The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes

by Cathy Ace

  Idris shook his head. “Not really. I hate guns, and I don’t even know what to do with them, but it suddenly dawned on me that I might find myself looking into the face of a maniac, bent on targeting my family with malicious acts, so I reckoned it was better than nothing.”

  Idris wiped his wet hands together, then across his face. I was almost as shaken as he was. Bud seemed to be the only cool one. Years of training do pay off, it seems.

  “I didn’t use the flashlight when we were walking up here,” I said bluntly. “Nor did Bud, so I don’t know what that light was, but it wasn’t us.” Bud threw me a sideways glance that showed me he was on full alert. I took the hint and pricked up my ears.

  Idris took off his hat and shook his head. Water poured onto the floor of the little office, making a river along the gaps between the flagstones.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he said. His voice was heavy, his face drawn. “Maybe I imagined the light, I don’t know any more.”

  “We’re doing all we can to try to sort out this mess,” Bud reassured. “Cait and I have made some real progress, but we need to finish checking the place. So, listen, since you’re here, and you’ve opened that locked door, maybe you can help Cait and me scout out the stables? Then we can all get back to the castle and change into some clean, dry clothes.” Bud’s voice was soothing, almost cooing. It seemed to do the trick, because Idris began to think more logically.

  “How did you get in?” Idris sounded puzzled.

  I answered. “Only the door from here into the stables was locked. The one we used to come in, from outside, wasn’t. Is that unusual?”

  Idris shrugged. “We don’t really lock anything much around here. My family cannot get it into their heads that they are surrounded by some very valuable items, which any number of people might like to steal. They just don’t get it. I’ve spent money getting locks fitted all over the place, but nobody ever uses them. That’s why I think that someone is lurking about Castell Llwyd and doing all these dreadful things. They’d have no problem getting into the place at all.”

  “Well someone seems to have used this lock at least,” I remarked. “Whose office is this?”

  “It’s Rhian’s,” said Idris, finally sounding calm. “She does all the event stuff in here, and David has—had—his space inside the stable block. One of the old stalls is set up for him.”

  “There’s no computer here, Idris, yet I know I’ve communicated with Rhian by email a great deal, so where does she do that part of her job?”

  Idris looked around. “Her laptop isn’t here. It’s usually on the desk.” He reached out to push the gun to one side, then lifted papers, searching for the laptop I knew wasn’t there. “No idea where it could be. You should ask her, she’ll know. It’s critical to running the business. She brings it with her when we have meetings in my apartment. Alice won’t let me take another room in the castle as an office, so everything is in the space that should be our sitting room. You know, maybe, with the weather the way it has been, she took it to her apartment with her so she wouldn’t have to keep running out here in the rain.” I hadn’t seen a laptop there, either.

  “Maybe,” replied Bud. “We can check that when we get back. But for now, could Cait and I see ‘David’s space,’ as you referred to it?”

  “Absolutely,” replied a now confident Idris. “Follow me. Oh—hang on a minute, I should lock that outer door before we leave, then everything will be secure here and we can leave by the door from the stables.”

  As Idris locked up, I said, “Shouldn’t we put that gun back into the gun cupboard?”

  Idris replied, “Absolutely. Maybe Bud could do it?” It was clear from the man’s expression that he didn’t care for the idea of picking up the gun again, and he expressed his thanks when Bud replaced it in what looked to be a very inadequate gun locker hanging on the stable wall.

  The office secure, Idris showed us David Davies’s space. And what a space it was.

  The apartment he shared with his wife had shown me how two people with very different temperaments had managed to rub along in a relatively small physical area. Rhian’s office had consolidated my opinion of her as a messy person who probably had a good sense of order in her mind—good enough to overcome the disarray in front of her eyes.

  Her husband, the neat and tidy one in the apartment, had let loose in his own space, with a huge amount of perfectly stacked, boxed, and labeled material. The area was no more than a brick wall with two wooden partitions and nothing to divide it from the walkway that ran the entire length of the stable building. His was the only stall that remained—the rest of the space had been gutted. Parked in it were two compact Vauxhalls—one was ours, and I guessed the other was Siân’s—along with a battered old brown Mini, a newer silver Renault Clio, an older model Range Rover, and something low and probably sleek covered with a very dusty tarpaulin. Against the wooden divider, facing the car-parking area, were shelves covered with a strange mix of tools and a makeshift workbench holding a good number of filthy rags. The smell of petroleum and oil filled the air.

  The lighting came from fluorescent tubes hung high above our heads, so I took advantage and poked about on the workbench. I paid particular attention to a pad of order forms, the type that have a pink carbon copy underneath the original white sheet. I ran my fingers over the paper, which was very thin and almost rough.

  “Do you know what this is?” I asked Idris.

  He peered at the book. “They are the chits David filled out to tell me what he was ordering and buying for the upkeep of the vehicles owned by the business. The Range Rover ‘belongs’ to the castle, as does the old Aston Martin over there.” He waved in the direction of the tarp-covered vehicle. “He’s doing it up so we can display it. It’s a sort of hobby-cum-ongoing project for him. I don’t know what’ll happen to it now. It’s taking longer than he’d hoped, he said.”

  “May I take one of these forms?” I asked.

  Idris, and Bud, looked puzzled. “If you like,” replied Idris, almost absentmindedly.

  “And so to David’s area,” said Bud, looking at his watch. “Cait, maybe you could take a look, then tell me about it when we get back to the castle? Time’s pushing on.”

  I nodded and did my thing. I’m good at taking in a lot of information and being able to store it for future retrieval. So, instead of taking my time, I went to work at quite a pace. I opened boxes, drawers, files, folders, turned on an electronic keyboard and played a few notes, and, finally, asked Idris if he might have a key for the one locked drawer in David’s desk. He didn’t.

  “Rhian might have one,” he suggested. “Or maybe he had some keys on him when he . . . died.”

  I’d felt the pockets of David’s jeans and he hadn’t had any keys on him at the time, but I didn’t tell Idris that.

  Bud stood beside me and looked at the drawer. “It’s a pretty old desk, Cait,” he said, inserting himself between Idris and the item, “maybe the drawer is just stuck. Here, let me have a go. I’m a good bit stronger than you, and I have a way with these things.”

  A couple of seconds later the drawer flew open. “There you go,” he said triumphantly, “just stuck. You can see what’s in it now, Cait, but don’t be too long about it, eh?”

  I resolved to ask Bud about where and when he’d learned to pick a lock as soon as I could. In the meantime, I rooted around in the drawer, then pulled everything out onto the top of the desk so I could get a better look at what David had seen fit to hide from the world.

  It was an eclectic and puzzling mix of items. A small book about the history of Bletchley Park and its role in the breaking of the Enigma Code was well thumbed. There was a black-and-white pamphlet about the Neolithic ruins at Parc le Breos. A lariat with a compass attached was being used as a bookmark in a copy of The Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome bound in blue linen, written by E. M. Berens in 1880, though I noted this was the tenth edition. The page marked was one of
seven that dealt with Poseidon and Neptune. There was a pack of white blackboard chalk, with only one and a half sticks remaining; two large, horseshoe-shaped magnets; a flat, rectangular piece of some sort of black-colored stone; and a couple of little plastic bottles with a clear liquid inside. The final item was a large-scale topographic map of the Gower Peninsula, folded in such a way that the Cadwallader Estate was on display. The map had been marked with four red lines, which all crossed each other in the center of the ancient stone circle in the courtyard of the castle.

  “I’d like to take this map back to the castle with me,” I said, “but, other than that, I’m done here.” I gave Bud a significant look. “We need to go.”

  We made our way back toward the castle as quickly as we could. The rain was so heavy that the light from our flashlights bounced back at us. By the time we entered the great hall, dripping and stamping our feet, it was almost as dark as night, though it was still, properly speaking, the afternoon.

  “Is that you, Cait?” called Rhian from the drawing room. She rushed out to greet us. I was about to explain that I really needed to clean myself up, but Rhian’s face stopped me in my tracks.

  “What’s happened?” I asked. I was afraid to hear the answer.

  “It’s your sister—you should really go and see to her. She’s . . . well, she’s had a bit of turn and she’s locked herself in one of the rooms on the top floor of the Gothic wing. She won’t let anyone in. She says she’ll only talk to you.”

  Dilys joined her daughter and said bluntly, “That sister of yours has been having the screaming ab-dabs upstairs for the last ten minutes, though she’s stopped now. Went up there with Gwen, she did, and never come down. Shut herself in, she has, and you’d better get her out.”

  “Where is she exactly?” I asked, throwing my wet outerwear at Bud as I started up the staircase.

  Dilys shouted, “Go up there. Turn right, not left for your room. There’s a door at the end, and more stairs behind it. Go up. Gwen said she’s in the second room along. Threw Gwen out and locked the door, she did. Go on with you now. She’s upset the missus already, and I won’t have that.”

  As I reached the first landing I glanced down at Bud and called, “I’ll go to Siân, you go in and find out what everyone has to say about their searches. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  Bud raised his arm to wave, then I was gone.

  Pump ar hugain

  THE TOPMOST CORRIDOR OF THE castle was less grand than the one for the first floor, and the dust and the smell of damp suggested it hadn’t been used in many years. The lighting was poor, though I could make out the doors easily enough. I gave myself only a moment to catch my breath, then I knocked on the second door along.

  “It’s me, Cait. Can I come in?”

  Nothing.

  “Siân, are you alright? It’s me. Come on now, let me in. Siân?” I knocked again.

  I heard a bolt slide, then the door opened. A pale, drawn face, streaked with dirt and tears, poked out. I hardly recognized my own sister. I heard myself gasp.

  “It’s just you, isn’t it?” she said. I nodded. “Alright then, you can come in.” She stood back as she allowed the door to creak and whine its way open.

  The room was dimly lit by one very tattered old standard lamp. Dusty sheets covered formless items against all four walls. On the floor in the center of the room was an old-fashioned three-story dollhouse, its front open, displaying the little rooms inside. The light from the lamp seemed to shine into the little house, and I could see it was fully furnished. Siân slowly settled herself onto the floor beside it, weeping into a couple of sodden tissues. I didn’t have anything else to offer her, so I let her sniffle into them.

  I looked around for a chair, but plumped for a footstool. I’ve never been good at sitting on the floor—I’m just not bendy enough.

  I thought it best to wait for Siân to speak, so I sat in silence. I’m not the world’s most patient person, so after a couple of minutes I revised my approach and said, “Come on, Siân, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. Dilys said you were very upset.” I thought it best not to use the woman’s exact words. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know where to start,” said Siân. Her body language, her tone of voice, her entire demeanor communicated helplessness.

  “Well, start somewhere, or we won’t get anywhere,” I said, immediately wishing I could make myself sound calm, like Bud does.

  “It’s Todd, it’s my life, it’s my children, it’s David, it’s Mum and Dad, it’s Wales, it’s you, it’s here, and it’s that.” She pointed at the dollhouse.

  “Could you be more specific?” I thought I did quite well with that one.

  “You’re the flaming brain-box in the family, can’t you work it out for yourself?” Siân’s helplessness had morphed into anger. Directed at me, it seemed.

  I put my psychologist’s head on and gave what she’d said a moment’s thought. Siân was my sister, so I thought she deserved the real me.

  “Don’t forget you asked for this,” I said before I began. “I think you came into this room to do some hunting about, and found this dollhouse. There’s nothing very special about it, except in terms of what it represents. A perfect home. And it set you off, because it became a focus for the frustrations, doubts, and worries that you have about your own life.”

  “Go on then, big sis, what’s wrong with my life?” Siân looked almost feral.

  I puffed out my cheeks and went for it. “Your husband travels more than you’d like, and you don’t find you have much more in common with each other than the children. Most of the parenting falls to you. I know from your emails that a lot of your time is spent ferrying Mattie and Beccie from your home in Como in your ‘Ute’ to their golf lessons, to the Perth Zoo—where you also volunteer—to the beaches at Cottesloe and Trigg. You’ve told me how you all go to barrack for the West Coast Eagles when they play footie, and how you haul them to and from their friends’ homes for various activities. You do all the motherly and housewifely things you should, and you fill the rest of your time with meditation, yoga, exercise, and parading from one health-food store to another, it seems to me. You follow the opera, the symphony, you knit, you have an online life, you mix with virtual people who share your interests and, I’m sure, some real ones too. What does that tell me?”

  “What?”

  “You’re trying to fill up the space that’s empty because your husband isn’t a constant and important part of your life anymore.”

  “Mattie and Beccie need me to get them about the place. That’s a fact of modern life, Cait, and something you’d understand if you were a parent.”

  “I get that bit, Siân, but the rest of it? The dollhouse is a symbol of the perfection for which you are striving, but which is unattainable. Own the fact you’ll never be the perfect wife and mother. Own the fact that someone broke your heart decades ago and that it’s alright for that to still hurt. Own the fact that you went to Australia for all the wrong reasons. Own the fact that no marriage is perfect.”

  “Says my sister who’s getting married in the morning.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Marriage is a trap, Cait. A trap you build for yourself, and then go leaping into wearing a really expensive frock and a stupid, naïve grin. Kids? Even more of a trap. And one you can’t ever get out of, not even if you want to. At least you don’t have that to face.”

  “A trap?” I knew I sounded exasperated as I spoke. “You might think that marriage is a trap, but people make traps for themselves all the time, in all sorts of ways. Of course, they don’t know what they’ve done until it’s too late, then they spend the greater part of their energy trying to work out how to escape the trap. I see it all the time in criminal psychopathy, but non-criminals do it too. It’s surprisingly normal human behavior.”

  Siân sighed. “Not a lecture, Cait, I’m in no mood for it. Just get to the point, if there is one, please?”

  “We’re in
exactly the right place to talk about being trapped. We’re trapped at Castell Llwyd along with everyone else. We’ll be able to get out when the bridge is sorted. But the others? It’s too late for most of them, I think.

  “You know what, Cait? You’re right about this place. It gives me the creeps. You can feel the poison here. I haven’t felt right since I got here. I thought I’d feel different, coming back to Wales. Back home. But it’s not home anymore. It’s just a place.”

  “Of course this isn’t home, Siân. Home was a three up, three down in Manselton with an outside toilet and a diet of homework and cheap, filling foods, and an inculcation of a work ethic that taught us both that we could do better than our parents. We were their escape. We were their reason for doing all they did. Look at what we did. You and I live about as far away from Wales, and each other, as we could get, at almost opposite sides of the world. We left. We escaped.”

  “So you’re saying that it’s natural to feel trapped, and to focus on getting out, but when you get out, you’re still trapped, or you just build yourself another trap you then have to try to escape from? That’s flaming depressing. Thanks.”

  “Tell me about David. Why did you fall for him? And how hard did you fall?”

  Siân had stopped crying, which was a good sign. She glared at me. “He was handsome, charming, witty, talented, funny, and he liked me. He liked me as me. I was gawky and quite clever but not very. I had a middling talent as a singer and didn’t excel at anything, and I was a largely unnoticed person, whom he noticed. He was my first boyfriend, my first everything. I thought we would get married and have beautiful and talented children, but once he’d got what he wanted he dumped me and moved on to his next conquest. What really hurt was that he told everyone about us, so people would point and giggle. Thank heavens there wasn’t Facebook, or any of the things my kids use these days. You must understand. You went through it with Angus, right?”

  “I don’t want to go there, Siân,” I said quietly.