‘What the devil are you talking about, you harpy!’
Lady Violet was on her feet now and looked at Posie in disbelief. Violet turned to Alaric, but he simply got up, avoiding her gaze and went and stood next to Inspector Lovelace over by the door.
The Inspector spoke to Violet directly, his face impassive:
‘So when Alaric told you that he was going to change his Will, that the Trust money of Two Hundred Thousand Pounds would come to you on his death, he inadvertently set in place a murder scheme. Not content to wait years until his death, you saw that money as your right, a supply of ready cash to set up your tea-shops with. You just needed to ensure he died quickly! You assumed that the new Will naming you as heir was safely stored at the lawyers’ office in London, and that your destiny as the heir to that money was certain.’
Posie smiled bitterly, continuing the horrible tale.
‘And so you put into effect your horrid chain of events, Lady Violet. First you rigged the engine of Alaric’s plane so that it would fail when he was flying. I didn’t see how you could have done that at first, not without help, but then something dear old Harry Redmayne told me out in Egypt jolted me badly: he told me that you were good with engines, that you could fix things in the blink of an eye. And in fact I had seen this talent for myself! So then I thought to myself, a car engine isn’t really so different from an aeroplane engine, is it? So you’d know what to do to disable one easily enough. That would be a piece of cake to a girl like you, if you’ll forgive the pun.’
‘My God!’ shouted Major Marchpane from his sofa. ‘Violet? Really? I don’t believe it! Have you gone quite mad?’
‘And then,’ Posie continued, ‘by the grace of God Alaric survived that crash. So you had to think again. And what better way to get at him than by killing off his precious hives of honey bees? You knew he would do his best to save them if there was any danger to them, and you made sure to use a really toxic poison, mixed with petrol, which if breathed in, would prove fatal for him. You tried it first as an experiment on the outer fields, and then you upped the dose a week later and made the chemical combination even more toxic. You used that to burn the hives nearest the annexe. And you nearly achieved your goal! Alaric would have died, but for Bikram raising the alert!’
‘You have no proof! No proof for any of this!’ Violet shouted hysterically.
‘Oh, but I do!’ said Posie infuriatingly. She waved the second document from her bag casually in the air.
‘And so Alaric then disappeared, not telling you where he was going. And you got me up here to trawl through all the clever red herrings you had set up for me: the ‘burnt’ photo of Major Marchpane in the annexe, to illustrate the so-called hatred and jealousy between Alaric and him over Cosima; the pair of heirloom cufflinks which you gave to poor old Codlington as a gift which you swore him to secrecy about, therefore throwing suspicion on him as a thief; the story of Ianthe being in love with Alaric when in fact she was just doing some research for her book; the tales of Eve hating Alaric, when in fact she loved him. And lastly, and cleverest of all, the suspicion thrown onto your own brother Roderick: the mess you made in the annexe to make it look as if he was looking for Alaric’s new Will in among the other papers, perhaps wanting to destroy it so that the old Will naming him as heir would remain in place? You were very clever. You stage-managed everything.’
Inspector Lovelace cut in. ‘I must confess, Lady Violet, I did wonder if you had it in you to kill so maliciously, to frame all these innocent people. But then I realised that you had done it before. A long, long time ago. The key to your behaviour is in the past.’
The whole room stared at the Inspector, and then turned to look at Violet.
‘What do you mean?’ Lady Violet half-whispered, her eyes darting everywhere.
‘Posie told me to look you up in the Who’s Who. And so I did. And then I did a whole lot of other research. Your parents died in a car crash when you were a child. From which you were the only survivor.’
‘And?’ cut in Lord Roderick. ‘Why is this relevant? Why dredge all this up again? It can only cause pain.’
The Inspector continued.
‘The police reports from the time are very strange. They describe a brand new car with no reported problems taking a hair-pin bend in the road at considerable speed. Somehow the brakes seem to have failed, for no reason. There was suspicion at the time that the child, Lady Violet, knew more than she was letting on, that there was more to the accident than met the eye, but nothing was ever proven. The child didn’t seem sufficiently upset at the death of her parents, for a start. But that’s perhaps not so surprising…because the Boynton-Dales were not her real parents, after all.’
Posie nodded at Alaric and Roderick, who had both gone bright red in the face and stared at each other uncomfortably. She spoke as gently to the brothers as she could:
‘That’s why I got the Inspector to look up the entry for your family in Who’s Who. It states that Lady Violet is adopted. I kept puzzling to myself why people kept referring to her as “Cuckoo”. At first I thought it was just an affectionate nickname, but then I wondered if perhaps there might be a smidgen of truth behind it; that Lady Violet was the cuckoo in the Boynton-Dale nest. And I was right!’
Posie turned to Alaric. ‘Your mother was a woman driven by compassion, by work for good causes. She worked on the Board of Women’s Prisons, didn’t she?’
Alaric nodded, his face troubled. Posie continued:
‘She had two sons, you two boys. But she had always wanted a baby girl. And when a notorious mass murderer, Annie Sparks, was caught and placed before the Prison Board and found to have a new-born baby daughter in tow, your mother declared she would adopt the child on the spot. And so she did! Annie Sparks hung for her terrible crimes, and much was made of it in the newspapers at the time, but your mother swore you two boys to secrecy, told you never to tell anyone that Violet was not your own flesh and blood. That is correct, isn’t it?’
Roderick nodded. ‘It’s a promise we’ve kept to,’ he said wearily. ‘We never told a soul. Not until now.’
Posie shook her head. ‘You’re wrong. I think Alaric told one person, and that was Ianthe Flowers, when she was following him around doing her research. Is that right?’
Alaric nodded. ‘I only realised that Ianthe had written about it all when I saw that loose page from the novel at the café in Ortigia: it said “BLOOD WILL OUT”!’
Posie nodded. ‘Exactly! It meant nothing to me at the time. But Ianthe had discovered something: the sins of the mother, Annie Sparks, were being continued by her daughter, Violet. Blood was proving much thicker than water! The capacity to murder had been inherited! And I am sure too that Violet had found out the identity of her real mother – my guess is that she found out on that fateful day of the car crash fifteen years ago. She decided that she had had enough of having the wool pulled over her eyes by the Boynton-Dales and she decided there and then that she would send their car off the road! As a punishment! She had little feeling for the people who had brought her up as their own child, so she didn’t care if they died horribly. Isn’t that right, Lady Violet?’
Sergeants Binny and Rainbird had left Codlington shackled on the sofa and were now standing over at the French windows. All exits to the room were blocked.
Lady Violet snarled, a horrible sound somewhere between an animal caught in pain in a trap and a wild laugh: ‘You have no proof of this, you lunatic! No proof at all!’
Posie smiled. ‘Oh, but like I said before, I do! Ianthe was not a mean person, and she wouldn’t have made a story out of your sad private family history if she hadn’t known for a fact that you were responsible for the attacks on Alaric. You see, she SAW you! She was confused by what she had seen, but she had seen you nonetheless. She wrote about it too.’
Posie shook the “BLOOD WILL OUT” typewritten page.
‘Unfortunately for you, Lady Violet, when you came to look for my copy of the manuscript in
Ortigia, disguised as Cosima, you left a page behind. And it was a significant page! Let me read it out so everyone can hear:
“So, she had done it after all! She walked in a calm sort of triumph, all the while unaware that she was being observed from up on high.”’
Posie continued.
‘I think that Ianthe was looking out of her bedroom window, unable to sleep, when she saw you, Lady Violet, coming back from setting fire to the beehives. Perhaps you were carrying a can of petrol? Who knows? But apparently you looked happy. When the fire and the destruction of the hives became common knowledge, she put two and two together and wrote about it. She knew what you had done. And then she decided to tell me about it on the evening I arrived at Boynton Hall. You overheard her setting up a meeting with me and you got scared. You panicked. You realised she had to die.’
‘But what about the manuscript?’ asked Mr Burns. ‘The Tomb of the Honey Bee? Why did Violet take the last page? Why not take the whole lot?’
Posie shrugged. ‘I think Lady Violet looked quickly through the book and realised that her identity was only clearly given away on the last page. She flicked through the rest of the book and decided it was pretty mild stuff, which is why she left it all there. And also why she agreed to letting Bernie Sharp publish the book as soon as possible. He told her it would be a money-spinner, and Lady Violet was blinded by the prospect of yet more money coming her way.’
Posie turned to Violet. ‘But you realised your mistake though, didn’t you, when you started to read Bernie’s copy, when you dropped by his office to sign some paperwork as Ianthe’s heir. You realised what an accurate observer Ianthe had been, and how tiny, deadly clues ran through the whole novel. Clues that would lead right to your door. That was why every single copy, even the original at Scotland Yard, and the copy at Bernie Sharp’s office, and the copy I had with me in Sicily had to be destroyed.’
Codlington had moved to the edge of his sofa:
‘That’s right! I told you I’d been set up! She called me from somewhere abroad and told me I had to get the copy back from Scotland Yard, by whatever means available to me. She told me to gut the office of Bernie Sharp, too. But I swear to God I had no idea he was in there at the time! I’m no murderer!’
‘Why? Why did you do what she told you to, Codlington? Was it for money?’ said Lord Roderick in quiet disbelief.
Codlington shook his head and looked at the floor. ‘I’d have done anything for Violet,’ he whispered, barely audibly. ‘I love her. Always have done. Besides, she’d given me those ruddy cufflinks: she said she’d tell the police I’d stolen them from the family if I didn’t obey her.’
‘My God!’ Roderick crumpled onto the sofa, head in his hands. ‘How can we have all been so blind?’
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it, my Lord,’ said Posie deftly, staring at Violet, who held her gaze defiantly.
‘She pulled the wool over my eyes too, almost the whole way through. I even told her that I had discovered where Alaric was! I led her to him! I told her I had gone out to Sicily. So she escaped out of the Priest’s Hole and made her own way to Ortigia. She followed me around the place, first dressed in a carnival costume and then as Lady Cosima, trying to scare me and convince me that there was a real element of danger to the case, but also trying to suss out where Alaric might be; she still had no idea. When she did eventually find us together, she tried to murder Alaric with a deadly cocktail of veronal, but unfortunately she got the wrong man, and an entirely innocent victim died instead.’
‘And Egypt? How did she know to follow you out there?’ asked Roderick, bemused.
‘Your sister is a master of disguise, an expert at laying clues, and picking up on clues, too. It’s a shame she didn’t put her skills to a legitimate use and become a detective! I suspect she was lurking around at the Water Aerodrome in Siracusa and bribed the man in charge to tell her where we were going. She then hired her own plane and her own pilot and followed us down to Luxor. Time wasn’t important; she was biding her time, seeing when best to strike. She played at being a tourist, entering the camp of the archaeological dig, again dressed as Cosima, sussing out how things worked there: when would be a good time to murder Alaric. She thought she’d found the perfect evening for it, too! Everyone was preoccupied with a big talk being given by good old Harry Redmayne, and Alaric had just made a fresh discovery to boot, and was likely to be working all alone and unprotected up in a remote spot. It was perfect! Except, yet again, but unbeknown to her, she got the wrong man. For such a clever girl, you’re remarkably unlucky, aren’t you, Lady Violet?’
Lady Violet sprung at Posie, fingers splayed. Just in time the police Sergeants crossed the room, restraining her, clipping her hands neatly together into glittering cufflinks. Lady Violet howled, a horrible noise, and Bikram joined in.
‘You never will find out what that last page said, though, will you?’ snarled Lady Violet as the Sergeants made ready to lead her out of the door.
‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong!’ said Inspector Lovelace, happily. ‘We had an expert reconstruct it. In fact, it was the final jigsaw-piece which led Posie to realise that you were the killer! I sent it to her as a telegram!’
‘What did it say?’ asked Lady Eve, who sat puffing at a pink cigarette, looking like a shrivelled heap on the floor.
‘I’ll read it aloud, shall I?’ said the Inspector. He searched in his briefcase and produced a crisp sheet of paper. He read clearly:
‘“The murderer was the Queen Bee. But she had been caught! All the work she had forced the worker-bees to do, and all the trouble she had caused them was finally over. She had never really fitted into the hive; she had been brought in from outside, a changeling from somewhere else, but her greed had got the better of her. In the end, she had made herself a web of honey and trapped herself in it like a tomb.”’
‘Goodness!’ said Major Marchpane from his couch. They all watched as Lady Violet was led out, snarling, and then Codlington was led out too.
‘My God!’ blathered Roderick. ‘She’ll hang for this!’
‘Yes,’ said Inspector Lovelace. ‘More than likely. Unless she is declared insane, which I doubt will be the case.’
Posie crossed the room to Alaric, who was stroking Bikram’s ears, both of them looking sorrowful.
‘Are you okay?’ she said softly. ‘That was quite something to go through, wasn’t it?’
He nodded.
‘But,’ continued Posie, ‘I don’t think it was a huge shock to you really.’
‘What do you mean?’ he whispered, looking up, fear showing in his green-bronze eyes.
‘I think you started to suspect Violet even before you left England,’ Posie said. ‘Looking back there were points when I thought you suspected who the killer was, or at least knew more than you were telling me. I think you realised that it might be Violet. But I also think you didn’t want to believe it yourself.’
Alaric grimaced.
‘You told Violet, didn’t you? You told her for certain that you had changed the Will in her favour. That it was all done and dusted. That was what gave her the confidence to act as she did.’
Alaric nodded dismally.
‘And after you had signed your new Will,’ Posie continued, ‘you didn’t take it with you because you thought it would be safer than leaving it with Mr Proudfoot. Far from it! You knew in your heart of hearts that in changing the Will you had made a terrible mistake: you took it with you because you thought of ripping it up every single day! You were always on the verge of destroying it. But you didn’t, because you never truly wanted to believe that Violet was a cold-blooded killer.’
Alaric nodded. ‘My baby sister,’ he muttered. ‘I always tried to look after her. I wanted to continue my mother’s legacy. I loved Violet, for what it’s worth. I still can’t believe she’s a full-blown murderer! But perhaps Ianthe was right? Perhaps the tendency to murder people is inherited? “Blood will out”…’
�
�Perhaps,’ said Posie stoically.
‘But I think we make our own luck. Now, I could do with a proper tea. Shall we get away from here? I know you have good memories of Boynton Hall, but quite frankly this place just depresses me.’
****
Epilogue
The flat on the top floor of Museum Chambers on Bury Place was chock-full of fresh flowers, and yet more seemed to be arriving every minute. So much so that Posie simply left the front door open to her new home, and men from various florists across London were moving in a constant procession from the lift on the landing through to her bright, light-filled front room. Every possible surface was groaning under the weight of flowers and Posie busied herself by going around the room and pouring extra water into the vases. The day was incredibly hot for September, and she didn’t want the flowers to wilt. They would be sent on later, after the wedding, to the bride and bridegroom’s new London residence, a neat little Mews House on Pavilion Road in Chelsea, SW3.
A man in the smart turquoise green and gold livery of Fortnum & Mason placed a beautiful flash of white Calla lilies and a spray of silver leaves into Posie’s arms and she sighed in contentment at the beauty of the arrangement.
‘Dolly!’ she trilled merrily to her friend who was still ensconced in a bedroom. ‘Your bridal bouquet is here! It’s wonderful. Just splendid!’
Prudence Smythe had been positioned on the front door downstairs, together with Inspector Lovelace’s best Constable, and together they were making sure that each florist who entered the building bore the necessary authority to do so. Prudence was enjoying being quietly officious, but there was a real need for the added security: the newspapers were keenly interested in the wedding of Lord Rufus Cardigeon and Dolly Price, which they were billing as ‘the society wedding of the year’, and hordes of journalists and photographers had crushed around the entrance to Museum Chambers, crowding onto the hot pavement, hoping to catch a first glimpse of Dolly as she left the building on her way to St Bride’s Church in the City.
The Tomb of the Honey Bee: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 2) Page 21