Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

“Good God Almighty,” said Drugan, “it’s Lord Gilroy! But where’s the rest of him?”

Edgar still had the train trip to Birmingham ahead of him and expected to arrive there close to flat broke. So he made the night-packet crossing sleeping beneath his overcoat in a lounge armchair. He didn’t expect to sleep well anyway. A severed head can do that to you. He remembered wondering aloud back there at the carriage, “Saber work?” But another voice, the ship’s doctor’s, said, “No, a finer blade than that.” Now Edgar wondered why Lord Gilroy had come aboard in disguise in the first place and who had killed him. Just before he drifted off to sleep he thought he knew.

Mrs. Noonan entered the railway compartment bent over in her widow’s weeds. She gave Edgar a polite nod when he rose to take her valise from the porter and placed it on the overhead luggage rack. As he did, he noticed a faint odor of Lord Gilroy’s pungent cigars. Edgar returned to his window seat and watched the woman from behind his newspaper.

She sat with an ample bombazine reticule in her lap. Now she pushed up her left sleeve as if to consult something on her wrist. Stopping in mid gesture, she turned her head a bit toward him as if to see if he had noticed.

Edgar could see the clock on the railway platform. “It is eight-twenty, madame,” he told her. “We shall depart in three minutes.”

The woman froze for a moment. Then she unpinned her veil and laid it across her lap. Her face was pale but handsome. Smiling, she straightened her back like a bow unstrung. The train got under way without any other passengers entering the compartment.

As the railway yard gave way to countryside, Edgar tried a bit of business he’d worked out for his role as Hawkshaw. Putting on his policeman face, he brought his hands together to make a church and steeple, tapped the tip of the steeple against his lower lip thoughtfully, and said, “What I can’t understand, Lady Gilroy, is why you left the severed head behind.”

The woman had a wonderful alto laugh. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. At the Royal in Sligo. You were what’s-his-name in The Ticket-of-Leave Man. You were very good, though a bit young for the part.”

Edgar blushed and tried again. “What I meant, Lady Gilroy, was that you and Wilfrid Gilroy disposed of the body. But why leave the head?”

Determination overtook Lady Gilroy’s smile. “First of all,” she insisted, “I killed my husband alone. Wilfrid had no part in this. Nor do I regret what I did.

“Oh, yes, when I married my husband I quickly discovered what a terrible mistake I’d made. Have you heard of the French marquis who refused to take Holy Communion unless the wafer had his coat of arms imprinted on it? That was my husband Tancred.”

“A haughty man,” Edgar agreed. “I can certainly testify to that. He came aboard disguised as a Sligo horse dealer.”

She laughed. “He was doing his Wilkes, was he? That was the nom de guerre he used when whoring around the countryside.” Looking away for a moment, she said, “My marriage was my mistake. But I am no crybaby. I was prepared to live with it. After all, I can give as good as I get, which kept him civil toward me. But then his brother came for an extended stay. Wilfrid was a fine, sensitive man, though of a weak and indecisive nature. We fell in love. My demand for a divorce was such a shock for Tancred it was only his fear of discovery and the indignities of a public trial that stayed his hand from killing us on the spot. So instead he made our lives as miserable as he could. Wilfrid bore his many humiliations better than I.

“When I could bear things no more I decided to offer Tancred an opportunity to kill us and get away scot-free. One day when he was away fox hunting with the Manor Hamilton pack, I ordered the carriage loaded on the Belfast steamer. Next I sent a telegram in our estate agent’s name informing Tancred his wife and brother had left together for the Continent. It wasn’t that difficult to predict his reaction. In a rage, Tancred set out for Londonderry to intercept the steamer and kill us both.”

Edgar understood. “What he didn’t know was that you’d faked your suicide the night before.”

“Correct,” she said. “And that Wilfrid wasn’t involved at all. For the suicide business I came on board at Sligo as the widow Noonan, in premature mourning. Then I changed and slipped ashore amid the coming and going of people seeing other people off. Later I returned as myself. After staging my own suicide, I slept in Mrs. Noonan’s cabin. Yesterday morning, before we reached Londonderry, I dressed up in the black veil, took the cane and a picnic hamper of biscuits and water, and settled into the carriage.

“When he couldn’t find us on board, Tancred would assume we were trysting in the carriage. That’s where he meant to kill us, caught in an amorous embrace. But Tancred needed darkness if he was to escape the punishment for his crime. He would wait. But I knew he would be watching the carriage. So I smoked one of Tancred’s terrible cigars which Wilfrid was so partial to, in case my husband came creeping about.

“When I thought it was dark enough for Tancred to risk it, I opened the leather curtains toward the ship and lit another filthy cigar for Tancred to see.” Lady Gilroy brought her fists side by side and moved them apart as if pulling the blade from the sword cane. She held the blade hand low. “Then I waited,” she said. “Before long I saw a shape move across the deck toward me. I heard the handle of the door turn. Suddenly the door flew open and Tancred thrust himself into the carriage, revolver in hand. Just then three strokes of lightning illuminated the scene. Surprised to find me alone, he opened his mouth to utter some blasphemy when I shoved my blade up and into his heart.

“I lowered his dead body down onto the deck against a scupper-hole. When I had recovered my breath, I stepped down out of the carriage, put a foot on his chest, and, sword in hand, I severed his head from his body. I tumbled the rest of him through the railing into the sea. Then I threw the sword cane, the picnic basket, the fake beard which I stripped from his chin, and those damned cigars after it. When we reached Belfast hours later, I left the ship as Mrs. Noonan.”

“And your leaving your wealth to a husband you despised?” asked Edgar.

“To give a certain authenticity to my suicide,” she said. “Of course I knew Tancred would never live to read the letter. And his estate would pass to Wilfrid.”

“And the business of the severed head?”

“I had a score to settle,” she replied. “Besides, the object in question proved beyond a doubt that Lord Gilroy was dead.”

“And now?”

“Now I shall go to Capri and wait. My suicide will distress Wilfrid. But when he learns his brother has been murdered he will understand what I have done. Once the estate is in order, he will join me in Capri. I think by train would be best. There we’ll marry and I will be Lady Gilroy again.”

What if Wilfrid didn’t come? Edgar wanted to ask. But another look at the formidable woman and he knew the man would not dare stay away. Was this woman guilty of murder or had she only acted in self-defense? Edgar was happy he did not have to make that decision. “I wish you a happy life, madame,” he said.

“And I you,” she said with a tired smile. With the words she removed her hand from the reticule beneath her widow’s veil, where it had remained during their conversation, and he realized what she had been holding. In her catalog of the things she had thrown overboard after killing her husband, she had not mentioned his revolver.

Edgar felt a sudden need for a cigarette. Excusing himself, he went out into the passageway. At the end of the railway carriage, he took out his tobacco and tried to roll himself a cigarette. But his fingers shook too much to do the job.