by Blake Banner
“Don’t patronize me!”
“Then don’t be such a child! You’ve been married almost forty years! And you still get upset! It’s too foolish of you.”
Pam took a step toward her, pointing back toward the French windows. Her voice was savage. “I have given the best years of my life… no… all my life! to that… that parasite! And he treats me like…”
“Pam, darling, he treats you like what you are: a foolish child who after a lifetime of marriage has still not grown up!”
“How dare you!”
Bee looked away and sighed. “Oh, do stop dramatizing everything. What did you expect?”
“I expected my husband to love me! I expected at the very least to be respected! I did not expect to be humiliated and insulted every day for the rest of my life!”
Bee turned back to face her and there was something sad, almost compassionate in her expression. She sighed and said simply, “Oh, Pam…”
Pam pointed a trembling finger at her. “Don’t you dare patronize me!”
“Oh, do stop, darling…”
“How you can…!”
Bee’s voice was suddenly animated. “How I can? My dear girl! How you can, after all these years married to the man! Why, you must surely have realized what he was like by now! How can you still be shocked by his behavior?”
Pam’s hands went to her face, her shoulders hunched, and she started to sob. Her voice came twisted and damp with tears. “But that… that awful woman! Why? How can you stand it, Bee?”
Bee sighed again, but this time with weariness. “What choice have I got, Pam?”
“You could leave him! We should both leave him!”
Bee gave a small laugh. “No, I couldn’t. He knows we won’t.” She paused, watching Pam sob. After a moment she said, “The difference between us, Pam, is that you never loved him. I have always loved him, not in spite of what he’s like, but because of what he is like. He is a beast, an arrogant, bad man, and I adore that in him. But you, you simply grew to need him. And the more he ill-treats and humiliates you, the more you need him. You should leave him. Really you should. You should teach him a lesson.”
Suddenly Pam’s voice was shrill. “Oh, I will! Believe me, I will!”
She turned and rushed toward the French windows. Dehan stepped out and Pam almost collided with her. As she pushed past, she stopped and stared at Dehan, her face streaked with mascara and tears.
“No doubt it will be your turn next!”
And next thing, she was rushing across the drawing room toward the door. Dehan looked at Bee, who still sat at the table, holding down her hat against the wind. Dehan fingered her hair from her face and approached. Bee looked away.
“This wind!” she said. “I should go inside, but I rather like it. It blows the cobwebs from one’s mind.”
Dehan sat. “Pam looked pretty upset.”
For a moment it was as though Bee hadn’t heard her, then she said, “You’d best ignore her. Enjoy your honeymoon. Don’t get involved.”
Dehan narrowed her eyes and chewed her lip a moment. “It’s hard to ignore something like that.” After a moment she added, “My father told me once that if people invested as much effort in not ignoring things as they do in ignoring them, the world would be a nice place to live in.”
Bee smiled. “You Americans are forever telling stories about what your fathers ‘always used to say’ to you. I wonder if any of them are true.”
“That one is. He was a great one for not ignoring things. I’m the same.”
Bee raised an eyebrow at her. “Is this the same relentless persistence you use when interrogating your suspects?”
Dehan shook her head and smiled. “No. Usually I take them down a back alley and beat seven bales of shit out of them.”
Bee threw back her head and hooted with laughter. “Oh you are so naughty! I love it!” She laughed again and Dehan watched her. Finally she went quiet and sighed. “I love him dearly, Carmen, but he is a pig, an absolute swine, and he does make poor Pam’s life a misery. And young Charles’. He bullies them mercilessly and takes every opportunity to humiliate them. Frankly…” She shook her head, gazing at the heavy black clouds that were building in the north. “I don’t know how she’s stuck it out all these years.”
“Almost forty years.”
Bee nodded. “An eternity.”
Dehan sat back and raised an eyebrow. “But, Bee, isn’t that exactly what you have done?”
“Oh, it’s quite different. I am hopelessly in love with him, you see. I have always known what he was like. Ever since he was engaged to my sister…”
She left the words hanging, held Dehan’s eye. Realization dawned. “You were with him before…”
“As soon as I turned sixteen. He knew how I felt. I couldn’t resist him. I would have done absolutely anything for him. I still would, even today.” She heaved another big sigh. “I am a one-man woman, Carmen, much like you, I suspect. But where you hit the jackpot, I got the booby prize.”
“So he was with you when he married Pam…”
“I came shortly after.”
“Why did he marry her? If he wasn’t in love with her…” She shrugged and shook her head.
“I’ve often wondered. He wanted somehow to cock a snook at his father, I suppose.”
Dehan shook her head. “No. That doesn’t make sense. His father was already dead when he married her.”
Bee stared at Dehan a moment and then tapped her head. “Not up here, he wasn’t. Charles Sr. and Pam have more in common than you might imagine. Neither of them is capable of letting go. Charles was a rebel, an anarchist, and he wanted more than anything else in the world to be rid and free of his father. He detested his father with a passion. And yet, he never walked away, never sold the castle or the island. Instead he stayed here. Why?”
Dehan spread her hands and shrugged. Bee smiled and went on.
“Here you have a handsome, intelligent, talented, Harvard educated lawyer. And what does he do when he graduates? He comes to Gordon’s Swona and marries the publican’s daughter.
“Now, you have the publican’s daughter: she is lively, bright, capable, she hates Gordon’s Swona and her great dream is to get away. She marries a man who is a multimillionaire several times over and within a year he has already given her ample cause for divorce. She could leave him and walk away with her independence and a small fortune. Does she?” She shook her head. “No, she stays with him for nearly forty years, on Gordon’s Swona. I am no psychologist, Carmen, but I think they both have a character flaw. They are weak, what they might call today addictive personalities. But more than that…” She gazed away again, toward the French windows. A cloud passed in front of the sun and for a moment it grew dark. “I don’t think Charles knows who he is without his hatred for his father.” She looked back at Dehan. “Once he was free of him, he didn’t know what to do. It was as though his fight against his father had defined him somehow, and without it he didn’t know what to do, or who to be. So he continued that fight, even after he had won, and he married Pam simply to dishonor his father’s memory. He certainly didn’t love her.”
Dehan frowned. “And you think she got some kind of Stockholm syndrome.”
“Something like that. Young Charles was born nine months after they were married. He was a lovely, bright, happy baby. She stayed at first because she hoped that the baby would bring them together. It had the opposite effect. He ignored them both and started having affairs, and flaunting those affairs in front of Pam. She became depressed, obviously, threatened to leave him, but somehow lacked the strength. He had alienated all her family and she had nobody to turn to. One month became six, became a year, became ten… Now she can’t imagine herself without him.”
“And you?”
Bee laughed. “Oh, I certainly can’t imagine myself without the old goat. I don’t even want to. His affairs don’t bother me. He was never a very good lover anyway, far too self absorbed. I just need to
be near him, bask in his badness. He is such a naughty man.”
Dehan was quiet for a long while, watching Bee. Bee avoided her eye, squinting out at the trees in the hedgerow that were now beginning to toss and bow. Overhead the swallows swooped and skimmed, snatching their tiny prey from the air. Finally Bee said, “I know what you are thinking, Carmen.”
“What am I thinking?”
“You’re wondering if I slept with the old man.”
“And did you?”
She didn’t answer for a long moment, then she said, “Well, of course I did. Old Man Gordon was a monster, but he was twice the man his son is.” She gave Dehan a mischievous smile. “And a much better lover.”
Dehan smiled. “And I’m naughty…”
“Darling, you should have known him. He was so intense!”
“So who else did he sleep with?”
“Believe me,” she laughed. “There was no sleeping involved.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I think he made a point of shagging every girl his son was with…”
“Even his fiancée.”
“Especially his fiancée. Both of them.”
Dehan sighed. “What a family.”
“Dysfunctional, toxic… all those words pseudo psychologists and social workers love to trot out these days. He was a very bad man, driven by intense passions, appetites and desires. But he was alive, and when you were with him, dear me! He made you feel alive!”
Dehan chewed her lip for a moment, looking up at the sky. “Well, you certainly had all the ingredients necessary for a murder.”
Bee studied her for a moment. “Yes, yes, there was that.”
“I’m just surprised there hasn’t been another one in the last thirty years.”
“So far,” said Bee, holding her hat with both hands as the wind gusted and the air turned suddenly dark. “We’ve all wanted him alive, until now.” She stood and staggered as another gust caught her. “Darling, the storm is here, let’s go inside and have some tea!”
They went inside, closed and secured the French windows, and the mounting gale became a muted bluster. Brown was there setting out the plates, cups and saucers. He was alone but for the red-haired maid, who was lighting the fire in the huge fireplace. Bee flopped onto the sofa, removed her hat and started arranging her hair. “Brown, will Mr. Gordon Sr. be joining us?”
“I believe he will, m’lady.”
“And where are all the men?” She gave Dehan a smile.
“I’m afraid I don’t know, m’lady. A little while ago I served coffee to young Mr. Gordon, the major and Mr. Stone in here. But I am not sure where they have gone. Shall I go and look for them, m’lady?”
“No, thank you Brown, no doubt they’ll show up before long.”
“Very good, m’lady.”
He made to leave with the maid in tow when the door opened and the massive form of Charles Gordon Sr. filled the doorway. He ignored Brown and the maid, eyed Bee and then stared for a moment at Dehan with a look that was nothing short of a leer.
“Good afternoon,” he said and moved into the room. Brown and the maid left and closed the door behind them. “Your husband has left you alone and unguarded.”
“I don’t need guarding, Mr. Gordon.”
“Call me Charles, then I can call you Carmen.”
Bee sighed and gazed at the flames that were beginning to enfold the logs in the fireplace.
Dehan smiled at Gordon. “That’s OK, Mr. Gordon. I still get a kick out of people calling me Mrs. Stone.” She smiled down at Bee. “It reminds me I just hit the jackpot.”
Gordon gave a humorless grunt. “Good lord!” He moved across the room toward the salver with the decanters on it. “Oh for the naivety of youth, though I do declare that even when I was at your tender age I was not naïve about love. Were you, Bee?”
“No, Charles, you know I wasn’t. You robbed me of all my innocence when I was just sixteen.”
He poured himself a whiskey and turned to her with a wolfish grin. “And didn’t we both enjoy that!”
They both laughed, but Dehan thought Gordon laughed with more pleasure, and Bee more trying to please. He turned to Dehan. “Believe me, Carmen, naivety is nothing but an inhibitor to pleasure. One lusts after dreams and illusions that can never be realized. How much more satisfying to lust after what is carnal and real!”
She rested her ass on the arm of a chair and raised an eyebrow at him. “Mr. Gordon, I think you are trying to convince me that you are bad. But I don’t believe you are bad…”
“Oh really?” He leered at her again. “I wouldn’t be too sure…”
Dehan shook her head. “No. Bad? Bad was Mick Harragan, who raped and murdered my mother while I was forced to watch. Bad was Maria Garcia, in the first case I ever worked with Stone[1]. She drugged Nelson Hernandez and his three cousins so they were conscious but they couldn’t move. She then shot each one of them with a pump action shotgun before cutting off Nelson’s head and balls and placing them in the middle of the table where they were playing poker.” She chuckled and shook her head. “No, you’re not bad, Mr. Gordon. You’re not even naughty. You’re a pussycat.” She grinned. “But, I’m sorry, my attention drifted, right about the time where the Ivy League heir to daddy’s fortune was going to explain to the Bronx born-and-bred Jewish-Latina detective all about naivety, reality and carnality. Please, go ahead and educate me, Mr. Gordon.”
Bee squealed with laughter and reached out and grabbed Dehan’s hand. “Oh, Charles, I do believe you have been put firmly in your place.”
Gordon stared at Dehan with baleful eyes. “I am not amused, Mrs. Stone.”
Dehan stood. “Get back in the sandpit, Charlie. I eat men for breakfast who make you look like a sissy’s bitch. I’m going to find my husband. You may have seen him around. He’s a man.” She grinned and held out her hands like she was holding two watermelons. “And he has balls.”
With that she stepped out of the drawing room, left Bee wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, and took her attitude across the hall to the study, where she had an accurate hunch she would find me.
What can I say, I guess I’d hit the jackpot too.
NINE
Charles, the major and I had left our coffee to get cold in the drawing room and crossed the hall to the study. The door, like the drawing room door, was solid walnut with a brass lever handle and a chub lock underneath. Charles pushed it open and stood back for me and the Major to go in.
“This is where it happened,” he said.
I stepped inside and stopped to have a look around. The room was large and roughly square, though perhaps a little wider than it was deep. I estimated it was almost thirty feet across, and twenty-something from the bay window on the right, at the front of the house, to the wall at the back, on my left. The window, flanked on the right by a credenza, overlooked the drive, and opposite, in the center of the wall, there was a large, granite fireplace, about six feet high and five feet across, with a large iron grate backed with red firebricks, blackened by centuries of burning wood. It was laid with large pine logs on a bed of kindling. On either side of it there was an old, burgundy chesterfield. The floor was carpeted in deep, red Wilton.
The far wall, opposite the door, was taken up with a dark mahogany bookcase. In front of that, almost dead center of the room, was a huge, oak desk with a black leather chair behind it.
Charles came in and closed the door behind him. I asked, “Is this how it was when he died?”
“Precisely. My father didn’t change a thing. And when I took over and started using the study as my own, I didn’t see any need to change it. I think this is the best use of the space.”
I turned and looked at the door. “A chub lock. They are easy to pick.”
“Oh, yes, without a doubt.”
The major coughed and took a step forward. “Thing is, Detective, if I may, and do remember I was there at the time, the key was still in the lock, which makes it impossible to pick unless you
remove the key first. Also, and this was what convinced the police, the latch was in the locked position, and had torn out the wood from the doorframe. Two hundred year-old door frame, I may say. Damn shame.” He pointed at a slight discoloration in the wood around the latch. “You can still just see where it was repaired.”
I nodded. If Henry had been satisfied that the door was locked, I was satisfied too. I turned back to the desk, then glanced at the two chesterfields by the fire. The desk was not quite dead center, and the fireplace and the chairs were at a slight, diagonal angle. I looked at the major and pointed at the black leather chair behind the desk. “That’s where he was sitting?”
He nodded vigorously. “Exactly. Shall I demonstrate?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, in two long, thin strides he was behind the desk, arranging the chair and placing himself in it.
“He was seated, like so, up against the desk as though he had been writing or reading. And in fact, he had on the desk in front of him an open tome on the history of the Scottish clans. He was slumped forward slightly, like so…” He leaned forward and allowed his jaw to sag onto his chest. “His left hand was upon the book and his right hand was hanging down by his side. And the revolver was just there…” He pointed a couple of feet from the chair. “:ying on the carpet. I shall never forget it. Such an eerie sensation. The oddest things seem to become so important, tiny details stand out, don’t they?”
I was staring at the two chesterfields and asked, absently, “Like what?”
He didn’t get up. He stayed in the chair, staring at the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know, foolish things. I remember worrying that Charles would tread dirt and grass into the Wilton, which had just been laid new. Not this one, obviously, a previous one… And how red the blood looked on the old man’s shirt cuff.”
I turned to look at him. “It’s true, in those moment our senses are heightened. Which cuff?”
“Eh?”
“Which cuff did you notice the blood on?”
“Oh, yes, his right arm, hanging down. He had two or three large, round drops on his cuff.”