‘Good evening, your grace. Won’t you join us?’
He did not wait for the duchess to reply, but instead turned and beckoned to a servant to lay another place at his table. With little choice but to remain, if she did not wish to appear churlish, the Duchess of Grismere walked into the room and took the seat beside Rose.
After a few moments of fascinated silence, conversations resumed. At the Belvederes’ table, however, colloquy was rather stilted, and might have been absent entirely, had Cedric not taken it upon himself to continue a predominantly one-sided conversation that required little input from anyone else beside the occasional nod. Rose found herself at rather a loss as to what to say, the various uncomfortable interviews she had held with the duchess weighing heavily on her mind. Even Lavinia who, with her reputation for frivolous chatter, might have been depended upon to perpetuate the conversation with very little effort, was oddly quiet. This, in itself, was so remarkable an occurrence that it drew from her brother a few concerned glances.
Rose considered it fortunate that her husband was ignorant of his sister’s dealings with Alec Dewhurst, of which she knew he would have heartily disapproved. She had caught the girl’s eye twice that evening and knew that, if nothing else, Lavinia was ashamed of the levity she had displayed during her interview.
To Rose’s mind, the duchess appeared listless and distracted, turning her head to look from one table to another. It was possible that she feared she was an object of discussion. Certainly she seemed apprehensive and the little, quick movements of her head were erratic.
‘I shouldn’t have troubled you,’ she said abruptly, while Cedric was in the middle of a sentence. ‘I intended to keep to my rooms.’ She took a deep breath, as if the very act of speaking was an effort. ‘If … if it had not been for the basket of sweetmeats, I should have done.’
‘Basket of sweetmeats?’ said Cedric puzzled
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Lavinia brightening. ‘I say, did you like them? We thought you would.’
‘Was it your idea?’ enquired the duchess, unable to keep the note of surprise from her voice, though her eyes showed a new interest in her companion.
‘No, not entirely,’ replied Lavinia, reddening slightly. ‘But I thought it was a jolly good idea when Miss Hyacinth suggested that we should give them to you.’
At mention of her name, Miss Hyacinth looked up inquisitively.
‘We were just talking about the basket of sweetmeats,’ Lavinia explained brightly.
‘Dear Lady Lavinia and I wanted to do something for you, your grace, on behalf of all the hotel guests,’ Miss Hyacinth said in a very gushing fashion, her voice carrying across the room.
‘Pah!’ muttered Mr Vickers into his drink.
‘That … that was very kind of you,’ said the duchess, lowering her eyes. She looked a little embarrassed by the sudden rush of attention that her comment had generated.
‘We thought you must be perfectly miserable,’ said Lavinia, feeling that some of the glory had been taken from her, ‘and, speaking for myself, I always feel frightfully hungry when I’m upset, don’t you? We thought sweetmeats would be just the thing. When one is distressed, one often doesn’t feel like eating a full meal, just something sweet.’
‘And I knew that Mr Kettering had the most delightful little silver Georgian sweetmeat basket,’ said Miss Hyacinth, advancing towards the Belvederes’ table. ‘It’s kept on the sideboard.’ She beamed at the duchess. Her smile was reciprocated with a rather pale imitation. Lavinia looked slightly put out. Miss Hyacinth wondered whether she should have remained at her own table. ‘It occurred to me it would be just the thing to use,’ she said rather desperately, addressing her remark to Rose, who alone seemed receptive to her commentary. There was an awkward pause. Miss Hyacinth knew that she should return to her table and yet, for some reason, her feet refused to obey this simple command. Instead, she stayed standing rather awkwardly beside the Belvederes’ table.
It was evident that the duchess felt obliged to show a little more polite interest. ‘Was it you who decorated the handle of the basket with the bow?’ she said.
‘No, that was I,’ croaked Miss Peony loudly who, it appeared, felt her presence was also required at the Belvederes’ table, if only to retrieve her sister. It is also possible that the woman, so often ignored, wished to be congratulated for her efforts.
The sound of her voice, so infrequently heard, made everyone start. Miss Hyacinth herself visibly winced and glanced anxiously about her. Really, Peony was too much. Why had she used that awful voice, which she usually reserved for when they were alone? On the rare occasions she talked in public, she spoke quietly. What had come over her? And was it Miss Hyacinth’s imagination or had Father Adler actually spilt his wine? To say nothing of that awful Mr Vickers, who was positively beside himself with laughter. Well, she would certainly be having words with her sister that evening when they returned to their room.
Miss Peony, if she was aware of her sister’s verminous thoughts, appeared quite unperturbed by them. ‘It was I who arranged the sweetmeats in the basket,’ she said, in the same loud croak that carried.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Hyacinth quickly, crimson with embarrassment on her sister’s behalf. ‘And it was very prettily done, dear.’ She took her sister by the elbow and steered her back to their table. ‘Why were you using that voice?’ she hissed. ‘Really, I think you did it just to spite me, I really do.’
‘You’ve spilt your wine,’ remarked Mabel to her father. She stared transfixed at the crimson stain, which appeared to be spreading across the white linen, and turned very white.
‘Oh dear, how clumsy of me,’ said the vicar, dabbing hastily, but rather ineffectually, at the damaged tablecloth with his napkin.
Mr Vickers sidled over to Ron Thurlow’s table and leered. ‘Fancy giving sweetmeats to a murderess,’ he remarked. ‘Whatever will the old biddy think of next?’
Ron, who had been staring down at his knife and fork, looked up. ‘You can go to the devil!’ He spoke with such unexpected ferocity that Mr Vickers shrugged and shuffled back to his own table muttering: ‘Wonder what’s eating him?’
Ron Thurlow sat back in his chair, aware that his outburst had not gone unnoticed. A few curious looks were cast in his direction. Admonishing himself severely, he flung down his napkin, rose from his table, and wandered out into the night.
‘Hyacinth, I have a headache,’ said Miss Peony.
‘Have you, dear?’ said her sister, with a remarkable lack of sympathy.
‘I must go to bed.’
‘What a good idea,’ replied Miss Hyacinth.
‘You must come with me. It … it isn’t safe to remain here.’
‘What utter nonsense,’ said Miss Hyacinth. ‘If you will insist on being in one of your ridiculous moods, I, for one, won’t be a party to it.’ With that, she got up purposefully from the table. ‘Now, if you have no objection, I think I’ll take my coffee with the Adlers.’
Miss Peony watched as her sibling joined the vicar and proceeded to help him in his futile efforts to dab at the wine stain. With various misgivings, Miss Peony got up from her own chair and made for the door. Once there, she hesitated. It was no good. She didn’t have the necessary courage to return to her room by herself. But she could hardly sit alone at her table, so very obviously snubbed and abandoned. Besides, Hyacinth had no doubt mentioned to Father Adler that she had retired to her room with a headache. It would appear odd, therefore, if she were to remain in the dining room. She crossed the floor to the French windows and went out on to the terrace. She would stay here a few moments and gather her thoughts. She was certain she was trembling, but on the terrace she could come to no harm. She was merely a stone’s throw from the dining room. Even so, her legs felt very weak. She pulled up one of the white cast iron chairs that occupied the terrace, and sat down. Her deafness muffled the sound of the music played by the band. The soft, sombre notes drifted out to her, soothing her troubled mind and lu
lling her into a reverie of sorts. She dozed.
She awoke with a start. It was dark. She was sitting on the terrace and it was dark. The band had ceased playing and the dining room lay behind her in darkness. Everything was shrouded in darkness. She had fallen asleep and now she had woken she found herself quite alone. Fear entered her bones and she stumbled to the French windows. She tugged desperately at the handle. They were locked. Mr Kettering employed very diligent servants; she had said as much to Hyacinth. Miss Peony rattled the handle of the window to make quite certain it wouldn’t open. It made a degree of noise, and this, together with her own deafness, meant that she did not hear the footsteps that crept up behind her. She had resorted to banging on the window stupidly with her fists, when the blow struck.
Chapter Thirty
‘She told me it wasn’t safe to remain in the dining room. She said we must leave, but I … I wouldn’t listen,’ sobbed Miss Hyacinth bitterly. ‘I … I shall never forgive myself, never.’
‘You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen,’ said Rose gently.
Flanked by Cedric and the hotel proprietor, Rose had sat in a respectful silence watching the dawn rise from the centre of the window where the curtains did not quite meet. They were in the Trimble sisters’ room, and a full hour had passed since the discovery of Miss Peony’s body on the terrace.
‘My last words to her were uttered in anger,’ cried Miss Hyacinth, dabbing at her eyes with one corner of a lace handkerchief. ‘I accused her of being in one of her moods.’ She wrung her hands with renewed anguish. ‘Oh, if only I hadn’t been so angry with her, I might have noticed earlier that she was not here when I returned. You see, I purposefully refused to look in the direction of her bed. I thought she might still be awake and I didn’t want to catch her eye. I wanted her to know how annoyed I was.’
‘What made you realise she was missing?’ enquired Rose curiously.
‘I woke with a start. I had an awful feeling that something was wrong. All of a sudden I knew what it was. It was too quiet. You see, I couldn’t hear Peony breathing.’ She leaned forward in her seat, as if she was about to communicate some highly confidential fact. ‘I had often accused her of snoring.’
‘And that is when you roused the hotel?’ said Cedric.
A makeshift search party of sorts had been quickly assembled, comprised of Mr Kettering and a few servants. It had not taken very long for them to discover Miss Peony’s body. The hotel proprietor, though beside himself, had acted quickly. Notwithstanding the hour, he had immediately summoned the Belvederes. As they sat in Miss Hyacinth’s room now, they were wearing clothes that had been hurriedly pulled on, and their hair had not seen a brush.
Rose glanced around the room. Her gaze took in Miss Peony’s bed, which had not been slept in, lingered for a moment on the empty fireplace and drifted towards the waste paper basket. Something caught her eye. She leaned forward. The basket contained a few balls of paper that had been hastily screwed up; indeed, some were coming undone. It took her but a moment to cross the room and retrieve the topmost paper. She unfolded it and read its contents with growing excitement. It was a draft of Miss Peony’s letter to the murderer. She gasped and, without a word, Cedric and Mr Kettering crowded round her so they might peer over her shoulder. When they had finished reading, Rose passed the sheet of paper to Miss Hyacinth, without a word. The woman glanced at it and emitted a startled cry.
‘Peony was writing something when I came into the room yesterday. She tried to stuff it under a book before I could see what she was doing. It must have been this.’ She waved the creased piece of paper frantically in the air. ‘Why, oh why, didn’t she tell me what she was doing? I would have stopped her.’
‘Did you know that she had seen the murderer?’ Rose asked rather sharply.
‘I … I knew that she had been out that night … the night Mr Dewhurst was killed,’ Miss Hyacinth replied hesitantly. ‘She woke me up when she returned. She told me to go back to sleep. I … I knew she was upset about something but she refused to talk about it.’
It was on the tip of Rose’s tongue to say that they should have told her, that they had lied during their interview and obstructed her investigation. A look at the distraught expression on Miss Hyacinth’s face, however, persuaded her to do otherwise. Instead, she said:
‘Do you think it might have been to do with the pocket watch? Was Miss Peony trying to return it?’
If she had suddenly announced that every one of the hotel guests had been murdered, the effect could not have been more tremendous. Miss Hyacinth turned very white and buried her face in her hands. Rose could barely decipher the words that she uttered through heartfelt sobs.
‘It’s … it’s my fault … If I hadn’t taken it … none of this would have happened.’
Rose did not have time to comfort the woman. Instead, she said abruptly: ‘Where is it? Do you still have it?’
Miss Hyacinth was too upset to reply. Rose marched over to the fireplace and thrust her hand up the chimney and felt inside. It took her a few seconds to locate the hiding place where she had found her brooch. Her fingers closed over a small velvet pouch, the same pouch she had discovered caught on one of the pinnacle finials of the grate. She withdrew her hand and, with trembling fingers, withdrew from the little sack a gold and diamond object. Had she been her husband, she might have whistled. Alec Dewhurst’s pocket watch looked up at her in all its jewelled glory. For a moment Rose stared at it stupidly. Then the engraved initials caught the light. “O, “E”, “W”, she murmured. ‘They’re “O”, “E”, “W”.
Having arranged for Miss Calder to sit with Miss Hyacinth, who stubbornly refused to leave the room she had shared with her sister, the others had returned, weary and shaken, to their own quarters. Rose had been persuaded to go back to bed to snatch a few hours’ sleep before another endless round of interviews commenced. Even as she undressed, she was tolerably certain that they would prove fruitless. There would be no convenient witnesses or alibis. Miss Peony had been killed at a time when both hotel guests and servants had been asleep. The hour, Rose acknowledged, somewhat bitterly, had been well chosen by the murderer.
She awoke barely an hour later, her mind racing. With a blanket wrapped around her, she crept out of the bedroom she shared with her husband and padded across the hall in bare feet to the sitting room. Sleep was now furthest from her mind and in here she might sit and think without fear of waking Cedric. Ensconced in the blanket on the sofa, she stared at the pocket watch and Miss Peony’s note, both of which she held in her hands like two sinister trophies.
She studied the pocket watch first and murmured: ‘There’s no “G”. She sighed and turned her attention next to Miss Peony’s note. She wondered idly what the murderer had done with the original. She doubted it differed in many respects from the draft she held in her hand. Indeed, if it had not been for the fact that there were two large ink blots on the sheet she was reading, her copy might well have been the one given to the murderer.
Miss Peony, she noted, had taken the precaution of not signing the document with her own name. Instead, she had written “A Well-wisher”. Given that it was highly improbable that the woman had handed the letter to her murderer, she wondered how the murderer had found out Miss Peony’s identity. Had she been spotted delivering the letter? Rose thought it unlikely that Miss Peony would have slipped the letter under the murderer’s door. She would have had to cross the terrace where there was every chance she would have been observed from any number of windows. It needn’t have been the murderer who had seen her either, for anyone might quite innocently have remarked to the murderer that they had seen her deliver the note. Rose was quite sure Miss Peony would never have trusted a servant to deliver it for her, for there would always have been the fear that it would fall into the wrong hands.
She thought it far more likely that the woman would have left the note somewhere where the murderer was certain to find it. The dining room was the obvious cho
ice, for everyone sat at their assigned tables in their allocated seats. The note could quite easily have been slipped under a napkin or placed on a chair. But it would still have involved a degree of risk. Miss Peony could quite easily have been observed doing the deed. Rose put a hand up to her head, which was throbbing, because of course she had been observed, which was how the murderer had discovered that it was Miss Peony who had written the letter.
The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Miss Peony had placed the note in the dining room for the murderer to find. Any other day, that would have ruled out the duchess being the murderer but for the fact that she had eaten in the dining room last night. Though, of course, Miss Peony could not have known that she would, or indeed where she would sit. Still, the fact remained that every one of the hotel guests had been present in the dining room that evening, and a few hours later Miss Peony had been murdered on the terrace, not a stone’s throw from the room.
Now the question was, had anyone appeared particularly upset? Rose had just arrived at a recollection of Ron Thurlow marching out of the room with a scowl on his face while dinner was still being served, when the door opened and Lavinia entered the room. One look at the girl’s pale face told her that Lavinia was aware that something frightful had occurred. If there was any doubt Lavinia’s next words confirmed the fact.
‘What is the matter? What has happened?’
‘Miss Peony is dead,’ said Rose quietly. ‘She has been murdered.’
Lavinia sank down beside her on the sofa and pulled some of the blanket towards her. As she did so, her eyes fell on Miss Peony’s letter and, before Rose could stop her, she had picked up the sheet and was reading it. ‘Did … did Miss Peony write this?’ she asked, her eyes widening. Rose nodded. ‘Is … is this why she was murdered?’
Murder on Skiathos Page 29