by Morgana Best
“What possible motive would they have?”
I held up both hands. “I have no idea.”
“Okay, I suppose I could look into it, but isn’t your boyfriend a cop?”
“Yes, he is,” I said dryly, “but that’s why I’ve come to you. For one, he’s not a detective, so he’s not on the case, and the main reason is that he told me I can’t do any investigating because it could be too dangerous.”
Dennis started walking again. “He’s right. Okay, I’ll look into Wendy and Adrian, but yes, your boyfriend is right—it could well be dangerous. In these cases, there is usually more going on than anyone realises. Don’t get involved, Sibyl.”
Chapter 14
Dennis’s words stayed with me the rest of the day. A thunderstorm was brewing, so I didn’t know if my feeling of anticipation was from the growing electricity in the air, or whether something was actually about to happen. Still, I managed to make great inroads into my paperwork, clearing most of it. Having the reward of going to a café soon certainly helped.
When I walked into the café, Cressida and Mr Buttons were already there. The café was small, and had not been decorated since the days when pale peach-pink was in fashion. A rather ghastly frieze featuring flowers in all shades of pink and red covered some of the peach-pink walls. Still, the coffee, albeit not the décor, here was good, and the pungent aroma was inviting.
Cressida waved at me frantically, but I could hardly miss her. Cressida and Mr Buttons were the only patrons in the café. I said hello to the café owner and walked over to take my seat at the table. I noted that Mr Buttons had some colour back in his cheeks, and I figured he had recovered from the koala incident. I just hoped it wouldn’t turn up on YouTube.
“I’m worried that we’re not investigating Albert Dubois,” Mr Buttons said, raising his voice over the music playing what sounded like Greatest Hits From the Eighties. “It has to be him. He was planning that murder for ages.”
I put my elbows on the table and rubbed my eyes. “What do you have against cooks and chefs?” I asked him. “You always said Dorothy was the murderer.”
“Well, she was the murderer!” Mr Buttons said triumphantly.
“Dorothy committed one murder, but how many murders did you think she committed?” I asked him.
Mr Buttons continued to smile and nod, the logic of my words clearly lost on him. “I think it’s one of the boarders,” I told him. “Actually, I spoke to Dennis Stanton this morning. I asked him if he could look into Wendy and Adrian.”
Cressida gasped. “But Sibyl, you’ve let the cat out of the bag! We weren’t supposed to know he’s a retired police officer!”
I hurried to reassure her. “That’s fine. We were talking about what small country towns are like, and I told him there’s a strong gossip mill. I did that to work into saying that I’d heard he’s a retired cop.”
Mr Buttons nodded approvingly. “That was clever, Sibyl.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said with a laugh. “If I do say so myself. Of course, I’m not discounting the possibility that he is the murderer, but if he’s not, then he might get us some useful information.”
“So he agreed readily enough?” Cressida asked me.
“Yes, he did,” I said. “Though he did say that it was dangerous and I shouldn’t look into it too closely.”
“He’s right,” Mr Buttons said. “Albert Dubois would be very good with knives. We know he’s not French, but he’s obviously a good chef, and chefs certainly know how to use knives. I’d say he strangled Bradley rather than stabbing him to throw suspicion off himself.”
I rested my head on my hands. “Mr Buttons, are you completely convinced that the chef is the murderer?”
“Yes, I am,” Mr Buttons said firmly. “He lied about being French.”
“I’m sure everyone who has lied about being French hasn’t murdered someone,” Cressida said, bewildered.
The café owner came over with a tray, and set our drinks in front of us. That was one benefit of living in a small country town that I hadn’t mentioned to Dennis—the staff at the cafés in town knew everyone’s regular drink. There was no need to order. When she left, I said, “We know Adrian Addison lied. He isn’t working for the Office of Geographic Names, or the Geographical Names Board, either. And Wendy Mason lied. She said she was going gold panning, but she didn’t, and she met with those two men. Wendy and Adrian are acting far more suspiciously than the chef.”
“Just because we don’t know what lies Albert Dubois has told us, doesn’t mean he’s not lying,” Mr Buttons pointed out.
My head was spinning, so I sipped my half strength latte on almond milk. The caffeine made me feel a little better and kicked my synapses into gear. “I just feel we’re going around in circles,” I lamented. “We have four suspects, and we really don’t know anything about them.”
One of the local real estate agents walked in and ordered. She popped over to our table to say hello. “Will you join us?” Cressida said.
She shook her head. “I’m just popping in for a quick coffee between appointments. I’m grabbing some coffee to take back to my office.”
“How’s business?” Cressida asked her.
“Slow,” she said sadly. “There are more listings than buyers. I’ve shown several people around the last week, and they’ve looked at everything I have on my books and haven’t been interested in a single one.”
I nodded. “Oh yes, one of Cressida’s boarders, Dennis Stanton, was looking.”
“Tell him to come and see me,” she said.
“Hasn’t he been already?” I asked her. “He told me he had been to every real estate agent in town.”
She looked puzzled. “What did you say his name was again?”
“Dennis Stanton.”
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t shown anyone by that name any listings.”
The café owner called her away at that point and handed her coffee to her. After she left, I said, “Okay, now that’s suspicious. When I asked Dennis if he had been to all the real estate agents in town, he said that he had.”
Mr Buttons tapped his chin. “Yes and she’s one of the two bigger real estate agents in town, so he surely would have been to her, what with her office on the highway and everything.”
“We googled him at length, didn’t we?” I said, trying to remember.
Cressida and Mr Buttons both nodded. “There were millions of Dennis Stantons, though, remember?” Cressida added. “We didn’t find anything about him, or the others, for that matter.”
“What if Dennis really isn’t here looking for a house to buy?” I said. “We need to find out. Cressida, do you know any of the other real estate agents in town?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I know all of them.”
“Who would be the main one,” I asked her, “apart from the lady who was just in here.”
“That’s easy,” Cressida said. “It’s the office just down from here.”
“Cressida, after you drink your coffee, could you pop in and ask them if Dennis Stanton has been viewing properties with them and if he’s made any enquiries at all?”
Cressida downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp. “Sure, I’ll go right now.”
“She left before she could order cake,” Mr Buttons said sadly. “Perhaps we shouldn’t order cake until she comes back.”
“Why don’t we just order her usual,” I said, “and if she doesn’t like it, you can eat hers and she can order something else.”
Mr Buttons’ face lit up. “What a great idea, Sibyl.”
By the time Cressida got back, her blueberry cheesecake was on the table. “We ordered for you,” Mr Buttons said. “If you don’t want it, we can swap it for something else.”
Cressida had already eaten some of it before he had finished speaking. “No, this is what I wanted,” she said. “You won’t believe this. That office had never heard of him.”
“They were sure?” I asked.
S
he nodded. “Yes, so Dennis Stanton is here under a pretext.”
“Whatever could it be?” I said. “Do you think Dennis is the murderer?” Mr Buttons and Cressida both shrugged, and I sighed. “Each one of our suspects has a secret,” I said. “That certainly isn’t helping us narrow it down at all.”
Cressida and Mr Buttons did not respond—they were too busy eating their cakes. I gave up and did likewise. I was frustrated that we didn’t have a good lead on the suspects. The more we investigated, the more puzzling it all became. To make matters worse, I was sure the detectives didn’t even know as much as we did.
I was wondering whether to order some more coffee, when a thought occurred to me. “There’s something we haven’t investigated!” I said excitedly.
Cressida and Mr Buttons looked up, their cake forks halfway to their mouths.
“We haven’t investigated Bradley Brown.”
Mr Buttons swallowed hard, and then said, “But he’s dead!”
I shook my head. “Don’t you see! We need to google him.”
“We already have,” he protested.
“No, we haven’t,” I pointed out. “We only googled the gang, and their robberies. We really need to research him in depth.”
Mr Buttons pulled a face. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”
“Well then, here’s an example. Let’s just say that we googled him and found out he had a sister. Maybe their father died and left him everything in the will, and nothing for the sister. Maybe his sister is Wendy Mason, and she murdered him to inherit the money.”
“But they looked nothing alike,” Cressida protested. “I’m sure they’re not related.”
I took a deep breath before speaking. “I just made that up off the top of my head, Cressida,” I said patiently. “It’s completely hypothetical. I’m just saying that if we google him, we might uncover some information that will lead to us discovering who murdered him.”
Mr Buttons smiled. “Sibyl, that’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”
A short time later, we were sitting in the private living room at the boarding house. Smaller than the main living room, the private room had even more antiques, if that could be believed. Unfortunately, Cressida had recently redecorated it, and for an artist, she sure had weird taste in paint colours for interior walls. One wall was bright blue and the opposite wall was metallic gold. Cressida had painted the other two walls in a marble effect. Consequently, the marble walls always made me feel as if I were in a horror movie, the walls closing in on me.
As usual, the faint smell of mould hung on the air. This was the least ventilated room in the old house. “Cressida,” I said, “would you like me to fill the diffuser I bought you?”
Cressida leant to one side and switched on said gift. “Oh, Sibyl, I completely forgot to turn it on. I filled it this morning with water and essential oil just like you showed me. I just can’t remember which oil I used.”
“Vetiver,” I said, when the bitter smell wafted out. “Hmm, you didn’t like that lavender oil I bought you?”
Cressida smiled widely. “Oh, I did, Sibyl, thank you. I read somewhere that vetiver was a perfume ingredient and so I thought it would be nice to try it.”
Mr Buttons crossed to the small window and tried to open it by way of response. He muttered under his breath. Aloud he said, “It’s still jammed.”
Cressida waved one hand at him. “Oh, I was going to get Bradley to fix it. That poor man.”
“And that’s our cue,” I said to Mr Buttons. “Let’s get to it.”
Cressida placed her laptop on the old secretaire. Made of oak, it was a beautiful piece, Victorian era and imported from England by Cressida’s great grandmother. “Allow me to type,” Mr Buttons said, sitting on the high-backed throne chair before Cressida or I had a chance to do so.
He opened the laptop and tapped away at the keys. Cressida and I leant over his shoulder. “Have you found anything yet?” Cressida said.
Mr Buttons sighed. “My dear lady, please allow me a few minutes before you ask again. On second thoughts, please do not ask again. I shall inform you the moment I uncover anything of interest.”
By the fifth page, Mr Buttons hadn’t uncovered anything, and I was beginning to think it was a waste of time. I turned away, and looked at Lord Farringdon who was sauntering into the room. “Eureka!” Mr Buttons exclaimed, startling me.
I looked over his shoulder at the screen, and gasped.
Chapter 15
Cressida leant so close to the screen that her nose nearly touched it. “I can’t believe it! It is him, isn’t it?”
“He’s many years younger, but it’s clearly him,” I said.
Mr Buttons jabbed his finger on the screen. “There’s his name, written right under the photograph. Detective Dennis Stanton.”
“So Dennis was one of the detectives on the robbery case all those years ago,” I said slowly, trying to process at all. “Well, that adds up now, with the real estate agents saying that they’ve never heard of him.”
“I’m not sure I follow your reasoning,” Mr Buttons said, turning around to face me.
“Dennis is either the murderer or he’s here for another reason,” I said. “He obviously came to the boarding house to keep an eye on Bradley. He was pretending to look for a house to buy as a cover.”
“Of course, he himself could be the murderer,” Cressida said.
I agreed. “We can’t rule anyone out. I should tell Blake that Dennis was involved in the case.”
Mr Buttons touched my arm. “Do you think that’s wise, Sibyl? He’ll ask how you became privy to the information.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Oh dear, you’re right, Mr Buttons. What should we do now?”
“I think we should challenge Adrian and tell him we know he’s not working for the Office of Geographic Names,” Cressida said. “Then we should challenge Wendy Mason and tell her we know she didn’t go gold panning that day and ask her who the two men are. Then we could tell Dennis that we know he was on the bank robbery case and was one of those who put Bradley in prison.
Mr Buttons stood up abruptly. “My dear woman, you’ll do nothing of the sort. It will be altogether too dangerous. If one of the boarders is the murderer, then saying such things will put your life in danger.”
“So you don’t think the chef is the murderer anymore?” I asked him.
Before Mr Buttons could answer, Cressida butted in. “Oh yes! I will tell Albert that we know he’s not really French.”
Mr Buttons threw his hands in the air. “Cressida Upthorpe! Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said? It’s simply not safe to question anyone.”
To my surprise, Cressida agreed. “You’re right, Mr Buttons, I suppose. Let’s look for more information on Dennis. That might throw some light on the case.”
Mr Buttons returned to his chair, satisfied, but Cressida winked at me. I wondered what she was up to. I soon found out. “I’m just going to make a nice pot of tea,” she said. “Sibyl, would you like to help me make the sandwiches?”
“Sure,” I said, casting a sideways glance at Mr Buttons to see if he knew she was up to something. It seemed that he did not. He was bending over the computer, staring at the screen.
As soon as Cressida and I were out of the room, she whispered to me, “This investigation has stalled, and those detectives are useless. You and I are going to have to take matters into our own hands, Sibyl.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that, Cressida,” I said. “Our track record of confronting murderers hasn’t done us much good in the past.”
“Pish posh!” Cressida took my arm and steered me towards the dining room. “Who should we start with, Adrian or Wendy?”
The matter was decided for us, as Adrian was sitting at the dining table, reading his iPad and sipping from a cup. He looked up when we entered the room, his brow furrowed. “You said you want to start with me?”
Cressida and I exchanged glances. “Yes, ther
e something we’ve found out,” Cressida said. She crossed to the dining table and beckoned for me to sit next to her. “Adrian, do you mind if I come straight to the point?”
He seemed a bit nervous, but shook his head.
“We found out that you’re not working for the Office of Geographic Names. There’s no such office in New South Wales. Here it’s called the Geographical Names Board. It’s only called the Office of Geographic Names in Victoria.”
Adrian laughed nervously. “Silly me. I used to work for the Office of Geographic Names in Victoria when I first moved to Australia, so I got used to calling it that.”
“The game’s up, I’m afraid, Adrian,” Cressida said, sounding for all the world like a mob boss. “We’ve spoken to the council, who confirmed that there is no one in town from any such organisation. We’d like to know why you’ve told us such a big lie, and what you’re really here for. Perhaps we need to call the police and tell them. Did you murder Bradley Brown?”
I managed to recover to the point that I shut my gaping jaw. I was shocked that she was so forthright. It seemed I was not the only one who was shocked. “No, I didn’t!” Adrian exclaimed. He wrung his hands and slouched in his seat.
“Well then, why did you invent such a story?” Cressida pressed him. “Who do you really work for?”
“I’m a journalist,” he said shakily.
“Aha!” I elbowed Cressida. “Mr Buttons guessed he was a journalist.” To Adrian, I said, “Were you doing a story on Bradley?”
Adrian shook his head. “I didn’t know a thing about Bradley, not until after he died. No, I’m writing a book on the Nithwell family of England.”
“Then why did you feel the need to keep that a secret?” Cressida asked.
Adrian leant back in his seat. “Because of Mr Buttons, obviously.”
Cressida and I exchanged glances once more. “What on earth does Mr Buttons have to do with it?” I asked him.
“You don’t know?” He quirked one eyebrow. When Cressida and I remained silent, he pressed on. “Mr Buttons is Lord Nithwell, the Fifteenth Earl of Nithwell.”