I haven’t let them out of my sight. No one followed them here,he said inside my head.
Thank you.I knocked on the door.
“Just a minute.” Mrs. Winstone shuffled through the house.
“Oh, do sit down, Brenda. I’ll get it.” Mrs. Ellis flung open the door. “Mina, I’m so pleased to see you. Your friend dashed off unexpectedly in the hospital and left some of his clothes behind. I don’t know where he got to in the buff, but I do hope we see him soon. Do come in and help me get Brenda settled.”
I followed Mrs. Ellis through the front hall into a comfortable sitting room. On every surface, photographs had been flipped down or leaned backward against the wall. As I walked past the hall table, my dress caught the edge of a frame and it slid onto the rug. I bent down to pick it up. It had flipped over, revealing an image of a young Mrs. Winstone, beaming from ear-to-ear as she embraced a man.
“My husband, Harold.” Mrs. Winslow said, her voice rising in pitch. She sat in a reclining chair beside the window, her feet up on a sheepskin footstool. Mrs. Ellis fussed with a coffee table beside her. “Isn’t he handsome?”
“Oh yes.” The man in the photograph did exude a sort of slick charm. “Mrs. Ellis said he was away on business. Whereabouts did he go?”
“Lord only knows,” she spat, her tone suddenly bitter. “Twenty-six years of marriage, and he’s left me.”
Poor Mrs. Winstone.I placed the photograph back on the table, feeling stupid. Of course, that was why she’d turned all the photographs the wrong way around, and why he wouldn’t come to the hospital to see her. “I’m so sorry.”
“He was always a rotten bastard. You’re better off without him, dear.” Mrs. Ellis knew to say the right things, the things girlfriends said to each other the world over after some man broke another heart.
“He waswonderful,” Mrs. Winstone sighed. Her eyes swung to the ceiling, a thousand miles away. “He was so handsome and clever. I never really understood what he saw in me. I did everything right, everything a good wife is supposed to do. I begged him for children, but he said he could never take time away from his work. I gave up my dream of being a mother for him, and he left me!”
“There, there. I’ll get the kettle on,” Mrs. Ellis stacked another pillow behind Mrs. Winstone, standing back to admire her work. “I’ve bought some groceries. Mina, will you help me in the kitchen? The paramedics put all Brenda’s food on the countertop and some of it’s gone off.”
“I’ll wash my hands and I’ll be right out.” I spied a bathroom at the end of the hall.
As I passed the kitchen door and linen cupboard, a foul smell rose up to meet me – a whiff of rot.It’ll just be that food Mrs. Ellis was referring to.It’s what happens when you’re taken to the hospital suddenly.
The bathroom decor was exactly what I expected of Mrs. Winstone – fluffy towels and a plastic shower curtain covered in a pattern of prancing cats. I did my business and washed my hands with soap shaped like a conch shell.
Mrs. Winstone is looking a little pale.It was a lot to deal with, your husband leaving you and then being beaten up all in the same week.I wonder if she has anything in her medicine cabinet that might help.
I opened the mirror door, peering into shelves of cosmetics and perfumes and soaps. As I pulled a bottle of ibuprofen off the shelf, something slid out and clattered into the sink. A necklace. Something about it seemed familiar, a nagging sense that it was important.
I picked up the necklace and held it up to the light. Stones sparkled in elaborate drops – deep red rubies surrounded by diamond clusters. My hand trembled.
Diamonds and rubies.
I remembered where I’d seen the necklace before.
Around Ginny Button’s neck.
“Harold gave that to her, you know.”
I whirled around. Mrs. Winstone stood in the doorway, her bruised face twisted in an expression of quiet rage.
Danger prickled at the edges of my conscience. “Your husband gave a necklace to Ginny Button?”
“That’s the sort of thing men like Harold do for their mistresses.”
Her words took a moment to sink in. Harold Winstone. The ‘H’ in Ginny’s love letters, the man who’d fathered her baby, who she wanted to marry… he was Mrs. Winstone’s husband.
Oh no.
Mrs. Winstone nodded, her eyes sad. “Harold had plenty of women over the years. It was expected, a man as handsome as him, traveling for work. He did get so lonely. I put up with it because I knew that one day he’d give me a child and I’d never feel lonely again.”
I cast my gaze over Mrs. Winstone’s shoulder to the hall beyond, hunting for an escape.She’s weak from the attack. I could shove my way past her and run outside. Quoth could transform and help me tackle her. “Why do you have this necklace, Mrs. Winstone?”
“I took it from the trollop, and I am taking her child. It’s mine by right. He’smyhusband.”
