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Authors: Graham Landrum

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BOOK: The Rotary Club Murder Mystery
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“He faced it out. You never saw such a thing in your life.”
“Didn't folks talk about it?”
“Honey, you can bet your sweet life they did. But Mr. Hollonbrook with his money, and Miz Hollonbrook taking it cool as you please, it kind of passed over. And then some said that little Desiree was just a fool. And to tell the truth, she was. I don't know what become of her.”
“Did Bucky marry again?”
“He might have, but I doubt it. You never saw anybody so broke up as he was.”
Maud had certainly been right about Noralou. But whether or not it had gotten me anywhere, I was not certain.
Anyhow, I got myself dressed again and asked Noralou how much I owed her. And do you know, that sweet Maud had told her to add my massage to her bill there at the club. So I gave Noralou a five-dollar tip. I certainly wouldn't know, but I hoped that was a handsome tip. I wouldn't want Noralou talking about me.
Maud had arranged to meet me in the club dining room for lunch. She was already seated at the table when I got there. That girl was always pretty, but it just seems that age was good to her. She was a picture in a gray silk suit with a frilly white blouse and great big pink pearl ear bobs and necklace—fake, of course—I don't even know if real pearls are ever pink. But they ought to be, for they certainly were becoming to Maud.
Her sweet blue eyes were just flashing as I came to the table;
I could tell she had something really exciting to tell me. But she said we should order first.
I selected the chicken-salad croissant, and Maud ordered quiche. Then as soon as the girl had left with our orders, Maud said, “You'll not guess who wants to talk to you.”
Well, I couldn't imagine. So I told Maud I would just give up.
“It's the widow,” she said.
At first, I didn't get the idea, but Maud explained that Mrs. Alice Hollonbrook had called and wanted to talk to me.
I want you to know that was a surprise to me. I had been wondering how I could work it around so it would seem natural for me to talk to her and ask her a lot of questions—and most of all about her
alibi
—and here she had called me! But then I reflected that Ms. Folsom at the library had penetrated my disguise.
Well, if it had got me access to Alice Hollonbrook, perhaps it was not such a bad thing that Ms. Folsom had published my presence to Stedbury.
>>
Alice Hollonbrook
<<
 
 
 
 
 
P
erhaps you are surprised to see that I have joined the staff and am contributing my bit to the story of how my husband's murder was disguised as suicide and how the murderer was found.
I warned Mrs. Bushrow that it was a bad idea to include me in the number of narrators. You see, it removes me from the list of suspects—but this is what she wanted, and this is what it is going to be.
In a way, it is appropriate that I should participate in the Rotary Mystery, because I am what was formerly called a Rotary Ann, the widow, in this case, of a Rotarian—one who was president of his club and governor of his district. And, I hasten to add, regardless of the peccadilloes and larger flaws of Holly's character, he was truly supportive of Rotary and was a good officer. Though his tremendous ambition was certainly served by the offices he held, I assure you that in his official activities he actually did put service above self.
I suppose Rotarians are only like the rest of us with all our faults. But there is something about Rotary that brings out the best in its members. Rotary calls for the same amount of loyalty to the local club as any other organization does: attendance—
oh how loyal Holly was to that—dues, committees. Rotary could justify itself merely at that level when you think of fiftytwo meetings a year. And as a visitor, I have heard some of their programs; frankly, most weren't that good. Still, look at it this way: Those programs, good and bad, on topics of local importance, keep a cross section of community leaders informed about city government, schools, industrial developments, and many, many other things of real usefulness.
Rotary is above all a service organization. The Stedbury Rotary Club built the ball field for the Boys Club, gives five thousand a year to Theater Stedbury, provides loans at low interest to college students from our area, assists the Janie Boyer Home, the Shelter for Battered Women, and the Downtown Association, which is fighting civic decay—not to mention the annual Rotary Charity Fund and assistance to the Salvation Army.
That's just what Rotary does at the local level. And believe me, it doesn't stop there. Rotary is truly international. It has clubs all over the world and promotes exchange of ideas by sending and receiving teams of experts to and from everywhere. Last year, the Stedbury club was visited by a team from Venezuela—just delightful people, whom we got to know and like. Although they were here to study and did study, it would have been worth the effort if the visit produced nothing but friendship.
And don't forget the Paul Harris Foundation. Its funds are used for various things, but most recently they have been used to combat polio worldwide. In fact, polio has been virtually eliminated through the work of the Paul Harris Foundation.
I don't think that the organization's reputation should be tarnished merely because an individual Rotarian may not have been a paragon. Rotary simply represents what is best in the way we live today. And if there is something wrong, it is wrong not with Rotary but with us.
Well, what am I doing preaching? There is as much wrong with me as there is with any of us. Holly's death has brought me
to think about a good many things I had figured would be put off for a long, long time.
As soon as I heard that the Harriet Bushrow was in town, it flashed through my mind that she was here because of Holly's death. I knew all about Harriet because her book,
The Famous DAR Murder Mystery,
was reviewed at my study club. We were studying the achievements of Appalachian women. Brenda Miller had chosen the book because she thought it said something about the region—and a lot about feminine initiative.
So Harriet Bushrow didn't think Chuck had committed suicide. And neither did I. But I had better get on with what happened during our visit.
When the door chimes sounded, I was not prepared for the commanding figure I was to find at my door. She looked like—well, she looked like the Queen Mother. Not that Harriet seems haughty—nobody could be more down-to-earth. It is something in the way she holds her head—and those clear gray eyes look at you with absolute assurance, as though she sees you through and through and is considering what she will do with you.
She had on the hat with the red poppies—and, of course, the famous cut-crystal necklace. She was wearing what would have been a little black dress if it had been four sizes smaller, and a summery white jacket with sleeves that stopped just below the elbow. And she wore white gloves! There was a red purse—and red shoes!
“Mrs. Bushrow!” I exclaimed. She was all that I had imagined, and a good deal more.
“Yes, my dear,” she said, “I am Hattie Bushrow.”
Coming into the living room, she took in everything in a brief but very efficient survey. It suddenly struck me that I was being judged.
Recalling that Harriet was an expert on antique furniture, I said, “I'm afraid it is all new.”
“All furniture starts out that way,” she said. Then she looked around again and added, “It is very pretty.”
I felt this was faint praise but perhaps kindly meant. We sat down and she turned her attention to me. I had on light blue slacks and a matching silk blouse with a discreet monogram. I was wearing my gray mules. I knew I was in perfect taste—better taste than Harriet Bushrow, thank you. But somehow I knew she was calculating all of this. I was very nervous and uncertain of myself.
Then suddenly, she smiled, and I was completely at ease.
“Now, darlin',” she said—she has this wonderful Old South accent—“I believe you have something to tell me.”
Yes, I had something to tell her, and I had rehearsed it several times, but I had not made up my mind where to begin. I said as much.
She was quite sympathetic, said she understood how hard it must be for me so recently after my husband's suicide.
“His murder,” I corrected her.
She pretended to be surprised, her eyes growing large, her mouth gathered into an 0: After a moment's pause, she said, “But the room was locked, and the police assure us that he took his own life, so why do you say it was murder?”
“Because you do,” I accused. “You wouldn't be here if you did not. You say he did not commit suicide. And I say he did not commit suicide.”
“I know why
I
say it. Why do
you
say it?”
Well, there it was. Why did I not think Holly had killed himself? Certainly he had never seemed inclined in that way. And when I last saw him, he appeared very confident, very self-possessed.
“I know it looks like suicide,” I admitted. “And I can't offer any other explanation. But at the same time, I simply can't see Charles Hollonbrook killing himself. It wasn't his nature. That's all I can say.” I paused, expecting her to make some rejoinder, but it became obvious immediately that she was waiting for me
to go on. “Perhaps,” I added, “it's just that I don't want it to be that way. And because—well because I very much
need
it to be murder.”
“In that case,” she said, “I'll lay my cards on the table and get one question out in the open and taken care of. What were you doing during that time when everybody thought you were down at Wilboro Beach—staying at Mrs. Hutton's—wasn't it? But you weren't really, were you? You weren't there on May 26th or 27th, were you?”
She looked at me—very kindly but insistently, waiting for me to explain about Wilboro Beach and May 26 to 27. “So you suspect me,” I said. It was only natural that she should.
“No,” she said, “I do not—not now, at any rate. If you had killed your husband, you would have been careful to be where you could receive word when his body was found. He was killed sometime after he went to bed—maybe a little after midnight. The body wasn't found until noon the next day. You could have killed him and gotten back to Mrs. Hutton's by that time—easity. But they didn't find you until the twenty-ninth. And the maid at Mrs. Hutton's says you didn't use your bed for three nights running.
“Of course, that's your private business,” she continued, “but it will all come out when the sheriff discovers—when I tell him—that it was murder. You see, I have to find an explanation. You were with a man, I suppose.”
Holly's death was a very real shock to me. The readers will probably think me a hypocrite for saying so. It was not that I loved him, and yet perhaps I did just a little. Loss was not the shock, though I'll explain the loss presently. The shock came when I began to view myself in a different light. I told myself I wasn't ashamed. But what I saw in myself wasn't pretty. It was more that I was surprised. I was surprised at how little feeling I had.
Cynical
was the word that came to me, and I could not escape it.
How must I appear to a woman from another age—a woman
such as Harriet Bushrow? The sexual revolution—open marriage—women's iib—what would she know about such things? She would judge me, no doubt. She might well condemn me as a “scarlet woman.” That didn't bother me. But I feared that she would find me merely cynical, empty, without value.
Nevertheless, I needed Harriet Bushrow—really needed her. I believed that when she heard my story, she would become my ally.
So I began at the beginning.
I grew up in a small town in eastern North Carolina—not far from the Virginia border. It was an uptight little place—Baptist churches, Dairy Queen, all those things—not so different from Stedbury. They tell me it has changed back there. There are drugs and teenage pregnancy and all the rest. But it wasn't that way when I was a girl.
After high school, I went to Raleigh to a business college. I learned a lot in Raleigh. I was all right at the business college—top of the class, in fact. But there were other things. I found that men looked at me and that I liked it. I was very confident.
Then there was Holly with the position here in Stedbury, and I became his secretary. We didn't become lovers for over a year.
I was not the cause of the divorce. That had been coming on for several years. Linda was the girl Holly had married as a first wife.
Yes, I am cynical. I admit it. She was a first wife and that was all. Holly was on the way up, and she could not cope with that. She whined a lot and complained, and I am sure that she knew she was merely tolerated and actually rejected.
She probably did not know about me and Holly, though she should have suspected. But Holly and I were very circumspect in the office. And after all, he didn't marry me until a year after the divorce.
Meanwhile, we were together as often as we could get away
without arousing suspicion. I know all the motels at a radius of thirty miles from Stedbury.
When we were married, I knew what Holly expected of me. Sex—yes, Holly had an appetite that way. Yet there was as much ego in it as hormones. He was a dominant male animal out for conquest in an age of sexual equality. He needed it. It drove him.
Oh, I found out about that very soon. And I admit that I was hurt. I had yet to develop my carapace. I cried buckets over his first infidelity. But he was not going to let it lead to divorce. He swore he loved me. He promised that if I stayed with him, together we would have everything we wanted. He promised me jewetry—that was how I got my tennis bracetet—the first one in town. Still I was not satisfied.
Then he took out the policy on his life—half a million dollars. He asked me if that didn't show that he meant what he said.
I was still very naïve, and half a million sounded very big to me. So I began to weaken. Holly said we should have an “open marriage.” Everything I read suggested that other women were doing it. So why shouldn't I? I decided to go along. Holly had a new fling about once a year. And since he always discarded the woman and was careful not to get her or me pregnant, I put my trust in that life-insurance policy.
Meanwhile, I was not a pushover. I have had only two affairs, and I was careful not to seem interested in men.
At this point, Mrs. Bushrow interrupted.
“How different it all is!” she said. “We always flirted. Our husbands expected it. Not serious flirting—just polite banter. If men found us attractive, in a nice way, of course, it showed the world our husbands had won a prize when they married us. We flirted, but we never had affairs.”
I realized that this woman from another age was not surprised at what I had told her. “You are not shocked! You do not judge me, do you?”
“No, I'm not shocked. But I do judge you,” she replied. “I judge all you modern girls. You have sold your birthright for a mess of pottage. In my day, we managed our husbands. They worked for us. And we worked for them, too. We kept the home and had their children. And we helped them in their careers. But you see, we fascinated them. We kept them charmed. And we were true to them. It would have been heartless if we hadn't been.
BOOK: The Rotary Club Murder Mystery
3.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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