by Mona Marple
“What happened?”
Ivan shrugged. “Grace were a bit of a home-wrecker, I’d say. Swept Bobby right off his feet then spent their marriage looking over her shoulder for the next woman to come along and do the same. I mean, if that boy left Hannah, he’d leave anyone.”
Connie frowned.
“Might as well be honest about these things. Bobby follows the greenbacks.”
“Who are they? A team?” Connie asked.
Ivan laughed so much he developed a hacking cough and his eyes grew wild and buggy. “Money! Dollars! He’s never got enough.”
“I don’t follow,” Connie said.
“Hannah were nice, but from the wrong side of the tracks. No money there for him. Nah, Grace, she come from a good family.”
“So Bobby shouldn’t need any more money?”
Ivan swiped a meaty hand across the air in her direction. “Just because you’ve already had an abundance of oxygen all your life, you feel like you ain’t needing more?”
“Erm, no,” Connie said. She would very much like to have more oxygen.
“Exactly!” Ivan said, his point proven.
“And he’ll inherit a quarter when Eliza, erm,…”
“When she kicks the bucket it looks like he’ll get the lot,” Ivan said with a snicker. “How’s that for a plot twist?!”
“But there are four brothers.”
“Only one with a wife,” Ivan said.
“The others are widowed,” Connie clarified. “Not divorced.”
“Don’t matter,” Ivan said. “That boy always managed to come up smelling like roses!”
“What if they remarry?”
“Oh,” Ivan said. “Then they get their share. If they marry before she dies.”
**
Connie wheeled Eliza into the dining room and took a seat next to the wheelchair.
“You must think this family’s mad,” Eliza said. “And you’re right!”
“A lot’s happened, that’s for sure,” Connie said. “And it’s all ruined your plan, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Eliza said. She used her good hand to prise each finger on the claw hand as straight as it would go, which in most cases wasn’t straight at all.
“You wanted everyone here for a reason,” Connie said. “And the murders have distracted everyone so much they’ve forgotten about it. Did you want everyone here so Lottie and Dottie could be killed?”
Eliza considered the question. It was clear that she didn’t have the physical strength or ability to kill, but she could’ve worked with an accomplice. The trouble was, she didn’t seem to like or trust any of her relatives enough for such a plan.
“Did you want them dead?” Connie asked.
“Lottie perhaps,” Eliza said. “Never liked her.”
“And Dottie?”
“Never liked her either, but kind of owed her something.”
“How come?”
“Not your business.”
Connie took a deep breath. “Eliza, I’m trying to find the killer. I know it’s not you, so why not help me find whoever it was?”
“Why would I help you?” Eliza asked. “It was someone in the house, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was one of my family,” Eliza said. “Sure, I can’t stand most of them, but I won’t be letting any of them go to jail.”
“You don’t think the killer needs to be punished?”
Eliza shrugged. “We’ll deal with it as a family.”
“It could look like this whole weekend is you dealing with things as a family. You’re getting rid of the outsiders”
“I’m not doing anything,” Eliza said. “And I made those women as welcome as I make anyone.”
She had a point. Eliza’s dislike wasn’t reserved for her daughters-in-law. The fact was, she seemed to hate everyone and made no effort to pretend otherwise.
“Why is everyone here?”
“I had an announcement to make,” Eliza said. “Don’t seem so important now.”
“What was it?”
“My family will hear it before some jumped-up amateur sleuth!”
Connie took a breath and met the woman’s eyes. “I see dead people, you know. Did you realise that?”
Eliza’s face blanched. “Why would I care about that?”
“I spoke to Ivan earlier,” Connie revealed.
Eliza rolled her eyes. “What did that no-good excuse for a man have to say for himself? Did he explain what he was up to, going and dying and leaving me to run that mess of a business?”
“You miss him,” Connie said.
“I’ve never missed him a day of my life.”
“That’s not true,” Connie continued. “You only want your married sons to inherit, and I couldn’t figure out why for a long time. Then I realised, you loved your husband. That’s why. You like to act all tough like you don’t like anyone, but you really loved your husband and you think promising the money will encourage your sons to stay married.”
Eliza raised a wispy, almost not there eyebrow, but said nothing.
“You have important news, don’t you?” Connie said, her voice more gentle. “Something they need to know. You can still tell them. Why don’t we go in there now?”
“Fine,” Eliza said. Her armour was still on, but Connie had found a hole on it, a slither of weakness. A vulnerable side that Eliza had learned to protect.
Connie pushed Eliza into the living room and cleared her throat.
“Eliza has an announcement to make,” she said, then left Eliza in the middle of the room and went to the seat beside Taylor.
“Seems a little unimportant now,” Eliza muttered. “Me sitting here talking about maybes when the definite has happened.” Her eyes found Connie. “Maybe I should do this another time?”
“Do it now,” Connie encouraged. Taylor searched her face for some idea of what was to come, but Connie gave nothing away. She had a suspicion, but she could certainly be wrong.
“What is it, mom?” Zeb asked. His eyes were puffy and Connie suspected he had shed fresh tears.
“I asked you all here so we could spend one last New Year together,” Eliza said. “Arguing and fighting and Grace moaning about the hard work she does, that’s the way we are. Maybe some of you will miss it when it’s gone.”
“What are you talking about?” Grace asked. “I never moan about what I do!”
“Shut up, mom,” Daisy snapped, leaning forward on the edge of her chair.
“It’s no great loss, I know that,” Eliza said. “But still, it seemed like I should tell the rest of you. I won’t be here next Christmas. Realistically, not even Easter. It’s weeks, not months.”
“You’re not making sense,” Taylor said. Her beloved Taylor, the smartest man she knew, who could solve any puzzle. He knew what it meant, alright, he just didn’t want to believe it. Connie reached for his hand.
“My time’s up,” Eliza said. “I’m dying. And before you start to think I’ve gone soft, I’m annoyed that Lottie and Dottie have taken the attention off me this weekend.”
21
The room was silent following Eliza’s admission.
“I’m sorry,” Connie whispered.
“Did you know?” Taylor asked her.
She shook her head. “I had an inkling, but I couldn’t be sure. It’s the final piece of the puzzle.”
“It is?”
“I need to speak to another person.”
Connie walked across the room and tapped Bobby on the shoulder. He sat with a stony-face, Grace gripping his hand so tight that the flesh had turned white.
“Let’s have a chat,” Connie said.
Bobby’s eyes looked towards her but didn’t quite meet her own. He rose from the chair but Grace refused to let his hand go. She stood as well, made to follow him out of the room.
“I’ll speak to you separately,” Connie told her, although the fact was she’d learned everything she needed to know about
Grace.
“He’s really not in any fit state,” Grace said through gritted teeth.
“It’s fine,” Bobby argued. He prised his hand free and left his wife standing, furious, in the middle of the room. As soon as they’d made it to the dining room and closed the door, he let out a breath. “She means well.”
“I’m sure she does,” Connie agreed. “She worries you’ll leave her the way you left your first wife?”
Bobby was taken aback by the question but recovered well. “We don’t talk about that.”
“You mean, you don’t talk about her?” Connie asked. “Tell me, you’re a man who seems to care about doing the right thing. Or being seen to, at least. What made you abandon Hannah?”
A vein in Bobby’s forehead began to pulse. “I was young and foolish. Not foolish. I don’t mean that choosing Grace was foolish. Lord, can I get some water?”
Connie shook her head. “We won’t be much longer. Please, carry on.”
“Hannah was a great gal,” Bobby said with a lazy shrug. “We were 18 when we got married, and that’s just too young. A guy doesn’t know who he is at that age. But, man, she was as sweet as a cherry. I broke that girl’s heart. Biggest regret of my life.”
“You ever tell her that?”
He shook his head. “I made my bed,” he gave a wry smile. “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“It seems to me that everyone in this family is hiding something, and that makes for a lot of shifty behaviour. People telling lies and half-truths, like you just have to me. How can I ever remove you as a suspect when you’re lying to me?”
“I… I don’t know what you mean,” Bobby said.
“You know exactly what I mean, but I won’t force you to say it.”
Bobby held her gaze. She held his. Finally, he looked away.
“I didn’t know for a long time,” he said. “Grace and I were already married when Hannah got back in touch. She’d been too angry, too heartbroken at first. I think her parents convinced her that I had a right to know.”
“You didn’t tell Grace.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “She was so controlling in the earlier days. She’s relaxed a lot now, believe it or not. Those first years were hell. Every time I came home late from a meeting she was asking who I’d been with.”
“Didn’t you consider leaving her? Returning to Hannah?”
“I did,” he admitted. “But Hannah wasn’t interested. And then Grace announced that she was pregnant. It seemed like I was meant to stick it out.”
“You have another child, Bobby. How could you keep that a secret?”
Bobby’s lips quivered. “I did what I had to do.”
“You had to bring her into this family and set her up as your mother’s nurse?”
“I wanted her close,” Bobby said. “Plus she’s a darn good nurse and mother needed someone. Why would I let a stranger do that rather than my flesh and blood?”
“You knew the risk you were taking?”
He gave a half-smile. “I know my family can’t see what’s under their nose, and if they can they don’t care. You’ve seen how everyone apart from that shmuck Christopher knew about Lottie and Zeb.”
“Including you?”
“Of course,” he admitted. “Grace picks up on things like that right away, and even I started to see it for myself. They didn’t care about hiding it. Christopher just wasn’t even looking for clues. Not on his radar, the poor sap.”
“Maybe he had other things going on?”
“Christopher?” Bobby mocked. “He hasn’t had anything going for him other than his hot wife in his whole life.”
“You must have been pretty shocked by your mom’s news?”
She saw the slight smile, then the poker face returned. “Of course.”
“You don’t think she had a duty to tell you earlier? Since you’re running the business?”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think that at all.”
**
“How long have you known about Eliza’s health?” Connie asked.
Grace had finally taken off the apron and smoothed down her silk blouse. She considered the question carefully. “Bobby told me before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t say how far before.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
She shook her head. “Bobby told me not to. Eliza hadn’t actually told him, you see. He’d found a medical letter at the house.”
“She didn’t know he knew?”
“I doubt it,” Grace said. “We never discussed it with her. I tried to treat her the same as I always had. She never liked a fuss making over her health.”
“But she was asking Bobby to take her to appointments?”
“She’s had appointments ever since the stroke,” Grace said. “They try physio and things. All useless, but she’d never give up hope of them working. Bobby waited outside reception; it was Lynn who took her in.”
“So there was nothing suspicious to the family about her having appointments?”
“The rest of the family don’t pay attention,” Grace said. She sat a little straighter in the chair. “They couldn’t tell you whether she has medical appointments or anything.”
“And Lynn… I guess she doesn’t drive?”
“Of course she does,” Grace said. “That’s non-negotiable. A nurse has to be able to get her wherever she needs to go, quickly.”
“So she could drive Eliza to the appointments herself?”
The question took Grace’s breath for a moment, as if the idea had never occurred to her. “Well… I guess she could.”
**
Lynn was visibly anxious to be called in and questioned. She was a waif of a thing, a delicate beauty who looked enough like her mother to pass as a nurse employed for her skills and not an obvious child of Bobby’s. She looked nothing like Rose or Daisy.
“I know who you are,” Connie started with.
Lynn gave a slight nod.
“It must be strange, working in this family and nobody knowing who you really are.”
“Well, Bobby knows,” she corrected.
“You don’t call him dad?”
She shook her head. “It’s a dangerous habit. Safer this way.”
“How does your mom feel about you working for Eliza?”
“She doesn’t like it,” Lynn said. “I guess she’s got used to it now, but we don’t talk about it. She lets me talk about Bobby, but not the others.”
“She doesn’t like them?”
“Oh, no!” Lynn exclaimed. “She adored them. When she married him, she married all of them. And she was so young. She thought of the boys as her brothers. Zeb was this little kid when she knew him. She loved all of them.”
“You knew that Eliza was ill, before the announcement today?”
Lynn shifted in her seat a little. “I told her she needed to let the family know. And, I did something I shouldn’t have. I did pass the news on to my mom. I knew she’d want to know something like that.”
“You did? What did she say?”
“She sat and cried. I haven’t seen her cry pretty much my whole life, but she just broke down over that news. She rang my - she rang Bobby and told him right away.”
“That’s how he found out?”
She nodded. “I feel bad about it every day. I have a duty to my patient’s confidentiality. I should never have betrayed that.”
“You don’t think she’d like to know before she passes that you’re her granddaughter?”
“It’s silly,” Lynn said. “But I think she already knows. She asks me about my mother all the time. Never uses her name, but she’ll say how’s your momma doing lately? She ever settle down with a nice man? She talks about wishing she could change the past. It makes no sense at all, but it’s like she understands everything and she knows it has to just be our secret.”
“The two of you have any other secrets?”
“I know she really doesn’t like Grace,” Lynn squirmed as she said it. “That
’s not just me wanting to believe my mom was better. She had a weird respect for Lottie, and she was getting close to Dottie in the last few weeks. She told Dottie, about her illness? She wanted a second opinion, which of course Dottie couldn’t give as a GP! But she never reached out to Grace in the same way. I think she still holds a grudge that Grace wrecked a perfectly good marriage.”
“Is that what you believe happened?”
Lynn laughed. “Of course not. A perfectly good marriage can’t be broken so easily!”
22
“You’ve all been in here long enough,” Connie said as she escorted Lynn back into the lounge. “Let’s move into the sunroom.”
Taylor was by her side in a moment. “What’s happening?”
“I know who did it,” Connie whispered.
**
The sunroom was basically an enclosed porch, with large windows and wicker furniture. It was out of touch with the rest of the house, its style more modern and casual. That was why Connie had chosen it as the venue for her revelation. She would need every piece of strength she could find to reveal the killer’s identity, and feeling somewhat at home would help.
“There are two parts of this mystery; the part that the murderer wanted everyone to believe, and the truth. Let us begin with the story we were meant to believe,” Connie began. She stood, while the others sat around the room in varying states of interest or faked-boredom.
“Lottie retired early after an evening of disagreements. Her mother in law had offended everyone that night, as I imagine is the case in each family gathering. Lottie claimed a migraine and headed to her room, alone. The evening continued, and so did the bickering. Everyone left the room at one time or another unaccompanied; for bathroom breaks, to change outfits, to fetch a guitar or novel,” Connie said. Luke’s cheeks flushed at the mention of the guitar. Connie wondered if he’d pen a song about the weekend’s events. She was sure Daisy would see the commercial opportunity in such a plan.
“Christopher went upstairs. It was not the first time he had been up since his wife had gone to bed. Christopher says that Lottie was asleep in bed when he went up earlier, apparently not unusual behaviour when she has a bad head. He didn’t call out to her earlier, didn’t ask if she was okay or if she needed anything. One may think this behaviour strange, not the actions of a loving husband towards a wife. We can examine that later. The point here is that Christopher claims that only on his second trip upstairs did he knock on that locked bathroom door and then break it down,” Connie braced herself.