Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery by G.M. Malliet Page B

looked around him, to be met by blank stares.
    “The Winthrop murder. Surely you remember? She was accused, and people think, rightly so, of murdering her husband.”

A STORY FROM THE PAST
    _______________________
    “MY GOD,” SAID SARAH. “It can’t be.”
    “I already have someone in my office checking the files, but you can be sure I’m right. It was sometime in the mid-1950s. We were unborn, then, of course, and even later you might have been too young to care about such things, but I, before long, was reading every newspaper I could lay my hands on. The coverage and speculation about the case went on for years.”
    Interested in what he was saying, they all nodded encouragingly, suppressing irritation at Ruthven’s image of himself as child prodigy, tackling at a tender age the baroque yet subtle nuances of the Daily Mirror .
    “Oh, yes, it’s she, all right,” Ruthven went on. “I recognized her face before the name dropped into place. Her photograph was everywhere at one time, and photographers simply hounded her for decades.”
    “What a pretty, sanitized version we heard of her past this evening,” said George. “What was it she said about having made a famous marriage? Well put, that. I thought I’d seen her somewhere. But it was more recent.”
    “No doubt,” said Ruthven. “Every so often the papers dig up the story for a rehash of the mystery.”
    “They never caught who did it, did they?” said Sarah.
    “They never tried,” said Ruthven. “They already had who did it. But money talks, then as now. There was even some question of evidence being removed, tampered with, although it was probably a matter of incompetence more than outright corruption. By the time the police got through trampling all over the clues and losing the evidence, there was no question of ever bringing her to trial. A complete farce. The old man had no family to speak of so there wasn’t even much of a stink raised from that end. And there was, indeed, a certain camp among the reading public that tended to plump for her innocence. Even then, it was felt a woman couldn’t have committed any crime that didn’t involve a little genteel poisoning.”
    “He was bludgeoned to death, wasn’t he?” said Sarah.
    “Something along those lines, I believe. I’ll have the details by tomorrow.”
    “It is hard to picture her doing that, having met her,” said Sarah doubtfully.
    “No doubt the police felt the same. Lizzie Borden, always the model for this kind of thing, was a big bear of a girl, and people had trouble believing her capable of wielding an axe to such stunning effect.”
    He clapped his hands on his knees and rose to leave.
    “So you see, it’s a thornier problem than we thought. I would suggest we all sleep on what to do about it.”
    “We have to tell him,” said Sarah. “Warn him.”
    “Don’t be daft,” said Albert. “He must know. In fact, knowing him, it’s part of the attraction.”
    Sarah frowned, doubtful.
    ‘Marrying a known killer?” George considered. “I suppose I wouldn’t put it past him, but still, it does rather give one the creeps. I can’t say I like the idea of sleeping under the same roof with her, myself, come to that.”
    Ruthven soon left, and after some further discussion of the “Can you believe this?” variety the rest wandered off to their assorted rooms.
    Sarah took the precaution of locking the door behind them, before preparing for bed and settling down to a disturbed rest. Her last waking thought before drifting off was, “I don’t care what Ruthven says. I must warn him.”

    Breakfast at Waverley Court was always an informal affair. Guests staggered down from upstairs as hunger moved them, to where vast quantities of food sat keeping warm under covered dishes on the sideboard. Sir Adrian always had a tray in his dressing room while he savored his latest fan mail, too voluminous to answer personally, even had he been inclined to do so. It was one of