Well, maybe you had to be there.
Now, sitting next to Elizabeth, I covered my face and held my cheeks together lest the memory send me into gales of laughter again.
Afterward, mourners came forward, passed the closed casket, and shook hands with us, murmuring appropriate sentiments. I recognized Charlene, Vicki, and Wanda, but they seemed to go out of their way to avoid me. Alice identified the others for me: friends, shopkeepers, and tenants of the family-owned properties that occupied the village. Everyone accounted for. No one who didn't belong or looked even remotely like a suspect.
Coats pulled tightly around shoulders, umbrellas raised, we all trooped out to the graveyard behind the church. Someone had obligingly set out stiff black runners so we didn't have to walk on sodden grass. Brought up with Hollywood films, where it always rains during funerals, I accepted the dark clouds that dripped water like a leaky faucet. Between grey skies and all the black clothing, the scene resembled a movie shot in black and white.
The outdoor service was also mercifully brief, but due to the hats worn by the mourners and the umbrellas over their heads, I could barely see any faces, even if by looks alone I'd be able to identify someone who might have been Noreen's murderer. Then I noticed Chaz standing off to one side with three young men, presumably his band members. Their attendance surprised me, since I would have thought the ceremony too old-fashioned, too reeking of tradition, for them. Yet could one of them have been Noreen's lover? After all, Chaz had supposedly met Noreen at the club where they played. Perhaps she'd been involved with one of those men as well. Before I could question them to learn more, the four of them disappeared immediately afterward, not coming to the house for refreshments.
While I concocted a substantial lunch for myself from the sandwiches and cakes Alice and Annie had whipped up that morning, I made mental plans to go hear the band perform. The thought of becoming a "groupie" made me smile, until I discovered an elderly woman frowning at my seeming levity from across the room, and I hid the grin on my face behind a cup of tea.
* * *
Afterward, Elizabeth and I helped Alice mop the stone floors in the great hall, where visitors had left wet and muddy footprints. At two o'clock, we joined the other family members gathered at Jason's behest in the drawing room.
Jason stood behind the desk, looking like a political-cartoon senator. He cleared his throat several times, waiting for us to pull up chairs in a kind of ragged semicircle in front of him.
"As you remember," he began, "the solicitor read Uncle Edward's will a few weeks ago. Now it's my task to read his widow's final testament." He paused dramatically, looking at us over the tops of his wire-framed reading glasses.
Aunt Beryl gave a long, slow sigh, and Chaz muttered a remark, probably something cynical, under his breath.
Having caught our attention by making his pronouncement sound ominous, Jason then relaxed somewhat, and his lips curled upward. "I have the good fortune," he said, "to tell you we found no new will signed by Noreen, and, inasmuch as she died three weeks after Edward, the wills they made out together will prevail."
"What does that mean?" Aunt Alice asked.
"A clause in the original wills," he paused while he adjusted his glasses and turned pages in the legal document he held, "states that should the two parties die within thirty days of one another, they are considered to have died simultaneously. Therefore the property did not pass from Edward to Noreen after all."
I knew the concept, which no doubt grew out of times when both husband and wife were involved in an accident together, and one died mere hours or days after the other. I didn't know, however, that British wills also used such a clause.
"Do you mean," Elizabeth said, "that Noreen didn't inherit after all?"
"Precisely." Jason removed his glasses and laid them, along with the document, on the desk.
Chaz stood up. "Then who does?"
William, who I presumed had known about the outcome before the rest of us and had been sitting well back in a wing chair, legs outstretched before him, answered. "I do."
Still, his face didn't betray how he felt about it.
Chaz sat down again. "That's a rum go."
"What else is in the will?" Alice asked.
"Some small bequests to servants," Jason said, "but basically, nothing happens. We all go on as before." He smiled, pleased with himself.
From his tone, Chaz was not so pleased. "Easy for you. You like living in this mausoleum. What about me? Can't I get a little something so I can live normal-like, on my own?"
William sat up straight. "You're free to leave any time you like. You may find some employment, like Jason, to support yourself."
"Jason again. Always Jason. 'Be like Jason,'" he mimicked. "Well, I do support myself. I make as much as him, but I want my own place. It's time I had my privacy."
"You have your room," Beryl said, her voice quavering, as if she feared the exchange between her husband and younger son might erupt into violence. "And a lovely music studio besides."
Chaz vaulted from his seat, and this time he headed for the door. "Thanks for nothing."
A long silence followed his exit from the room, and I wondered if Chaz's animosity extended to Jason as well as Noreen. Jason, tight-lipped, made no comment on the altercation and gathered up the papers on the desk to put them in a folder. He'd finished his little will-reading ceremony.
As I left the drawing room, I thought of my parents having come to Uncle Edward's funeral and hearing the reading of that will, the one giving everything to Noreen. No wonder they were concerned. Even in the short time I'd been in the house, I'd learned that everyone despised her. I marveled she'd lasted three whole weeks.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I still searched for the product of my imagination, Mister X, Noreen's mythical lover who I stubbornly believed would turn out to be her murderer. Later that day I managed to corner Aunt Alice in the kitchen. I'd asked her for a photograph of Noreen the previous week, and now she held out one that had been taken immediately after Noreen's wedding to Edward.
With a backdrop of wood-paneled walls and flowers, they stood together, Edward tall, white-haired, and slender, like both his brothers. Noreen, about average height, thin almost to the point of anorexia, sported a mass of bottle-blonde hair that made her look like a pencil with a fuzzy eraser. She had large, dark eyes and a wide mouth with the full lips Hollywood stars achieved these days through surgical enhancement. She looked younger than the fiftyish person I'd expected, and I could see why she might turn a few male heads.
This being an official wedding photo, it showed other family members on either side of the bride and groom. Beryl, William, Elizabeth, and Jason stood on Edward's right, while Alice, Chaz, Elizabeth's brother Hans, and her daughter Dorothea stood next to Noreen.
I handed the picture back to Alice, and we sat across from each other at the kitchen table. "So that's Noreen. She was prettier than I imagined."
"Oh, she could be a charmer if she liked. Trouble was, once she married Edward, she no longer felt it necessary to act charming. Cut everyone dead, she did. Holed up with Edward all the time, in their rooms or in the office. Hardly spoke to us except to give orders about how she'd run things now she was mistress of Mason Hall."
"'With Edward all the time'?" I repeated. "What about the rumors she carried on with Chaz?"
Alice sighed. "Ah, well, there were the nights, weren't there? Edward falling asleep the minute the sun went down like he did. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, or the living for that matter, but she might have been having a—a to-do with Chaz. Until near the end, that is."
"And then—?" I coaxed. "What about the end?"
"She and Chaz quarreled a good bit. She avoided him, but if they met you could almost see the anger between them. At dinner their eyes threw daggers at each other."
"Do you have any idea why that happened? Did Noreen take up with another man? Uncle William thinks she did and so do Noreen's card-playi
ng friends."
"It wouldn't surprise me. With Edward asleep, Noreen and Chaz would go out to his club together. Then, after Edward died, Noreen took to going out alone. She certainly could have been meeting someone else."
"Someone she might have met at Chaz's club while his band performed?"
"Makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Do you have any idea who it might be? Did Noreen ever drop a name? Might you have overheard something when she spoke on the telephone?"
Alice glanced at the kitchen clock and got up from her chair. She took an apron from its hook and tied it around her waist. "Even if I tried to listen, it wouldn't have been possible. Noreen used her cell phone in her bedroom or in the office. With the doors closed," she added.
That apron business didn't fool me. She had eavesdropped and didn't want to admit it. I'd have done the same.
Then Annie came into the room, nodded to me, and put on her own apron, ready to begin dinner preparations. Assuming Alice wouldn't tell me what she overheard, I felt I'd learned all I could from her for the present. At least she'd confirmed my belief that Noreen probably played footsie with other men.
I'm somewhat tenacious when I decide on a course of action and often impatient, wanting everything to happen immediately. So in my plans to interrogate everyone, I mentally checked Alice off my list and went looking for Beryl. She sat in the small sitting room, watching the early newscast on television, but she obligingly turned it off when I came in.
"Dreadful stuff," she said. "I don't know why I bother to watch. It seems as if good news is no longer news, just the bad. Is it that way in the States?"
"Worse. In spite of that, the broadcasts get longer every year." I'd long since stopped watching local news completely.
I sat next to her on the sofa. Although designated "the small sitting room," it easily dwarfed my living room at home, with a floral-print sofa between end tables, three side chairs, a coffee table, a television set in a large walnut cabinet, and a secretary in a corner.
"I didn't mean to interrupt you," I said.
"Not at all. I've been feeling rather embarrassed that I haven't been more attentive during your visit. This is a very busy time for me. Autumn, you know, when people begin to do things again after a leisurely summer." She patted her steel-gray hair, every wavy strand glued in place from a recent visit to the beauty parlor. "And then I assumed Elizabeth would be entertaining you."
"She has," I assured her, "except school begins soon, and she has had to spend time preparing for that."
"Oh yes, of course." She frowned. "Dear me. We haven't neglected you, have we? Left you too much on your own?"
"No, please don't think about it. I'm having a lovely time." I smiled in emphasis. "With all that's happened, I don't blame you for being preoccupied."
"Still, I don't like to think we've been inhospitable. Is there anything special you wanted to do?"
"No, not really." I paused, and then as if suddenly remembering something, I began my quest for information. "However since you ask, there is something, if you don't mind."
She looked at me expectantly, so I continued. "It has to do with Noreen."
Beryl's expression changed immediately, and I could almost feel the animosity. "What about Noreen?" Her tone could have caused an ice storm on Waikiki.
"She seems to have been generally disliked by the other family members. Not that she didn't deserve their disdain. At least, so it appears," I added.
Beryl looked down and plucked at a fold in her skirt. Like me, she still wore the black dress she'd worn to the funeral, but hers extended to mid-calf, had a high neck, and both a collar and long sleeves. "I believe in being charitable toward others—"
I sensed her pause didn't mean she'd ended. "But?"
"—but she made it rather difficult to like her."
"In what ways?"
"From the very start, when Chaz brought her to dinner, I could see she was, well, no better than she should be."
"Would you call her a—" I searched for the right words, "—a 'loose woman'?"
"She had a certain, er, personality not attractive to women, at least certainly not to me, but men… Well, you know how men are."
I wanted to say "horny" but restrained myself. "Do you think she might have been unfaithful to Edward?"
She paused again, apparently fighting a battle between her desire to speak ill of the woman and her genteel upbringing, which forbade such behavior. "I really couldn't comment."
"Uncle William is quite certain she not only had an affair with Chaz—"
At this point, Beryl's voice dropped but revealed a hard quality I'd never heard before. "She…she…threw herself at him. Chaz…so young, naive…"
Chaz naive? Not in my book. Yet I let her continue.
As if she'd been waiting a long time to tell the truth, Beryl threw discretion to the wind. Her voice became louder. She plucked angrily at her skirt. "She flirted with him, seduced him. Like a tornado, or an army of locusts destroying everything in its path."
"So, in your opinion, she could have been seeing someone else."
Beryl went on as if she hadn't heard me. "She formed a plot to get Edward's money. She used Chaz, persuaded him to bring her here and then manipulated Edward into marriage. The man didn't know what he was doing. We all warned him, but he wouldn't listen."
I took Beryl's hand, which felt hot and damp, in mine, and she finally turned and looked at me. The fire left her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have…"
"I understand. I'm sure it must have been very painful for you." I tried to get back to my original question. "Do you think Noreen had another lover, someone she might have met at Chaz's club, even before Chaz?"
She remained silent for a time, breathing more slowly, collecting her thoughts. "I suppose she might have done. Not before Edward died, I shouldn't think. She wouldn't have risked his divorcing her but after, yes."
"It seems to have turned out all right after all, because the family fortune is still intact."
"Yes, she's dead now. It's all over." Beryl pulled her hand from mine and again twisted the fabric of her dress as if strangling it, once more speaking her thoughts aloud. "She seduced Chaz, then Edward, even Jason…"
Jason? Stunned, I didn't hear her next words. So far no one, including Jason, had even hinted he ever had anything but contempt for Noreen.
Beryl's voice turned low again, and I could barely hear the words. "She was a very wicked woman."
My thoughts raced around like a mouse in a maze. Did Jason have an affair with her too? Furthermore, did she then dump him for Mister X? If so, that would give him one more reason to hate her. Not only did he suspect she tried to steal from the family, she'd made a fool of him.
I looked over at Beryl and saw she'd calmed down again, but for a few minutes she'd let her anger show. Justifiable anger. Noreen had seduced both Beryl's sons, and no amount of British reserve could totally hide her hatred.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dinnertime arrived, giving me little time to think about what Beryl said, but I realized Jason now had an additional motive to want to do away with Noreen. So did Beryl, for that matter. Okay, she was short and elderly, but she could have done it. How much strength does it take to strike an inebriated woman on the head with a rock and push her under the water to drown? However, I still preferred not to think any family member had committed the murder, and I brushed those thoughts aside. Mister X had done it, and I would find him and solve the mystery.
My plan had been to approach Jason next, but under the circumstances, I decided not to. If she had dumped him for the other man, he would be embarrassed to be questioned about Noreen's possibly having a lover. I didn't want to embarrass him. Instead, I moved on to Elizabeth and Chaz, planning to query two birds in one night.
"I haven't seen you much lately," I said to Elizabeth at dinner, hoping to work on any possible guilt she might be feeling for neglecting me. "I hoped we might spend some time together this eveni
ng."
She answered quickly. "Of course. What would you like to do?"
"I thought we might go to Chaz's club and hear his band perform."
Chaz turned and grinned at me. "Jolly good. We'll run out the welcome mat for you."
The promise of red-carpet treatment apparently meant nothing to Elizabeth. Her face flushed, her forehead puckered into a frown, and her mouth turned down at the corners. After a few seconds' pause, she managed, "Really?"
Beryl spoke up. "What a good idea. You young people probably enjoy such music. When I was your age, I liked the popular singers, Vera Lynn and Frank Sinatra."
I didn't tell her that, as a teenager, I secretly listened to my mother's albums in addition to rock and roll. I remembered breaking up with a boyfriend and listening to Sinatra's album, Only the Lonely, after school. Every song seemed written just for me, and I left the album covers splattered with tearstains.
Now, however, I tried to convince Elizabeth that Chaz's music would be exactly what we needed. "Come on, it'll be fun. We need a night on the town, and I've bought a new dress I'd like to try out."
She didn't give in gracefully, but she did give in, probably didn't want to seem churlish in front of the others. So, immediately after dessert, I returned to my room and put on the slinky black number. The neckline revealed rather more cleavage than I remembered when I tried it on in the shop, but I reasoned cleavage was "in," and I'd have no other chance to wear the dress anyway. Plus, I didn't want to have spent all that money for nothing.
After putting on my one pair of heels, I knocked on Elizabeth's door. She called to me to come in, and I found her sitting on the edge of her bed, still in the black dress with long sleeves and high neckline she'd worn to the funeral.
"You're not going to wear that?"
"I'm not going. Please don't ask me."
"Why not? And don't tell me it's because of the music they play. I'm sure you grew up on something very much like it."
Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) Page 11