The Impetuous Mistress. George Harmon Coxe
now.”
“Well, do you—” He broke off to turn on Legett. “Do you guys have any idea—”
“Not yet, Mr. Ashley.” Legett’s eyes had been busy and now his tone was casual. “You’re Mr. Sheridan’s next door neighbor?”
“That’s right. The little white house. I drove up and saw all the cars and the lights, so I came over.”
“You weren’t home this evening.”
“No.”
“Mind telling us where you were?”
“Hell, no. I went out to eat around seven thirty or a quarter of eight,” he said, and named a restaurant.
“How long were you there?”
“I don’t know. I had a couple of drinks. Maybe an hour and a quarter or so.”
“That would make it around nine or a little before.” Legett glanced at his strap watch. “It’s now ten forty.”
“Well?”
“Where did you go after you left the restaurant?”
“I drove out along the shore and parked.”
“Alone?”
Until then Ashley’s replies had been quick and matter of fact. Now he hesitated, a small frown warping his brows and his eyes narrowing. For the first time he seemed to sense that the questions were not idle ones, that Legett was investigating a murder and still looking for suspects. His shoulders straightened slightly and they were thick shoulders, for Ashley was a strongly built man, hard-necked and bulky in his slacks and sport shirt.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” he said, “and if that sounds a little fishy to you I’ll try to explain it. I’m a writer. I spend ninety per cent of my time not writing but thinking. To think, I have to be alone and I like it quiet if possible. I can show you where I parked and the cigarette I chucked out the window if that’ll be of any help.”
The pointed irony of such an explicit explanation was not lost on Legett, but he gave no sign that it bothered him. He lean face remained impassive and his voice was unchanged.
“You know Mrs. Sheridan?”
“Certainly. She published my first two books.”
“How many have you written?”
“Three.”
“Who published the third?”
“Nobody—yet.” For an instant Ashley’s gaze wavered. “I just finished it. I haven’t signed a contract with anybody.”
“Did you know she was coming here tonight?”
“No,” Ashley said and then his eyes flickered to Rick and he seemed to realize that such a statement might trap him. “What I mean is, Rick told me over the phone this afternoon that she was coming but I didn’t know when.”
Legett had a few more routine questions which Ashley answered, but by that time Rick was no longer listening; instead his mind had moved backward as he recalled that Ashley had once been very friendly with Frieda.
In a way Ashley was responsible for his building in that neighborhood. For he had met the writer at a party in Wilton over a year ago when Ashley was finishing his second book. Both had been stags at the party and they’d had quite a bit to drink and they wound up late at Ashley’s house where Rick had spent the night.
He had already been thinking of building a house and the following day Ashley introduced him to a real estate man and the three of them looked for likely locations. In the end Rick settled for the adjoining two acres, and as time went on they had become good friends.
Ashley’s first book had been a critical success but had not earned much in the way of royalties. Frieda’s firm had published it and Rick knew that she had worked hard in helping Ashley with the second one, which turned out to be a resounding hit. Ashley knew about the separation and he had made sure of Rick’s attitude before admitting that he was seeing a lot of Frieda during the time he was working on the book. In more recent months there had been no mention of Frieda, and Rick had the impression that the affair, if there had been one, had petered out. He did know that Ashley was now engaged to a girl in Westport whose family was socially prominent. He had met the girl—she was only twenty-two—and had found her engaging, attractive, and apparently entirely sold on Ashley. . . .
“All right, Mr. Ashley,” Legett was saying by way of dismissal. “We’ll be in touch with you. Thanks for your help.”
“Sure.” Ashley nodded to Rick. “Don’t forget, chum. Anything you want, just yell.”
When Legett came back he had the county detective with him and this time they shut the door and asked Rick to sit down. Manning took a small notebook out of his pocket and gave it his attention while Legett started the ball rolling.
“Miss Heath has told her story,” he said, “and now we’d like to hear yours. Take it from the time you got out of the car here and tell it in your own words.”
Rick did the best he could and it did not take long. When he finished, Manning cleared his throat.
“How long have you wanted this divorce?” he asked in flat, impersonal tones.
“I began to think about it a couple of months ago.”
“Because you wanted to marry Miss Heath.”
“Right.”
“What was your wife’s reaction?”
“Negative. She said she’d think about it, and why did I want it. You know—things like that.”
“When did you talk about it again?”
“Last week.”
“What did she say that time?”
“She said she liked the arrangement we had.”
“She must have said more than that.”
“She said a lot more than that,” Rick said as he recalled the rather stormy scene and Frieda’s announcement that if he tried to get a divorce she would probably fight it. “But what it amounted to was that she had no intention of making it easy for me to marry Miss Heath.”
“She wasn’t in love with you—your wife, I mean?”
“Not for years.”
“The feeling was mutual?”
“It was.”
“Then why do you think she refused to co-operate. Was it a question of money?”
“No. I think she just wanted to be difficult.”
“Were you surprised when she phoned this afternoon and said she was ready to talk? Have you any idea what changed her mind?”
Rick thought about this before he replied. He had no way of knowing if something had happened in Frieda’s personal life that made her find a divorce desirable, or whether her father had instigated the offer. For Brainard saw in Ricky the son he had never had; he would have liked nothing better than to bring the boy up as he saw fit and without interference from Rick.
“No,” he said. “I don’t know why she changed her mind.”
“Did you reach an agreement tonight?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She wanted full custody of my son and I wouldn’t go for it.”
Manning cleared his throat again and exchanged glances with Legett. “You said before that you had an argument and you walked out on your wife. Why? Because you were afraid you might kill her?”
The question was so close to the truth it put Rick on the defensive and