Luke came out of the library to find Pete in the hall looking for him. ‘Hey, boss. We found something outside. Come and look.’
Luke shrugged into his sheepskin jacket and followed Pete outside. His deputy led the way around the west side of the house to the library windows. He pointed into the shrubbery under the small, working window around the corner from the fixed windows of the bay.
Nestled deep in the green needles was a tiny bottle.
Luke turned with his hand held out and, smooth as any OR nurse, Pete handed him a latex glove. Luke snapped it on and reached into the bush.
‘There you are, you little beauty,’ he murmured to the bottle. It was amber glass, about two inches high and half an inch wide, with a neck threaded for a cap, but the cap was missing. Luke held the bottle up to the light – empty. He brought it close to his nose, not right under, and wafted the vapors toward him with his ungloved left hand. A slight smell of bitter almonds met his nostrils.
Cyanide.
He thought back over Cruella’s dying moments. The way her face was flushed, the vomiting and gasping for breath – all consistent with cyanide poisoning.
‘I believe we have our murder weapon. Bag this and keep looking for the cap. Lab may have a hard time finding enough in the bottle to test. Oh, and be sure you print it before you send it off.’ Chances were the murderer had handled the bottle with gloves on, but you never could tell. Some killers were so arrogant, so sure of not being caught, they didn’t bother.
Luke shivered – the temperature was still below freezing, and he hadn’t taken time to button up his coat. He walked around the bay window to the French doors and entered the library.
Emily looked up from her reading, startled. ‘Luke! Don’t scare me like that. We’re all prone to seeing monsters in the shadows right now.’
‘Sorry.’ He moved to the fire, took off his coat, and draped it over a chair. ‘Pete’s made a discovery.’
‘Oh?’
‘Little amber vial in the shrubbery right outside that window.’ He pointed across the room to where the bar shelf stood beside the window. ‘Smells like cyanide.’
Emily stared. ‘But that means—’
‘Yup. It was planned.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘I just talked to Dustin about him posting his plans on Facebook. I would swear in a court of law it had never occurred to him Cruella might see that and follow him.’ She looked up at him. ‘So where does that leave us?’
Luke frowned, hands on hips. His feeling of triumph at finding the bottle evaporated. ‘That leaves us right back at square one.’
Emily wrapped her shawl tighter and shivered. ‘There has to be something behind all this that we haven’t seen yet. It really is like a Christie novel – layers on layers of connections and motivations.’ One corner of her mouth went up in a wry smile. ‘Any minute now, we’re going to find out that somebody is somebody else’s unacknowledged child. Christie used that trope at least a hundred times.’
She screwed up her eyes a minute, facing the bay window, then spun toward him, grinning. ‘What do you want to bet it’s Dustin and Cruella? She abandoned him as a baby and he’s hated her ever since.’
He barked a laugh. ‘Gotta admit, there is a family resemblance there. Almost want to say two people that obnoxious in the same part of the world have got to be related.’
‘They’d get the Dysfunctional Family of the Year award, for sure.’
They shared a good laugh over that, and Luke reflected he couldn’t remember when they’d last laughed together that way. What kind of crazy relationship did they have that it took a murder investigation to break down the walls between them?
At Luke’s request, Emily coaxed all the guests down to the dining room for lunch – even Dustin, who had breakfasted barely an hour before. ‘I want to see how they all interact,’ Luke said. ‘See if I can figure out who Oscar’s so afraid of, for one.’
Emily was quite curious about that herself. She lured them all with the promise of a delectable hot lunch that would cool and spoil if carried to their rooms, augmented by the argument that keeping themselves isolated would only add to the tension in the atmosphere. Fears and suspicions might dissipate in the open air of fellowship.
Ian seemed relieved to be asked; Oscar was only a little hesitant, and Olivia demurred merely because she needed time to dress. She said she had managed to get a little sleep after the chamomile tea and her talk with Emily, and she felt almost human again. Dustin was truculent, as always, but put up no serious fight.
Luke had suggested they keep the conversation neutral, so Emily started off by asking what good books each person had read lately. That was a topic guaranteed to be popular among writers – except Dustin, who apparently did not read as much as he watched TV.
‘I’ve started reading Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians,’ Ian said cheerfully. ‘Quite an extraordinary book, really. Haven’t read it since I was a boy. Of course, now the title is And Then There Were None. They changed it because the reference to Indians wasn’t considered PC.’
‘Isn’t that the one where ten people are stuck on an island and they all get killed off one by one?’ Emily said. Then she heard a fork clatter and glanced across the table to see Oscar white and staring. Oh dear. Not the best topic of conversation.
‘Completely unrealistic, of course,’ she went on. ‘That could never happen in real life. I mean, these days people wouldn’t simply accept an invitation to a remote island from a stranger without checking into it first.’
That remark did not improve the situation. Windy Corner might not be on an island, but it was fairly remote, and the weather had cut it off as effectively as the sea could do. And Emily had been a stranger to all of them except Marguerite before they came.
She tried another save. ‘My favorite Christie novel is Orient Express. Kind of an opposite situation – twelve people killing one man instead of one killing ten.’
Oscar’s color began to return. ‘An unofficial jury, judge, and executioner, as I recall,’ he said, apparently determined to act normally.
‘Yes. They claim they’re remedying a miscarriage of justice, and Poirot ends up agreeing with them. But it always sounded more like revenge to me.’ She turned to Luke. ‘What do you think? Is private justice ever allowable? If official justice fails?’
Luke shook his head. ‘That’s a dangerous precedent. Once you allow something like that, you’ve got vigilantism, people deciding for themselves what’s justice and what isn’t. Not everybody’s qualified to do that. ’Specially not people who are emotionally involved.’
‘Load of crap,’ Dustin muttered. ‘Justice system’s all screwed up. No protection for the average citizen.’
But Olivia, who might have had ample reason to feel the same, said, ‘I think I agree with you, Lieutenant. Justice is for the state to administer. The individual must strive for forgiveness.’ She looked up, directly into Ian’s eyes, with something like an appeal. ‘That is the only way to find peace.’
He smiled at her and pressed her hand. ‘You speak like a saint, as always, my dear. For some of us, forgiveness is not so easy.’ He sighed deeply. ‘And yet we must try.’
‘Forgiveness is easier when we understand why the person acted as he did,’ Emily said. ‘At least, that’s how it’s always been for me.’ She had harbored resentment against her father for years, until she began to understand that his grief over her mother’s death had undone the last strings of manliness left in him. His spiral into alcoholism, his failure to care properly for his children, even his early death when Emily was twenty, could all be traced to that grief, exacerbated by the guilt of believing he had driven his wife to her grave.
‘True,’ said Ian. ‘But you have to admit that some people’s behavior is nearly impossible to understand.’
‘It can usually be traced to early influences, I think – sometimes so subtle the person isn’t even aware of them and thus cannot enlighten anyone else. It seems to me, w
hen people act badly, it’s nearly always because they have never felt truly loved.’
Ian shook his head. ‘Maybe. But I can’t help thinking certain people are simply and irredeemably bad.’
‘People can choose evil, certainly. And in doing so, ultimately put themselves beyond the possibility of redemption.’ Emily noticed the other faces around the table were looking either blank or uncomfortable. This conversation was getting awfully deep for the lunch table.
She turned to Luke. ‘Do you have any updates for us?’
‘Not about the investigation. I have heard a weather report, though – looks like it’ll probably thaw tomorrow. Then we’ll be able to get stuff off to the lab.’
‘Thank God,’ Ian said. ‘The sooner this whole thing gets resolved, the better.’ He reached over and pressed Olivia’s hand.
‘Amen to that,’ she said.
EIGHTEEN
After lunch, Emily reluctantly returned to her perusal of Cruella’s oeuvre. Within a couple of hours she hit pay dirt – ‘dirt’ being the operative word – with that first book of Cruella’s, Quandary on Queer Street. This one was set in England, and the title was a pun – ‘Queer Street’ being British slang for a difficult situation, but also ‘queer’ in the outmoded, politically incorrect sense of ‘homosexual’. The purportedly true story – in which, as Luke had predicted, the names had been changed to protect the author from lawsuits – involved the suspicious death of a gay man. The strong implication, though it lacked any sort of proof, was that the man’s surviving partner had killed him. And that surviving partner bore an unmistakable resemblance to Hilary.
It seemed an almost incredible coincidence that Hilary’s and Cruella’s paths could have crossed before, but then everything about this case was incredible. Emily couldn’t dismiss the possibility on that basis. She could not believe Hilary capable of murder – either of a partner or of Cruella. But if she was honest with herself, she had to admit the only reason for her disbelief was their friendship. Unlike the timid and flippant Devon, Hilary had a core as hard as diamond – combined with an unusually cool head.
She tracked Luke down in Cruella’s room, where he was going through her things one more time, hoping to find something of significance his deputies might have missed.
‘I think I’ve found something.’ She explained the book’s plot and the possibility of Hilary’s involvement.
Luke whistled through his teeth. ‘Time to talk to our friend Hilary,’ he said. ‘Obviously he wasn’t convicted of murder in a court of law, but after a slam like this, he could easily have been convicted in the court of popular opinion. Sounds like something that could make a fellow contemplate revenge.’
‘If he really was the target,’ Emily put in. ‘I mean, Hilary stands out in a place like Stony Beach, but within the British gay community he may not be all that distinctive. The resemblance could be accidental. And we know nothing about his history. I’ve always had the impression he and Devon have been together a long time.’
‘Same here, but it’s only an impression, right? Neither of them’s ever said so straight out, have they?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Besides, what’s the pub date on that book?’
Emily stared at the e-reader in her hand. ‘No idea.’
Luke took it from her and made mysterious passes over it with his hand. ‘Two thousand and one. So it could be him, and he and Devon could have gotten together after that – that’d still give them fifteen-plus years. That’s enough to give the impression of an old married couple.’
Emily quailed internally. ‘I really don’t want to believe it. But I guess we have to talk to him.’
Luke raised one eyebrow at her. ‘We?’
Oh, right, she wasn’t an official detective. ‘Could I be present, please? I promise I won’t do anything to throw things off. He might be more comfortable talking to me.’
‘Just one of the girls, huh? All right, we can do that. It’ll have to wait for a thaw, though.’ He glanced out the window at the ice glinting on the bare branches in the last rays of the setting sun. ‘Have to be pretty darn urgent to drag me out on those slick roads tonight. A fifteen-year-old story can keep till tomorrow.’
Emily spent another sleepless night and woke groggy and disoriented. Even several cups of coffee didn’t help to clear her brain. This would never do – she needed all her wits about her until this case was solved. She’d have to call Sam Griffiths and ask for a prescription for Ambien, which she’d used in past times of stress without ill effect. In the ordinary way Emily avoided drugs as much as possible, but this was not the ordinary way.
The thaw arrived as promised once the sun was fully up. Emily herself had no desire to stir outside; slush was not her preferred element. But she could sense her guests getting antsy – especially Dustin. He paced through the downstairs rooms, pausing at every window and jingling the keys in his pocket.
Eventually he confronted Luke head-on in the hall as Emily watched from the dining room, sipping her third cup of coffee. ‘I need to get out of here,’ he said. ‘I’ve got responsibilities to get back to. You can’t keep me here.’
Luke stood before him, unflappable as usual. ‘As a matter of fact, I can. And didn’t you plan to be down here till New Year’s anyway? I think your responsibilities can wait till we get this murder solved.’
Dustin spluttered and blustered, and finally Luke said, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to hand over your car keys until I say you can go.’
At that Dustin’s face turned so red Emily feared he would burst like an overripe tomato. ‘What? No way! You can’t do that. I have my rights!’
Luke stood there with his hand out, not saying a word. In the end Dustin ran out of bluster and dropped his keys into Luke’s hand. Then he stomped into his room, slammed the door, and did not reappear until lunchtime.
It really was too bad Luke had to detain him. Emily would have been so happy to see him go.
A van arrived mid-morning to carry Cruella’s body off to the morgue for a post-mortem. Emily was relieved, both to have the body gone and to be one step closer to knowing for certain what killed her, so the investigation could proceed on solid ground.
‘I need to go into the main office for a while,’ Luke told Emily when the van was gone. ‘I’ll leave Pete here to make sure everybody behaves. But I need to take all the evidence to the lab and get it tested for cyanide or whatever. And hand over Cruella’s phone and computer to the tech guys and make sure they crack them right away. I’ll pick up Hilary on my way back.’
Emily nodded, her heart misgiving her. Her head believed what she had said to Oscar – that whoever had killed Cruella was unlikely to kill again – but the removal of Luke’s personal protection, even for a few hours, left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. Pete was a powerful young man – six-four and built like a football player – and he knew his job, but he wasn’t Luke.
‘Can you do me a favor while you’re out? Sam called in a prescription for me. Could you pick it up?’
‘Sure thing.’ He frowned. ‘You not feeling well?’
‘Nothing serious. Just having trouble sleeping. She’s giving me some Ambien.’
Oscar descended the last stair as she shut the door behind Luke. ‘Good morning,’ he said, not sounding as if he found it particularly good.
‘Didn’t you sleep well either?’ Emily asked.
Oscar shook his head. ‘I heard you tell Luke about that prescription. I may need to borrow some, if you don’t mind.’
‘No problem.’ Emily wasn’t in the habit of sharing prescriptions, but Ambien seemed to be doled out like candy these days, so it probably couldn’t hurt.
Jamie came in as Oscar moved on to the dining room. ‘I have to go into the office,’ he said. ‘I wanted to thank you for everything.’
‘For getting you involved in another murder investigation?’ she said wryly. ‘You’re welcome. Any time.’
He waved a dismissive hand
. ‘It was a great Christmas up till then. And I hate to leave. I’ve been taking care of Lizzie while Katie was busy over here, and she’s so much more fun than deeds and trusts and wills. But if I don’t take care of the deeds and trusts and wills, I’ll never be able to afford to get married, so I’d better get back.’
Emily gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘You know you’re welcome here any time. And you must absolutely come for Twelfth Night.’ Emily was planning an Epiphany celebration at the end of the twelve days of Christmas – all the more reason to pray the investigation would be satisfactorily concluded by that time.
‘I wouldn’t miss it.’ He flashed his shy grin at her and was gone.
All the writers kept to their rooms – even Marguerite, who was writing a paper for an academic journal – and Emily was left to herself in the library with the cats. Ordinarily she would have been perfectly content in that state, but recent events had left her restless. Returning to her Dostoevsky work was hopeless in her current mood; she couldn’t even settle to reading or knitting. Thank God she’d found what she was looking for in Cruella’s books and didn’t need to subject herself to any more of that filth. For another person involved in the case to be a victim of Cruella’s ‘journalism’ as well as Hilary would be more of a coincidence than Emily could swallow.
Then she remembered the task the arrival of most of her guests had interrupted: going through the boxes of old papers she’d found in the attic. She headed up to her sitting room to continue the job.
She paged through the remaining photo albums, skimming quickly over the ones that documented Beatrice’s childhood, young womanhood, and marriage to Horace Runcible. At the bottom of the stack she came to an album that began with pictures of her father, Ernest Worthing, as a child and young man.
Her father used to joke about his name, which was taken from Oscar Wilde’s hilarious farce, The Importance of Being Earnest. The layers of inauthenticity involved in that name – a fictional name adopted by a fictional character for the purpose of getting away with irresponsible behavior and deceiving the woman he loved – made Emily’s head spin. But the name fit her father so perfectly, she had to wonder whether her grandparents had been prescient in giving it to him or whether he had spent his life deliberately living up to it. Or down to it, as the case might be.
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