ruin everything. If he’s jealous”—she pushed back her chair, stood, looked down at me with grave, sad eyes—“he mustn’t marry her.”

  I tried to walk fast, realized I simply didn’t have the energy. I was late for my meeting with George. Marlow’s unexpected revelations—and how much of those I could accept as truth and how much was a daughter’s defense, I wasn’t sure—had taken all of the allotted twenty minutes and a few more.

  And I walked slowly because I was troubled. I should have told Marlow emphatically that I could not be an emissary to Lloyd. But I had not done so. That lack of refusal was tantamount to acquiescence. Was I willing to embark on a futile and potentially distressing mission simply to improve Marlow’s opinion of me? I’d been shocked at her picture of me. Arrogant? No. Aloof, perhaps. Reserved, yes. Sometimes weary, tired of insincerity and triviality and unwitting cruelty. But she had seen me as a cold and dismissive woman. Why should I care what Marlow thought of me? It is not only Rhett Butler who doesn’t give a damn. No one over sixty gives a damn. That is a very great freedom and one to be prized.

  The sea breeze stirred the branches of a glossy-leaved magnolia. Sunlight speared between the branches, dappling the dew-laden grass. I pulled my cardigan tight. Although the early-morning air was cool, it wasn’t the air that chilled me. It was almost as if I walked alongside myself, saw the dark-haired woman with a worn face and thoughtful eyes. I valued the freedom of age, but I didn’t want to be hard, encased in an impervious shell. I didn’t
want to be arrogant.

  Everything had seemed simple this morning. I’d had a clear-cut plan: Confront George, roust out the truth of Roddy Worrell’s ghost, convince Connor she had nothing to fear. Marlow’s request and her cold-eyed appraisal of me had re-sorted my priorities. I was afraid Lloyd would refuse to listen to me, but, damnit, I would try. As for George, now it was even more important for me to determine the truth of the visions at the tower.

  I glanced again at my watch. I was more than a half hour late. I started down the steps to the lower terrace. However, George had an incentive to be patient. He was hoping to reel in a five-thousand-dollar fish. I hadn’t decided how to proceed, but I had no compunction about misleading him. In my view, George wasn’t due honest dealing.

  I stopped a moment at the bottom of the second flight of steps. The long, inviting green tunnel to the beach was another hundred yards along. I was very late. But if George had given up on me, I’d seek him out. I didn’t hurry. I had plenty to think about. I understood my options:

  Promise George the five thousand but on the condition that he explain the ghostly phenomena first.

  Tell him his easy-money days were over and either he revealed what he knew about the tower or I would take the note he’d left in my room, give it to Mrs. Worrell, and inform her of my conversation with him after tea.

  I inclined toward the latter. I doubted George would provide what I wanted to know without actually receiving money and, since I had no intention of paying him, I might as well see what I could learn by threat.

  I wondered if it had occurred to him to wear gloves when he handled the envelope and note? After all, Mrs. Worrell would be justified in taking the note to the police on the basis that her livelihood was being endangered by the disturbances.

  Actually, I felt fairly confident. George had made a mistake when he’d agreed that he could prevent the apparition at the tower. That was a clear admission of more knowledge than he would possess if he was an innocent bystander.

  Last night screams tore apart the quiet, and a luminous glow hovered near the platform.

  Somebody made it happen. I thought that someone was George. However, George could claim he was guilty of nothing more than trying to scam a tourist and insist he had nothing to do with the apparitions and had made the offer to me simply hoping nothing more would happen before we left Bermuda, making him the grateful recipient of an unearned thousand.

  Maybe, damnit, that would turn out to be the fact and I’d be no nearer learning the truth behind the luminous glow even if I reported George to Mrs. Worrell. Still, the threat of talking to her, even if the more innocent explanation served, might be enough to scare him into cooperating. Or at least spinning another story to satisfy me. After all, his attempt to get money from a guest should be enough to get him fired. I didn’t know how hard it was to get a job on Bermuda, how important a recommendation might be, how much his job mattered to him, whether a complaint could jeopardize his work permit. I might still have the upper hand.

  However, I knew without doubt that George wanted money. All right, maybe I should talk to Lloyd, see how much he would be willing to pay to expose the nonsense about the tower as trickery. Maybe bargaining was still the best route. I would decide how to deal with George when we talked.

  I reached the end of the tunnel of greenery. I stopped at the ridged concrete walkway that shelved down to the rocky, seaweed-strewn beach. Surf as white as Chantilly lace foamed against the rocks, rippled over the pale pink sand. The sky gleamed bright blue, shiny as enamel. If I were a painter, I’d take that sky and splash it by the handfuls on a stark-white canvas and add dollops of the lighter, richer turquoise of the water, but no art could ever match the grandeur of color in Bermudian sky and sea.

  I edged down the ridged slab and crossed the damp sand to the base of the headland. I found the faint trail, followed it. When I reached the top, I could see all the way to the point and far, far out to sea, the glorious, compellingly blue sea.

  “Damn.” No one waited.

  Was George a no-show? Had he given up on me because I was late? But if that was the case, we should have met in the green tunnel. I walked slowly toward the point, feeling the strength of the breeze, welcoming the salty scent of the water. I passed the moongate and stopped at the edge of the cliff.

  The breeze was cool and fresh. I wanted to stand there and draw the freshness inside, feel young again, buoyed by beauty which feeds hope. I clung to the moment, knowing I must turn away. I needed to find George. And I must approach Lloyd. Would he listen? I believed that Lloyd loved Connor, but could he provide the accepting love Marlow thought Connor needed? And yet I lingered, still as a lizard, basking in the sun. Finally, with a sigh, I turned to go and my gaze swept out to the reef and the bubbly line of surf, then closer to shore and the sharp rocks below…

  I froze, shocked into immobility, staring down at the crumpled body wedged facedown between black pinnacles. Foamy surf submerged the body as each wave broke and for that instant I lost sight of the lolling head.

  Dead. George was dead. I didn’t need to see his face to recognize him. The body was that of a young man in a white shirt and khaki trousers. I stood for another moment, listening to the crash of the surf. There was no way to climb down the cliff face without ropes and pitons. The only access to the rugged rocks would be from the beach over wet boulders and that would be a struggle. But there was no hurry. The water sloshing over the body, pummeling the inert form, had long since extinguished any spark of life that might have survived the brutal plummet onto the rocks.

  nine

  I PACED up and down at the top of the hotel steps. I’d grabbed up the phone at the front desk to make the 911 call, ignoring the shocked questions from Rosalind, the young woman at the desk, saying only that I was going outside to await the arrival of the police. It wasn’t my job to announce the discovery of George’s body to the staff. But I’d known as I hung up the phone and moved toward the front door that word would spread faster than the click of castanets. I wasn’t surprised a few minutes later when Mrs. Worrell burst through the main door. Lloyd was right behind her.

  Mrs. Worrell’s angular face was taut with irritation. “Mrs. Collins, please explain this call you’ve placed.” Her hands curled into bony fists.

  Lloyd’s voice was shocked. “Henrie O, what the hell’s going on? Did you really find a body? Where? What happened?” He paced back and forth beside me, peering down at the drive. “Have you actually called the police?”

  I held up my hands. I spoke to the manager. “There’s a body at the foot of the point, caught in the rocks.” I hesitated, then, watching her carefully, I said, “I think it may be George.”

  Her head shake was decisive. “I just saw George a little while ago, Mrs. Collins. And certainly he wouldn’t fall on the rocks. That’s absurd. Besides, he’d have no reason to be out on the point. You may have seen a log—”

  “In a white shirt and khaki slacks?” My tone was sharp.

  Her pale blue eyes bulged.

  Lloyd jolted to a stop, stared at me. “God, that’s too bad.” He ran a hand through his reddish-gold hair. “Oh, hell, this is going to upset Connor.” He glanced down at his watch. “We’re supposed to take off in the van in about twenty minutes. Maybe I can round everyone up and we’ll leave a little earlier, miss all the…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t meet my eyes.

  I stared at him. “What a shame if you are inconvenienced.”

  “Oh, hell.” He chewed on his lower lip.

  I didn’t say a word.

  Lloyd finally met my stony gaze. “I’m sorry, Henrie O. God knows it’s a shame but we can’t help anything by hanging around here, and Connor…She’s not up to any more stress. Look, it has nothing to do with us—”

  The manager nodded emphatically. “That’s a very good plan. The fewer people in the hotel this morning, the better it will be. Please gather up your group, Mr. Drake.” Mrs. Worrell glanced down the steps. “I must stay a
nd speak with the police, but I’ll arrange for another driver.”

  Lloyd gave me a shamefaced look, ducked his head and hurried up the steps.

  A white station wagon rolled to a stop by the front steps of the hotel. I walked down to meet the uniformed officers, two of them, a slender black woman in her forties and a young man who reminded me sharply of George, tall, gangly, smooth young skin and a sunburned nose. Mrs. Worrell was right on my heels.

  The woman officer was in the lead. “Mrs. Collins?”

  I’d made the call, so they had my name.

  The officer observed me politely but with care, noting, I was sure, that my clothing showed no signs of disarray, that I was dry, sober, and apparently compos mentis.

  “Yes, officer. The body is on the rocks below the headland. A man.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Collins. I am Police Constable Howard.” She nodded toward the young man. “Police Constable Dugan. We will accompany you to the beach.” It was a simple statement, but it reminded me that for the time being I had no freedom of movement.

  Mrs. Worrell clasped her hands tightly together. “If you could direct the ambulance to use the lower road…I don’t want to disturb the guests. It has nothing to do with the hotel.”

  P.C. Howard was polite but firm. “There will be a number of cars, ma’am. In the event of an unexplained death, it is necessary for a forensics team to assemble.” She unloosed a cell phone from her belt. “I will ask that the vehicles be deployed to the lower road.”