A Most Novel Revenge by Ashley Weaver Page B

mind to send for the authorities.
    â€œWas everyone there when they found him?”
    â€œI … I think so. Freida had collapsed up at the house and didn’t go back with us, and Phillip went back to look after her. I remember Bradford walked away and was sick. It was Beatrice who got a blanket from the summerhouse and covered Edwin. The rest of us just stood there until the doctor came.”
    â€œAnd he said it was the drugs and the cold?”
    â€œYes, that was what he thought. It’s what everyone thought, until…”
    Until Isobel Van Allen had written her book.
    â€œMiss Van Allen accused Bradford Glenn of murder and shortly thereafter he committed suicide. Do you think he might really have killed Edwin Green?” I asked.
    Laurel shook her head a bit as if to clear it, then she seemed to consider what I had said. “I don’t think so. Of course, I didn’t know any of them very well. One can’t really take people’s measure in the space of a weekend, but I wouldn’t have said I thought that he would do such a thing. He seemed very kind, in fact. Kinder than most of them.”
    â€œIn what way?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. It was little things that I noticed. He spoke kindly to the maids, for example. That isn’t, perhaps, something that amounts to anything, but so few people speak kindly to maids. He was kind to Lindy, too, when most people ignored her. He was pleasant when he didn’t have to be.”
    That was an astute observation, the logic of which I had often seen to be true. I had known a great many people who fancied themselves to be philanthropists yet were absolute horrors behind closed doors when nothing was to be gained by presenting a benevolent front.
    â€œAnd yet…” she said. “There was something about him…”
    I waited as she considered it.
    â€œIt’s difficult to explain,” she said at last, “but it seemed to me that there was something strange, almost insincere about the way he fawned over Beatrice.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    She considered it. “I don’t know, exactly. It’s been so long now, and I tried to put so much of that time from my mind. It was just that, when no one else was around, he didn’t seem exceptionally fond of Beatrice. It was as though he was doing it just to challenge Edwin Green, making a show of it. But I didn’t know them very well, so perhaps I was mistaken.”
    Somehow I doubted that. Laurel was an excellent judge of character.
    â€œWho was the last one to see Edwin Green alive, do you remember?”
    â€œI think it must have been Bradford. He and Edwin had fought that evening, and the others said later that it was just the two of them left in the summerhouse. I suppose that’s why Isobel drew the conclusion that he had killed him. Both of the men were in love with Beatrice, you see.”
    This fact was surprising to me. Though I had known about her purported entanglement with both men, having now met Beatrice Lyons Kline, I shouldn’t have thought she was the type of woman over which men would kill each other. There was nothing disparaging in this assessment. I only felt that, as cool and aloof as she seemed to be, she would not be likely to draw such ardent romantic interest. Isobel Van Allen, with her simmering sensuality, seemed more likely to have incited such behavior. Of course, the ways of the heart were not always as one would expect.
    â€œWere Isobel and Bradford Glenn on good terms?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “As far as I saw. As I said, I didn’t know either of them well. I wish I knew more, but I was an outsider at the time,” Laurel said. “I had formed certain impressions, of course, of all of them. Some I liked better than others, but I shouldn’t have thought any of them capable of murder.”
    â€œPerhaps Isobel didn’t realize the impact the book would cause. Perhaps