Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

wrought iron table on the terrace some thirty or forty feet away. Her dress was flapping in the rising wind and she held her hat down on her head with her left hand. She was looking up at Pamela, who was standing, leaning forward slightly, with her back to Dehan, her fists clenched by her side. Dehan had been about to step out, but something about their demeanor made her pause and withdraw a little back into the drawing room.

Bee was saying, “My dear Pamela, if he upsets you so much, why don’t you simply divorce him?”

Pam’s voice was shrill and Dehan wondered if she had continued drinking after she’d left them at the pub. She spat her words at Bee like venom. “And leave him all for you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you!”

Bee’s laugh was a shrill hoot. “Oh, Pam! You must be drunk! What utter nonsense! After all these years? Don’t be so absurd!”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“Then don’t be such a child! You’ve been married almost forty years! And you still get upset! It’s too foolish of you.”

Pam took a step toward her, pointing back toward the French windows. Her voice was savage. “I have given the best years of my life… no… all my life! to that… that parasite! And he treats me like…”

“Pam, darling, he treats you like what you are: a foolish child who after a lifetime of marriage has still not grown up!”

“How dare you!”

Bee looked away and sighed. “Oh, do stop dramatizing everything. What did you expect?”

“I expected my husband to love me! I expected at the very least to be respected! I did not expect to be humiliated and insulted every day for the rest of my life!”

Bee turned back to face her and there was something sad, almost compassionate in her expression. She sighed and said simply, “Oh, Pam…”

Pam pointed a trembling finger at her. “Don’t you dare patronize me!”

“Oh, do stop, darling…”

“How you can…!”

Bee’s voice was suddenly animated. “How I can? My dear girl! How you can, after all these years married to the man! Why, you must surely have realized what he was like by now! How can you still be shocked by his behavior?”

Pam’s hands went to her face, her shoulders hunched, and she started to sob. Her voice came twisted and damp with tears. “But that… that awful woman! Why? How can you stand it, Bee?”

Bee sighed again, but this time with weariness. “What choice have I got, Pam?”

“You could leave him! We should both leave him!”

Bee gave a small laugh. “No, I couldn’t. He knows we won’t.” She paused, watching Pam sob. After a moment she said, “The difference between us, Pam, is that you never loved him. I have always loved him, not in spite of what he’s like, but because of what he is like. He is a beast, an arrogant, bad man, and I adore that in him. But you, you simply grew to need him. And the more he ill-treats and humiliates you, the more you need him. You should leave him. Really you should. You should teach him a lesson.”

Suddenly Pam’s voice was shrill. “Oh, I will! Believe me, I will!”

She turned and rushed toward the French windows. Dehan stepped out and Pam almost collided with her. As she pushed past, she stopped and stared at Dehan, her face streaked with mascara and tears.

“No doubt it will be your turn next!”

And next thing, she was rushing across the drawing room toward the door. Dehan looked at Bee, who still sat at the table, holding down her hat against the wind. Dehan fingered her hair from her face and approached. Bee looked away.

“This wind!” she said. “I should go inside, but I rather like it. It blows the cobwebs from one’s mind.”

Dehan sat. “Pam looked pretty upset.”

For a moment it was as though Bee hadn’t heard her, then she said, “You’d best ignore her. Enjoy your honeymoon. Don’t get involved.”

Dehan narrowed her eyes and chewed her lip a moment. “It’s hard to ignore something like that.” After a moment she added, “My father told me once that if people invested as much effort in not ignoring things as they do in ignoring them, the world would be a nice place to live in.”

Bee smiled. “You Americans are forever telling stories about what your fathers ‘always used to say’ to you. I wonder if any of them are true.”

“That one is. He was a great one for not ignoring things. I’m the same.”

Bee raised an eyebrow at her. “Is this the same relentless persistence you use when interrogating your suspects?”

Dehan shook her head and smiled. “No. Usually I take them down a back alley and beat seven bales of shit out of them.”

Bee threw back her head and hooted with laughter. “Oh you are so naughty! I love it!” She laughed again and Dehan watched her. Finally she went quiet and sighed. “I love him dearly, Carmen, but he is a pig, an absolute swine, and he does make poor Pam’s life a misery. And young Charles’. He bullies them mercilessly and takes every opportunity to humiliate them. Frankly…” She shook her head, gazing at the heavy black clouds that were building in the north. “I don’t know how she’s stuck it out all these years.”

“Almost forty years.”

Bee nodded. “An eternity.”

Dehan sat back and raised an eyebrow. “But, Bee, isn’t that exactly what you have done?”

“Oh, it’s quite different. I am hopelessly in love with him, you see. I have always known what he was like. Ever since he was engaged to my sister…”

She left the words hanging, held Dehan’s eye. Realization dawned. “You were with him before…”

“As soon as I turned sixteen. He knew how I felt. I couldn’t resist him. I would have done