After Glynis murmured a refusal, she stole a glance at Helga Brant, and found the woman watching her daughter-in-law with a disconcerting intensity. Then her gaze moved to Glynis. For a brief instant their eyes met, before Mrs. Brant looked away.
To Glynis's profound relief, she heard Cullen's voice coming from the hall. When he didn't materialize, she nodded to the others, and started for the doorway. And nearly collided with the dining room's silver tea service. The servant carrying the tray—at least Glynis assumed the man was a servant, since he had a deferential manner that no one else in the house seemed to possess—stopped and bowed briefly. Then he stepped aside to allow her past him.
Glynis came face-to-face with a pinch-faced woman in a black maid's uniform, who had been following the man. She was holding a plate mounded with something that was covered with a large white damask napkin and smelled like freshly baked pastry. Glynis tried to move aside, but the woman swayed directly into her, sending fruit tarts flying in all directions.
The maid gasped dramatically and sank to her knees, and then began sobbing. Since everyone else in the room seemed to be frozen in place, Glynis bent over the woman and put a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to apologize—for what she wasn't certain, but the poor woman must have felt humiliated, and something had to be done. The woman shoved Glynis's hand away, while continuing to sob with a rising intensity that sounded perilously close to hysteria.
"Phoebe, do calm down," said Konrad Brant. He lifted the distraught woman to her feet and, while nearly dragging her from the room, said to Glynis over his shoulder, "Not to worry. She does this every so often. Clements," he added, "please see to Miss Tryon."
Glynis felt a hand grasp her elbow, and she was whisked from the room by the manservant, who deposited her in the hall and, with another short bow, immediately returned to the parlor. Someone, probably at Cullen's direction, had placed several lanterns in the hallway, thus diminishing the gloom.
Sobs interspersed with prolonged wails from the end of the corridor implied where the unfortunate Phoebe had been taken. Then a door closed, the sobs ceased, and Konrad reappeared. He passed Cullen and Neva, who were standing in the hall, and gave Glynis a wry smile before he disappeared again into the parlor.
She saw Neva and Cullen waiting near a door beyond the dining room. They were both looking at her with incredulous expressions, but she decided that she would not even try to explain the scene in the parlor. And if that slightly ajar door by which Cullen and Neva stood led to Roland Brant's library, she would go no farther. Neither would she return to the Brants, none of whom she could characterize as grieving, at least not in any sense that she understood. They were unmistakably tense, yes. In shock, perhaps. But not grieving.
She had paused at the foot of the oaken staircase, but Cullen motioned for her to come down the hall. If she shook her head, the light was still so dim he might not see it. If she spoke to him, it could bring Konrad and Tirzah out into the hall with wine and bourbon in hand. The quantity of spirits being consumed here was guaranteed to rankle Dr. Cardoza-Levy, and it might be best to avoid this. Seneca Falls was in the forefront of the temperance movement, and Neva had been known to deliver a lecture on abstinence for less cause than what she would find in that parlor. Glynis doubted that a lecture would prove fruitful here and it would prolong their stay. Then the sound of steps at the top of the staircase gave her no choice. She went down the long hall, passing by another closed door, as Erich descended the stairs.
He paused at the foot, sending the three of them a glowering look before going into the front parlor, his behavior Glynis finding more appropriate than what she'd witnessed of the other family members. Erich, at least, seemed to have grasped the fact of his father's murder. Or it might be, she thought uneasily, that for good reason he'd had more time to adjust to it. She suddenly wondered if Roland Brant had made a will. And who in this house stood to gain most by his death?
"Glynis, I'd like you to take a look in there," Cullen said when she reached him, gesturing toward what must be the dead man's library.
"Whatever for?"
Neva ran a hand over her eyes in obvious fatigue. "Because I would like to leave this madhouse and go home!" she stated. "But the good constable here insists that we continue a discussion that would be better left until tomorrow. I am not performing an autopsy tonight—I'm too tired to think straight! So let's get your thoughts, Glynis."
"Thoughts about what?"
"The library," answered Cullen. "I want your impression of it. And by the way, Clements thinks that when he found Brant's body, the far, outside door of the library had been closed and bolted—though he grudgingly admitted he might be mistaken about it. But he was certain that he'd bolted that door himself last night. Said he always checked it."
As Glynis had dreaded, there seemed little hope of avoiding this undertaking, as from experience she knew that Neva and Cullen could continue to argue for some time. And she, too, wanted to go home.
"Very well," she said, "but I don't know what good it will do." She drew in a breath, let it out, and walked into Roland Brant's library. The room held a pungent, unpleasant odor that she tried in vain to ignore.
A pendant kerosene library lamp suspended from center ceiling gave adequate light, and polished the tooled, dark leather spines of volumes that almost filled two floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Some other volumes, though, lay strewn over the floor, their spines cracked and their pages torn, causing Glynis to wince. A desk with papers scattered in disarray over its surface, and behind it an overturned leather-covered chair, stood in front of a curious-looking door. It consisted of small panes of glass, much like one of the tall, mullioned windows in her own library. She'd never seen anything like it before, and wondered if the door had been acquired during Roland Brant's frequent travels. The glass door stood with its drapery drawn aside, and when she went to it and turned the brass handle, the door readily swung open onto a small, bricked terrace. The servant Clements had said the door had been closed and bolted; Glynis saw now that the brass bolt could only have been shot home from inside the room. And none of the small panes of glass appeared to be broken or newly glazed.
Against another wall of the library sat heavy mahogany cabinets, one of which, from the intricately shaped keyhole on its door, was obviously a safe. Its hinged door stood open. When Glynis bent over to glance inside, she could see several steel boxes with their lids raised and a jumble of leather folders. Presumably Cullen had asked if anything had been removed. She also presumed, since the open safe and the room's disorder so clearly suggested robbery as the motive for Brant's murder, that he might want her to look for something less obvious.
A grouping of small chalk-and-ink etchings of Ruben's nudes hung on the only wall lacking cabinets and shelves. Several of the etchings were askew, as if disturbed during a search or a struggle; otherwise the room, in stark contrast to the parlor, was free of ornamentation. Glynis took a hesitant step around the desk and looked down. There, on a rich burgundy and blue Persian rug at the desk's far side, and thus concealed from the view of anyone passing down the hall, was the rigid corpse of Roland Brant, the bone handle of a knife protruding from his chest.
Although she had been expecting it, imagining it, the reality struck a hard blow for which she could not have prepared herself. She backed up against the desk for support, and stood there in an attempt to merely observe. Cullen wanted her impressions and she would fail him unless she could move past this first numbing impact.
The scene looked incongruous to her—not withstanding that suspicious death always looked that way—but this death looked particularly so. Roland Brant had been a man she thought of as vigorous, capable, forceful in presence. The position of the body seemed telling: rolled partially on its side, the forearms stiffly raised, the fingers curved like claws.
Although a rather short man, he had been sturdily built and should have been able to defend himself, unless his killer had caught him unawares. That could point t
o a stranger, in spite of Cullen's dismissal of the notion as farfetched. Brant might have surprised a thief already inside the room when he entered. Or, if Clements had erred about the door being bolted, and if Brant had been seated at his desk, the thief could have come in behind him and Brant's reaction had not been fast enough.
Then, too, the killer could have been someone familiar to him; someone who he had learned, but learned too late, meant him harm. Else why the curved fingers that might before death have been clenched into fists?
She forced herself to move from the desk to stand at the feet of the corpse. Whenever she had seen Roland Brant, he had been without exception well-dressed. Yet here there was no frock coat, and the collar had been detached from the cotton—not linen—shirt, its four buttons at the top undone. Meaning he had not been dressed to go out. Not on business, at least. His shirt was tucked into trousers held by a belt with a monogrammed gold buckle, and there was no sign of slashed fabric around the embedded knife. Whatever blood there had been was difficult to make out against the arabesque pattern and dark color of the rug.
As she began to bend down to look at the rug more closely, an odd blotch of red caught her eye. At first she thought it was blood. But when she moved her head to one side, it flashed light. She went down on her knees and reached under some strewed papers beneath the desk.
When she rose to her feet, she held the clear glass dome of a paperweight, so smooth and slippery that she had nearly dropped it. Enclosed in the glass was a single, waxy red rose that looked as if it had been dipped in paraffin. A picture jumped to her mind, one that had accompanied an article on glassmaking she had read some time ago in a library copy of the respected journal Scientific American; the picture of a paperweight called the Millville Rose. While it had not appealed to Glynis either then or now, the paperweight was becoming a popular, relatively inexpensive collectors' item.
The Millville Rose had been featured in the same article where she had learned of the French Baccarat factory. The manufacturer of costly, crystal paperweights.
She stood looking down at the desk surface on which she had already noted an overturned brass library lamp, and a pen-and-ink stand. When she moved aside the scattered papers, she could find no other paperweight there. Surely at such a time as this, the two she had all but accidentally found must have some significance, though, since he had been stabbed, she couldn't think what their link might be to Roland Brant's murder?
She shook her head in bewilderment, then stepped back from the desk and knelt to study the carpet again. Roland Brant's face was turned slightly away from her, and it was only then she noticed a bruise on the left temple, nearly covered by graying blond hair. Glynis glanced at the rose paperweight, wondering if it was heavy enough to have made the bruise. She picked it up and hefted it, deciding that it weighed more than enough, but if the paperweight had been used as a weapon, surely it would not have been left there in the room. Not when it could easily have been taken away. Before she placed it on the desk, she turned it slowly in her hands, looking the smooth glass over carefully. There were no scratches, nothing she could find to indicate that it had been used violently.
The corner of the desk, which she thought Brant might have fallen against in a struggle, likewise seemed to bear no evidence of violent contact that she could see, even with her close inspection.
Before she left the room, she took one last look at Roland Brant's face. The bluish pallor and the absence of expression distressed Glynis more than anything else. It was a face she remembered as being ruddy with health and strong of feature. There remained little hint of either.
When she stepped back out into the hall where Cullen and Neva waited, Cullen looked at her and asked quietly, "Are you all right?"
Glynis nodded, relieved that he didn't ask for her impressions. But he wouldn't yet, not with the family right down the hall. She felt, though, that she should say something about Roland Brant.
"It's an elegant room, and it looks like him," she offered, unable to conceal the note of sadness she heard in her voice. "If I had ever thought about it, that room of his is just what I would have expected."
Neva exhaled a long-suffering sigh. "That room, Glynis," she said, fatigue registering in every syllable, "is not what we're concerned with here—"
She stopped as Erich emerged from the parlor to come toward them. "Seen enough?" he said curtly. "Now can we have some privacy?"
"You can as soon as my deputy comes back," answered Cullen evenly. "You do know, Mr. Brant, that there will have to be an autopsy?"
"Autopsy! Why, for God's sake? My father was stabbed to death. That's certainly obvious. The library's been ransacked, and the property deeds and bank notes kept in the safe are missing as I told you. Instead of wasting time on an autopsy, why don't you spend it finding his thieving killer?"
In spite of Cullen's bland expression, Glynis watched the muscles along his jaw tighten. But he would not lose control; that knowledge in the past had often been reassuring to her, and few times more so than now.
"Mr. Brant," he said, "I'm sorry for what your family is going through. And I'd like to spare you any more aggravation, but in a case of suspected murder, a postmortem exam is—"
"I refuse to allow it," Erich said, cutting off Cullen in an uncompromising tone. "An autopsy cannot be performed without my permission."
"Then I'll get a court order. It will be done, Brant, whether you agree to it or not."
At this, Neva gave a soft groan. A request for a court-ordered autopsy meant the doctor would need to prepare an affidavit of merit. She backed up against the wall as if she needed support, and sent Cullen a black look.
Then a distant rumble, coming from beyond the house, turned everyone toward the entrance door. Glynis hoped it was Zeph returning, as by this time she'd guessed where Cullen had earlier sent him. She followed the others out to the porch and watched a team of gray horses drawing a black, silver-trimmed hearse emerge from the woods. Even Erich was silent while Zeph brought the hearse to the front entrance, reined in the team, and jumped down from the driver's seat.
"I will contest an autopsy," Erich said to Cullen, and Glynis wondered if the man could be trying to maintain the upper hand rather than expressing some deeply held conviction. He did not impress her as unintelligent, therefore she wondered just how far he would carry his opposition. But Cullen would not back down, she knew that. Not if it took until dawn, or a midnight ride to the home of a judge for the court order.
"Listen, Brant," said Cullen, his voice still steady, "we can do this the simple way, or you can make it unpleasant. Have you asked how the rest of your family want to proceed? Your mother may have a different opinion."
"My mother need have nothing to do with this," Erich answered. "I will not permit some brazen female calling herself a doctor to violate my father's body."
Neva said nothing in response to this, but simply gazed upward at the hazy stars of a warm, moonlit night. No one spoke for an uncomfortable length of time, during which Zeph climbed the porch steps and went to stand beside Cullen, obviously waiting for instructions.
Cullen said, finally, "O.K., Brant, if that's the way you want it. I'm impounding your father's body until I have a court order for the autopsy."
"You can't do that!"
"I'm doing it. Zeph, ask some of the servants to help bring Mr. Brant's remains to the hearse."
Erich moved swiftly to block the young deputy's path. When Glynis saw Zeph's hand go to his holster, and although she trusted his judgment, she grasped Neva's arm to remove them both from a possible confrontation.
Neva, however, stood firm. "I understand that you're upset Mr. Brant," she said. "In your place I would be, too. And I wouldn't necessarily want a male doctor—if the circumstances were similar—doing, say, my mother's autopsy. So if that's your objection, then as you certainly know, there's another doctor in town. And Quentin Ives is a good man. But there's no sense in—"
"I don't need to be patronized b
y you," Erich snapped. "And I'll fight any desecration of my father's body."
The entrance door suddenly swung open, and Erich's brother stepped out onto the porch.
"What the devil's going on?" Konrad asked. His words were more distinct than Glynis would have expected, since the glass tumbler he held looked to be empty again.
"Nothing that concerns you," Erich told him.
"It concerns me that you're behaving like an ass, Erich." Konrad pointed toward an open parlor window. "Mother's heard this whole sorry thing from in there, and you might give some thought to her sensibilities. In any case, you can't stop Stuart from taking Father's body."
"Keep out of this, Konrad! You gave up any right to talk about sensibilities long ago. Remember, you were in this house at Father's indulgence—and you are now here at mine. But I warn you, my patience is not unlimited."
Glynis saw a shadow move behind him.
"Erich, please stop!" Helga Brant, leaning on a cane, stood just inside the doorway with her eyes fixed on her older son. "Enough has been said," she added, "and Constable Stuart is clearly determined to do as he feels necessary. Neither you nor I will likely dissuade him."
Konrad started to speak, but his mother ignored him, saying, "No, let us have no more airing of our differences." She turned again to Erich. "I have instructed the servants to assist the deputy."
Her eyes held those of her son, a long look that did not waver, and then, after motioning for Zeph to enter, she went back inside.
Erich brushed past the others and strode down the porch steps. At the edge of the brick drive, he turned back to those on the porch. "There will be no autopsy. You may be sure of it!"
He then walked rapidly toward what looked to be a carriage house and stable.
Glynis, as she turned to Cullen, caught from the corner of her eye a glimpse of Erich's wife standing just inside the doorway. Tirzah's face seemed to hold the same bitter anger as that of her husband. But anger, Glynis had learned, sometimes looked much the same as grief.
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