Honeymoon with Death

by Vivian Conroy

  Stephanos’s chest burned. He didn’t want to be implicated himself, but Achilles, vain, insufferable Achilles with his myths, calling that woman who had been murdered his Helena, a woman worth risking war over. Like he owned her.

  Had he owned her? Had he been her secret lover? Only the thought was…

  Jasper said, “You were both possibilities for a secret lover. And when Eureka died, you were so eager to involve me and your brother as translator. Then your brother involved Petros, pretending he himself didn’t know a thing about the unmarked grave in the cemetery. But he knew and he consciously kept the knowledge from me. And that letter… That letter you wrote to yourself.”

  Stephanos froze. “I did what?” He tried to laugh.

  “You so badly wanted to involve your brother or perhaps even anybody just so long as suspicion wouldn’t fall on you.”

  Jasper eyed him coldly. “If you had tried harder to solve the murder back then, it would not have been necessary to do all of this now. And Eureka need not have died.”

  Stephanos banged a hand on the table. “I don’t have to listen to these insults. I did my job properly at the time.”

  Jasper waved his protestations off. “We are here now and I’m just pointing out that the woman who was murdered, Mrs Ramsforth’s mother, might have had a secret lover. Did he kill her? Out of jealousy? Or because she wanted to end the affair? Who knows.”

  He turned around, slowly focusing on them one by one, to end on an unobtrusive woman sitting with the hotel girl. “Mrs Murray. Formerly Mrs Reynolds…” Stephanos shocked upright and stared. A relative of the young man driven into the sea? How?

  * * *

  Mrs Murray held the inspector’s gaze. “What do you want, Inspector?’

  “The full truth. Why you came here. And what you wanted with Mrs Ramsforth. Did you want to have her found in the same position as your son? Standing over a dead body?” Mrs Murray laughed. “You just said that to get her to the beach her champagne had to have been drugged. How would I have done that?”

  “Still, you knew more than you told me. You pretended you had no idea that Mrs Ramsforth was related to the murdered woman at the time. But you did know. You recognised her. Before I told you about the link with the past I watched you through the window of the room where you were tending Mrs Ramsforth. You were studying her closely. You wanted to see what it was in her face that had lured your son. You suspected him of having had an affair with Mrs Ramsforth’s mother and of having stabbed her when it became difficult. You were never sure he had truly been innocent.” Mrs Murray lowered her head. Tears burned her eyes. “I wanted to believe he was innocent, Inspector. But I knew how he loved beauty. And Mrs Ramsforth’s mother had been very beautiful. I wasn’t sure what their relationship had been. I wasn’t sure… of anything.”

  “But you did know he was buried here, and you had met Eureka who had tended his grave. Did she tell you she had the body examined by a doctor, also to find out if her mistress had been with child? From a secret lover… From your son perhaps.” Mrs Murray covered her face with her hands. “I didn’t want to think it but… how could I be sure? I was so confused. So sad again, and so angry.”

  “Angry enough to kill?”

  She looked up. “My son’s death meant I lost everything. Him, contact to his family. I have never seen my grandchildren in the flesh. Only in a photo.”

  “Yes.” Jasper pulled something from his pocket and held it up. It was an old pocket watch. “Your son carried this and Eureka took care of it after his death. She may have found it pretty or considered it a memento of a young man she cared for like a son, as she had lost contact with her own children when she moved away from the city where she had lived and came to live on this island. The pocket watch disappeared off her dead body. A thief took it while I was away to fetch the police. But another saw it and killed the thief for it, however not finding the watch to take it back. The names in it are very important. They are the names of Arthur Reynold’s wife at the time, and his children.”

  Jasper lowered the pocket watch. Turning his head he focused on Hawtree. “You were adopted, weren’t you, Mr Hawtree? Have you ever known who your real parents were? Can they have been French? A French widow and her son coming into contact with a young Englishman who married her and made the son his son. Until he died a brutal death and the family fell apart and the child was adopted by others.”

  Mrs Murray looked at Hawtree. Her heart skipped a beat at the idea that Arthur’s stepson was sitting a few feet away from her. “Are you…?”

  * * *

  Gideon Hawtree laughed. “This is going too far, Jasper. First you try to accuse me of the old woman’s murder and now you want to claim I was the son Arthur Reynolds accepted into his family when he married a French widow with a son?”

  “Yes. You killed Eureka to put Mrs Ramsforth in the exact same position as your stepfather had been. It was your revenge for his death. Come, come, not so quick to deny. You have holidayed here before. You could have known the story of the villa, the murder, the young man killed and washed up by the sea. Eureka tending the grave. You could have put two and two together and realised your stepfather died here. You care about family, Mr Hawtree. You cared about it enough to have killed before. You killed the child of your adoptive parents to have their love for yourself.”

  Gideon rose to his feet. “How dare you!” he yelled. “I did not! I did not kill him.”

  Two men entered the room and came up to Jasper quickly. Two uniformed policemen.

  Jasper gestured to them to stand aside for the moment.

  Gideon stood, his entire body tense. He wasn’t sure whether the former inspector believed him or was just stretching the suspense. What more did that wretched fellow have up his sleeve?

  “Sit down, Mr Hawtree,” Jasper said slowly.

  Gideon obeyed. His head was heavy and his body numb. Now Robin knew. Or at least she was clever enough to wonder. To think there had to be a reason why the inspector thought his brother’s death had been suspicious. What if she also started believing…

  Jasper said, “You could have been the child that the French widow brought into her marriage with Reynolds. But you are not. Whoever your real parents may have been, you are not connected to Arthur Reynolds and the sad events that transpired here all those years ago. Like Teddy Ramsforth, you were dragged into it by someone else. There was another child, remember, born to Arthur Reynolds after he married the French widow. A girl.”

  He looked at the circle of people, his eyes resting on the hotel reception girl. “You came to work here, Medea, after someone alerted you to the position, you told me. And Eureka was your grandmother, you told me.’

  Medea looked grim. “I only found out about that later.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jasper said. “Later, after you had already helped her to plant the beetles and the skull and to—”

  “You did that?” Teddy Ramsforth shot to his feet as if wanting to rush over to the girl. But one of the policemen intercepted him and pushed him back into his place.

  Medea said, “She only wanted to be about the hotel. I had no idea why.’

  “You argued with her, you were overhead. You said you wanted no part in it.”

  Medea lowered her head. “She told me about what she wanted to do. Make the newlywed English woman afraid. She said she deserved it for something that had happened in the past. I didn’t want to cooperate but she threatened me. That I would betray family if I didn’t. Family means everything here. I had to.”

  “And what family would you have betrayed?”

  “I assume now she meant she was related to me.’

  “Yes. Or were you related to—”

  “That can’t be.” Mrs Murray spoke quietly. “Medea can’t be more than seventeen and my son died twenty-five years ago.”

  “True.” Jasper said. “Medea was lured into the story by her grandmother who wanted her revenge for the old matter. She had always believed Reynolds had been inn
ocent and she wanted to punish the child of old for crying out and driving him to his death.”

  Damaris said in a hoarse voice: “How can she have hated a child for screaming when it sees its mother dead on the floor?”

  “She took it upon herself to exact revenge as she saw fit in her twisted mind.”

  “What twisted mind?” Teddy called. “She told me that Damaris was betraying me and I did indeed find her with that painter, Dupin. So maybe she was telling the truth.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr Dupin,” Jasper said. “You also deceived me. You never told me you had known Damaris’s mother and that you recognised Damaris the day you saw her at the harbour. You never told me you wanted to meet with her again to find out if she knew about the island and what had happened here.”

  Dupin said, “I was worried for her. I only wanted to protect her.”

  “Yes. She was indeed in danger. The victim of an elaborate plot.” He looked at Gideon. “Mr Ramsforth told me you had encouraged him to meet with Mrs Ramsforth and marry her for her money. Is that true?”

  Gideon said, “I did mention it to him.”

  “Yes, but tell me, did you have that information just because you had been in the same treatment as Mrs Ramsforth? I can imagine you might have come to know something at the time about what she had been there for, perhaps to explain to you how treatment of trauma in children worked, but the money left to her? How would you have known about it?”

  Jasper shook his head. “No. The idea to take Mrs Ramsforth’s money came from neither Mr Hawtree or Mr Ramsforth. It came from… Mrs Hawtree.”

  * * *

  Teddy stared at Robin. Her face was calm, the expression a bit arrogant as always. She was a living, walking challenge and that was why he had loved her from the moment he had lain eyes on her. She was perfection.

  Jasper said, “Mrs Hawtree wanted to achieve two things. Support her husband’s ambitions, and help the man who was hopelessly in love with her find happiness of his own. It seemed like a flawless plan in which nothing could go wrong. You sent the invitation for the play to Mrs Ramsforth. She came out, of course – who would not, having such a chance – and Teddy Ramsforth’s charm did the rest. They courted and married and went on their honeymoon and you made sure you were waiting for them here. Mr Fennick showed up to tell Mrs Ramsforth of the money and everything was perfect. Your two accomplices suspected nothing.”

  Jasper’s voice became lower. “They believed you were helping them to all the money they could ever want for their business plans. But you had another idea. One they weren’t aware of.”

  Teddy couldn’t look away. Robin sat there so completely in control. She was exposed, her idea of getting the money given away so casually, as if it hadn’t been sheer brilliance. But she didn’t flinch. In fact, not even the puzzling statement about “another idea” seemed to shake her.

  Teddy himself was not so calm. What did Jasper mean? The man was good at heaping surprises upon them.

  Jasper continued, “You knew about the money, Mrs Hawtree. And that was the crucial element all along. How could anyone have found out about the money? Money tied to Mrs Ramsforth’s past, her father who had abandoned her right after her mother’s murder… It mattered for the plot to rob her of what was rightfully hers, but it mattered even more for everything that happened here. You see, I thought that only a lawyer handling the trust could have known. I suspected that the psychiatrist treating young Mrs Ramsforth had known. But how did that lead to other people knowing at a later time? Then my dear helper Mrs Valentine made a very valuable remark. She said that when coming to doctors’ offices people tend not to see the secretaries or assistants. They are quite unobtrusive, going about their business. They blend in with the wallpaper much like butlers do. And there you had it. An assistant to this psychiatrist would have had access to all of his case notes. Present, and past. You worked as a secretary before your marriage, didn’t you, Mrs Hawtree? You travelled a lot. And I know with whom you travelled. With a man who had given up his practice and was now lecturing on his speciality – the effect of trauma on memory in children.”

  Gideon turned his head to Robin.

  Teddy supposed he was aghast at the idea that she had been able to find out about his treatment after his brother’s death. Had the psychiatrist established Gideon had done it? That would mean he was a killer. Surely Robin would want to leave him now. This was his chance to be with her at last!

  Jasper said, “You worked as a secretary to the psychiatrist in question during his travels for his lectures and, when he wanted to write a book about his speciality, trauma in children, or more exactly, the effect of trauma on memory in children. There you came to know of both the cases of Gideon Hawtree and Damaris Ramsforth, back then called Eleanor Collins. You didn’t know what had become of her, but you filed away all the information, to use later on. Once you had married Mr Hawtree and found out where Eleanor Collins was living, you could put your plan into motion. At first you had perhaps only wanted to hurt her for all that she had caused. But then you began to make bigger and more ambitious plans. I imagine it might have happened when your husband said that he wished Teddy had some more money and he could get it by marrying a rich wife. There it was. You arranged for Teddy to meet Damaris and court her and marry her. You made him come here and act the perfectly nice husband. You had only told him, and told your husband, you could get her money, the easy way. Both of them didn’t know what you really wanted.”

  Teddy couldn’t believe Robin endured the former inspector’s insults without twitching a muscle. He wanted to stand up for her and defend her but he realised it might not be wise.

  Jasper said, “You told Eureka that Mrs Ramsforth was coming to the island. You told her she might now at last get her chance for revenge. You suggested she could be in the harbour and sell flowers to Mrs Ramsforth, then later put beetles, portents of death, on them. Et cetera. You drugged the champagne and you led Mrs Ramsforth from the cafe’s back entrance to the spot where you had agreed with Eureka that she would be waiting. You killed her before she realised what would happen to her and put Mrs Ramsforth in place to take the blame. It was a perfect plan because you knew there would be so many threads to unravel. The money would, of course, stand out as a clear motive and would lead any policeman looking for motive right to Teddy.”

  “You wouldn’t have…?” Teddy croaked.

  Robin didn’t even glance in his direction.

  Jasper continued, “You believed it would lead to Teddy or your husband. Perhaps even to Medea or someone else? Never to you, though. For who would realise who you really were? But there was a problem. Eureka’s memento – the pocket watch. You realised after you had walked away quickly from the murder scene that you should have secured it. You went back. I had led Mrs Ramsforth away. But there was someone else there. The thief, who took the necklace. Later on you killed him to get it back, but he wasn’t carrying it any more and you couldn’t find where he had put it. I have it now. It holds a pocket watch that once belonged to Arthur Reynolds. With the names in it of the woman Arthur Reynolds had married, her son, and the child they had together. This girl had just been born when he left for the island.’

  Jasper held up an old dented pocket watch and opened it, reading out loud from the inside.

  Probably the inscriptions, Teddy thought.

  “The name of the son is Marc, the name of the little girl Eunice.’

  So? Teddy thought, confused. What did it prove? What was Jasper driving at?

  The others present also seemed puzzled, glancing at each other.

  “And the name of the mother…” Jasper let the watch dangle tantalisingly on its chain, stretching the moment before he spoke again. “Therese Robyne.”

  He looked at Robin. “You took your mother’s name and made it English. Robin. You wanted to keep her close, remember the injury done to her and to your entire family when your father was wrongly accused and killed.’

  Teddy gasped.

 
; Robin still sat motionless, as if the words didn’t reach her.

  Jasper said, “Your father Arthur Reynolds was killed by an angry mob for a murder he didn’t commit. Your mother had to leave her Parisian home because she was no longer supported. Once again a widow, she had to work hard to make ends meets. Your childhood wasn’t spent with a loving father and opportunity, but in a broken family without substantial means. As you grew up, you learned how and why your father had died. And you blamed it on the little girl who had screamed and alerted people to him. Perhaps you also blamed the little girl’s father, the victim’s husband, the successful American novelist Collins, who had left his daughter so much money, and that’s why you wanted to seize the money, as just payment for what you had lost. You planned it patiently and cleverly, you took risk. You even killed for it. Twice.”

  “Robin, no!” Teddy pushed himself up from the table to be able to stand. “You would never do such a thing. You’re not like that!”

  Robin didn’t even look at him.

  Jasper said, “You killed two people and therefore you will be charged and convicted. Probably condemned to death.”

  Teddy saw a rope being put around Robin’s graceful neck, chafing her skin exactly at the points where he had ached to kiss her. How the life would be choked out of her and…

  “No!” In one swift movement, he turned over the table and jumped at her. “No! Run with me, darling, run!”

  The policemen grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor. He kept calling she had to run away.

  But Robin never moved from her seat.

  * * *

  Gideon stared at his wife, his heart beating so loud it drowned out the sounds of the policemen fighting that fool Ramsforth. He whispered to her, “So you understand what it means.”

  She turned her head to him and eyed him from those clear blue eyes. “It was always about family, Gideon. Always.”

  The policemen had cuffed Teddy, and Jasper held him by the arm, while the policemen now came for Robin. She rose calmly and offered her wrists to them. She looked past them at Jasper. “It would have worked, you know. If only you hadn’t been holidaying here. It would have worked.’