Murder at the Breakers

by Alyssa Maxwell

  I leaned closer to Nanny and kissed her soft cheek. Then I strode out the door.

  Ten minutes later, I pulled my rig up in front of Redwing Cottage. A police officer I vaguely recognized walked slowly between the drive and the hedge-lined wrought-iron fence that separated the property from Bellevue Avenue. He stopped when I did and approached my carriage.

  “This isn’t a good day for visiting, miss,” he said with a tip of his high-domed hat. “You might want to come back another day.”

  “Nonsense. I’m a good friend of Mrs. Halstock. In fact, her closest friend, and she needs me right now.” I secured the brake on my rig and set the reins down. “Have you seen any trace of Mr. Halstock?”

  “None at all, miss, and to be honest, I don’t expect to. But just in case, my partner will be returning to join me just as soon as he’s done reporting back in town.”

  “There, then,” I proclaimed with a nod, “with the pair of you here, I’ll be safe as can be.”

  He shook his head doubtfully but didn’t order me off the property. He helped me down and I went to the front door. I used the knocker, the clank clank echoing deeply inside the house. A minute or two passed and I tried again. A glance over my shoulder revealed that the officer had lost interest in me. He stood at the fence peering through a gap in the hedge, his hand resting on his sidearm.

  I knocked once more, the hollow sound rattling my nerves. Finally, I tried the latch and the door opened inward with a light whine of its hinges.

  “Hello? Anyone here?”

  Had Adelaide given all the servants a holiday? Or had money troubles forced her to fire most of them? The stillness reminded me of my very first visit here, except on that occasion the red velvet curtain that hid the passage to the morning room had fluttered and Rupert Halstock had shuffled through. This time there were no such stirrings of the curtain. I walked several paces into the center of the hall and peeked into the front parlor. “Adelaide?”

  An unnatural pall hung over the room; the furnishings and the grand piano seemed poised as if waiting . . . for what, I couldn’t say. The hair at my nape bristled to attention.

  Turning, I glanced up the stairs. Afternoon sun poured through the stained-glass window at the half landing, bathing the steps in a rainbow of light. I made my way up, gripping the banister and walking practically on my toes. When a floorboard beneath the stair-runner squeaked, I nearly yelped.

  I found the upstairs to be as lifeless as the lower level. Adelaide’s bright and feminine private parlor, where she and I had first reestablished our friendship, seemed faded somehow; an inexplicable aura of sadness sent me hurrying back downstairs.

  Back in the hall again, I thought I heard a faint hum of voices. Quickly I ran into the parlor and peered out the bay window. Had Rupert shown up? But, no, the policeman was now lingering near the gate at one end of the circular drive, where a sculpted azalea bush hid him from anyone approaching from town.

  A wide doorway opened onto a second, rear-facing parlor. I walked through, practically jumping out of my skin when from the corner of my eye I caught my own reflection in the glass-fronted bookcases. I pressed a hand to my heart and kept going. This room opened onto the formal dining room. Here I paused to listen, and once again a low drone reached my ears. I could make out neither the gender of the voices nor the words they spoke, but I determined their direction to be from somewhere near the far rear corner of the house.

  Something held me in place, very nearly sent me retreating out the front door seeking the officer’s assistance, until a reasonable thought calmed me. Why, Adelaide could be in the kitchens discussing the week’s menu with her cook. Or she could be outside in the garden, giving instructions to her groundskeeper. I remembered, too, that sometimes The Breakers felt as lifeless as a tomb, while in actuality its servants and inhabitants were simply going about their business quietly.

  Reassured, I made my way from the dining room into a paneled hallway. I passed a small, masculine study, a game room, and what looked to be a cloak room. Finally, the richly woven hall runner disappeared from beneath my feet. I stepped onto wide, white-washed floorboards, the equally white walls to either side of me lined with cupboards and counters. A moment later I turned a corner and stepped down into the main kitchen.

  “Is anyone—”

  The voices I’d heard rose up again, still muffled through walls but much louder now. Beyond a doubt I heard both feminine and masculine tones raised in unmistakable anger, though I still couldn’t make out the words.

  I ran to the back counter and craned my neck to see out the window above the sink. A few feet below me and off to my left, I spied a black-clad shoulder, nothing more. But where the counter ended another doorway opened onto what must be a mudroom and an outside door. I hurried over to it.

  And slid to a stop, heart in my throat, hands pressed to my mouth in horror.

  Had I kept going I’d have tripped over the body of Rupert Halstock’s valet, a man I recognized from my first visit here. He lay sprawled across the floor, faceup, a wound to his forehead clotted with blood. More blood matted his hair and soaked the floorboards beneath his head. Rivulets of red filled the thin gaps between the wooden planks on either side of him.

  The wound . . . so like the one that had killed Alvin Goddard . . .

  Through the roaring in my ears and the pounding in my temples, I heard the voices clearly now. Adelaide . . . and Rupert!

  I started to turn. I needed to alert the officer . . . the officer so close at hand, yet. . . .

  “Damn you, Adelaide. I trusted you. I loved you. I stood by you when everyone told me I was crazy.”

  “You are crazy, old man. God help me, why did I ever marry you?” Her words were interrupted by the sounds of a scuffle. And then, “Stop it, stop it, Rupert!”

  Alarm drove me to the door, where I could see, through the small curtained window, the two of them struggling on the pathway between the stoop and the kitchen garden. Their hands waved back and forth together above their heads, their fingers locked around the blue-and-red-striped handle of—

  A gasp tore from my throat.

  In their combined grip, a cricket bat swung wildly back and forth. A bat whose width I didn’t doubt exactly matched the dent in Uncle Cornelius’s balcony doorway and in the cabinet at Jack’s house on the Point.

  In that instant I knew Rupert Halstock had indeed been faking his illness. And I knew beyond a doubt if I didn’t act immediately, his next victim would be Adelaide.

  I wanted to scream, wanted to tear back through the house and seek the officer’s help, but how much longer could Adelaide hold off her madman of a husband? I retreated into the kitchen, searching—oh, God—searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon. My gaze lighted on the copper pans hanging from pegs along one wall. Grabbing a solid-looking fry pan with a good long handle, I spun about and returned to the back door.

  Turning the knob as far as I could, I managed to open the door without a sound. A few feet below me Rupert and Adelaide continued their tussle; his curses and her yelps of fear filled the air. Couldn’t the officer hear them? But the distance was too great, I realized—the house too big, the grounds too sprawling.

  As I made my way down the steps, my shadow fell across the thrashing pair. Adelaide saw it, then looked up and saw me. Her eyes jolted wide. They were glassy, gleaming. Her arms were trembling fiercely as she continued trying to wrestle the cricket bat from her husband’s hands. Rupert held on obdurately. I raised the frying pan.

  And brought it crashing down on the back of his head with a resounding thwack. The metal rang out melodiously. Rupert froze, and for a moment I thought I’d missed my mark, feared he’d turn around and accost me, as he had the night he nearly ran me off the ocean drive . . . as he had the night I’d followed Neily to the Point while Rupert had followed me.

  In the next instant his legs buckled, his arms dropped away from the cricket bat, and he collapsed to the ground on his back. For the next seve
ral moments neither Adelaide nor I moved, but I stood looking down at Rupert, studying the rise and fall of his chest. Great swells of relief rolled through me. I’d wanted to stop the man from committing another murder, but I certainly hadn’t wanted to commit one myself.

  “Good heavens, Adelaide. Are you all right?” Suddenly more weary than I’ve ever been in my life, I bent to set the copper pan on the bottom step. I straightened and turned back to Adelaide. She stood panting, the cricket bat gripped at her side, her gaze pinned to the sprawled man at her feet. A frown marred the smoothness of her brow.

  “Adelaide? It’s all right, it’s over. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Still she didn’t move, didn’t utter a word. She kept staring, her scowl deepening as if she were silently raining all her resentment and recriminations down on the man she had once pinned all her hopes on.

  “I should go and get the officer,” I said, more out of a hope of getting some kind of response from her. Had the shock been too much?

  “No,” she said, a single flat note. She continued glaring down at her husband.

  “What?”

  I glanced down at Rupert again, and something occurred to me. How could he have gotten home without being caught by the policeman? A simple answer formed: He had already been at home when the police came inquiring. Adelaide had lied about the whereabouts of her husband.

  But why would she do that?

  The second answer followed swiftly on the first as I saw what I hadn’t noticed a moment ago: a bruise on Rupert’s forehead and a cut along his receding hairline. I could not have caused either with the frying pan. Adelaide’s skirts rustled and my gaze shot to her. She had bent down to retrieve something from the ground, and now straightened and squared her shoulders.

  I knew then for certain I’d made a mistake.

  Chapter 18

  I stared down the barrel of the pistol in Adelaide’s hand, until a drop of blood rolled off the cricket bat at her side and fell with a plop into the grass at her feet. The sound seemed impossibly loud, echoing in my ears. My stomach roiled at the sight of that glistening red blob sinking into the blades of grass.

  “Adelaide . . .” My voice breezed between my lips like a gust billowing off the ocean.

  Yes, Adelaide, my friend . . . my childhood chum. . . . The schoolyard athlete, the tennis and archery champion. . . . She had always been a tall girl, solid and sturdy.

  And she had been the captain of the girls’ cricket team.

  Realization solidified along my spine, forcing me ramrod straight. “Peabody. Your maiden name . . . Adelaide Peabody. The pocket watch in Uncle Cornelius’s safe . . .”

  “My great grandfather’s,” she snarled with scathing contempt. “The only scrap of his wealth to make its paltry way to me.”

  “Why did you give it away?”

  “Collateral on a loan. But I didn’t give it to Cornelius, that idiot husband of mine did. Used the money for an investment—another one of his doomed-to-fail schemes. And it did, of course. And to think Rupert had the nerve to bellyache about the loss of his first wife’s precious spinet. ‘What about Great-Grandpapa’s watch?’ I asked him. Not that I really cared, mind you. What’s a pocket watch to a woman? But tit for tat, you know.”

  This casual little speech of hers rattled through me, leaving me clenching my teeth, fisting my hands. “It’s been you all along,” I said tonelessly. I uncurled one hand and raised an accusing finger as if to duel against her gun. I shouldn’t have goaded her, but I was shocked beyond caution. “You killed Alvin Goddard. And Jack. And now . . .” I started to glance over my shoulder at the mudroom door, then just as quickly turned back to her. “Why, Adelaide? Why would you do such hellish things?”

  She scowled and pursed her lips in a way that made me think she was going to spit. She stopped short of that but, her upper lip curled in a sneer that chilled me. “Why do you think, you stupid girl? I had the perfect plan before your damned uncle Cornelius spoiled everything.”

  “The railroad. The New Haven-Hartford-Providence Line. Your husband was an investor.”

  “Yes, and before your uncle became involved, the stock was still worth something. Rupert’s holdings were in the millions. And if he’d died on schedule, I’d have inherited those millions.”

  “Died on schedule,” I repeated. “His illness. You’ve been poisoning him.”

  “What a brilliant deduction, Emma.” She smirked, that spiteful curl of her lip reminding me of the petulant child she had been. “With him gone I’d no longer be dependent on anyone. Not on some doddering old fool of a man, and certainly not on the society dragons like your fat Aunt Alice who’ve been turning their noses up at me.” She swung the cricket bat against the side of her calf, first a light tap, then harder, making a thwap, thwap sound against her skirts. “Oh, wouldn’t I like to turn my nose up at all of them—and I will, Emma, just as soon as I’m a wealthy widow.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Adelaide,” I said steadily. “You know it can’t. Information about the misdealings in the railroad management is already coming out. The stock value has plummeted—”

  “And whose fault is that?” she all but screamed. A wild spark lit her eyes, and suddenly I saw her for the insane killer she had become. Before I could answer her, she continued more calmly, but with an underlying tremor in her voice. “Your uncle ruined everything. He’s a hateful, greedy, horrible excuse for a man and he deserves to die. He would have died—should have . . .”

  “Then why kill Alvin Goddard?” I could guess at the answer, but as long as I had her talking, I wanted to keep her doing just that. Keep her from remembering to finish off Rupert . . . and me. Meanwhile, I hoped, prayed, someone would come. With all my might I willed the officer at the front of the house to decide to walk around back.

  “The idiot!” Adelaide’s voice rose again. Please, I thought, let the policeman hear her. “What was he doing in Cornelius’s bedroom? It was dark—especially after I dispatched your stupid brother and extinguished his candle. How was I to know the wrong man entered the room? It’s not like I could have said, ‘Oh, excuse me, are you Cornelius?’ before I whacked him across the back of his head.”

  As she blurted those sarcastic words she came at me, the pistol pointed at my chest and violence flashing in her eyes. Instinctively I cringed in anticipation of the shot, but when I looked up, she stood frozen in place, her features twisted with fury. Her hand slowly lowered, yet the gun now remained trained on my stomach.

  I let out a breath. “And in the confusion afterward you smuggled your weapon out to the playhouse.”

  “Of course I did. You and your meddling ways. What on earth brought you outside Cornelius’s window at just the wrong moment?”

  I ignored her question and asked one of my own. “Why the bat? The house was full of potential weapons.” I thought briefly of The Breakers’ many marble busts, ornamental swords, and, yes, candelabras.

  “Oh, because the irony was too sweet to resist,” she said. “Don’t you remember how your uncle funded our school cricket team? I suppose his charity made him feel magnanimous. To me it was a reminder of how much I didn’t have as a child.” She shook her head. “My plan was perfect—perfect, Emma, if not for you. If you hadn’t alerted Neily and then the police, I’d have had time to quietly leave the ball with this cricket bat safely stored in my carriage. But, no, the police were searching all the vehicles and everyone’s bags. I had no choice but to hide it away where the authorities would never think to look.”

  “And where it stayed until Jack found it today.” I almost didn’t want to ask my next question. “How did he know it was there?”

  Please, I thought—I prayed—don’t let him have been involved, part of her sinister plans.

  Her lips curved, this time in a cunning little smile. “Jack proved most useful. Most sympathetic to my cause. And his own, of course. He stood to profit nicely from helping me.” The grin vanished as quickly as it had come. “Until to
day, that is, when his conscience overruled his common sense and his ambition.”

  His ambition . . .

  “Oh, God. Brady,” I murmured as additional pieces fell into place. “Brady originally stole the railroad plans to show Jack. Brady said it was his own idea . . .” I shook my head sadly. “But it wasn’t, was it?”

  Her smile burgeoned again. “I’ve never met a more biddable fool than Brady Gale. Jack hoodwinked him into stealing those plans and making him think it was his own idea with less effort than . . . than I made you believe I was your friend, Emma. It would seem pitiful gullibility runs in your family.”

  She went on to utter more mockery, but I didn’t hear her, didn’t care. A pain grew in my chest; my heart squeezed, turned over, squeezed again as I processed Jack Parsons’s betrayal. Adelaide’s, well, that was my own fault, my own gullibility as she had said. But Jack’s . . . oh, I knew that from then on . . . if I lived beyond that day . . . I would never bestow my trust as freely as I had in the first twenty-one years of my life.

  “Why did you kill Jack?”

  “Because he was going to turn me in!” she cried savagely, spittle flying from her lips. “Because he put it all together and realized it was me—that I killed Alvin Goddard.” She swung the cricket bat in the air, making me recoil. “He’d actually suspected Rupert, even remembered about Rupert’s collection of cricket bats. Last night he announced his intentions of going to the police and suggesting one of those bats might be the murder weapon, that Rupert was merely faking his illness.”

  “So why didn’t you let him?” I wondered aloud.

  “Oh, I applauded his astuteness and encouraged him to go. But then this morning . . . he sent a message asking me to meet him on the Point. I thought we were going celebrate finally getting Rupert out of the way.” She laughed, a sardonic cackle.

  “And you brought along a gun?”

  She shrugged. “I’d taken to bringing it everywhere I went. A girl can’t be too careful, you know.”