Definitely, A Crime Of Passion, page 1
Definitely, a Crime of Passion
BY MARY HIGGINS CLARK
"Beware of the fury of a patient man," Henry Parker Britland IV observed sadly as he studied the picture of his former Secretary of State who had just been indicted for the murder of his lover, Arabella Young.
"Then you think poor Tommy did it?" Sandra O'Brien Britland sighed as she delicately patted homemade jam onto a delightfully hot scone.
The couple was comfortably ensconced in their king-size bed at Drumdoe, their country estate in Peapack, New Jersey. Matching breakfast trays complete with a single rose in a narrow silver vase were in front of them. The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the London Times, and L'Observateur were scattered on the delicately flowered gossamer-soft quilt.
"I find it impossible to believe," Henry said slowly. "Tom always had such iron self-control. That's what made him such a fine Secretary of State. But ever since Constance died during my second administration, he's not been himself, and when he met Arabella there's no question that he fell madly in love with her. I'll never forget when in front of Lady Thatcher he slipped and called her Poopie."
"I do wish I'd known you when you were president," Sandra said ruefully. "Oh, well, nine years ago when you were sworn in for the first time you'd have found me boring, I'm sure. How interesting could a law student be to the President of the United States? At least when you met me as a member of Congress, you thought of me with respect."
Henry turned and looked benevolently at his bride of eight months. Her hair, the color of winter wheat, was tousled. The expression in her intensely blue eyes somehow managed to simultaneously convey intelligence, warmth, wit, and humor. And sometimes childlike wonder. At their first meeting Henry had asked her if she still believed in Santa Claus.
That was the evening before the inauguration of his successor. He'd thrown a cocktail party at the White House for the about to be sworn in members of Congress.
"I believe in what Santa Claus represents, sir," she'd replied. "Don't you?"
At seven o'clock when the guests were leaving, he'd invited her to stay for a quiet dinner.
"I'm so sorry. I'm meeting my parents. I can't disappoint them."
Henry had thought of all the women who at his invitation changed their plans in a fraction of a second and realized that at last he'd found the girl of his dreams. They were married six weeks later.
The marriage of the country's most eligible bachelor, the forty-four-year-old ex-president, to the beautiful young congresswoman twelve years his junior had set off a media hype that threatened to be unending.
The fact that Sandra's father was a motorman on the New Jersey Central Railroad, that she had worked her way through St. Peter's College and Fordham Law School, spent two years as a public defender, and then in a stunning upset won the congressional seat of the Jersey City longtime incumbent, earned her the cheers of womankind.
Henry's status as one of the most popular United States presidents of the twentieth century as well as possessor of a great private fortune and his regular appearance at the top of the list of the sexiest men in America made other men wonder why the gods had so favored him.
On their wedding day one tabloid had run the headline: LORD HENRY BRINTHROP MARRIES OUR GAL SUNDAY, a takeoff on the popular radio soap opera of the 1930s that five days a week had asked the question "Can a girl from a mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of England's richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrop?"
Sandra had immediately become known to one and all, including her doting husband, as Sunday. She hated the nickname but had become resigned when Henry pointed out that he thought of her as a Sunday kind of love, which was his favorite song, and how people who voted for her embraced it. "Like Tip O'Neill," he said. "That suited him. Sunday suits you."
Now seeing the genuine concern in Henry's eyes, she covered his hand with hers. "You're worried about Tommy. What can we do to help him?"
"Not very much, I'm afraid. I'll certainly check to see if the defense lawyer he hired is good, but no matter whom he gets it's a particularly vicious crime. Think about it. The woman was shot three times with Tommy's gun in his library right after he told people that she had broken up with him."
Sunday examined the front page picture of a beaming Thomas Shipman, his arm around the dazzling thirty-year-old who had helped to dry his tears after his wife's death. "How old is Tommy?" Sunday asked.
"Sixty-five, give or take a year."
Together they soberly studied the photograph. Tommy was a trim, lean man with thinning gray hair, and a scholarly face. Arabella Young's wildly teased tresses fell around her shoulders. She'd had a boldly pretty face and the kind of curves found on Playboy covers.
"May and December," Sunday commented. "They probably say that about us."
"Oh, Henry, be quiet. And don't try to pretend that you aren't really upset."
"I am," Henry said softly. "I can't imagine what I'd have done when I found myself sitting in the Oval Office after only one term in the Senate without Tommy at my side. Thanks to him I weathered those first months without falling on my face. When I was all set to have it out with Yeltsin, Tommy in his calm, deliberate way showed me how wrong I'd be to force a confrontation and then somehow conveyed the impression that he was only a sounding board for my own decision. Tommy is a gentleman through and through. He's honest, he's smart, he's loyal."
"But he's also a man who must have been aware that people were joking about his relationship with Arabella and how smitten he was with her. Then when she finally wanted out, he lost it," Sunday observed. "That's pretty much the way you see it, isn't it?"
"Yes. Temporary insanity." Henry picked up his breakfast tray and put it on the night table. "Nevertheless he was always there for me and I'm going to be there for him. He's been allowed to post bond. I'm going to see him."
Sunday shoved her tray aside, then managed to catch her half-empty coffee cup before it spilled onto the quilt. "I'm coming too," she said. "Give me ten minutes in the Jacuzzi and I'll be ready."
Henry watched his wife's long legs as she slid out of bed. "The Jacuzzi. What a splendid idea!"
Thomas Acker Shipman tried to ignore the media camped outside his driveway. The lawyer at his side had just forced his way from the car into the house. The events of the day finally hit him and he visibly slumped. "I think a scotch is in order," he said quietly.
Defense attorney Leonard Hart looked at him sympathetically. "I'd say you deserved one. I just want to reassure you that if you insist we'll go ahead with a plea bargain, but I do think we could put together a very strong temporary-insanity defense and I wish you'd agree to go to trial. You went through the agony of losing a beloved wife, then fell in love with a young woman who accepted many gifts from you and then spurned you."
Hart's voice became passionate as though he were addressing a jury. "You asked her to come here and talk it over and then when she arrived you lost your head and killed her. The gun was out only because you planned to kill yourself."
The former secretary of state looked puzzled. "That's how you see it?"
Hart seemed surprised at the question. "Of course. It will be a little hard to explain how you could simply leave Miss Young bleeding on the floor, go upstairs to bed, and sleep so soundly that the next morning you didn't even hear your housekeeper scream when she saw the body; but at a trial we'd contend that you were in shock."
"Would you?" Shipman asked wearily. "I wasn't in shock. In fact after that martini I barely remember what Arabella and I said to each other, never mind recall shooting her."
Leonard Hart looked pained. "I think, sir, that I must beg you not to make statements like that to anyone. Will you promise? And may I suggest that from now on you go easy on the scotch?"
From behind the drapery, Thomas Shipman watched as his rotund attorney was charged by the media. Rather like the lions released on the solitary Christian, he thought. Only it wasn't Hart's blood they wanted.
He had sent word to Lillian West, his daily housekeeper, to stay home today. He knew last evening when the indictment was handed down that television cameras would witness every step of his leaving the house in handcuffs, the arraignment, fingerprinting, plea of innocence, and less-than-triumphant return. He didn't want her subjected to their attention.
The house felt quiet and lonely. For some unfathomable reason his mind began to slip back to the day he and Constance had bought it thirty years ago. They'd driven up to have lunch at the Bird and Bottle near Bear Mountain and taken a leisurely drive back to Manhattan. It was when they impulsively wandered through local streets in Tarrytown that they'd come across the FOR SALE sign in front of the turn-of-the-century residence overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades.
And for the next twenty-eight years, two months, and ten days we lived here happily ever after, Shipman thought as-deciding against the scotch-he wandered into the kitchen and reached for the percolator.
Even when he served as Secretary of State they managed occasional weekends here, enough of them to restore their souls. Until one morning two years ago when Constance said, "Tom, I don't feel so well." And a moment later she was gone.
Working twenty hours a day helped to numb the pain. I became known as the Flying Secretary, Shipman thought with a slight smile. But Henry and I did a lot of good. We left Washington and the country in better shape than it's been in years.
He measured coffee into the filt
What had they said to each other in the library? He vaguely remembered how angry he had become. How had he been driven to such an act of violence? How could he have left her bleeding and stumbled up to bed?
The phone rang. Shipman didn't answer it. Instead he walked over to it, turned the ringer to "off," and disconnected the answering device.
When the coffee was ready he poured a cup and with slightly trembling hands carried it into the living room. Normally he'd have settled in his big leather chair in the library, but now he wondered if he'd ever be able to enter that room again.
From outside he heard shouting. He knew the media were still there but what was the point of all the racket? Yet even before he looked out the window, Thomas Shipman guessed which visitor had created such a furor.
The former president of the United States was on the scene to offer aid and comfort.
The Secret Service men tried to hold the media back. His arm protectively around his wife, Henry voluntarily made a statement. "As always in this great country, a man is innocent until proven guilty. Thomas Shipman was a truly great Secretary of State and remains a close friend. Sunday and I are here in friendship."
As the former president reached the porch, Shipman unlocked and opened the door. It was only when it had closed behind the Britlands and he felt himself embraced in a warm bear hug that Thomas Shipman began to sob.
. . .
Sunday insisted on preparing lunch for the three of them. "You'll feel a lot better when you have something hot in your stomach, Tom," she said as she sliced tomatoes, peppers, seal-lions and ham for a western omelette.
Shipman had regained his composure. Somehow the presence of Henry gave him, at least for the moment, the sense that he could handle whatever he had to face. Sunday's brisk, sure movements at the chopping board brought back a more recent memory of Palm Beach and watching someone else prepare a salad and dreaming dreams about a future that now could never be.
Glancing out the window, he realized that the shade was raised and, if somebody managed to sneak around to the back of the house, there was a perfect opportunity to take a picture of the three of them. Shipman got up and drew the shade to the windowsill.
"You know," he said, "pulling down this shade made me think of how last year some salesman talked me into putting an electric setup on the draperies in all the other rooms. They did something wrong in the library and when you click to open or close the draperies, you'd swear someone had fired a gun. You've heard about coming events casting their shadows before? Ah, well."
He sat across the table from Henry, thinking of the many times they'd faced each other across the desk in the Oval Office. Now he found the courage to say steadily, "Mr. President..."
"Tommy, knock it off."
"All right, Henry. We're both lawyers."
"So is Sunday," Henry reminded him. "And she worked as a public defender before she ran for office."
Shipman smiled wanly. "Then I suggest she's our resident expert. Sunday, did you ever launch a defense where your client was dead drunk and not only shot his... friend... three times but left her to bleed to death while he slept off a hangover?"
"I defended a number of people who were so high on drugs they didn't remember committing a crime."
"They were found guilty, of course."
"They had the book thrown at them," she admitted.
"Exactly. My attorney, Len Hart, is a capable fellow, but as I see it, my only course is to plea-bargain in the hope that in exchange for a guilty plea the state will not seek the death penalty."
Henry and Sunday watched as their friend stared unsee-ingly ahead. "You understand," Shipman continued, "that I took the life of a young woman who ought to have enjoyed perhaps fifty more years on this planet. If I go to prison I probably won't last more than five or ten years. The confinement, however long it lasts, may help to expiate this awful guilt before I am called to meet my Maker."
They were all silent as Sunday finished tossing a salad, then poured beaten eggs into a heated skillet, added the tomatoes, peppers, scallions and ham, folded the ends of the eggs into flaps, and flipped the omelette over. The toast popped up as she slid the first omelette onto a heated plate and placed it in front of Shipman. "Eat," she commanded.
Twenty minutes later, when Shipman pushed the last bit of salad onto a crust of toast and looked at the empty plates on the table, he observed, "It is an embarrassment of riches, Henry, that with a French chef in your kitchen you are also blessed with a wife who is a culinary delight."
"That's because I was a short-order cook when I was working my way through Fordham," Sunday explained. Then she said quietly, "Tommy, there have got to be some extenuating circumstances that will help you. We understand that Arabella had broken up with you, but why was she here that night?"
Shipman did not answer immediately. "She dropped in," he said evasively.
"You weren't expecting her?" Sunday asked quickly. "Er, no, I wasn't."
Henry leaned forward. "Tom, as Will Rogers said, 'All I know is just what I read in the papers.' According to the media, you had phoned Arabella and begged her to talk to you. She came over that evening around nine."
"That's right. She came over around nine." Henry and Sunday exchanged glances. Clearly there was something Tom was not telling them.
"Tom, we want to help you," Henry said gently. Shipman sighed. "Arabella had been phoning me," he explained. "I returned her last call and we agreed it was important to sit down and talk things out. However, we made no specific date. I did not expect her the night of the tragedy."
"Where did you keep the gun?" Henry asked. "Quite frankly, I was surprised that you had one registered to you. You supported the Brady bill."
"I'd totally forgotten it," Shipman said tonelessly. "It was in the back of the safe for years. Then it came up in conversation that there's going to be another drive to turn in guns for toys. I was clearing out the safe, came across the gun, and decided to contribute it to the drive. I left it out on the library table, the bullets beside it, planning to drop it off at the police station in the morning."
Sunday knew that she and Henry were sharing the same thought. Not only had Tom killed Arabella but he'd loaded the gun after her arrival.
"Tom, what were you doing before Arabella came in?" Henry asked.
They watched as Shipman considered and then answered, "I had been at the annual stockholders' meeting of American Micro. It was an exhausting day. I had a dreadful cold. My housekeeper prepared dinner at seven-thirty. I ate a little and went upstairs immediately afterward. I was suffering from chills and took a long hot shower, then got into bed. I hadn't slept well for several nights and took a sleeping pill. I was in a sound sleep when Lillian knocked at the door and said Arabella was downstairs. Lillian, I might add, was just about to leave."
"You came back downstairs?"
"Yes. Lillian left. Arabella was in the library."
"Were you pleased to see her?"
"No, I was not. I was so groggy from the sleeping pill I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was angry that she had simply come without warning. As you may remember, there's a bar in the library. Arabella had already prepared a martini for each of us."
"Tom, why would you even think of drinking a martini on top of a sleeping pill?"
"Because I'm a fool," Shipman snapped. "Because I was so sick of Arabella's loud voice and cackling laugh that I thought I'd go mad if I didn't drown it out."
Henry and Sunday stared at Shipman. "I thought you were crazy about her," Henry said.
"I was the one who broke it off," Shipman told him. "As a gentleman I thought it proper to tell people it had been her decision. Anyone looking at the disparity in our ages and personalities would certainly have believed that. The truth was that I had finally-temporarily as it turns out-come to my senses."
"Then why were you calling her?"
"Because she was phoning me in the middle of the night, every hour on the hour. I warned her that it could not go on. She pleaded for a meeting and I agreed to see her in the near future but not that night."
"Tom, why haven't you told this to the police? Everyone thinks it was a crime of passion."
