Kissed a Sad Goodbye

happily enough for Annabelle—why not Teresa?”
    “No.” Mortimer’s voice sharpened as he turned round at last. “You don’t understand. I needed that promotion. There’s a big jump in salary. With Annabelle gone, it was the only way I could keep the vultures at bay a bit longer—that, and the hope that in that position, I could’ve salvaged the deal—” He broke off abruptly.
    “What vultures?” Kincaid asked.
    Reg stretched his lips in a smile. “I’m afraid I got in a bit over my head.”
    Kincaid nodded towards the canvases on the walls. “The paintings?”
    “Very perceptive,” Reg acknowledged. “Yes, among other things. Managing cash flow has never been my strong suit, and I was counting on a rather large sum that never... materialized.”
    “I think you had better sit down and tell us about this deal.” Kincaid gestured towards the sofa.
    Reg Mortimer came round and slumped onto the white cotton cushions, putting his head in his hands as if his exhaustion had finally overwhelmed him. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Nothing does, much,” he said through his splayed fingers. Then he dropped his hands to his lap and looked up at Kincaid and Gemma.
    “It was a commission—a sort of finder’s fee, I suppose you might call it. We came to the conclusion quite some time ago—Annabelle and Teresa and I—that the only way to keep Hammond’s solvent was to sell the physical plant and use the proceeds to move the business downriver into more modern and cost-efficient premises.
    “I knew a chap—a developer—who would pay any price for the property... if Annabelle could be persuaded to go against her father’s wishes. So I brought them together.”
    “Hence the commission,” Kincaid said, thinking aloud. “Paid only if the sale was completed?”
    Mortimer nodded. “But that wasn’t the only catch. The deal was only feasible if we could get a majority of the shareholders to vote against William, and the only way Annabelle would agree to move against her father was if she were convinced that the warehouse itself would be saved as an integral part of the development. She thought it might mollify William, make him feel that Hammond’s still had its place in posterity.”
    “This developer...,” said Gemma. “It was Lewis Finch, wasn’t it?”
    As Mortimer nodded again, Kincaid frowned. “You said, ‘If Annabelle were convinced.’ Was that not the plan, then—to incorporate the existing building into the new structure? I thought Lewis Finch had a reputation for doing just that.”
    “He does. But he didn’t intend it in this case. Something about ‘structural flaws in the warehouse.’ But Lewis and I agreed not to tell Annabelle, hoping she wouldn’t insist on having a preservation clause written into the contract.”
    “What did you think would happen when Annabelle found out?” Gemma sounded incensed. “You were engaged to be married, and you were colluding against her.”
    “I was desperate. And I suppose I thought that once the deal had gone through, it wouldn’t matter so much—that perhaps William would have come to see reason.”
    Kincaid thought he’d begun to see where this was leading. “And then you learned that Annabelle was no stranger to lies and betrayals. What happened that night, after you found out about Annabelle and Martin Lowell?”
    “We were arguing when we left Jo’s. One thing led to another. I said that if she would do such a thing to her own sister, and if she’d kept that from me, what else had she done?”
    “Go on.”
    “I don’t know what got into me that night. I’ve always hated jealousy—thought it was uncivilized. But she’d been pushing me away for months, refusing to talk about our wedding, making excuses not to stay with me... and suddenly it all seemed to make sense. I accused her of... things. Whatever came into my head. And then I thought of Lewis Finch, and of all those ‘business’ meetings she’d claimed they’d had. I accused her of sleeping with him. I said... I said Lowell was right, she was no better than a whore, sleeping with Finch to get what she wanted.”
    “What happened then?” Gemma asked softly.
    “She laughed. She stood there and laughed at me. She said I didn’t know the half of it... that it had cost her his son, and that she’d only learned too late what it meant to really love someone. I yelled at her, said it had cost her more than that—served her bloody right, too—and then I