“Yes, I tell you,” she moaned. “Yes!”
“You quickly realized he had been indulging in erotic auto-asphyxiation – a hobby of his. But this time he had taken it too far and had passed out before he could free himself. As far as you could tell, he was already dead.”
“Yes,” she sobbed into her hands. “I begged him to stop that stupid game. I knew he would take it too far someday. But the alternative was for him to visit those whores at Trixie’s. He said at least this way he wasn’t being unfaithful to me.”
The anger that Eulalie had detected inside this woman from the beginning came bubbling to the surface.
“Stupid, selfish man! Why couldn’t he see that his whole attraction to that lifestyle was a betrayal of me? I wanted to make his death respectable. I couldn’t bear the thought of the scandal that would result if the police were to find him like that. It would have tainted the rest of my days. My friends would have pitied me. I would have been the object of never-ending gossip and rumor and innuendo. It would have blighted my life. It would have blighted the lives of my children. I had a split-second to think about it. No more than that.”
“So you went to the kitchen and found the chef’s knife and stabbed it into your husband’s chest to make it look as though someone else had been in the apartment with him.”
“Yes, yes. How did you know? How did you figure it out?”
“The first time I interviewed you, you told me you had been wearing long evening gloves to the fancy-dress party. Then I noticed that they didn’t appear anywhere in the crime scene photographs. And there wasn’t a speck of blood on you. The police found the gloves in a dumpster a block and a half from your apartment. The blood on them matches the blood type of your husband. A DNA match should be confirmed in a couple of days.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except that I killed him. I was so sure he was already dead. I just wanted to save his reputation, his legacy.” The anger flared again. “Goodness knows he cared little enough for that himself. That disgusting fetish of his ruled his life. I was supposed to turn a blind eye - and I did, for so many years. Then one night I come home from a lovely party and find him with his pants around his knees and a stupid plastic freezer bag over his head. What was I supposed to do – let him ruin my widowhood as well as our marriage?”
“That wasn’t the only thing you tidied up, was it, Mrs. Faberge?”
“What do you mean?”
“You hired three men to warn me off the investigation, and you ordered them to speak Russian.”
“But how do you…?” She caught herself.
“How do I know? It wasn’t hard to figure out. The only person who kept trying to point me in the direction of the Russians was you. You tried it with the police as well. You wanted us to be looking at that side of your husband’s life, rather than his visits to Trixie’s Bar.”
“I had to protect myself, obviously.”
“Obviously. But then the leader of the three men turned up dead - murdered in exactly the same way as your husband. It was a brilliant piece of misdirection, but it didn’t quite work. He was the only one of the three who knew who had hired them. He was the only one who could have pointed us to you.”
Stella continued to sob. Eulalie didn’t know that the human body could contain so many tears. She was so lost in her own grief, she would have admitted to anything.
“It’s true. I hired someone to remove Henri Popov. He was a loose end. And you were becoming increasingly dogged in your investigation. I had to lead you off the scent.”
Eulalie sat back in her chair. She reached into her messenger bag and switched off the voice recorder she had been using to record this conversation. “That’s all I needed to know. The police will take it from here.”
At a signal from her, Chief Macgregor and two of his junior officers slipped quietly into the Versailles Room to arrest Stella Faberge.
“And by the way,” said Eulalie as the woman was being cuffed. “Your husband was dead before you stabbed him. I lied to get you to confess. With regards to him, you are guilty of nothing more than mutilating a corpse and interfering with evidence. Your big mistake was in having Henri Popov killed. That’s the crime you are going to prison for.”
Epilogue
“How sure are you about this?” Eulalie asked.
“Sure enough to be reluctant to go ahead without you.” Chief McGregor took out a small bunch of keys and started fitting them into the large padlock on the steel door in front of him. Behind him stood three paramedics carrying a stretcher, oxygen, a hypothermia blanket, and a rehydration drip. Their ambulance was parked out in the street, unable to get any closer to this series of underground containers.
The padlock clicked open in Chief McGregor’s hands and he unbolted the first door. The first container was empty, so he moved through it and began to work on the next padlock.
“If we find him, let me go in first,” Eulalie said.
“That’s the plan. You’re the only one who speaks his language and he will recognize you if he is conscious and lucid. We need you to explain every step of the process to him.”
Eulalie wished they could have brought his parents to Queen’s Town for this, but every second counted. It might already be too late. The fact that she hadn’t dreamed about him again made her fear that it was.
Another empty container, another padlocked door.
“How did you pinpoint this location?” she asked, more to keep her mind off the possibilities than anything.
“It was a combination of the factors you told us to look out for,” said Chief McGregor. “A rented storage unit - not in Marcel Faberge’s name, but in the name of one of his subsidiary companies. A dockside location. Proximity to the port bell and most importantly, recently begun construction.”
“I think we’re close,” said one of the paramedics. “There’s something on the other side of this door.”
They could all detect it now – the smell of human waste, of sweat and smoke and desperation. Chief McGregor’s hands were steady as several keys failed to open the padlock. Eulalie longed to hurry him up, but managed to restrain herself. When the door finally swung open, she was the first one into the room.
Bibi was lying on a cot under some blankets. His face was yellow, his eyes sunken. He was unconscious and unresponsive.
“We’re too late,” she said.
Then she was being bundled out of the way by the paramedics who went straight into life-saving mode as they set up their drips and oxygen lines. She hovered nearby wringing her hands.
“They’re not doing CPR,” she told Chief McGregor. “That’s got to be good, right? That must mean his heart is still beating. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t be bothering with all this other stuff.”
Chief McGregor’s hand reached out and clasped hers. There was something calming about his touch. She could feel her fidgeting subside and her breathing slow down.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It has to be a good thing.”
He continued to hold her hand as they walked behind the stretcher. He held her hand in the ambulance as she sat next to Bibi with tears running down her cheeks. He held her hand as Bibi’s eyes fluttered and opened just as they approached the hospital.
The little boy had to sip water from a straw before he could speak.
“Eulalie?” he said. “You found me?”
“Yes,” she replied in the language they shared. “I found you. Your mother and father will be here tomorrow to see you. Soon you’ll be back in the forest. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
A tiny smile lit up his face and he nodded. Then he sank into silence again, overcome by exhaustion.
“Eulalie,” he said again.
“Yes, Bibi?” she rested her hand gently on his.
“They wanted me to find something for them. They heard I was good at finding things. But I was very afraid of what they would ask me to do.”
“It was just a flower,” she explained, trying to take awa
y his worst fears. “Just a flower. But the two men had an accident before they could come back for you, and that’s why they left you alone for so long.”
“I wouldn’t have found their flower for them. I would have fought with them, and maybe I would have won.”
Eulalie smiled at him. “Of course, you would have won, Bibi. Those men wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
Eulalie’s Vespa drew up outside the small house in the neighborhood known as Sea View. It was no Edward Drive, but it was a solid middle-class neighborhood where children rode their bikes in the street and seniors could walk on their own after dark.
The house was as neat and tidy as its owner. Eulalie had anticipated nothing less. She was sure that the inside of the house would be just as immaculate, but feared she might not get to see it. She rang the bell anyway.
Lorelei Belfast answered the door with a heavy frown on her face.
Eulalie wasn’t sure what she had been expecting – a velour tracksuit perhaps, and bouncy sneakers. But Mrs. Belfast was dressed as if she were going to the office. Heels, pantyhose, beehive, face powder – she looked exactly the same as she had looked every day at the police station for the past ten years. Eulalie told herself to stop staring and put a smile on her face.
“Good morning, Mrs. Belfast. Sorry to drop in unexpectedly. Do you have a moment to talk?”
She made a show of looking at her watch. “I’m a busy woman, dear. Very busy. I have a bridge tournament starting in forty-five minutes.”
“This will only take a moment.”
“Then you’d better come in.”
Eulalie wasn’t expecting to be offered coffee or tea, and she wasn’t disappointed. Mrs. Belfast led her into a formal parlor with hard, straight-backed chairs and an unwelcoming air. She perched gingerly on one of them, while her hostess sat opposite her.
“I hear you’ve retired.”
Mrs. Belfast inclined her head.
Eulalie looked down at the floor, then back up again. “I was surprised. I thought you loved your job. You’re good at it too.”
“Wasn’t my choice.”
“Are you telling me Chief Macgregor fired you? Why would he do such a thing? I’ve seen the person he’s got in your place, and she’s not half as good as you were.”
A spasm passed over Mrs. Belfast’s face. Eulalie read it as part rage and part regret, with just a touch of satisfaction.
“It wasn’t the chief’s fault. Don’t go blaming him for this.”
“Who then? If you didn’t resign voluntarily and he didn’t fire you, why aren’t you sitting at your desk right now?”
“The order came from the governor’s office. They have introduced a compulsory retirement age of sixty for all city officials.”
“But that’s crazy. If people want to retire at the age of sixty, they should absolutely be allowed to do so, but if they want to carry on working, they should be allowed to do that too. Sixty-year-olds have knowledge and experience and smarts. They should be the most desirable people on the payroll, not the least.”
“Well, that’s the way it is now. Chief Macgregor wanted to keep me on. He told me so himself. But his hands were tied. He has to defer to the governor’s office. Still, never mind. You mustn’t think I’m unhappy about it. I’ve got my bridge to keep me busy. Most people find it very absorbing.”
“You’re not most people. You’re a worker, like me. It’s what you do.”
“I assure you, I’m absolutely fine. I’m looking forward to retirement. I have plans for the house and the garden, and as I say, I have my bridge.”
“Right.” Eulalie paused. “Then perhaps you won’t be interested in my proposal.”
Mrs. Belfast sat up a little straighter. She reminded Eulalie of a war horse answering the call to battle. “What proposal?”
“How would you like a job?”
HOOKED
Prologue
Sixteen years ago
Lorelei Belfast had a message to deliver. As school secretary, she was expected to pass on phone messages by sending an email to the teacher concerned. She had done that. Yes, she had, even though she didn’t totally trust electronic communications. But that wasn’t enough for her. She also wrote the message down on a piece of paper and hand-delivered it to the recipient personally.
This message was for the gym teacher, Ms. Pybus. It was from someone at the Parks Department in the Governor’s office confirming that the annual school fun-run would be held at Montagu Park, as usual. It was an important message, in Mrs. Belfast’s opinion, and one that needed to be delivered properly.
Leaving her assistant in charge of the office, she went to the gymnasium to deliver the message. According to her timetable, Ms. Pybus should be taking the seventh graders for gym class in there right now.
As she approached the gym, the sound of sneakers squeaking on floorboards and excited pubescent voices told her the timetable was correct. At the double doors, Mrs. Belfast paused for a moment to admire the newly refurbished gym. Everything had been freshly painted. There were new basketball hoops, and the gymnastics equipment looked shiny and modern. There were pommels, rings, parallel bars, and vaulting horses. The roof had been raised to double its height and was now soaringly high, with rafters that wouldn’t be hit by even the wildest basketball.
Right now, Ms. Pybus and the kids were standing looking up at a set of knotted ropes that were suspended from the rafters.
“Girls, you are to climb up to the third knot, please, and boys to the fifth,” said Ms. Pybus. “This exercise is excellent for upper-body strength, and the development of the shoulder girdle.”
Some of the children seemed apprehensive as they looked up at the ropes, while others - the boys in particular - were flexing their muscles and raring to go. Mrs. Belfast noticed the new girl, Eulalie Park, standing among the other children. She was easy to spot with her tangle of wild, dark hair. Honestly, how much longer were the teachers going to let her get away with that? Her hair should be tied up smoothly and neatly like the other girls. She had been at the school for a couple of weeks already. There was no excuse.
The Park girl stared up at the ropes with a faraway expression on her face. It was as though she were somewhere else – not here in the gymnasium of Queen’s Town Middle School. She was probably dreaming of the primitive forest village that had been her home until recently. Mrs. Belfast had serious doubts about the wisdom of admitting a child like that into the school. Still, she supposed they’d had no choice.
Queen’s Town Middle School was a public school. It wasn’t in their power to refuse to take a child who was resident within the city limits. The child’s grandmother had bought a pub on downtown Lafayette Drive and was busy renovating it. The two of them had moved into the apartment above the pub, or so people said.
“We’ll do the exercise three times,” explained Ms. Pybus. “I’ll time you with my stopwatch. You must aim to improve your time. Girls, are you ready?”
There were unenthusiastic noises of assent.
“Get set. Go!”
Mrs. Belfast’s mouth dropped open as the village child shot up the ropes like she had been fired from a cannon. She didn’t stop at the third knot, or the fourth, or the fifth. She just kept going higher and higher.
“That’s enough, Eulalie,” Ms. Pybus said sharply. “You’re too high. Please come down now.”
The girl didn’t seem to hear her. Within seconds she had reached the top of the rope and was climbing onto the big wooden rafter just below the roof. It made you feel ill to look at her. She must have been forty feet above the ground. A fall would kill her for sure. Some of the children were screaming, while others were laughing and applauding.
“Eulalie!” Panic crept into Ms. Pybus’s voice. “Come down from there at once. That’s extremely dangerous.”
The girl swung her legs from her perch on the rafters, her face ablaze with happiness.
“Okay, Eulalie. Don’t move. I’m going to phone the fire departmen
t. They’ll bring a big ladder to help you down. Just stay where you are and hold on tight.”
The girl cast a last, regretful look around. Then there were gasps as she swung herself off the rafter and back onto the rope. Down the rope she came in a single slithering motion. It was like watching water going down a drain. Within seconds, she was standing on the ground with her classmates.
The children clustered around her, laughing with relief. Ms. Pybus’ voice was shrill as she scolded.
She’s a show-off, Mrs. Belfast realized. A dangerous show-off. They should never have let her into the school.
Others might have been fooled by the girl from the forest, but Lorelei Belfast was never one to be taken in.
Chapter 1
“We send out invoices on the twenty-fifth of every month,” Eulalie explained. “Are you familiar with Paymaster XL software?”
Lorelei Belfast nodded. “That’s what we used at the police station. I know it well.”
“Excellent. There’s a template saved in the folder for you to use. Many of the clients are repeat business, so it’s just a case of changing the dates and amounts each month. The accounts are submitted electronically, but I like to send them by registered mail as well. Luckily the post office is just around the corner.”
Mrs. Belfast smiled. Eulalie’s words warmed her Luddite heart. Perhaps this job would work out after all. If you had asked her sixteen years ago what she would be doing at the age of sixty, she would never have dreamed that she would be working for that tangle-haired wild child from the forest. She still felt like pinching herself whenever she thought of it.
But what was the alternative? She had reached the compulsory retirement age for a public servant on Prince William Island. She could sit around playing bridge for the rest of her days, but she had never seen the point of putting all that mental energy into a game.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 23