This was probably the only time the servants had been grateful for the family’s lack of trust in them. At least they were all cleared of suspicion. If they hadn’t been, Mark Egger would quite possibly have tried to push the blame onto them.
Eulalie thought that she would like to re-interview the servants. They might not have been suspects, but they would definitely have an insider’s knowledge of the politics and resentments going on inside the house.
She read through the interviews with the family. None of them had been conducted by Chief Macgregor and were consequently not quite as thorough as she would have liked. The only person he had interviewed personally was Mark Egger. It didn’t seem to have gone well.
From the start, Egger had been angry and pugnacious. He had resented every second the police spent interviewing members of his family. He had urged them repeatedly to investigate his theory of an outside intruder. When they continued to focus on the family, he had accused them of incompetence, corruption, and vindictiveness. On several occasions, he had threatened to get his good friend the governor involved.
At the end of the transcript of the interview, there was a note from Chief Macgregor commenting on the fact that Mark Egger had hired Eulalie Park Investigations to look into the murder of his wife on his behalf.
Eulalie read through the interviews with the family again. There wasn’t much that jumped out at her. Priscilla Bosworth, the sister of Mark Eggers’ first wife, admitted that she had resented Mark’s swift remarriage. However, her anger seemed to be directed more against him than against the woman he had set in her sister’s place.
Josef Egger, for all his supposed dementia, had been clear enough in describing his most recent daughter-in-law as ‘that dreadful woman’.
The middle son Richard commented that his wife Jane didn’t particularly like her new sister-in-law. But when Jane was asked about this, she had insisted that they hadn’t really known each other well.
Apart from these little tufts of discontent, the Eggers seemed to be one big happy family.
Eulalie decided that she would drip-feed information about her interviews with Antoine and Jimmy the Knife to Mark Egger over the next few days. He would think she was pursuing the outside-intruder angle, but she would really be interviewing his family. If he found out what she was up to and pulled her off the case, so be it.
She prepared a detailed memo about certain operators who bought and sold jewelry in Queen’s Town and were known to be receivers of stolen goods. She sent it off to Mark by email. He would probably see it as a good start to her investigation.
The Egger residence in Edward Heights was where Eulalie wanted to start. The crime scene photographs were detailed and interesting, but she needed to see the layout of the house for herself. She would also be able to interview whoever was at home at ten o’clock on a weekday morning.
For once, Eulalie wasn’t worried about witnesses refusing to talk to her or barring her from the house. This time, she had been hired by Mark Egger, the grieving husband himself. That would be her passport.
She decided to take her Vespa up to Edward Heights. Queen’s Town was well serviced with public transport. There were buses, trams, and cabs ready to take you wherever you wanted to go. But Eulalie loved the Vespa for the freedom it gave her and the pleasure of riding it, especially out on the Coast Road. That was where she was heading now.
It was stop-start driving while she was still in town, but the moment Beach Road became the Coast Road, everything opened up.
Eulalie opened her throttle and enjoyed the feeling of the wind snatching at her braid. The road followed the curve of the island, swinging out so dramatically that it felt as though you were going to be flung out to sea. Then it curved back in where the sea had carved a deep inlet into the land. The views were spectacular. Everywhere you looked, the land was hazed over with the grey-green scrub that was indigenous to the island. The sea was emerald green close to the land, turquoise further out, and a deep, deep blue where it stretched out to the open ocean.
The recreational beach front was protected by a coral reef that formed a natural lagoon. This calmed the waters and created a perfect area for swimming, boating, and water sports. But everywhere else on the island, the Indian Ocean battered and raged at the land in its eternal quest to wear it down to nothing.
The struggle was beautiful to watch, especially when you were on the back of a Vespa with sunlight sparkling on the chrome.
There was a reason why Edward Heights was the premier residential neighborhood on the whole of Prince William Island. It commanded the best views. It overlooked both the harbor and the yacht club. It was based on solid bedrock too, which meant that the houses built there had stood for hundreds of years without cracks or slippage.
Eulalie could never have afforded to live there herself, but probably wouldn’t have chosen to anyway. She liked being in town, in the center of things. Still, it was nice to visit. She turned off the Coast Road onto Cliff Street, the steep road that led up to Edward Drive, which was the main drag through Edward Heights. The Egger residence was at number thirty-two.
In a road full of elegant and beautiful mansions, number thirty-two was one of the most jaw-dropping. Rather than renovating the original French Colonial house that had stood here, the Eggers had torn it down and replaced it with a modern house in the French Colonial style. The steep slope of the land meant that the back of the house was only two stories high, but the front – the part that looked out over the beach and the harbor – was fully five stories from the top of its single, fanciful turret to the bottom courtyard where a Zen garden had been landscaped at great expense. This was the distance Emma Egger had fallen. Eulalie could see a widow’s walk running along the curve of the turret that must have been the scene of the murder. It was no wonder she had died instantly.
Eulalie rode up to a gatehouse where a guard took down her details and phoned them through to the main house. She had already read his witness statement from the night in question. He reported that there were no signs of an intruder or any disturbance at all until that ear-splitting scream and the bone-chilling thud that followed it.
Eulalie could see into the gatehouse where a bank of screens let the guard monitor the whole periphery of the property. This didn’t make it impossible that an intruder could have got past him, but it did add credibility to the theory that this was an inside job.
The guard pressed a button and the gates swung open giving Eulalie access to a gravel drive that swept around the side of the house to the double-volume entrance at the back. She was greeted by a housekeeper called Talia who told her that Mr. Egger had given orders for Eulalie to be admitted.
“Thank you,” said Eulalie, smoothing down her helmet-hair. “Are any members of the family here this morning?”
“The gentlemen are at work, of course. But Mrs. Lily Egger is here with her Bible-study group. She is the wife of Mr. Joe Egger, you know? The eldest son. They are almost finished for the morning. Mrs. Bosworth is here too. Mrs. Priscilla Bosworth – the sister of my dear late Madame,”
Eulalie was confused for a moment. “I didn’t know the victim had a sister?”
“Non. Not her.” The housekeeper’s nostrils quivered slightly on the word ‘her.’ “I am speaking of the original lady of this house - Mrs. Mary Egger, my dear late mistress who died last year. Mrs. Priscilla Bosworth is her sister.”
“Oh, that’s right. Yes, of course. I got confused for a moment. Two dead mistresses. This house has seen a lot of sorrow.”
A tightening of the woman’s lips suggested she was reserving the right to comment on whether this latest death could be regarded as a cause for sorrow or not.
“It was certainly a great shock,” she conceded.
Eulalie winced as a cacophony of screams reached her ears.
“Who is making that noise? Not the Bible-study ladies, surely?”
“No, indeed.” Talia had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of juvenile shr
ieks and thumping noises. “That is the sound of Mr. Joe and Mrs. Lily’s three little ones being home-schooled.” There was that lip-tightening again.
“Really? I’d hate to hear what they sound like when they’re taking a break.”
“Come into the morning room. I’ll let Mrs. Lily know that you are here.”
Chapter 6
Eulalie assumed it was called the morning room because it faced east, and the morning sun poured into it. She knew she was supposed to stay put like a good private investigator, but she wanted to get a look at the Bible-study group. She waited until Talia’s footsteps had receded towards the kitchen before slipping out of the room. The Bible-study ladies would have to come down the grand staircase to get out, so she hovered within sight of it.
There were sounds of a genteel commotion upstairs. Eulalie expected to see a group of women in stretch-waisted skirts and high-necked blouses coming down the stairs. What she saw was considerably stranger.
The women ranged from their early thirties to their late fifties and were dressed in ceremonial robes. Some were purple, some were olive green, and others were mustard yellow. The robes had drawstrings at the waist that ranged from pale-grey to almost black. The robes resembled the togas worn by the ancient Romans, except that they had baggy, batwing sleeves.
None of the women wore makeup and their feet were pushed into brown leather sandals. Listening to their voices, Eulalie could hear that they sounded like the usual mixture of Prince William Island society – French-Creole, English, and American. She thought she could pick out a German accent too.
This wasn’t a Bible-study group at all. It was a cult.
As the ladies filed out, Eulalie slipped back into the morning room to await her hostess. Soon, the door opened and a woman in a purple toga with a black drawstring walked in. Her face was almost aggressively plain and makeup-free. Her hair was mousy brown and at least forty-percent gray. It was cut into a mullet style. It had been so roughly styled that Eulalie suspected she had done it herself with a pair of nail scissors.
“Hi.” She put out her hand to shake Eulalie’s. “I’m Lily Egger. You’re Mark’s private detective. He said you might want to talk to us.”
“That’s right. I know you’ve all been interviewed by the police, so I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”
“Yes, please.”
The German accent Eulalie had noticed was hers. It was faint, but unmistakable, and became more noticeable the faster she spoke.
Eulalie sat down and took out a notepad and pen. Lily Egger sat down too and looked business-like.
“So, you are the wife of Joe Egger, the oldest brother?”
“That’s right.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Twelve years. Mark and Mary have been married the longest of all of us. No, I mean …” A look of real grief came over her face. “Sorry. It’s just … I keep forgetting that Mary’s not still alive. She and Mark were married for so long, you see. Joe and Richard were the bachelor brothers. They were both in their early forties and no one thought they would ever marry. It was Mark who was the family man. Married for years with three gorgeous daughters. Mark and Mary were an institution in Queen’s Town society.”
“You were fond of her? Mark’s first wife, I mean.”
“Yes, I was. Not that she was perfect or anything. We had our run-ins. It was just such a terrible shock when she died. So unexpected. We were giggling about how she would be able to start wearing shorts at the beach after her operation. It was for varicose veins in her legs. And then she never woke up again. It was the most appalling shock.”
“Why do you think Mark is so convinced that Emma’s murder was an outside job - that it was an intruder who broke into the house and killed her?”
Lily Egger sucked in her bottom lip and wiggled a finger in her ear to relieve an itch.
“Two reasons,” she said. “First of all, it’s true that Emma flashed her jewelry around more than was wise. She was so proud of her trinkets. That is the sort of attitude that comes from not having grown up with money.”
“You think criminals might have seen her as an easy target?”
“It’s possible. The other reason is that Mark doesn’t want to believe that someone in the family might have killed her.”
“What was your relationship with Emma like?”
“I hardly knew her. She and Mark had what you might call a whirlwind romance. He met her two weeks after Mary died and started dating her immediately. Then they got engaged and waited while the house was being rebuilt. They got married at the beginning of this year - a summer wedding.”
“Do you think it was a rebound relationship - a lonely man missing his late wife and looking to get back what he’d had with her?”
Lily Egger sniffed. “He couldn’t have chosen anyone less like Mary if he’d tried. Mary was a sensible woman. She never pretended to be anything other than what she was – a middle-aged mother. Yes, she enjoyed living the high life, but she wasn’t a glamour girl like the new Frau Egger.”
“I’ve heard that Emma Egger was a lovely person.”
Eulalie had heard nothing of the sort, but when you were trying to get someone to open up about what they really thought of the deceased, pretending to praise that person could be a good tactic.
Lily snorted so loudly it sounded like a car backfiring.
“If she was so nice, why did she tell me my clothes weren’t appropriate for her wedding?”
“She didn’t really say that, did she?”
“She absolutely did. ‘Lily,’ she said to me. ‘You aren’t going to wear your leather sandals to my wedding, are you? And please tell me you will at least arrive in a dress. I’ll lend you the money if you don’t have it.’ Can you believe the cheek of the woman?”
“What did you say?”
“I told her I was going to wear my robes, of course. A wedding is a religious sacrament. Of course, I would come in my formal robes.”
“And what did she say?”
“Nothing then, but she got Mark to speak to Joe and to tell him that if I planned on turning up to her wedding in my robes my invitation was thereby withdrawn. Can you believe that? I’ve been a member of this family for twelve years and she had been dating Mark for about twelve minutes. I’ve been Mark’s sister-in-law all these years. How could she even have thought of excluding me from her wedding?”
Her nostrils flared at the memory.
“I presume you went to the wedding.”
“Of course I did. But the whole thing put Joe in a difficult position. I don’t want him to be at odds with his brother. I caved and wore a normal dress. I went to that dress shop in town, La Robe, and got fitted for something comfortable. I even wore heels, although they hurt my bunions. So really, no one can say that I didn’t go the extra mile.”
“What about Emma? Was she prepared to meet you halfway?”
Lily compressed her lips. “Never. Not once. In the ten or eleven months that I knew her, she didn’t compromise one iota. It was her way or the highway. And since the rest of us care too much about the family to see it torn to pieces, we were always the ones to blink first.”
Eulalie looked down at her notepad and wrote something. She let the silence stretch out between them just long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Then she looked up.
“You were here when Emma was murdered, weren’t you?”
“We all were. We’d just had a big family dinner together. Joe and I are staying here while our house is being renovated.”
“How long after dinner did it happen?”
“At about nine o’clock. We had finished eating at about eight-thirty and gone into the blue drawing room for coffee. I drank mine quickly and went to look for Emma. She had promised that I could have a rummage through her sons’ old clothes. She has two boys in boarding school on St. Michael’s Cay. They are both a year or two older than my girls and she said I was welcome to look through their old clothe
s to see if there was anything there that would fit my daughters. I had just put my foot on the first stair on my way up to her bedroom when I heard that dreadful scream. I knew immediately that something was wrong. It wasn’t the kind of noise children make when they’re playing.”
“Who was in the drawing room?”
“I’m not sure. The police asked me the same thing. The only one I can be sure about is Opa. Joe’s father, you know. He was definitely there. I think Priscilla was there too, and Mark’s eldest daughter. Or was she upstairs? I can’t exactly remember. There was another man there besides Opa. But I’m not sure if it was Joe, Richard, or Mark. It’s hard to tell them apart when you just catch a glimpse out of the corner of your eye.”
“What do you think happened to Emma?”
Eulalie liked to sneak this question in at the end of an interview. It made people think she had cleared them as suspects and was interested in their opinions. It made them indiscreet, which was always useful.
“I’m a bit like Mark in that regard. I can’t bear to think that anyone in our family could have pushed her over that balcony. Although, goodness knows I’ve wanted to murder her myself often enough.” She caught herself. “Not literally, of course. I just mean she could be a very frustrating person. I think it was probably an outsider. Someone after her money.”
“May I ask which church you belong to?”
“It’s the Church of the Blessed Redeeming Savior. Or BRS, as we call ourselves. We meet in the Scout Hall on Alice Road. That’s how Joe and I met. A friend of his brought him along to the worship service one Sunday and we started chatting. He was surprised to find that there was another German-speaking Swiss family on Prince William Island. We’re bring the children up to speak German as their first language.”
Eulalie closed her notepad and stood up.
“I think that’s all for now. Thanks so much for talking to me. You’ve been very helpful.”
Lily Egger’s smile was friendly. “Anytime”.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 27