I pushed a counter around on the backgammon board. “It’s too much of a coincidence, don’t you think? That they knew each other, what, eight or nine years ago, and then meet up again here?”
“It happens more than you’d imagine,” Fergus said. “I walked into a pub in Edinburgh last summer and found myself sitting next to the doctor who set my ankle after I broke it while caving down in the Forest of Dean. We hadn’t seen each other for twenty years, but we recognized each other. What do they call it, six degrees of separation?”
“Well, I’m glad that Knox wants to proceed with the purchase. That is good news.”
Fergus nodded just as the telephone rang, shrill in the quiet room. He jumped up to answer it. When he placed the receiver in its cradle, he looked troubled. “That was Frank from the repair shop in Oban,” he said. “He says the brake cables were punctured, enough for brake fluid to leak out slowly. Could have been general deterioration, but he doesn’t believe so. He says it was deliberate.”
28
Thirty minutes later, Inspector McMahon rang the doorbell. “There are plenty of spare rooms here,” I said when I opened the front door. “You should probably just move in.”
His mouth twitched with the faintest hint of a smile, and he followed me into the drawing room. Fergus had phoned him as soon as he’d heard from the repair shop. After I’d described to the inspector what had happened with the Land Rover, Fergus confirmed again that the mechanic thought the damage was deliberate. The crease between McMahon’s brows deepened into a crevasse as he scrawled a note in his book.
“Do you think that Mr. Jameson did it while he was on the property before the firebomb attack?” Josh asked. “Sort of a back-up in case the fire didn’t work?”
McMahon tapped his pencil on the open page. “Possibly. I’ll investigate, but it’s likely the brakes would then have failed on the way into the village, not on the way back. My alternative theory is that Kate was the target.”
The temperature seemed to plummet. My blood chilled.
“But why target Kate?” Josh asked, grabbing hold of my hand.
“Because she’s been asking questions.” McMahon looked at me. “That’s not an accusation, merely a statement of fact.” He raised his eyes to scan the space over my head. “Would you know if you had one of those aura things?”
Instinctively, I swept my hand above my hair. “No. I’ve never seen one over myself. I can’t see them in mirrors, so I wouldn’t know if I had one.”
“I’m sure that’s not it,” Josh said. “It’s far more likely that the target was Fergus.”
“Well, I’ll follow up on the car inspection report and let you know what I find out. Meanwhile, Kate, you should be cautious.” McMahon closed his notebook.
Seeing that he was about to leave, I jumped in. “Before you go, I’ve uncovered a few things you may be interested in.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out Remy’s business card. “I found this in Lucy’s room.” I said, passing it over to McMahon. “Remy Delacroix stayed here for a couple of days. He and Pierre knew each other in Paris, Pierre told me, and Remy volunteered to help with the party after Pierre was left short-handed. You know, with Nick being gone.”
“Yes, Delacroix was on our list of interviewees, like all of the temporary staff who were here on Saturday.” McMahon turned the card over a couple of times, his large hands dwarfing it. “What about him?”
“I found the card yesterday after Lucy left. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but then today I found out from Fiona that the Frenchman helping Pierre was this Remy Delacroix and I wondered why Lucy had his business card. I came up with a possible reason. Remember that we think Lucy and Duncan were searching for a Fabergé egg? Well, six months ago, a Paris antiques dealer sold a Fabergé egg to a collector for a thousand pounds, apparently not realizing what it was. Later, the collector discovered it was a genuine Romanov-commissioned Fabergé egg worth millions. Which left the dealer who sold it with egg on his face.”
Josh grinned, but McMahon looked blank.
“Remy is an antiques dealer in Paris,” I said. “Maybe he sold that egg, or he knows the dealer who did.”
McMahon cradled his chin in his hand, eyes narrowed in concentration. “If a collector has the egg, why were Lucy and Duncan looking for it here?”
“I’m confused too,” Fergus said.
“They weren’t,” I said. “They were searching for another of the missing Romanov eggs. It’s believed that there are seven missing eggs. Well, six now, with the one that was sold in Paris. The publicity on the newly discovered imperial egg renewed interest and speculation on the whereabouts of the other pieces, motivating collectors and historians all over the world to review everything they knew about the missing Romanov treasures and their possible locations. Remember I told you that Duncan had made some notes in his journal? Were you able to take a look?”
McMahon frowned. “Not yet. I do have other things on my mind, and missing treasure isn’t one of them.”
“It should be if it’s the reason for Duncan’s death. And for the ongoing danger to Fergus.”
McMahon patted the air in front of him as though trying to calm me. “I’ll get to it, I promise. And that brings me to something I want to tell you. The medical examiner has come up with a time of death for Duncan. It proved hard to pin down because of the temperature in the meat locker, but he was most likely killed between two and three a.m.”
“That’s later than we thought,” Josh said. “So where was he between one and two a.m.?”
“Lucy said she went to bed at one after Duncan told her he was tired and wanted to sleep alone,” I said. “We were all in our rooms by then.” I looked at Josh. “Wasn’t it around one when we went to bed?”
“Yes. And Fiona said she waited for Duncan until one-thirty and then drove home. If Duncan was still alive at that time, why didn’t he go out to meet her as planned?”
We fell silent for a minute. I reconstructed the evening in my head, but I had no blinding insights. If both Lucy and Fiona were correct about the timing, then there was a period of an hour, possibly two, when Duncan was unaccounted for.
“He must have gone to his room to change,” I offered. “He was wearing his tuxedo for the party, and had changed into his casual clothes before he was killed.”
“That accounts for some of the time,” McMahon agreed.
“And he might have gone to the east wing again,” I said.
Fergus lifted his eyebrows. “Duncan in the east wing? Didn’t you say Lucy had been up there?”
“She was. And I think it’s possible Duncan paid a visit too. He had cobwebs on his jacket when he arrived at the party. Perhaps he went back there after we were all in bed.”
“What’s in the east wing?” McMahon asked.
Fergus explained how it had been damaged and abandoned in 1941. “The place is a wreck,” he said. “I can’t see why anyone would want to go in there. And why now? All his life, Duncan’s never been in there, and then he decides to poke around on the night of the party? Besides, he could have picked up cobwebs anywhere.”
“You’d better not let Mrs. Dunsmore hear you say that.” Josh grinned.
“Some people like exploring ruins and old buildings,” McMahon said. “There’s probably not much more to it. But we can organize a search if you like, to see if there’s anything in there that explain Lucy’s interest.”
“There’s one more thing.” I glanced at Fergus. “It turns out that Lucy knows Stanton Knox, the American who’s going to buy the estate. We didn’t think they knew each other, but Fiona told me she saw the two of them in Lucy’s room.”
“Fiona seems to be a positive fountain of information,” McMahon commented drily. He opened his notebook again and flipped pages. “She didn’t mention that during my interview with her.”
“I’m not sure why she would.” I was quick to defend her. “As far as she knew, they were just two house guests. They could have been old friend
s, or a couple hooking up for the weekend. It wouldn’t seem significant.”
“Hooking up?” Fergus asked. When Josh leaned over and whispered to him, Fergus chuckled. “Ah. Well, house parties always were prime territory for illicit affairs amongst the beau monde. My ancestors in the Georgian era had quite a reputation for throwing elaborate entertainments, and there were plenty of guests tiptoeing between bedrooms in the night.”
“And I found some information on the Web,” I went on. “Knox and Lucy were at the same American university for one year.”
McMahon made a note in his book. “This has been helpful, thank you all.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be back as soon as I have more information.”
Mrs. Dunsmore arrived just then with a tray. McMahon cast a wistful look at the plate of buttery shortbread biscuits that accompanied the tea. “Take one with you,” the housekeeper offered. “You can eat it in the car.”
After accepting the biscuit, McMahon strode out of the room.
Fergus waited until he’d gone. “Not sure what to make of any of this,” he said. “But McMahon seems to be working hard trying to sort it out.”
After pouring tea for everyone, I sipped mine even though it was hot enough to scald my tongue. McMahon was working hard, no doubt, but he didn’t have the incentive of seeing Fergus’s accelerating aura. Its rapid spinning taunted me. I knew we were running out of time.
“I need to find a computer,” Fergus said, between mouthfuls of shortbread. “I have to send some papers to Knox.” He looked at his watch. “Five o clock, so it’s too late for anything in town to be open. But I wonder if the hotel might let me use their fax machine. If we buy a drink in the hotel bar, maybe they’ll look on me kindly. What do you think, Josh? A pint sound good?”
Josh glanced from Fergus to me and back again. “What about Kate? What if someone is after her too?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Truly.”
“Don’t think twice, my lad,” Fergus said. “I’ll pop over there by myself and be straight back. You stay with Kate.”
“That’s not a good idea,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”
We got into our rental car, and Josh drove slowly along the rain-soaked road into the village. “That’s where the car landed,” I pointed through the dusky evening light when we passed the spot where the Land Rover had left the road. “You’d never know to look at it though.”
The heather had bounced back, revealing no sign that it had been flattened by a ton of metal over a one-hundred-meter stretch. But then the Scottish moors were accustomed to hiding evidence of violence and trauma. The spilled blood of centuries of war and the bones of thousands of clansmen lay hidden in the ancient soil. My hectic excursion from the road to the car’s resting place was literally only a scratch along the surface, easily mended and quickly forgotten.
Fergus twisted in the passenger seat. “Are you sure you’re all right? You must have been shaken up badly this afternoon.”
“I’m okay.” I flexed my right shoulder, feeling an ache where the seat belt had tightened across it. “Your car is built a like a tank.”
Josh pulled into the car park of the hotel, a quaint white-painted building. It had twenty rooms, Fergus told us, and a small restaurant and bar. As we reached the door to the lobby, I heard a shout and turned to see Alistair Ross waving his umbrella at us.
“I’m glad to see you, Kate,” he said after he’d crossed the road to join us. “I was on my way to the supermarket but, if you have a minute, I have some information to share with you.”
“Why don’t you two have a chat while Josh and I wangle some time on the fax machine?” Fergus suggested.
Inside, Alistair and I headed to the bar, where he deposited his umbrella in a stand, and I hung up my jacket, wet from the short walk across the car park. While Alistair chatted with the barman, I admired the beamed ceiling, tanned with centuries of soot and smoke emanating from the large inglenook fireplace. But the tartan carpet was new and plush, and the wood tables gleamed. A faint scent of furniture polish mingled with the smell of beer.
Alistair ordered a half of Scottish ale with a Celtic name I couldn’t pronounce, and I opted for a glass of pinot noir. We carried our drinks to a table near the lead-paned windows. Only one other table was occupied, by a young couple in hiking gear.
Alistair took a swallow of his beer and dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief before taking a piece of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it, smoothing out the creases with the palm of his hand. “I called in some favors with a friend of mine, Ian McPherson, who helped me research the Agnes Fenton story in the past. Ian looked up Cyril Thorpe, the last name on that list of yours. It turns out that Thorpe was actually quite well-known— although notorious might be the better word. He owned an antiques business in London during the late 1930s, and was investigated for fraud several times. He hit the headlines when he tried to sell a Rubens to a Rockefeller who knew enough to recognize a fake when he saw it. Thorpe insisted he was innocent, that he’d bought the painting in the belief that it was authentic, and the charges were eventually dropped.” He paused and took another drink of his beer. I sipped my wine, which tasted surprisingly good.
“Anyway,” Alistair continued. “Thorpe traveled to Paris in early 1940, hoping to pick up some bargains. People were panicking, and many were selling their valuables before the Nazis could seize them. There’s a Customs Office list on record of what he procured in Paris because he was stopped and searched at Dover on his return. I suppose his reputation led the Customs men to assume he might be trying to smuggle in goods without paying duties on them.”
Alistair put his glass down, centering it in the middle of a cardboard coaster. “I’ll keep it as short as I can. Ian found a list of those receipts for Thorpe’s purchases in Paris, which included a collection of books, an extensive assortment of very fine jewelry— and a Fabergé egg.”
I leaned forward across the table to look at the paper, a scanned and barely legible copy of the list. “Oh my God,” I breathed. “So that note in Duncan’s journal listed the egg’s owners: Tsarina Alexandra, her lady-in-waiting, and then Cyril Thorpe?”
“Yes.” Alistair’s eyes gleamed bright. “Do you remember what I told you about the Tsarina’s lady-in-waiting? Anna Vyrubova? When everything went pear-shaped in Russia, Alexandra entrusted some of her prized valuables to Anna, who eventually escaped to Finland. In 1939, the Soviets invaded Finland, the start of the Winter War between the two countries. Ian believes that Anna, like many in Helsinki at the time, believed the Russians would overrun the country. She was concerned about the Tsarina’s heirlooms. He suspects she must have panicked because she gave the treasures for safekeeping to a Frenchman who’d been at court with her during the reign of the Tsar. He was supposedly a trusted friend, but he turned out to not be such a good comrade after all— he took the valuables to Paris and sold them for enough money to pay for a ship passage to New York.”
“I’d have thought the Tsarina’s valuables would have been to enough to pay for his own ship, not just a ticket,” I said. “He must have been stupid or desperate.”
“Maybe both, but definitely desperate. He, Anna, and many others like them, had suffered terribly during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. The prospect of another war was undoubtedly terrifying. America was a safe haven.”
“So he sold the treasures to Cyril Thorpe?”
“Exactly. The receipts match up with what Vyrubova would have given to her friend.”
“And Thorpe brought the items to England?”
“Some of them. It seems he sold them off quickly, probably eager to dump them because of their dubious provenance.”
Alistair tapped his finger on an item on the list. “We know that this necklace turned up at auction ten years ago. It’s easily recognizable as belonging to the Tsarina because there are photographs of her wearing it. It went for a fortune, as you can imagine. Other items of jewelry have also reappeared over the past co
uple of decades. Thorpe must have sold Anna Vyrubova’s treasure trove to a number of different buyers.”
“And the Fabergé egg?”
Alistair shook his head. “Sadly, that we don’t know. There’s no documentation to show that Thorpe tried to import it to the UK. Either he’d already sold it in France, or he smuggled it in somehow.”
“He must have got it into the country, don’t you think? And sold it to Gordon MacKenna? Otherwise, how else could it have made its way to the castle?” I tapped my fingers on the table, thinking. “If there is no documentation, how did Duncan and Lucy work out that it’s here? There must be something we’re missing.”
“I agree,” Alistair said.
He looked so disappointed that I quickly reassured him. “But what you’ve discovered so far is brilliant. Now we understand the significance of that list of names in Duncan’s journal. It’s thrilling to see evidence of the connection between the Tsarina, her lady-in-waiting, and Thorpe. There’s just that missing link that would explain Lucy’s conviction that the egg is in the castle somewhere.”
“There is something that might help,” he said. “Anna Vyrubova also gave her untrustworthy French friend a crate of Russian books as part of the consignment of valuables. The Frenchman sold the collection to Thorpe as a single lot for twenty-five pounds.” He tapped on the list. “See here? ‘Leather-bound novels, quantity 12.’ Thorpe then sold the lot in England for fifty pounds.”
“And?”
“And Gordon MacKenna bought that case of books. Ian’s seen the receipt recording the sale. That one was on record with the customs people.”
“Maybe the egg was concealed in that case? That’s how Thorpe smuggled it into England. Or maybe he didn’t even know it was in there and just sold the case unopened?”
My skin tingled with excitement. This would surely explain how the egg came to be at the castle.
Alistair’s eyes gleamed. “Yes, it’s possible.” He steepled his fingers under his chin. “I’d wondered why Anna Vyrubova thought those books were valuable enough to be worth saving. They weren’t even itemized, so we don’t know the titles. But if they were a cover for a Fabergé egg then it makes more sense.”
The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Page 107