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“I really enjoyed killing her.” Jenny’s voice wasn’t a child’s anymore. It seemed especially evil that she should make such a pronouncement in this little place of consecrated ground. “I became quite expert at archery when Daddy here was doing research for his book, Robin of Nottinghill Gate. Simon tried to talk me out of retiring Mrs. Delacorte. He said it might stir up a panic among the widows, but Simon always comes around to my way of thinking. That’s what love does-it turns people into fools. I rather enjoy watching the good doctor squirm for me the way my mother used to squirm for Daddy.”

“Not true, Wren,” said Edwin Digby.

“Yes, she did. She, the sparkling, glittering Sylvania, who had men reaching for her every time she stepped on stage and lit it up with her voice. She was ageless and she loved you, God only knows why, you ugly man, only to discover that you were trying to relive some adolescent passion with your secretary, the washed up, washed out Lady Peerless.” Jenny took on Teddy’s toothiness. “And because of you and your unfaithfulness, my mother, my exquisite mother, stuck her head in the oven and wasn’t lucky enough to die. She became a husk. I can look in her eyes and call, but she isn’t there.”

Edwin Digby took a step toward his daughter and then retreated, the gun dangling in his hand. “Wrong, Wren! Your mother never really loved me. Her one passion was her career; she would never acknowledge she was married, even after you were born. She was obsessed with keeping up the aura of being unattainable. She insisted that I use the pseudonym Edwin Digby-in private life, to tighten the veil of secrecy, and you were kept hidden away with her childhood nanny.”

He was a figure out of a vampire skit, with his twirled eyebrows and beard forked by the wind. “Teddy and I had been youthful sweethearts, but Sylvania demanded that I sever all ties with the past. Think what you will of me, all of you!” His eyes glared at Ben and me as well as his daughter. “Teddy is guiltless!” The words might sound as if they came from one of his books, but I felt drops of water on my face, that weren’t rain. “She did not realise she would be working for me when she applied for the post of my secretary, ten long years ago. She had known me under my real name of Robert Burns, which-” his rheumy eyes were turned fully on Ben and me now, “I never used professionally, for obvious reasons.”

“And you fell in love.” Jenny (she would always be that to me) made the words sound like gutter ones.

“I swear there was no unfaithfulness. What drove your mother mad”-Mr. Digby’s lips twisted-“was the idea of so unworthy a rival.”

Jenny smiled mockingly. “You did not think it unfaithful to ask Mumma for a divorce.”

I said, to be saying something, “The parrot in Teddy’s office talks like one of your characters, Mr. Digby.”

“A farewell present, Mrs. Haskell. Teddy was ever a bird fancier. I settled in Chitterton Fells to be near her, even though we had assured each other that all was over between us. I came to the Haskell wedding reception,” the wind lifted his crinkly hair from his high forehead, “but too late, too drunk, to catch a glimpse. The first time I saw Teddy in all the years, other than to pass on the street, was at the restaurant soiree, the night Charles Delacorte died.”

“Teddy saw your daughter there.” I wrenched my eyes away from Jenny’s smile. “Maybe she wasn’t sure at first, but then the full horror must have hit her-that this was Wren,” I inched closer to Ben, “grown frighteningly younger than when last seen. No wonder Teddy blundered into the office to escape and, instead, found a body. No wonder she wouldn’t talk about that night. I don’t suppose she suspected-do you Mr. Digby?-that Wren had anything to do with Charles’s death, but I don’t doubt she blamed herself, all over again, for the old tragedy and… the results to Mother and now…”

Jenny was still smiling. “I’m not mad and I do not consider myself a criminal.”

Mr. Digby steadied the gun again. Mother trod over his feet, as he said, “I have not seen Teddy since that night.”

“I imagine,” Ben said to Wren, “that it was your father’s latest pseudonym, that of Felicity Friend, that embarked you on your voyage of revenge?”

“It wasn’t only revenge.” Jenny’s voice was wistful, a child’s again. “I wanted to help other women whose husbands were betraying them. And when Daddy became Felicity Friend and I remembered that book, The Merry Widows-that sold three copies, it all became clear. I had expert medical advice from Simon, who yearned to suffer at my hands. I could kill off Daddy a little bit at a time with every other man whose death I staged and bide my time until I decided to bury him.” Her eyes were on Mother, who was standing motionless with her wings spread. “You didn’t like to refuse me, did you, Daddy, when I asked you to put the occasional message in your confidential column? I told you it was a little game I was playing. But you worried nicely about what it all meant-the dickybird brooches… the deaths, but Daddy’s little girl was too big to go in the corner. And what you didn’t see couldn’t happen. What a weakling you are! Not even man enough to fight for your Teddy bear. I wish I could think she had read The Merry Widows and suffered accordingly, but even if she had-which isn’t likely-I don’t think her capable of taking the leap from fiction to fact. And such was your downfall, Daddy. You were ever so grateful (weren’t you?) that I was looking after Mumma, and came to see you sometimes.”

Jenny gave a childish giggle and addressed me. “I was at The Aviary the day you came, and he got the wind up, first that I might do something to tease you, and then that your charwoman had recognised him as Felicity Friend. I was so tempted to cheer him up by telling him I would kill her for him.”

I drew closer to Ben. The rustling of the trees and Mother’s feathers were for a moment the only sounds. “I should have guessed, with so much typing on his desk, when supposedly he hadn’t written in years, that Mr. Digby was a prime candidate for the role of Dear Felicity. And I should have realised that the only reason to wear plaits that make you look too young for your age is because you are too old for them. I suppose that makes me rather stupid, but I really prefer that to being diabolically clever.”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Jenny stepped away from the angel. “And to think I thought you so guileless. I liked you. I really did. You gave me your wedding roses and I sent you some. But you figured out the way to trap me. Only it isn’t going to work.” She lifted up her arms and spread her fingers, as though pushing back the clouds. “It can’t work because my dear Daddy wouldn’t shoot me. He doesn’t have the courage.”

She stepped toward us. “I have nothing to lose, you see, because I have nothing to love. Mumma was gone a long time ago.”

She kept coming. She was right. Edwin Digby couldn’t pull the trigger. Closer, closer. Mother must have felt threatened, for suddenly her wings fanned out. Neck extended, she rushed toward Jenny, who turned her back and with an eerie, childish laugh, darted and zigzagged between the tombstones, arms outstretched. Maybe she didn’t look ahead, maybe she did. It doesn’t alter anything. She tripped and tumbled headlong into an open grave-the grave waiting for Ann Delacorte. And we were left standing in the wind-ruffled churchyard, listening to the gulls and the distant moan of the sea.

Epilogue

Primrose expressed my sentiments exactly. “I can have no sympathy for The Founder; but I am saddened that Jenny got lost somewhere in childhood, a place many of us like to revisit but do not want to relive, and that she is dead. Let us thank God her end was quick and trust that Mr. Digby is successful in persuading that friend of his at Scotland Yard that The Widows Club does exist. Although my strong feeling is that with its guiding force gone, the organisation may degenerate into a social group.”