I became bored.
At first I attempted to ignore it, as I tend to ignore everything until it explodes in my face, and simply carried on. I was on General Holmes' staff at that time, spending far too much of each day reading and summarizing despatches and reports, and my original notion of revenge against Aunt Edith began recurring at discouragingly shorter intervals. My new image of myself — strong, capable, dependable, resolute — crumbled a tad about the edges, and soon I realized either the boredom or the new image would be vanquished.
Also on staff, at this base that shall remain nameless, was a light colonel named Greentree (not his real name). He wasn't a bad sort, and I had early learned to respect his intellect and erudition, but he was cursed with an utter lack of that trait termed a sense of humor, and the larks of the younger officers surrounding him, myself included, tended to bring out a regrettable amount of choler in his relationships therewith. After a public dressing-down regarding certain puns I'd buried in one utterly unimportant summary that no one else was ever going to read — and I'd considered them rather snazzy, myself — after that incident, I say, I realized that my furtive and vindictive younger self, still hanging about somewhere deep inside me, had already decided upon his punishment.
Later that morning, Lieutenant-Colonel Greentree's office keys unaccountably vanished. As these devices accessed not only his personal office but also certain filing cabinets, storage areas, and even cipher machines and safes, this loss was not considered amusing. All employment within the department came to a crashing halt, and everyone therein proceeded to rip the building apart brick by brick. Needless to say, quite in vain.
My uniform pocket, meanwhile, felt rather heavy. And increasingly hot.
That midnight, while Greentree and those who couldn't escape continued the search, I rappelled down the outside wall of his apartment building, let myself into his bedroom, and planted the ruddy things in the trouser pocket of the uniform he'd worn the previous day. It seemed a decent enough plan at the time, and my skills weren't so rusty that I left any fingerprints that would incriminate me. And I must admit to a sensation of sopping-wet-rag relief as well as giddy satisfaction as I let myself out of the building at the end of the operation, carrying my tools camouflaged in a gym bag and crossing the parking lot to my own housing at around one in the morning.
But at the edge of the lot, a soft slow drawl spoke out of the impenetrable shadows at the foot of the boundary wall. "You know, I generally mind my own business."
I froze, my heart in my teeth. If Greentree learned of this stupid little prank, my promising Army career would have a rather precipitant conclusion.
"But this time, I gotta ask."
Two occasionally painful years in the Army had taught me never to respond to an unidentified voice with the first words that crossed my impolitic mind. I slipped a penlight from my pocket, snapped it on, and traversed the wall until I located a nearly recumbent body, slid so far down I wondered the spine remained intact, neck propped against a rucksack, one reasonably presentable combat boot crossed atop the opposite knee. The collar tabs on the uniform keeping said body decent sported the eagles of a full colonel — well beyond my little lieutenant's range of flight — and the bottle in the attached left hand, the only one visible at my angle, could not be described as half full by the most optimistic of fools.
I didn't recognize his face, rugged as if sculpted by a sandblaster and dominated by hooded dark eyes that peered into the light without blinking. But confidence of that genus only came from experience earned in the field, not from sitting behind a desk nor from any bit of metal decorating a uniform, and a knot of worry began eating at my stomach. If this one turned out to be a fire-eater, even an inebriated fire-eater, he would be much more than I could handle.
My own face was touched by the lights of the parking lot, the ones casting the shadows in which he hid, and I didn't doubt that my sudden tension was perfectly obvious to him.
In my dark civilian clothing, I didn't spring to attention. But I did bring my heels together and straightened my shoulders. "Sir?"
He belched softly. "'Scuse me. What the hell were you doing on the side of that building at this hour of the frigging night?"
The knot in my stomach proceeded to expand exponentially. There wasn't going to be any fooling this one. I didn't try. "It's personal, sir."
One of his eyebrows canted. After a moment his head tilted back, in much the same manner that my father and William used to look down their Roman noses at me. But with the angle of his entire anatomy and the alcoholic relaxation about his mouth, the effect was considering, and I could detect no trace of contempt in his mien.
"A bet? A prank?"
I glanced aside. "Something like that."
He popped his eyebrows, up and down in a quick little motion that implied acceptance of my answer. "Most people would have tried to deny it."
I was growing to like him, even if he did have the drop on me, and my tension was diminishing in an inverse ratio. There was something here that reminded me of Aunt Edith, and not a spark in sight. "Couldn't see any point to that exercise."
Something flickered in his eyes that the little penlight didn't catch. He offered me the bottle.
Discretion over valor or hygiene. I took a swig. To my astonishment, it wasn't cheap whiskey but an incredible old brandy, smooth, mellow, fiery, and probably worth more than every stitch I wore, even throwing in the wallet and all its contents.
"Oh. Oh, that's good."
"You like that?"
"It hits every spot I've got."
He grinned lazily, then showed me his right hand, clutching a pair of night-vision binoculars that had been hidden at his side. "Been watching you for an hour," he said, suddenly apologetic. "Best entertainment I've had all year."
This particular gig was fully up, it seemed. For some reason, I couldn't get worried. "May I ask your intentions, sir?"
He set the binoculars aside and reached. "Gimme a hand up."
It cost both of us a fair amount of effort to haul his big frame erect, but once there, he maintained position without weaving, even when he stretched, even when he retrieved the rucksack and binoculars from the ground. "What's your name?" he asked.
I told him. From this perspective, I put his age at mid-thirties or just past, which made his rank nothing less than incredible. I was doubly glad I hadn't tried to fool him.
"Lieutenant Ellandun," he repeated, tasting the syllables. As if they reminded him, he took the bottle from me and slugged from it. "The robber." He cocked an eye at me, again consideringly. "You work for my dad, don't you." It wasn't a question.
I froze. Office rumor had mentioned General Holmes' son, with the inclusion of epithets ranging from "one helluva soldier" to "out of his ever-loving mind." On one point did everyone agree: what this man had achieved in the Special Forces gave a whole new meaning to the term feats of arms.
At that thought, for some reason, my heart beat faster.
"Yes, sir," I said.
He handed me the bottle and while I took my turn — worth it no matter how the adventure ended — he stuffed the binoculars into his rucksack. "Old Greentree's keys had to be somewhere," he said to the empty air of the parking lot.
I nearly gagged but managed to get it down.
"Come on, Lieutenant, wouldn't you rather work for me?"
Which was, of course, exactly what I had been dreaming while downing the man's brandy. I'm certain I gaped at him.
"Dad's got you behind a desk, right? You're bored, I know you gotta be bored—"
"Yes," I said, the brandy mellow on my tongue, my heart beating like a drum. "I'm bored."
"That's what I thought." He took the bottle, capped it, and slid it, too, into the rucksack. "I drafted your transfer request this afternoon. I just needed the name to put on it." He considered me one last time, drawing the strap of the rucksack over his shoulder. Suddenly he grinned, and it was such a spontaneous, mischievous thing that I gri
nned right back. "I bet you'll feel right at home the first week." He sauntered off into the night and vanished before I could think of a thing to say.
That was the last time I was bored in the Army. However, he was wrong about one thing. I felt at home the first day.
And I never looked back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
current time
"What can you tell me about a man named Basil Glendower?" I asked.
Father stiffened. "She told you of that Welsh rogue?"
"Not precisely." Surely we hovered on the verge of something important; for once I was glad my emotions were so plainly read. "Will you tell me? I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
He stared as seconds ticked by, his outraged flush fading as he examined my expression. Then he glanced down at his knuckles, white about the knob of his stick.
"When our father would not allow her to attend university—" He paused and glanced toward me, eyebrows slightly lifted. "Did she mention that?"
I nodded. "She never forgave him."
He nodded in turn. "It caused strife and bitterness in the family, and everyone took sides. I went with Father, of course, from youth and inexperience as much as loyalty, and so did our mother. But Preston and our Aunt Caroline sided with Edith, and there were hard words. When he would not give in, Edith began seeing that rogue."
He leaned back, setting his stick across the arms of the chair. The memory's intervening years softened his tension, but grief intertwined with remembered indignation in the depths of his eyes. "After that, she listened to no one, not even Aunt Caroline, who'd always been able to influence her before. I knew Glendower was the thief raiding the nobility's homes, and I knew she was helping him—"
He glanced at me again, almost with guilt.
"I found the jewelry."
"I see," he whispered back. "My God, but she's left you a legacy indeed."
I didn't want to think about that yet. "Please go on."
"As I said, I knew she was abetting him." He sighed. "I told her I knew and she laughed in my face, saying she'd learned a trade after all, despite Father. I threatened to tell the police, but I had no evidence and she knew it."
The undertones to our conversation were changing and, with our focus on the mystery, any remaining hostility between us vanished. If I'd spoken this honestly with him earlier, perhaps some of my anguish over Aunt Edith's duplicity could have been avoided, the same way she could perhaps have avoided being murdered if she'd made peace in the family sooner.
Father stared into empty space. "Then, one night, a man was killed."
"The security guard," I said. "Ezra Higdon."
Remembered pain clouded his eyes. "Yes, that was his name. Too late, I went to the police and they questioned Glendower on my word, but still we had no evidence — the jewelry was nowhere to be found — so they had to release him. He did own a pistol of the same sort used in the murder, but the ballistics were all wrong."
"He owned a brace of pistols. She hid the jewelry and the actual murder weapon for him." There was no point telling Father that his little sister was the one guilty of Higdon's death, especially as he seemed to feel a measure of responsibility for the crime.
"I see," he said. "It was obvious Glendower would flee. I believe the Scotland Yard inspector knew it even as he released the rogue. There was simply nothing we could do about him. But I could prevent Edith from fleeing as well. And I did."
That possibility had never occurred to me. But this time, I held my tongue. An experienced barrister, after all, needed no guidance.
"On the night he was released, I bullied my way into her room. She had started packing and I even searched her Gladstone. But I found nothing."
False bottom. In the intervening years, had he realized how close he'd come to a momentous discovery?
"I heard a whistle from the rear garden at about two that morning, repeated every fifteen minutes for several hours. Then it began to rain, and silence fell, and it was just another night. Edith and I sat on either side of her fire without speaking, staring at each other for hours, and all I could think was that she would hate me for the rest of our lives." His chin sank. "There have been days when I wondered if I hadn't imagined all those suspicions, if perhaps Edith was innocent of any crime and my cynicism forced her into an intolerable position."
He deserved the truth. "It wasn't your imagination."
He stared at me again, as if to read my thoughts through my skull. "She taught you lockpicking, you say?"
As I'd blurted out in the gallery, hoping to hurt him. It seemed I'd succeeded. "I'm not a thief, Father."
He smiled. It was unlike any smile I'd ever seen on his face before. Neither studied nor calculating, it lit him from within; without doubt, he was very proud of me.
"Colonel Holmes said his team needs and values your skills."
And finally the enlightened look on Father's face in the law office, and the considering one on William's, made perfect sense. I shot a glare at Sherlock, still reading that touristy trash with an absorbed expression as if my life wasn't being transformed, and contemplated mayhem. A rousing fistfight in a bed-and-breakfast entryway full of lovely breakables could be intensely satisfying. "Told you that, did he?"
"Now, will you tell me why this is so important?"
There were no gentle words to couch the message. "Glendower murdered her."
Slowly his mouth tightened, until he resembled the barrister I'd known as a child. "How do you know this?"
"Because she was killed with the second of that brace of pistols, the one he took with him when he fled."
"And where has he been hiding all this time?"
The ballistics report had mentioned central European ammunition from an ex-Soviet manufacturer, confirmed by the passport hidden in Glendower's lair. "I think Bulgaria, probably employed by the KGB or some similar organization. Certainly he needs money now, so I'd guess he's been unemployed since the Soviet empire fell."
He gripped his stick, still lying across the arms of his chair. Concern tightened the skin across his cheekbones. "Have you gone to the police with what you know?"
"Of course I haven't." His eyes flared and I backtracked. "I mean, if I go to the police, from there it would go to the press—"
His hand on my arm was gentle but too firm to ignore. I fell silent.
"Charles, you're making the same mistake I made."
I froze.
"You're putting the family honor before the needs of society. Ezra Higdon died because I made that mistake. I'd rather not see you carry such a burden."
My heart pounded. The intensity of his concern — his concern for me — hit home. It helped. But not enough to alter my conviction.
"Perhaps it's time I paid some attention to the family honor."
He set his stick aside and drew a small pill bottle from his breast pocket. I'd seen von Bisnon produce just such a bottle under emotionally stressful circumstances, containing nitroglycerine to ease an over-strained heart, and my own picked up speed.
"Father?"
"I'm all right." He sounded testy. He opened the bottle and shook a tiny white pill onto his fingertip. "I simply hadn't expected to hear all this."
"What's going on?" William's tense voice spoke from Father's other side, startling me. But Father placed the pill in his mouth without speaking, leaving me no polite alternative. And there were family affairs that needed settling here, as well. I stood and faced my brother.
I'd mistaken William's tone. He wasn't tense; he was concerned, for there was no hardness to his expression. Again he wore his casual slacks and two-toned sport shirt, the same outfit I'd worn for the police identity parade; it fit him much better than me, especially about the middle.
I felt a stab of anger when our gazes meshed, which must have shown. He flinched, his eyes flared in return, and he tilted his chin up to glare down his Roman nose at me. But now I knew that stabbing sensation was old anger, lingering from the beating he gave me years a
go, and not any emotion I currently felt. I also knew this was something we'd have to settle someday, but now wasn't an appropriate time. No matter how much fun wrecking the bed-and-breakfast might be.
Instead I pulled forward the memory of William, bowed with grief and worry in the hospital corridor outside his son's room. The remembered sympathy helped me manage a smile that I hoped didn't look too strained. "Thank you for telling him."
He subjected me to the same long scrutiny Father employed. Then his chin lowered and he managed a small, tight smile of his own. "If I insisted upon acting the fool, I should have discussed it with him at the time." He hurried on. "You never were a bad kid, you know. Not like I was."
But that wasn't right. "I don't remember you as a bad kid. Quite the opposite."
He swallowed. "Perhaps you don't remember all that well."
For a moment we considered each other. I could think of absolutely nothing to say.
"Look," he said suddenly, "I was going to grab a bite on my way to the hospital. Linda's already at the restaurant with Uncle Preston and Aunt Viola. Why don't you join us?"
Without thinking, I glanced down at Father. But his eyes were closed and his face still, his lips just turning up. The nitro pill would be dissolving beneath his tongue.
"Father usually prefers to rest after his medication." William lowered his voice. "It generally gives him a headache."
Father, eyes still closed, nodded.
Across the lobby, paper again rustled. William and I both glanced aside. Sherlock folded his newspaper, not looking our way.
"I see. Another time?" William said.
"Definitely," I said. "Hello to Trés, and my love to Linda and the others. Father, should I walk you upstairs?"
His eyes opened at that. But their expression was frosty. I froze, heart accelerating.
William cleared his throat. "His usual answer to such a suggestion emphasizes the fact that he is neither old nor a dotard, at least not yet, and one should reserve one's sympathy for unhappy people deserving same."
Trans-Atlantic relationships, it seemed, were normalizing. I grinned. William's eyebrows shot up and surprise washed across his expression. Then he smiled, too.
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