Philanderers Gone

by Beth Byers

  “I’ll be staying with Mrs. Hughes should you summon the backbone to interrogate me further, Detective Truman. Good day.”

  She left him irritated and angry on the bench and her heart raced all the way back to Hettie’s auto. Hettie was going to kill her when she found out how belligerent Ro had been with the detective. She might as well have put a sign about her neck that stated, ‘I had every reason to kill my husband, including my abiding hatred.’

  Chapter 7

  Hettie followed the detective, glancing back at Ro and seeing that she was also staring back. Hettie felt a little as though she were being pulled to the headmistress’s office. Detective Harris had a grumpy look to him and was older. He carried a few more pounds without crossing the line to fat. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face needed a shave.

  The fellow was looking her over as if she were a naughty child who might need the ruler used on her palms. She ignored his expression to press the space between her eyebrows. A headache was making its existence known in a way that couldn’t be ignored.

  “Mrs. Hughes,” Detective Harris said, waiting.

  Hettie glanced at him, wondering if he was playing games with her. Was he, perhaps, trying to intimidate her by waiting to say anything else? Maybe hoping to make her nervous by only staring? Perhaps her dress had flipped up and her underthings were showing. She wanted to check, but she’d be damned before she was caught checking for a malfunctioning dress while discussing the possible murder of her husband.

  She waited him out, realizing as they stood there, silent, that she felt sick to her stomach as well as her head. She had reached the level of exhausted that made her very hair follicles hurt along with, oddly, her thigh bones. Not the muscles, just the bones.

  “Mrs. Hughes,” the detective said again.

  She lifted her brows.

  “Did your husband often yacht with Mr. Ripley?”

  Hettie shook her head.

  “Is that a no?”

  “To be perfectly honest, detective, I have no idea if Harvey ever yachted with Mr. Ripley before. As far as I know, they met yesterday evening.”

  “Your very good friend’s husband had never met your husband?”

  “Ro and I are newer friends.” Hettie met the detective’s gaze. “Even if we’d been friends for years, detective, Harvey didn’t concern himself with how or with whom I spent my time.”

  “You seem very chummy,” he replied, frowning at her. “Your driver said he was taking you both to your rooms. Is she staying with you?”

  “I suppose we bonded very quickly over an understanding of each other’s lot.”

  The detective frowned again at her. “It’s unethical to sidestep questions about a possible murder, Mrs. Hughes.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “How long have you and Mrs. Ripley been friends?”

  “What does that have to do with the sinking of the yacht?”

  “There is concern of a homicide.”

  “And my friendship with Ro has what to do with that?”

  “It’s not necessary for a detective to explain his thought process at every step of the investigation, Mrs. Hughes. Let me be clear. Your behavior at the death of your husband was alarming in the extreme. Especially when you add in the fact that we were already concerned about what we were discovering.”

  Hettie paused long enough to control her temper before speaking. “As often as I have heard comments on feminine hysterics, detective, I wonder that you are surprised at all.”

  He scoffed. “Laughing at the death of your husband is female hysterics?”

  “I don’t think I have to explain my very shocking reaction to my husband’s death, detective. I am exhausted. Harvey was healthy yesterday and I was bone-weary with how he treated me. I watched him leave a party with his lover, and I won’t pretend he was a saint simply because he’s dead. He was, to be perfectly honest, a right bastard.”

  The detective’s jaw dropped open, and Hettie sniffed.

  “Which is why I was planning a trip without him. I didn’t wish him death, but I wouldn’t have nursed him if he broke his leg.”

  “You don’t think that’s your duty as his wife?” Detective Harris’s righteous indignation made Hettie want to slap him until his ears never stopped ringing.

  “I think, detective,” Hettie said witheringly, “that any right he had to my love and care expired with his infidelity.”

  “Why should I believe that you weren’t behind the sinking of that yacht?”

  “Why should you believe I was?”

  “You got rid of a cheating spouse and have full control of your money?” The detective lifted a brow over his significantly less handsome face.

  “I already have full control of my money,” she said. “It was wrapped up tightly by my far-wiser relatives. The larger problem is that I wasn't smart enough to listen to those same wiser relatives’ concerns about the man I was marrying. Let me give you advice, detective—if you ever have a daughter, spend the entirety of her life warning her to exercise extreme caution when determining whom she spends the rest of her life with.”

  The detective looked upset at that and Hettie immediately wondered if the man already had a daughter.

  “The truth is detective, the difference between Harvey being dead and being alive is minimal. He was hardly a husband to me, and technically speaking, I’ve been living separately from him. We have separate suites in the same hotel and have had for some time. He didn’t care as long as I kept paying the bills, and I kept paying the bills in order to not have to deal with him.”

  “Now you can marry again.” Detective Harris sounded triumphant.

  Hettie’s bitter laughter disabused the detective of that notion. “I honestly cannot imagine that happening.”

  “Do you have an alibi?”

  “You mean outside of Ro?”

  The smirk the detective shot her infuriated Hettie, but she couldn’t tell if she was righteously angry or only exhausted. Either way, she shrugged at him and then turned to leave.

  “Not so fast, Mrs. Hughes.”

  Hettie turned back and lifted a brow with what might have been the last of her energy.

  “Did anyone else see you?”

  “I’m not from London, you know.”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t have bushels of friends and acquaintances in London. People aren’t going to recognize me if you mention my name.”

  “Even still,” Detective Harris said.

  “I was at a party with Ro. I played water tennis, I soaked in a hot bath and had a rather invigorating debate with another redhead about freckle removers. I couldn’t tell you her name, but if you can find a random redhead, I’m sure I’d remember the map of her freckles and identify her that way.”

  The detective scoffed.

  “I shared a cigarette with a black woman with the unlikely name of Ruby Rose, who sings for a jazz band. I am quite jealous of her lovely dark brown eyes. I was pretty drunk the entire time, detective. I suspect if you find the staff of Aurelia Bath House and you describe the plump, morose Canadian who was crying at one point over dropping her G&T, you’ll find my alibi.”

  “You can’t do better than that?”

  “Isn’t Scotland Yard supposed to be the best police department in the world?” Hettie probably shouldn’t have used such a snide tone. Her slight regret was emphasized by what was probably a flush of fury. Given the way he was condescending to her, she doubted it was shame.

  “If you don’t take your freedom seriously, why should I?”

  “It’s your job,” she shot back, “but it’s fine. I’ll hire a detective, shall I? To find the random folks I talked with the night before? Since the woman I actually spent the whole of the party with isn’t good enough for you.”

  “You both benefited from the sinking.”

  Hettie’s face shifted to cold as she said, “I don’t find the death of an unknown number of people a benefit. As I have said now
multiple times, I didn’t want Harvey to die. I had every intention of getting what I wanted by abandoning our marriage. Isn’t it funny? I could simply leave him and not imperil my mortal soul.”

  “You don’t think that God cares if you abandon your vows?”

  The remark had Hettie seething. “I have no intention of debating the morality of leaving a husband who was neglectful and unfaithful with a judgmental man who has no idea what my life was like. Do you want to know if I killed Harvey? I’ve said no twice.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Detective Harris shot back.

  She knew antagonizing the detective was a bad idea, but it didn’t stop her from snapping, “Shaming me about my marriage and my feelings towards my husband isn’t going to prove my guilt. If it makes you feel better, I’ll tell you this much: murdering my husband would have been easy for me.”

  Detective Harris gaped and Hettie smiled meanly. She hated this man almost as much as she hated Harvey. “One quick shove of a drunk husband into the path of an auto. Or a shove of him over the railing of our last steamship. Easy,” Hettie hissed with anger. “He was so drunk so often or under opium’s influence I could have put a pillow over his face and leaned down. The reason that I didn’t is because I am not a murderer. If I were, I don’t see any reason to have killed all those other people when removing only him would have been simple.”

  The detective stared at Hettie as though she’d grown a second head.

  “Just to give you some perspective on my choices.” She left him that time, and he didn’t stop her.

  She walked away with an intensified headache pounding behind her eyes, a surreal feeling in her body as though she had stepped outside of her skin and that she was watching this from above. How was it possible that her own personal demon had been killed? How did she align the relief she felt at his death with her heart? How did she go on from here? What did she do? Should she go back to the hotel and pack her bags?

  Peterson was standing by the auto and opened the door for her. She slid into the seat and found Ro had already made it back.

  “I think,” Hettie told Ro as Peterson shut the door, “we might need to hire a detective on our own. That fellow seemed to think that because I was hysterically laughing at my husband’s death I must have killed them all.”

  “As if you’d murder a whole group of people to get rid of one.”

  “That’s what I said,” Hettie agreed. “Harris didn’t seem impressed with my logic.”

  “He clearly doesn’t know what it’s like to live with someone like Leonard or Harvey. If we’d wanted to murder them, what’s a little arsenic in the hair of the dog?”

  Hettie laughed, but she wasn’t all that amused and a moment later, she was wiping away a tear. “Do I want to go to sleep and let this all have been a terrible dream?”

  Ro took Hettie’s hand, providing the most unexpected of comforts.

  “You truly are a bosom friend,” Hettie said low. “It’s as though I’ve always known you.”

  Ro nodded and then laid her head on Hettie’s shoulder. After a few minutes of driving through London, Ro asked, “Would you want things to go back to how they were before?”

  Hettie pulled back to look at Ro and found her avoiding meeting gazes. Her mouth twisted as she thought. “I think? Maybe? My goodness, Ro, I want to say no, but I’m not sure that’s true.”

  Their gazes met in the same combination of sickened guilt and relief.

  “It’s fine,” Ro said, taking Hettie’s hand. “It’s fine.”

  “Is it fine?” Hettie asked, staring out the window. “I hate him even more than I have words to say. I hate him so much. I hated him for taking that sweet, innocent version of me and turning it into this bitter woman. I feel like a person who had my future stolen by a man who saw nothing but dollar signs over my head. Ro—I hate him—and I’m glad he’s dead. And I hate that is how I feel.”

  “Would you have saved him if you could have?”

  Hettie paused and then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then hating him for what he did to you is entirely separate from being willing to murder him. We’re dealing with two different things.”

  “The fact that we hated our husbands is going to ruin our lives if we don’t also find a…ah—narrative for our feelings. If we’re going to be asked questions, we need to be able to answer them in a way that doesn’t make us seem like monsters.”

  Ro nodded as Hettie finished. “After we sleep.”

  Hettie nodded. “After we sleep.”

  Chapter 8

  “I’ve been thinking,” a slightly tipsy Ro said to Hettie when she woke from her nap. She’d entered the sitting area of her suite and found Ro already there, comfortable with her drink and a tray with a late breakfast from the hotel’s restaurant.

  The suite was luxurious in the extreme with detailing on everything from the doorknobs to the carpets. Even the wood shone, and Hettie had thought more than once that she was grateful not to be part of the cleaning staff for this hotel. Especially given how much of a spoiled barbarian that Harvey was. She paused, remembering suddenly, and shivered. Her headache made itself known with a vengeance.

  Hettie glanced at Ro, held up a hand, and made herself a plate of fruit and scones. “You’ve been thinking or the gin has been thinking for you?” she asked with an envious glance at Ro’s nearly empty glass.

  “I’m sure it’s a well-balanced combination of my own thoughts spiked with gin-induced confidence and a lack of sleep, as I had a hard time succumbing to that sweet embrace.”

  “Let’s hear it then, sweet sister,” Hettie said through a yawn. “First though, pour me a drink, would you? I haven’t had enough sleep to kill this headache yet. Perhaps a little gin and aspirin will resolve it, along with clotted cream.”

  “Clotted cream and jam solve everything,” Ro said as she crossed to the bar. “Especially when you add gin and aspirin.”

  Hettie ran her hand over her hair, finding her turban, and was astounded she’d thought to put it on given she’d dropped her dress on her floor, flung her stockings aside, and flopped onto her bed. She didn’t even remember curling into her pillow, but she’d woken up wrapped around it.

  Ro added muddled blackberry and lavender syrup to a generous amount of gin and bit of tonic and then stabbed ice out of the bucket and tossed it into the glass.

  “Here you are, darling. I was in the same spot only an hour ago when I woke, but this magical concoction seems to be just the thing. I am not crediting the handful of aspirin I choked down.”

  Hettie gulped down half the contents of the short, glass tumbler with her own aspirin. Ro took the glass and refilled it.

  “Now that you’ve had an introductory swallow, perhaps consider sipping while we bend our minds to some brainwork. We’ll need our wits for at least long enough to plan.”

  Hettie knew, of course, that the plan revolved around those blighters, their dead husbands. “Tell me your grand ideas, but first let’s order fresh coffee.”

  Ro made the order while Hettie rubbed her hands over her face.

  “Please,” Hettie asked when Ro finished, “add a dash of frivolity and wickedness with a large dose of continued freedom to your thoughts.”

  Ro returned to her seat opposite Hettie, raised her glass, and continued, “We know the detectives, at the very least, suspect murder, otherwise I don’t think they’d be so keen to interview us.”

  “Indeed,” Hettie sighed, but not for long. “The fiends! How are we supposed to feel about the murder if someone did rid us of them?” She paused again. “Don’t answer that.”

  Ro’s lips twitched. “They are fiends! To make such hostile insinuations about our involvement in the yacht-sinking. We both know that we didn’t do it, but there’s nothing to stop the detectives from trying to pin it on us and making our lives miserable. I’ll be damned if I let Leonard Ripley rob me of any more of my life. I see only one way through this, Hettie. I think it involves neither of us fleeing f
or Paris or Spain or even Prince Edward Island. I fear we’ll need to remain in London to prove our innocence.”

  Ro paused to take a drink and give Hettie a moment to process.

  Hettie raised her glass in a toast. “It would be like Harvey to ruin my life even after he died. We must ensure we aren’t held accountable for their demise—whatever it takes. There’s only one problem.”

  “Only one?” Ro asked and then pulled her feet under her to curl up on the chaise lounge.

  “Perhaps there are many. But one particularly pressing problem takes priority. We don’t know what caused the police to be suspicious in the first place. Is it simply that the yacht sank? Might there be some sort of sign, the tell-tale heart of this dilemma? How can we investigate without evidence?”

  “We’ll solve that problem, my dear Hettie. We are in agreement that we must prove our own innocence?”

  Hettie nodded, setting her drink aside. “I fear we must, and so yes, we are agreed.”

  Ro moved to the bar to refill Hettie’s drink, talking as she did so. “As I was saying, we need to prove our innocence and I have thoughts about the best way to do it. Did you know that the detective who interviewed me, Detective Truman, insinuated that I’d had enough to drink that I might not remember my whereabouts last night and whether I’d murdered my husband? You’d have been proud of me. I was a touch belligerent, but no more so than he deserved. Some nerve.”

  She handed the glass to Hettie and began to mix herself another one.

  “The detective who interviewed me,” Hettie said, “had the gall to imply that I’d killed Harvey so that I’d be free to remarry. As if I’d ever marry again after this nightmare. Foolish men. They have such a difficult time considering anything other than the obvious. If I hadn’t already known it was going to be up to us to prove our innocence, I certainly know now that we’ve spoken to those two buckets for brains.”

  They shared a giggle and then turned serious.