Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [112]
‘Then all at once Sam was there behind them, wresting the knife out of Sheldon’s hand. I sped round the table to help, Theo suddenly got free and the knife fell on the floor, but then Lively started muscling in. He punched me in the jaw, and Sam must have snatched up the knife from the floor at the same time, because as I went to punch Lively back, Sam was just standing there with the knife in his hand, like he didn’t know what to do.
‘But Sheldon lunged towards him to get it back. That’s when Sam stuck him.’
Beth had tried to get Sam to give his version of what happened. While he couldn’t explain it as lucidly as Jack, it was basically the same, except he insisted he didn’t stab Sheldon. He said the man just ran straight into the knife.
Theo’s laconic view was that it hardly mattered how the knife ended up in the man’s belly. After all, Sheldon was going to kill him and Sam stopped him.
But it did matter to Beth. There was a world of difference between someone running into a knife and having it shoved into them. And she blamed Theo for creating the anger in Sheldon which turned her brother from a peace-loving card dealer into a killer.
Lively ran off immediately he saw Sheldon was bleeding profusely. Jack said he believed he’d gone to get a doctor, but Theo said he was just saving his own skin.
Jack tried to staunch Sheldon’s wound with his own shirt, but the man died as he was doing so. So they collected up all the money and cards from the table and left, leaving Sheldon there with the knife still embedded in his belly.
Beth wished she could feel, as Jack and Theo did, that Sheldon was a vicious brute who had preyed on the weak and defenceless all his life, and that he’d finally got his just deserts. But he must have had a wife, and maybe children who loved him.
Setting aside the crime, however, and the fact that the three people she loved most were on the run, Beth felt angry that the good life she’d had in Philadelphia was over.
She’d been so happy there. People admired her fiddle-playing and liked her as a person. She had made good money, she’d bought nice new clothes, she could buy presents to send home for Molly, she had even managed to save some money too. Life had been fun, she really felt she was going places, but now she would have to start all over again without the support and affection she’d got from Frank Jasper and Pearl.
Word would get around that Theo was cheating, and Frank might wonder how often he’d cheated at his games, and even whether the real reason Theo had to seek refuge in Philadelphia was for the same thing.
He’d certainly start to wonder if he should have trusted any of them, and regret getting Pearl to give them lodgings. As for Pearl, Beth knew she would be very hurt that they’d run off without even leaving a note of explanation for her.
Theo was supremely confident they wouldn’t pass on any information about them to the police, and he was probably right because that was the code they lived by. But Beth had built up a close relationship with Pearl, closer even than with her own mother, and she felt she had let her down.
As Beth sat on the chair by the window in the dark, for the first time since she’d embarked on her love affair with Theo, she felt she hated him.
He’d hurt her so many times by disappearing, then returning a week or two later without any explanation. She knew he wormed his way into the parties and soire´es of the most wealthy and influential people in the city, and only a fool would believe he wouldn’t abandon her if a beautiful heiress wanted him.
But he could turn her tears to laughter and her sad moods to gay ones effortlessly with his abundant charm. He was generous with both his money and affection. He made her feel she was the most beautiful, talented woman in the world, and when he made love to her he took her to heaven and back, always