The Young Widow Page 4

  Maddie Wellman sat in a chair by the fire, knitting a sweater in deep blue wool. She had a long face, rather horsey, with sharp gray eyes and a long, thin nose. She had curly, iron-gray hair cut short, and a spare, square-shouldered frame.

  She raised an eyebrow when Carmichael introduced himself and said, “Scotland Yard, eh? What’s the matter? That ass Gorringe not have enough courage to arrest her himself?”

  Carmichael was startled. “The investigation isn’t complete yet,” he said neutrally and she snorted, her eyes dropping once again to her knitting. “May I sit down?” he asked.

  She nodded and indicated the other chair drawn up to the fireplace, facing her own. Carmichael settled himself, regarding her with shrewd blue eyes. A no-nonsense sort of person, he decided, with, clearly, a sharp tongue. He fancied he had met her sort before: bluff and honest, and probably a terrible liar. Most noticeable, however, was the fact that she seemed in no way grief-stricken.

  “Were you fond of your brother-in-law, Miss Wellman?” Carmichael asked.

  “I grew to be,” she answered. “I can’t say I cared much for him in the beginning.”

  “Why was that?”

  “No very good reason,” she replied. “Mostly because he was like the vast majority of men—hugely aware of his own rights and pretty vague about anyone else’s.”

  “You felt he was inconsiderate of your rights?”

  She looked surprised. “Not at all. I don’t suppose I had any, really. None to speak of, anyhow. No, I was thinking of my sister—not that she ever minded. As I said, I didn’t think much of her choice at the start, although I did realize she was the sort of person who needed marriage to be happy.”

  “You never married yourself?” asked Carmichael.

  She shot him a penetrating glance. “I was not more attractive in my youth, Chief Inspector, than I am now. Just less wrinkles, is all. Here.” She rose, setting aside her knitting, and picked out a silverframed photograph from those on the mantel. She handed it to him and resumed her seat.

  It was a black-and-white print showing two girls in their early twenties. From the style of their summer frocks, Carmichael dated it to just after the war. The taller of the two girls was clearly Maddie Wellman; she was right in saying she had changed very little. Her curly hair was longer and there was an air of girlish awkwardness about her, but her features were clearly recognizable.

  “You will forgive me for pointing out that not all wives are great beauties,” said Carmichael.

  “Oh, yes, they are,” she contradicted him. “No man has ever married a woman he didn’t think was beautiful. He may be aware that she doesn’t look like Elizabeth Taylor, it may be purely an inner beauty, recognizable only to himself. But he always thinks she’s beautiful in some way, and I never had any inner beauty, either. The other girl in the picture,” she added, “was my sister, Gwenda.”

  Carmichael turned his attention back to the photograph, interested to see Berowne’s first wife. She looked tiny beside Miss Wellman. She, too, was dark-haired, but otherwise there was not the slightest resemblance. This girl was round-faced, with a sweet smile and large, gentle, dark eyes.

  “She looked like our mother,” said Miss Wellman. “I took after Father—in more ways than looks.”

  “You were very fond of her?” asked Carmichael.

  “Oh, yes. Everyone was.” Miss Wellman looked up, staring into the fire. “She was one of those rare creatures. She had the true gift of happiness and everyone she came into contact with gleaned a little of it. She was a very gentle person, but she could always smooth things over. She liked doing it, it was easy for her.” She sighed and turned back to her knitting. “It would have been much better if I could have died instead of her. Then Geoffrey would still be alive, and still happily married—because their marriage was a happy one, odd as that always seemed to me. And he would certainly have been on better terms with Paul.”

  “You think Gwenda would have smoothed out their business differences?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Oh, yes,” she said, a trifle too casually. “She was good at things like that.”

  So, thought Carmichael, they had differences outside of business, too. But all he said was, “How long ago did your sister die?”

  “Nearly eight years ago now. I came to live here a few years before that, when my arthritis started acting up and I had to give up teaching. I wasn’t too sure about it really, but Gwenda was quite firm that I should come and, actually, it worked out very well. When she died, Geoffrey made a point of asking me to stay on, so I did. We’d gotten used to each other by then, you see. It wasn’t the same without Gwenda, but we got on all right.”

  “Until he remarried?” suggested Carmichael gently, but she was not to be drawn out. She gave him an amused glance.

  “It didn’t make a great deal of difference to me,” she said. “Beyond that I didn’t like to see Geoffrey making a fool of himself and that I had to put up with Annette at mealtimes. Geoffrey always insisted on family meals.”

  “So you didn’t resent Mrs. Berowne?”

  “Don’t be silly, Chief Inspector. Of course I resented her. Any fool could see that. I probably would have resented any woman who tried to take my sister’s place. I also might have got over that if she hadn’t been such a conniving little twit. Annette has never thought of anybody but herself in her whole life.”

  Carmichael frowned at this; Annette had not struck him as a conniver, and he wondered if her undeniable charm had affected his judgment.

  “Did you feel that she treated Mr. Berowne badly?”

  “It depends on what you mean by that,” she replied, giving him a wry glance. “She kept up the illusion she was in love with him, billed and cooed over him and all that, but that’s about all she did. Kitty and I still run the house between us.”

  “So you feel she didn’t take on the responsibilities she should have?” Carmichael tried to keep his tone neutral, but she shot him a sharp glance.

  “There was more than that,” she said tartly. “But I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you. She’s already got you wrapped around her finger, too.”

  Carmichael deeply resented this. “Nonsense, Miss Wellman—” he began.

  “Let me put it this way,” she interrupted. “Geoffrey was a kindly, deeply religious, and generous man. He could also be totally unreasonable and he wasn’t beyond cracking the whip to make things come out the way he wanted. Annette played on his beliefs, took advantage of his generosity, and supported his whip-cracking in order to drive wedges between him and his family.”

  “If she went to all that trouble to keep him to herself, it hardly makes sense that she would murder him,” Carmichael pointed out.

  Miss Wellman snorted. “Nonsense. He wasn’t any good to her once she’d won the game. None of us realized that, of course,” she added. “Foolish of us, but then one doesn’t suspect people one actually knows are murderers, even the most unpleasant people.”

  “No one ever suspects that,” Carmichael told her. “Now, if we could just go over the day of the murder. You went down to breakfast with the rest of the family?”

  “Yes. I was down first, I usually am. It was a fairly ordinary morning. Geoffrey and Paul were discussing business, and Annette was reading a magazine. I left when I’d finished eating and came back here. Kitty came up to go over a few household details, and then I spent the rest of the morning at the desk there, writing letters. I did get up once to open the window, but I didn’t notice anyone out there besides our gardener. It was some time after noon when Kitty came up and said she’d found Geoff dead in his study. I didn’t believe her—Geoffrey always enjoyed excellent health. I got downstairs as quickly as I could and went in to him, but it was no use. I’ve had some first-aid training and it was clear to me he was dead.” For the first time, her gray eyes looked rather bleak. “So I went out to wait for the doctor. I had no idea, of course, that it was anything but a sudden heart attack.”


  “Of course not.” Carmichael had watched her carefully, but she had made this statement too many times before for him to tell whether there was deception in any part of it. He smiled at her. “I’m almost done, Miss Wellman. I’d just like to ask you about the business differences Mr. Berowne was having with his son. Am I right in assuming they arose after Mr. Berowne had retired?”

  “Certainly,” she answered. “Before that, Geoffrey ran the company and Paul followed whatever he said. No problem there.”

  “Who was in the right in most of these disagreements?”

  “Depends on what you mean by ‘right,’” she said. She paused, peering intently at her knitting, and counting under her breath. Then the click of the needles resumed and she looked back at him. “Geoffrey was very clever about business and investments, so, from the point of view of profits, he was certainly right. On the other hand, it was unreasonable of him to blame Paul for not having the same cleverness. It was also rather unreasonable of him to give Paul the business and then not let him run it.”

  “But surely,” said Carmichael, “if Mr. Berowne was so knowledgeable about such matters, it was unreasonable of Mr. Paul Berowne not to take his advice.”

  “Oh, he did take advice. No, it wasn’t as simple as that, Chief Inspector.” She thought for a moment. “Here’s an example: some other little biscuit company wasn’t doing very well and Paul wanted to take it over. He asked Geoffrey, who said he was a fool if he didn’t. So Paul put in a takeover bid. I’m not sure what happened next, but at any rate, things didn’t go as planned. Paul did acquire the company in the end, but it cost far more than he had thought, at which point Geoffrey made a terrific fuss and told him he was an idiot for buying at that price.”

  “I see,” said Carmichael.

  “However,” she said sharply, “if you think Paul killed him because Geoffrey criticized him, you’re wrong. My nephew may not be a brilliant businessman, but neither is he vindictive.”

  “No, I’m sure he isn’t,” said Carmichael. “He and his father had no disagreements aside from business?”

  “No, of course not,” she muttered, but once again Carmichael felt she was hiding something.

  “Well, thank you very much, Miss Wellman,” he said pleasantly, and rose to go.

  Mary Simmons was clearly alarmed by the police. Gibbons and Bethancourt cornered her in the dining room where she was waxing the table, but all her replies to their questions were monosyllabic and her eyes flickered between them like the eyes of a mouse confronting two cats.

  “I understand you weren’t in the house on the day of the murder?” asked Gibbons, smiling to put her at her ease.

  “No, sir,” she answered, anything but easy in her manner.

  “You were at Mr. Paul’s house, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what were you doing there?” asked Gibbons, deciding he had better restrict himself to questions that required more than a yes-or-no answer.

  “Cleaning. Their charwoman is off on Wednesdays, and I give the house a thorough going-over.”

  “Now you arrived just as Mr. Paul was leaving, correct? And by eleven o’clock you were working downstairs in the living room?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And where were Mrs. Paul and her son during that time?”

  “They was upstairs in the schoolroom, sir. I could hear them playing the piano while I was cleaning.”

  She repeated this parrot-like, giving them the answer that had been got out of her by the Surrey officers in—so far as Gibbons could tell—exactly the same words, as if any alteration might damn her.

  He glanced at Bethancourt; his friend was often good with skittish female witnesses, and he was in fact wearing his most charming smile. It was a pity that Mrs. Simmons did not look up long enough to see it.

  “I take it Mr. Paul’s charwoman isn’t quite up to snuff?” asked Bethancourt genially. “I mean, if you have to give the house a good going-over every week, she can’t be doing a very expert job.”

  “She only comes to help with the daily chores,” muttered Mrs. Simmons, her eyes fixed firmly on the table she had been waxing.

  “Ah, I see,” said Bethancourt. “She just tidies a bit and does the washing up.”

  Mrs. Simmons nodded silently, and Bethancourt gave his friend an exasperated glance.

  Gibbons abandoned the attempt to wring fresh information out of her. It was possible that she had returned to the main house and poisoned her employer, but looking at her Gibbons had to wonder if she would have had the nerve.

  “Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Simmons,” he said, leading Bethancourt out.

  In the hallway they met Carmichael just coming down the stairs, and reported their progress to him.

  “Then that’s the household done,” said Carmichael. “Let’s find Mrs. Berowne and have a look at the study.”

  Annette was found in the writing room, which she had pointed out to them earlier. She came out quietly when they knocked and stood looking up at Carmichael as if he held the answers to all questions. Uncomfortably, he recalled his urge to come to her defense during his interview with Miss Wellman, and he avoided her eyes.

  “We’d like to see the study now, Mrs. Berowne,” he said.

  She nodded. “It’s down this way,” she said.

  The study was at the far end of the house, by the side entrance. It was a long room, with wide windows looking onto a terrace, which in turn led down to the garden. On the wall opposite the windows was a fireplace with a small scalloped table to the right of it. At the farther end of the room stood a large rolltop desk accompanied by a modern desk chair on rollers.

  Annette indicated the table beside the fireplace. “This is where the tray was.”

  Carmichael glanced at it and then at the desk; Berowne’s back would have been turned to the table while he was working. His eyes rose to the mantelpiece and encountered a small porcelain vase with a bunch of dead daisies in it.

  Annette followed his gaze. “Oh!” she said. “I don’t know how that got left there. Only, of course, I told Mrs. Simmons not to bother with this room until Daniel Andrews was sure he was finished with it.”

  “Please leave them, Mrs. Berowne,” said Carmichael as she began to reach for the vase. “Can you tell me who usually provides the flowers for this room?”

  She looked bewildered. “Well, no one does. I put some flowers in that vase, but that was more than a week before my husband was killed. Someone must have seen them and instead of just throwing them out, they decided to replace them. Kitty, I suppose, or Maddie.”

  “You think these are not the original flowers?” asked Carmichael.

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Mine were lilies of the valley.”

  She clearly did not see the import of her words—the poison had been described to the family only as “an alkaloid”—but all three men glanced sharply at her and then at the vase.

  “Is it Kitty or Miss Wellman who does the flowers in the rest of the house?” asked Carmichael.

  “Usually either myself or Maddie. She would probably be the most likely person to have changed these. Or Marion might have brought them over,” she added doubtfully.

  “Do you remember which flowers were in the vase the day your husband died?”

  “Well, it must have been these, mustn’t it?” she said. “No one’s been in to change them since then.”

  “But you don’t really remember seeing them?”

  “Well, no,” she answered, frowning in thought. “No, I can’t remember one way or another. Is it important?”

  “Probably not,” said Carmichael cheerfully. “We just like to get to the bottom of any little anomalies.”

  While this conversation was taking place, Gibbons was looking over the desk. It stood open, revealing neatly organized pigeonholes, an immaculate blotter, and a pen and pencil set. The Surrey CID had already taken and gone over the papers and correspondence Berowne had been working on when he died
. They had all seemed to be in order and, so far as anyone could tell, nothing was missing.

  Bethancourt had drifted over to the bookcase, which covered half the wall beside the desk, and was idly examining the book spines. Now he moved over and nudged Gibbons.

  “Look there,” he murmured.

  Gibbons looked. Halfway along one of the middle shelves was the same book on poisons that Bethancourt had consulted the evening before, along with two others on forensics and firearms.

  Gibbons raised his eyebrows. “That’s interesting,” he said. He turned. “Sir?”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Berowne,” said Carmichael. “Find something?” he asked as he came up to the two younger men. Gibbons nodded a the bookshelves.

  “Ah,” said Carmichael. One bushy eyebrow rose. “Yes. Gibbons,” he added in a low voice, “I think perhaps you should run out to the car and bring in some evidence bags.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gibbons.

  Bethancourt remained behind, still hovering beside the bookcase, but watching Annette Berowne from the corner of his eye. Her manner—even when she had mentioned the lilies of the valley—was perfectly open, and he was involved in trying to work out whether or not that openness was assumed.

  Carmichael turned back to Annette, who had retreated discreetly to the doorway.

  “Mrs. Berowne,” he said, pacing back toward her, “was your husband particularly interested in poisons?”

  “Poisons?” she repeated. “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “He seems to have several books on the subject.”

  “Does he? I never noticed.” She frowned thoughtfully. “He certainly never spoke about it. Unless—he was very fond of detective stories. I think they often have poisonings in them.” She shivered a little.

  “I understand it’s an uncomfortable topic,” murmured Carmichael soothingly. “I’m very sorry to have to bring it up.”