A Forgotten Murder

by Jude Deveraux

  Teddy was the first to speak. “Was that my father? If that watch was his, then was that...that him?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “We believe he was murdered and his body was hidden.”

  “He didn’t run away?” Nadine whispered.

  Jack’s face softened as he looked at her. “No. He didn’t leave you.”

  Nadine put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  Teddy was on the other side of the chapel. She went to her mother and put her arms around her.

  “Are you sure he was murdered?” Clive asked. “Or was his body just hidden? Maybe he fell. Maybe a horse kicked him.”

  Willa, who’d been sitting in the back in disguise again, moved to the front. “If it wasn’t murder, then why hide the body?” She looked at Jack. “How did you Americans find it?”

  They all seemed to know the answer to that. Everyone turned to look at Puck. She looked at the exit doors. How fast could she reach them?

  “Stop it!” Sara said as she stood beside Jack. “You’re not going to blame anyone but yourselves. We need to figure out who did this.”

  “Then you will write one of your bestselling novels about it?” Byon said. “Oh, darling, what a lucrative idea.”

  Kate stepped in front of her aunt. “If you want to be snide and sarcastic, so be it. I’ll just call the police. We’ll tell them how each of you had motive and opportunity. The press will love it! I can’t wait to read the headlines. They’ll love speculating on which one of you is a murderer.” She had her phone in her hand. “Your emergency call number here is 999, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t call,” Clive said. “Byon, shut up!”

  “Oh my goodness. The boy becomes a man.” A glance from Clive made Byon quit talking.

  “The police will try to find the murderer,” Willa said.

  “And it will be in the papers,” Nadine whispered. “And on social media.”

  “Perhaps it would be better to leave this alone,” Byon said. “After all, our dear friend Sean has been there awhile. Maybe we should leave things as they are.”

  “My father deserves justice,” Teddy said.

  “Maybe we could find him a place in the churchyard.” Byon looked at Nadine. “Next to your father.”

  “What does that mean? You think my father killed Sean?”

  “No, of course not,” Byon said. “But he did offer him a million pounds to—” He shut his mouth.

  “I see,” Jack said. “The lot of you do know things.”

  Sara stepped forward. “What we need is a human sacrifice. Someone to burn at the altar.”

  She had their full attention.

  “What my aunt means,” Kate said, “is that when we do contact the police, we need to hand over the guilty person to them.”

  “And save them the expense of an investigation.” Willa turned to Clive. “You disappeared that night. You went outside but you were nowhere to be seen.”

  “I was hiding from you.” There was venom in his voice. “You were always throwing yourself at me. That night you had on a dress that exposed the upper half of you and you were always leaning over me.”

  “And you were tempted,” Byon said. “Clive, my dear man, we all knew you wanted to jump on that. If Nicky hadn’t laughed at you so hard, you would have grabbed onto her family fortune the way you’re now going after young Kate and her bestselling millions.”

  “You fat, lazy bastard.” Clive lunged for Byon but Jack grabbed him.

  “Sit!” Jack ordered, then stepped back. “We all want to get out of here. We Americans most of all. We didn’t want to get entangled in your nasty little Pack where you have predetermined winners and losers.” He looked at Willa. “Which have now reversed themselves.”

  She smiled at him.

  “All we want to know is—which one of you bastards killed Sean Thorpe?” Jack asked.

  No one moved.

  “As I thought,” Jack said. “None of you are man enough to admit the truth, so we need to figure it out.”

  “Which one of you is the spy who sold the story to the tabloids?” Sara looked at Byon.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said. “But how much do they pay?”

  “You should find out,” Clive said. “Your bank account is so low that—”

  “Why you lying sneak. I’ll report you to—” Byon began.

  “Stop!” Jack ordered, then ran his hand over his face. “If I had a gun, I’d fire it.”

  “Americans,” Byon muttered.

  Jack gave him a look to shut up. “We need to figure this out. We have given ourselves the rest of the weekend. On Monday at 4:00 p.m., we turn it all over to the police. Whether we give them a person who is a murderer or just hand over the masses of information that we’ve gathered is up to you. Are you going to help us or are you going to continue to bicker?”

  They looked like they were considering the matter. Only Willa spoke up. “I’ll help. How about if I retrace my steps that night?” She gave Clive a little smile. “I’ll show you where I was and where other people weren’t.”

  “Looks like we have a lamb to burn.” Byon was looking at Clive. “I’ll get rosemary for seasoning.”

  “Can the rest of you show us what you did that night?” Kate asked.

  “Of course.” Nadine was holding her daughter’s hand.

  “It’ll be useless,” Byon said. “Without Nicky, there’s nothing.”

  “Who did he fight with?” Jack asked. “How did his face get smashed?”

  They all looked straight ahead and said nothing.

  Jack threw up his hands. “Your choice. We’re not going to beg you to tell us.”

  Sara stepped forward. “We’re not going to reenact an English murder mystery. We aren’t going to plead with you to tell us what you know, then you say, ‘How dare you?’ It doesn’t work that way. You tell us or not. But what we do get, we’ll give to the police.”

  “If we don’t have a murderer by Monday, the tabloids will speculate on each one of you,” Jack said.

  “I’m sure they’ll be as kind to you as they were to me,” Sara said. “That should be fun, right, Byon?” Her vision of headlines pointing out Byon’s failed career seemed to project itself to him. His face turned a yellowish-green.

  “None of us wants that,” Willa said.

  “Afraid your siblings will say, ‘I told you so?’” Clive said snidely.

  “They’re too afraid I’ll stop paying their bills to say anything bad to me.” Willa gave a little smile.

  Clive’s face lost its smirk and looked at her with interest.

  “Love is in the air,” Byon said.

  “And the color is green.” Nadine stood up. “I need time to digest all of this.” She looked at her daughter. “We’ll discuss this and decide what to do. Are we free to go or have we been imprisoned?”

  Jack gestured toward the big doors in the back. “Go to London for all I care. I’m sure no one will even hint that you murdered a man who was bribed by your father.”

  Nadine gave Jack a look that nearly set his hair on fire. Then she put her nose in the air and left the chapel.

  Quietly, the others followed. Even Byon seemed to have nothing to say.

  When they were alone again, Jack, Kate and Sara looked at each other as they started putting away the video equipment.

  “We did our best,” Sara said.

  “I loved your English murder mystery crack,” Kate said. “I feel sorry for the detectives on TV having to deal with all the lies.”

  “Then figuring out the answer through superior intelligence,” Jack said. “Wish I could do that.”

  Kate was looking at her aunt. “You have something in mind, don’t you?”

  “Willa said she’d walk us through that night. I know she still wants to know where Clive was hiding
, but I wonder about the others too. Maybe...”

  “Maybe what?” Jack asked.

  Sara closed her computer. “I have an idea about something. Would you two mind if I kept some secrets from you?”

  “I would love it if you kept everything a secret,” Jack said. “I mean like shoot Cupid’s arrows into the sky love. I’d light candles of thanks. I’ll name something after you. A kid maybe. I’ll—”

  Sara and Kate were looking at him with expressions of too much!

  “Wouldn’t mind it at all,” he said. “What about you, Kate?”

  “I’d be fine with it,” she said politely.

  “See you later then.” Sara hurried out the door.

  Jack turned to Kate. “I’ll take care of this. Go. Have fun.”

  “Thanks.” Kate hurried after her aunt.

  Smiling, Jack finished clearing up.

  Eighteen

  It was early evening, and Sara was being bawled out by Bella. They were in her mini-Versailles of a bedroom—way too much gold for Sara’s taste—and Bella was piling guilt onto her. “How could you do this to me?” Bella said for the third time. “You know how hard I’ve worked to make this into a world-class hotel. And I’ve succeeded. But this!” She held up the tabloid that had butchered Sara. “Murder at Oxley Manor. I’ve already had six calls asking to stay in the room where the man was murdered. Not suicide but murder.”

  Sara kept her head down and looked as contrite as she could manage. But, she was thinking, This is nothing. Wait until the world finds out there’s a skeleton on your property. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. Again. She wanted to defend herself, but she really was the one who’d started it all.

  “They were going to leave.” Bella was standing over Sara like some great ogre ready to drop blows onto her head. “Then you met in the chapel and now they’re all...” She turned on her heel. “I don’t know what they’re planning. Some of them are in the attic.”

  “Kate and Byon are looking for—”

  “I don’t care,” Bella shouted. “I want them out of here.”

  “Bella,” Sara said gently. “There are things going on that I can’t tell you about.”

  Bella threw up her hands in exasperation. “Parasites, the lot of them. That Nadine is husband hunting. Disgusting. I think that daughter of hers was fathered by the boy who worked in the stables. How distasteful! The music man plays piano in a bar.”

  Sara was looking at her friend with wide eyes. “You seem to know a lot about them.”

  “They’re not exactly quiet, are they?”

  From what Sara had seen, they were a secretive lot. On the other hand, if Bella had done some research, Sara didn’t blame her.

  “What went on in my chapel?” Bella’s eyes were intense.

  “Showing off my photography,” Sara said. “You know how vain I am about it. I have lots of pictures of the estate. You can use them on your website. Free.”

  “Next to the pictures of the Murder Room?”

  Sara gave a weak smile. She was telling herself she should be like one of her book’s heroines and demand, “How dare you say such a thing to me?” then she’d storm out in a dress with an eighteen-inch waist. But Sara just felt guilt. All the bad that was happening to Bella was caused by Sara’s boredom and curiosity. “Everyone will leave on Monday.” If the police let us, Sara thought. By then, the skeleton will be exposed and hell will have been awakened.

  Sara stood up. “I need to...” She couldn’t think of anything she needed to do except escape. She practically threw herself out the door. She didn’t dare go to her room for fear Bella would find her. Instead, she ran up the stairs to the bleak servants’ quarters, then up to the attics. Dear, calm Kate would be there.

  Sara smiled at the sight of Kate and Byon together, surrounded by an untidy pile of boxes and suitcases and trunks.

  “I can’t find the box,” Byon was saying. “Nicky probably threw it away. Probably threw them in the manure pile.”

  Sara rolled her eyes. The Enneagram divided people with nine personality types. Byon was a four. A true creative, but with extreme highs and lows. Just like me, Sara thought, and grimaced.

  “We haven’t even begun to make a dent in all of this stuff,” Kate said. “It will take us days.” When she saw Sara, her eyes were pleading for help.

  “What’s the box look like?” Sara asked. “And more importantly, what’s in it?”

  Byon sat down heavily on an old chair and dust floated up around him. He gave a sigh that told of all life’s burdens. “Writing used to obsess me. It was like a disease that overtook my body and mind.” He looked at Sara for understanding.

  “Been there,” Sara said. “And you kept every syllable you wrote, then put it all in a box?”

  He nodded.

  “The parodies!” Sara said. “You came here after that night. Did you write about that night?”

  Again, Byon nodded.

  “Hell and damnation,” Sara said. “Get up and start looking. Tell us the size and color of the box. Kate! Call Jack. He can help search.”

  “He’s with Nadine. She’s up to something.”

  “Probably getting his clothes off,” Byon said.

  Sara and Kate turned angry faces to him.

  “I’m in the midst of virgins. Stop the scowls. The box is about this big and it’s blue. Maybe green.”

  “When did you last see it?”

  “It...” His head came up. “I stayed in Nadine’s room after that night.”

  “Of course you did,” Sara said. “Finest in the house.”

  “Why not?” Byon said. “They all abandoned Nicky. I was the only true friend he had.”

  Sara’s anger came to the surface. “Nadine left because she was pregnant with the child of a man who she believed abandoned her. Clive escaped years of bad treatment. Willa ran away because Nicky told her all of you were sick of giving her sympathy, no matter how much she paid for it. And Sean was gone because he was dead. Heaven only knows what happened to poor Diana.”

  Byon was unflustered. “Whatever their excuses, I was the only one here.”

  “You—” Sara took a step forward.

  Kate placed herself between Byon and her aunt. “What happened to Nadine’s things? Did she ask for them to be sent to her?”

  “She turned her back on everything,” Byon said. “Left her clothes and her friends. She—”

  “Well, then, let’s look for them,” Kate said. “Find Nadine’s clothes and we’ll probably find your box of writing.”

  “Unless you wore them out,” Sara said to Byon.

  His lips twitched. “Only a few hats, darling. The rest didn’t fit.”

  Sara laughed and the anger was gone.

  It took them thirty minutes to find an old-fashioned trunk full of clothes fashionable about twenty years before.

  “These are gorgeous.” Kate pulled out a sky blue cashmere dress and a Chanel bag.

  “Only the best for our Nadine.”

  Sara was leaning so far over the trunk she was half inside it. She was tossing clothes out to Byon and Kate. When she got to the bottom of the trunk, she had to brace herself at the side, but she came up with a red leather portfolio.

  “That’s it!” Byon clutched it to his chest.

  “A ‘box’ of papers?” Sara said. “And blue or green? That is from Asprey’s. So who gave it to you?”

  “Willa for Christmas.”

  “I could have guessed,” Sara said.

  Byon sat down on the top of a trunk and opened the clasp of the beautiful portfolio and began flipping through the pages inside. “They’re all here.” He sighed. “That means Nicky never read them. No one did.” He looked like he might cry.

  “Good!” Sara said. “Then no one can plagiarize them. We need to go over it all and see if there a
re any clues in there.”

  “They’re all plays.” He sounded as though that was a superior form of writing.

  “The easy way out,” Sara said. “No having to bother with scenery descriptions and literary glue.” At their blank expressions, she said, “You know, getting people from one place to another. Standing or sitting? I used to use toy figures to keep up with who was where. Sex scenes were like directing traffic on an eight-lane highway, with everyone moving at a hundred miles per hour.”

  Byon’s eyebrows were raised high. “Really? Maybe I should read one. Just for reference, that is. I could—”

  “So what is in your plays?” Kate asked.

  “I tried to write everyone’s part in that night.” He paused. “But back then, I thought it was all a joke. Diana and the groomsman had run off together. Quite amusing but not new. But after the little photo display...”

  “Now it’s different,” Sara said. “What you wrote back then is very important.”

  Byon smiled at that.

  “Willa said she’d walk us through what she did that night,” Kate said.

  “Poor Clive,” Byon muttered. “She followed him endlessly. Today it’s called stalking.”

  “She was trying to please Nicky,” Sara said. “Trying to please all of you. She was terrified of being thrown out of your nasty little group.”

  “We couldn’t afford to toss her out,” Byon said. “Literally. She fed us.” His head came up from the case. “And she bought lovely things for us. If only we could look back at that time. We could—”

  Sara was smiling. Glad he was finally understanding.

  “A play,” he said. “With actors!” He blinked a few times. “Jack looks like Sean.”

  “And the others are here.”

  They were looking at each other with wide eyes and heaving breasts.

  “Is this writer sex?” Kate asked but they didn’t answer.

  “They will see only their own part.” Sara was so out of breath her chest was like a runner’s. “Do you know enough?”

  “Not by a mile. Jack can get Nadine to tell all.”

  “Willa will love ratting on Clive.”