A Three Book Problem, page 26
“In fairness, we did ask each of them, several times, if they’d noticed anything in the way of suspicious behavior on the part of the others, or if they had anything else to tell us. Miranda had plenty of opportunity to tell me about the blowgun. She chose not to.”
“She let Annie know she’d found it. Exceedingly foolish of her, but greed has a way of overcoming instincts of self-preservation. Or so I’ve heard.”
Ryan nodded. “That it does.”
“Annie knew Miranda would hold David’s death, his murder, over her head for the rest of her life, so Miranda also had to go. Until a few minutes ago, Miranda didn’t out and out tell Annie that she’d seen, and photographed, the blowgun and dart, but Miranda’s not all that bright. Annie became aware that Miranda knew, or at least suspected, what Annie had done. They were planning to drive back to New York City together; Annie probably intended to see to it that Miranda had an accident along the way. But then Cliff arrived, argued with Miranda, and left without anyone seeing Miranda again. The perfect fall guy.”
“When did you know it was Annie?” Estrada asked.
“Not until it was almost too late. I made a serious mistake, and Miranda might have paid for that mistake with her life.”
“Are you going to explain that?” Estrada asked.
“If I must. I took both Annie and Kyle at face value, and I didn’t search far into their backgrounds. I came here, today, intending to confront Steve Patterson.”
“Steve? Why? What did Masterson have on him?” Ryan asked.
“Nothing criminal, but enough to cause Steve enormous embarrassment among the people who matter to him. Let’s leave it at that. I was wrong.”
Estrada snorted. “That’s a first.”
“The first of which you are aware,” I said.
“Okay,” Ryan said. “You were wrong about Patterson. What happened today that made you suspect Annie?”
“She’s an opera singer. Good enough to audition at the Met.”
Estrada and Ryan exchanged glances. “So?” Estrada said.
“The blowgun has been worrying me a great deal. We know the weapon’s easy enough to get. I’m assuming you had no luck tracing the one that was used?”
Ryan shook his head. “Nothing that would tell us who had bought that particular one.”
“Or the strychnine?”
“Again no,” Estrada said. “Will you please get on with it, Gemma. We don’t have all day here.”
“I wouldn’t mind sitting out here all day.” The kitchen step was warm beneath me, the sun shone on my face, the air was refreshingly cool and crisp. I wiggled my bare toes. “I love autumn in New England, don’t you?”
Estrada growled.
“I knew Annie’s in show business, but I thought she was an actor. I couldn’t find traces of her career online, and so I assumed she had a stage name, which she does. I let it go and didn’t keep searching. A blowgun can be difficult to use with precise accuracy, particularly one so small. In this case the dart had come through the tear in the screen of the door, crossed the twenty-five or so feet of the library floor, and hit the target in the exact spot intended. The side of his neck. Most importantly, the shot had to be successful the first time. I would have noticed a dart flying in front of my face and I would have turned to see what was going on.”
“Get to the point, Gemma,” Ryan said.
“I am getting to the point. If you’ll both stop interrupting. Our killer must have practiced extensively. You searched, I’m sure, and found no trace of any of these people belonging to some sort of blowgun club, if there are such things, and I’m sure there are. No one around here had seen someone casually practicing shooting darts out of a blowgun. I considered briefly that they might have been archers, as the steady aim would be similar.”
Ryan nodded, meaning he’d had the same thought.
“I’d initially concluded that the shooter was most likely a man, as men have greater lung capacity than women. But breath control can be learned, can’t it? The shooter had to have, considering the small length of the blowgun and the distance the dart had to travel, extraordinary breathing power.”
Ryan and Estrada glanced at each other and I saw comprehension dawn on them both.
“Such as a Met-worthy opera singer,” Estrada said.
“Exactly. And that was why I suddenly realized I had to find Miranda. Because Annie, the opera singer, had been watching Cliff leave and she was not in the music room listening to everyone argue. As for where she got the strychnine, I’ll suggest you contact farm and supply stores in Kansas and ask about purchases of wild animal control substances. Whether Annie had the idea of using the blowgun and dart back in the summer or not, murder has been on her mind for a long time.” I pushed myself to my feet. “Shall we join the others?”
Chapter Eighteen
“So David was blackmailing them all?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Why would he gather together all those people who hated him for his house party?”
“Because he was manipulative and mean. Miranda said he liked making people dance to his tune. If I had to guess, I’d say he knew his power trip was coming to an end. He was running out of money, and out of excuses to keep borrowing, so he threw the last he had into making this grand gesture of playing host at a country house property.”
We were relaxing on the deck of the Blue Water Café, gathered around a big table next to the railing. We had drinks in front of us, along with platters of calamari, bruschetta, and a bucket of mussels and clams. Below us, harbor seals played in the cool waters, and in the distance lights shone from boats bobbing at anchor. Heat lamps were turned on and we were bundled up in thick sweaters with blankets over our knees. Andy would be closing the deck after the weekend. He’d come out of the kitchen to join us and sat next to Jayne, holding her hand under the table. I grinned at Ryan and helped myself to a piece of bruschetta.
“We haven’t asked Steve, Cliff, or Miranda what he had on them, as that appears to not be relevant to his death,” Estrada said. “So why don’t you tell us. If you know.”
“Do you doubt I do?”
“Sadly, no.”
I shook my head and helped myself to a crispy piece of calamari.
“I want to know why I’d been invited,” Donald said. “And Arthur. David didn’t even know us, not personally, much less have blackmail material on us.”
“He might have been mean and manipulative,” I said, “but David Masterson was, we mustn’t forget, a Sherlockian. I believe the original idea for the weekend was to have a meeting of the like-minded in a mutually enjoyable environment. Then, once his financial world began crashing down around him, he decided it would be a nice idea to remind the others that he could ruin them if he so chose. As a bonus, Steve and Cliff do have some Sherlockian knowledge, so he could indulge his passion at the same time he made his victims squirm. We know Miranda was paying him off, and you’ll find that Cliff was too. Ryan, you said David had unaccounted for deposits going into his bank account?”
Ryan nodded.
“The blackmail payments. Steve doesn’t have the kind of money that would help David out of his financial difficulties, probably not Cliff either. It wasn’t about the money for David. It was about holding the threat of disgrace and ruin over their heads and making them dance to his tune. You’ll likely find that some people who weren’t at this weekend were also being blackmailed. It’s entirely possible David’s victims thought they were finished paying up, but blackmail never stops, does it? The blackmailer gets greedy and can’t let go of the pressure.”
“As I tried to tell my editor when he said we were to keep mention of Suffolk Gardens House out of the paper,” Irene said. “He wouldn’t listen to me, but it became a moot point after the chief of police’s statement about the events surrounding David’s death and Annie’s arrest, didn’t it?” She chuckled. “I wish I could have seen Daniel Steiner’s face when he heard it on the radio. Naturally, the paper printed the chief’s statement in full.”
“Let’s hope that was sufficient to dissuade Steiner from taking up the life of a blackmailer,” Donald said.
“If you’ve decided those matters are irrelevant to the case against Annie, then I’ll keep what I know to myself,” I said to Ryan and his partner. “It’s mostly speculation anyway.” Miranda had been paying David so he wouldn’t reveal what he knew about her son, Mark. I have no interest in finding out what Mark’s secret is, so I hadn’t looked into him, and I wouldn’t ask Ryan if he knew. David might not have been blackmailing Annie but he did enjoy holding the promise of helping her with her music career over her head, and he was intending to do the same for Kyle. The only one of them who seemed to owe nothing to David was Billy, although he resented having to play the poor relative.
“You might drop a word to your friends at the NYPD to look into Cliff Mann’s antique business,” I said. “It’s not entirely above board. Cliff came back to the house to ask Miranda to give him a letter he’d sold to David, which David had given to his mother and after her death to Miranda as a memento. A letter supposedly written by Emily Dickinson.”
“That would be nice to have,” Jayne said.
“Not in this case,” I said. “Supposedly is the operative word. I can’t see Miranda as a collector. When David died, the first thing that crossed Miranda’s mind would be that she could now sell the letter. That would require it being examined, and Cliff couldn’t have that. They argued about it, and Cliff stormed off.” I remembered Friday night, when I’d heard someone telling David they wouldn’t have come if they knew “he” was going to be there. I now believed that had been Miranda, complaining about Cliff. Even before David’s death, Cliff had been pestering her about wanting that letter back.
“Jennifer?” Jayne asked. “What about Jennifer? You saw her earlier, Gemma. What did she have to say?”
After Annie’d been arrested and the others had given their statements, Jayne and I had been allowed to return to town and our businesses. Steve had given Jennifer a lift back to the Harbor Inn. Shortly before closing she came into the Emporium and we’d chatted while she browsed.
“Annie’s role this weekend, initially, was to play the housekeeper. In that position, she put the towels in the bathrooms, made the beds, tidied the rooms.”
“Wouldn’t help in the kitchen,” Jayne muttered.
“Which meant she was in and out of people’s bedrooms. She and Billy came in Billy’s car, and they got to the house on Friday before the guests arrived. Annie would have been expected to ensure the rooms were ready and in doing so, she would have realized, almost immediately, that David and Jennifer had slept together the night before. Once she knew that, she would have wanted to know more. The walls in that house might as well be made of paper. Annie listened to David and Jennifer making plans for their future. Annie knew David had told Jennifer he was going to divorce Rebecca and marry her. I believe he intended to do that, and Annie must have believed it also.”
“Why?” Jayne asked. “I mean, why do you believe it? He was a scoundrel.”
I’d watched as Jennifer browsed my shop. She picked up everything and selected what she liked, without looking at the price tags. She didn’t spend a lot of money on herself—her clothes, shoes, and purse were serviceable, but not new and not particularly attractive, although of good quality—but clearly she could afford to indulge her passions whenever she wanted. Period clothes of the quality and detail she’d brought for the weekend are not cheap. Her earrings had been gold, and the diamonds in the jewelry she’d worn to the Saturday dinner were genuine. She’d given me an address in Beverly Hills to have her purchases sent to. “Your parents’ home?” I asked her.
“Yes. I’ve decided to go to London after all. To take the trip David and I intended to take together. Maybe I’ll spend some time in Europe too. After that, I’ll go back to California and back to working at my dad’s publishing company.” She was having dinner at Steve’s that night, she told me, where they’d have a lively spirited discussion about the Second Afghan War and Doctor John Watson’s part in it. Tomorrow she’d be gathering all her courage around her and booking a flight to England. I gave her the contact information of my friend Grant Thompson, who’d recently moved to London to be with my older sister, and suggested she give him a call. Grant was a true Anglophile, and he’d be delighted to show an American first-timer the sights of his beloved adopted city.
“Jennifer,” I said now, “is financially comfortable. She’s not mega-rich by the standards David and Rebecca tried to maintain, but well enough off not to need to work for an extended period. Her family live simply, and they taught her to live simply, but they have a great deal of money. When Jennifer told me she’d rewritten her will to mention David, I wondered why a single, childless woman of her age with a job in publishing and a rented flat would even have a will, and so I checked into her. You can be sure David did the same. Yes, he intended to divorce Rebecca, who’d rapidly run through her own inheritance, and marry Jennifer and her trust fund. Annie had been intending to get rid of David when and if the chance presented itself, but she realized that if she was to get anything from him, she had to act now.” I looked between Ryan and Estrada. “Am I close?”
“Annie’s not talking,” Ryan said. “But we’ll get her. We have the pictures Miranda took of the blowgun and the dart in Annie’s luggage. We’ve no proof, yet, that Annie put those things there, but we’ll get it.”
“The NYPD have found mysterious holes in the walls in the corridor of her apartment building,” Estrada said. “Tiny holes about the size of a dart. Her apartment itself isn’t very big, nowhere near the size of the library at Suffolk House. Neighbors say they’ve wondered what she was doing out in the hallway at night.”
“The dress she wore as the housekeeper was baggy enough to conceal the blowgun,” I said. “Slip it down the side, tuck it into her knickers, secure it with the belt, and no one would notice. Annie had no need for a hollow walking stick or ladies’ parasol. As for why she used a blowgun in the first place, please let me know when she confesses. I’m very interested in that.”
“Do you suppose, Gemma,” Donald asked, “she was making a direct reference to The Sign of Four?”
“I believe so. If not the book itself, some reference to Holmes at any rate. David’s mother was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, and she donated a lot of money to theatrical and musical companies. David did not. David spent his money on Sherlock Holmes first editions and Sherlockian country house weekends. I suspect Annie resented his devotion to Holmes and she wanted to express her contempt for that passion. She really is a very confused young woman.”
“Don’t tell me you feel sorry for her,” Estrada said. “And you hope we go easy on her?”
“Sorry for her? Not in the least. Plenty of confused young women are out there, and they don’t go around killing people and attempting to frame others. I thought she was genuinely grieving for David, but I now believe I was mistaken. An opera singer is also an actor, and she’s a good one.”
I took a sip of my wine and glanced around the table at the faces of the people I loved and cared about. Even Louise Estrada. “So, Jayne. Andy. Let’s talk wedding plans. If Suffolk Gardens House is still available in the spring, it would be a lovely setting.”
“I am never, ever stepping foot in that place again,” Jayne said firmly.
“Perhaps we could use it for the January sixth dinner.” A gleam popped into Donald’s eye, and he rubbed his hands together. “It will be even more atmospheric in winter. Roaring fireplaces, drafty halls, creaking floorboards. Dark moonlit nights.”
“Count me with Jayne,” Ryan said. “I’m not working in that kitchen while you and Arthur entertain your friends, Donald.”
“I have no particular desire to go there again, myself,” I said. “But I have one last detail to tidy up. I trust you’re all free Sunday at nine?” I smiled at everyone. No one smiled in return.
Chapter Nineteen
“Careful there!” I called. Violet and Peony danced around the newcomer, sniffing at everything.
I stood in the mountain of debris scattered across my lawn. Yards and yards of bubble wrap, heavy blankets, packing tape, Styrofoam peanuts, cardboard. I stroked my cheek lightly as I thought. “Maybe it would look better under that tree.”
Ryan Ashburton leaned his hands against his knees. “Absolutely not,” he gasped. “We’re not moving it again, Gemma.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Jayne said.
“If I can’t claim my back injury as work-related, I’m going to sue you.” Louise Estrada put both knuckles in the small of her back and leaned against them with a groan.
“Okay,” I said.
Andy Whitehall peered at me from behind the wheel of the forklift. “You mean we’re done? Thank heavens. Sorry about those bushes, Gemma. It’s been a while since I drove one of these.”
My neighbor Mrs. Ramsbatten had pulled a garden chair out of her shed and set it up on her lawn, where she sat drinking iced tea and cheering us on. Heads had popped out of nearby houses to watch and more than a few people wandered over to offer the benefit of their advice. A rental truck filled my driveway, and the forklift had dug up a good part of the lawn, destroyed some flowering bushes, and barely avoided taking out the steps to the mudroom. My friends were exhausted and dirty, Louise Estrada was threatening to sue me, and my dogs were wary.
I was delighted.
The bronze statue of the little girl and her dog sat in the center of the back yard. Next week, I’d buy a bench to put next to it. I’d create a pleasant oasis where I could sit and read on a warm summer’s day. I’d done my research into the sculptor and the cost and value of similar bronze work before calling Daniel Steiner and offering to buy the statue. I’d gone in low, giving my opening bid, expecting he’d drive a hard bargain. Instead, he’d said, “Come and pick it up any time. But you have to bring your own crew.”
