Murder For Love

That was the evening before the inauguration of his successor. He'd thrown a cocktail party at the White House for the about to be sworn in members of Congress.

"I believe in what Santa Claus represents, sir," she'd replied. "Don't you?"

At seven o'clock when the guests were leaving, he'd invited her to stay for a quiet di

"I'm so sorry. I'm meeting my parents. I can't disappoint them."

Henry had thought of all the women who at his invitation changed their plans in a fraction of a second and realized that at last he'd found the girl of his dreams. They were married six weeks later.

The marriage of the country's most eligible bachelor, the forty-four-year-old ex-president, to the beautiful young congresswoman twelve years his junior had set off a media hype that threatened to be unending.

The fact that Sandra's father was a motorman on the New Jersey Central Railroad, that she had worked her way through St. Peter's College and Fordham Law School, spent two years as a public defender, and then in a stu

Henry's status as one of the most popular United States presidents of the twentieth century as well as possessor of a great private fortune and his regular appearance at the top of the list of the sexiest men in America made other men wonder why the gods had so favored him.

On their wedding day one tabloid had run the headline: LORD HENRY BRINTHROP MARRIES OUR GAL SUNDAY, a takeoff on the popular radio soap opera of the 1930s that five days a week had asked the question "Can a girl from a mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of England's richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrop?"

Sandra had immediately become known to one and all, including her doting husband, as Sunday. She hated the nickname but had become resigned when Henry pointed out that he thought of her as a Sunday kind of love, which was his favorite song, and how people who voted for her embraced it. "Like Tip O'Neill," he said. "That suited him. Sunday suits you."

Now seeing the genuine concern in Henry's eyes, she covered his hand with hers. "You're worried about Tommy. What can we do to help him?"

"Not very much, I'm afraid. I'll certainly check to see if the defense lawyer he hired is good, but no matter whom he gets it's a particularly vicious crime. Think about it. The woman was shot three times with Tommy's gun in his library right after he told people that she had broken up with him."

Sunday examined the front page picture of a beaming Thomas Shipman, his arm around the dazzling thirty-year-old who had helped to dry his tears after his wife's death. "How old is Tommy?" Sunday asked.

"Sixty-five, give or take a year."

Together they soberly studied the photograph. Tommy was a trim, lean man with thi

"May and December," Sunday commented. "They probably say that about us."

"Oh, Henry, be quiet. And don't try to pretend that you aren't really upset."

"I am," Henry said softly. "I can't imagine what I'd have done when I found myself sitting in the Oval Office after only one term in the Senate without Tommy at my side. Thanks to him I weathered those first months without falling on my face. When I was all set to have it out with Yeltsin, Tommy in his calm, deliberate way showed me how wrong I'd be to force a confrontation and then somehow conveyed the impression that he was only a sounding board for my own decision. Tommy is a gentleman through and through. He's honest, he's smart, he's loyal."

"But he's also a man who must have been aware that people were joking about his relationship with Arabella and how smitten he was with her. Then when she finally wanted out, he lost it," Sunday observed. "That's pretty much the way you see it, isn't it?"

"Yes. Temporary insanity." Henry picked up his breakfast tray and put it on the night table. "Nevertheless he was always there for me and I'm going to be there for him. He's been allowed to post bond. I'm going to see him."

Sunday shoved her tray aside, then managed to catch her half-empty coffee cup before it spilled onto the quilt. "I'm coming too," she said. "Give me ten minutes in the Jacuzzi and I'll be ready."

Henry watched his wife's long legs as she slid out of bed. "The Jacuzzi. What a splendid idea!"

Thomas Acker Shipman tried to ignore the media camped outside his driveway. The lawyer at his side had just forced his way from the car into the house. The events of the day finally hit him and he visibly slumped. "I think a scotch is in order," he said quietly.

Defense attorney Leonard Hart looked at him sympathetically. "I'd say you deserved one. I just want to reassure you that if you insist we'll go ahead with a plea bargain, but I do think we could put together a very strong temporary-insanity defense and I wish you'd agree to go to trial. You went through the agony of losing a beloved wife, then fell in love with a young woman who accepted many gifts from you and then spurned you."

Hart's voice became passionate as though he were addressing a jury. "You asked her to come here and talk it over and then when she arrived you lost your head and killed her. The gun was out only because you pla

The former secretary of state looked puzzled. "That's how you see it?"

Hart seemed surprised at the question. "Of course. It will be a little hard to explain how you could simply leave Miss Young bleeding on the floor, go upstairs to bed, and sleep so soundly that the next morning you didn't even hear your housekeeper scream when she saw the body; but at a trial we'd contend that you were in shock."

"Would you?" Shipman asked wearily. "I wasn't in shock. In fact after that martini I barely remember what Arabella and I said to each other, never mind recall shooting her."

Leonard Hart looked pained. "I think, sir, that I must beg you not to make statements like that to anyone. Will you promise? And may I suggest that from now on you go easy on the scotch?"

From behind the drapery, Thomas Shipman watched as his rotund attorney was charged by the media. Rather like the lions released on the solitary Christian, he thought. Only it wasn't Hart's blood they wanted.

He had sent word to Lillian West, his daily housekeeper, to stay home today. He knew last evening when the indictment was handed down that television cameras would witness every step of his leaving the house in handcuffs, the arraignment, fingerprinting, plea of i

The house felt quiet and lonely. For some unfathomable reason his mind began to slip back to the day he and Constance had bought it thirty years ago. They'd driven up to have lunch at the Bird and Bottle near Bear Mountain and taken a leisurely drive back to Manhattan. It was when they impulsively wandered through local streets in Tarrytown that they'd come across the FOR SALE sign in front of the turn-of-the-century residence overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades.

And for the next twenty-eight years, two months, and ten days we lived here happily ever after, Shipman thought as-deciding against the scotch-he wandered into the kitchen and reached for the percolator.

Even when he served as Secretary of State they managed occasional weekends here, enough of them to restore their souls. Until one morning two years ago when Constance said, "Tom, I don't feel so well." And a moment later she was gone.