Page 44 of The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair

Chapter Thirty-One

Ruth decided to continue the podcast.

She was now in the public eye, and she had to make sure that the story of Daphne St Clair and Ruth Robinson was the right one. How she handled this Gabrielle wrinkle would either make or break her in public life.

When Daphne finally answered the phone and agreed to an interview, Ruth drove to Coconut Grove, hoping to get this episode out as soon as possible, before people abandoned the show.

Her listeners needed to know that she was going to give them the truth, the whole truth.

About Daphne, yes, but also about Ruth. And she had to do it fast, before they started drawing their own conclusions.

The car was silent as Ruth drove to Coconut Grove.

The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the wind buffeting her ears.

Ruth wiped her face at a red light and was surprised to see that she was covered in a slick, cold sweat.

Her face looked bloodshot and lined in the mirror.

This investigation had taken so much out of her, had brought so much to the surface, and Ruth knew that she wouldn’t last much longer.

Whether it was Daphne or Ruth, something had to give.

There was a police car parked outside the seniors’ center but Ruth strode past it, refusing to look inside.

There was nothing they could say, nothing they could do, that could stop her.

She knew the stakes, knew what would happen if she failed and how many people were hoping she would do exactly that. Today was the day.

As soon as Ruth walked into Daphne’s room, she could tell that Daphne knew that today would be different too.

The air felt like it did before a major tropical storm, when it seemed hazy and charged with electricity.

She felt Daphne watching her set up her recording equipment and when their eyes met, Ruth saw that cold, predatory gaze that Daphne’s face lapsed into when she wasn’t consciously trying to obscure it.

Daphne didn’t know how Ruth would handle these new allegations, what story the podcast would endorse. Ruth didn’t know yet herself.

So, she took a deep breath and began recording, praying that she wouldn’t fail.

EPISODE ELEVEN: 1972–1974

RUTH: Daphne, a news story broke this week, a very controversial one. Let’s talk about your time in Abrams, New York.

DAPHNE: Sure, that’s essentially where I was at in the story anyways.

RUTH: Well, no we were actually up to 2022 the last time we talked, so this would be oh. . . fifty years earlier.

DAPHNE: Maybe if you didn’t yap so much, I wouldn’t have forgotten about the Seventies! Let’s see, after Leosville, I went back to New York. The kids went to the best schools in the city, they did every kind of extracurricular, and we had summers in the Hamptons. Anything they wanted I bought them.

RUTH: All with David’s money.

DAPHNE: Yes, obviously. Anyways, when I was forty, I married my next husband, Robert Hanks. I had been feeling so bored and I really thought it would be different this time.

RUTH: Tell me about Robert.

DAPHNE: Robert was my white whale. A rich, childless man who didn’t mind a few stepchildren. He was never much for babies but he wasn’t fazed by a few preteens in the house. It’s hard to find a man over forty who hasn’t moved to the suburbs and isn’t saddled with a nest of brats.

RUTH: How long were you together before you got engaged?

DAPHNE: A year. We were taking it slow, keeping our own separate lives.

There’s something about marriage; too often, in a man’s eyes, it transforms you from an alluring seductress into the nag in the bathrobe blocking the TV.

Even the best men let themselves slide when you get married and suddenly Friday evenings at the champagne bar become TV dinners and ball-scratching.

RUTH: But he did propose.

DAPHNE: Boy, you’re really hurrying me along today!

Yes, I guess he was less jaded about marriage than me.

He took me to Lutèce, one of the best restaurants in New York in the early Seventies.

He gave me a huge emerald ring in a champagne glass.

There was a bit of awkwardness as he tried to fish it out with his stubby fingers but then he gave me his Big Speech, about how we would live in New York, travel the world, and have fun.

My first husband had been a cheat, the second a bore, maybe Robert would be Just Right.

So, I said yes and slapped that ring on my trotter.

That night we lay in bed, heads still buzzing from the bubbly and the excitement.

“I want this to work out,” Robert whispered. “I just can’t go through another divorce.”

“Was it hard?” I asked. At that point the only man who’d ever gotten away from me alive was Carl, my son’s father, so I didn’t have much experience with breakups.

“It was terrible. We were only married for two years and after the first six months we just . . . fell out of love with each other. We spent the next year and a half making each other miserable. Then she started cheating on me.”

“How did it end?” I asked, wishing he’d wrap this story up and focus on me.

“She waited until I was on a business trip and then she stripped the apartment of everything valuable and moved to the West Coast. A week later she wrote to me, asking for a divorce. We got a quickie divorce in Nevada and I never saw her again.”

“That’s tough,” I said absent-mindedly. I was enjoying how my ring glistened in the lamplight. He rolled over on his side and stroked my hair.

“Of course, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you, losing the father of your children, becoming a widow . . .” Okay, so I had taken a little artistic license and cleaned up my backstory; giving the kids one dead father instead of a string of bad dads and suspicious deaths.

“But at least you know your husband didn’t want to leave you. He didn’t want to die,” Robert said.

“No,” I agreed. “He really didn’t want to die.”

The next year passed in a flood of happiness.

We got married in a small civil ceremony because—and this might surprise you—I’ve never been much for weddings.

Wedding announcements, hundreds of guests, pictures in the paper, it’s all just a recipe for getting caught.

Then we moved into a gorgeous penthouse apartment, the kind of place that makes you feel right in the center of the city even when you’re just standing in your living room.

Robert and I got along great. He seemed to enjoy being a husband again after so many years of bachelorhood and I was happy to play the little wife since he didn’t expect me to cook, clean, or have babies.

We’d often meet up for lunch in the middle of the day to break up his workday and then in the evening it was dinner parties, restaurants, and theater shows.

Robert let me do what I wanted while he footed the bill. He was the perfect husband.

My kids, however, seemed somewhat detached from Robert.

One time I asked James about it. I was sitting on his bed, the wind howling outside on a cold November evening, watching him glue a model airplane in the dim light of his desk lamp.

We had just come back from a movie theater trip.

I had dragged James to the new Audrey Hepburn movie and he had agreed, knowing that I’d loved her ever since I saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s .

“James, do you like Robert?”

A shrug rippled through his bony, adolescent shoulders.

I could see his shoulder blades shift beneath his shirt and I suddenly wished that I could kiss them, that I could cover him with kisses the way I had when he was a baby, when his body had belonged to me.

But of course, I didn’t kiss him now. The mother of a teenage boy is only permitted a couple of grudging hugs on a semi-annual basis, usually after a large gift.

It made me sad, watching him grow up and grow away from me.

“He’s okay,” James said. His voice was completely neutral, as if I’d asked him whether he liked bread.

“Maybe you could be warmer to him. He’s giving us a good life,” I said.

It was the closest I’d ever come to lecturing James, my perfect boy.

But I didn’t think it was too much to ask him to smile in exchange for the private school tuition, the museum tickets, the trips abroad.

In my life, I’d had to do much more for far less.

James spun in his chair and looked at me, clasping his hands. His dark hair flopped in his eyes and I resisted the urge to brush it off his shiny forehead.

“Mom, there’s been a lot of guys over the years. I just don’t want to get attached.”

“But, darling, Robert’s different. This one is going to last.”

“That’s what you said about David,” he said quietly.

“Well, how was I to know he was going to get cancer?” I asked.

James didn’t say anything for a moment. He just stared hard at me and rolled his hands together. I shifted uncomfortably, not sure what he was thinking.

“All I’m saying is, it’s just easier not to get attached,” he muttered. I sighed and got up to leave, patting his shoulder as I brushed past. I wished that my son, the person who knew me best in the world, had a little more faith in my marriage, in me. Then again, he did know me pretty well . . .

It could have ended there. I could have stayed happily married to Robert in Manhattan. I really believe that we could have made it work, if it hadn’t been for Gabrielle.

It’s funny, you expect the girl who ruins your marriage to be a twenty-something cocktail waitress with zero-gravity boobs. But in my case, it was a twelve-year-old girl.

It all started one day when I came home from a productive afternoon shopping to find my husband sitting on the floor by the phone, his face the same shade of gray as his wool suit.

“Are you all right?” I asked, carefully depositing my shopping bags on a table as gently as you’d lay down a baby, then crouching down next to him.