Rubies Among the Roses

by Vivian Conroy

  That was probably true. Guinevere pointed at a plastic bag lying on a stool. ‘Can I wrap the book in that and take it with me? I’ll turn it over to the police who can then check it for fingerprints and DNA.’

  Lady Serena frowned. ‘You don’t seriously believe I hurt Jago Trevelyan? I had nothing against him. He had been on my family’s side before. Besides, he was a big strong man. He could have killed me maybe, but not the other way around.’

  ‘He was hit over the head and rendered unconscious. You could have shoved him into the water then.’

  ‘I wasn’t there. You can’t prove otherwise.’ Lady Serena’s eyes glittered with hostility. ‘And tell that little photographer friend of yours that if he does publish those pictures, he will hear from my lawyers. I hope he can afford their lawsuit.’

  Guinevere quickly wrapped the book in plastic, cover and all, and left. She doubted that there would ever be a lawsuit about those pictures Max had snapped. Lady Serena knew very well that she had a lot more to lose than Max.

  Still it was strange he had snapped the couple and not said a thing about it to her or anybody else. Did he have sneaky plans for the pictures? Blackmail, as Lady Serena had bluntly called it?

  It seemed certain that Max’s work for Wadencourt was over now and he might have been tempted by some easy money.

  Or had Lady Serena lied to explain for her snooping about the castle?

  Guinevere looked down at Dolly and said, ‘How would you like to see Vivaldi, girl? We can ask Meraud if it’s the right book before we turn it over to the police.’

  Dolly squeaked happily, and they walked to The Cowled Sleuth.

  ***

  Meraud had already closed up for the day and opened up only after Guinevere had knocked at the door again and again. Vivaldi peeked out from behind her legs, then jumped at Guinevere with happy yaps as if to say he knew her. Dolly nuzzled him and followed him inside to play a little push and shove on the shiny floorboards.

  Meraud looked Guinevere over with a frown. ‘What’s the matter? Is the castle on fire?’

  Guinevere shook her head. ‘No. Not literally at least. But people’s lives are going to be completely destroyed if we don’t find out what really happened.’

  ‘The police made an arrest; I saw that. They took a man away. An outsider.’ Meraud looked her over. ‘Do you think he’s not guilty?’

  Guinevere said, ‘He denies having seen the book that Jago borrowed from you. I have had the feeling, right from the start, that the book matters. Jago was doing something to it when he was in his boat on his way to Cornisea, mere hours before he died.’

  Meraud studied the bundle in her hands. ‘And you have it now? Who had it?’

  ‘Lady Serena. She’s from the family who claim the goblet of Rose and Stars belongs to them.’

  Meraud nodded slowly. ‘And this book should somehow give away something about that goblet?’ She spied inside the plastic to be sure it was the right book and then shook her head. ‘I have gloves here to handle books with, but I don’t dare go through it before the police have seen it. They might claim I disturbed something and I don’t want anything to do with them. You shouldn’t interfere either. You look haggard, girl. Have you had dinner? You need to turn in early tonight, get some sleep. Let this whole business rest for a few hours.’

  Guinevere swallowed. ‘I can’t. I have to give this to the police. Then I have a few more questions for someone.’

  For Max.

  Meraud touched her arm. ‘You give the book to the police to study if you think it can do any good. But I doubt they’ll find anything vital in it. Jago might have been on a wild goose chase. Just trying to find someone who would listen to his stories.’

  Guinevere blinked against the burn behind her eyes. Jago had been a lonely old man who felt his knowledge of island ways wasn’t appreciated any more. He had sought a way to matter again, to someone at least, but in trying he had met his killer.

  Guinevere called for Dolly, and the dachshund came out of the shop reluctantly, looking back at her puppy friend.

  Meraud said, ‘You better be careful going back to the castle. If you’re right that the man arrested didn’t hurt Jago, then the killer is still on the loose. He might be staying there.’

  Guinevere didn’t respond. Her heart was heavy as her feet began to walk back up to the castle, her hands closed tightly round the plastic-wrapped book.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The skies were overcast, and the sunset wasn’t as fiery and spectacular as it could be during a Cornish summer. The breeze coming across the waves carried a chill and maybe even the promise of rain.

  Guinevere wrapped her cardigan more tightly around her as she walked towards the figure ahead of her. Standing with his feet planted apart, his camera up in front of his face, snapping shots of the skies.

  Guinevere had put the book in her room, then decided to talk to Max before she called LeFevre about it. Or else she wouldn’t sleep all night turning over the pieces in her head.

  She halted by Max’s side. He said, ‘Just let me finish this.’

  Guinevere stood and watched the stretch of skies he was shooting. It was so peaceful, so silent. Not a single sound disturbed the air but the quiet breaking of the waves at their feet.

  Suddenly she tensed. Silence …

  Her mind went back to the first afternoon when Max had shot the great tit, the yellow roses, and her. The constant clicking of the camera. Not a beep or a ding but a click, a mechanical sound. He had explained to her that the beeps and dings could be turned off, but that the mechanical sounds were a consequence of parts of the camera moving when a photo was taken.

  He had said you couldn’t turn that off. There were no clicks now.

  Guinevere kept looking at the blood-red strip of sky ahead, searching her memory. When Max had been shooting the blossoming bushes in the yard, the day after Jago had died and the stones had vanished, had the clicking sound been there then? She didn’t think so.

  And when he had snapped Wadencourt prying open the statuette to take out the goblet?

  She wasn’t sure. The knife had scraped across the statuette and the hardened clay and she had been more focused on a possibly spectacular find than on any sounds.

  But she knew for sure that the camera had clicked before Jago had died. Before the stones had vanished. But not now.

  Lady Serena had said she couldn’t turn it on. That she had pressed the on button but nothing had happened. She had concluded that the battery was dead.

  That was possible. Then the camera wouldn’t work and there would be no clicking sounds either. But why carry around a camera with a dead battery?

  Why pretend you were taking shots with a camera that wasn’t working?

  Max lowered the camera. He gripped it tightly with his suntanned hand. ‘What have you been up to since walking away from dinner?’ He looked her over. ‘I’d almost say you care that Wadencourt got arrested.’

  ‘Don’t you? He’s your father.’

  ‘He never acknowledged that.’ Max made a soft, disparaging sound. ‘Maybe I should be relieved now that he never did. Nobody wants to be the son of a thief.’

  ‘And a killer,’ Guinevere supplied. ‘After all, whoever took the stones, must have killed Jago as well.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she tried to read his expression as she said this. LeFevre had said the goblet had been on the pier with Jago.

  Max looked puzzled. ‘Why? I still think there’s a chance he was drunk and he fell. He ended up in the water by accident. He just couldn’t be saved.’ Max reached out and touched her hand. ‘Some people cannot be saved, princess.’

  She looked at him.

  His eyes were warm and inviting; his smile made his face look young and relaxed. It was a beautiful summer’s night on an island, away from the world. It was just the two of them in a landscape of sand and clouds. The first star was visible, a sharp bright silver point.
The breeze picked up her hair and played with it.

  Max said, ‘Would you like to travel? See Vienna? Or Venice?’

  ‘Of course, but I don’t have money for that.’

  ‘Money is never a problem as long as I have this.’ He moved the camera a fraction. ‘I can find my own work. I’ll snap shots and sell them. My source of income is always with me. And those places provide the perfect backdrop for stellar shots. But it’s a lonely business. I could use some company.’

  Guinevere was overwhelmed by this sudden suggestion. ‘Do you mean …?’

  ‘Yes. Come with me to see some of the great cities.’

  ‘But why would you take me?’

  ‘Is that really a question?’ Max looked her over. ‘I liked you from the first moment I saw you. You’re different. You don’t live like all the other people do. I understand that. We’re the same in so many ways. We don’t belong anywhere. We don’t even need to belong. We’re drifters. Let’s drift side by side.’

  He took her hand in his. ‘I’m not asking for any commitment. I’m not going to say a lot of big words. That would be silly. We only met the other day. But I think we should see where it might go. Just travel together, have a good time. Explore the feeling.’

  His eyes turned serious, a deep brown that questioned and challenged her. ‘I’ve always been on my own. My mother had her new family. My father … was a shadow. I tried to find him, the man I wanted to know. But Wadencourt is nobody I want to know. Sometimes I’m even sorry his genes are in my body. I don’t need him. But I can’t be alone all of the time. I want to laugh, share a view, have a chat at a fountain, on a terrace with a cold drink in my hand. I want to stroll through alleys and look at house fronts. I want to ride horses or take a tour in a chopper. I want to see new places, through new eyes. Your eyes.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘Go with me. Just for a few weeks. You don’t have to pledge your entire life to me. If it doesn’t work out, you can go back to the theatre in September. Just give it a try.’

  Guinevere was slightly dizzy with the effect of his words, the picture he painted of doing beautiful things together. Of sharing places with someone you wanted to be with and someone you wanted to know a whole lot better. It didn’t have to be serious at first. They could be friends and explore if there was a chance for more. They could explore it while being in some of the most attractive places on earth. Vienna, Venice, Barcelona, or Lisbon.

  It sounded like an inviting dream.

  And if she could believe Max, all that was needed was a yes to step into it. The willingness to take a chance.

  She had taken chances before, choosing a creative profession that might never offer a steady job like other people had or a career with a lot of growth possibilities. She had followed her heart. She could do it again.

  But there was something preventing her from just saying yes.

  ‘Show me the shots you just took,’ she said.

  Max blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The shots you just took. Show them to me. I want to see how they turned out.’

  ‘I uh … The camera’s battery died. I can’t turn it on now.’ He smiled at her, that easy, lazy smile. ‘Some other time, OK?’

  ‘The battery died?’ she repeated, thinking of what Lady Serena had told her about the camera not turning on when she had tried to find the incriminating shots of her and Vex together.

  ‘Yes, after a couple of hours of shooting it dies. Especially if you use flash – it loses power quickly. And this battery pack is not brand-new. It does wear down as you use it. It needs constant recharging. But I don’t see a wall contact here, do you?’ Max winked at her.

  ‘You have several battery packs, I assume,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘You can’t run out of juice in the middle of a shoot. Haven’t you got a spare on you?’

  ‘I just took off to be alone for a while.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t plan on snapping any shots really.’

  ‘Then why even take the camera?’

  ‘I’m used to it. I like to have it with me. It makes me feel secure.’

  Guinevere’s heart rate shot up. ‘Lady Serena was in your room. She looked at your camera. She seems to believe that you took sensitive shots of her. Her and a man.’

  Max laughed. It sounded shrill in the silence around them, just broken by the crash of the waves on the sand. ‘I didn’t snap her and a man. I have no idea what she’s talking about.’

  ‘No, maybe your battery was dead at that time too,’ Guinevere said. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her stomach squeezed. She was almost sure he was lying to her, but she didn’t want him to. She wanted him to be honest.

  Max looked down at the camera. His mouth was tight. But he forced a smile as he said, ‘Lady Serena was wrong. She saw another photographer and she thought it was me. I never shot her with or without any man. Trust me.’

  Guinevere pressed her heels deeper into the sand. She didn’t trust him. Not because of Lady Serena, who might indeed have been mistaken, but because there was something not right with his camera and it had been that way before.

  She wasn’t sure what to say or do next.

  Max said, ‘How about my proposal?’

  ‘I can’t just leave Cornisea. I’ve got a summer job here.’

  ‘Bolingbrooke likes to do things his own way. And his son is always snapping at you. Ordering you about like a dog.’ Max looked around them. ‘Where is Dolly anyway?’

  ‘I left her at the castle.’ Guinevere didn’t want to say she had been worried about the tension in the air, the sense of foreboding. Wadencourt wasn’t guilty. It was somebody else.

  Max smiled at her. ‘She can come along, you know. To all the places we’re going to visit. I’m not a big dog person, I won’t lie, but I’ll get used to her. She matters to you, so I have to learn to like her, huh?’

  His eyes were warm again. ‘Can you see us in Venice? Or maybe you’d rather do Greece? Athens with the Parthenon?’

  The ruins, them walking among them, talking, laughing, running ahead up some crumbling steps, waiting for the other, then ambling on. It sounded amazing.

  Guinevere tried to hold on to reality before the beauty of the picture he painted swept her away. Life like you saw it in travel magazines where everybody was suntanned and smiling and the real world with real problems didn’t seem to exist.

  The world in which people died.

  She repeated lamely, ‘I have no money for something like that.’

  ‘But I do. I have enough for both of us.’

  He was still gripping the camera tightly.

  Guinevere felt her stomach knot. Earlier he had said it was so hard to get assignments and he needed this job with Wadencourt. He needed a good portfolio. It hadn’t sounded like he had money to travel all through Europe.

  So what had changed? If what she was suspecting, with her heart in her mouth, was right, then Max’s camera was his source of income in a different way than you’d first expect. Not because it took the shots that he lived off, but because …

  The perfect hiding place. The police hadn’t looked there.

  In the beanbag, yes, and in his pockets, but not there.

  But what had Max done it for? The monetary value of the gemstones?

  Or …

  The liquid hidden in Wadencourt’s room, the sole ruby in the spine of his notebook. So well planned, so carefully executed.

  No, please, no.

  Guinevere forced her voice to sound even as she said, ‘I’m wondering why you’re here taking shots of the sun going down, while your father is at the police station being charged with theft and possibly murder.’

  ‘It won’t be murder. LeFevre can’t prove that Jago’s death has anything to do with the goblet.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that. LeFevre told me that he can prove the goblet was on the pier with Jago when he died. It fell and left a dent in the wood.’

  ‘That de
nt was caused by the flask.’

  Max’s swift reply hit her like a punch in the gut. She clenched her hands into fists. ‘No, it was not. They can test things, compare things. It wasn’t the flask, it was the goblet.’

  ‘What does it matter? What do you expect me to do? Go to the station and claim to be his son? He wouldn’t accept it. He doesn’t need me.’

  Max grabbed her shoulders. ‘When will you understand, Gwen? He doesn’t need me. Nobody needs me. Like nobody needs you. But we can need each other.’

  His voice lowered. ‘We do need each other.’

  He looked her in the eye, leaning over slowly. His lips came so close to hers.

  Guinevere sucked in a breath, smelling his aftershave. Part of her ached to just fall into the feeling and not think any more. But her rational mind still worked. And it was full of questions.

  LeFevre had ascertained based on lab tests that the goblet had been on the pier, had caused the dent, that the flask had been placed to obscure that fact. Max had emphasized Jago was drinking. He claimed to have found out by hearing about it upon his arrival, in the harbour. But that could be a lie.

  She backed away. ‘Don’t.’

  Max stood so close to her she could see his neck artery pulsing.

  He asked softly, ‘What are you afraid of?’

  That I care for someone who is not who he pretends to be.

  Guinevere fought her tears. She forced a smile. ‘I don’t want to leave Cornisea. I can’t go with you on all those trips you want to make.’

  She waited a moment. ‘We do need someone to help us promote the island, also by way of good photographs. Why don’t you stay here and we can see what might happen?’

  Max shook his head. ‘I can’t stay here.’ It sounded final. ‘Oliver is the photographer for his own father’s keep. He’d hate me for poking my nose in. And I need change. I never liked to stay long in one place.’

  He stared into her eyes. ‘Don’t try to change me, princess. I will never try to change you.’

  ‘I accepted a job here. A very close friend asked me to. I can’t just walk away from that responsibility.’