Guilty Love (Completed)

Chapter Twenty

"After everything he had to go through, it's so cruel!" she accused, as if blaming Ritchie for everything that had happened to Barty. "What sort of life did he have? The crash..., losing his mother..., the baby..." her voice broke off and she groaned achingly. "The baby..., that hurt him more than anything, I think. Hurt us both. Our baby, dying before it was even born! It's so unfair -- why did all those things happen to us? Why us? What had we done to deserve it all? And now he's dead. Oh God, I wish I'd never seen you..., never taken that job.., if I'd never set eyes on you, Barty would be alive..."

Her voice rose wildly, she stared at the covered shape on the floor, her face distraught. "It's all my fault, isn't it? He's dead because of me! Oh, I can't bear it... I shall go mad.." One of the policeman had a notebook in his hand, he was writing rapidly. "What do you mean, Mrs York, it's all your fault? Why do you say that?"

Ritchie turned to him angrily. "Can't you see what sort of state she's in? Leave her alone, for God's sake!"

The doctor intervened. "I agree. She can't answer any questions tonight. I'm going to have to sedate her. She's in no condition to give you sensible answers to your questions, anyway." He bent down towards Linzi. She shrank away as she saw the hypodermic needle in his hand.

"This isn't going to hurt," he soothed, deftly rubbing her bare arm with a little pad, and she made a noise somewhere between a sob and wild laughter. "Isn't going to hurt? Don't bother to lie. Everything hurts. Unless you're dead..., the hurting stops then..., I wish I were dead..., oh, Barty..." The words faded into each other, the room was fading too, and get eyes closed gratefully as she escaped back into oblivion.

The police spoke to her the following day, in a small, quiet room in the local hospital. One of the police was a young woman with short, dark hair and a calm face, the other was a man in his late forties with a thin, clever face and shrewd eyes. Linzi watched them bring chairs close to the bed. She lay, very still, almost as white as the sheets. Her eyes dark pools of grief and misery in her bruised and battered face. She knew how she looked, she had seen herself in a mirror that morning but the usual dismay and embarrassment she would have felt, knowing what others must think, no longer bothered her. How she looked didn't matter.

"How are you feeling this morning, Mrs York? I'm Superintendent Rogers, and this is Sergeant Dale. I'm sorry to have to trouble you at this time, but I hope you'll understand the urgency of finding out exactly how your husband died, and why we have to talk to you." Linzi nodded bleakly. "I understand."

"Good, thank you. Now, suppose you tell us, in your own words, exactly what happened yesterday from the moment when you arrived home." Huskily she said, "Barty was very angry with me, he had misunderstood something he'd read in a newspaper..." The superintendent opened a folder he held on his knee and showed her a grey photocopy of a page from a newspaper. "This one, Mrs York?"

Startled, she looked at the headline, winced, nodded. "Your husband believed what he'd read?" She bit her lip, nodded again. "He..., Barty..., was..,"

"Jealous?"

A wisp of colour crept into her cheeks. "He had no reason to be.., it was all lies.., but he had been drinking. He was upset.." Her voice trailing away, she stared at neat coverlet over the bed, her hands closing and unclosing, and the police watched her. Superintendent Rogers prompted her, "He hit you?"

She nodded without looking up.
"Did he often hit you, Mrs York?"
"Only when he'd been drinking," she whispered, then looked up widely, her blue eyes wide and angry. "Barty loved me, he didn't mean to hurt me, he was always sorry afterwards, it hurt him when he saw.."

"Saw what he'd done to you?" The police were looking at her face, the cut below her eyes, the angry bruises, a red swelling along her cheekbones, puffiness around her swollen lips, the deep-sunk dark bruises on her throat, where the fingers had sunk into her flesh. She bore the visible marks of Barty's rage. Linzi felt their stares and winced.

"You mustn't think.., Barty was a kind man, I've known him most of my life, he was my best friend as well as my husband. We were very happy until the accident." She told them about the crash, how Barty's mother had died of the shock, how she had then miscarried the child she was expecting, and the grey months that had followed while Barty was in hospital. "After that, he was never the same again. He was bitter and unhappy and he started to drink."

There was a silence then Superintendent Rogers asked, "How did your husband feel about you working for Mr Calhoun?"
"It was far more money, he was pleased when I got the job." But her eyes didn't meet the policeman's. Gently he asked, "Until he became jealous of Mr Calhoun?"

"He resented the long hours I had to work. Mr Calhoun is often out of the office for most of the day, and when he got back he liked me to be there, to work with him on confidential matters. He didn't like to use a Dictaphone in case it got into the wrong hands; I had to be there in the office to work straight on to the computer, while he dictated. Then after I'd printed out the documents I'd erase the tape and he would keep the documents in his safe."

"How often did you work late in this way?"
"Several nights a week."
"How late did you work?"
"I don't know, I never kept an eye on the clock." Her voice was edgy, unsteady. "But quite late, I suppose. It was part of the job, though. When I took it, Ritchie.., Mr Calhoun.., made it plain that I'd be working odd hours, I'd have to be flexible -- take time off during the day, for instance, if I had to work very late. I got paid very well for accepting those conditions."

Drily the Superintendent said, "But your husband didn't like it?" She gave a little sigh, nodding. The policeman's eyes probed her face, she felt he saw far too much. "He resented it, in fact, and became jealous of Mr Calhoun? He suspected it wasn't exclusively work that was keeping you out so late?"

A dark flush crawled up her face, she met the man's eye with anxious defiance. "Sometimes he said wild things, when he was drunk, but he knew it wasn't true, it was only because he couldn't.., since his accident he hadn't been able to.., make love.." She drew a long, painful breath. "It had a terrible effect on him, he felt.., he was very bitter." The policeman's steady gaze shifted slightly, as if touched by her distress. There was a little silence, giving her time to pull herself together again. "Are you saying your husband was impotent?" He gently asked.

She nodded, eyes down, wishing she hadn't blurted it out like that. He didn't have to know that. That had nothing to do with what happened. Did it?
"What effect did his inability to make love have on you, Mrs York?" The policeman asked, and she looked up again, her face blank for a moment.