“Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not true,” she challenged.
“Of course it’s not!” he shouted. “Why are you trying to destroy any little chance I have with her? I did what I thought was best back then.”
“Best for you, not best for her.”
Dawson heard the sound of a hard slap and Eileen crying out. And another slap in quick succession. He stepped into the doorway, expecting to see Eileen hurt by her brother’s hand. Instead, the two were grappling with each other, arms intertwined and hands at each other’s throats. She was taller than he was and quite possibly just as strong.
“Stop,” Dawson said. He came closer. “Stop, or you’ll both go to jail.”
That distracted them enough for him to sever the grip they had on each other and separate them.
“She’s a crazy woman!” Brian yelled, pointing at his sister as Dawson firmly pulled him back. “She’s a witch!”
“And you are a fool,” she jeered.
“You sit down here and don’t move,” Dawson told Brian. To Eileen he said, “Take a seat over there.”
“You must be Inspector Dawson,” Brian said dispassionately.
“Yes. What’s going on here?”
“He slapped me, and so I slapped him back,” Eileen said, almost casually.
“She insulted me,” Brian said.
“And so you think you can just slap me like that?” She looked at Dawson. “I didn’t even insult him. He’s angry because when his daughter was here a couple of days ago, and we were reminiscing about Charles. We agreed that she owed everything to her uncle.”
Brian aimed a finger at her. “No, that’s not all you said. You told her that I had just wanted to get rid of her, and that is not true. Why do you insist on saying that to her?”
Eileen turned to Dawson, almost as if her brother wasn’t there. “Brian conceived Sapphire out of wedlock when he was barely nineteen-a mere boy. He fell in love with this raving beauty of an Englishwoman, Constance, some ten years older than he, and she turned out to be crazy. Brian was immature and couldn’t handle parenthood, let alone a psychotic wife.” Eileen opened her arms with her palms up, as if appealing to a judge. “So Brian asked Charles for help, and he took over Sapphire’s care. That’s the truth, and it’s also the truth that he and Fiona shaped Sapphire more than Brian did. What have I said so far that is insulting?”
“But the way she’s expressing it to you is not how she says it to Sapphire,” Brian said plaintively to Dawson. “When it comes to her niece, Eileen does her very best to paint me as some kind of criminal. And why does she do this? Because instead of asking her to take care of Sapphire all those years ago when I was having so much trouble with Constance, I turned to Charles for help. That’s why she resents me so much.”
