“I told him that my mother was in the hospital, and that she was very sick, and asked him to help us. But Miles wouldn’t listen. He shook me off and slapped me on the face. I remember his cruel eyes and his mocking laughter. I must have walked at least a hundred blocks to return to the hospital in Lower Manhattan. When I went back to the hospital, I found out that my mother was dead.”

  Catriona suddenly remembered the photograph she had found in Ward’s room. “The woman in the picture with the child. That was you?”

  “Yes, that was me. I was put in an orphanage. I grew up hating Miles. For the last sixteen years of my life, I swore revenge. I vowed for the day when I’d be released, I’d travel to New York and I would kill him.”

  Catriona was silent. For a moment she felt sorry for Ward, growing up without a mother in an unloving orphanage. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone––hating someone so passionately that you wanted to kill them more than anything. More than being alive.

  “I wasn’t released from the orphanage until I was eighteen. And after landing a job as a waiter, my first task was to track Miles down. It wasn’t hard. He was always mentioned in the society columns and still owned the buildings on the Lower East Side. I made a point of visiting the places that Miles frequented. Like 21 and the Stork Club. I followed him everywhere. And then I found out a little about his dirty habits. Do you know how I met Miles? He used to frequent this club in the West Village called the Bluebird. So a year ago, I made a point of going there so that I would meet him.”

  Bluebird? Catriona’s mind began to work overtime. So Miles had met Ward at the Bluebird. The bar tender said that he had a number of gentlemen visitors with him.

  “I got to know Miles, make him trust me. You see I knew about Miles’s sexual proclivities. He loved anything that was kinky and sexually deviant. I had to get him to like me, to trust me. Confide in me. He didn’t know that when I was with him, I hated him inside, with all my heart and soul. He murdered my mother.”

  “So you poisoned him,” replied Catriona slowly.

  “He thought that he could trust me, but I despised him. He relished the thrill of being caught. He used to take his newest pleasure to the Bluebird. I even drove them there once. Him and the wop.”

  The penny dropped for Catriona. She knew instantly who the man Miles regularly took to the club was.

  “Ferrero’s nephew, Johnny?” said Catriona.

  Ward nodded.

  “Was he involved with Miles?”

  “Miles took him under his wing, like so many impressionable young men before him. He’d met Johnny at one of Ferrero’s parties and the two became acquainted. I used to eavesdrop on their conversation when I was driving Miles around. Pathetic, really. What Johnny didn’t know was that Miles was using him to gain information about Ferrero so he could use it against him or blackmail him. Using people. That was a specialty of Miles. And extortion. What he didn’t know is that he couldn’t use me. The same for that Polish scum who tried to blackmail me, too.”

  Polish scum? Catriona thought. The pieces of the jigsaw were all beginning to fall into place for Catriona, and it wasn’t a pretty picture.

  “Leiobesky. Did you kill him as well?” Catriona asked in almost an inaudible whisper.

  “That Polish scum thought he could blackmail me. You see he figured that I must have been the one who poisoned Miles’s cigar after he supplied me with the cyanide. He wanted money from me. What he didn’t know was just how clever I am.” He smiled. “Do you want to know how I killed him?”

  Catriona didn’t but she was morbidly intrigued.

  It was just after breakfast and the butchers were opening up their shops in the meatpacking district. They were too busy to notice Ward as he silently crossed the streets, glancing sideways at the animal carcasses that hung on the cold metal hooks. The pigs had been gutted that morning and blood dripped on the shop floors.

  Ward had just dropped Max off downtown and then instead of driving back to Belvedere, he had parked the car on 10th Street and Washington so it wouldn’t be noticed. He was wearing a pair of black leather gloves and a long overcoat. Inside his coat pocket he was carrying a concealed weapon.

  Leiobesky had rung him the night before at the house. Ward had requested a meeting the next day, saying that he would rather deal with him in person, offering to come to his apartment in the meatpacking district.

  Ward opened the door to Leiobesky’s building and took the stairs. As he had long legs, he quickly ascended to the sixth floor. He peered down the corridor making sure that there was no one in view and then marched quickly to room 606.

  Impatiently he rang the buzzer to the apartment.

  Eventually Leiobesky appeared in his dirty white vest.

  “Let me in,” Ward said, pushing his way past Leiobesky into the apartment.

  “By all means, come in,” said Leiobesky. “What is so urgent that you have to see me so early in the day?”

  Ward turned to face Leiobesky and his stomach churned. The Polish man disgusted him with his bulbous eyes, sweaty forehead and saliva dripping from his tongue.

  “Do you really have to ask me that since you’ve been calling me and trying to blackmail me?”

  Leiobesky smiled calmly. His black cat was rubbing between his legs and purring loudly, demanding to be fed.

  “Shall we get down to business?” Leiobesky said. “There is the little matter of the cyanide I supplied you. It’s interesting to read in the newspaper that Miles Kingston was poisoned by cyanide. More than a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Ward’s smile turned ugly.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Ten thousand dollars for my discretion,” said Leiobesky. “Times are hard. This is New York after all.”

  Ward nodded, hoping to put Leiobesky off guard. Then he swiftly kicked the cat that was at their feet. It howled and retreated under the sofa with fright.

  Leiobesky was just about to scream and curse when Ward suddenly drew out a large kitchen knife from his jacket and raised it in his right hand. He plunged the knife sharply into Leiobesky’s chest.

  Blood instantly spurted out. Leiobesky gasped in shock and pain.

  Ward plunged the knife again with deadly accuracy and this time the blade penetrated Leiobesky’s heart. Leiobesky let out a long terrible moan and fell forward.

  Ward caught him in his arms before he fell. Then he dragged Leiobesky under the armpits to the bathroom and propped his lifeless body on the toilet. Leiobesky’s eyes continued to stare at him.

  Scum, thought Ward as he wiped his hands on his trousers. He felt no remorse as he washed the knife in the bathroom sink, watching the sticky blood disappear down the drain. Then he went back into the room and started to ransack the apartment, looking for anything that would implicate him to the dead man.

  Catriona listened with horror as Ward delighted on telling her about the killing, obviously enjoying the sickened expression on her face.

  “So I had to kill him. He was a parasite on society. He deserved to die. You understand don’t you?” He looked at Catriona in the hope of some recognition.

  Catriona thought she was going to faint, so she clung on to the side of the dressing table. Her mind was working overtime with questions as she figured out the logic.

  “What about Johnny? Did you kill him too?”

  “He suspected I was behind Miles’s murder. And when he called to warn you, I was waiting. You see, I’ve been listening to all your conversations.”

  He moved over to the telephone on the nightstand and tapped the receiver.

  “You bugged my phone?” cried out Catriona.

  Ward nodded. “I’ve been watching and listening. When I heard that you were going to meet him at the Rockefeller Plaza, I arrived there minutes before you did. It was easy for me to single Johnny out. It was crowded with people. So I pushed him into the street in front of the traffic.”

  “How did he know it was you who murdered Miles?”

  Ward shrugged. “He saw me take the cigar from the cabinet and minutes later, Miles is dead.”

  He started to loosen his tie and moved towards Catriona like a tiger going in for the kill.

  “Now I’m going to finish what I started at the opera,” said Ward.

  “That was you?” she said, suddenly realizing who her attacker was. She suspected that it was Ward who also sent her the anonymous letter.

  “Yes, and I almost succeeded that time. I had to punish you for snooping in Miles’s room—and mine.”

  Catriona was stunned. “How, how did you know about that?”

  “It was obvious when I came back that day that you had been in my room. Your perfume stank. And when I checked the top of the picture frame, I saw that the dust had been disturbed. So I figured out that you stole the key and had been snooping in Miles’s room. I caught you outside once. You have no respect for other people’s privacy. I had to punish you.”

  “Listen, Ward, you don’t have to do this. I won’t say a word to anyone.”

  “I do, it’s my duty. It’s what Miles wanted. You see, you’re not really Mrs. Kingston, are you?”

  He continued to walk towards Catriona. She started to slowly inch away towards the bedroom door.

  “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I give you my word. I just want to go back to where I came from.”

  “It’s simply, really,” Ward said, taking off his tie. “That’s how the police will see it. You and your Italian boyfriend were in it together. But things backfired when you were being blackmailed. Your boyfriend killed Leiobesky and he is now in jail paying for it. You couldn’t bear to be without him any longer, so you hanged yourself.”

  The full realization of Ward’s plan began to sink in. “Hanged myself?” Catriona said in horror.

  “Yes,” Ward said as he wrapped his tie around his index fingers.

  Catriona started to scream.

  “Scream all you like, no one will hear you. Everyone’s out and I’ve given the staff the night off.”

  Catriona started to run towards the door. Ward lunged at her with his necktie. She began to scream again even louder this time. He reached out and grabbed her by the arm, slipping the tie around her neck and starting to choke her.

  Catriona gasped. Ward had her by the throat as he bent her back onto the dressing table, ever tightening the tie around her neck. She desperately tried to escape from Ward’s suffocating grip. Her hands reached out frantically on the dressing table. She grabbed something in her right hand. It was the pair of scissors from the sewing box that her dressmaker Madame Nicole had left behind. Catriona managed to grasp them in her hand and then swung them in an arc, stabbing Ward in the back.

  He cried out in pain and released his grip. The sharp scissors had jammed into his spine. He took a step back, tripped and hit his head on the mantelpiece. As he fell backwards onto the floor, the scissors embedded even deeper, severing his spinal cord. His tall frame collapsed, motionless.

  Catriona was stunned. She stared at Ward’s body lying on the carpet. Blood trickled onto the rug where he had fallen, seeping into the woven fabric. His mouth was open and his face was pale.

  She tried to compose herself as she made her way to her bedside table. Her neck was bruised from the strangling. Three times she had survived a murder attempt. She wondered how many more lives she had left.

  She picked up the phone with trembling hands and started to dial.

  Downtown in his Soho loft, Freddie was fast asleep. He was tired from an exhausting day, and after dropping Catriona off at Belvedere, had gone straight to bed.

  “Hullo?” he said.

  “Freddie, it’s me. I’m in trouble.”

  “Catriona? What time is it?”

  “Can you come to Belvedere? Something awful has happened!”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Freddie said, using his other hand to pick up his Rolex watch.

  “Please.”

  “OK, I’ll be right over.”

  *

  Thirty minutes later, Freddie was looking down with folded arms at Ward’s corpse on the rug. His blood had congealed in thick rosettes and his skin had turned a deathly pallor.

  “He tried to kill you?”

  Catriona nodded. “Yes, he came at me from behind with his necktie. He was the one who tried to strangle me at the opera as well.”

  “And he told you Miles married you to murder you?”

  Catriona nodded again.

  “He needed money to pay off his gambling debts, so he took out a life insurance on me. Damn, I’ve been such a fool! I curse the very day I met Miles Kingston!”

  She brought her hands up to her face. She was thinking of how she would explain all this to the police. She wondered if Detective Radcliffe would even believe her.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Well, we could dump him in a dark alley way,” said Freddie.

  Catriona looked at him in horror. “You can’t be serious. We can’t do that!”

  “Nonsense, the police find dead corpses in the streets all the time. This is New York City, after all.”

  Catriona stared at Freddie in amazement. And then she saw the twinkle in his eye.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said.

  “We could call Detective Radcliffe,” said Freddie. “Which is probably the sensible thing we should do.”

  *

  The police arrived twenty minutes later with the detective. They took Ward’s body and Catriona and Freddie were escorted back to the police station. It was the second time they had been there in less than a couple of hours.

  “Miss Benedict, this is beginning to be a habit. First Miles and now his chauffeur.”

  “You’re talking about Miles’s killer,” Catriona said. She began to tell him the story of how Miles and Ward had plotted to kill her for the insurance, and how Ward had double-crossed him to avenge his mother’s death.

  The detective was busy writing all of this down in his notebook.

  “So you say that Ward killed Miles Kingston, Leiobesky and Johnny Ferrero. And then tried to kill you. Can you prove it?”

  Catriona looked at Freddie. She suddenly realized that she could prove none of what she just told the detective.

  “Well, actually—” Catriona began.

  “So all I have is your word against a dead man’?” said the detective. “How do I know that you didn’t kill Ward to shut him up? Maybe you’re the one who killed Miles and now you’re trying to frame it on a dead man!”

  “No!” said Catriona. “That’s not the way it happened.”

  “Oh come now, Detective,” said Freddie. “You don’t really think that Catriona made all of this up. It’s so fantastic.”

  “Yes, it is. But I believe you. We did some checking into Ward’s background. At the orphanage. And a wealthy guy in Boston employed him a few years ago by the name of George Wendell. Wendell mysteriously died, leaving Ward some money. Wendell was also poisoned, but the culprit was never found. With a little more checking, I would suspect it was Ward.”

  Catriona looked at Freddie with relief. Ward was a serial killer. All those men he had killed, all those lost lives.

  “Thank God, that’s over,” said Freddie.

  “What about Mario?” Catriona prompted.

  “He’s free to go. I’ll authorize his release,” said Radcliffe. “Now get out of here. I’m sick of the sight of you. I don’t ever want to see you again!”

  Catriona looked at Freddie and smiled with a huge sigh. They thanked the detective and followed an officer to another part of the building. There, they were shown into a detention room that adjoined the small jail.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Freddie sensitively, standing outside in the corridor.

  “Thank you,” Catriona said and stepped inside the room and waited for the officer to bring Mario from his cell.

  Five minutes later, the far door opened and Mario appeared. He was dressed in prison clothes and had a week’s growth of stubble, but apart from his sleepy eyes, he looked well.

  Catriona ran over to greet him.

  “Oh, darling, darling Mario,” she said, kissing him.

  “Catriona, bellisima,” said Mario. “You’ve been so brave, with the heart of a lioness.”

  “You’re the one who’s been brave!” cried Catriona. “Locked up in this prison cell.”

  “Are you all right? You’re not hurt?” asked Mario.

  Catriona shook her head. “No, I’m fine now that I’m with you.”

  She noticed Freddie standing awkwardly at the doorway, watching the two lovers reunite. She took Mario by the hand and led him over to the door to introduce him to Freddie.

  “Mario, this is Freddie Swann, a very good friend. He’s been helping me get out of this mess.”

  “Hello,” said Freddie, extending his hand.

  As they shook hands, Catriona noticed the striking physical contrast between the two men. One was fair skinned, sunny and blonde, the other dark haired, saturnine and brooding.

  “Freddie’s been marvelous. If it wasn’t for Freddie, I don’t think we’d be all standing here now.”

  “Thank you, thank you very much,” Mario said, clasping Freddie’s hand with gratitude.

  Freddie smiled. “It’s been a pleasure. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  *

  The next few days were a maelstrom of activity. The FBI raided Louis Ferrero’s apartment at the Waldorf Astoria, but they could find no trace of him. All of his personal possessions were gone and there was not a scrap of evidence to link him to his nefarious activities in the city.

  They also raided his casino downtown. There they had more luck and arrested three of his men, including Sonny, and his consigliore Fat Charlie, an old gentleman from Sicily. They were charged on accounts of money laundering, racketeering and art forgery.

  Catriona was nervous that Ferrero had not been captured. She kept looking over her shoulder when she was out shopping, half expecting to see him there, ready to pounce with some chloroform.

  Grace and Jeroen were charged with accounts of art forgery, embezzlement and attempted murder. Max had tried to bail Grace out, but she was denied it and was waiting trial behind bars.

 

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