Weekends Can Be Murder, page 10
“All right, fellow sleuths, we have a murder to solve,” Hugh declared, springing to his feet. It appeared nothing could dampen this man’s enthusiasm for a mystery, not even the presence of an actual murdered corpse in the house. “What’s our first priority?”
“Establish the time line,” Norman volunteered, “beginning with time of death. Then reconstruct the victim’s past twenty-four hours. We know from his wounds that he was shot, and two to the chest is usually fatal. We heard gunfire earlier. Two shots, at 8:41 p.m.”
“Those may not have been gunshots,” Selena told him. “In fact, they may not even have been part of the simulation. After all, a door slammed hard enough will make a very similar noise, and it was right afterward that we were all trapped in our rooms.”
Frowning, Hugh was opening his mouth to say something. Before he could get a word out, Larry interjected in a lowered voice, “The prop gun was stolen earlier in the evening. The theft was discovered and Court put the simulation on hold about ten minutes before the doors and windows jammed shut. So, if that was a gun we heard, it could not have been part of the mystery game.”
“Sssh! Everyone be quiet,” Hugh commanded them. “Liz, get the doors, please.”
Wordlessly, she swept around the room, closing and locking every entrance. When she was done, Hugh said in a hushed voice, “Now, tell us how you know all this.”
Leaning forward on her chair, Selena replied, “We accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation between Tony Court and two of the servers. There are secret passages in this house, and a trap door in the bottom of the closet in my room. We decided to explore a little after dinner.”
“Court was on his way to notify Arthur about the theft when he was hit on the head and knocked unconscious,” Larry added. “Then he must have been dragged or carried into the room in the south wing where Baker and I found him later.”
Hugh’s lips were pressed tightly together. “So, we don’t know when Gareth Wylde was shot, but we do know in real time when Antony Court was attacked?” he finally said.
“What are you thinking, pet?” Liz asked him.
“That Wylde’s imaginary murder may not be the only crime Mr. Court wants us to investigate. And that before we split up and begin questioning potential suspects, we should probably spend a few minutes sharing everything we know about them. Holmes and Watt, you’ve already begun your report. Please continue, keeping your voices down.”
There was quite a bit to share. Larry and Selena tag-teamed to tell about the secret passage in his quarters, Georgina’s professional jealousy of her husband, Edyth Pyke’s hatred of “the boy” and of Rafferty Island, and Court’s low opinion of Lois’s acting ability. When they got to Court’s revelation about the reappearance of the gun in the desk drawer, jaws dropped.
Then Selena and Liz recounted what they’d overheard through the door to the kitchen.
“Good lord!” said Norman. “A second murder attempt? And a patsy to take the blame? Maybe Edyth is right about this place. It seems to be seething with criminal intent.”
“Well, we have two men with head injuries,” Larry pointed out. “Either one of them could have been the intended murder victim.”
“And I recognized Farley’s voice when he spoke up at the meeting just now,” Selena blurted. “It’s why I stopped him from leaving the room. If he’s the hired killer Liz and I overheard, we can’t let him be alone with Gareth Wylde or Antony Court.”
“Good thinking, luv,” said Liz.
Norman and Blaise had little to add, other than a rather unpleasant exchange with Wylde on the back porch as they were going inside. Apparently, on top of all his other unattractive personality traits, the author was bigoted and homophobic as well.
“So you didn’t see which of the servers lured him out to the bluff,” Larry said.
“Lured?” Hugh’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s an interesting word to use, Mr. Holmes. You don’t believe his fall was an accident?”
“I’m not sure. Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember much about it, and until he does…” Larry ended his sentence with a helpless shrug.
“Well, we noticed Lois and her alleged fiancé, Warfield, walking around the grounds after dinner,” said Liz, leaning in confidentially. “They weren’t trying to stay in character. Weren’t even holding hands. In fact, he had his nose buried in his tablet the whole time.”
“We were told there’s no internet service on the island,” Selena remarked. “But he might have been reading or word processing from a file. Did he appear to be keying things in?”
“We couldn’t tell, sorry!”
“Don’t forget Mr. Baker, on the front veranda, yelling into his phone,” Hugh reminded his wife. “We caught some of his conversation as we were coming inside. He was trying to make travel arrangements, and it sounded as though he wasn’t having much success.”
“Edyth wanted to leave before breakfast this morning,” Larry recalled. “A summer weekend is probably a busy time for the charter boat services.”
“Have we accounted for everyone now?” said Hugh.
“Except for the servers, who most likely had their hands full cleaning up after dinner,” Liz replied. “Unless they didn’t, of course. They could have spelled one another off in the kitchen, giving any one of them the opportunity to commit a crime. Or return a stolen weapon. And a servant’s first duty when there’s company in the house is to be invisible until required, so none of us would have had a reason to engage in casual conversation with them.”
“All right, then,” Hugh decided. “Let’s go at this as if our main concern is the mystery game, but feel free to stray off-script whenever you get a chance, and make special note of any useful information that falls into your laps as a result. We don’t have a time of death for Mr. Wylde, but perhaps the person who found his body can enlighten us. According to the starting point Vaile gave me, that was Lois Drake.”
Lois was stationed in the dining room. No longer Miss Scarlet, she was now wearing a turquoise-coloured top with a pattern of pearl and sequin spirals all over it. The rest of her was out of sight behind the polished mahogany table. Norman and Blaise were delegated to question her while the other four stood just outside the door, listening. She glanced up and smiled as the two men walked in and sat down facing her.
“Hello, Ms. Drake,” Norman began. “We understand that you’re the one who found the body, and we just want to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said with a trill of nervous laughter. “Ask away.”
“Okay. Can you tell us approximately what time it was when you discovered Mr. Wylde’s corpse?”
“Yes, I can.” Reciting in a singsong voice, she replied, “I stumbled across the deceased at approximately a quarter to ten p.m.”
“And how did you know what time it was?” said Blaise.
“Umm, because I checked…?” Her expression was anxious, as though she was guessing at the answer.
Court was right, Larry decided. This girl was no good at improvising.
“You were out on the beach pretty late,” said Blaise. “Doing what, if I may ask?”
Lois glanced down at her lap. Then her chin rose in defiance. “If you must know, I was taking a swim.”
She also needed to work at memorizing her lines. In fairness, though, she’d probably just received them.
“So you were swimming all alone, in the dark?” Norman challenged her.
“In the altogether,” she countered smugly. “And it wasn’t that dark. There was a moon.”
“Still, you wouldn’t have been climbing around on the rocks,” Blaise said, continuing to press her. “How were you able to see the body from the sandy part of the beach?”
“I didn’t, at first. What I saw in the moonlight was that the fence on the bluff was broken.” Her gaze dropped to her lap again and, clearly reading from the script she was holding there, she completed her response: “I was curious to know what heavy object might have fallen through it, and I went over to the rocks to find out. That was when I discovered the body.”
Under different circumstances, this would have been laughable. Larry glanced at Selena, who was struggling to keep a serious expression on her face as well. Then, in a flash, he realized something: 9:45 was approximately when Arthur’s body had been found. This revised scenario had more than one subtext.
Blaise must have realized it too. He leaned forward to ask, “And did you find anything else near the body? Anything metallic that caught your eye, for example, lying among the rocks?”
“No.”
“How about gunfire? Did you hear anything unusual before you saw the broken fence?”
“What?” Lois referred quickly to her script, then threw a quizzical glance across the table. “It says here that I didn’t.”
“What time did you arrive at the beach to take your swim?” Norman asked.
The confusion on her face evaporated as she straightened in her chair and replied, “It was eight-thirty. I’m positive.”
“And before that?”
“Before that…” She looked lost for a moment. “I guess I was in my room, getting changed,” she finally said, in a voice totally lacking conviction.
“You guess?”
Blaise sank a silencing elbow into his ribs. “Thank you, Ms. Drake, you’ve been most helpful,” he told her.
A minute later, the Crime Club was once more closeted in the parlour.
“Well, that was painful to watch,” Selena remarked.
“But informative,” Liz declared. “If she heard no gunfire after 8:30, that means we have an approximate time of death. The murder occurred between 7:30 and 8:30.”
“Excuse me, but whose murder are we discussing here?” Larry asked. “Gareth’s? Or is it Arthur’s?”
“It’s both,” Liz replied. “Arthur was alive when we left him in the drawing room at 7:30, and he was unreachable shortly after the shots were fired. Since the doors were jammed shut at that point, it’s reasonable to suppose that he was already lying dead in his room. Arthur’s time of death, therefore, was between 7:30 and 8:40 p.m.”
“I believe Court has overlapped the two murders in this scenario,” Hugh informed him, “such that the process of solving one will help us to solve the other. At the same time, there are questions to clear up regarding the attack on Antony Court, as well as Gareth Wylde’s accident on the staircase earlier. How are you at multi-tasking, Mr. Holmes?”
“I’m a team player, if that’s what you really want to know.”
“Good. Because there’s no longer anything hypothetical about this investigation. We are now on a mission to shed some light on the events of the past several hours and, with luck, to stay a step or two ahead of Farley, the hired killer Court brought to this island. Hopefully, he did it unwittingly. The police may not think much of our efforts on their behalf, but if we can prevent further bloodshed, they’ll have to appreciate the results.”
“What’s next, pet?” asked Liz.
“This.” He was brandishing a manila envelope. “Mr. Vaile has very kindly supplied us with diagrams of both the sleeping arrangements and the assigned locations of everyone during the mystery game. We know how and approximately when Wylde was killed, but we don’t know where, and that gives us probable cause to search the house. Blaise and Norman, that will be your task. I’m guessing that a major domo will have a set of passkeys. Go get them and start looking for anything that might be a clue. Remember to search with your eyes only, in every part of the building, upstairs and down, finished and unfinished. Take photos and make notes on whatever you find, but do not touch or move anything. We’ll figure out which are the red herrings later. ”
“Are we including Edyth’s and Harald’s rooms?” Blaise asked.
“Absolutely. I’m pretty sure Court didn’t send them outside just because he felt sorry for them. He most likely wanted them out of the way so they couldn’t interfere with our investigation,” Hugh declared, handing out room maps to everyone in the group.
When Norman and Blaise had left the parlour, Hugh said, “We four will have to question everyone, ostensibly to rule them out as suspects. There are nine persons of interest. Holmes and Watt, why don’t you take statements from Vaile and the servers? Meanwhile, Liz and I will go upstairs and interrogate Georgina, Warfield, and Lois. We’ll question Baker as well. As Harald Pyke’s security chief, he might have had a hand in Arthur’s murder. Jot everything down so you don’t forget any details. Afterward, the six of us can meet back here and compare notes.”
The persons of interest were spread out all over the house. Vaile, Diane, and Farley were in their respective quarters on the first floor. Meanwhile, the remaining two servers had been posted elsewhere. Fan was in the kitchen, tasked with replenishing the coffee urn and snack trays on the buffet. Will was in the drawing room, watching over the liquor cabinet. And, without realizing it, he was also guarding the desk with the gun inside it. Reflexively, Larry checked to make sure he still had the key. A surreptitious glance showed him Selena’s hand patting her slacks pocket as well.
“Vaile first?” he suggested.
“Yes. He’ll have to be warned, sooner rather than later.”
Vaile’s quarters were directly across the hall from the crime scene where Baker was on guard duty. He and Larry exchanged grim nods as the sleuths approached the major domo’s door. Larry’s hand was poised to rap on it when they heard a familiar, unaccented voice call from within, “Well, don’t just stand out there! Come in.”
The foul odour in the lower north wing wasn’t as pronounced as before, Larry noted. The ceiling fans in the other rooms seemed to be doing their job. Meanwhile, the smell of death was barely noticeable in Vaile’s quarters, smothered as it was by the smell of liquor.
The major domo was sitting in a gold jacquard-upholstered chair, his legs casually crossed beneath a grey and white dressing gown. At his elbow stood a stick-figure valet made of metal tubing, holding the blue blazer and dark grey slacks Vaile had been wearing since their arrival. (Had it really been less than twelve hours earlier?) A light grey suit lay across the bed, still on the hanger and protected by a dry cleaner’s transparent plastic bag. The actor smiled up at his visitors, then raised his glass in a salute before downing its contents in a single swallow.
Larry cleared his throat. “You have a head injury. Should you be—?”
“Probably not. I do a lot of things I shouldn’t be doing,” he replied with a sigh. “You’ve got questions for Cedric? Give me a minute and I’ll see if I can rustle him up for you.”
With catlike speed, Selena reached over and snatched his glass. She sniffed it, then handed it back to him.
“Uh-oh! Am I busted?” he asked in a furtive voice.
“Only if you don’t answer our questions,” she assured him.
Larry gazed inquiringly at her.
“He’s not drinking the whisky,” she explained, laughing. “He’s just using it as a prop. And as an air freshener.”
“How—?”
“It’s an acting trick,” Court explained. “I rinsed my mouth out with scotch so it would be on my breath when I met you on the dock yesterday. Since then, I’ve been drinking iced tea and pretending to be slightly inebriated.” He grinned. “It’s all just part of the show.”
“I see. And was Georgina drinking something other than wine yesterday, as part of the show as well?” Larry asked.
“No,” Court replied. “She likes her Chardonnay. But she has a tremendous capacity for alcohol for someone her size. Georgina was nowhere near as drunk as she wanted you to think she was. She’s always been good at that.”
“Pardon?” said Larry.
“She’s a natural actress,” he explained, “although many would use a less flattering term. She can make you believe that she’s helpless, that you hold all the cards. Then she turns around and teaches you who really has the upper hand. As an actor and director myself, I always thought her talent was wasted behind a keyboard. On the other hand, if she weren’t writing about crime, she would probably be committing it, so I guess it’s all for the best.”
“What you’re telling us is that she and Gareth deserve each other,” Selena said.
He chuckled. “Yes, but it’s not an even match, by any means. She’s had his number for years.”
Interesting. Larry filed the information away and asked, “What can you tell us about your four cast members?”
As Court shifted mental gears, his expression became instantly sober. “Well, Diane and Will were among my first acting hires when I started up Heron Springs about five years ago. Fan joined us two years later, and Farley came to us just this past spring, looking for offstage work. Set building, props management, stuff like that. He was good at it, so I kept him on. I thought he had promise as an actor and let him understudy some of the minor roles as well. A few days ago, the performer he was understudying for this engagement broke his leg. I thought Farley could handle it, so I moved him up.”
“Broke his leg?” said Larry. “I thought that was supposed to be a metaphor. How did it happen?”
Court gave him a strange look. “Some sort of motorcycle accident, I believe. Why?”
“Because it’s quite possible that Farley caused that accident in order to take his place. You need to be careful around him, Mr. Court,” Larry warned. “We have reason to believe that Farley may be a hired killer. He may have been the one who attacked you earlier, and in fact, he may still be gunning for you.”
The other man stared at his drained glass for a long moment, probably wishing it had contained real whisky. Then he pursed and unpursed his lips and said firmly, “No.”
“You have to believe this,” Selena urged him. “I overheard part of a conversation earlier between him and someone else. Its meaning was pretty clear.”
