Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories (21 page)

The smell of gas was permeating the room. Alvirah tried to tilt the
rocker forward. She had to take the chance of butting Creighton with her head and making him drop the gun. She was too late. A vise-like grip on her shoulders. The sense of being pulled forward. Her forehead slamming against the mantel before she fell to the stone hearth. As she lost consciousness, Alvirah was aware of the sickening smell of gas filling her nostrils.

•  •  •

“Here's Ned now,” Lillian said calmly at the sound of door chimes. “I'll let him in.”

Cynthia waited. Lillian still had not admitted anything. Could she get Ned Creighton to incriminate himself? She felt like a tightrope walker on a slippery wire, trying to inch her way across a chasm. If she failed, the rest of her life wouldn't be worth living.

Creighton was following Lillian into the room. “Cynthia.” His nod was impersonal, not unpleasant. He pulled up a chair beside the desk where Lillian had an open file of printouts.

“I'm just giving Cynthia an idea of how much the estate shrank after the taxes had been settled,” Lillian told Creighton. “Then we'll estimate her share.”

“Don't deduct whatever you paid Ned from what is rightfully mine,” Cynthia said. She saw the angry look Ned shot at Lillian. “Oh, please,” she snapped, “among the three of us, let's say it straight.”

Lillian said coldly, “I told you that I wanted to share the estate. I know my father could drive people over the edge. I'm doing this because I'm sorry for you. Now here are the figures.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Lillian pulled balance sheets out of the file. “Allowing for taxes and then interest made on the remainder, your share would now be five million dollars.”

“And this house,” Cynthia interjected. Bewildered, she realized that with each passing moment Lillian and Ned were becoming more visibly relaxed. They were both smiling.

“Oh, not the house,” Lillian protested. “There'd be too much gossip. We'll have the house appraised, and I'll pay you the value of it. Remember, Cynthia, I'm being very generous. My father toyed with people's lives. He was cruel. If you hadn't killed him, someone else would have. That's why I'm doing this.”

“You're doing it because you don't want to sit in a courtroom and take the chance on being convicted of murder, that's why you're doing it.” Oh God, Cynthia thought. It's no use. If I can't get her to admit it, it's all over. By tomorrow Lillian and Ned would have the chance to check on Alvirah. “You can have the house,” she said. “Don't pay me for it. Just give me the satisfaction of hearing the truth. Admit that I had nothing to do with your father's murder.”

Lillian glanced at Ned, then at the clock. “I think at this time we should honor that request.” She began to laugh. “Cynthia, I am like my father. I enjoy toying with people. My father did phone to tell me about the change in his will. I could live with Dartmouth getting half his estate but not you. He told me you were coming up—the rest was easy. My mother was a wonderful woman. She was only too happy to verify that I was in New York with her that evening. Ned was delighted to get a great deal of money for giving you a boat ride. You're smart, Cynthia. Smarter than the district attorney's office. Smarter than that dumb lawyer you had.”

Let the recorder be working, Cynthia prayed. Let it be working. “And smart enough to find a witness who could verify my story,” she added.

Lillian and Ned burst into laughter. “What witness?” Ned asked.

“Get out,” Lillian told her. “Get out this minute and don't come back.”

•  •  •

Jeff Knight drove swiftly along Route 6, trying to read signs through the torrential rain that was slashing the windshield. Exit 8. He was
coming up to it. The producer of the ten o'clock news had been unexpectedly decent. Of course there was a reason. “Go ahead. If Cynthia Lathem is on the Cape and thinks she has a lead on her stepfather's death, you've got a great story breaking.”

Jeff wasn't interested in a great story. His only concern was Cynthia. Now he gripped the steering wheel with his long fingers. He had managed to get her address as well as her phone number from her parole officer. He'd spent a lot of summers on the Cape. That is why it had been so frustrating when he had tried to prove Cynthia's story about stopping at the hamburger stand and gotten nowhere. But he'd always stayed in Eastham, some fifty miles from Cotuit. Exit 8. He turned onto Union Street, drove to Route 6A. A couple of miles more. Why did he have the sense of impending doom? If Cynthia had a real lead that could help her, she could be in danger.

He had to slam on his brakes when he reached Nobscusset Road. Another car, ignoring the stop sign, raced from Nobscusset across 6A. Damn fool, Jeff thought as he turned right, then left toward the bay. He realized that the whole area was in darkness. A power failure. He reached the dead end, turned left. The cottage had to be on this winding lane. Number six. He drove slowly, trying to read the numbers as his headlights shone on the mailboxes. Two. Four. Six. Jeff pulled into the driveway, threw open the door and ran through the pelting rain toward the cottage. He held his finger on the bell, then realized that because of the power failure it did not work. He pounded on the door several times. There was no answer. Cynthia wasn't home. He started to walk down the steps, then a sudden unreasoning fear made him go back, pound again on the door, then turn the knob. It twisted in his hand. He pushed the door open.

“Cynthia,” he started to call, then gasped as the odor of gas rushed
at him. He could hear the hissing coming from the fireplace. Rushing to turn the jet off, he tripped over the prone figure of Alvirah.

•  •  •

Willy moved restlessly in the backseat of Cynthia's car. She'd been in that house for more than an hour now. The guy who'd come later had been there fifteen minutes. Willy wasn't sure what to do. Alvirah really hadn't given specific instructions. She just wanted him to be around to make sure Cynthia didn't leave the house with anyone.

As he debated, he heard the screeching sound of sirens. Police cars. The sirens got closer. Astonished, Willy watched as they turned into the long driveway of the Richards estate and thundered toward him. Policemen rushed from the squad cars, raced up the steps and pounded on the door.

A moment later a sedan pulled into the driveway and stopped behind the squad cars. As Willy watched, a big fellow in a trench coat leapt out of it and took the steps to the porch two at a time. Willy climbed awkwardly out of the car and hoisted himself to his feet in the driveway.

He was in time to grab Alvirah as she staggered from the back of the sedan. Even in the dark he could see the welt on her forehead. “Honey, what happened?”

“I'll tell you later. Get me inside. I don't want to miss this.”

In the study of the late Stuart Richards, Alvirah experienced her finest hour. Pointing her finger at Ned, in her most vibrant tones, she pronounced, “He held a gun to me. He turned on the gas jet. He smashed my head against the fireplace. And told me that Lillian Richards paid him three million dollars to set up Cynthia as the murderer.”

Cynthia stared at her stepsister. “And unless the batteries in Alvirah's
recorder are dead, I have both of them on record admitting their guilt.”

•  •  •

The next morning, Willy fixed a late breakfast and served it on the deck. The storm had ended, and once again the sky was joyously blue. Seagulls swooped down to feast on surfacing fish. The bay was tranquil, and children were making castles in the damp sand at the water's edge.

Alvirah, not that much worse for her experience, had finished her article and phoned it in to Charley Evans. Charley had promised her the most ornate sunburst pin that money could buy, one with a microphone so sensitive it could pick up a mouse sneezing in the next room.

Now, as she munched a chocolate-covered doughnut and sipped coffee, she said, “Oh, here comes Jeff. What a shame he had to drive back to Boston last night, but wasn't he wonderful telling the story on the news this morning, and all about how Ned Creighton is talking his head off to the cops? Buh-lieve me, Jeff will go places with the networks.”

“That guy saved your life, honey,” Willy said. “He's aces high with me. I can't believe I was curled up in that car like a jack-in-the-box when you had your head in a gas jet.”

They watched as Jeff got out of the car and Cynthia rushed down the walk and into his arms. Alvirah pushed her chair back. “I'll run over and say hello. It's a real treat to see how they look at each other. They're so in love.”

Willy placed a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. “Alvirah, honey,” he begged, “just this once, for five minutes, mind your own business.”

“ ‘
B
eware the fury of a patient man,' ” Henry Parker Britland IV observed sadly as he studied the picture of his former secretary of state. He had just learned that his close friend and political ally had been indicted for the murder of his lover, Arabella Young.

“Then you think poor Tommy did it?” Sandra O'Brien Britland said with a sigh as she patted homemade jam onto a hot scone, fresh out of the oven.

It was still early morning, and the couple was comfortably ensconced in their king-sized bed at Drumdoe, their country estate in Bernardsville, New Jersey. The
Washington Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
, the
Times
(London),
L'Osservatore Romano
, and the
Paris Review
, all in varying stages of being read, were scattered about, some lying on the delicately flowered, gossamer-soft quilt, others spilling over onto the floor. Directly in front of the couple were matching breakfast trays, each complete with a single rose in a narrow silver vase.

“Actually, no,” Henry said after a moment, slowly shaking his head. “I find it impossible to believe. Tom always had such strong self-control. That's what made him such a fine secretary of state. But ever since Constance died—it was during my second administration—he
just hasn't seemed himself. And it was obvious to everyone that when he met Arabella he just fell madly in love. Of course, what also became obvious after a while was that he had lost some of that steely control—I'll never forget the time he slipped and called Arabella ‘Poopie' in front of Lady Thatcher.”

“I do wish I had known you then,” Sandra said ruefully. “I didn't always agree with you, of course, but I thought you were an excellent president. But then, nine years ago, when you were first sworn in, you'd have found me boring, I'm sure. How interesting could a law student be to the president of the United States? I mean, hopefully you would have found me attractive, but I know you wouldn't have taken me seriously. At least when you met me as a member of Congress, you thought of me with some respect.”

Henry turned and looked affectionately at his bride of eight months. Her hair, the color of winter wheat, was tousled. The expression in her intensely blue eyes somehow managed to convey simultaneously intelligence, warmth, wit and humor. And sometimes also childlike wonder. He smiled as he remembered the first time he met her: he had asked if she still believed in Santa Claus.

That had been the evening before the inauguration of his successor, when Henry had hosted a cocktail party at the White House for all the new members of Congress.

“I believe in what Santa Claus represents, sir,” Sandra had replied. “Don't you?”

Later, as the guests were leaving, he had invited her to stay for a quiet dinner.

“I'm so sorry,” she had replied. “I'm meeting my parents. I can't disappoint them.”

Left to dine alone on this final evening in the White House, Henry had thought of all the women who over the past eight years had readily changed their plans in a fraction of a second, and he realized that at last he had found the woman of his dreams. They
were married six weeks later. At first the media hype threatened to be unending. The marriage of the country's most eligible bachelor—the forty-four-year-old ex-president—to the beautiful young congresswoman, twelve years his junior, set off a feeding frenzy among journalists. Not in years had a marriage so completely captured the public's collective imagination.

The fact that Sandra's father was a motorman on the New Jersey Central Railroad, that she had worked her way through both St. Peter's College and Fordham Law School, spent seven years as a public defender, then, in a stunning upset, won the congressional seat of the longtime incumbent from Jersey City, already had made her a champion to womankind, as well as a darling of the media.

Henry's status as one of the two most popular presidents of the twentieth century, as well as the possessor of a considerable private fortune, combined with the fact that he appeared with regularity at or near the top of the list of America's sexiest men, made him likewise a favorite source of copy, as well as an object of envy by other men who could only wonder why the gods so obviously favored him.

On their wedding day, one tabloid had run the headline:
LORD HENRY BRINTHROP MARRIES OUR GAL SUNDAY
, a reference to the once wildly popular radio soap opera that daily, five days a week, for years on end, asked the question: “Can a girl from a mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of England's richest and most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrop?”

Sandra had immediately become known to one and all, including her doting husband, as Sunday. She hated the nickname at first, but became resigned to it when Henry pointed out that for him it had a double meaning, that he thought of her as “a Sunday kind of love,” a reference to the lyrics of one of his favorite songs. “Besides,” he added, “it suits you. Tip O'Neill had a nickname that was just right for him; Sunday is just right for you.”