She nodded and stood waiting, head bowed, for whatever questions he chose to rain down upon her. Gibbons sighed again.
“I only want to get some times clear,” he said. “Perhaps we could sit down?”
She led him silently into the living room and obediently perched on the edge of a chair. It looked like she was ready to flee at a moment's notice.
“I'd like to go over the day of the murder again,” said Gibbons.
“You said you arrived as Mr. Paul was leaving, and Mrs. Marion and Edwin were in the kitchen. Is that right?”
She nodded.
“You cleaned the schoolroom,” continued Gibbons, “and then came downstairs. What did you do next?”
“I cleared up the breakfast things,” she answered. “Just as usual. Then I did Mr. Paul's study and the dining room after that. Then I came in here.”
“And that's when you heard the piano from upstairs?”
“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes firmly on her hands folded in her lap. “It was just eleven, because I'd heard the grandfather clock striking as I was coming in.”
“But you didn't hear Mr. Berowne come in the kitchen door? It would have been about the same time, perhaps a few minutes later.”
She looked frightened that she couldn't give him the answer he wanted. “You can't hear much from the kitchen in the living room,” she said. “It's at the opposite end of the house. I'd only hear if there was shouting.”
“I see,” said Gibbons soothingly. “You're doing very well, Mrs. Simmonsâthis is just the kind of information I need. So you didn't hear anything that might have been Mr. Paul coming in or moving around? No? Very well. Now about when did you start hoovering?”
She seemed somewhat reassured. “When I came in.”
“So about eleven,” mused Gibbons. “And how long did it take you to finish hoovering in here?”
She looked helpless. “I don't know,” she said.
“I think I heard you hoovering when I came up,” said Gibbons encouragingly. “That would have been eleven-thirty or so. Did you start at about eleven today?”
“Yes.”
“And when you stopped, you heard the piano again?”
“Yes. While I was working in here, too.”
“But, Mrs. Simmons,” said Gibbons, “if you had the hoover going, how could you hear the piano?”
“I have to turn it off,” she said defensively. “I do the carpet, and then I have to adjust it for the floors. And I have to stop and move the furniture to get under it.”
“I see,” said Gibbons. “I didn't understand before.” He thought it over, noting the position of the chairs and tables. It seemed unlikely that Mrs. Simmons could have been hoovering continuously for more than fifteen minutesânot long enough for Marion Berowne to get to the study and back.
“That's very clear, then,” he continued. “Now you said you cleaned up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen. When was the next time you went in there?”
“After I'd finished the living room. Around noon it must have been.”
“And was everything just as you'd left it?”
“I think so. I didn't notice anything different.”
“Not, say, a dirty coffee cup?”
“No, sir. The dishes were all put away in the washer, like I'd left them.”
It didn't really prove anything, thought Gibbons. Berowne might have put the empty cup in the washer on his way out, rather than leaving it sitting in the sink or on the counter. And by this account, Mrs. Simmons would have been hoovering when Berowne left for the garage, and could not possibly have heard him.
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After the antics of
the night before, Bethancourt rose late the next morning. He was surprised not to find a message from Gibbons waiting on the answer phone, but he prudently waited until Marla had left before ringing his friend. But New Scotland Yard informed him that Detective Sergeant Gibbons was out of the office.
Bethancourt rang off and frowned at the phone. He had not spoken to Gibbons since his friend's brief call the evening before when he had rung to say Paul Berowne had not confessed. They had had no opportunity to compare thoughts on this development and it struck Bethancourt as peculiar that Gibbons had made no effort to get in touch with him since. Neither, he recollected, had Gibbons been at home late last night and for that Bethancourt could think of only two explanations: there had been another development in the case, or Gibbons had been with Annette Berowne.
And if there had been a new development, it was surely odd that Gibbons had not found two minutes to ring his dogsbody and let him know.
“I'm making too much out of this,” said Bethancourt to his dog. “Let's get you brushed.”
Cerberus merely wagged his tail and stood obediently while Bethancourt sat on the edge of a coffee table and began removing clouds of lose fur.
“Probably,” he said, “poor Jack was too depressed to ring. From the moment I told him about Paul Berowne, he was counting on a confession. So was I, if it comes to that, but Jack has a lot more riding on this. He very likely went to bed early last nightâpeople often sleep a good deal when they're depressedâand with nothing new to report, he didn't bother ringing this morning.”
Cerberus panted happily.
“You think that's right, don't you, lad? Of course it is. Still, it leaves us with the problem of who did murder Geoffrey Berowne, if it wasn't his son. It's a pity I'm not a dog. I could have had a quick sniff around that study and known at once if anyone besides Annette and Kitty had been there that morning. Easiest, of course, for Maddie Wellman to sneak in, but if she did it, why didn't she provide herself with at least a partial alibi? A nice, long phone call to a friend would have done the trick.”
Annette, he thought, had provided herself with an alibi, or as
good a one as she could get if she were guilty. Marion Berowne had an alibi of sorts as well, though nothing that couldn't be easily broken. But Bethancourt had always thought it a very odd coincidence that Annette Berowne, if she was innocent, had chosen to put lilies of the valley in her husband's study. In that case, the murderer could not have planned to kill Berowne before he or she noticed the flowers there. And whoever it was would have had to have known that lilies of the valley were deadly, certainly an arcane bit of information. That led back to Paul Berowne, who had shared an interest in mystery stories with his father and who might have looked at Geoffrey's books on poison, or even been told the fact by Geoffrey himself while discussing mysteries.
“That's a thought,” said Bethancourt aloud. “I wonder if there have been any mystery books written that use lilies of the valley as the murder weapon. It's worth checking out.”
Who else might have known about the flowers? There was McAllister, who very likely knew all kinds of odd things about plants. Maddie Wellman and Marion Berowne were more of a stretch; neither of them were horticulture experts and it was difficult to see how else they might have come by the knowledge. If they had been planning Geoffrey's murder, they might have read his books on poison, but it was asking too much to believe that, just as they had hit upon their method, Annette would innocently provide it. But of course Annette could have read the books too, and selected lilies of the valley on purpose. She might have planned it months before and been waiting for spring and the blossoming of the flowers.
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Gibbons had not kept
in contact with Bethancourt because of a feeling he knew to be ridiculous and yet could not put out of his mind. It seemed to him that anyone as perceptive as Bethancourt, and who knew him so well, would take one look at him and know he had become
Annette Berowne's lover the night before. But by the end of the day the depth of his guilt had engendered a desire to confess, and even to be scolded. Bethancourt, he knew, would disapprove and probably be quite sharp with him, and he went almost eagerly to face him.
In the event, Bethancourt was neither sharp nor particularly observant. His first look at Gibbons apparently did nothing more than remind him of the hour.
“Jack! Good Lord,” he said when he opened the door to the detective. “What's the time?”
“Nearly seven,” answered Gibbons, surprised.
“And I've never walked Cerberus,” exclaimed Bethancourt, running a harassed hand through his already disheveled hair.
Gibbons looked down at the dog who gazed back at him mournfully.
“You don't mind, do you, Jack?” continued Bethancourt, pulling on a jacket and grabbing the dog lead. “We don't have to go all the way to Battersea Park if you're tired.”
“I am tired,” said Gibbons, following his friend out. “What have you been so busy with?”
“The Internet,” answered Bethancourt, turning down the street toward the embankment. “I've spent all day looking for a mystery novel in which someone is poisoned with lilies of the valley. I've gone the rounds of the chat rooms, posted queries to newsgroups and bookstores, and spent the rest of the time plowing through synopses.”
Gibbons was beginning to feel alarmed. “You didn't mention the Berowne case, did you?”
Bethancourt shot him a withering glance. “What do you take me for?” he asked. “I posted one of those âNeed help with title' queriesâyou know, where someone remembers something about a book they've read, but can't think of the title.”
“Oh,” said Gibbons, reassured. “I see. You pretended you already knew of such a book. But why?”
They had reached the embankment gardens and Bethancourt bent to unclip the lead from Cerberus's collar, freeing him to inspect the trees. The Thames was iron-gray beneath the cloudy skies and a brisk wind came off the water. Bethancourt huddled against a tree to light a cigarette.
“It's one way Paul Berowne could have known about the fatal properties of lilies of the valley,” he said, straightening. “We know Annette put them there originally, so the murderer must have seen them and thought what a wonderful opportunity it was. That means he or she already knew they were poisonous, which is an odd bit of knowledge to have. I mean, neither of us knew it.”
“True,” said Gibbons. “But any of them could have read about it in that book in the study.”
“Yes, but why should they? People don't normally browse through books on poison for light reading. They use them to look things up, like whether or not the last mystery they read was based on a reasonable premise.”
“So you're saying that only someone who read mysteries could have done it?” Gibbons looked thoughtful. “There aren't any on Maddie Wellman's shelves, but I don't know about Marion Berowne.”
“Nothing that definite,” admitted Bethancourt. “I just thought that if there was such a book, we might be able to prove Paul Berowne had read it.”
“That's good,” said Gibbons, “because Carmichael has spent all day investigating the two women. Not,” he added, “that we've turned up much, beyond that it would have been exceptionally easy for Miss Wellman, and rather difficult for Mrs. Berowne.” It was not quite deliberate, but somehow he did not mention his interview with Harry Denford.
“Difficult?”
“Mrs. Simmons never ran the hoover continuously for more than about fifteen minutes,” explained Gibbons. “And when she wasn't running it, she could hear the piano from upstairs. Marion
Berowne couldn't have made it to the study and back in that time.”
Bethancourt gave him an odd look. “But the piano's no alibi anymore,” he said. “Didn't you realize that?”
“No. Why should I?”
“That horrible tape that Denis and Edwin made of their playing,” answered Bethancourt. “You can't have forgotten. We had to listen to it for half the trip to London.”
“Of course I haven't forgotâ” began Gibbons, grimacing, and then he broke off. “Oh,” he said. “Of course.”
“After the boys were done playing,” said Bethancourt, “there was moreâobviously something they had recorded over. It might have been an adult and a child playing
âChopsticks.'
But in any case, the mere fact of the tape itself means Marion Berowne didn't have to be there for Mrs. Simmons to hear the piano playing. She might have recorded herself and Edwin at any time and set the tape to play back while she ran over to the Hall.”
“You're right,” said Gibbons, shaking his head at himself. “I should have realized that as soon as I heard that horrible tape. But I just never thought.”
“It doesn't mean she's guilty,” said Bethancourt. “No one else has an alibi either.”
“No, but it's something I ought to point out to Carmichael,” said Gibbons. He sighed. “I'm just not sure how I'm going to explain how I came to let you bring your nephew along on a murder investigation.”