Philanderers Gone

by Beth Byers

  Donovan nodded.

  “I heard he was looking for help, and I believe him to be quite honorable.”

  Donovan’s gaze was wide and shocked.

  “If you swear to me to cease those games you attempted to play with Ro and me, you may refer him to me for a reference.”

  “I swear,” Donovan said quickly and, Hettie hoped, earnestly.

  Hettie left the gentlemen’s ward and made her way to the ladies’ ward. It took her several minutes to find Mrs. Stone, who wasn’t in the general ward but a private room. When Hettie approached the door, she heard a raised voice inside and paused. Looking around, she found the young, beautiful nurse from that morning. Their gazes met as the deep, male voice bellowed. Hettie hurried to the nurse.

  “Surely you can get rid of him?”

  The nurse shook her head. “The head nurse said he was paying the bill, and he wasn’t hurting her.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Hettie whispered back. “I’m finding this painful.”

  They both jumped at the sound of a crash and then Hettie couldn’t take it anymore. She walked boldly to the door with the nurse whispering that she must come back, but Hettie wasn’t going to stand aside. She burst into the room and called, “Marilyn, darling.”

  Hettie paused in the face of the thunderous Mr. Stone but then stepped forward with a bright grin and hand out. “Why you must be Mr. Stone! Marilyn has told me the most wonderful things about you.”

  Keeping that bright grin, Hettie noted the broken vase of flowers and laughed, “Oh Marilyn, you’re normally so graceful, but when you lose your balance, you lose it so dramatically.”

  With a busy bustle, Hettie stuck her head out the door and called, “Nurse! There’s been a spill. Do bring something to clean it up, would you? I fear we’re facing a certain glass splinter if we’re not careful.”

  Hettie moved back into the room and around the man who was staring at her as though she had two heads.

  “What are you doing, madam?”

  “Visiting my friend of course,” Hettie lied with the same fixed grin. “I was going to send the nurse for tea. Did you want any?”

  “My wife is resting.”

  “Of course she is,” Hettie said. She let a steely look come into her eyes. “Nothing like chamomile tea and quiet to help her get better. When we’re in the face of a miracle, Mr. Stone, we should be careful to show our appreciation for God’s hand.”

  Mr. Stone stared at Hettie, who was carefully speaking in a way she thought he might find less objectionable. “You look like every other bright young thing.”

  “I’m a good married woman,” Hettie lied. “I might be young. I might occasionally be bright. But I assure you I am no bright young thing.”

  “Your fashion says otherwise.”

  Thank goodness, Hettie had bypassed anything other than a light layer of powder. Instead, she took a stab in the dark and said, “I don’t believe that a simple dress shows anything other than a bit of vanity.” In a moment of sheer daring, she asked, “Will you pray with us?”

  Mrs. Stone’s gaze was darting between Hettie and Mr. Stone while the nurse was carefully sweeping up the shards.

  “Come, nurse,” Hettie added. “Join hands in prayers with us.”

  Hettie held out an imperious hand and Mr. Stone stared at it as though it were a snake. After a dangerous moment, he cursed and left the room. Hettie didn’t, however, hear the stomping of his steps departing, so she held out her hand to Mrs. Stone and demanded, “Nurse!”

  Hettie’s gaze darted to the door and back to Mrs. Stone, and the nurse understood. She hurried over and joined as Hettie began. “Our Father who art in heaven.” Inside, she was praying for far more than show. She didn’t remember the rest of the verse and she was afraid that Mr. Stone would realize the lie. Instead the women heard another, fiercer curse and the sound of retreating footsteps. The moment they faded, Hettie jerked her head towards the door with a silent order for the nurse.

  She tiptoed over and put her head out and then looked back. “He’s gone.”

  “Thank goodness. I feel blasphemous,” Hettie announced and collapsed into the chair. “Your Mr. Stone is terrifying.”

  Mrs. Stone said nothing. She was weeping quietly into her hands. Hettie dug out her handkerchief from her pocket and shoved it at Mrs. Stone. “Oh bother,” Hettie muttered. She leaned back and closed her eyes. After a few moments, she said, “I really do need a stout cup of tea.”

  “Please yes,” Mrs. Stone said in a cracking voice. She snuffled rather dramatically. “I thought he was going to murder me right here in the hospital with the nurses outside of the door.”

  Chapter 13

  As soon as the nurse left the tea, Hettie demanded, “What in the world?”

  Mrs. Stone met Hettie’s gaze almost shamefully. “I didn’t ask you to interfere, and I don’t owe you anything.”

  Hettie stared pointedly at Mrs. Stone who had, at least, the grace to blush.

  “So I should deliver to Mr. Stone the bills that you and your lover—my husband—tried to hand over to me?”

  Mrs. Stone paled to a degree that made Hettie look about for smelling salts. Before she could get the cap off, Mrs. Stone waved Hettie back and then sighed. “You’re almost as vicious as Harvey, then?”

  “Harvey’s dead,” Hettie said flatly. “During your drunken party, someone sabotaged the yacht so that it would sink, killing my husband, along with a host of others, and you survived.”

  Marilyn didn’t reply. She sniffled into her handkerchief, and Hettie wanted to slap the woman silly. Hettie could imagine that Marilyn Stone had been through quite the ordeal, but Hettie and Ro were being considered as—Hettie realized—the ones who had engineered murder.

  Neglected and betrayed wives must strike people like Detectives Harris and Truman as the most obvious murderers, most likely living in despair and misery for want of love from their husbands, and willing to kill them rather than share them.

  “People died, Marilyn,” Hettie said pleadingly. “Help me understand why.”

  That got those large blue eyes to flick to Hettie’s face, but then Marilyn went back to sniffling silently into Hettie’s handkerchief.

  “Come now,” Hettie said, finished playing nicely. “Do you think that I won’t tell your husband about the bills that were sent to my house? Why does the rich, spoilt wife of a man like Mr. Jacobus Stone not have the money to pay her bills?”

  Marilyn cast Hettie a horrified glance. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” Hettie said with certainty. She’d refused to pay Harvey’s mistresses bills before. She let the truth of it fill her gaze. She didn’t, in fact, intend to pay Marilyn’s bills regardless of what happened.

  Marilyn shook her head. “You saved me from him.”

  “You owe me,” Hettie told Marilyn. “Tell me what you know.”

  “You’re too kind for that. You saw what my husband is.” Marilyn actually pouted. “If you tell him, I might not survive.”

  “Then save yourself,” Hettie demanded in a fury.

  “No. You’ll save me.”

  Hettie groaned and stood. “I suppose that Harvey wanted an idiot who would look at him with big eyes and admire him. He was a fool and you are too.”

  “Was?”

  “Harvey, Leonard Ripley, and many others died,” she repeated, this time angrily. “Don’t you understand? Someone killed them. And I’m certain you know more than you’re sharing.”

  Marilyn Stone sniffed into the handkerchief again and then leaned back and closed her eyes, ignoring Hettie.

  “My goodness,” Hettie muttered, “it’s a wonder no one in your life has murdered you yet.”

  The comment made Marilyn cave in on herself, and she curled onto her side and nearly wailed. Hettie left with a fury and only just managed not to slam the door behind her.

  The pretty nurse stood in the hall looking shocked, maybe even horrified.

  “Are you all right?”
Hettie asked gently.

  “Was your husband like Mr. Stone?” the nurse asked. She seemed as though she’d grown in a day, Hettie thought. “Was that why you laughed when he died?”

  Hettie didn’t answer for a long minute. When she answered, she spoke calmly and with completely honesty. “My husband was a cheating, lying, manipulative imposter who lied his way into my heart for my fortune. I hated him for crushing every girlhood dream of love and family I ever possessed. He was not, however, like Mr. Stone. He never would have treated me that way, he never would have screamed at me, and he never would have tried to scare me.”

  The nurse stared in shock, mouth open, eyes wide, gaze uncomfortably shifting to the side, the floor, the side, past Hettie’s shoulder. Hettie realized she was sharing more than she should have, but she couldn’t quite stop up her mouth.

  “I hated him,” Hettie added with more heat. “I hated him every single day for what he did to me.”

  The nurse tried stepping away but she couldn’t quite escape before Hettie reeled her back in.

  “But Harvey wasn’t like Mr. Stone. He’d never have laid a hand on me or even yelled at me. Harvey would have said something charming and bashful; he would have complimented me and told me I was pretty and then excused himself. If he’d found me crying, I’d have discovered a box of chocolates or a trinket as though a second-rate gold necklace could heal a broken heart.” Hettie shuddered and she could no longer keep the emotion from her voice. “I hated him, but I wouldn’t have wished him dead—not really—and maybe eventually, I’ll miss him. Even if I’m only missing what I wished he’d have been.”

  The nurse nodded helplessly in the face of Hettie’s vomited confession.

  Hettie laughed at the look on the woman’s face and pretended that it wasn’t a watery laugh. Then she told the pretty young nurse simply, “It’s not so easy to rid yourself of a husband like Mr. Stone or my Harvey. Marry carefully.”

  This time, it appeared the pretty nurse heard what Hettie was trying to say. But perhaps seeing someone like the rich, beautiful Mrs. Stone cowering from her husband was what the nurse truly needed to see.

  “If you see anything odd with Mrs. Stone”—Hettie handed over her card—"I’d appreciate knowing of it. I feel certain that she knows more about what is happening. I’d be very grateful.” Hettie added a pound note to go along with her card. The nurse accepted both.

  Hettie found her driver outside of the hospital.

  “Did Harvey have a regular mistress?” she asked bluntly.

  Peterson stared at Hettie and she saw pity in his eyes.

  “I am well aware,” Hettie told him gently, “of the kind of man I married.”

  “He didn’t have anyone in particular, ma’am,” Peterson said, blushing furiously.

  Hettie nodded. “Did he give any instructions concerning Mrs. Stone?”

  He hesitated and then admitted, “We didn’t go to the door for her. We stopped along the sidewalk a house back if it was late. Even if Mr. Stone wasn’t home, Mrs. Stone didn’t want the servants to see us.”

  “How did she get out of the house?” Hettie demanded, visualizing Mrs. Stone letting herself down a rope made of sheets wearing a fringed cocktail dress with heeled slippers and a long strand of pearls.

  “I do not know the details, Mrs. Hughes.”

  Hettie thought of Ro refusing her married name. Hettie almost provided the same instructions, but she felt she needed the constant reminder of what Harvey had been and the effects of her mistake on her life.

  She shook her head. “I am imagining the wildest things.”

  His gaze glinted enough to tell Hettie he’d probably had similar thoughts.

  “Take me home, please.” Before she let him seat her into the auto, though, she asked him, “Do you think it’s possible that you would be able to find the gents who fished out the survivors? Perhaps we could talk to them? Or one of them? Bribe them to come to speak with me?”

  Peterson considered. “It may take a few hours.”

  “I’d wait however long is needed.” Taking charge of this search left Hettie feeling more empowered in her own life than she had in quite a while.

  It took Peterson a few hours to bring her one of the sailors and even then, she had to send him back out quickly to take Donovan Brooks to his home.

  Her maid was at hand, so Hettie wasn’t left alone with a man of indeterminate character. There was, however, little reason to believe she’d be in danger. After all, this was a man who’d help fish out the survivors from the water and then seen them to the hospital.

  “Hullo there,” he said, with an accent that had Hettie’s Canadian ears straining.

  “Hello,” she said brightly, gesturing to a loaded tea table for him.

  His eyes glinted with a bit of gut greed, but it was a different kind of greed that had him saying, “Yer servant type told me you’d give me twenty quid to answer yer questions.”

  Hettie’s brows lifted and she very much felt that the fellow had just upped the amount given that her man wasn’t there, and no doubt also influenced by the lush luxury of the hotel suite.

  “I know a little about what happened,” Hettie told him flatly. “The food is free. If you answer my questions, and your answers align with what I already know, I’ll pay you.”

  “Don’t believe me?”

  “I am utterly certain that Peterson did not offer quite so much money.”

  He didn’t argue but rose quietly, loaded his plate rather heavily with liver pâté sandwiches, biscuits, and cakes and then took a seat as he asked, “Well then?”

  “What did you see?”

  Around a biscuit, he answered. “We was watchin’ them. Rich folks like that. Being fools. Bit of a free entertainment for us, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course,” Hettie agreed.

  “We sees a little boat come up on the yacht. They was dancin’ and singin’ and laughin’ so hard not a one of them noticed it.”

  “Someone did,” Hettie told him, “but carry on.”

  “Wasn’t too much longer that they’re setting off fireworks but all at once. Big mess of it. Like someone fouled up and lit them all. But the folks on the boat didn’t seem to mind. Loud as ever, maybe more so. Took a time to realize that the shoutin’ weren’t drunken no more but fearful. We was a bit out. Sound carries on the water. By the time we made it over to them, well, they weren’t all gonna be walkin’ away.”

  Hettie shuddered, happy to see that her horror was echoed both by her maid and this sailor.

  “We got who we could, combed fer more, and then figured we’d lose the ones we got to keep lookin’ for anyone else. Cap’n, he turned us towards shore and radioed ahead, so we didn’t do much more than get them off the boat.”

  “Was there a blonde woman among them? Very lovely, a bit older than me, with big blue eyes, and a very lush figure?”

  “No one like that. We had a few girls. Pretty black girl, a couple of matching brunettes, one blonde. But she weren’t lush like you said. Real, real thin. I’ll tell you one thing, though,” the sailor said, cutting in. “That little boat that met the yacht? It showed up with two fellows and left with three.”

  Hettie stared at him. “Did you tell Scotland Yard?” she asked all in a rush.

  He nodded.

  “Could it have been a woman?”

  “Could be,” the man said. “D’you know who it was? Because if anyone knows who killed them folks on that yacht, it’s the one who got off onto that other boat, not the poor fools who were caught up by me and my mates.”

  Hettie didn’t get anything else out of the fellow, but she didn’t quibble when he took the rest of the food with him, wrapped in paper and placed in a box, and she was happy to hand over the bribe for his answers. She felt certain that he’d been telling the truth about what happened, if not that promised price, and given her freedom and Ro’s were on the line, that was worth more than she could say.

  Scotland Yard must assume that one of th
em was on the yacht and had escaped on the smaller boat. The person most likely had sabotaged the yacht or was known by the one who did, who might have been on the little boat. The sailor didn’t say he noticed anyone leave the boat during the time it had come up to the yacht, only that it left with an additional person. Since Hettie knew it was neither her nor Ro, she thought it quite possible that it may have been Mrs. Stone.

  Was it possible that Mr. Stone was on the small boat and he had caused the yacht to sink? Would he really murder her lovers and everyone else who associated with them? He’d been furious, but not so unhinged that he’d commit such slaughter. What did Hettie know, however, about what a man was truly like? She’d had to be handed the truth about Harvey before she’d believed, despite the many clues she’d seen, examined, and then set back down.

  She needed to talk to Ro. Together, they could puzzle it out, she was certain.

  Chapter 14

  Gerald dropped Ro at Scotland Yard and she gave him instructions to circle round. This was not going to be a long meeting. At least she hoped. She felt as though she was sacrificing herself on some sort of altar by visiting Detective Truman, but she had no choice. When he heard the news that she was the sole beneficiary of Leonard’s very large estate, he would hunt her down. Exactly how large she couldn’t be sure until the reading of the will, but either way, that she was the beneficiary was a problem for her, or it very soon would be. She intended to meet that problem head on.

  Once escorted to his office, she was shown to a chair by a secretary.

  “I’ll let Detective Truman know you are here.”

  While she waited, Ro considered what she knew so far. When her husband’s brother, Reginald, was in first position to benefit financially, he was the most likely person to have killed Leonard. As much as she disliked Reginald, she found it hard to believe he would kill so many people just to get rid of Leonard even if he still thought he’d be Leonard’s heir.