“Physical attraction.” Marguerite nodded her head. “He certainly had that, and he used his sexual magnetism to exert power.”
“You’re right about the power. Although I’m realizing how little I knew my husband, I do know power motivated him. I suspect he maintained his compartmentalized life to prevent any one person from finding out enough about him to exercise power over him.” They sat for a moment in silence. “Did he try to control you?”
“Tried, but didn’t succeed,” Marguerite said with a wry smile.
“Maybe control and power were the factors attracting him to counselling?”
Marguerite’s face froze. She rose and paced slowly. The third board squeaked every time she stepped on it. She stopped in front of Hollis.
“It’s a shocking thing to say to anyone let alone his widow, but I’m relieved Paul is dead. A situation arose recently. I had to act, but I procrastinated.” Her eyes filled, and she collapsed into her chair, slumped forward with her head in her hands. Her voice was muffled. “God, if only I’d been decisive.”
Her dramatic emotional reaction alarmed Hollis. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it . . .” For moments, Marguerite didn’t say anything. Finally, she lifted her head and revealed eyes filled with pain.
Hollis couldn’t imagine what Marguerite would reveal and didn’t know if she was strong enough to hear whatever Marguerite was going to say.
“Almost a month ago,” Marguerite said in a low voice, “a woman who’d been seeing Paul professionally came to me in a terrible state. She said Paul had initiated sex during a counselling session and, although she hadn’t wanted to because she felt it was wrong, she gave in. She’d ended the counselling sessions and wanted me to know what had happened.
“I believed her charge, agreed he’d been way out of line and said I’d speak to him and report what he’d done. I intended to confront Paul immediately, but I put it off. He would have challenged the woman’s story, said she was unstable, made light of the allegation. I did intend to act, to take the matter to Presbytery.” Marguerite’s voice quivered. “It’s no good saying what I would have done, I didn’t do anything and she committed suicide. If I’d acted promptly and reassured her Presbytery would consider her complaint, she might be alive.”
A sexual predator. Hollis wanted the words to go back in Marguerite’s mouth. “How horrible,” she said and thought what an inadequate word it was.
“The problem didn’t end with her death. I’ve considered what I should do—she probably wasn’t an isolated case—and I knew I had to track down other victims and bring Paul to justice. It’s cowardly of me, but you realize why I’m relieved.”
Hollis swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat. She thought of Paul in his office, seducing an endless line of needy, damaged women and felt sick. Not now. Time to share her suspicions. “I think he also was having an affair.” She avoided Marguerite’s eyes. “He often stayed out all night. The first time it happened, I asked him where he’d been, and he told me it was none of my business.” Hollis met Marguerite’s gaze. “Do you know who she was?”
“Hollis, you don’t want to know. What good will it do?”
“Yes, I do. Everything. I have to know everything.”
Marguerite peered at her moccasins.
“Really, it will help me,” Hollis said in what she hoped sounded like a reasonable tone of voice.
“I can’t imagine how, but I suppose if I don’t tell you, someone else will.” Marguerite leaned forward and addressed her moccasins. “Sally Staynor.” She concentrated on drawing a circle with her toe. “And there’s more. She made a scene in church this morning when I informed the congregation of Paul’s death.”
Great. Anyone who hadn’t heard would figure it out. Who was she kidding? Probably she’d been one of the few not to have heard about Sally and Paul’s relationship. “Is there a Mr. Staynor?”
Marguerite, looking as if she regretted telling Hollis, bent forward to pick up their glasses and place them on the tray. “He’s a butcher and owns the Chop Shop.” Marguerite shivered. “It isn’t summer yet. Now that the sun’s gone, it’s chilling down. Let me scramble or boil a couple of eggs. My mom always made a soft-boiled egg with toast fingers when we were sick or unhappy.”
Get up. Go. No more talk, no more revelations. She stood. If she didn’t get out of here, she’d explode, howl—she didn’t know what she’d do. How could he have done what he’d done? How could she have been so stupid, so unaware? She pulled her pink jacket tightly around her as if to contain her rage. Taking a deep breath, she relied on forty-four years of training in civil behaviour. “Thanks, but if you’ll loan me the keys, I’ll check Paul’s appointment calendar.”
Marguerite’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, reaching forward to touch Hollis’s arm.
Was she? No, definitely not, but she had to keep going and find out everything. “Not great, but I’ll be fine.”
Marguerite looked into her eyes for a minute. “Okay. Bring the keys to St. Mark’s tomorrow morning. Barbara always arrives before I do. I’ve been a night owl since I was a baby.” She finished loading the tray. “Hollis, don’t get mixed up in the investigation. Leave it to the police.”
“Taking a peek at his calendar isn’t going to do any harm.”
At St. Mark’s, Hollis unlocked the green door and let herself into the vestibule of the church annex. In the eerie light of the low wattage bulbs, she peered up half a flight toward Marguerite’s office and down half a flight to a hall leading to a warren of rooms and Paul’s office.
The building didn’t feel empty.
Spooky.
She was being stupid—overreacting. Too much had happened to her in one day. Of course the building was empty. No one would be in the church late on a Sunday night.
Telling herself not to be ridiculous, she forced herself to march downstairs to the lower hall.
When the total darkness inside the first open door seeped out and wrapped its tentacles around her, she walked faster and gave herself instructions. Eyes forward. Don’t look left or right. Go straight to the end of the hall.
Yellow police tape stretched across the doorway to Paul’s office.
Retracing her steps was impossible. She couldn’t pass those yawning doorways again. She had no choice but to rip the tape, fumble for the lock, rush into the office, flick on the light and collapse against the door when the lock clicked shut.
Her only other visit had occurred shortly after her marriage three years before. She’d dropped in to invite Paul out for lunch and been told, in a pleasant but non-negotiable tone, that his office was off limits. If she wanted him, she was to phone.
A room with a split personality. Cheap mismatched office furniture crowded the front. A couch, three upholstered chairs, a scarred coffee table, and a beleaguered split-leaf philodendron reaching frantically for light, huddled at the rear.
In the office section, everything on Paul’s desk reflected his obsession with order. Two books bristling with slips of paper marking particular passages sat precisely in the middle of the perfectly centred brass-cornered desk blotter. An empty “out” basket beneath an “in” basket stacked with papers awaiting the attention they would never receive anchored the left corner of the desk. A pen and pencil set in an onyx-based holder centred above the blotter lined up with Paul’s appointment calendar next to the phone at the top