“We’ll do our best to stay out from under foot, but I don’t feel right leaving Tal and his mother to deal with all this alone.”
“No, I suppose they could use a bit of support. Just don’t interfere with my men doing their jobs, eh?”
Drew nodded. “They’re doing quite a thorough job of it from what I can see, from the box room to the wine cellar. The cook’s in high dudgeon over the state of her cupboards and pantry, and Mr. Beddows has been fussing about, trying to put things back in order everywhere else. I just hope you’ve left Tal and his mother alone.”
“We had to question them, of course.” Birdsong scowled at the look Drew gave him. “I promise you, we kept it as brief as possible.”
“And your Scotland Yard friends? I don’t fancy they were too concerned with Tal’s grief or Mrs. Cummins’s.”
Birdsong’s expression darkened even further. “They haven’t got time for the niceties, so Endicott tells me. Results are what he needs, and results are what he’ll get.”
They didn’t deserve this, Tal and his mother, neither of them, but Endicott and Birdsong weren’t really to blame. It all went back to Cummins himself and the greed that had ultimately devastated those he should have done everything to protect. Well, Drew couldn’t bring Alice back, he couldn’t return Mrs. Cummins to the pleasant, sheltered world she had always known, and he couldn’t mend Tal’s shattered heart. Evidently, he couldn’t even find a string of pearls his wife had hidden for a lark. But he could at least help his friends get through the unpleasantness that was still to come.
“Could Tal or his mother tell you anything?”
Birdsong shook his head. “Evidently our Mr. Cummins was quite good at leading his double life. Mrs. Cummins still doesn’t quite believe he was involved in any of this, I think, though she was cooperative with us. Your mate, young Cummins, not so much.”
“He has had rather a blow, you know.”
“Yes, I realize that. That’s why he’s still here and not down at the station with his father. But we haven’t found anything to show he knew what was going on either here or in London.”
Drew opened his mouth and then shut it again. I’d know if he did, he wanted to say, but then he remembered how utterly wrong he’d been about Mr. Cummins. Did he know Tal, really know him, anymore? They’d been close at school, he and Tal and Nick, but that had been half a dozen years ago now. They’d all lost touch. . . .
“I’ll talk to him, too,” Drew said at last. “Maybe there’s something he’s seen or heard that he doesn’t even realize has to do with the case.”
“Could be.”
Drew stood. “Either way, I’m not going to leave him and his mother to deal with all this alone.”
“Fair enough,” Birdsong said, studying him with dour eyes. “But you might want to send the bride and her friends back to Farthering Place. Alice Henley’s death might very well be murder, and if someone other than Sterling Cummins is to blame, you wouldn’t want to find yourself a widower before you’ve had much chance to be a husband.”
Seven
Just as Drew expected, Madeline and the others had no interest in going home yet. Madeline didn’t want Drew to stay at Winteroak House without her, and she didn’t want to leave Mrs. Cummins without another woman to talk to. Carrie said she didn’t want to leave if Madeline wasn’t going to, though her eyes were on Nick the whole time she was saying it. Nick wanted to help out Tal if he could, but he made no bones about not budging if Carrie was staying. Will, Drew did not doubt, just wanted to solve a real murder case.
Two days after the grand ball, the day of Alice’s funeral, the police finished searching the house and grounds. Will had been forbidden to accompany them as they carried out their tasks, but now that they were gone, he was doing his best to follow in their footsteps on his own, certain he would find something they had missed.
After the service was over, Tal had made himself scarce, clearly wanting to be left alone. Carrie and Nick volunteered to go into the village to get some headache powders for Mrs. Cummins while Madeline sat at the older woman’s bedside, reading quietly to her as she lay with a cool cloth over her forehead. Restless and tired of seeking and finding nothing, Drew took a walk through the trees and all the way down to the narrow beach. It was a clear afternoon, and he could see the Isle of Wight with its low chalk cliffs and green fields.
He looked up into the nearly cloudless sky, blue and untroubled, fresh with the smell of the sea and the sounds of the birds. He knew God was beneath his feet and at all sides of him as much as up in His heaven, but it seemed natural to look into that endless blue in search of Him. There were too many questions racing through Drew’s thoughts, too many for him to be able to catch hold of only one and fashion it into speech, but surely the one who fashioned both thought and speech knew what was in his mind and heart. He merely stood there, soaking in the heat of the sun and letting his heartbeat slow to the soothing rhythm of the water, listening for that still voice that would tell him what to do.
“Might I have a word, old man?”
Drew turned to see Tal standing beside him at the edge of the water, still in the dark suit he’d worn to Alice’s funeral, still with his collar buttoned to the top and his tie pulled so snug, Drew wondered that it didn’t strangle him.
“Anytime, of course. How are you?”
Tal looked perfectly wretched, which was no surprise. He’d hardly eaten or slept since the grand banquet on Saturday night. He’d barely spoken.
“Jolly,” he said, his mouth a tight line. “Couldn’t be better.”
Drew looked out over the Solent, waiting for him to go on.
“I went to see him this afternoon.”
Drew didn’t have to ask who he meant. “How is he?”
Tal shrugged. “All right enough, I suppose. Says he wants me to ‘understand.’”
“Understand?”
“About what he’s been doing all this time. About why. I suppose he thinks that’ll make it all right.”
Drew studied him for a moment. “And does it?”
“I . . .” His lips trembled. “I just don’t know. He’s my dad, right? I mean, he’s always been good to me, right? And now I don’t even know him.”
Drew had no answer to that. He felt the same. Deceived. Hurt. Foolish. How much more so must Tal feel when Cummins was his own father? “What are you going to do?”
Tal kicked at the grass and then picked up the stone half buried there, squeezing it in his hand. “I haven’t anything that wasn’t bought with dirty money. I don’t know where Mother and I are supposed to live, but we can’t stay in the house. Not now.” He drew back and flung the stone into the water.
“The police can hardly turn you out of your own home.”
“We can’t stay here.” Tal picked up another stone and then another, hurling them in succession into the river. “There’s no one in the parish who’ll speak politely to us now.”
“You had nothing to do with any of this.”
“They might not blame us, but they’ll talk about us and pity us and treat us as if they don’t know us.”
“Not everyone, surely,” Drew said, knowing he was more than likely right. “Your friends, your true friends, won’t be that way. Mr. Broadhurst seems a good chap. He wouldn’t turn away from you.”
Tal shrugged and threw another stone, not so violently this time. “Maybe not. Mother’s done charity work with him for ages now. He’s all right enough.”
“I’ve had my share of scandal,” Drew said, “but I’ve found there’s always a new scorcher to take attention away from the old ones. As far as I’ve ever seen, there’s no one can shame you but yourself, and you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”
Drew turned to face him, wanting to know Tal had truly heard that last. Tal only shrugged again.
“I could have seen what was happening. I could have . . .” He covered his face with both hands and then raked his fingers through his hair. “I could have listene
d when Alice tried to tell me something was wrong. Now she’s dead.”
“Your father did his smuggling out of his warehouse in London. Did you spend time there?”
Tal shook his head.
“Did Alice tell you anything specific you could have told the police?”
Again Tal shook his head. “But she knew something was going on. Why didn’t I find out what it was?” He scanned the ground for more stones, but there didn’t seem to be any more. He kept his eyes down anyway. “I came to ask you a favor, Drew.”
“Certainly. What is it?”
“I have to know who killed Alice.”
“Tal—”
“No, don’t tell me it was my father.” Tal looked at Drew, his eyes fierce and rimmed with red. “I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it. Even with everything that’s happened, it’s just not true. And don’t tell me Alice took the cocaine herself. Someone killed her.”
It seemed unlikely Cummins and Alice both were living double lives.
“If it wasn’t your father, who would have done it? Who else would have wanted her dead?”
“I don’t know. Nobody.” Tal stopped for a moment, his breath coming hard. “I don’t like how Laurent used to look at her. Typical foul-minded Frenchman.”
“If he’s in on the smuggling, it’s more than the police have been able to find. They’ve watched him even longer than they watched your father. Not a bit of evidence connects him to anything to do with drugs. Just wine, and every bit of it declared and properly imported.”
Tal frowned. “Maybe it had nothing to do with the drugs. Maybe he just didn’t like that she turned him down.”
“Did she?”
Tal glared at him, and Drew quickly shook his head.
“I mean, did he go as far as making that sort of proposition to her? Right in front of you, as it were?”
“Not that she told me, no. And I think she would have.” Tal looked faintly disgusted. “But he was that way with all the girls, the old lech.”
“Yes, I know.” Drew gave him a rueful smile. “If he’d been the one murdered, I could easily understand why.”
“I think your Madeline stands up for herself rather well.” Tal cracked a weak smile and added, “Women like her aren’t easy to come by.”
His voice broke a little at the end, and Drew knew he was thinking of Alice again.
“I’ll do my best to hang on to her,” Drew assured him. “And believe me, I know there aren’t many like her. Alice, she was a lovely girl. I’m . . .” He shook his head, knowing the right words were beyond him. “I’m sorry.”
Tal took a deep breath. “So will you? Will you find out who killed her?”
“I don’t know, Tal.”
Tal grabbed his arm. “Don’t put me off, Drew. I’m begging you. I have to know, for her sake and—” he looked up at the cloudless sky, blinking back tears—“for my dad. I have to know he’s telling me the truth about something.” Abruptly, he dropped his hold and looked out at the water again. “Please.”
“All right, old man,” Drew said at last. “I’ll try.”
Tal answered with a curt nod, and the two of them stood in silence for a minute or two. Then Drew handed him another stone.
Drew stood watching the Solent long after Tal had gone back into the house, watching the boats cruise up and down the waterway, wondering about how Laurent could be bringing contraband into the country without it being found in his possession when he docked. There were certainly plenty of boats passing by. It seemed unlikely the police could search them all.
He watched as one chugged along near the bank, a trig little craft compared to the others used by the local fishermen, and evidently new. He realized it was the boat he and Madeline had seen when they sailed up the Beaulieu River.
It went round a bend and disappeared from his sight. He watched for a while, waiting for it to come back into view, but for the longest time it didn’t. Just as he was about to go down to see where it had gone, it came sailing along again and docked just below the village. Three men clambered out, spoke to the old man smoking and loitering on the weathered old dock, and the four of them headed up the rocky path. The last Drew saw of them, they were going into the pub, The Knight and Lady.
Intrigued, he took the path leading to the beach and then toward the docks. There was the boat he’d been watching: The Gull. Chuckling at the irony of the name for a boat bringing in contraband, he climbed the stone steps leading from the narrow beach to the boardwalk, thankful to see the windows of the pub faced toward the town rather than the docks. With one more look round, he hopped aboard.
There didn’t seem to be much to see. Nets, coils of rope, a pair of rusty buckets, a kerosene can. Either the fishing that day had been particularly bad or they had been out on some other errand. There wasn’t a fish to be seen, and they hadn’t unloaded any. But the deck was wet, as if something had been brought aboard. Whatever it was, it wasn’t on board now.
Finding nothing of interest, he was about to walk back to the house when he noticed something light in color stuck in a crevice in the deck. It looked like it had been scraped off of something else. He bent down and picked up the little scrap.
“What you lookin’ at?”
Seeing the three men who had gone into the pub coming down the dock toward him, Drew used one swift motion to slip the scrap inside his pocket watch. Then he straightened and turned, giving them a friendly smile.
“Just wondering if this boat might be for hire.”
“You see a sign on it?” the one on the left said, his bushy red beard wagging in indignation.
Drew made a slight bow. “No harm meant. Good afternoon.”
“Hang on there!” A tall boy with bony wrists poking out of his too-short sleeves moved toward Drew. “Turn out your pockets.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He took something,” the boy said to the others, his attempt to look fierce foiled by the adolescent whine in his voice. “I saw him.”
The man with the beard held out a weathered hand. “I’ll have that.”
“I can assure you gentlemen I have nothing much of any value. Upon my honor.”
“Hear that,” said the third man, his grin showing a missing front tooth. “Lord Coxcomb swears upon his honor.”
The other two laughed.
“We’ll have a look all the same,” the bearded one said, again holding out his hand. “Turn ’em out.”
Drew gave him a taut smile. “Seeing that you asked so nicely.”
In truth, he didn’t have much on him: wallet, keys, handkerchief, a few coins. The bearded man rummaged through it, looking unimpressed.
“Not much here for a toff, eh?”
He tugged at Drew’s watch chain, pulling the watch into plain sight along with the silver sixpence that hung from the same chain, dangling them before his face.
“Careful there,” Drew said. “That was my grandfather’s.”
With a sneer, the bearded man put the watch back. “What’d he take, Tom?”
“Dunno.” The young one glared at Drew. “He put something in his waistcoat pocket.”
Drew reached into the suspect pocket and turned it inside out and then held up his hands. “As I said, I’ve got nothing much of value. I simply wanted a look at the boat. It seems ideal for bringing things in from the sea.”
The bearded one narrowed his eyes. “What ‘things’?”
“Fish, of course.” Drew lowered his hands, keeping his movements slow and unthreatening. “I don’t know of anything else of value floating about out there, do you?”
The one with a missing front tooth gave him a sly grin. “Had some nosy gent end up facedown in the Solent a few months ago.” He stuffed the lining back into Drew’s waistcoat pocket with two thick fingers. “’Course, there weren’t much value in him by the time he were brought in.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Drew said. “No doubt.”
“A wise man don’t get himself in a position t
o have unfortunate accidents, I always say.” He displayed his gap-toothed grin again. “He stays out of places he don’t belong and then there’s no need to put the local police to the trouble of dragging for him. Just by way of being thoughtful, you know?”
“I do indeed,” Drew said. “No need to burden them when they already have so much to see to.”
“Right. You’re absolutely right. Ain’t he right?”
The bearded man’s smile had disappeared. “We wouldn’t like to bother them about folk taking liberties with our private property either, seeing as they are so busy.”
“I wouldn’t like that a bit,” Drew said. “No. So I expect I should toddle along now. The wife’ll be worrying. You know how women are.”
He tipped his hat and strolled not too quickly down the dock and out of their sight. They were up to no good, those three. Whether it had anything to do with Cummins’s business operation remained to be seen.
He found everyone except Mrs. Cummins in the library at Winteroak House, all having tea and biscuits.
“Where have you been?” Madeline asked, hurrying to him. “Look at you.”
She smoothed back his hair and straightened his tie, then pushed his watch chain and the sixpence deeper into his waistcoat pocket.
He gave her a wink. “I’ve just had a nice chat with some local fishermen. They did not offer their names, and they most emphatically do not hire out their boat.”
He gave them a brief account of his conversation with the fishermen, and afterward Tal frowned.
“Sounds like Bill Rinne and Bert and Tom Kimlin. I’ve known Bert and Tom since I was born. Rough lads but no worse than most, at least not until they hooked up with Rinnie. Even their own father, when he was partners with Rinnie, didn’t want them around him much. But they’re a trifling lot, big lads at the local pub but nowhere else.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get your head bashed in,” Nick said, “going without me. And Mrs. Farthering would not at all be pleased if you were suddenly missing your front teeth.”
Madeline shook her head emphatically. “Not at all.”
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