London

by Carina Axelsson

  And what about Ellie and Agnieszka? They were both stationed upstairs somewhere. I’d told them to keep their eyes and ears focused on the main stairwell…but what if Caro had gone up a back staircase? Could she have snuck up on them unnoticed?

  “And so you threatened her, didn’t you? Maybe you even threatened her life.”

  Were Ellie and Agnieszka still in position? Or had something happened to them? I didn’t hear anything… Was their silence good or bad news?

  “I did, yes. Because she had gone too far. She had threatened me! Threatened to fire me for negligence! Ha, the irony of it! Fire me for negligence—after she’d neglected her own children and I’d taken care of everything!”

  “So you decided to get rid of Clarissa…”

  At this moment we all heard a muffled shout followed by a loud thud upstairs. Johnny and Georgie ran to the hall, but I stayed and watched Jane. I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off her.

  “Who’s there?” Johnny yelled before disappearing up the stairs. Then I heard Georgie scream and saw her fall to the floor.

  In that same moment Jane sprang up and tried to run. Without thinking I ran after her and grabbed at her jacket, bringing her down. But she was stronger than she looked, and she threw me off. I fell backward and hit my head on the low table, landing with a thud. Pain seared through my skull. I was dizzy, but I forced myself to sit up. As I tried to see through the pain, I could just make out Jane as she picked up Johnny’s medical files and the photos Georgie had brought. She took them to the fireplace, drew a lighter from her pocket, and held the flame to the papers until they caught.

  I tried to steady my breathing for a few seconds, and then, grabbing hold of the low table, I pulled myself up.

  Satisfied that the files were burning, Jane now walked to the desk and picked something up before turning back to me. The sharp, crazed glint in her eye and her small, cruel smile didn’t exactly reassure me. And then I noticed what she was holding in her hand. It looked like a heavy ball of some sort. She raised her arm high over her head, and I watched as it caught the light. That’s when I realized it wasn’t a ball—it was a glass paperweight.

  I dropped to the ground and rolled out of her way just as her arm came down, smashing the paperweight into the corner of the low table. Glass scattered around me in a rain of tiny splinters as Jane screamed in anger. In that second, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blur of white fly over me. A loud growl was followed by another of Jane’s screams. When I rolled back toward the sofa and pulled myself up, I saw Halley, her paws off the ground and her teeth clenched firmly to Jane’s sleeve.

  Suddenly Sebastian came running into the library and threw himself on top of Jane, although Halley was doing a good job of holding her still. I sprang to Sebastian’s side, helping him as he twisted Jane’s arms behind her back. A few seconds later the library and hall were flooded with light as Mr. Rivera entered the house with the police.

  It turned out that Georgie had fainted in the stairwell. (She’d seen Ellie in her black ninja outfit—face mask included.) She needed to lie down once she’d woken, so rather than take everyone to the station right away, the police questioned us all at the house.

  They started by hearing the account of my movements for the entire week, beginning with Tallulah’s visit about Gavin. Sebastian and Ellie were questioned too, after which Ellie busied herself with enthralling half the policemen in the house with a display of her martial arts moves.

  From where Halley and I quietly sat in the hall afterward, I was able to hear the Vanes being questioned. There would be more cross-examinations in the coming days, of course, but thanks to Jane’s fresh confession, the police were eager to immediately press forward with their most pertinent questions. I concentrated on hearing all that I could, and the full picture became apparent.

  Caro had indeed gone up the old service staircase. Sebastian had lost her for a moment, and by the time he’d discovered the staircase and followed her up, she’d hit Agnieszka on the back of her head and was ready to do the same to Ellie.

  But how had she known that Ellie and Agnieszka were upstairs? Pure chance, it seemed. As I’d deduced from my investigations, Jane was not the only guilty party involved in Clarissa’s death. Caro had had a role to play too. And so, spooked by my threat to bring in the police, she had gone up to look in her sister’s desk and remove any evidence that could have pointed to her own part in the murder. She must have feared that, along with the photos and medical files, Clarissa might have kept news clippings about the broken engagement, evidence of the bad blood between them. Jealousy, after all, is a strong motive, and it had certainly motivated Caro to help Jane with her sinister plan. But as she was heading to Clarissa’s room, Caro had instead spotted my friends.

  In any case, she wouldn’t have found anything in the desk. She didn’t know that Georgie had been through it thoroughly in the last few weeks (and I certainly hadn’t seen anything in it when I’d quickly looked on Thursday evening).

  We all watched as Jane and Caro were taken from the house in handcuffs. “Johnny” accompanied the police too. He would have to help with the formalities of the arrests. And he’d have his hands full preparing for the press once the story leaked out.

  Georgie and Agnieszka were taken to the hospital to be checked out. Although Georgie had only fainted, she’d hit her head hard on the hall floor.

  Luckily Sebastian had been able to warn Ellie before she got a knock to the head too, catching up just as Caro was moving toward her, a heavy vase in hand. As soon as she heard Sebastian shout, Ellie had unleashed her new martial arts moves. The loud thud we’d heard was Caro hitting the floor. And while Sebastian secured Caro upstairs (with, of all things, a curtain tie-back that he’d taken from one of the bedroom windows while holding Caro with her arms twisted behind her back), Ellie had run downstairs to find me—which was when she’d frightened Georgie into fainting.

  As we all left the house, I couldn’t help asking Mr. Rivera how he’d known to come to the rescue with the police. He laughed. “Simple. I looked through the windows and saw trouble was brewing. I doubt anyone else on the street would have noticed. You know, nowadays neighbors don’t have the time to look out for one another or be nosy like we used to. But I saw some lights on, I saw Jane’s face, and I watched as Caro got up and left the library. It didn’t look good.”

  Ellie, Sebastian, Halley, and I watched as the police cars and ambulance drove off. I thanked Mr. Rivera, and after a while, he walked home. Then we turned and looked back at the house.

  “It’s hard to imagine that so much was going on in there just a short while ago, isn’t it?” Ellie asked.

  Sebastian and I nodded. The house stood quiet and dark, and the four large rooftop eagles watched us in stony silence as we turned and left.

  • • •

  “So how exactly did Clarissa die?” Sebastian asked.

  I’d dropped Halley off at home and quickly fed her before Ellie, Sebastian, and I headed to the Lucky Seven Diner around the corner.

  I bit into a hot fry and said, “Well, she was pushed by Jane—although she’d had Caro’s help. What Jane didn’t know was that Georgie had heard her threatening Clarissa before she pushed her. Georgie may not have been able to understand precisely what Jane was saying, but she certainly understood the tone of her voice.”

  “How awful!” Ellie said.

  I nodded. “Jane obviously never expected four-year-old Georgie to hear her—she was supposed to have been asleep—or to have remembered.”

  “And how did Caro help?” Sebastian asked.

  “Remember how you asked what could have gotten Clarissa out of bed when everyone knew she would usually be resting?”

  Sebastian nodded.

  “Well, that got me thinking, because you actually had a good point, Watson.”

  “Thank you, Holmes. Can I have that in writing
?”

  “No.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Anyway…why did Clarissa, who was at that point dressed in her robe and in the middle of her downtime, suddenly dress up and head downstairs? Perhaps if there was an emergency or, more specifically, an emergency call of some sort? And that jibed with what Mr. Rivera told me about Caro’s movements just before and just after her sister’s death. Plus I’d noticed the phone next to Clarissa’s bed—one of two in the house. She’d have answered if it had rung.”

  “And that’s why you asked Agnieszka how many phones were in the house and where—and why you had me check on the neighborhood phone boxes.”

  I nodded. “Once I had the idea of a phone call, the next logical step was to see if there was a pay phone an easy five-minute walk from the Vane house—and there was.”

  “But why not just knock on Clarissa’s door or call her downstairs?”

  “Because that would have been too risky. Jane wanted to scare Clarissa without anyone else being in the house—and in such a manner that it would look like an accident. Pushing her down some stairs that were known to be slippery and dangerous was an obvious choice, and with Clarissa dressed to go out, it could look as if she’d been in a rush to get somewhere. And Jane’s timing was perfect, because the housekeeper was shopping at two thirty p.m., the maid had left for the day, and Mr. Rivera was busy outside. But how could Jane persuade Clarissa to leave her bedroom at precisely that time? She needed to give Clarissa a reason that couldn’t be ignored.”

  “So Caro called with a fake emergency?” Ellie asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. And Clarissa answered, believed whatever lie she was fed, dressed, and ran down the stairs. Georgie said Jane was waiting for her mother on the landing. She heard Jane go down just before she heard her mother—only Jane didn’t go down all the way.”

  “And…?” Sebastian asked.

  “And as she pushed Clarissa, Jane must have said something horrible or threatening, or both. Like I said, Georgie didn’t understand the actual words, but she was certain whose voice it was—and the tone of that voice—right before she heard her mother scream.”

  Ellie shook herself. “That’s so nasty. Wow. What an evil woman.”

  I nodded. “You should have looked into her eyes. She looked psychotic by the time the police arrived. Of course, Jane didn’t kill Johnny. The Thames did. But then afterward she chose to deceive everyone.”

  “I wonder if Clarissa would really have fired her if she’d thought Johnny had died rather than Julian.”

  “We’ll never know. But in any case, what’s important is that Jane clearly believed Clarissa would have fired her. And that was a risk she absolutely refused to take.”

  “But what about Caro in all of this? Why didn’t she do more to protect the kids? How come she didn’t notice anything when Jane switched the boys? I mean, didn’t she know her nephews better than that?”

  “Better than what? Their mother? I doubt it. Caro was too busy riding on Clarissa’s coattails to notice the kids. She was partying, traveling, and trying to make a name for herself in the fashion world. And don’t forget that at the time the real Johnny died, she was heartbroken over Clarissa stealing her fiancé from her.”

  “You don’t think Clarissa purposefully intended to hurt her sister by having the affair, do you?” Ellie asked as she bit into her lentil-melt veggie burger.

  “Probably not as much as she did. Of course, she had the affair before she cleaned herself up, so to be fair, perhaps her judgment wasn’t at its best. Then again, what matters isn’t what Clarissa thought, but what Caro thought. She was already jealous of her sister, so losing her fiancé and first great love to the sister she was already envious of must have eaten at her insides, day and night. From what I gathered when the police were questioning her, she fell in pretty quickly with Jane’s scheme to scare Clarissa, although for Caro, it was more about revenge. Neither of them really expected her to die—or at least that’s what they’re saying now.”

  “So Caro must have been surprised when she returned to the house and discovered her sister was dead,” Ellie said.

  I nodded. “Of course, by then it was too late for her to say anything. She’d done the deed and made the call. She was a vital accomplice to Jane’s crime.”

  “And the police didn’t think to ask her where she’d been or what she’d been doing?” Sebastian asked.

  “Not really. Like Mr. Rivera said, she was often dashing in and out of the house, although perhaps not from the side door, but that didn’t seem particularly strange. And the fact that Mr. Rivera saw her leave and return—so she was clearly not in the house when Clarissa fell—was all the police were really interested in at that time.”

  “And when did Georgie notice her mother’s belongings? The secret drawer in the desk, the medical records, all that stuff?” Ellie asked.

  “Mr. Rivera told us from the beginning that the family rarely visited the house. However, he’d seen Georgie go in twice in the last month. I started wondering why. Why her? And what did she do when she was there? Taking the little of what I knew about her character into account—she’s quiet and secretive—I thought she was probably looking for something. And once I saw what a time warp the house was in, I felt even more certain that was the case.”

  “So that’s why you looked at Clarissa’s desk when we were in her bedroom. But you didn’t find anything in there, did you?”

  “It was exactly because I found nothing in it—well, that and the fact that the thin layer of dust had been wiped clean around the drawer—that made me think my theory was right. Georgie had been searching for something, and the empty drawer made me believe she’d found it. She admitted as much when we spoke in the garden this morning. She said she just couldn’t take the nightmares anymore, that she had to find out if what she thought she remembered was real.”

  “I wonder what will happen to Johnny Vane’s company,” Ellie said. “Will he keep the name Johnny, do you think?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I suppose. After all, it’s been his name for most of his life now. Don’t forget how young he was when the accident in the Thames happened. The shock of what happened that day must have left him immensely vulnerable to Jane’s manipulation. I overheard him crying at the end of the police interview earlier, you know, saying that Jane had always been the mother he felt he’d never really had.

  “He would have done—and did do—whatever Jane asked him to do. So when she asked him to wear gloves, and when she told him to answer to the name of Johnny from then on and said that it would be better for the two of them, he didn’t ask any questions. He just buried the memories and went along with her. He was as dependent on her love as she was on his.

  “Although he might feel differently now. But I think it will take him some time to get over this betrayal and deception. Georgie has been untangling it over a long period of time, but for Johnny, it’s all quite fresh—even if the knowledge has been buried inside him all this time.”

  “So the gloves he always wears,” Ellie asked, “that was Jane’s idea?”

  “Originally, yes. But perhaps after a while they just made him feel safe. In his head he probably couldn’t let go of the fact that Jane had made him wear the gloves. And then, of course, they became part of his ‘look.’”

  Sebastian and I filled Ellie in on what we’d been doing the last few days, until after a while the three of us were too tired to go on. The buzz of the evening’s excitement had worn off, leaving us barely able to speak.

  Ellie and Sebastian walked me home and then continued on their way in a taxi. I’d be seeing Ellie at the Marc Jacobs show the next day, and I had plans to meet up with Sebastian afterward.

  I was so tired and relieved to be safely back home that even my mom’s sudden appearance on the landing outside my bedroom didn’t scare me. She was not happy about the pho
ne call she’d received from the police concerning my activities, and she let me know in no uncertain terms that she and my dad would have some strong words to say to me about foolishly putting myself in such a dangerous position.

  “You should have told me everything from the start, Axelle,” Mom said.

  I remained silent—after all, what could I say?

  After my mom left, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and slipped into bed. I fell asleep before you could say Mulberry, with my arm around Halley’s snoring warmth.

  SATURDAY

  Picnics and Plans

  “Axelle?”

  Someone was calling my name. And it sounded as if they were calling from the end of a tunnel somewhere underground, deep, deep in the earth’s core. Who was it? And how did they get there?

  “Axelle?” I heard it again—only this time it was not coming from the deep, deep center of the earth. The voice was, in fact, only inches from my face, and it was coming from someone who should have known better: my mom.

  She’d peeled my duvet away from my face and was peering at me.

  “Mom, honestly, if you’d like you can use the magnifying glass on my desk. You might be able to see me better.”

  “Good morning to you too, Axelle. And there’s no reason to get mouthy with me.”

  “Mom, do you think we could just backtrack a bit and pretend this isn’t happening? Don’t you have a client to see or something?” Now she was pulling up the blinds on my windows. I flipped onto my stomach and buried my face in my pillow as the sun streamed into my room.

  “Actually, Axelle, you’re the one with an appointment. Tallulah is here to see you. She’s downstairs.”

  I sat up. Tallulah? Argh! I’d completely forgotten that I’d agreed to see her this morning! We’d made the appointment late last night on the phone. I’d been eager to find out how Gavin was doing. But by the time I’d finished with the police it had been too late to meet her, and I’d been too tired to do anything beyond eating a burger and rehashing the case with Ellie and Sebastian. Tallulah and I had set the time for ten this morning—and I’d completely forgotten.