Rules of Murder

by Julianna Deering

  “Mrs. Parker was well acquainted with Mr. Lincoln,” Mason said coolly. “As I said, his father was one of Farlinford’s founding partners, as was Drew’s father. We’ve all known each other for ages.”

  “I mean, sir . . .” Applegate’s face was now beet red. “I mean, there’s been talk, just rumor mind you, about Mrs. Parker and Mr. Lincoln in Monte Carlo. I wouldn’t dare repeat such a thing if it didn’t have bearing on a murder investigation.”

  “The rumors are just that,” Mason said, his usually mild face taut. “Is there something you’d like to know about that actually pertains to the case?”

  “Perhaps it would be best to send for Mrs. Parker after all, sir. Just to clarify things.”

  “Don’t you think she’s upset enough as it is?”

  “I can appreciate that, sir, but under the circumstances . . .”

  “Shall I send Anna up for her?” Drew asked.

  Mason did not reply for a moment, but then he nodded. “Yes, perhaps that is best.”

  Drew excused himself, found Anna in the kitchen gossiping about murdering Bolsheviks lurking everywhere, and sent her upstairs.

  When he returned to the ballroom, Dr. Wallace was there talking to the others.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than was already obvious. Instantaneous death from a shotgun blast to the head. No more than two hours ago. Your fireworks display, Mr. Parker, must have been what masked the sound of it. No other marks or injuries on the body. No weapon at the scene. Marks & Blackistone’s have come to remove the body, Constable, if permitted.”

  “Yes, all right. I’ve dusted for prints and found nothing but what was on the lantern, probably Mr. Drew’s. No weapon found, as you say.”

  “You did fingerprint the corpse as well, didn’t you?” Nick asked. “I mean, just to be sure.”

  “Yes, I do know my job, thank you. Nothing more there to see. I’ll tell Mr. Blackistone he may carry on.”

  “But, Jimmy,” Drew began, “what about—?”

  “Doctor! Oh, Doctor!” Anna raced down the front stairway, something Mrs. Devon never allowed. “You must come at once!”

  “What is it?” Dr. Wallace asked, hurrying to her.

  “It’s Mrs. Parker, Doctor. She’s dead.”

  Five

  The bottle on the night table was marked Veronol.

  It was empty.

  “Did Mrs. Parker typically use this?” P. C. Applegate asked.

  Drew narrowed his eyes, studying the expression on the face of the girl standing at his mother’s bedside. Beryl had been Constance’s personal maid for nearly five years and knew her mistress’s habits well.

  “She did. If she couldn’t sleep or her head was bothering her, she’d take it and go right out.” Beryl crumpled her apron in both hands and used it to blot the tears from her round face. “She’d go right out. I didn’t think anything of it when she didn’t wake at first, but then I saw she was stone dead.”

  Applegate nodded. “And you helped her dress for bed?”

  “Yes, sir. I always did. But she was in a terrible state tonight. I couldn’t hardly get her to sit still long enough to let me brush her hair and take off her makeup.”

  The constable made note of that. “Did she say what had upset her?”

  “No, she wasn’t much like that. Not one to confide as some ladies are.”

  “But she had heard about Mr. Lincoln being killed?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. I only heard about it just now.”

  “You didn’t go downstairs with the rest of the staff after Mrs. Parker had retired?”

  “No, sir. I had my program on tonight. Mrs. Parker was always kind enough to let me listen to Gert and Daisy on her wireless, the one in her sitting room.”

  “So you’d know if there was anyone else up here this evening? After she’d come up to bed?”

  “Oh yes, sir. There wasn’t nobody. I’d’ve seen if someone come through the sitting room, and she always kept the hallway door locked.”

  The girl glanced at the lifeless, negligee-clad form that lay with one bare white arm thrown gracefully over its head. Mason was kneeling beside the bed, patting his wife’s cold hand. Drew stood behind him, one steadying hand on his stepfather’s sagging shoulder.

  “Poor Mr. Parker and Mr. Drew,” Beryl sobbed.

  “All right,” the constable said over another torrent of weeping. “That’s all for now.”

  Anna and some of the other girls were clustered, whispering, in the hallway. But when Beryl came out, they gathered around her and, clucking and consoling, led her away to her quarters.

  “This has already been fingerprinted and photographed,” Applegate said, and he handed the little bottle to Dr. Wallace, who put it into his black bag along with his stethoscope.

  “I’ll run some tests to make sure the contents were the same as the label and to make sure it’s what’s in her system,” the doctor assured him. “I see nothing to suggest it wasn’t an accidental overdose of the stuff. For now, we’ll say death by misadventure.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Mason said, not taking his eyes from his wife’s waxen face.

  “Will you be all right, Parker?” the doctor asked. “I could give you something to help you relax, if you’d like.”

  “No,” Mason murmured. “No, that’s all right.”

  Dr. Wallace snapped his bag shut and came over to the bedside. He looked closely at Mason, and then he lifted Drew’s chin so he could better peer at him.

  “How about you, son?”

  “I don’t need anything.” Drew patted Mason’s shoulder. “I wish you’d get him to bed, though.”

  “Not yet,” Mason said. “Not until they come to—to take her.”

  “I’ll be taking her now,” the doctor said, his voice gentle. “There will have to be an autopsy, I’m afraid.”

  Mason clung a little more tightly to the lifeless hand he held. Then he sighed, released it and stood up. “Of course. Of course.”

  It was a relief when Mason’s man, Plumfield, appeared and led him away.

  “I’ll let you carry on then, Dr. Wallace,” Applegate said. “If you’d like to come along with me, Mr. Drew, I do have a few more questions.”

  With one final look at Constance, Drew followed the constable out into the now-vacant hallway, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

  “You heard what the maid said,” Applegate began. “Was there any of that that didn’t seem right to you?”

  Drew shook his head. “No. Mother’s often mentioned taking something to help her sleep some nights. Dr. Wallace prescribed it for her himself, as he said. And Beryl does listen to Gert and Daisy every week without fail. I had a friend who acted in it once, and she worried me to death with questions about him.”

  “Not to be indelicate, sir,” Applegate said, “but it would be stretching coincidence if the two deaths were unrelated.”

  “I suppose it would,” Drew agreed. “But we don’t even know if my mother knew about Lincoln’s death. All the same, earlier on—”

  He caught himself, remembering what Mason had said when the constable had first suggested sending for Constance. “According to her maid, she has retired for the evening. She was, quite understandably, upset by what’s happened.” Beryl never would have told him Constance was upset over Lincoln’s death. She hadn’t yet heard about it. Had Mason been mistaken about what she said, assuming the murder was the cause of Constance being upset, or had he lied?

  “What is it, sir?” Applegate pressed.

  Drew shook his head. “Oh, um, earlier on Mother did complain of a headache. That could be why she went up to bed and took something to help her sleep. It never took much to put her into a state, and everyone knew it.”

  “I suppose we can’t prove whether or not there was a connection until we’ve had a chance to go through Mr. Lincoln’s things. You did have his room locked up after we found the body?”

  “I believe my stepfather had someone take ca
re of that.”

  The constable nodded. “I’d like to see it now, if you please, sir.”

  Drew rang for a maid, and in another moment they were unlocking the door to Lincoln’s room. As it happened, P. C. Applegate’s precautions proved futile. There wasn’t a fingerprint on anything—not Lincoln’s or anyone else’s.

  “Clean as a whistle,” the constable observed. “Are you certain this room was locked up, Mr. Drew?”

  “I’m assuming it was, but at the best that was sometime after the murder. With the party going on and all, I expect just about anyone could have come in here and tidied up before Lincoln’s body was discovered.”

  “I did find this in the inside pocket of one of his bags,” Applegate said, “in with the handkerchiefs and socks and, er, unmentionables.”

  He set a thick envelope on the little table next to the bed. Drew opened it to reveal a slip of paper wrapped around twenty ten-pound notes.

  This is the last, David, the paper read. I’m serious this time. I expect he’d find it a relief to know anyway.

  It was Constance’s handwriting.

  “What do you expect that means, Mr. Drew?” Applegate asked once Drew had told him who had written the note.

  “The same as you do. He was blackmailing her.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Drew snapped. “You’ve heard the gossip. Why do you think he would have?”

  “Presuming, then, it was the . . . Monte Carlo incident—I hate to be blunt, sir, at a time like this, but do you think she might have killed him over it?”

  Drew sighed and sank down into the overstuffed chair in the corner of the room. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so. But then I would have thought her too vain to take her own life.”

  He drew a slow, deep breath and resisted the urge to bury his head in his arms and cry. His mother was dead. It didn’t matter that she had never been much of a mother to him or whether the fault of that was in her or in himself. She was gone and so was the possibility that things between them would ever be any different.

  “And the ‘he,’ sir?”

  Drew knit his brow. “What?”

  “The ‘he,’ sir. The one she says would be relieved to know. Who do you think she means there?”

  “My stepfather would, I think, be the obvious choice.”

  “I see,” Applegate murmured, and he made another notation in his book.

  “Is there—?” Drew steadied his voice. “Is there anything else in Lincoln’s things we ought to know about?”

  Applegate shrugged. “Apart from a rather large quantity of brilliantine and other gentlemen’s toiletries, just the usual clothes and things, sir. A bill from his tailor, racing tips, the odd box of matches. I will ask if you recognize this, sir.”

  He produced a photograph of a young woman. She could have been no more than twenty-two or -three at the time the picture was taken, though judging by the style of her clothes and hair and the fading portrait itself, she was at least twice that old by now. She was rather pretty.

  Drew studied the photo for a moment and then turned it over. In neat block letters, someone had written MARIELLE.

  “Not a clue,” Drew admitted. “Perhaps Mr. Parker or Mr. Rushford would know.”

  “I will be talking to them,” Applegate assured him.

  “Not tonight,” Drew said. “Please. Not my stepfather anyway. He can wait till morning, can’t he?”

  “That’ll be all right,” Applegate agreed, his voice a touch less official. “Maybe you ought to have a bit of rest as well, sir. And, um, I’m sorry about your mum.”

  Drew managed a thin smile. “So am I, Jimmy.”

  It was after three in the morning when Drew finally made it to bed and nearly six before he slept. At a quarter after eight a discreet knock woke him from an insensible sleep. A moment later, Dennison came into the room.

  “You wished to be dressed before nine, sir.”

  Drew didn’t respond at first, hoping for just another instant of oblivion, but then he opened his eyes.

  It wasn’t Denny’s usual job, but now he stood over Drew with a tray laden with ham, eggs, and tomato grilled to perfection, along with toast, double cream, and a steaming cup of tea.

  “Mrs. Devon’s made your favorite, sir, and she’s sent up some honey for your toast, fresh from Mr. Cranston’s hives, as you like it. For your tea as well, of course.”

  Drew only stared at him, very stupidly, he was sure, and then he managed a nod.

  “That was good of her, Denny.”

  He struggled into a sitting position, and Denny set the tray across his lap.

  “And may I,” Denny continued, “on behalf of all of us belowstairs, sir, express our deepest sympathies regarding Mrs. Parker.”

  Drew closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Constance, not quite yet, but it would have to be dealt with sooner or later. He managed another nod. “Yes, thank them all for me if you would, Denny.”

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “Not at the moment, no,” Drew replied, expecting Denny’s usual very good, sir and circumspect departure. It was not forthcoming.

  Drew looked up at him and saw something more behind the impersonal correctness of his demeanor.

  “I’m all right, Denny,” Drew told him, surprised at the thickness in his own voice. “Really.”

  “Very good, sir,” Denny said. “I’ll just lay out your morning things and draw your bath.”

  Shortly before nine, Drew was groomed and dressed and in his stepfather’s study.

  Mason looked weary. Inexpressibly weary. It came as something of a surprise to Drew that there was nothing more in his stepfather’s expression. But neither was there anything more in his own. Constance was dead. The idea seemed strange yet.

  “Did you sleep?” Drew asked.

  Mason shrugged slightly. “Off and on. I don’t much remember.”

  “Has the chief inspector been in yet?”

  “Not yet. I’m sure he’ll be here and asking for me anytime now, though.” Mason sighed. “More questions.”

  “I can get them put off a day or so if you like, I expect,” Drew offered, and Mason patted his arm.

  “No, best have it over at once.” Mason sighed again and stared into the little fire that had been laid to take the Sunday morning chill from the room. “Not that I can tell them much of anything.”

  “You could talk to them about the blackmail.”

  There was a long, thick silence, absolute but for the crackling of the flames. Then the French clock whirred and began tolling the hour in delicate little pings. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. For a moment afterward, the sound still resonated in the room. When there was again perfect silence, Mason lifted his eyes to Drew’s.

  “Blackmail?”

  His voice was bland and quiet, almost studiedly nonchalant.

  “I see you’re not surprised by that, sir,” Drew said. “Perhaps you arranged to have it paid for her. I’ve known some while, so there’s no need to shield her now. Especially not from me.”

  “You’ve known what some while?”

  “Well, not about the blackmail, not till now, but about the reason for it.”

  His stepfather’s dispassionate expression did not change. “You mean you’ve assumed you know the reason for it.”

  “Come, sir, I’m no longer a child. I know what I’ve seen and, if I didn’t, I’ve had enough people point it out to me over the past two years.”

  “People who know no more of the truth of the matter than you, I’m afraid, Drew.”

  “You mean people not hiding from the truth, don’t you, sir?” Drew asked, his words sounding sharper than he meant them to.

  “No. People who don’t know the truth.”

  “Then they should be made to know the truth,” Drew insisted. “I, at the very least, have the right to know it.”

  “There are some things she did not wish
to have brought up. They are in the past and digging them up now could not benefit anyone. Trust me, son, they have no bearing on this case. She did not wish to have them discussed, and I mean to abide by that now she’s gone.”

  “But she is gone! How can it hurt her now?”

  “You’re a Farthering, Drew. The name means something. Surely you can understand her reasons for keeping it out of that sort of scandal.”

  “If she wanted the name kept out of scandal, she should have kept herself out of scandal.”

  “There really is nothing more to discuss here,” Mason said, his voice taut. “I mean to honor what your mother wanted. As her husband, it’s my place to protect her interests.”

  “Hers or your own?” Drew said, the words barbed. “It’s humiliating for a man to have to admit he’s been cuckolded, I’m sure.”

  Mason pressed his lips together and did not answer.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Drew said after a moment. “I sometimes say more than I ought.”

  Still Mason said nothing.

  “We like to believe the best of those we love,” Drew added, hating that he had hurt the man. “I know it isn’t easy to accept it when they aren’t always what we think they should be.”

  Mason peered at him. “No. No, it’s not.”

  “But knowing the truth doesn’t mean we can’t still love them.”

  Mason nodded. “So you would rather have the truth, would you? Even when the thing is past and done and changes nothing?”

  “I would.”

  Again his stepfather peered at him. “How old are you now, Drew? Twenty-four?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “So you know why she was being blackmailed, do you?”

  Drew nodded, suddenly not as sure as he had been.

  “Tell me why,” Mason urged.

  “I don’t mean to upset you, sir, but I’m sure you’ve known as well as anyone.”

  “About?”

  “About her and Lincoln. I’ve no doubt he was taking money to keep quiet about their affair two years ago.”

  Mason shook his head. “I’ve told you time and again. There was no affair.”

  “And I thought you were going to give me the truth now,” Drew said tightly.