“Will you, Mr. Hammond?”
“I only wish I could.”
53
After Banks and Markinson left, I went upstairs and lay down to rest. It was almost five o’clock. I knew that a security guard was at the gate and another on the grounds. I had sent Jane home, telling her that I wasn’t feeling well, and that I would heat some of her homemade soup later on. Thank God, she didn’t protest. I think it must have been evident from my manner that I absolutely wanted to be alone.
Alone in this great, sprawling house from which, hundreds of years ago, in another country, a priest had been dragged out and hacked to death on the lawn. As I lay on the bed in our suite, I, too, felt like I had been hacked to pieces.
Was it possible, I asked myself, that my husband, Peter Carrington, had rushed me to the altar because he needed to make sure I could never testify against him?
Was it possible that all his declarations of love were merely the calculations of a cold-blooded killer who, rather than take the chance of murdering me, married me instead?”
I thought of Peter standing in that holding cell, looking at me, with eyes that were alive with his love for me. Behind that expression, had he been mocking me, Kay Lansing, daughter of the landscaper, who had the colossal stupidity to think that he had fallen in love with her at first sight?
There are none so blind as those who will not see, I reminded myself.
I put my hand on my abdomen, a gesture that was becoming almost a reflex reaction to thoughts or situations I did not want to deal with. I was sure the baby was a boy, not because I preferred to have a boy rather than a girl, but because I just knew it was a boy. I was sure I was carrying Peter’s son.
Peter does love me, I told myself fiercely. There is no other answer.
Am I deluding myself? No. No. No.
Hold fast to what you have, for it is happiness. Who said that? I forget. But I shall and will hold fast to my love for Peter, and to his belief in me. I must, because every instinct tells me that this is truth. This is what is real.
I eventually felt myself calming down. I guess I even dozed a little, because the ring of the phone on the bedside table startled me awake. It was Elaine.
“Kay,” she said, I could hear a quivering in her voice.
“Yes, Elaine.” I was hoping that if she was in her house, she didn’t want to drop in on me.
“Kay, I must talk with you. It’s desperately important. May I come over in five minutes?”
I clearly had no choice but to tell her to come. I got up and dashed some cold water on my face, then touched my lashes with mascara and my lips with a light touch of color, and went downstairs. It may sound silly that I bothered to go to that trouble for Peter’s stepmother, but I had a growing sense of a looming turf battle between me and Elaine. With Peter in jail and me so new on the scene, she had been getting in the habit of walking in and out of the house as if it were once again her home.
When she came in this evening, however, there was nothing of the lady of the manor reestablishing her position about her. Elaine was ghastly pale, and her hands were trembling. There was no question that she was nervous and terribly upset. I noticed that she was carrying a plastic bag under one arm.
She didn’t even give me a chance to greet her before she said, “Kay, Richard is in terrible trouble. He’s been gambling again. I must have a million dollars right away.”
A million dollars! That was more money than I would have made if I had worked my entire life at the library. “Elaine,” I protested, “first of all, I don’t have anything like that kind of money, and it’s useless to ask Peter for it. He has told me he thinks you’re very foolish to keep bailing Richard out. He said that the day you refuse to pay his gambling debt is the day Richard is finally going to have to do something about his addiction to gambling.”
“If Richard doesn’t pay this debt, he won’t be alive long enough to do anything about his addiction.” Elaine said. She was clearly on the verge of hysteria. “Listen to me, Kay. I’ve been protecting Peter for nearly twenty-three years. I saw him come home the night he killed Susan. He was sleepwalking, and there was blood on his shirt. I didn’t know what kind of trouble he was in, but I knew I had to protect him. I took that shirt out of the hamper so that the maid wouldn’t see it. If you think I’m lying, look at this.”
She dropped the plastic bag she was carrying on the coffee table and pulled something out of it. It was a man’s white dress shirt. She held it up for me to see. There were dark smudges on the collar and around the top three buttons. “Do you understand what this is?” she asked.
A wave of dizziness made me sink down onto the couch. Yes, I understood what she was holding. I did not doubt for a single instance that it was Peter’s shirt, or that the dark stains were Susan Althorp’s blood.
“Have the money for me tomorrow morning, Kay,” Elaine said.
My mind was suddenly filled with the image of Peter hurting Susan. The antopsy report showed that she had suffered a severe blow to her mouth. That was the way he had flailed out at the cop. My God, I thought, my God. There is no hope for him.
“Did you see Peter come home that night?” I asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“You’re sure he was sleepwalking?”
“I am positive. He walked past me in the corridor and never even saw me.”
“What time did he come in?”
“At two o’clock.”
“Why were you in the corridor at that time?”
“Peter’s father was still ranting about the cost of the party, so I decided to go to one of the other bedrooms. That’s when I saw Peter coming up the stairs.”
“And then you went into Peter’s bathroom to get the shirt. Suppose he had seen you, Elaine. What then?”
“I would have told him that I knew he’d been sleepwalking, and was concerned that he went safely back to bed. But he didn’t wake up. Thank God I took the shirt with me. If it had been found in the hamper the next morning, he’d have been arrested and convicted. He’d probably still be in prison.”
Elaine started to look relieved. I guess she realized that I would get the money for her. She folded the shirt neatly and put it back in the plastic bag, as though she were a clerk in a department store, completing a sale.
“If you were really trying to help Peter, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to get rid of the shirt?” I challenged her.
“No, because it was proof that I did see Peter that night.”
A kind of insurance policy, I thought. Something tucked away against a rainy day. “I’ll get you the money, Elaine,” I promised, “but only if you give that shirt to me.”
“I will. Kay, I’m sorry to do this. I’ve protected Peter because I love him. Now I have to protect my son. That’s why I’m here bargaining with you. When you have a child of your own, you’ll understand.”
Maybe I do already, I thought. I had not told anyone except the lawyers that I was pregnant. It was too soon, and besides, I didn’t want it leaked to the press. I certainly was not going to tell Elaine about the baby now, I thought bitterly, not when I was bargaining to buy the bloody shirt that proved its father was a killer.
54
Vincent Slater had attended a business dinner in Manhattan and was not home in time to respond to Kay’s urgent request to call him. “If you don’t get back to me this evening, be sure to call first thing in the morning,” she told his answering machine.
It was 11:30 P.M. when he got the message. He knew Kay went to bed fairly early, so he wouldn’t try to call her now. But what could be so urgent? he wondered. That night, even though he was usually a sound sleeper, he found himself waking up several times.
His phone rang at seven A.M. It was Kay. “I don’t want to talk over the phone,” she said. “Be sure to stop by here on your way to the city.”
“I’m up and dressed already,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
When he got to the mansion, Kay brought him back
to the kitchen, where she had been having a cup of coffee. “I wanted to see you before Jane gets here at eight o’clock,” she said. “Last month, that first morning after we got back from our honeymoon, Peter and I went jogging early. I made coffee for us before we went out. It was fun being just the two of us, Mr. and Mrs. Newlywed living in suburbia. It seems a lifetime ago.”
In the harsh morning light, Slater could see that it looked as if Kay was losing weight. Her cheekbones seemed more prominent, her eyes enormous. Afraid of what he might hear, he asked what had happened to upset her so much.
“What happened? Nothing very much. It’s just that it seems Peter’s loving stepmother claims she has been protecting him for years, and now she needs a little help in return.”
“What do you mean, Kay?”
“She is willing to sell me an object that could hurt Peter very much if it fell into the hands of the wrong person—meaning the prosecutor. The price is one million dollars, and she must have it today.”
“What object?” Slater snapped. “Kay, what are you talking about?”
Kay bit her lip. “I can’t tell you what it is, so don’t ask me any questions about it. She needs that money today because her wonderful son Richard is deeply in debt after making losing bets. I know Peter opened a joint account for us. How much is in it? Is there enough for me to write a check to her?”
“Kay, you’re not using your head. A check takes time to clear. The only way I can get money that fast is to wire it directly into her account. Are you sure you want to do this? You know how Peter feels about Richard’s gambling. He’d want no part of subsidizing it. Maybe Elaine’s bluffing.”
“She—is—not—bluffing! She—is—not—bluffing!” Kay shouted, then clasped her hands to her face as a flood of tears rushed down her cheeks.
Startled, Slater watched as she impatiently brushed the tears away in an effort to control her emotions. “I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“All right, Kay,” he said soothingly. “All right. Don’t do this to yourself. I’ll wire the money to her.”
“I don’t want Peter to know,” Kay said, her voice low but controlled. “At least not yet. He goes to that sleep disorder center tonight. He’s got enough to deal with without having to worry about this, too.”
“He doesn’t have to know yet. I have power of attorney to transfer money. But realize something: Once that money is transferred, you can’t get it back. Will she turn this object over to you before the transfer?”
“I doubt it very much. Let me finish this cup of coffee, then I’ll call her. I don’t want to sound upset when I’m talking to her.”
Slater watched as Kay folded her hands around the cup as if to warm them. They sat at the table for a few minutes, not speaking, both sipping their coffee. Then Kay shrugged. “I’m all right now.” She dialed Elaine’s number and waited as the telephone rang repeatedly. “There’s some satisfaction in knowing that I’m waking her,” she said bitterly. “She was falling apart when she first came in here last night, but when I promised to get the money to her today, she managed to cheer up really fast. Oh, here she is.”
Slater watched Kay’s expression harden as she and Elaine talked. It was obvious, as he listened to one side of the conversation, that Elaine was not parting with whatever it was that she was holding until the money transaction was complete.
What could it be? he wondered.
Elaine was still living in the mansion the night Susan disappeared, Slater thought. The master suite is just around the corridor from Peter’s old room.
Was it possible that she saw Peter come home that night wearing a bloodstained shirt?
It was possible, he concluded, nodding slightly.
Slater remembered the sleepwalking episodes he had witnessed years before, when he accompanied Peter on vacation trips. There had been the one incident outside the ski lodge when he woke Peter too quickly and Peter had lashed out at him. The three or four other times he’d witnessed him sleepwalking, when Peter returned to his bed he immediately fell into a deep sleep. Elaine could have gone into his room and retrieved the shirt from the hamper without his even being aware of her presence, he decided.
Kay hung up the phone. “She doesn’t trust me. She says her banker will call her the minute the money is in the account, and only then will she come over here with the package I’m talking about.”
“Is it the formal shirt he was wearing that night, Kay?” Slater asked.
“I won’t answer that. I can’t.”
“I understand. All right. I’m on my way to New York now. I have to sign some papers to transfer the money.”
“Money! That’s the cause of most crimes, isn’t it? Love or money. Susan needed money, didn’t she?”
Slater stared at her. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Oh, of course I don’t know it.” She avoided his eyes by turning her head. Then, in a surprised tone, she said, “Oh, Gary, I didn’t hear you come in!”
“I stopped to speak to the guard outside the front door, Mrs. Carrington. I offered him a cup of coffee, then came into the house right there.”
Meaning he used the front door, Slater thought. He should know better. Had he been standing in the hall, and if so, how much did he hear? He knew the same thought was occurring to Kay.
Kay stood up. “I’ll walk you to the door, Vince.”
She did not speak again until they were in the reception area, then in a whisper asked, “Do you think he overheard what we were saying?”
“I don’t know, but he had no business coming in the front entrance. I think he saw my car, spotted us through the kitchen window, then backtracked and used that as an excuse to try to eavesdrop.”
“That’s what I think, too. Call me when the transfer is done and I’ll—” Kay hesitated, “and I’ll complete the transaction.”
At noon Slater called Kay to tell her that the million dollars was in Elaine’s bank account.
At twelve thirty, Kay called him back, her voice angry and upset. “She won’t give it to me. She said she sold it too cheap. She said her pre-nup was much too small. She wants to discuss an amount that would be appropriate for her future needs.”
55
This is one way of getting out of the Bergen County Jail,” Peter Carrington observed to Conner Banks as, shackled and manacled, escorted by two sheriff’s officers and four private security guards, he was led through the lobby of Pascack Valley Hospital and up to the Sleep Disorders Center on the second floor.
“Not the way I’d necessarily choose myself,” Conner told him.
“It’s obvious you think this is nonsense,” Peter said.
“I didn’t mean that. What I meant was that I wish you were going home instead of coming here.”
“Well, it seems as if I’m here for the night. Sorry to inconvenience you.”
It was eight P.M. Banks had read up on what to expect from this experiment. Peter would be interviewed by a sleep specialist, answer a series of questions, then be put into a bedroom in the testing suite. A polysomnogram recording would be made of his heart rate, brain waves, breathing, eye muscles, leg movement, and all five stages of sleep. A television camera in the bedroom would also monitor him all night. In the morning he would be transported back to jail.
A special bolt and chain had been put on the outside of the door of Peter’s bedroom. Banks and three of the guards would sit on chairs in the corridor, while the fourth one, accompanied by a hospital technician, would watch the video monitor that showed the interior of the room with Peter in bed. The sheriff’s officers stood outside his door.
At one A.M. the knob on the bedroom door turned. The guards sprang up, but the chain they had installed on the outside prevented the door from opening more than an inch. The tugging from the other side lasted for more than a minute, then the door closed again.
Banks hurried to the monitor; he could see Peter sitting on the bed. He was looking directly in the camera, his face expressionless, his
eyes staring. As Banks watched, Peter attempted to reconnect himself to the breathing tube, then lay down and closed his eyes.
“He was sleepwalking, wasn’t he?” Banks asked the technician.
“You’ve just witnessed a classic example of it,” the technician replied.
56
For the second morning in a row, Vincent Slater received a seven A.M. phone call; this time it was from Conner Banks. “We’ve got a problem,” Banks said without introduction. “Peter was sleepwalking last night, during his stay at the sleep clinic, and tried to open the door of his bedroom. It could be viewed as a violation of the terms of his release. As soon as the prosecutor hears about it, there’ll be another bail hearing. Krause will move to have the bail forfeited.”
Slater swung his legs over the bed and sat up. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want you to do anything except pray that the judge sees it our way—that Peter didn’t know what he was doing. Otherwise you can kiss another twenty-five million dollars good-bye.”
“You absolutely cannot let that happen!”
“Do you think I won’t give it my best shot? Vince, I’ve been telling you all along that this sleepwalking defense is madness. There is no way that the judge is going to buy it. He certainly wasn’t happy with allowing Peter to go to the sleep disorder center, even with the guards. My big worry is that it might look as if this is a stunt to boost Peter’s sleepwalking defense at trial. If the judge views it that way, your money is going to help the State of New Jersey reduce its budget shortfall.”
“Have you told Kay about this?” Slater asked.
“I didn’t want to disturb her yet. The last time I saw her was Monday, and she was pretty upset then.”