Mary Clark - I 've Heard That Song Before

Susan Althorp had disappeared when Barbara had only been in the office a few years. Because of the prominence of both the Althorp and the Carrington families, the case had been investigated from every possible angle. The inability to solve it or even to be able to indict the number one suspect, Peter Carrington, had been a bone in the throat to Barbara’s predecessors, as it was to her.

From time to time, over the years, she had taken out the Susan Althorp file and reviewed it, trying to take a fresh look, circling some testimony, putting a question mark after certain statements. Unfortunately, none of it had ever led anywhere. Now, as she sat at her desk, some of Peter Carrington’s statements ran through her mind.

He claimed that he had dropped Susan at her door that night: “She didn’t wait for me to open the car door. She ran up the steps to the porch, turned the handle, waved to me, and went inside.”

“That was the last time you saw her?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went home. There were still some people dancing on the terrace. I’d been playing tennis all afternoon and was tired. I parked my car in the garage and went into the house through the side door, straight upstairs to my room and to bed. I fell asleep instantly.”

See no evil, hear no evil, Barbara thought. Interestingly enough, he used the same story the night his wife drowned in the pool.

She glanced at her watch. It was time to go. She had been sitting in on a homicide trial, just observing. Closing arguments were about to begin. In this case, the identity of the killer was not in question; rather it was a matter of whether the jury would find the defendant guilty of murder or of manslaughter. A domestic quarrel had turned violent, and now the father of three young children would probably spend at least the next twenty-five to thirty years in prison for killing their mother.

Let him! Because of him, these kids have nothing, Barbara thought as she stood up to head back to the courtroom. He should have taken the twenty-year plea we offered him. Nearly six feet tall, and always fighting a weight problem, she knew her nickname around the courthouse was “the linebacker.” She reached for a final sip of coffee from the cup on her desk.

As she did, the newspaper picture of Peter Carrington and his new wife again came into her line of vision. “You’ve had twenty-two years of freedom since Susan Althorp disappeared, Mr. Carrington,” she said aloud. “If I ever get a chance to get my hands on you, I can promise you one thing: There won’t be any plea to manslaughter. I’ll try you for murder and I’ll get a conviction.”

The two weeks we spent on our honeymoon were idyllic. We had married so quickly that we were finding out new things about each other every day, little things, like me always wanting a midmorning cup of coffee, or the fact that he loves truffles and I hate them. I hadn’t realized how basically lonely I had been until Peter was there with me all the time. Sometimes I would wake up at night and listen to his even breathing, and think how incredible it was that I was now his wife.

I had fallen so intensely in love with him, and Peter seemed to feel exactly the same way about me. When we’d started to see each other daily, he had asked, “Are you sure you can be interested in a man who is a ‘person of interest’ in two deaths?”

My answer was that long before I knew him, I absolutely believed that he was a victim of circumstances, and I knew how horrible that must have been, and, of course, continued to be for him.

“It is,” he said, “but let’s not talk about it. Kay, you give me so much joy that I can really believe there is a future, a time when the answer to Susan’s disappearance will be solved and people will know with certainty that I had nothing to do with it.” And so, during our courtship, we never talked about either Susan Althorp or Peter’s first wife, Grace. He did talk lovingly about his mother-it was obvious they had been very close. “My father was constantly traveling on business. My mother had always accompanied him. But after I was born she stayed home with me,” he reminisced.

I wondered if it was after he lost her that the look of pain had settled into his eyes.

On our honeymoon I was somewhat surprised that there were no calls to or from his office. Later I learned the reason.

The paparazzi hung around the gates of the villa he had rented, and, except for one brief walk on the public beach, we stayed on the grounds. I called to check on Maggie every day, and she grudgingly admitted that the stories about Peter had disappeared from the tabloid magazines. I began to hope that Nicholas Greco had run into a blank wall in his investigation of the Susan Althorp disappearance; a blank wall at least as far as Peter was concerned.

I found out soon enough that I was living on false hope.

Home: It seemed impossible to me that I would ever call the Carrington mansion home. As we were driven through the gates on the return from our honeymoon, I thought of the child I had been when I crept upstairs to the chapel, and the trepidation I had felt in late October when I came to ask Peter to allow me to hold a reception here.

I was uneasy when, on the flight back, Peter had become more and more quiet, but I thought I knew the reason. He would once again be in the glare of publicity, and with the demands of his position would not be able to avoid it. I had resigned from the library regretfully, because I loved my job. On the other hand, I had done some serious thinking about how best I could help Peter. I was going to suggest to him that he plan to do a lot of traveling for his company. There would be less interest in Greco’s ongoing investigation if the prime target was not around to be followed all the time by the media. Of course I would travel with him.

“Does one still carry a bride over the threshold?” Peter asked as the car stopped at the front door.

I sensed immediately that he would be very uncomfortable if the answer was yes, and wondered if he had carried Grace over the threshold when they were married twelve years ago. “I’d rather walk in hand in hand,” I said, and I knew my answer pleased him.

After our blissful two weeks in the Caribbean, that first evening in the mansion was oddly uncomfortable. In a mistaken gesture of “welcome home,” Elaine had ordered a gourmet dinner served by a caterer, relegating the Barrs to the kitchen. Instead of the small dining room that looked out over the terrace, she had ordered it served in the large formal one. Even though she had been wise enough to have us placed opposite each other in the center of the banquet-sized table, with the two waiters hovering around us the dinner felt stilted and awkward.

We were both glad when it was over and we could go upstairs. Peter’s suite consisted of two very large bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, divided by a beautiful sitting room. Everything about the bedroom to the right of the parlor made it unmistakably a man’s domain. It had two massive hand-carved dressers, a handsome maroon leather couch and matching chairs by the fireplace, a king-sized bed with bookshelves over it, and a television screen that could be lowered from the ceiling at the push of a button. The walls were white, the coverlet had black and white squares, the carpet was charcoal gray. Several paintings depicting different scenes from fox hunting in the English countryside adorned the walls.

The bedroom on the other side of the parlor had always been occupied by the Carrington lady of the house. Peter’s wife, Grace, had been the last one to use it. Before that, Elaine had slept there, and before that, Peter’s mother, and all his maternal ancestors back to 1848. It was very feminine, with pale peach walls and peach and green draperies, headboard, and bedspread. A love seat and lady chairs near the fireplace made the room look cozy and welcoming. A truly beautiful painting of a garden scene was above the mantel of the fireplace. I knew that soon I would want to put my own stamp on the room because I like more vibrant colors, but it amused me to think that I could have tucked my little studio into it.