Murder at Beechwood (23 page)

S
tunned silence enveloped the room and held each of us immobile in its grip. Seconds, perhaps minutes, passed. I scarcely breathed, aware of little else but the pounding of my heart and the blood rushing like an ocean in my ears. It was as if Judith had cast a spell on us, and only Judith could break that spell.

While we stood rigid with shock, she seemed more relaxed than I had ever seen her, sinking back against her pillows with something approaching a serene smile tilting her lips. Her expression perplexed me, nearly angered me, until I realized how tremendous a burden she had just released.

“I told you I'd come to hate Virgil,” she said. “Only weeks into our assignations last summer, he stopped bothering to be charming.” Her gaze slipped past me, to her brother, still gripping the footboard. “The mask he had always shown us as children finally slipped, you see. I saw the true Virgil—cruel, self-satisfying, indifferent to anyone but himself. I told him I had tired of him and would no longer see him, but he laughed in my face and threatened to expose me as a whore.”

Mrs. Andrews gasped. “That insidious snake!”

“I didn't know what to do.” Judith's calm exterior shattered. She clutched the edge of the sheet, dragging it to her chin as she sank lower in the bed. “He could not only destroy me, but our family. I knew that. He had powerful connections—he could buy anyone or anything and he was the kind of man who, once he had made up his mind, could not be deterred.” She raised a remorseful gaze to her mother. “I knew he was already trying to buy controlling shares of the
Sun.
I feared if I didn't cooperate with him, he would dismantle the paper and everything Father has worked for over the years. He would put hundreds of people out of work. How could I allow that to happen?”

The footboard rattled slightly as Derrick finally released it. He moved to the other side of the bed, across from me, and held Judith's hand. “You should have come to me.”

“And admit to the sort of situation I'd gotten myself into?”

I saw Derrick struggling to find the right words. He would know, as perhaps everyone in that room did, that no platitudes could undo the past. In the end, he coaxed her gently. “What happened next?”

“Virgil brought me to his New York townhouse. So brazen of him to have me there. It was late last summer, and Eudora and the children were at their Long Island estate. One day, while Virgil was at his offices in the garment district, Wyatt came by, quite unexpectedly. I'll never know why the maid who opened the door allowed him into the house, much less escorted him to the upstairs sitting room, where I was having my breakfast.” She raised the sheet higher to dab at her eyes.

“I didn't know how to react to him being there, until he assured me Vigil wouldn't object. It seems Virgil had bragged to Wyatt about me, his conquest. The very thought sickened me—and Wyatt saw that. He saw my unhappiness. Little by little, on subsequent visits, we became closer. Sometimes under Virgil's very nose, for Wyatt hadn't lied. Virgil
had
told Wyatt all about us and took no pains to conceal anything from him. I believe Virgil enjoyed showing me off in front of his brother.”

“God help me, if he weren't already dead . . .” Derrick let the thought go unfinished, but no one in that room could have wondered at his sentiments. His color high, he made a visible effort to bring his anger under control. “How did Virgil discover the child wasn't his?”

“Timing,” she said succinctly. “He was away for much of that September, back on Long Island playing the loyal, if not quite devoted, husband.”

“You could have come home then,” Derrick interrupted.

“And face everyone's questions? ‘Where have you been? With whom? Doing what?' No, it was easier to stay in New York. I took a small apartment of my own across from the park and hoped inspiration might strike and I'd find a way to free myself.”

Here, Mrs. Andrews seemed to rouse herself from her shock and moved to the bedside. Silently I stood and backed away, allowing her to take my place.

“Oh, Mother,” Judith said. “I never meant to make such a mess of things. I certainly didn't set out intending to be intimate with Virgil, a married man. But I was still hurting from Jonathan's death, and Virgil—”

“Took advantage of that fact, damn him.” A vain thrashed in Derrick's temple.

His mother reached across the bed to touch his sleeve. “Let Judith speak. Go on, darling.”

“Wyatt proved so different from his brother,” Judith went on. “People thought they knew him. The sportsman, the dandy. The irresponsible one. He was much more.”

“Was he?” Derrick's question came through clenched teeth.

“Do not judge him harshly, brother.” A bit of Judith's former spark flared. “What happened between us was mutual, not forced. We found comfort in each other and became friends. And in truth there was only the one time.” She relaxed back into the pillows again. “One time that made our child.”

I took that as my cue. Slipping out of the room, I hurried down the hall to the top of the stairs. There I caught Hannah's eye below and signaled to her. I returned to Judith's room to wait.

The doctor apparently had stepped out, too, possibly minutes ago when the conversation had turned so intensely personal. Jesse and Scotty Binsford had moved into the doorway, listening as unobtrusively as possible to the evidence they would need to finalize their case. As I passed them to reenter the room, they backed farther into the hall. Only the Andrewses were left, and me.

Though only for the next minute or so. Then Hannah entered the room with both Stella and Katie behind her. The two of them looked disheveled, with their hair—Stella's sleek black and Katie's wild bright red—hastily gathered and pinned, their dresses rumpled, their eyes puffy from lack of sleep. Yet both were smiling. Both blinked back the tears in their eyes. A bundle in Katie's arms wriggled.

Judith saw them and cried out, and stretched out her arms. “Is that him? Oh! I never thought . . . Please, please may I have him?”

Katie came forward, carefully unwrapping the knitted blanket from Robbie's pink face. She approached the bed and leaned, but when Judith eagerly pulled forward to reach for the child, Katie held on.

I came up behind her. “It's all right, you can let go of him now. Let his mother hold him.”

Her arms reluctantly stretched forward to relinquish Robbie into Judith's trembling arms. Even then, Katie didn't completely let go, but held his head in her palm. “Like this, ma'am. Support his head, though he's doing quite a fine job of holding it up himself when he isn't sleepy.”

“Katie, I believe Mrs. Kingsley knows how to hold her baby,” I whispered.

My maid-of-all-work nodded with a sniffle and retreated from the bedside. My own throat tightened around a sob—of joy, of triumph, of immeasurable sadness. I had done what I had set out to do. I had found Robbie's mother and by all appearances, I had been correct in one essential assumption: that his family would ultimately want him. It had been that belief that kept me so single-minded in my quest. In all my life, being correct had never felt so gratifying.

Or so devastating. As I gazed from Katie to Stella, I saw my own sentiments mirrored in their forlorn expressions. We would be saying farewell to our visitor. No longer would anyone's sleep be interrupted at night. There would be no more bottles to warm, diapers to change, or extra linens to wash. Our daily burdens lightened, our lives would become our own again.

And at that moment, the future presented a dismal prospect.

But then, I could not come close to imagining what it had been like for Judith to have her child ripped from her arms, and to wonder if she would ever see him again, to agonize over his fate and attempt to find the will and the strength to salvage some kind of life for herself.

And to think I had judged her.

I dismissed the thought as something to be reconciled at a later time. I forced myself to rejoice for Judith, and for Robbie. For no matter how good we might have been to him, however much we might have loved him and formed a surrogate family, none of us could ever have been his mother. Only Judith could fill that role.

“He's gotten so big! So chubby compared to when I saw him last.” Gingerly she unwrapped more of him, stroking his arms and dimpled knees, sprinkling both kisses and tears across his forehead. “Oh, look at his darling cheeks.” She surprised me by addressing me next. “He's so rosy and healthy looking. Your sea air seems to have done him a world of good, Miss Cross. Or Emma, if I may. You took good care of him, and for that I'll always be in your debt.”

“Oh, no, Judith. It's these two”—I gestured at Katie and Stella—“and Mrs. O'Neal, my housekeeper, who deserve the credit. Most of Robbie's care fell to them.”

“While you were out hunting down a killer.” Derrick spoke in a low rumble that brimmed with emotion.

My throat went tight again, and I only nodded.

All the attention and fawning brought Robbie more fully awake, for he began to fuss and squirm. Judith touched her forefinger to his lips, and he latched on as if sucking on his bottle. Her peal of laughter echoed through the room and more tears spilled over, several splashing into Robbie's wispy, dark hair. As if reaching out to stroke a precious, priceless object, Derrick used his fingertips to wipe the moisture away. He said nothing, simply looked on with his slightly lopsided smile as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

Their mother moved back to the side of the bed vacated by Katie. She sat, leaned, and kissed her grandson's brow. Stella stepped forward then, holding up a cloth bag. “If you would like to feed him, ma'am, there's a bottle in here.”

“Oh, yes, please!” With her gleaming eyes and heightened color, Judith had taken on the radiance of a new mother.

Mrs. Andrews reached for the offered bag. Her gaze bored into Stella then, and her brow furrowed. She went very still, and I remembered that she knew about Stella—knew of Stella's dark past. Would she cast judgment? Balk at having Stella in the room? I held my breath, ready to step between them, to deflect any derogatory comments Mrs. Andrews might make.

But then the woman's features smoothed. She nodded at Stella, even tilted her lips slightly upward. She turned back to her daughter and handed her the bottle. The family closed in around Robbie then, forming a protective circle. The earnestness and sheer power of that sight, of their joy, made me look away, and then move away. I didn't have to signal to Katie or Stella. Almost as one we quietly retreated to the hallway and closed the door behind us.

My exhaustion could have kept me in bed all the next day, but my hectic thoughts would not allow it. I dragged myself out from beneath the covers just after sunup, and after a quick breakfast I returned to town, to the offices of the
Observer.
There I sat down at the typewriter in the cramped office I shared with Ed Billings. He hadn't arrived yet, so in those rare few moments of privacy punctuated by the rumble of the presses at the far back of the building, I wrote out the basic facts of the murder at Beechwood that turned out to be no murder at all, but an attempted one gone awry. Virgil Monroe, out of jealousy and revenge, had schemed to stage an accident that would have killed his brother. From that point on, his deranged son sought to avenge his father's death.

As I had in the past, I left out much of the story, only outlining each murder as it happened, and perhaps dropping a hint or several about sibling rivalry, hostile buyouts, and financial fraud—all viable motives for murder, and all rampant among the members of the Four Hundred. As to the many truths I left out....

For the first time in nearly a year, I thought about the unfinished manuscript moldering away in a desk drawer at home. Had I truly fancied myself a novelist, someone who endeavored to capture imaginations and emotions with the written word? Life, I had discovered, held thrills and dangers aplenty. I needn't make them up, nor could I have devised anything so fantastical as the events of these past two summers. Someday, perhaps, but not now.

Ed entered the office mere minutes after I proofed my account and declared myself satisfied.

“You're here awfully early,” he said, his surprise evident. His expression became wary. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

I tugged the page from the cylindrical platen and thrust it toward him. “Here. I listed the facts, Ed, but I must admit I have no stomach to write this story. I'm giving it to you.”

He made no move to take the sheet of paper. “You're joking.”

“No, Ed. Some events are too overwhelming even for me.” The words nearly stuck in my throat, but I kept talking. “I think it best if you write the article.” I stood and placed the page in his hand, forcing him to accept it or let it drop to the floor. Somehow I knew Ed would not let this unexpected boon slip from his fingers.