The First Wife
Ever since Edgar Allan Poe introduced C. Auguste Dupin to the reading public in his 1841 novel The Murders in the Rue Morgue, mystery lovers have eagerly followed the cases of their favorite fictional detectives. For nearly two centuries, popular literary sleuths such as Arthur Conan Doyle's incomparable Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Martha Grimes's Richard Jury, Caroline Graham's Tom Barnaby, Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew and James Patterson's Alex Cross all attained a loyal following.
Such well-loved crime-fighters inspired Adrienne Shields, an avid reader, to attempt writing a mystery novel herself. Although she had no education beyond a high school diploma or experience in creative writing, she sat at the coffee bar of the local bookstore in her hometown of Remington Mills one day and jotted down a preliminary outline.
A lifelong anglophile, Adrienne chose Victorian London as the setting of her book. Unlike most other writers of the genre who paired brilliant detectives with less-than-brilliant and often downright bumbling subordinates to unravel convoluted murder plots, she chose as her protagonist a prim, somewhat stuffy, by-the-book Scotland Yard inspector who had a remarkable record of successfully solving cases, thanks to the unsolicited and often unappreciated advice of his wife.
After Ms. Shields's book was published, readers fell in love with her quirky, intuitive Cockney heroine, and her book sales soared. It wasn't long before Murder in Mitre Square topped the bestseller list. To celebrate the novel's remarkable success—and to promote interest in the release of the paperback edition—its publisher, Burgess Press, hosted an elaborate party at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston.
While attending the gala event, Adrienne noticed a very attractive, middle-aged man who had come to the party alone.
"Who is that?" the author asked Mimi Farber, one of Burgess's senior editors.
"You mean the hunk who looks like George Clooney?" Mimi replied. "That's Ken Westbrook. Isn't he gorgeous? He's the new hire in our public relations department."
Eventually, Ken made his way through the crowd of authors, editors and office staff and presented himself to the guest of honor.
"I'm sure you've been hearing this all night, but I absolutely loved your book," he said after introducing himself to Adrienne Shields. "I found Mrs. Tottenham one of the most delightful characters in modern fiction."
"Thank you," the author replied, graciously acknowledging the compliment and trying not to stare at the man's incredibly handsome face and captivating blue eyes.
"The word around Burgess is that you're going to outsell both Yvette Delacroix and Humphrey Sloane this year. That's quite an achievement for a novice writer."
Adrienne felt the blood rush to her face and put her head down, pretending to look at the drink in her hand so Ken would not see her blush.
What began as an everyday business conversation ended on a far more personal note when Ken asked the pretty, young author out to dinner the following evening. One date led to another. Although the romance progressed rapidly, it wasn't until three months later that Adrienne learned about Ken's tragic first marriage. The news came as quite a shock.
"My wife, Elena, was murdered," he reluctantly admitted one night at dinner, "and the police have yet to find her killer."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Adrienne apologized. "How horrible for you!"
As a mystery writer, she was naturally curious about the details of the investigation into the crime, yet she did not want to upset Ken by asking painful questions. Their relationship was still in its infancy, after all, and she did not want to say or do anything to jeopardize it.
"That was fifteen years ago," he explained with tears brimming in his blue eyes. "Ever since she was killed, I've been unable to get close to another woman. Now that I've met you, however, I finally want to get on with my life."
Although Ken was nearly twenty years her senior, Adrienne was hopelessly in love with him and felt certain they would have a long, happy future together. That future, it turned out, arrived sooner than the writer had expected. One year from the day the couple met at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, Ken proposed, and the smitten Adrienne eagerly accepted.
* * *
Within days of returning from her three-week-long European honeymoon, Mrs. Adrienne Shields Westbrook received a lucrative proposition from a well-known Hollywood producer, offering her a substantial amount of money for the movie rights to her novel. In addition, he wanted her to collaborate with an experienced Hollywood writer on adapting the book for the screen.
"I can't believe you would turn down such an offer!" Ken exclaimed when his wife told him the news.
"I don't know anything at all about screenwriting," Adrienne explained.
The real reason she wanted no part in writing the screenplay was that it would require her to work on the West Coast for several months, and as a newlywed, she had no desire to be apart from her husband that long.
"You're passing up what could be the opportunity of a lifetime," Ken argued. "I really think you ought to reconsider."
"Are you trying to get rid of your wife so soon, Mr. Westbrook?" she teased.
"Not at all. I intend to go with you. I can easily do my job in California. All I need is a phone and a laptop."
"I don't know. As much as I'd like the warm weather and sunshine, I don't relish living in a hotel room and eating in restaurants every night."
"We don't have to. I just so happen to own a house in Hollywood. We can stay there while you work on the screenplay. Come on, darling, say yes," Ken urged. "It'll be fun."
Adrienne smiled at her husband, who was behaving like an enthusiastic schoolboy trying to talk his reluctant parents into taking him to the ballpark or to the circus. She didn't have the heart to turn him down.
* * *
When Ken pulled into the driveway of his Hollywood Hills home, Adrienne stared in wonder at the splendor of the house. She had no idea the man she had married was so wealthy. On impulse, her husband swept her into his arms and carried her over the threshold. Yet when he put her down in the elegant foyer, she felt a coldness that was unnatural in the warm Southern California climate.
"I had someone come over to clean the place up and stock the kitchen with the usual staples," the homeowner said, as he gave his bride a brief tour of the first-floor rooms.
When the newlyweds ascended the staircase to the second floor, Ken hesitated before opening the door to the master bedroom.
"If you'd rather not sleep in here, I'll understand," he said. "There are four other bedrooms in the house to choose from."
"It's a lovely room," Adrienne replied when the door was opened and she stepped inside. "Why wouldn't I want to sleep here?"
Suddenly it dawned on her that the house was most likely the one Ken had shared with his first wife, possibly even the one in which the poor woman was murdered.
"Was this where ...?"
But she could not bring herself to finish the question.
"Yes," Ken answered, his face lined with grief and his voice raw with emotion. "She was found lying on the floor beside the bed."
"Perhaps it would be best if we slept in one of the other rooms then," Adrienne concluded, with a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold temperature of the house.
* * *
Not long after moving into Ken's mansion in the Hollywood Hills, Adrienne noticed a change in her husband's behavior. Ever since she had met him, he was outgoing, gregarious and fun-loving. Since moving back to his old home, however, he had become quiet and withdrawn. Yet the more Adrienne tried to coax him out of his black mood, the further he slipped into it.
Thankfully, the screenplay progressed smoothly, despite the writer's lack of experience and her preoccupation with her husband's deteriorating emotional state. Once the project was finished, Adrienne and Ken would return to the East Coast. Until then, she decided, it might be better if they stayed in a hotel.
"It's this house," she told Ken. "You should never have come back here where there are so many painful memories."
"It's not that," he replied, his eyes red from lack of sleep.
"What is it then?"
"Just forget about it. You won't believe me anyway. You'll think I'm insane."
"Don't be silly. Please tell me what's bothering you."
Ken realized his wife was not about to let the matter drop. With a sigh of resignation, he answered her question.
"Elena has come back. I've seen her here in the house."
Adrienne was stunned by his confession. She never dreamed he was the type of person to believe in ghosts.
"That's all the more reason we should leave here," she said, trying to remain calm and logical in the face of what she considered madness.
"I can't go now," her husband cried. "I have to find out what Elena wants and why she is haunting me."
"Darling, listen to yourself. There are no such things as ghosts and haunted houses."
"I told you that you wouldn't believe me! You can go to a hotel or back to Massachusetts if that's what you want to do, but I intend to stay here and find out what's going on."
* * *
When the rough draft of the screenplay for Murder in Mitre Square was finished, Adrienne opted to turn over all responsibility for editing the script to her collaborator. Not only did she feel her husband needed her, but she also wanted to work on her second novel, which she had not touched since she and her husband left Massachusetts.
"Ken?" she called when she opened the door upon returning home from the studio.
There was no reply. She walked into the foyer where she found an opened letter that had been typed on Burgess Press stationery. Assuming it had been addressed to her, she picked it up and began reading. When she realized it was a letter of termination of employment addressed to her husband, Adrienne felt a momentary panic.
"Ken?" she called with more urgency.
A sound from the master bedroom above sent her scrambling up the stairs.
"Ken?"
She opened the door and found her husband lying down on the king-sized bed.
"Adrienne? What is it?" he asked sleepily. "What's wrong?"
"I didn't know where you were. I was afraid you might have—never mind. What are you doing in this room?"
"Taking a nap, or at least I was until you woke me up."
"Why here?" she asked. "Why not sleep in our bedroom?"
"I was waiting for Elena to appear, and I must have fallen asleep."
Tears welled up in Adrienne's eyes.
"Do you really believe you've seen your dead wife's ghost?"
"Yes. She was over there by the window. Why don't you wait here with me? Perhaps you'll see her, too."
"No, I won't because there are no such things as ghosts. The dead don't come back."
"You're wrong. Elena is in this house. Apparently, she never left it."
* * *
Adrienne desperately wanted to return to Puritan Falls, to recapture the happiness of those first weeks of marriage, but Ken wouldn't hear of it.
"For better or worse," she moaned as she walked into the first-floor den of her husband's Hollywood Hills home and placed her laptop computer on the mahogany desk.
After four tentative starts and four subsequent deletions, the young writer was finally able to clear her mind and concentrate on the world of Chief Inspector Rudyard Tottenham and his keenly perceptive wife, Pansy.
"I'll bet you would know what to do if you were in my situation," Adrienne said, her mind making a mental image of her popular female character, "although I doubt a no-nonsense, nineteenth-century detective such as Chief Inspector Rudyard Tottenham would ever admit to seeing ghosts."
A sudden chill in the room caused her to shiver. She couldn't imagine what was wrong with the house. Drafts were commonplace in Puritan Falls during the cold New England winters, but in sunny Southern California they were probably as rare as a blonde without a suntan.
Maybe all the talk of ghosts is preying on my imagination, she thought, subconsciously choosing not to remember that she first felt the mysterious drop in temperature the day she and Ken arrived at the house before she learned it was where Elena Westbrook had been murdered.
After finishing the sixth chapter in her new book, Murder in Covent Garden, Adrienne closed the Word file, turned off her computer and went upstairs to the bathroom to draw a bath. As the hot water ran into the tub, she walked to her closet to get a pair of sweatpants and her Nantucket sweatshirt. Since there were only a handful of items in the closet, it was immediately apparent that her blue cocktail dress was missing.
"Someone has been in the house," Adrienne concluded when she told her husband about the missing dress.
"No one but the two of us and, of course, Elena. I suppose she must have taken it. Blue was her favorite color."
"I don't believe in ghosts, and even if I did, I doubt your first wife would have any use for my dress."
"When I see her, I'll ask her if she has it," he added, as though he hadn't heard what his wife said, or maybe he simply chose to ignore her.
Adrienne cringed. Now that Ken was having conversations with his dead wife, she knew it was time for him to seek professional help. Her husband agreed, but his idea of professional help differed from her own. Adrienne wanted to call a physiatrist whereas Ken was thinking more along the lines of a psychic or a medium.
"You want to have a what?" she asked when Ken first broached the subject of trying to contact his first wife's spirit.
"A séance. I have to talk to Elena, and that's the only way I know how. Look, I'll make a deal with you. If a séance doesn't work," he promised, "I'll forget about the whole thing, and we can pack up and go back east."
After voicing numerous objections, Adrienne finally gave in and agreed.
* * *
Ken opened the door, invited Marcella Domingo, the spiritualist, inside and showed her to the dining room while, upstairs, Adrienne finished dressing. Not only had her cocktail dress not resurfaced, but she was also missing several other articles of clothing and personal items including a pair of pumps, a tennis bracelet and a tube of lipstick. She wondered if someone working for her husband's cleaning service had a key to the house. Either that or—God forbid!—Ken had a girlfriend who was helping herself to his wife's belongings.
Running late, Adrienne zipped up her dress, slipped into her shoes and walked to the vanity to touch up her makeup. When she reached for her perfume, she noticed the bottle of Chanel No. 5 was missing.
"This is getting ridiculous!" she cried angrily. "Just wait until I get my hands on the person who is stealing my stuff!"
Adrienne went downstairs and into the dining room where Ken, Marcella and Alberto, the psychic's spouse, sat around the chrome and glass contemporary dining table.
"There you are," Ken declared with relief. "Good. We can begin now."
Adrienne sat down across from Ken and joined hands with Marcella on her right and Alberto on her left. The lights of the crystal chandelier were dimmed, and the spiritualist attempted to enter a trance. The temperature dropped dramatically, yet Adrienne seemed to be the only one to notice.
In an occult sense, the evening was seen as a failure since no spirits appeared and no one from the other side spoke through the medium. Yet despite the disappointing results, Ken remained convinced that his dead wife haunted the house, and his promise notwithstanding he had no intention of abandoning his efforts to contact her.
"You told me we'd go home if nothing happened at the séance."
"I know I did, but I can't leave here until I learn the truth."
A terrible argument followed, in which Adrienne demanded Ken come to his senses and return to Massachusetts. When he stubbornly refused, she made a painful decision.
"Then I'm going back without you."
Her husband having made no effort to try to convince her to stay, Adrienne went down to the den to make an airline reservation for one. Afterward, she returned to the bedroom to pack her bags. As she walked from the closet to the open suitcase on the bed, a movement in the hall caught her attention. She looked up in time to see a figure in a flowing white gown enter the master bedroom. Her heart raced with fear, and she began to tremble.
Ken has been right all along! Elena is haunting this house!
Frightened though she was, Adrienne could not resist the urge to follow the spirit. She stood outside the master bedroom with her hand on the doorknob, hesitating. When she finally mustered the courage to open the door, there was no icy cold in the room, no eerie glow.
At the sound of the opening door, the mysterious figure in the flowing white dress turned and stared at the intruder.
"What are you doing in here? This is my room. Get out!"
The shock of seeing her husband wearing a blond wig and women's clothing left Adrienne speechless.
"I told Kenny I didn't want you in this house," the man dressed as a woman cried in a falsetto voice. "Since he hasn't got the guts to get rid of you, I guess I'll have to do it myself."
Ken reached into Elena's dresser drawer and took out two silk scarves.
"Which one would you prefer, the Loro Piana or the Emilio Pucci?" he asked with a cruel laugh. "Although I don't suppose someone from Puritan Falls would know Pucci from Gucci."
In three steps, Ken was across the room and upon his wife. He slipped one of the designer scarves around her neck and tugged at the ends. Adrienne tried to fight him off, but her strength was no match for his. Just as the frightened writer was about to lose consciousness, her husband unexpectedly released his hold on the scarf. She fell to the floor, gasping for breath. It took her a few moments to recover, and when she did, she saw Ken huddled in a corner, whimpering with terror.
Suddenly, the bedroom felt as cold as a walk-in freezer. The scent of Chanel No. 5 was overpowering, as a shadowy figure, wearing a blue cocktail dress, appeared.
"Elena?" Adrienne asked with dread. "Is that you?"
"No, mum. It's me, Pansy Tottenham."
How was it possible? Pansy Tottenham was no ghost; she was a figment of Adrienne's imagination, a character in a book.
"I must be losing my mind," the writer concluded.
"Not to worry, mum. Your 'usband's the one 'o's insane, not you. 'e murdered 'is wife fifteen years ago, though 'e believes it was some other bloke what did it. Coming back to this 'ouse brought it all back to 'im. Rather than admit 'e's a murderer, 'e convinced 'imself 'e was seeing 'er ghost. Course, it got so bad, 'e 'ad to bring 'er back to life."
"How could you possibly know these things?" Adrienne asked, beginning to doubt her own sanity.
"I know because deep down inside your brain you 'ave already deduced these things. You 'ave just been too blinded by love to think straight. It's like I always says to me 'usband, the Scotland Yard inspector: sometimes you're too close to a crime to see the obvious."
Adrienne looked closely at the cloudy features of the apparition and saw her own likeness staring back at her. She reached out to touch the face that was so like her own, but her fingers passed right through Pansy's cheekbone.
"I don't 'ave a body," Pansy informed her. "I'm just an extension of your subconscious mind. From the moment you first set foot in this 'ouse, you knew something was wrong, but you wouldn't admit it to yourself. Then your belongings started to disappear. 'ad you been thinking straight, you would 'ave realized your 'usband was taking them so 'e could prove 'is ghost theory was true."
Adrienne's conscious mind was rapidly catching up to her subconscious one.
"Yes," she said. "He desperately needed to convince me—and, more importantly, himself—that Elena was still here in this house. I suppose, in his mind, her coming back from the dead absolved him of his crime."
Pansy Tottenham smiled and nodded.
"You got it straight now. You won't be needing me any longer. I best be on me way. Me 'usband, the Scotland Yard inspector, will be needing me 'elp in solving another murder if I know 'im."
With a mischievous wink, the pert Englishwoman vanished, once again consigned to the realm of the writer's imagination.
After Pansy departed, her creator walked over to her husband, who was still crouched down in a corner of the bedroom. She had no reason to fear him, for he was no longer violent. Ken Westbrook, eyes staring sightlessly ahead in a near-catatonic state, was as docile as a newborn kitten. Adrienne prayed that somewhere in his tortured mind he had come to terms with his awful crime and made peace with the ghost of his first wife—a ghost that had been nothing more than a personal demon born of his own guilt.
I wonder who left this book on my night table. I was reading a Dan Brown thriller.
The image above is from samthecat.com
