The Case of the Fallen Hero (An Inspector David Graham Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Alison Golden

  Harding spotted the magic word. “You mean to say… Did you have one eye on George’s inheritance? Even at that age?”

  Graham glared at her, very worried that she’d both spoken out of turn and had risked grievously insulting someone who, though stubborn and decidedly odd around the edges, was well-placed to be extremely helpful.

  Harding continued. “His family owned land and property in England and in France. They were successful. And everything they had would go to George and his sister.”

  Graham was stunned. You’ve got, Graham thought through the numbed haze of confusion, to be kidding me. “He was a boy… Hardly a teenager,” Graham couldn’t help pointing out. “And he’d just lost his parents in the most tragic way.”

  “But you saw an opportunity,” Harding directed her statement to Juliette. It was a summary of the diabolical machinations of which she seemed more than capable.

  “It was a way out,” Juliette confessed. “He was good looking, a nice boy. I would have to wait for a few years but not too many. I was patient. We were friends already. It was just a matter of choosing the right moment to become more than friends.”

  DI David Graham had dealt with drug dealers, domestic abusers, tax fraudsters, and crooked businessmen, but this simply took the cake. It was breathtaking for its brazen, heedless, obsessive focus on Juliette’s own wellbeing at the expense of another. George and his feelings existed solely to be manipulated for her benefit.

  Graham and Harding exchanged another glance. “That’s quite…” Harding began, but stopped.

  “Calculating,” Graham contributed.

  “Yes,” Harding said. “Quite so. Calculating. But you left him. What happened to your master plan?”

  “I miscalculated,” Juliette glared at them. “George did not have ready cash, and he wasn’t ambitious. He refused to sell his property. He said they were investments, and besides, they had sentimental value.” The disdain dripped off her.

  “Does your daughter stand to gain from her father’s death?”

  Juliette’s expression brightened fleetingly but quickly settled back into a mask of disinterest. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  They were all quiet for a moment, deep in thought.

  “So do you know who killed him?” Juliette said, interrupting the silence and stubbing out the cigarette. “Because if you don’t, then you’re only playing at being police,” she said testily. “Just pretending.”

  In a sudden surge of anger, Graham wondered, just for a quarter of a second, whether he could arrest someone simply for smoking during a police interview. He was absolutely dying to put a set of handcuffs on this snide, horrid woman and drag her down to the station. But he couldn’t, and his lack of a ready response to her pernicious evil gnawed at him.

  “Thank you for your time,” he said instead, and stood. Juliette merely turned to look out the window. She did not watch them leave.

  Again, Graham escorted Harding quickly down the hallway before she could say anything that Juliette or other guests might hear. In the lobby, Graham stopped and then paced around briefly, gathering his thoughts. Or perhaps just letting his temper cool a little.

  “What,” Harding offered, “a piece of work.”

  “Grooming a grieving teenager for marriage,” Graham summed up. “All so that she could get a piece of his dead parents’ estate.” He found himself staggered, yet again, by the seemingly diabolical, selfish, greedy behavior in members of his own species.

  “But she didn’t break any laws that I know of,” Harding argued. “At least not English law.”

  “It’d be heartening to think,” Graham replied, “that somewhere in some old, thick, French statute book there might be a Draconian edict that promises lethal punishment for being a complete she-devil.”

  Harding steered her boss into the quietest part of the lobby. “Don’t let her get under your skin, sir.”

  “I don’t know, Sergeant,” Graham breathed. “These cases… with families hating each other, conspiring against each other… They get to me. I’m sorry,” he said genuinely.

  “Want to take a walk?” Harding offered.

  Graham was about to agree, certain that the evening sea air would do him some good, especially after the intense pollution of Juliette’s room, but a pair of figures caught his eye. They were moving rapidly through the lobby. Scuttling through it, in fact. The air of guilt around them and obvious desire for stealth were not lost on Graham, whose radar for such things was unerring.

  “Monsieur and Madame Joubert,” Graham said loudly, as if announcing their arrival – rather than their hurried, furtive departure – to the whole hotel. “What an unexpected surprise. I imagine you’re heading out for dinner in Gorey?”

  The two stopped in their tracks but did not turn to face Graham. At her reception desk, Mrs. Taylor appeared and stared at the retreating couple and then at DI Graham. Her face told the whole story: please don’t make a scene.

  “No, it seems not,” the DI said, answering his own question with unconcealed relish. “In fact, it seems as though you’re leaving Jersey.” Neither of the Jouberts let go of the suitcases they were pulling behind them. “And doing so against the strict instructions of the Gorey Constabulary.”

  Mathilde finally turned and glowered at Graham. “And what is the problem? Why can we not come and go as we please? We are French citizens, under the protection of the European Union…”

  “You cannot return to France because,” Graham said, in that same annunciatory tone, “you are persons of interest assisting us with our inquiry.”

  There was complete silence in the lobby. People stopped chatting, put down their early evening drinks with a soft ping or a gentle clunk, and then simply gawked at this remarkable scene. “And as such, the only place you are free to return to is your room. Now, please leave your luggage behind and accompany Sergeant Harding and myself.”

  Mathilde gave Graham a look that could kill. “To where, exactly?” she asked defiantly. Antoine had kept silent, Harding noticed, clearly deeply ashamed to have been caught trying to skip town quite so publicly.

  Graham took five paces toward the couple, his gaze fixed on them. “To where this all began. To where,” Graham said, his fists balled, “I will find some answers.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THEY SAT IN the far corner of the strange storage room, leaning against a large crate which remained unopened. The quartet had been very keen to lever open each and every container, but Emily had put a stop to their “crowbar rampage,” as Harry had styled it. She and Marina had dozed fitfully but were now awake. They had shuffled away a few feet so as not to disturb Harry and Leo who slept more soundly. Soft snoring echoed around the chamber.

  “What about some kind of tie-in between the art,” Marina was wondering aloud, distracting herself to avoid a repetition of her earlier panicked hissy fit, “and the string quartets of the time?”

  “Hmm?” Emily asked.

  “You know, performing quartets by Jewish composers who were forced to flee the Reich. Or maybe stuff by the Second Viennese School.” The challenging music of the three greats of serialism – a concept in which all twelve notes of the octave carried equal weight and were freed from the conventions of major and minor keys – wasn’t a standard part of the quartet’s repertoire, but the idea did catch Emily’s attention.

  “I like the Berg Lyric Suite,” she confessed. “Though it’s been recorded to death.”

  “Sure, but never with the benefit,” Marina pointed out, “of being associated with a host of recently discovered artwork. Found,” she added with a raised finger, “by the quartet themselves.”

  Emily let her imagination run riot for a moment. “How about a coffee-table book about the art, with an accompanying CD of relevant works?”

  “I love it,” Marina enthused. “We could call it ‘Exposure’ or something else nice and modern.”

  “Great,” Emily agreed. She shifted a little. The packing material they had assembl
ed was reasonably comfortable, but she was still going numb. “Some wouldn’t,” she allowed, “but I, for one, kind of like how you’re turning this into a commercial opportunity right from the outset. We could use a break.”

  “Right!” Marina replied brightly. “This could be huge for us. And that’s before we get into finder’s fees and all that.”

  The thought had occurred to Emily, but she’d put it aside.

  “Whatever happens,” Emily replied, “it should be equal between the four of us. I mean, Leo made the discovery by opening that door and later identifying the art. I didn’t even know who Franz Lipp was, never mind his history and artistic style. But we were the ones who followed Leo in here and helped get him over that pile.”

  “We’re also the ones stuck down here wondering if we’re ever going to get out,” Marina grumbled before remembering her earlier resolution. “I can’t wait to get out of here and tell the world about this place. It’s going to be… Well, I have no idea what it’s going to be like,” she added more cheerily.

  “Me neither,” Emily said. “Like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.”

  Marina was thoughtful for a moment. Emily guessed she was imagining a bright future where she might not have to scrabble around for gigs and students, imagining instead the luxury of picking and choosing the projects she would be involved in. She was happy to let her have her daydreams. And join her in them. The alternative, trapped down there in the damp and the dark, was certainly not worth thinking about. Then Marina said, “You think one of us should check on Leo?”

  Emily shifted again. She was losing the feeling in one foot. “Harry’s over there with him. I think he’ll be okay.” Emily paused for a moment, “How’re you getting along with Harry these days, Marina?” The fling between Harry and Marina had made things difficult for all of them for a while.

  “We’re fine,” Marina replied. “Don’t you think so? We’re not affecting the group, are we?”

  “No, I guess not.” Emily murmured. They sat in silence for a while. “But you kind of are, really,” she resumed, much more quietly. Something in Emily wouldn’t let it go.

  “What? How? I don’t think so.”

  “But… It’s just that…” Emily began. “You know, I’ve had… You know…”

  “Feelings for him?”

  Emily cringed but accepted the truth. “Yes. For years now. Almost since the beginning.”

  Marina thought it through. “Please don’t tell me that’s why you’ve never married,” she replied. “That you were waiting around for him.”

  Emily blushed deeply in the dark.

  “Good God, Emily, if you’re in love with Harry, why don’t you simply tell him?” Marina said this just a little too loudly. The echo sent her question reverberating around the chamber.

  Grimacing and hoping like never before that both Leo and Harry were genuinely asleep, Emily let the echo peter out and then said, much more quietly, “Because I know that it’s not me he wants.”

  Marina sighed. “He and I went down that road. It didn’t work out.”

  “Yes you did, and no, it didn’t. But I know that Harry would give anything to be with you. It was just a timing issue.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “It’s true! He’s…”

  “Maybe,” came a voice, “Harry might like to decide for himself what he wants.”

  Oh, bugger.

  “I’m so sorry, Harry…” Emily started to apologize. “You weren’t meant to hear that.”

  “I heard,” he said, struggling up off the ground. He was stood ten feet away, arms folded. “I heard everything, and I want you both to know something.”

  Neither woman knew what to say. “What?” Marina tried.

  “I’ve been in love with Emily since I was nineteen,” Harry admitted for the first time. “That has never changed.”

  The silence was complete.

  “But you know why I’ve never told you? Why I haven’t even asked you out, all these years?”

  Stumbling over the words, Emily said, “I don’t know, Harry. I had no idea…”

  “Because you were already in love,” Harry said. “And so completely, so publicly. There was never even a hope for me.”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean? I’ve never so much as…”

  “Schubert,” he said, and then ticked the names off his fingers. “And Beethoven, and Mozart, and Haydn. You idolize them. There’s hardly room in your life for a cat, or your students, let alone a big, bearded cellist like me. I’d have been competing with a room full of dead geniuses.”

  “But,” Emily began and then stopped. There was no way to refute him. She lived and breathed music – especially the classical string quartets – so much so that she thought about little else. It was the sign of a dedicated professional, she would argue. But it was also the sign of an obsessive, a musician so enamored of her heroes that good romantic prospects and all of her life came and went without her even noticing. Perhaps too, it was a means of distracting herself from what, or who, she really wanted but believed she couldn’t have.

  Emily suddenly seemed fragile, uncertain, and painfully shy. It was not a side of her any of them had seen before. She hesitated, momentarily lost for words. “I didn’t know. It’s not fair to have kept that from me all this time.”

  “What would you have done if I hadn’t?” Harry asked, still standing, arms folded.

  Emily considered this for a brief moment, but it was a decision she’d taken years before. “I’d have said yes, you idiot. I’d have said yes in a heartbeat.”

  Marina sighed. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  A weak but jocular voice came from the other side of the room. “About bloody time, too,” Leo contributed.

  “Enough,” Emily chided. Harry was by her side now, an arm around her as they sat together on the pile of old Nazi curtains and sheets.

  Marina made herself scarce, “I think I’ll open a crate to mark the occasion.”

  “That’s a good idea!” Leo called. “Let me know what you find.”

  Marina went to him and saw that he was pale but conscious and seemingly in good spirits. “How you doing, champ?”

  “Oh, just basking in the reflective, beatific light of someone else’s new romance,” he said. “I have to say I’m fractionally jealous, but it’s been a long time coming.”

  “Jealous of whom?” Marina asked, wondering if some new admission of long-hidden, secret desire was on the horizon.

  “Of anyone who can keep a steady relationship together,” Leo admitted. “I’m bloody hopeless in that department.”

  “But not bad at all,” Marina said, “when it comes to identifying stolen art.”

  “Sure,” he chuckled. “And what a terrific bulwark against loneliness in my old age that’s going to be.”

  Marina shone her phone around the room, looking for a suitably large crate to open, but scrupulously ignoring the corner where Harry and Emily were now alone in the dark. Good luck to them, Marina thought. She huffed and put the thought aside. Picking up the crowbar they’d found and weighing it in her hands, she selected her crate, a big one with that typically Nazi writing on the side. “Okay,” she said to the room. “Cover me. I’m going in.”

  CHAPTER 15

  IN THE DAYLIGHT, the battlements of Gorey castle afforded views of the island of Jersey and the English Channel unachievable from anywhere else. Its position, high atop the only major prominence on this part of the island, was the very definition of “commanding.” It would have taken a major armed force weeks to successfully capture the place and certainly at incalculable cost. But now, in the dark of a clear night, Graham looked out over the lights of Gorey and the boats in the harbor and reminded himself that they were not here to take in the sights or indulge in historical musings.

  Large, powerful floodlights added drama as well as illumination to the scene. Graham gathered his thoughts, walking around the battlements for several minutes while the ac
tors in this particular piece of theater were brought together by Sergeant Harding. Rounding them all up and insisting that they accompany her to the crime scene had taken time, presenting yet another point of confusion for Harding on this extraordinary day. There was almost the sense, she judged as she shepherded the Jouberts and Eleanor Ross en masse up the spiral staircase and through the narrow passageways to the battlements, that they didn’t want the puzzle of George’s death to be solved. Or perhaps one or more of them knew full well there was a murderer among their number and were fighting to keep it a secret.

  Whatever the truth was, she knew DI Graham would get to the bottom of it. Or at least she hoped so. This case, only twelve hours old but relentless and intense, was already taking its toll on her, and she yearned for the comparatively quiet times they had enjoyed before George Ross’ untimely fall.

  Graham returned, looking surprisingly energetic as he paced quickly along the ancient stonework. “Good evening, everyone, and thank you for coming.” Harding admired his confidence, his way of speaking to a group of people; not superior, or smug, and not like a lecturer or teacher. No, his was the style of a consummate investigator, someone dedicated to discovering the truth from those who would prefer that it remain hidden. As she knew from his performance on the terrace at the White House Inn six weeks earlier, he was a master in just this kind of situation. It was thrilling to watch.

  The response to Graham’s greeting was a collective rendition of that blasted Gallic shrug.

  “Is this strictly legal?” Juliette asked.

  “We made a request, and you kindly obliged,” Graham told her. “None of you are under arrest.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Yet.”

  Antoine and Mathilde Joubert stood stoically while Juliette leaned on one hip insouciantly, her arms folded around her waist. Eleanor Ross brought up the rear. She found her way to the front to see what was going on and peered briefly over the battlements. “Whoa,” she moaned nauseously. After a pause, she crumpled slightly, “Poor George.”