Suddenly it came to her, as clear as the late-afternoon weather. It all fit. She knew the answer.
She considered trying to signal. If that light was visible, a light from her would be as well. Then she laughed sadly, maybe even ironically, as she realized that it would be pointless even to try.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was the morning of the fifth day on Komondor Island. The three survivors sat well apart at the dining-room table, uneasily eyeing one another.
After a long and tense silence, Violet looked at Cerise and casually asked, “How’s Rebecca?”
“Who?” Cerise said, but Violet had seen her stiffen momentarily, and she knew she was right.
“Rebecca Redford. Isn’t that your mother’s name?”
Cerise stared at Violet, then said, “Yes.”
“The same Rebecca Redford who used to work here as a maid?”
Cerise looked down and mumbled something.
“What’d you say?”
Cerise looked up again. “I said, ‘Yes, it’s the same Becky.’” Her voice was hard and flat.
Violet looked at her for a long while, nodding her head, then asked softly, “Where is it…? The mark?”
“All right! If it will make you happy.” Cerise pushed up the sleeve of the blue sweatshirt she was wearing. Just below her shoulder was a small, fin-shaped strawberry birthmark.
“I say!”
Violet looked disgustedly at Derrick. “Oh, cut out the act! You’re not very good, and it’s a little late to try and pull that one.”
“Okay, Violet,” Cerise said. “You found out. Yes, Rebecca Redford is my mother. Yes, she worked here. Yes, I’m a bastard. Yes, that son of a bitch, Ripley Sill, was my father. Yes, I am Rosa’s half-sister.”
“I say!”
“Shut up!” Violet said, not turning to Derrick, but keeping her eyes on Cerise. “I told you I’d find the reason, and that when I did it would all be over.”
Cerise smiled sadly. “Oh, it’s all over, all right. But what is the reason? That I’m the one?”
“Yes.”
Cerise shook her head. “For quite a while I was afraid I might be.”
“But now you’re saying you’re not?”
“No, I’m not. It doesn’t make much sense for it to be me, does it…? Oh, I admit I came here planning to have it out with Rosa, and absolutely determined to get half the estate. If she didn’t share it, I was going to sue. And I also admit that I grew up hating Rosa, because I thought that she had such an easy life while my mother had it so rough. Now, of course, no one cares that much about this sort of thing, but when I was born it was a much bigger deal. When I got to know Rosa, though, I found that in most ways her life had been much worse than mine. I even felt a little sorry for her.”
“How touching.”
Cerise shrugged. “I don’t care if you believe me, Violet. It really doesn’t matter any more. I won’t deny it looks as if I had a reason to kill Rosa. Maybe if I had confronted her—if she got upset and we fought—maybe under those circumstances it could have happened. But I never saw her here alive.”
“That’s what you say.”
“Well, it’s true. Don’t you remember? I told you that I heard Budgie and the Colonel in their room. So I couldn’t have had the opportunity.”
Violet nodded. “That’s what I assumed for quite a while. Until I realized that at the time you made your assertion, the Colonel was dead and Budgie was gaga. So neither of them was in a position either to verify what you said you heard, or to say in turn that they heard you in your room. No, you provided your own alibi, and that’s not good enough.”
“All right, Violet,” Cerise sighed. “So I might have killed Rosa, presumably either by accident, or in anger, or to get the estate. But assuming that I did, what would be the point of continuing? The estate’s worthless. Actually, after all my plans, all my anticipating, I found it quite funny when we learned that there was nothing left.”
Violet smiled. “But there would be a point if the estate was not worthless. If, in fact, there was—at today’s prices—several million dollars’ worth of gold buried somewhere on the island. It might be worthwhile killing quite a few people for that, mightn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, give it up. I’m talking about the other half of the arrangement. I knew you two were in something together, but I couldn’t make it fit together until yesterday. Now, it makes perfect sense. I don’t know whether it was planned beforehand, or decided upon after you got here. It hardly matters. It’s a natural partnership, though—the heir to a seemingly worthless estate, and the person who thinks he knows where a treasure is buried on property that belongs to the estate.”
“What are you talking about?” Cerise repeated.
“So you want to play dumb? Suit yourself,” Violet said, and turned towards Derrick. “You haven’t located it yet, have you?”
Derrick looked at Violet without much warmth, then said, “No.”
“Where did you get that code? Did you have it before, or did you find it here?”
Derrick hesitated, then shrugged. “I’d seen a catalogue of Augustus Sill’s collection of historical papers. The catalogue showed that there was a cryptogram among the papers that had belonged to a Loyalist who I remembered was supposed to have taken part in the theft of the Continental Congress’ treasury. As you know, that gold was never found, nor does anyone know what happened to the Loyalists after they came to this island. I thought the cryptogram might have the answer.”
“But you haven’t managed to decode it yet, have you? Is that what you were doing in my room? Looking for the translation? Is that why you took my notebook?” Derrick stared at Violet, but did not speak, and Violet took a piece of paper from her purse. “I would never leave something like this lying around. You know, it was really very simple. Two hundred years ago they weren’t very sophisticated in these matters. I’m surprised that book on cryptography you were looking at didn’t help you, since this is about as basic as they come. After all, the key is given right with the code. ‘GOLD—716147.’ Each letter has a numerical value. G is the seventh letter of the alphabet, and its number is seven. O is the fifteenth, but its number is 16, and L is the twelfth while its number is 14. Each letter in the word increases by an additional increment. The same thing was done in the cryptogram proper, only there all letters were used instead of numbers, and it was all run together. Thus the first three letters of the cryptogram are ‘TFP’. T is the same because it starts the word, F is one letter beyond the correct one, and P is two letters beyond. So the word is ‘ten’. The only problem is figuring out where each new word begins in order to get the progression right. Your message starts off, ‘Ten paces northeast of the main cairn.’ Then it goes on to relate distances to the great oak and the round rock.”
“Oh,” Derrick said.
“Not much good, is it? Unless you know where those things are. Unless you have an old map that shows where at least some of them had once been located. Unless you know enough about old surveying techniques to be able to relate a map to the real thing. I assume that is why you were studying those books on map-making practices.”
“Violet,” Cerise said, “are you saying that Derrick and I have been working together in order to get this treasure? But it doesn’t make sense. Why kill all those people?”
“Still playing dumb, sweetie? Okay, by the numbers. One, Rosa: so you can inherit. Two, Drupe: because he might have known about you; or perhaps because you had to get the map and he just happened to be in the way. Three and four, the Colonel and Budgie: so your alibi remained intact, so there’d be no question of sharing the estate with the aunt and uncle, and so the Colonel didn’t get to the treasure first. Five, Mrs. Hook: because she somehow got hold of Mousey’s letter naming you as her illegitimate half-sister. That would be enough for her to figure out that you were involved in what was going on. Especially if Mousey also included that story about your ex
pulsion from medical school.”
“That was a lie!” Cerise screamed.
“Was it? What had Mousey told me? That you were kicked out because you got a little too much pleasure out of dissection? Wasn’t that it? What did they call it? Just a touch of sadistic psychosis? Wouldn’t that kind of personality disorder fit with the way people keep getting carved up around here? You certainly put your training in dissection to good use on Mousey, but you got a bit sloppy with the others.”
“I told you—and I told Rosa—that story was a complete lie. You want to know what happened? One of the professors made a play for me. I turned him down and reported him. So the creep, to get off the hook, made up that story about my being a sadist. Naturally he was believed, and I was out. That’s why I’m sensitive about references to med school. Another piggish man messing up my life.”
Violet nodded. “You know, I believe that by this point you have convinced yourself of the truth of that story. Of course, in view of everything that’s happened, you might have some difficulty convincing anyone else of it.…Now, where was I? Number five, Mrs. Hook. Number six, Mr. Ching: I don’t know, maybe Mrs. Hook had told him what she’d learned, or maybe he was going for help and you couldn’t permit that before you were ready. Seven, Mrs. Argus: because, no matter what you thought about the man, she still killed your father, and you had to repay that. Eight, my brother: he figured it out—I don’t know how—and you, who always found him so amusing, killed him in a way he would’ve appreciated. Did that help to ease your conscience? Though I guess you’re not often much troubled by guilt, are you, sweetie?”
“Are you through, Violet?”
“Oh, yes. I think so.”
“Then why don’t I tell you who’s doing this?” Cerise stood up, went to the sideboard, and poured some coffee in her cup. “It came to me yesterday afternoon when I was standing by the water.”
She paused and took a sip of her coffee. At that instant Derrick jumped to his feet and cried, “Wait! Don’t drink that!”
Cerise looked at him, then swallowed. “It’s—” Suddenly her eyes opened wide. Her hands clutched at her throat, and liquid gagging sounds came from her mouth. Her face contorted in a spasm of pain. A tremendous convulsion seized her body. She fell to the floor, writhing, then went still. And rigid. And dead.
Violet and Derrick looked at one another and slowly moved even farther apart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Later that morning, Violet stood on the sloping lawn below the house, looking out at the grey water. Her body was tense, her senses alert, her eyes and mouth hard with determination. As Derrick approached her from the house, she drew a gun—taken from the display of weapons in the lounge—out of her purse and trained it on him. As he got close, she saw that he, too, held a revolver, which he pointed at her.
“I think that’s far enough,” she said when he was ten feet from her. “What’s your plan now? Kill me, hunt for the treasure, then somehow get away before anyone comes for us? Just disappear, leaving ten bodies and a giant mystery behind, and hope that in the confusion no one ever connects you with this island? Maybe use Drupe’s plane ticket to get down to South America?”
Derrick looked at Violet without reaction, his gaze and the gun both steady. “I came down to tell you that I intend to leave here alive. If I have to kill a rabid bitch to do so, I will. So you’d better keep your distance.”
“You really had me fooled,” Violet went on, as though he had not spoken. “I must have assumed that anyone who seemed so dumb and always acted so suspiciously and guiltily couldn’t possibly be the one. I still don’t know if you are inept but lucky, or if this was all a pose to distract us. You know, that’s an interesting approach—to look so uneasy and to make it so clear that you’re hiding something that no one ever takes you seriously, because it’s all too obvious. If you can bluff like that, I’m surprised you haven’t done better at poker. Or do you lose your money at other games?” Derrick neither moved nor spoke, so Violet shrugged and continued. “I’m not yet certain which ones you did and which Cerise did. At first, I thought that she had done most. Now, seeing that I may have underestimated you, I’m not so sure. That was certainly a nice manoeuvre you made the first night, after we found poor Mousey. You’d forgotten all about the boathouse. If we’d been able to get away from here, your plans would’ve fallen apart, but you covered nicely. You volunteered to check it out, and left before anyone could stop you. That was when you destroyed the boats, wasn’t it?”
Derrick did not reply, and his expression remained blank and unchanged.
“I guess you were the one who did Drupe,” Violet said. “After all, your dislike of him was pretty clear, and he knew enough about you and your relationship with Mousey to make things very awkward. You obviously also killed the Colonel. Although why I accepted your ridiculous story about falling in the mud right before we found the Colonel in that hole I’ll never know. I guess that, once again, you were so obvious I couldn’t even consider you as a possibility. Budgie? I should have realized that you were the only one strong enough to tear that room apart…” Violet paused for a reaction, but still there was none. “I think that maybe things started falling apart at that point. You tried to frame Mrs. Hook using the handkerchief, but she wouldn’t co-operate, so you had to eliminate her. And Mr. Ching as well, probably for the same reason. But things had to stop sometime, and you still needed a scapegoat. Who better than mad old Mrs. Argus? You threw suspicion on her by identifying the knot in the rope as one used by sailors. I didn’t think of it at the time, but now I see that if you could identify it as a sailor’s knot, that meant you could also have tied it. Then you must’ve decided it would work better to have it be me, so you killed Mrs. Argus in order to set up the frame. Then my brother became a threat, so exit Sebastian.
“As I said,” Violet went on, “Cerise may have had a hand in some of those, but the latest one was all yours. Any lingering doubts I may have had entirely disappeared after that. What was the idea? You knew I’d figure it all out, so you had to silence me? What’d you do—put poison in the coffee the last time you took some? Intended for me? Only Cerise drank it before I did, and you reacted too slowly to stop her?”
“I didn’t put any poison anywhere,” Derrick said.
“No? Then, if you didn’t poison the coffee, how do you explain your attempt to warn her?”
Derrick looked at Violet for a long time before speaking. “You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know. Your brother was right after all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I knew the coffee was poisoned because I read that it was.”
“What?”
“I read it in your notebook, Violet.”
“What do you mean? What are you playing at now?”
Derrick sadly shook his head. “I’m not playing at anything. I was looking for that code yesterday in your room. And I took your notebook to see if it was in there. As you said, it wasn’t. Instead, I found a summary of all the murders.”
“Yes. I made those notes. So?”
“So this was yesterday, Violet. And the last entry was for a murder that did not take place until today.”
From inside his coat Derrick took out Violet’s notebook. He tossed it across to her and it dropped at her feet. Keeping a close watch on Derrick, Violet cautiously knelt, picked it up, and stood again. She turned to the last page with writing on it. There, following her account of Sebastian’s death, was one further sentence: “On the morning of the fifth day, Cerise died from swallowing an unknown, untraceable poison.”
Violet threw the notebook down. “What are you trying to do? Isn’t it obvious that that’s not my writing? It’s not even close. You just put that in this morning. What do you expect to accomplish with a feeble stunt like that?”
“It’s not my writing, Violet. And it was there yesterday.”
“Do you expect me—or anyone else—to believe that? Come on!”
“Yo
u’d better believe it, Violet, because it’s true. Just as it was true that Cerise and I saw you with Mrs. Argus. Face it, Violet. Your brother was right. It’s been you all along, only you haven’t known it. You’ve been chasing yourself, Violet.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“It’s not absurd, it’s the only explanation. You’ve got some kind of split personality. Half of you is a detective and the other half is a murderer. How else were you always able to find the bit of incriminating evidence that you needed each time? You knew it was there because you planted it. Or your murdering personality planted it in order for your detective half to find it.”
“No,” Violet said, shaking her head from side to side. “No. It can’t be.”
“Violet, it is. What else is there? That note cinches it. It was written by that other personality inside you. It knew what was going to happen.”
“No, I didn’t write that! I would know about it if I had, and I didn’t.”
“You wouldn’t necessarily know, Violet. And who did write it, then?”
“What about Hacker?”
“There is no Hacker, Violet. There is only us.”
“I see what you’re trying to do!” Violet cried, her voice rising to a scream. “You’re trying to drive me mad. That’s how you’re going to get away. You’re going to pin it on poor mad Violet. Well, it won’t work! You’ll see! You’ll be sorry! Now, you just stay away! Keep back! I’m warning you!”
Suddenly a shot rang out. Derrick’s lower jaw dropped and his eyes rolled upwards as a wet red hole appeared in the centre of his forehead, and he crumpled to the ground.
Did I do that? Violet wondered; I guess they must be right about me. Christ!
An Old-Fashioned Mystery Page 20