“I want your perceptions, not a verbatim account.”
Dr. Yantha, who’d been sitting erect, relaxed slightly. Perhaps he was about to drop his obstructionist attitude.
“They never met my criteria for classification as a ‘happy family’.”
From the movies, Rhona realized psychiatrists didn’t offer opinions but waited until their patients couldn’t bear the silence and spilled out their troubles. She tried the technique. They sat and stared at one another.
“As I told you, Hollis is Tessa’s friend more than mine, but we both agreed Hollis married Paul because she thought it was time to marry and, according to my wife, he was a handsome man with sex appeal. Tessa said Hollis has been preoccupied and depressed recently, but she didn’t pry. She figured eventually Hollis would confide in her about whatever was bothering her.”
“I thought prying was a professional skill you psychiatrists prided yourselves on having.”
The doctor bristled. “My wife is not a psychiatrist—she’s a surgeon and, incidentally, psychiatrists do not pry. Anyway, Hollis was not my patient, she’s our friend. Friends exchange confidences, but it has to go both ways or it doesn’t work,” he lectured. “Tessa and I relate so very, very splendidly—Tessa would never have anything to confide. If there was trouble in the Robertsons’ relationship, I expect loyalty to Paul and the Anglo-Saxon stiff upper lip tradition prevented Hollis from sharing the details with Tessa.”
His tone of voice when he asserted how successful his marriage was alerted Rhona, and she made a mental note to keep his comment in mind when she interviewed his wife.
“Was your wife a friend of Reverend Robertson’s?”
“No.”
“Would she have contacted Reverend Robertson in any professional capacity?”
“Professional capacity,” he repeated, and shook his head. “Tessa is a cardio-thoracic surgeon. She isn’t the sort of doctor a man who runs marathons has anything to do with.”
“One more question. I have heard Reverend Robertson characterized as a judgmental Old Testament Christian. Speaking as a psychiatrist, give me an idea how such a man rationalized his womanizing?”
“I didn’t know Paul. I don’t generalize about people I don’t know.”
Time to appeal to his professional acumen. Nothing like a little ego stroking. “I realize that, but I’m at a loss to understand how a minister lived with himself knowing he was a womanizer.”
Dr. Yantha randomly tapped the fingers of both hands on the desk as if playing a piece of music audible only to him. “I can’t speak about Paul, but, if he’s like most of us, a traumatic event in his childhood probably shaped him.” He warmed to his theme. “Perhaps he required rigid boundaries around his life to protect himself from himself. He may have needed women to constantly reassure him of his desirability, or he may have considered sex a means of exerting power. In a convoluted way, he may have told himself he was ministering to the women. I’ve dealt with more than my share of philanderers and sex offenders, and power is most often the motivating force.”
His fingers stopped, and he ostentatiously lifted his arm to bend his head over his watch.
Message received. Rhona had more questions, but first she wanted to delve more deeply into his past.
Eight
Being jarred awake in the middle of the night by her alarm left Hollis feeling even more sleep deprived and grouchy than she’d felt after Sunday’s and Monday’s insomnia. Her bones ached. She felt as if a monster magnet anchored her to the mattress. Nervy and gritty-eyed, she groaned when MacTee’s whining dragged her out of bed.
Wednesday, the day she’d promised herself she’d investigate her husband’s bedroom, the inner sanctum, the forbidden room she’d never visited when he was alive. She had to do it—no matter what dark secrets awaited her. Wednesday was also the first of the two evenings Paul would lie in state in the funeral home.
Out of bed, she wavered in front of her cupboard. Indecisiveness washed over her. What was appropriate?
The doorbell heralded Elsie’s arrival.
Hollis shrugged into her dressing gown and dragged herself to the kitchen, where she said hello to Elsie and stepped outside with MacTee promising him a longer walk later. When she came back in, she found Elsie tracing the broken door frame.
“What happened here, dear?” Elsie poked her finger into a deep gouge.
“An attempted break-in, but the burglar set off the alarm. I’m calling the locksmith.”
“Poor dear, as if you haven’t had enough to contend with—I’ll deal with the locksmith.”
An hour later, she’d dressed, walked MacTee, sipped two cups of coffee, eaten a poached egg and watched the locksmith install a deadbolt. She felt better. Her organizing Virgo kicked in and said enough procrastination. Detective Simpson had said she’d send someone around to pick up his papers, but Hollis wanted to have a look at them first. Wanted to have time to unearth more of Paul’s secret life, no matter how horrible. Something was hidden in the house, something the killer wanted, and she intended to find out what that something was.
She poured a third cup of coffee, rummaged around in Paul’s downstairs study, picked the ring of keys out of his desk drawer and marched upstairs. The coffee parked on the straight chair outside Paul’s door, she remembered how he’d insisted she leave his clean laundry there for him to deal with. She tried keys until she found one that worked.
The door swung open. A gray room. No, two rooms. A second small, windowless room opened out of the first. She flipped on the overhead light and stepped through the bedroom into the smaller room rigged out as an office. The small, windowless space closed around her like a coffin.
Claustrophobia, a problem she’d coped with since her childhood, raised her temperature and made breathing difficult. It would be possible to work here only if she gritted her teeth, breathed deeply and always faced the door.
Gray dominated: gray walls, government surplus gray filing cabinets, gray steel shelving, gray metal desk and a gray waste basket. No pictures decorated the walls and no carpet covered the floor. Three cardboard bankers’ boxes, a black typewriter case and a black desk chair completed the dismal ensemble.
Claustrophobia triumphed.
She rushed from the windowless room to the bedroom, snapped the roller blind, which clattered to the top of the frame, and threw the window open. Deep breaths of sparkling spring air. She filled her lungs repeatedly. Gradually, her panic abated as the air worked its magic.
Before she pushed herself to re-enter the monastic cell to investigate the desk and read the files, she surveyed the bedroom. Paul had once told her his bedroom furniture had belonged to his father.
A worn navy and red oriental carpet lay beside the bed. A pair of black-framed steel engravings of battlefield scenes saved the gray walls from monotony. An old-fashioned tailored maroon spread piped with gray shrouded the narrow bed. On the bedside table, Paul had pushed aside a lamp with a clear glass bead base and a once-white
