Flora had taken the precaution of slipping a second sheet of typing paper into her handbag before she’d left Polly’s office, but now she looked around the dimly lit space in vain. A rubber mat sat in the centre of the desk, seeming as though it should house a machine, but there was no sign of one. It made no sense. There must be a typewriter. Alice had been certain there was one here. Kate Mitchell had said as much, sounding proud that her husband typed Elliot’s personal correspondence in his private office.
Flora walked over to the bookcase that had once belonged to the library. It was unlikely she would find a machine hidden among the row of business tomes, but if she viewed the room from this angle, she might work out just where Elliot chose to keep it. She leaned back to take stock, but her new position made no difference. It was hopeless. The typewriter must have been taken away for repair, it was the only explanation. To have come so far and be beaten at the very end! Dejected, she’d begun to move away when her foot found the curled edge of a rug and, tripping, she fell heavily backwards against the bookcase. She grabbed at a shelf to steady herself and her hand touched metal.
There was a loud click in her ear and suddenly, she felt herself falling further. The shelving behind her head began to move, swinging inwards so that she was catapulted into a dark space. A shard of light filtered through from the desk lamp beyond, but otherwise it was pure darkness and she could barely make anything out. Not that there was much to make out. Except in one corner, crouched in the gloom, was an upturned box and on top of the box sat a typewriter.
Flora’s mind was skittering. What was this space and how had a typewriter found its way here? It had to have been deliberately hidden. Hidden because it provided a clue to where the florist’s note had been typed and therefore a clue as to who’d typed it? That must be it. Pulling the spare sheet of typing paper from her handbag, she attempted to wind it into the machine, but her hands were trembling so much that the paper crackled and scratched against the roller, ending up at a lopsided angle. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, but to try the keyboard. She struck the letter ‘s’ and was immediately rewarded – it was missing the top curve! This was the machine. This was where that note had originated. But who had typed it? ‘Mitchell, or Elliot himself?’ she asked aloud.
‘Elliot, Miss Steele,’ came a voice from the doorway.
Twenty-Six
She spun round from the machine to see Vernon Elliot walking towards her. He came to a halt a few feet from where she stood, casting the secret room into complete darkness by blocking any light from the office beyond. Silhouetted in the entrance, his tall, stringy figure assumed a menace that Flora had never felt before.
‘Mitchell?’ he queried, his voice rising in incredulity. ‘You surely can’t think that clown would ever have contrived a florist’s bouquet? The man was good enough for the common or garden stuff but—’
‘Common or garden as in growing poisonous flowers?’ Flora interrupted, finding her voice and trying not to let it waver.
‘Exactly. I never rated him as a gardener. Leaf clearing was about his mark, but anything needing a careful touch, no. Still, he managed to keep the water hemlock alive for long enough and burnt it when its job was done. That’s all I needed from him. You can buy plants from abroad, you know,’ he said in a conversational tone, ‘get them sent through the post, and no questions asked. I made sure to order from Holland. There’ll be no trace, every scrap of paperwork destroyed weeks ago.’
‘You ordered the plant?’ Flora was mystified, even as she felt fear creeping closer. Had Elliot schemed to murder even before Kevin Anderson showed his face?
‘Timing was of the essence,’ Elliot said, as though anticipating her question. ‘It turns out that buying plants from abroad is an unusually swift process. Everything comes down to careful planning, Miss Steele. Preparation and planning. It’s what separates the clever from the dolts of the world. Dolts like Mitchell. He would never have devised such a strategy in a thousand years.’
‘So why did you?’
It was a pertinent question. Elliot owned a prestigious hotel and clearly hoped to make it a financial success. Murdering his guests hardly seemed the way to do it.
‘I had to – as soon as I knew why Anderson had come here. It was obvious there had to be a reason for his visit. You don’t travel all the way from Australia to stay in a Sussex village without good cause. I didn’t believe all that guff about wanting to see the house his uncle had inherited. I knew there would be something else and, once I found out why he was here, I had to get rid of him.’
Flora stared at the man confronting her, barely able to take in what was happening. Was this the same person who had welcomed her to the opening of the Priory, the same person who had greeted her today with the hope that she would enjoy Polly’s party?
‘How did you find out why Kevin was here? By encouraging him to drink with you?’ She couldn’t believe she was actually saying these words.
‘So you heard about that? Miss empty-headed Dakers, no doubt. Thank the Lord, I’m rid of her at least. One less blabbermouth. Kevin liked a drink – I believe Australians are partial to beer, but Kevin was much more of a whisky man. He became quite loquacious when he’d had a few. Enough for me to realise that what appeared a ludicrous mission was, in fact, quite serious. I hadn’t heard the legend myself – I’m not a native of these parts – and if I had, I doubt I’d have taken much notice. When Anderson first told me the story, I thought it was a joke, but the more he talked, the more I was persuaded that he was actually on to something.’
‘Kevin seems to have done a great deal of talking.’
‘He never stopped asking questions, which was suspicious in itself. The story he’d got from his uncle had been vague – Reggie Anderson had heard it as a child – but Kevin set about discovering details. And he did it well, I’ll give him that. Learned about the Templeton family in Tudor times, how they had been persecuted and died. He even managed to trace the priest they’d employed. With what he discovered, I could see it was just the kind of thing that could have happened in troubled times. After he went to see that rascally bookseller in Worthing, I was convinced there was something to be had from it.’
‘So you decided to use what Kevin had found for yourself? You decided to kill him?’
‘I don’t think the poor chap suffered – at least not much. And so easy, you wouldn’t believe. Miss Horrocks arranged the florist’s bouquet in his room, and all I had to do was add a couple of stems of water hemlock. Deadly stuff. I had to borrow Mitchell’s gloves and mask. Of course, Kevin wouldn’t have had that protection.’
‘He could have disappointed you. He might not have touched the flowers.’
Flora heard herself sounding normal in what was an insane situation. How could she? This wasn’t just a very bad dream; it was as though she had stumbled into another life.
‘That was the beauty of the plant I chose. You don’t have to touch it to be affected. It’s sufficient merely to breathe close to it. The pollen isn’t quite so toxic, but it gets everywhere, particularly when the blooms are almost finished. I had to be careful not to poison my staff, or there would have been questions. The flowers were whisked away as soon as Kevin went out for his drive in the Aston Martin. I was glad the poor chap enjoyed at least some of his birthday, though I did have a few qualms. He could have collapsed at the wheel and that was an awful lot of motor car to risk. But I calculated that he was young and fit and it would take some hours before the poison took hold.’
She had to escape, get past this dreadful man blocking her from the light. Even with his meagre frame, Elliot filled the entrance almost completely, and in any tussle he would be much the stronger. Her only means of flight was to lull him into thinking that she was no threat, that she meant him no harm, and when his guard was down, make a dash for it. It would be difficult – he’d caught her with the typewriter, trying to prove he was a murderer, but perhaps if she could distract him sufficiently, she could rush
at him, hurl herself at his horrible scrawny body and break free.
‘You made a sensible calculation,’ she said, thinking flattery had to work since she had no other resource. ‘It was some hours before Kevin died. But Cyril Knight? Was that a clever move, too?’
‘Entirely his own fault, my dear. If he hadn’t come nosing where he shouldn’t, he would never have died. I can’t say I was sorry to see him go. Cantankerous old man. Always complaining about the way he’d been treated. That was nothing to the way I was treated by that crooked uncle of Anderson’s, selling me this place under false pretences. Ruining my life.’
Flora stared at him, not understanding. ‘The sale must have been above board. Reggie Anderson inherited, the solicitors said so. The Priory was his to sell.’
‘False pretences,’ Elliot repeated. ‘I had to borrow heavily to buy the place, couldn’t afford a surveyor, then found out just what a pig in a poke the man had landed me with. Half the roof falling in, a hot water system that didn’t work, rising damp in every ground-floor room. The list is endless. Anderson knew about the defects – his legal team would have told him – but he deliberately played dumb, hiding away in Australia. It’s meant more money, more borrowing. I don’t have a hope in hell of paying any of it back. Whatever is buried in the Priory grounds is mine. I need it. Why should I buy a useless house and not gain from its gardens? To think that crook’s nephew thought to come here and benefit all over again. It makes me sick to the stomach.’
Hadn’t Jack said there were very few reasons for people to kill – love, revenge, greed? She’d ascribed lack of money to Kate, to Cyril, to Polly, as a motive for murder, then found them all innocent. Beneath her nose, it was Vernon Elliot who’d had the most powerful reason.
‘All would have been well, too,’ Elliot was saying, ‘if you hadn’t interfered, with that idiot writer you seem attached to. The man with the stupid hat. He was lucky I was a good shot.’
Flora was startled afresh. ‘It was you? It was you, who aimed that crossbow?’
‘A warning, nothing more. You’d started to meddle. Kevin had been foolish enough to die in your bookshop and I could see your business was suffering as a result – I even tried to foment it a little in the hope you’d be forced to sell up and move away. But you didn’t. You’d worked out that to save your shop, you had to discover why a seemingly healthy young man had died there. I watched you the afternoon you visited Cyril Knight and realised it meant trouble. It was only a matter of time before Cyril told you what he knew – Kevin had talked to him a lot – and you began to dig more deeply.’
‘He did tell us. You were a little late with your crossbow.’
‘There you are, you can’t prepare for everything. I wouldn’t have killed either of you. Not then. I simply wanted to frighten you away, send the fedora man back to his study and his books and you away from Abbeymead. In a way, I was being kind. You should have heeded my warnings. Cyril managed to kill himself and couldn’t spill any more information, but that didn’t stop you. You should have walked away, Miss Steele. If you had, this unpleasantness could have been avoided.’
He waved a vague hand at the dark enclosure in which he’d trapped her. Flora had slowly begun to realise what that unpleasantness could be, and her stomach knotted at the thought. For a moment, she lost the will to fight back.
‘You’ve had more than one chance to save yourself, but you’ve been foolish. If you had sold your books to Joseph Rawston, I could have found what I needed and you wouldn’t be here now.’
‘You sent Rawston to me?’
‘Of course, I sent him. Kevin told me he was going to meet a man who’d bought books from the Priory library. By then, Anderson and I had scoured every volume here and found nothing – we’d made an agreement, you see. It made sense that the document this priest wrote would be amongst the oldest books, but it turned out that they were the very ones that had sold at auction. Kevin died, poor chap, before he could tell me the result of his trip to Worthing, so after his demise, I thought I’d follow in his footsteps.’
‘Wasn’t Rawston suspicious? He seemed to me a man who wasn’t entirely legitimate.’
‘You’re perceptive, Miss Steele. Joseph Rawston is no better than a barrow boy, but I made a deal with him, too. The books he’d bought at auction were useless – Kevin must have discovered that – but then I learned from Rawston that at the same sale your aunt, too, had bought a large number of very old books. I commissioned Rawston to buy them back from you.’
Flora had gradually edged closer to the entrance, keeping to the deep pools of darkness that lined the edges of the small enclosure. She didn’t think that Elliot had noticed her movement, but she couldn’t tell for certain. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze sharp, even as he was speaking.
‘Kevin learned about your aunt’s books on his visit to Rawston, which is why you found him in your bookshop the next day – so clumsy! And dishonourable. He’d evidently decided to cut me out, to double-cross. Pathetic, really. He should have died in his room, that was my plan. Instead, by stupidly breaking into your shop, he managed to arouse suspicion.’
Elliot gave a deep sigh. ‘Water under the bridge now, of course. I couldn’t be sure the books you owned would be any more use than the ones Rawston bought, but I had to have them. I paid him well and ended up getting nowhere.’ Elliot’s face darkened at the thought.
‘Why pay him? Why not follow Kevin’s example and break in?’ She had shuffled a few more inches forward.
Elliot looked shocked. ‘I couldn’t do that. Such a risk, apart from being so very uncivilised!’ He gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘Another break-in would certainly have alerted the police that something untoward was going on. They were happy to accept that Kevin had died from a heart attack and, from the beginning, I made certain they kept thinking it. The minute they contacted me to identify my unfortunate guest, I had Mitchell get rid of the flowers, Horrocks dump the cake and the cleaners scour Anderson’s bedroom. It’s what’s called making sure.’
‘Not that sure. The room wasn’t completely clean. There were pollen grains left in the crack of the table. Pollen that led directly to flowers grown in a padlocked enclosure at the rear of the Priory.’ Flora edged a little closer.
‘Really? I didn’t have time to check – I was too busy getting to the morgue. Cleaners are so slapdash these days. You should have accepted his offer, you know. Rawston’s. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now.’
‘So you’ve said. And Bernard Mitchell? What offer should he have accepted?’
‘You think I killed him? You can’t know the man. I’d no need to kill him. He was a bully and a coward. Threats were enough to make him turn tail and run.’
‘You threatened him because he knew too much.’
‘He always knew too much. I threatened him because he was going to the police. Such ingratitude. All the money he took from me to keep his mouth shut, and then to renege. I could have killed him, true, but I really didn’t want another murder on my hands. The hemlock was easy, gentle. For Mitchell, it would have had to be something more gruesome. In the event, all I had to do was threaten murder, and off he went.’
‘He didn’t go that far. The police believe he committed suicide from Littlehampton beach.’
‘Maybe. Who knows? He could have survived. It’s not a matter that keeps me awake at night. If he’s still alive, he won’t come back. He’s far too scared of ending in the churchyard. Even if he finds the backbone to return, I won’t be here. But you, Miss Steele, you are another matter. You’re not a coward and you’re highly intelligent. Such a shame. I’ve been watching you for some while, watching you solve the puzzle for me. I know you have the priest’s letter in your handbag, along with the strip of parchment you found in my library. Luckily for me, your handbag is on my desk, while you, unfortunately, are in the priest hole.’
Stupefied, Flora gazed around her. ‘This is what this room is?’
‘Absolutely. Neat, isn’t it? An
d such a neat ending. I’ve no doubt that the man who wrote that parchment spent time just where you’re standing. Time waiting in the dark, hoping the Catholic hunters had searched the Priory and failed. According to the legend, the priest escaped. That, I’m afraid, won’t be happening to you.’
Flora raised her head at that, and said in as steady a voice as possible, ‘What will be happening to me?’
‘You’ll be staying just where you are. There’s only one way to access the priest hole and that’s from a small lever in the bookcase. I discovered it when I had the library partitioned to make an office for myself. An office with possibly the most romantic secret in Sussex.’
At that moment, Flora couldn’t think of anything less romantic.
‘I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, but everything has its uses. For one thing, it can house a typewriter for which I have no further use. And it can house you.’
The air around Flora suddenly felt thick, a heavy layer pressing down on her, making it difficult for her to breathe. She had known all along that this was his plan, but somehow hadn’t brought herself to believe he would actually go through with it. Another murder on his hands. And it would be murder. But why hadn’t she believed it? Elliot was cold, unfeeling, and quite possibly insane.
‘You’re going to shut me in here?’ she asked, knowing the answer, and bunching her muscles into a tight ball.
‘Best not to fight it, Miss Steele. I’ve read that in such circumstances it’s easier if you simply lie down and accept your fate. There’s little point in yelling and screaming, since no one will hear you. No one even knows where you are. I doubt that anyone even noticed you had left the party. As far as the other guests are concerned, you ate and drank and went home. No, much better to go quietly. I must leave you now. I have an appointment with a shovel and some rudimentary directions.’
The Bookshop Murder: An absolutely gripping cozy mystery (A Flora Steele Mystery Book 1) Page 20