Talk about closing the barn door. We were almost at the twenty-four-hour mark after Cleta’s death and had spoken of it at length, as I’m sure the ladies had done among themselves.
“Merry, you first.”
As a reinforcement arrived to watch over my flock of geriatric hens, I crossed the great hall, leading Virgil to the turret room library off the dining room, which now doubled as my office. I cleared space at the oak Eastlake desk, making room for him. As he sat I pulled a chair up in front of it and sat down, too. He hid a smile at my arrangements, but I knew the drill by now. Without prompting, I started relating my afternoon. When I got to the time in question, I paused and thought hard. “I first noticed Cleta was missing at about . . . two-ish? Everyone was so relaxed and enjoying the afternoon. There was never peace when Cleta was around, or not for long, anyway. I got so used to her agitating presence that the peace felt odd.”
“Who else was not in the room at the time?”
I scanned the room in my mind. “People kind of came and went,” I said. “I can’t be sure who was where when. I was mostly trying to make sure everyone had something to do, something to eat, something to drink.” I sighed. “People kept wandering off. I felt like a border collie half the time, herding them back to the dining room. I went to the kitchen for something at one point and had to shoo out three people who just wanted a peek. It was like a tour group, for heaven’s sake.”
“What three people?”
“Elwood Fitzhugh, Helen Johnson, and . . . gosh . . . I think there was a third, but I’m not sure.”
“So not one of your folks?”
I shook my head. “Oh! It may have been Elwood’s sister Eleanor.”
“Who else disappeared at any point?” He kept jotting notes while he watched me, a skill I envied.
“Let’s see . . . Barbara didn’t look like she was feeling well and was gone for a while. That was before Cleta was missing, I think. Or there may have been some overlap. Juniper disappeared and I don’t think she ever came back. I figured she went out for a smoke.”
“She never came back?” he asking, scrawling another note while he watched my eyes.
“Not that I saw,” I said uneasily. “She doesn’t do so well with hordes of people.”
“Go on.”
That had reminded me of someone else who didn’t do so well with groups of people. “I hate to say it, but Isadore Openshaw disappeared. I never did figure out where she went, but she came back at some point.”
“And?”
I thought back. “When I noticed Cleta was gone, I went to look for her upstairs. I caught one of the ladies there, coming out of Patsy Schwartz’s room. She said she was looking for a bathroom and evidently used the one in Patsy’s room. That was definitely Eleanor, Elwood’s sister. She was kind of weird about it, and . . . Oh! She said one of the New York ladies had been upstairs. I don’t know which one, but she could probably describe her.” I shook my head. “Then I went on to Cleta’s room and checked it. She wasn’t there. I smelled cigarette smoke, but I’m not sure it was new or left from Juniper having a smoke while she cleaned the room.”
“Juniper’s the only one in the household who smokes?”
“That I know of,” I said.
“Do any of the other guests smoke?”
“I don’t know about the ones from Golden Acres. I suppose it’s possible.”
“I’ll check with my mother. What about your ladies?”
I shook my head.
Morning light streamed in the diamond-paned library window and fell on Virgil’s broad hand, holding the pen that he was making notes with. Dark hairs dusted the back and up his wrist, disappearing under his shirt cuff. “What happened then?”
“That’s about when all hell broke loose after Janice Grover dumped a pitcher of cream on Patsy Schwartz.” I related the event. “It wasn’t until Hannah asked about the bathroom that I went looking. She said she’d been trying for half an hour or more, but it was locked. That may have been three-ish?”
He jotted that down. “Okay, that gives us an end time, anyway. Maybe Hannah will remember exactly what time it was.”
“She probably will,” I said, envisioning Hannah’s jeweled pendant watch, which she always wore on a long chain. She checked it often, punctual about opening and closing the library. “Oh! While I was trying the bathroom door, Zeke said he had last seen Barbara Beakman using it, but he didn’t say what time that was.”
“But he wasn’t in the hall the whole time?”
“No, Zeke was responsible for helping the folks in when they arrived. He also helped Hannah’s parents with the wheelchair, and kept an eye on things.”
“So he would have seen if anyone pulled up outside?”
“You never know. He’s been doing some gardening, so he may have been behind the castle.” My eyes widened. “Do you mean someone could have come from outside?”
“Anything is possible.”
Better than the alternative, I thought. Better than a senior slayer sitting in my breakfast room.
Chapter Eleven
“DO YOU HAVE any idea why Miss Sanson went to the bathroom in the first place?” Virgil then asked.
“What do you mean?”
“She was . . . uh . . . fully clothed.” His cheeks turned ruddy. I hadn’t thought someone as matter-of-fact as Virgil Grace could blush, but he did. “Presumably she wasn’t in the bathroom to use the toilet,” he continued. “But why else would she be there?”
I shook my head, mystified. “I haven’t a clue.”
“Maybe some of the others will know. Just go on with your day. We’ll be here awhile.”
I stood and stared down at him, wanting to say so much . . . wanting to ask so much. Did he have a theory? Did he have a suspect in mind? But there was a distance between us that had been breached only on occasion, some few moments when I thought we were becoming friends, or maybe even something more. “Who would you like to see first?” I said, in lieu of anything more profound.
“Can you find one of my officers and send him here?” He continued jotting notes. “I’d like to have someone with me while I interview the ladies. Thank you.”
I had been dismissed. I didn’t know whether to be angry or bemused. As to his request for backup, Virgil is a careful and wise sheriff; he takes no chances on lawsuits against his office. Close to joining the FBI as a field agent when his mom became ill with breast cancer, he gave up the chance at his dream to stay in town and look after her. That was many years ago, and he had risen in his local force until he became sheriff, a popular one, as far as I knew, winning handily in the last election and looking good for the next one, in the fall.
But he’d had his challenges, locally. His marriage to the daughter of Ridley Ridge’s sheriff had gone badly, and Ben Baxter had nothing but scorn for him. I suppose that had soured Virgil on women, but there was something between us. “Any preference, or are you happy with that sarcastic Urquhart jerk you hired?” I was still stung by him hiring an Urquhart and not telling me, after all I’d been through with that clan. My eyes widened as I acknowledged the truth that had popped into my brain. So that was what I was really upset about; I wished Virgil had just given me a heads-up when he hired him.
“The sarcastic jerk will do, if you can find him,” Virgil said, eyeing me with a calm expression. “He has his faults, but he’s a good deputy, Merry. Give him a chance. I’ll have a talk with him about his attitude toward you, if you like.”
I was silent. Virgil was being more than fair and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t be wounded and miffed when he did that. “No, I don’t want him to think I’m complaining to you. I have enough problems with Minnie without that getting back to her. I’ll send in whoever I find first.”
I found an officer—not Urquhart—gave him the message, content to let them do their job. For once, it wasn’t
up to me how the ladies were taken care of. I trusted that Virgil would see that everything was done correctly. I retreated to the kitchen, my comfort zone, and made more muffins. Once Emerald and then Pish were done, they joined me. Pish was carrying a clipboard under his arm.
“The police found Juniper and she’s in with Virgil right now. I can’t believe someone killed Cleta,” he said.
I held my tongue. My true opinion would be ill-timed. I had been thinking that it was a wonder she hadn’t been murdered years ago, given her nature, but if unpleasant people were inevitably murdered, the crime rate would double. There had to be some deeper reason behind it. “What do you remember about the afternoon? In particular, everyone’s whereabouts?” I asked, taking them both in with my glance.
“I’ve been trying to reconstruct it in my mind,” Pish said, perching on one of the bar stools I had bought from Janice to sit along the high countertop. “We started at about twelve thirty, right?”
I nodded, measuring flour, using a knife to level it in the cup, then glancing over at him. “I timed it to be a good hour or so after the last church service. We had everyone seated and eating luncheon by one. I know for sure that everyone was in the dining room at that point.”
Pish placed his clipboard on the stainless steel worktop. “I’ve made a list of everyone who was at the luncheon, including those of us here at the castle,” he said.
I grated cheese for the cheddar muffins that I was making for Golden Acres to serve with their noon meal of soup. I had to get a move on, if I was going to make it there in time, I thought, glancing up at the clock. The police arriving had thrown a wrench in my scheduled timeline. Emerald started to run water in the big sink for dishes. She did the breakfast dishes, while Juniper handled them the rest of the day.
“Read them out,” I said to my friend.
Pish read them all off, and I listened intently. “You got them all,” I said, when he was done, “but did you notice that Juniper disappeared at some point? She went somewhere and never came back.”
“Where did she go?” Emerald asked.
“I have no idea.”
Pish jotted down a note. “Who else disappeared at any point?”
“Isadore, for sure. Eleanor. Patsy. Barbara.” I paused and looked over at him, as I got the gist of his questions. “Pish, I already feel like I’m skating on thin ice with Virgil. The last thing I need to do is get in his way, so . . . we’re not really investigating this.”
“Who said we’d get in his way? Why else are we talking about it if not to figure things out? Virgil will thank us.”
I sighed and shook my head. My friend is a good-looking older man, lean of face and body, longish brown hair, fastidious and tidy in habits and mind. But he has a wicked sense of humor and a gleam in his eyes that always makes me smile. Right now the mischief had been replaced by determination and it made me nervous. “Pish—”
“You didn’t have to reassure your aunt that there is not some goon out there murdering elderly women,” he said, his voice filled with emotion. He adores his aunt. “Poor Lushie is quivering in her orthopedic shoes.”
“We can talk about it, can’t we?” Emerald said to me, wiping her soapy hands on a tea towel and putting her arm over Pish’s shoulders. “We won’t do anything; we’ll just talk. It makes me nervous, too, especially with Lizzie here.”
I got where they were coming from. “Let me think about it.”
“In the meantime, we’re all adults here,” Pish said, giving me a stern look. “And we need to figure out what to say to the Legion about this.”
I had been tickled that Pish had taken to calling them by my name, the Legion of Horrible Ladies, but now it seemed kind of mean. “Okay, so offhand, who do you think is the murderer? Who snuck out after Cleta, followed her to the bathroom, taking a towel with them, and smothered her until she had a heart attack?” I said ruthlessly.
“Awful!” Pish took in a shaky breath. “How could someone do that to an old woman?”
“Or anyone,” Emerald added.
“Please forget what I just said.” I had an uneasy sense I had already broken my promise to Virgil. “I told you way more than I should have, and Virgil will have my head if he finds out. But it feels really personal to me. Like an intimate murder; someone really hated her.”
“You don’t think one of those harmless ladies had anything to do with it, do you?” Emerald asked.
I was having trouble with it, too, but I had to wonder how much strength it would take to kill Cleta the way it had been described to me. “We don’t have many options,” I said.
“But there were lots of people here,” she stubbornly said. “Could have been anyone.”
She was right about that, except it had to be someone who really wanted Cleta out of the way. Pish was jotting something down.
“What are you writing?”
“I’m dividing possible suspects into two groups with different motives, castle folk and townsfolk.”
I grudgingly admitted that they both had a point. As much as I had hoped to confine the victim and suspect to one group—the Legion of Horrible Ladies—I had to figure that there were townsfolk with whom Cleta had run-ins. “If you look at it that way, anyone who was at the castle that day could be guilty: Shilo, Jack, Juniper, Zeke . . . you two, me,” I said to Pish. “We were all wandering in and out of the dining room, and no one was watching the clock.”
He nodded without commenting on my inclusion of ourselves. “And Stoddart,” he added.
“Right. And from Golden Acres, Gogi, Hubert, Doc, and Elwood. Several of them were wandering around, snooping all over the castle. I caught Elwood’s sister upstairs coming out of Patsy’s room.”
“I remember her!” Emerald said. “She was one of the twittery ones and came on the Golden Acres bus. So she’s Elwood Fitzhugh’s sister?”
“She is. What about others from town?” I asked, moving on. I did not think Elwood’s twittery sister was a suspect, and what did it matter who was upstairs? The murder happened on the ground floor. “Who actually had a motive of sorts? Janice Grover, no comment needed after the incident at the opera, though Janice wasn’t as upset about it as I expected. Isadore? She and Cleta hated each other, but I can’t picture Isadore sneaking after her and smothering the woman. Bashing her over the head with an umbrella maybe, but not smothering.”
“I can’t picture anyone doing this!” Emerald said, plunging her hands back in the soapy water.
My memory was spotty because I was so busy, but we all agreed that there was a lot of movement as the tea tables were cleared and remade for cards. Cleta was there for the beginning of that and sat down to play, but people came and went, and some changed games, as Patsy did. Lush claimed that Cleta was one who changed tables, being banker for a game of faro.
“That’s true,” Pish said. “Vanessa wanted to try faro, so we got Cleta to our table to be banker, but it didn’t work out because neither Eleanor nor Helen knew how to play. Cleta just went back to her table then.”
Some sat out a hand as they waited to play a different game. More than one tried the bathroom on the main floor but found the door locked, Pish and Emerald both confirmed, and so went upstairs to one of the other bathrooms.
“I think Stoddart said the same thing,” Pish said. “That the downstairs bathroom was in use, so he just went up and used mine.”
As we talked Emerald finished the dishes and I got a lot done, browning cubes of beef, sautéing garlic, cubing vegetables, and uncorking red wine. Soon I had a bourguignon stew in the huge slow cooker I’d bought from Janice when the ladies had moved in. I’d get some fresh rolls from Binny’s Bakery in town. I had a pot of soup on the stove and baked fresh corn and cheddar muffins to go with it. Add some fruit for dessert, and that was lunch. “Can you serve lunch, Em, while I go on a muffin delivery?” She knew the drill: coffee, tea, and water;
milk for anyone who asked. Set the table, let them eat family style, then shoo them out and clear the table.
“Sure. But should you leave with the police here?”
“I’m not doing any good here, I’m just worrying. Pish, are you coming into town with me?”
“I am,” he said, making a few last notes. “I’m going to drop in on Isadore and talk to Simon, too.”
“Not about this,” I said as a statement, not a question.
“Of course not,” he said.
“We’ll discuss it later, though, so try to remember whatever you can, you two.” Something about the scene was in the back of my mind, something I saw, but I couldn’t think what it was. Maybe it would come to me if I left it alone.
I checked in with Virgil and he said I was free to go to Autumn Vale, but not to talk about the crime. I had one thing to do before going. I ducked out the front door and circled the castle to the butler’s pantry door, the door nearest the bathroom. There was crime scene tape across it, though it had already been searched, as much good as that would do after the scrubbing it had received from Juniper. I wondered if the outside door had been left unlocked after Hannah’s arrival? Only Zeke would know.
I paced around the end of the castle wall to the protected nook where my fledgling garden was and stared; I could not see the lane or the direct approach to the back door from that spot. Zeke had indeed been gardening, his handiwork evident in the tidy patch of cleaned-up herbs and seedling basil plants he had brought from his mom’s garden and planted for me. If he’d left the back door unlocked, then someone could have come in, suffocated Cleta, and retreated, with no one the wiser unless they looked out the right window at exactly the right time.
Even Lauda could have done it. Money or material gain is at the center of many murder cases. I went back inside in a thoughtful mood and wrote it all down on a note that I handed to a deputy to give to Virgil. It made me uneasy to consider Lauda a suspect and yet have her in the castle, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.
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