The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (22 page)

My dander was up, and I wasn’t about to back off. “Ma’am, “ I said, “I’m sorry to cause a scene, but your son here raped my cousin Billy Jean and now she
is expecting his baby.”

Mrs Sheldon reared back like a horse spooked by a snake. “How dare you,” she hissed. “My son is a gentleman, which is more than I can say about you or your kin.” She
made a kind of snorting noise in the back of her throat. “The very idea of any Ferguson woman being able to name the father of her children with any certainty is absurd. Now get off my
property before I call the police. And take your slut of a cousin with you.”

It was my turn to grab Billy Jean. I thought she was fixing to rip Mrs Sheldon’s face off. “ You evil witch,” she screamed as I pulled her away.

Ruthie stared Mrs Sheldon down. When she spoke her voice was cold and sharp. I know I hoped she’d never use that tone of voice to me. “You should be ashamed of yourself,”
she said, turning on her heel and walking back to the truck, head high. I never knew to this day whether she meant Kenny or his mother or both of them.

What happened that evening must have had some effect, though. A week later, Kenny was gone.

Back in the early Sixties, being an unwed mother was still about the biggest disgrace around and most girls who got into trouble ended up disowned and despised. But Billy Jean
was lucky in her parents. The Fergusons never had much money but they had love aplenty. When she told them she was pregnant and how it had happened, they’d been shocked, but they hadn’t
been angry with her. Her father went round to see old man Sheldon. He never told anybody what passed between them, not even Mrs Ferguson, but he came back with a cashier’s check for ten
thousand dollars.

Nobody knew where Kenny was. His mother told her church crowd that he’d landed a big important radio job out on the coast, but nobody believed her. Truth to tell, I don’t think
anybody much cared. We certainly didn’t.

Jeff and I were married three months later. I guess we were both kind of fired up by Billy Jean being pregnant. We wanted to start a family of our own. We moved into a little house on
Jeff’s daddy’s farm and Jeff started working as a trainee sales representative for an agricultural machinery firm.

Half a mile down the track from us there was an old double-wide trailer that had seen better days. Jeff’s dad used to rent it out to seasonal workers. We persuaded him to let Billy Jean
have it for next to nothing in return for doing it up. We knew there wasn’t enough room in her parents’ house for Billy Jean and a growing kid and I wanted her to be close at hand so we
could bring up our children together.

Jeff and I spent most of our spare time knocking that trailer into shape. Billy Jean helped as much as she could, and by the time Jess was born, we’d turned it into a proper little home
for the two of them. They moved in when Jess was six weeks old, and Billy Jean looked relaxed for the first time since Kenny had raped her. “I can never thank the two of you enough,”
she said so many times I told her she should just make a tape of it and give us each a copy.

“It was Ruthie’s idea,” Jeff said, acting like it was nothing to do with him.

“I know,” Billy Jean said. “But I also know you did more than your fair share to make it happen.”

We settled into a pretty easy routine. I worked mornings on the farm, helping Jeff’s mother with the specialty yogurt business she was building up. Afternoons, I’d hang out with
Billy Jean and Jess. Then I’d cook dinner for Jeff, we’d either watch some TV or walk down to have a beer and a few hands of cards with Billy Jean. Most people might have thought our
lives pretty dull, but it seemed fine enough to us.

There was one thing, I thought, that stopped it being perfect. A year had gone by since Jeff and I had married, but still I wasn’t pregnant. It wasn’t for want of trying, but I began
to wonder whether my lack of enthusiasm for sex was somehow preventing it. I knew this was crazy, but it nagged away at me.

Finally, I managed to talk to Billy Jean about it. It was a hot summer afternoon and Jess was over at her grandma’s house. Billy Jean and I were lying on her bed with the only a/c in the
trailer cranked up high. “I love him,” I said. “But when we make love, it’s not like it says in the books and magazines. It doesn’t feel like it looks in the movies. I
just don’t feel that whole swept away thing.”

Billy Jean rolled over on to her back and yawned. “I’m not the best person to ask, Ruth. I only ever had sex the once and that sure wasn’t what you would call a good
experience. I don’t guess it’s the kind of thing you can talk to Jeff about either.”

I made a face. “He’d be mortified. He thinks I think he’s the greatest lover on the planet.” Billy Jean giggled. “Well, you have to make them feel like
that.”

Billy Jean yawned again. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I don’t mean you to feel like I’m dismissing you, but I am so damn tired. I was up three times with Jess last night.
She’s teething.”

“Why don’t you just have a nap?” I said. But she was already drifting away. I made myself more comfortable and before I knew it, I’d nodded off too.

I woke because someone was kissing me. An arm was heavy across my chest and shoulder, a leg was thrown between mine and soft lips were pressing on mine, a tongue flicking between my lips. I
opened my eyes and the mouth pulled back from mine. A face that was familiar and yet completely strange hovered above mine.
Jeff with long hair
, I thought stupidly for a moment before the
truth dawned.

Billy Jean put a finger to my lips. . . . “Ssh,” she said “Let’s see if we can figure out what Jeff’s doing wrong.”

By the end of the afternoon, I understood that it wasn’t what Jeff did that was wrong. It was who he was.

Kenny came back a couple of weeks before Jess’s fourth birthday. It turned out his mother hadn’t been lying to the church group. He had landed a job working for
a radio station in Los Angeles. He was doing pretty well. Had his own show and everything. He rolled back into town in a muscle car with a beautiful blonde on his arm. His fiancee,
apparently.

All of that would have been just fine if he had left the past alone. But no. He wanted to impress the fiancee with his credentials as a family man. The first thing we knew about it was when
Billy Jean got a letter from Kenny’s lawyer saying he planned to file suit for shared custody. Kenny wanted Jess for one week a month until she started school, then he wanted her for half the
school vacations. If he’d been the standard absent father as opposed to one who had never even seen his kid, it might have sounded reasonable. And we had a sneaking feeling that the court
might see things Kenny’s way.

Justice in Marriott comes courtesy of His Honour Judge Wellesley Benton. Who is an old buddy of Kenny Sheldon’s daddy and a man who’s put a fair few of Billy Jean’s
relatives behind bars. We were, to say the least, apprehensive.

The day after the letter came, Billy Jean happened to be walking down Main Street when Kenny strolled out of the Coffee Bean Scene with the future Mrs. Sheldon. I heard all about it from Mom,
who saw it all from the vantage point of the quilting store porch.

Billy Jean just lit into him. Called him all the names under the sun from rapist to deadbeat dad. Kenny looked shocked at first, then when he saw his fiancee wasn’t turning a hair, he
started to laugh. That just drove Billy Jean even crazier. She was practically hysterical. Mom came over from the quilt shop and grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to get her away. Then Kenny
said, “I’ll see you in court,” and walked his fiancee to the car. Billy Jean was fit to be tied.

Well, everybody thinks they know what happened next. That night, Kenny was due at a dinner in the Town Hall. As he approached, a figure stepped out of the shadows. Long blonde hair, jeans and
a Western shirt, just like Billy Jean always liked to wear. And a couple of witnesses who were a ways off but who knew Billy Jean well enough to recognize her when she raised the shotgun and blew
Kenny Sheldon into the next world.

That was the end of her as much as it was the end of him.

I knew Billy Jean was innocent. Not out of some crazy misplaced belief, but because at the very moment Kenny Sheldon was meeting his maker, I was in her bed, moaning at her
touch. That first afternoon had not been a one-off. It had been an awakening that had led us both into a deeper happiness than we’d ever known before.

If I’d been married to anyone other than Jeff, I’d have left in a New York minute. But I cared about him. More importantly, so did Billy Jean. “You’re both my best
friend,” she said as we lay in a tangle of sheets. “Until this afternoon, I couldn’t have put one of you above the other. You gotta stay with him, Ruth. You gotta go on being his
wife because I couldn’t live with myself if you didn’t.”

And so I did. It might seem strange to most folks, but in a funny kind of way, it worked out just fine for us. Except of course that I still couldn’t get pregnant. I began to think of that
as the price I had to pay for my other contentments – Jeff, Billy Jean, Jess.

Then Kenny came back.

They came for Billy Jean soon after midnight. A deputy we’d all been at school with knocked on our door at one in the morning, carrying Jess in a swaddle of bedclothes. He looked mortified
as he explained what had happened and asked us to take care of the child till morning when things could be sorted out more formally.

Jess had often stayed with us, so she settled pretty easy. That morning, I drove into town, leaving Jess with her grandma, and demanded to see Billy Jean. She was white and drawn, her eyes heavy
and haunted. “They can’t prove it,” she said. “You have to promise me you will never tell. Don’t sacrifice yourself trying to save me. They won’t believe you
anyway and you’ll have shamed yourself in their eyes for nothing. Just have faith. We both know I’m innocent. Judge Benton isn’t a fool. He won’t let them get away with
it.”

And so I kept my mouth shut. Partly for Billy Jean and partly for Jess. We’d already made arrangements with Billy Jean and her parents for me and Jeff to take care of Jess till after the
court case, and I wasn’t about to do anything that would jeopardize that child’s future. I sat through that terrible trial day after day. I listened to witnesses swearing they had seen
Billy Jean kill Kenny Sheldon and I said not a word.

Nor did Billy Jean. She said she was somewhere else, but refused to say where or with whom. Judge Benton offered her the way out. “Woman, what is your alibi?” he thundered. “If
you were somewhere else that night, then you won’t have to die. If you’re telling the truth, give up your alibi.” But she wouldn’t budge. And so I couldn’t. It nearly
killed me.

But I never truly thought he would have her hanged.

I never truly thought he would have her hanged. I thought they’d argue she was temporarily insane because of the threat to her child and that she’d do a few
years in jail, nothing more. And I was selfish enough to think of how much my Ruthie would love bringing up Jess for as long as Billy Jean was behind bars.

Sure, I wanted to make her suffer. But I didn’t want her to die. She was my best friend, after all. A friend like no other. I swear, I always believed we would lay down our lives for
each other if it came to it. And I guess I was right, in a way. She laid down her life rather than destroy my marriage.

When the sentence came down, it hit me like a physical blow. I swear I doubled over in pain as I realized the full horror of what I’d done. But it was too late. The sacrifices were
made, the chips down once and for all.

I saw the way she looked at me in court. A mixture of pity and blame. As soon as she heard those witnesses, recognized the conviction in their voices, I think she knew the truth. With a long
blonde wig and the right clothes, I could easily be mistaken for her.

There was an excuse for the witnesses. They were a way off from Kenny and his killer. But there’s no excuse for Ruthie. She was no distance at all from Billy Jean that afternoon I saw
them by the lake shore. She could not have been mistaken.

Why didn’t I confront her? Why didn’t I walk away? I guess because I loved them both so much. I didn’t want to lose the life we had. I just wanted Billy Jean to suffer for a
while, that was all. I never truly thought he would have her hanged.

Jess turned fourteen today. She’s not old enough for the truth. Maybe she’ll never be that old. But there’s one thing she is old enough for.

Tonight, there will be two of us standing over Billy Jean’s grave, our long black veils drifting in the wind, our tears sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight.

Susanna Gregory

London, 1663

Thomas Chaloner, spy for the Lord Chancellor, hated assignments like the one he had been given that morning. He did not mind the physical labour of excavating a tomb in
the hour before dawn – although he would have been happier had it not been raining so hard. And he enjoyed the challenge of disguising himself as a gravedigger – donning the filthy
clothes of the trade and staining his teeth brown, so that even his own mother would not have recognized him. He did not even mind manhandling corpses. But what Chaloner didn’t like was
causing distress to the dead woman’s son and daughter, who had objected strenuously to their mother’s final resting place being disturbed. Nor did he like the possibility that he might
be ordered to steal what was in the coffin with her.

“How much longer?” demanded John Pargiter, wealthy goldsmith and husband of the deceased. He was a tall man, with a long nose and a reputation for dishonesty – the
Goldsmith’s Company had fined him several times for coin-clipping and shoddy workmanship. “My arm aches from holding this lamp and I’m soaking wet.”

“This foul weather is a sign of God’s displeasure,” declared Pargiter’s son Francis, hugging his sobbing sister closer to him. “This is an evil deed, and you will
pay for it on Judgment Day.”