Death at Thorburn Hall

by Julianna Deering

  “Jamie Tyler.”

  Her mouth tightened. “They couldn’t keep me from marrying him, but they could keep me from having enough money to hold on to him. I knew what he was. I didn’t care. Don’t you see? I didn’t care that he was a gigolo. I didn’t care how many women he’d had or how many fathers and husbands had paid him off, I wanted him. And to get him I needed money. He wouldn’t have minded waiting if he’d known I’d get it all eventually, but when Dad told me he’d cut me off if I married Jamie, and Mother backed him up, what else could I do?”

  “Some would suggest murder isn’t the best alternative,” Drew said. “What about Mr. Barnaby?”

  “He was the easiest part of all this,” she said, and she looked slyly pleased with herself. “It’s quite astounding what a bit of flattery, a touch of ‘Oh, what a big, strong man you are’ will do with these middle-aged, straitlaced types. Get them to believe you’re a young innocent helpless to resist their charms and there’s nothing you can’t make them do for you.”

  “I see. And I suppose you convinced him it would be worth his while to claim your father had requested a new will, the provisions making your mother a suspect in his death. Then afterwards, having no more use of him, he had to be made away with. So you were the one he had a tête-à-tête with that night, and it was you who brought him that bottle of wine.”

  She smirked. “Our gardener keeps cyanide for killing wasps. He never missed the bit I borrowed.” She glanced behind her, and the crash of the surf on the rocks below all at once seemed very near. “Now, if you’d be so kind as to turn around and go back down the stairs, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  Again he put up one hand. “Wait. Just wait. I understand why you killed your father and why you killed Barnaby, but why Tyler? If you loved him as much as you claim, why did you kill him?”

  She pressed her lips together, saying nothing.

  “Tell me,” Drew said.

  “It was stupid. I went to tell him he didn’t have to worry any longer. There was no one to stand between us, and he needn’t stay away anymore.”

  “I take it he didn’t welcome the news.”

  Her eyes flashed fire. “He said it was best that we moved on. That I would need some time to recover from what had happened with my parents and that neither of us should make any rash decisions when everything was in such turmoil. He—” her voice cracked—“he patted my shoulder and said it would be better this way. Better if we let each other go.”

  “And you weren’t going to let him go.”

  “After all I’d done for him? For us? He couldn’t just leave me.”

  “Did he know?” Drew moved a half step closer to her. “Did you tell him what you’d done for him? Everything you’d done for him?”

  “I didn’t have to. I could see it in his eyes. He knew what I’d done and it frightened him. I frightened him.”

  The man may have been a cad, but at least he’d drawn the line at murder.

  “He told me again that we ought to end it, and I said I’d make him sorry if he went. He didn’t believe me. Not until I’d turned the gun on myself and told him I wouldn’t go on without him. He told me not to be a fool and tried to take it from me. And . . . and . . .” There was a tight hardness in the lines of her mouth, but her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “The gun went off,” Drew said at last.

  “I wouldn’t have done it. He knew I would never have killed myself. He looked so surprised when he was shot. And then he just fell.” Her mouth turned down into a pout. “It wasn’t fair. It was all taken care of. I’d got all the money and the estate and no one would have been the wiser, and then he had to go and spoil everything by being careless with a gun.”

  “Thoughtless of him,” Drew murmured, studying her face, her petulant, cruel-mouthed face. How had he ever thought her naïve and in need of protection? “Then what did you do? I thought perhaps the killer had tossed the gun into the sea, but you had that little hiding place so you needn’t worry about the gun being found. Pity your mother was already in jail. You might have blamed that on her, as well.”

  Joan thrust out her chin. “If it weren’t for her, Jamie wouldn’t be dead. He and I wouldn’t have quarreled and he wouldn’t have been killed. She ought to hang. It’s only fair.”

  “I’m curious,” Drew said, moving another step closer. “How did you manage it? Making it look as if your mother had gone out that night when she hadn’t? Or should I say when she couldn’t?”

  Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “You’re so smart, you tell me.”

  “I’ve no doubt that whatever you gave her for her headache that night was meant to put her out. Did you give her something to make her feel ill in the first place?”

  “I mashed up a strawberry in her soup. The broth was strong enough to cover the taste. She’s allergic, you know, and it gave her an awful headache. I’d done it before when I wanted her out of the way, so I knew it would do the trick.”

  “I thought it might be something along those lines,” Drew said. “I must admit, though, I’m rather stuck as to what you did with her while she was unconscious. Or was it something as simple as having the maid lie for you?”

  “Agnes?” Joan snorted. “I could never trust that ninny with something that important. It was simple enough, though. All I did was roll Mother over against the wall, wedged a bit into the space beside the mattress, and toss the pillows and coverlet over her. That way it appeared, if one didn’t look too hard, as if the bed were empty.”

  “Ah,” Drew said, “I should have known.”

  “Agnes, the ninny, barely gawked at the bed. And when she saw the bathroom was empty, she went searching all over the rest of the house.”

  “Deftly played, as well as that business about the path down to the cottage. But what if MacArthur had had an alibi he could speak about?”

  Her mouth twisted up on one side. “I guess that’s where the joke’s on me. I thought he didn’t want to speak because he’d been with that blond girl.”

  “But she had been at the bookshop that night, so we knew Mac wasn’t telling the truth about it. Worked out nicely for you, I’d say.”

  He moved a step closer still. Joan stiffened, springing back from him. Closer to the edge of the roof.

  “Don’t do it,” she warned. “I’d sooner end up in the sea than at the end of a rope.”

  “I thought you said you never meant to kill yourself, that the gun was merely for show.”

  “That was when Jamie was still alive.” Her expression turned hard. “None of my options are very attractive at the moment, are they? I’d rather go out on my own terms.”

  He moved closer again, and she backed up against the low wall that encircled the rooftop.

  “I mean it now. Don’t imagine I don’t. If you have any other questions, best ask them now. It won’t do you much good to ask them later.”

  He held up both hands, not wanting to goad her into doing anything foolish. “I just want to know about Tyler. Seems to me that as long as you were funneling money into his pockets, there was no need for you to marry him. Neither of you appeared to have a moral objection to carrying on as you were. Why go through all this for just a veneer of respectability?”

  “You still don’t understand, do you?” She smiled faintly, and for just that instant she seemed the ingénue he had first imagined her to be. “He’d have found someone else before long. Do you think he wanted to live over the grocer’s the rest of his life? This is what he wanted.” She gestured toward the mansion beneath their feet. “If we were married, he would have been able to live here. He would have been able to go wherever he wanted without someone telling him he wasn’t allowed or that he’d better use the trade entrance.”

  Drew remembered the first time he’d spoken to Tyler, there in front of the clubhouse at Muirfield. “The dining room is only for members and their guests.” How that must have galled the man year after year.

  “And for that,” Drew said, i
nching closer, “he needed you.”

  “I would have given him everything he wanted, and he would have loved me.” Again she lifted her chin, eyes fierce as she glared at him. “Don’t you dare pity me.”

  “Very well,” he said mildly. “If you won’t have pity, perhaps you’d prefer truth. He would have hated you. Perhaps not right away, but in time.”

  “No,” she breathed.

  “And you would have despised him for being someone you could buy. But it seems he wasn’t quite what any of us thought. He wouldn’t take you and your money once he realized how you got it.”

  “It’s not true. He would have. He would have loved me. I fixed everything so he would love me and never leave.” She drew a sobbing breath. “He would have loved me.”

  “I suppose we’ll never know for certain now. But it’s getting a bit late, don’t you think? You’ve left rather a mess downstairs, and I think the police will want to have a chat with you before bedtime.”

  He held out his hand to her, and she stepped farther away, against the wall. She glanced back, out over the rushing sea below, and then turned to him again. She was utterly calm now.

  “I don’t want to talk to them. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not ever again.” She smiled only the slightest bit, the smile of a porcelain doll or a shop mannequin, and stepped up onto the wall.

  “Joan. Look here, don’t be a fool.” He looked around, desperate for help from someone, anyone. Dear God, please. “You don’t want to do that. You don’t—”

  He leapt at her just as she stepped into the empty air, catching her around the middle and then realizing too late that they were overbalanced. Together they tumbled into the darkness below.

  Nineteen

  Drew landed on his back with Joan still in his arms, not sure if the stars he was seeing were in the sky or swirling out of his head. An instant later, the breath rushed back into his lungs, and he rolled over, pinning her to the floor before she could struggle away from him. By some miracle they’d landed on the balcony that led to her bedroom, the one overlooking the sea, about an eight-foot drop from the rooftop above. He hadn’t seen it in the darkness, hadn’t remembered it was there, but she had.

  “Get off me!” She kicked his legs and pounded his head and shoulders with her fists, burning the air with a string of the foulest epithets he’d ever heard. “Get off!”

  “Language,” he said, twisting her arms behind her and then getting them both to their feet. She skewered his foot with the one spike heel she still wore, making him gasp. He pushed her arm up higher, eliciting a hiss out of her.

  She glared at him, breathing heavily. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “My wife would have been quite put out if you had done,” he said, a taut thread of anger under his affable tone. “She rather likes me, don’t you know.”

  “She’s a bigger idiot than you are.”

  “Steady on now.” He swallowed hard, still breathless himself. “I won’t have that said by you or anyone.”

  “It’s true.” She made a sudden attempt to break away and then stopped when she found it only made him tighten his hold. “You probably can’t help being a fool, but she chose to marry you anyway.”

  “That I put down to the mercy of a gracious God.” He sobered when he considered what he was taking her to. “One you’ll have to face one way or another.”

  “Don’t,” she begged. “You know what they’ll do to me. You can’t let that happen.” She began to sob now, and for once the tears were real. “It was for Jamie. All of it was for him.”

  “No,” Drew said, pushing her ahead of him through the open French doors that led into her bedroom. “It was all for you.”

  The police had arrived by the time Drew escorted Joan down to the drawing room, where they immediately took charge of her. The doctor had come as well, and he and Drew hurried up to Joan’s bedroom. Several of the servants had returned to the Hall by then and stood gaping at the sight before them. Madeline was still kneeling at Kuznetsov’s side, keeping pressure on the gunshot wound. He hadn’t yet come to.

  The doctor made a brief examination, replaced the blood-soaked coverlet with proper bandaging and then ordered that Kuznetsov be taken to his own room to be tended to.

  “Where’s Nick?”Drew asked Madeline once the doctor was gone.

  “Still outside Lord Rainsby’s study, I think,” she said. “Let me clean up a little and then we’d better see how he’s doing.”

  Nick and Carrie were still where Madeline had left them. It was a relief to see Nick sitting up and, apart from the long bruise down the side of his head, looking relatively unscathed. Carrie was sitting on the floor beside him with one arm around his shoulders as she tenderly patted his face with her handkerchief.

  “Let a girl get the better of you, did you?” Drew asked with a grin. “Shocking. What is British manhood coming to?”

  Nick scowled and then winced. “You don’t look quite the thing yourself, old man. Did you let her get away?”

  “Miss Rainsby is safely in the custody of Inspector Ranald, thank you very much, though not without leaving a wide path of destruction behind her.”

  Drew hauled Nick to his feet, steadied him and then helped him to the sofa in the study. Without too much coaxing, he lay down with his head in Carrie’s lap, and Drew and Madeline told them everything that had happened. Just as they got to the point where the police arrived, Dr. Portland came in.

  “A lot of blood,” the doctor said when he had finished with Kuznetsov and come back down to the library, “but I don’t think he’s in real danger. It looks much worse than it actually is. Could have been very nasty, of course, but the count seems to lead a charmed life.”

  Drew gave him a wry smile. “And I suppose, even under the circumstances, he couldn’t resist as dramatic a performance as he could muster.”

  “My nurse will stay and look after him as long as is necessary. Now, if you will sit up, young man,” he said to Nick, “we’ll see what can be done about you.”

  After cautioning Nick to take it easy for a day or two and to ring up if he didn’t feel better soon, and making sure Drew wasn’t also in need of his services, the doctor went away. Nick was packed off to his own room with one of the footmen assigned to keep watch over him. It was nearly two o’clock by then, and Carrie was persuaded to spend the rest of the night in the room she had occupied before.

  Everyone else seen to, Madeline shooed Drew up to their room and immediately began fussing over him. “You know, Plumfield will not be pleased to see what you’ve done to those trousers.”

  Drew grinned and then winced. “Good thing we sent him and Beryl straight to their quarters directly they got back to the Hall. Don’t tell him yet, but I think I’ve torn a hole right through the elbow of my coat and my shirt.”

  “What in the world did you do?” she demanded, helping him out of both articles of clothing.

  By the time he’d bathed and put on clean underthings and let her nurse his cuts and scrapes, she knew the whole story.

  “So Joan never meant to kill herself, even at the last,” she said, dabbing a wet cloth to the bloodied split in his lower lip.

  He flinched slightly, gritting his teeth. “She knew precisely where that balcony was, thank God.”

  Madeline dabbed at a scrape on his cheek, looking searchingly into his eyes, her own filled with equal parts worry, relief, and annoyance. “Anyhow, she was right about one thing.”

  He pulled her into his lap, ignoring the strain it placed on the bruised and wrenched muscles of his legs. “What’s that, darling?”

  “You are an idiot.”

  “Darling!”

  She smoothed his still-damp hair back with both hands and then clasped them behind his neck as she leaned close to kiss his forehead. “Well, you are,” she murmured against his cheek. “You knew she wasn’t going to kill herself. At least you should have known after what happened with the caddie. She wasn’t going to kil
l herself then either.”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” he admitted, “but you didn’t see the look of her when she stepped up onto that wall. I couldn’t just let her do it, could I? After all, she might have got away.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t let her talk you into letting her go.”

  “No fear.” Drew shifted a bit to ease the ache in one hip. “She was rather smug about her ability to manipulate people. I wasn’t about to let her carry on. Not knowing the lengths she’d go to get what she wanted.”

  “I don’t understand,” Madeline said. “How could anyone do the horrible things she’s done? And all for a man who didn’t really care a thing for her?”

  “I don’t know, darling.” He held her closer. “I don’t understand it myself. As best I can tell, it wasn’t about him in the long run. He was just something she wanted and was told she couldn’t have.”

  She curled up against him. “I want to go home. This hasn’t been at all the fun time I was hoping it would be.”

  “No. I think it’s time we left. Once Lady Rainsby is seen to, of course. I hate to think of what she must be going through just now.”

  “I suppose they’ll release her right away,” Madeline said, “and she’ll be left in all this emptiness by herself. Should we ask her if she’d like to come stay with us at Farthering Place for a while?”

  He took her face in both hands. “Have I ever told you what a nice person you are, Mrs. Farthering?”

  She looked up at him through her dark lashes, coloring prettily. “You’ve mentioned it a time or two.”

  “Consider it mentioned again.” He kissed the tip of her nose and released her. “And we shall ask Lady Louisa to come and stay, if not now, then once things have quieted down. You know how it is. When there’s a tragedy, people are so helpful at first. But after a while they go back to their regular routines, and the bereaved one is left quite alone with nothing to go back to.”

  There was a touch of wistfulness in Madeline’s expression. “Like Carrie.”

  “No, not like Carrie. Carrie needn’t go back at all. She’s loved and wanted here. It’s up to her if she cares to stay.”