“Yes, maybe. I can’t be sure, but I think the person left empty-handed.”
“Did you see which way they went out?”
“Through the door and down the stairs.”
“An inside job?”
“Maybe. All I can say is what I saw.”
“Would you like to be present for the interviews? Mark and Joe have gone to work, but Lily and Priscilla have agreed to talk to us. I said we’d see them in the morning room while the techs finish up in here.”
Eulalie was more than eager to speak to two people who had been in the house during the break-in.
They went down to the morning room to wait, and soon Lily Egger came in. It was the first time Eulalie had seen her out of her toga. She was wearing a dirndl-style dress that covered her from chin to ankles. She wore no make-up and looked as defiantly plain and unglamorous as ever.
She walked in wearing a broad smile and sat down opposite them.
“Thanks for coming to talk to us, Mrs. Egger.” Chief Macgregor’s tone was humble and grateful. “You’ve obviously heard that someone broke into Mark and Emma’s bedroom early this morning. Did you hear anything between about three o’clock and five o’clock this morning?”
“You mean apart from Joe’s snoring?” She laughed heartily. “No, I didn’t hear anything else. I was mostly asleep, although I do remember getting up to go to the bathroom at about four. But I didn’t see or hear anything unusual.”
“If you had to take an educated guess,” said Eulalie. “What do you think the intruder was looking for?”
“Jewelry, maybe? Or drugs? I heard a rumor that you guys confiscated Emma’s pills. Maybe that’s what the burglar was looking for. Emma had expensive tastes. There must be plenty of stuff worth stealing in that room. It’s not so much a question of who would want to break in there as who wouldn’t?”
“There are treasures all over the house,” said Chief Macgregor. “Why would someone be looking in the bedroom?”
“Perhaps the evil one sent his minions to this house to test our faithfulness. If we give in to despair, we will be known to have failed.”
Eulalie changed the subject.
“We were surprised to hear that Mark wasn’t in his bedroom last night. Where could he have been?”
Lily smiled slyly. She tapped a finger to the side of her nose. “You’d better ask him that, hadn’t you? And ask yourself why the minions of the evil one might have been sent to punish him.”
“We’ll do that, Mrs. Egger, thank you.” Chief Macgregor stood up and held the door for her. “Please ask Mrs. Bosworth to come in here.”
As Lily left and Priscilla entered, Eulalie tried to imagine either one of them as the black-clad figure from the night before. They were about the same height and build, although Priscilla was slenderer and had a narrower waist. It was hard to picture either of them creeping around the room in the small hours of the morning.
“I wasn’t sure you would still be here, Mrs. Bosworth,” said Chief Macgregor as she sat down.
“I won’t be for much longer. I am leaving in a couple of days. I’ve already stayed longer than I planned. I’m missing my kids.”
“Do you have any idea what someone might have been doing in Mark’s room this morning and what they might have been looking for?” Eulalie asked.
“I can’t imagine. Perhaps Emma made a habit of stealing from people, and I wasn’t her only victim.”
Chapter 18
Chief Macgregor looked confused, so Eulalie took over.
“You’re talking about the items belonging to your late sister that you asked Emma to put aside for you?”
“Not just belonging to Mary.” Priscilla’s voice rose. “Belonging to our late mother. They should have been mine from the beginning. My mother knew I’d take better care of them than Mary would, but she didn’t feel right about not leaving some mementos to her. For all the good it did her.”
“Emma claimed not to be able to find the items, is that correct?”
“She was lying. I’d seen them myself just a few months earlier at the funeral. I still can’t understand why she wouldn’t just hand them over. Their only value was sentimental.”
“I think you might be wrong about that, Mrs. Bosworth. Emma googled the value of some of those items, and they came to a few thousand dollars.”
“A few thousand dollars. A few thousand dollars! What would that matter to Emma when she had a fish like Mark dangling on the end of her line? I know she didn’t come from money but surely the Egger millions would be enough even for her.”
“We have reason to believe that Emma had expenses she didn’t want her husband to know about,” said Chief Macgregor.
Priscilla Bosworth thought about this. “So, Jane was right.”
“About what, Mrs. Bosworth?”
“About Emma being addicted to pills. That is literally the only expense I can’t see Mark agreeing to cover. And that must have been what you took away from here the other day. The servants were gossiping about pill bottles. It just goes to show that you never know what’s going on in someone else’s life, do you?” She sounded more cheerful now, as though news of Emma’s weakness had put heart into her.
“Do you remember noticing anything strange last night between three and five in the morning?” asked Chief Macgregor.
“I would have been fast asleep. I’m staying in the Clock Room, which is at the opposite end of the house. I do remember hearing a bang, though. I must have been in a light sleep because it woke me. But it seemed to be coming from the servants’ entrance. I remember thinking it must be morning already and that the servants were coming in to start their day. But then I realized it was still too early. This must have been at about four-thirty.”
Eulalie turned to Chief Macgregor. “It’s strange that Mark wasn’t in his bedroom last night.”
He agreed solemnly.
Priscilla made a contemptuous sound. They turned to look at her.
“What’s that, Mrs. Bosworth?”
“Let’s just say if you can’t figure that one out you don’t deserve to call yourselves detectives.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he already has a girlfriend. He replaced Mary two weeks after she died, and now he has replaced Emma two days after she died. He can’t stand to be alone, that man.”
“So, Mark’s affair is an open secret,” said Eulalie. She and Chief Macgregor were inspecting the servants’ entrance for signs of tampering.
“It looks like it. Both of his sisters-in-law knew about it, so Jane and her family probably do too.”
“This door is close to the Clock Room,” said Eulalie. “That might have been what Priscilla heard this morning.”
“But did she hear the intruder leaving, or Mark sneaking back in?”
“I can’t see Mark letting himself in by the servants’ entrance. He wouldn’t want to risk waking them. And it would be beneath his dignity not to come in through the front door. He is the lord of the manor, after all.”
“But that’s the thing,” said Chief Macgregor. “He isn’t the lord of the manor. From what you’ve told me, private property doesn’t exist in the Egger clan. The company owns everything. From the cars to the houses to the wives’ jewelry. They are all company assets.”
“That’s true.”
They turned as Talia walked past carrying a mop and bucket.
“How many people have keys to this entrance, Ma’am?” Chief Macgregor asked her.
She set down her bucket and rubbed her lower back. “Mrs. Emma did, Sir, so I presume that Mr. Mark has it now. I do, of course. And Mrs. Jane has one too.”
“Jane?” said Eulalie. “But she doesn’t even live here.”
“That’s right, Ms. Park, but she and Mr. Richard keep a full set of keys for this house, just as Mr. Mark keeps a full set of keys to their house.”
“And the same for Lily and Joe?”
“That’s right. Except their house is a building site at t
he moment.”
“Is Mark’s bedroom kept locked during the day?” asked Eulalie.
The housekeeper’s eyes widened. “How did you know that, Ms Park?”
“You unlocked it for me the other day. I wondered if it was always kept like that.”
“Mrs. Emma gave instructions that her bedroom was to be kept locked at all times during the day. She didn’t like the young ladies – Mr. Mark’s daughters, you know – going into her room to borrow her clothes and makeup. I’ve been continuing the habit seeing as I’ve had no orders to the contrary. I unlock the room in the evening when Mr. Mark is back from work.”
Talia returned to her duties.
“What made you think of that?” asked Chief Macgregor.
“If the intruder came from inside the house, they would have plenty of opportunity to search the room during the day. It would make no sense to sneak around in the middle of the night, unless the room were locked up in the daytime.”
“Yes, I see. That would also tend to exclude Talia as a suspect. As the one who locks and unlocks the main bedroom, she wouldn’t need to take the risk of searching it at three in the morning.”
“I’ve never really seen the servants as part of this,” Eulalie agreed. “There’s no motive that I can find.”
They walked to their respective vehicles.
“I’ve given this case about as much time as I can afford today,” said Chief Macgregor. “I’ll hand it back to my team now. I have a meeting at Governor Montand’s office that’s likely to take up the whole afternoon. We’re discussing security for the Prince William’s Day parade.”
Eulalie swung a leg over her Vespa. “And I need to speak to Pastor Ellie. Let’s see if Mrs. Belfast can get me an appointment.”
“Ask her to tell the Pastor’s secretary that your soul needs saving. I’ve heard she’ll see anyone if she thinks they might be a new recruit.”
“Good tip, Chief. Thanks. She waved and set off back to town.
It was only eleven-thirty, but Eulalie was already starving. Eating breakfast at six in the morning would do that to you. She stopped at a food truck to buy a pita bread stuffed with falafel. She took it back to the office to eat at her desk. Mrs. Belfast was hard at work trying to secure her a face-to-face meeting with Pastor Ellie.
Eulalie heard her say, “Yes, she is very conflicted spiritually. She would really appreciate some guidance from Pastor Ellie.”
She smiled and gave her secretary a thumbs-up. There was some more discussion before Mrs. Belfast thanked Pastor Ellie’s assistant and put down the phone.
“You can see her at three o’clock at the BRS headquarters. I had to pretend you had one foot toasting in hell before she agreed.”
“You’re the best, Mrs. B. Thanks.”
Eulalie spent the intervening hours powering through paperwork that her secretary had prepared for her and investigating the financial background of Pastor Ellie and the Church of the Blessed Redeeming Savior.
It didn’t take her long to realize that they were basically the same thing. Every cent donated to the church was funneled into a trust that was solely administered by Eleanor Robotham, also known as Pastor Ellie. Robotham paid herself a generous salary out of the trust every month, over and above her expenses. This included her household expenses and all the expenses incurred during her numerous first-class overseas trips.
BRS was registered as a charity so it paid no tax. Eleanor Robotham paid tax in her personal capacity on the salary she earned. It wasn’t easy to see what charitable works BRS performed to justify their designation. The most Eulalie could find was a reference to a store of canned goods that the church kept and handed out to people who came to the door looking for food. They also handed out sleeping bags to the homeless during Prince William Island’s short and very mild winter. The church’s annual expenditure on charitable items amounted to a few hundred dollars. It did not even begin to match up to the hundreds of thousands they received in donations.
Mark was right. Their most significant donations came from deceased estates. The fifty-thousand dollars that Emma Egger’s memorial service raised was a drop in the ocean compared to some of the other bequests. It was hard to believe that someone would have been prepared to kill her for it.
Still, it was a lead, and had to be followed up.
The most eye-opening thing for Eulalie was how easy it was to access this information. The church had made no attempt to hide it. They were raking in money and didn’t mind who knew it.
The address for the BRS headquarters was in the smartest part of the Dockside precinct. It occupied some of the most valuable real estate on Prince William Island. Yet somehow the congregants were happy to meet in the draughty old Scout Hall. It made no sense.
Eulalie was so caught up in the fascinating puzzle that was BRS that Mrs. Belfast had to remind her of her appointment. She made it to Pastor Ellie’s headquarters with minutes to spare.
The building was even more luxurious than she’d expected. It was all brushed steel and smoky glass with top of the line finishes on the inside.
Eulalie was shown into an inner sanctum that reminded her of a treatment room in a hotel spa. Pastor Ellie was dressed all in white today – a pure white toga with a white belt. An indoor fountain trickled next to her and whale music played over the sound system. Eulalie felt like lying down on the desk and requesting a hot stone massage.
Instead, she gave the Pastor a brisk handshake and took out her notepad and pen.
“Thanks for seeing me, Ms. Robotham. It was good of you to spare the time.”
The other woman gave her an otherworldly smile. “Please. It’s Pastor Ellie. That name belongs to my previous life from before I was saved.”
“It’s still the name this building was registered in, just eighteen months ago,” Eulalie pointed out.
“That’s true enough. Unfortunately, the sordid world of commerce is obsessed with earthly nomenclature. I wanted us to have a base for our humble operations, so I had to play the game. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
“That comes from the Christian bible. But you’re not Christians, are you?”
“We are a deeply evolved offshoot of Christianity. We have taken the golden kernel of the message and discarded the difficult bits.”
“Well, I’m a Catholic so I’m all about the difficult bits. I’m afraid my secretary may have misled you, Pastor. It’s not salvation I’m after, but information.”
Pastor Ellie smiled that ethereal smile again. “I know that, Ms. Park. It’s a common ruse. But those who come here seeking something quite different often walk away with salvation instead.”
For a dizzying moment, those luminous eyes seemed to pierce Eulalie to her very soul. She had to blink and shake her head to break the connection.
“Your contact lenses are turquoise today. At the memorial service for Emma Egger they were green. They are very effective in giving you a penetrating stare.”
The Pastor’s smile didn’t waver. “You are investigating the murder of the dear, departed soul, Emma, are you not?”
“I am. Were you close?”
“You misunderstand the notion of agape love, Ms. Park. I don’t need to have met Mrs. Egger to feel love for her beautiful soul or to mourn its passing.”
“She wasn’t a member of your congregation then?”
“No, she was not. Sadly, she was an unbeliever. But her soul is saved now. Praise the Savior! She is saved.”
“Why did you have a memorial service for someone who wasn’t a member of your congregation?”
“It was at the request of my dear friend, Lily Egger. She was deeply concerned about the fate of her sister-in-law’s soul. She begged me to hold a service on her behalf. Lily is a treasured and hard-working member of our community. How could I possibly refuse her?”
Eulalie looked around at the quietly expensive Italian floor tiles, the Aubusson rug that was bigger than her bedroom at home, the bespoke crystal chandeliers moun
ted at discreet intervals on the ceiling. The woman in front of her was no spiritual guru, but an astute businesswoman. She would do well to remember that.
“The Egger memorial must have been good for your bottom line, Pastor,” said Eulalie. “There was the fifty-thousand dollars that Joe Egger pledged, plus the amounts that the rest of the congregation put into the collection bag. You do well out of funerals and memorial services, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. If you mean that BRS benefits materially from these events, you are quite correct. But our benefit is as nothing compared with the salvation of the departed souls. You must know that it is central to our belief system that the soul that crosses over to the other side having donated all of its assets to the Blessed Redeeming Savior will be welcomed into heaven to dwell among the blessed.”
“I was there. I got the gist. Very convenient for you. It funds your expensive lifestyle. The first-class tickets to Paris. The five-star accommodation in uptown New York. The luxury cruise on the Mediterranean. All paid for by the deceased estates of your parishioners and their families.”
The smile on Pastor Ellie’s face shifted from ethereal to amused.
“Do you seek to expose me, Ms. Park? Do you intend to take your story to the media? To conduct an exposé in front of my congregation?”
“No,” Eulalie admitted. “Because it won’t make any difference. This is all a matter of public record. Somehow your congregation knows exactly what you’re spending their money on and they still keep giving it to you. I have to admire your skill.”
The world seemed to slow down and stop. Eulalie saw Pastor Ellie pick up an object from her desk. She thought it was a letter-opener, but it turned out to be a finely balanced throwing knife. Holding it by the blade, she swung it backwards, and threw it with an outstretched arm straight at Eulalie’s chest.
The knife turned a slow revolution in the air. The point of the blade was coming towards her, about to lodge itself under her left collar bone.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 38