by Alex P. Berg
Shay knelt in the corridor, her eyes on the rough stone floor. “Look at this.”
I knelt beside her. The lighting made investigation difficult, but even in the reflected light of the office proper, I could see what Shay pointed to. A dark spot, the source of the metallic tang I’d noticed in the air. Blood. Quite a bit of it.
“You were right,” I said. “Clarice must’ve been murdered here.”
“And dragged into this passageway. The office itself was cleaned, but this space wasn’t.” Steele pointed up the corridor, where streaks of blood faded into the darkness. “The only question is, where was she taken?”
“We’ll get to that soon enough.”
I headed back into the office. Marcus glared at Bertrand, shooting daggers from his eyes. Bertrand stared back without the malice Marcus delivered. Rather, he looked hurt—emotionally more than physically.
I crossed to Marcus’s desk and from its corner picked up the gleaming brass statue of a titan holding up the world. I’d thought perhaps Sydney had been to blame for Clarice’s murder given the manner of the woman’s death, and yet…
I peered at the sphere held between the titan’s hands. It was dented.
“Daggers?” Shay had joined the rest of us. She nodded at Bertrand. “Who is this?”
“Bertrand Beauclerk. Sophie’s son. The woman who died in the fire.”
Shay glanced at the young man, then at Marcus, undoubtedly noticing the same thing I had. “And you swear at some point you’re going to explain what you were up to this morning and afternoon?”
“Soon. But first, Rodgers? Escort Bertrand down the hall. Don’t take your eyes off him. Quinto, you can head with him. Shay and I will be there soon enough. First, we need to have a chat with Marcus. There are certain events I think he’ll want to shed light on for us.”
“Come on, Rodgers,” said Quinto, waving toward the door. “You know how this works. With luck, Daggers will sort through whatever jumbled mass of ideas he’s juggling and cobble them into a coherent theory. We came late to the party, which means we won’t figure out what the hell’s going on until all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.”
Bertrand sputtered as the pair of detectives pushed him through the doors. I’d busted one of the hinges kicking them open, but I managed to force them shut. I turned to the desk, planted the brass statue square in the middle, and crossed my arms.
“So. Marcus. Tell us about Bertrand.”
The elder Vanderfeller coughed and grimaced. He reached into his jacket and removed the white bottle with his pills, from which he pulled one and swallowed it.
“Ah, yes. Bertrand. I’m…sorry I forgot to mention him when you first inquired about our household. As you seem to have surmised, he’s Sophie Beauclerk’s son. Clarice and I always prided ourselves on taking care of our household staff as if they were family, and after Sophie’s passing in the fire, we couldn’t leave the boy to the wolves. We took him in. Gave him a place to stay. But the fire was hard on the boy. Took a lot out of him. He was never the same afterwards. Preferred to stick to himself, which is why he took on the role of coal boy.”
“That’s a great story,” I said. “But how about you dispense with the bullshit and give me the truth?”
The man frowned, unconvincingly I might add. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“We’ll get to the heart of your spat in a moment, but don’t treat us as if we’re idiots. Steele noticed it the moment she laid eyes on him, same as I did when I interviewed him this morning. Bertrand is your son, Marcus!”
Marcus met my eyes, then Steele’s, before casting his gaze to the floor. “Very well. No sense denying the obvious, I suppose. Yes, Bertrand is my son. The product of an ill-advised affair between myself and Sophie. But the rest of what I said was true. I couldn’t leave the boy, my own son, in the wake of his mother’s passing. I took him in. Raised him as my own.”
I laughed out loud. “Raised him as your own? He was relegated to the sub-basement, kept out of the public, hell, even private eye. If you treat your legitimate children with such love, no wonder your family is dysfunctional.”
“Call it what you will, but I spoke the truth,” said Marcus. “The fire, the loss of his mother, the loss of Nell, it all affected him. His interpersonal skills never developed. That’s why he isolated himself.”
“Really? It couldn’t have had anything to do with your wife forcing the choice upon him?”
Marcus glanced at the me, the truth evidence on his face if not his lips.
I took a step around the desk, closing in on the man. “His resemblance to you is striking, Marcus. When did Clarice find out? When did she know?”
“I’m…not sure. At some point after the fire, I think. It didn’t take long for her to…suggest Bertrand live out of sight. Her sight.”
“Does Bertrand know?”
“Of course.”
“Since when?”
Marcus shook his head. “Again, I’m not sure. Quite some time, I suspect. As you say, how could he not know? All he needed was to pass in front of a mirror.”
“Tell me about the fire, Marcus.”
The man sighed. “What do you wish to know?”
I took another step forward, letting my shadow fall over him. “Who set it, Marcus?”
He shrunk away from me, as if my shadow were a cloud of poison. “What are you implying? That I set the fire? Are you crazy?”
“The investigators suspected it was arson. They never proved it, but they had precious little to work with. But we know a few facts about the fire. That Sophie was in the building when it started, for one. That she didn’t escape though everyone else managed to. That Opal’s husband, Aaron, found her within, but couldn’t bring her to safety. What we never knew was why. Why someone would set that fire. But if Clarice knew? If she knew about Bertrand earlier than you suspected?”
“No. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t. But…” Marcus’s eyes widened.
“But what?”
“Bertrand,” said Marcus, his voice pained. “If she’d known… If he’d somehow found out. It would explain…why. As soon as he burst through that wall, asking me to come with him, to leave, I suspected. Because of what Detective Steele had said. Because of the blood. That’s why I snapped. I needed someone to blame, someone to lash out against. But him coming through that passage. Here, to my office. Coming back. Oh gods…it really was him.”
I wasn’t sure I’d caught everything the elder Vanderfeller was getting at, but if Clarice had murdered Bertrand’s mother via the servants’ home fire seven years ago, that gave Bertrand a clear motive in her murder, as well as the opportunity to hide it thanks to the secret passageways.
“Did you know about the corridors?” I asked. “Were you aware of their presence?”
Marcus shook his head and pressed his face into his hands, sobs now wracking him and tears glistening through his fingers.
I turned to Shay, her brow a knitted jumble. She was pretty good at filling in the gaps, but her face said she was a few puzzle pieces short at the moment. Heck, maybe I was, too.
“So…this Bertrand character?” she said. “He’s been living here the whole time? And you think he’s the one?”
“I do. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a hundred questions I want answered, not least of which is what the young man was doing here just now.”
Marcus cried out and grimaced, doubling over in his chair. He clutched his stomach with one hand and fumbled for his medicine bottle with the other.
“Oh, gods…the ulcer. Get Lothorien!”
The man’s pain seemed real, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility he was faking it to create a distraction. I sent Shay for the butler while I loosened the man’s collar and helped him to the floor.
38
Lothorien was no doctor, but at least he was familiar with his master’s condition. With a few more pills, a glass of water, and a soothing monoton
e, the elven butler managed to get Mr. Vanderfeller’s state under control. While I imagined the stress of fighting his bastard and coming to grips with the idea of his son as his wife’s murderer had exacerbated the situation, I couldn’t help but think the wasting disease was worsening of its own accord as well.
Shay and I found Rodgers, Quinto, and Bertrand in a guest bedroom down the hall from Marcus’s office.
Quinto eyed us as we entered. “Everything alright out there?”
“More or less,” I said. “Mr. Vanderfeller is feeling under the weather. Mind keeping an eye on him?”
The big guy sighed, rolled his eyes, and left. Rodgers started to as well, but I nodded for him to stay. Bertrand sat in a chair in the corner of the room, his face pale in the dim light, his eyes trained on the floor.
I pulled up a spare chair in front of him. I stripped off my leather jacket, draped it over the back, rolled up my sleeves, and settled into the seat. I might as well have been a fruit fly searching for moldy bananas for all the attention Bertrand paid me.
“You mind taking a look at me, champ?”
The young man lifted his head. He looked on the verge of tears.
“How long have you known Marcus is your father?”
Bertrand averted his eyes.
“Look. I know you don’t want to talk to me. I understand your personality, better than I did this morning, but you’re going to have to play ball whether you like it or not. Unless you’d rather go down for first-degree murder without even defending yourself.”
That got the youth’s attention. He met my gaze. “Huh?”
“You’re the prime suspect in Clarice Vanderfeller’s murder, Bertrand.”
He blinked, his sorrow fleeing. “What? No. I didn’t kill her. I swear!”
“Then answer my questions, and do so truthfully. How long have you known Marcus is your father?”
“I…” He glanced toward Steele and Rodgers, but their faces held no pity. “I don’t remember, exactly. I figured it out a few months after the fire. It wasn’t any one thing that did it, rather an accumulation of factors. Mostly Mrs. Vanderfeller’s treatment of me.”
“She forced you to live in the basement?”
“Not at first. In the early days she’d simply yell at me, tell me to get lost, assign me more work than I could possibly complete. But eventually? Yes. She didn’t want to see me any more, at all. At first I assumed it was my fault, that my mother’s death was on my shoulders and that every time she saw me she saw my mother, burning. I assumed it weighted on her, her death. But she saw something worse when she gazed at me. Something far more hurtful.”
“When do you think she knew? That you were the product of an affair between her husband and your mother?”
Bertrand hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“Try again. The truth this time.”
The young man shook his head. “I’m not lying. I don’t know. But…I suspect she knew before the fire.”
“And you also suspect Clarice Vanderfeller set that fire.”
More hesitation. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“For everything I’ve already said. For every reason you clearly also suspect. Mrs. Vanderfeller was never cruel to me before that day. She knew who I was. Spoke to me. Treated me with kindness, even. But never again after the fire. What other change could’ve happened in her other than the knowledge, the truth? I didn’t become his spitting image until after puberty, several years later. It wasn’t anything I did to create the change in her. She discovered something, and she set that fire. She murdered my mother.”
“And that’s why you killed her, all these years later.”
“What?” Marcus snorted, again looking to Shay and Rodgers for assistance. “No! I’m telling you, I didn’t kill her. Yes, I feared her. Not physically. Not anymore. She’d become a recluse, weak and timid. But I feared what she could do to me in other ways, the influence she wielded over others, even these days. But I didn’t kill her. I hadn’t seen her in years! In fact, once it came out she was missing, I…”
I leaned forward. “You what?”
“I…tried to find out what happened to her.”
I narrowed an eye. “Everyone was trying to figure that out, Bertrand. Everyone in the household went looking for her.”
“I know that. But not like I did.”
I paused, engaging the gears in my brain. “You’re talking about the passages.”
He nodded.
“You’re the one who was spying on me,” I said. “I know about the other night, out in the grounds. But in the attic. You were there, too, weren’t you?”
Another nod.
“How many people know about the secret passageways, Bertrand?”
He hesitated again. “I…don’t know.”
“Surely you must have some idea.”
“Me, obviously. Mrs. Vanderfeller, too, based on the blood in the passage outside Mr. Vanderfeller’s office. Other than that? I couldn’t say. Maybe none. Maybe a handful.”
I didn’t believe him. “So you’ve been snooping, trying to figure out who murdered Clarice. And surely you know she was murdered. You came across her blood in the secret corridor outside Marcus’s study. So what have you learned? Who did it?”
“I don’t know,” stammered Bertrand. “I didn’t find that blood until recently, and I…didn’t start searching for her killer until after Mr. Vanderfeller—er…my father sent everyone in search of her. No one’s mentioned a thing.”
What wasn’t he telling me? “Why come after your father? Why now?”
Bertrand wet his lips with his tongue. “I…overheard Detective Steele had apprehended him. That she’d found blood. It was only after hearing that tidbit that I found the blood in the corridor. I simply wanted to talk to him. In private. Hear his side. He’s…all the family I have left.”
“So why did you attack him?”
Bertrand sputtered defensively again. “I didn’t attack him! He attacked me. I came in through the wall, telling him to come with me. He about had a heart attack. I don’t think he knew about the corridors. But then something flashed across his face. Anger. Pain. I don’t know. He slammed into me, screaming about how it must’ve been me. I’d been the one. Where was she? What had I done with her?”
I nodded. “He suspects you’re the killer. With good reason.”
Bertrand leaned forward. “Please tell me you’re not on his side in this. I didn’t kill her! Why would I? I wanted nothing to do with her.”
“Please, Bertrand. You knew about the fire. You suspected she murdered your mother.”
The young man quieted, his face sagging.
“Where were you the night of her disappearance? And the nights before and after?”
“In…the basement. By myself.”
“You’re familiar with the concept of an alibi, aren’t you Bertrand?”
He nodded soberly.
“No one can vouch for your whereabouts?”
More hesitation, then another resigned shake of the head.
I readjusted my sleeves, stood, and returned my jacket to its rightful home. “Rodgers? I need you to keep an eye on this guy. A good eye. Who knows which walls are mobile.”
“Leaving me in the dark again?” asked Rodgers. “How did I know that would happen?”
“It’s a big house. There’s lots of suspicious individuals in need of watching. Besides, I have something I need to discuss with Steele. We won’t be gone long.”
I waved to my partner. She followed me into the hallway, her eyebrows more relaxed than they’d previously been. She waited until we’d closed the doors and headed away from the room before speaking.
“So, that’s it then. Bertrand is Clarice’s murderer?”
“Maybe. He possesses an obvious motive, but there’s a number of things about this case that still don’t make any sense. If he murdered his step-mother, or whatever Clarice was to him, his
explanation as to why he came to see Marcus now makes zero sense. Why wouldn’t he simply disappear? I didn’t know of his existence until this morning, you until even later.”
“You say he’s a recluse, like Clarice was,” said Steele. “He rarely left the basement, unless it was through those secret tunnels. Where would he go?”
I snorted, unsure of myself. “Until I showed up, you’d suspected Marcus was the killer.”
“That was circumstantial. I found blood in his office. Although when I pressed him on the matter, Lothorien admitted Marcus was the last person to lay eyes on Clarice and hear her voice through the speaking tubes. Which if true doesn’t provide him with a motive, but it would grant him greater opportunity, in a sense.”
I shook my head. “Lothorien is compromised. Sydney is blackmailing him. Anything he says is suspect.”
“Wait, what?” Shay blinked and shook her head. “Lothorien is being blackmailed? What the hell have you been up to since I last saw you?”
“I found a note in Lothorien’s room. It instructed him to meet post haste, citing his little problem, which I assumed meant his drug addiction. That was when I made the decision to send for Rodgers and Quinto. The case was getting out of hand, and good thing I did. You needed them to search for me, and we need them to monitor the prisoners. But that’s neither here nor there. I was able to intercept the manor’s drug dealer while looking for a runner to send the station’s way, and he pointed me in the direction of Fezig and Sydney. The latter runs this place, Steele. If anyone had a motive to murder Clarice, it’s her, especially with Marcus’s ongoing health problems. That must’ve been why she was blackmailing Lothorien. She must’ve been gathering allies, preparing to set her father up for the fall. And yet…it doesn’t go through her. The murder. It goes through Angela, instead. Either she was working with whoever killed Clarice, or against all odds, she had nothing to do with it and only with Nell.”
“Whoa, whoa,” said Steele. “Back up. I’m so confused. Sydney? Angela? Nell? You need to start making more sense.”