“What was she like as a person?” she asked when Fleur came back.
“Who, Emma? She always started off very sweet. She would come in here all smiles and friendly greetings. Then the little criticisms would start. ‘Dear me, is this dust? When last did you clean in here?’ That kind of thing. And you know how immaculate I keep this place.”
Eulalie nodded in response to Fleur’s fierce look. She did indeed keep the shop spotlessly clean.
“It would get worse and worse until I was actually wrapping up the gift and taking her money. Then her voice would become sharp and grating until she was talking to me like she was the lady of the manor and I was the dimwitted help. Dreadful woman. I can’t imagine anyone missing her.”
Eulalie remember Priscilla Bosworth’s theory that Emma had said something tactless to the wrong person at the wrong time.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?”
Fleur shrugged. “She was a suburban housewife. She was abrasive, but I can’t imagine anyone hating her enough to kill her. Unless it was an outside job. They’re certainly rich enough.”
“Did you know she was pregnant when she died?”
“Of course. She told me herself. She practically took out an ad in the Queen’s Town Chronicle. You would have thought she was the first woman in the history of the world to bear a child. She had barely missed her period and she was already convinced it was a boy. The only thing that worried her was what her husband was going to say about it.”
“But why? People with that kind of money don’t raise their own kids. It’s all nannies and au pairs and drivers. Her own sons are at boarding school.”
“You don’t understand. They had agreed not to have any more children.”
“So, it was an accident?”
“Nope. She deliberately went off the pill. You can see how she might have been a bit nervous about her husband’s reaction after that.”
Jethro brought Eulalie her lunch. She had to savor her first bite of the sandwich before she could carry on talking.
“Oh, wow, that’s good. Best grilled cheese on the island.”
He grinned. “We keep it on the menu especially for you, seeing as most of our customers aren’t five years old.”
Eulalie just smiled and carried on eating.
“This thing about Emma going off the pill,” she said at last. “Is that real or are you speculating?”
“It’s real. She told me so herself. She was dreading telling Mark, even though she’d convinced herself he was going to be happy about it.”
“Men have killed their wives for less, haven’t they?”
“I guess they have.”
“Mark and Emma had only been married a couple of months. Something like that could end a young marriage. It was quite a risk she took. Can you remember exactly when she told you about the pregnancy?”
“It was last week. It must have been the last time we talked. She came in to buy a gift basket for her son’s English teacher who had just had a baby. They were going to St. Michael’s Cay on the weekend to watch him play basketball. She was planning to tell Mark before the weekend. Next thing I heard, she’d been murdered.”
“And a few days after that Mark Egger was knocking at my door because he was worried that the police were spending too much time investigating his family and not enough time looking for an outside intruder. Interesting.”
“It sure is. I presume you want to speak to Mark now?”
“I do, but I have to pick my moment. He can pull me off this case anytime he likes. If I start probing into his personal life, that’s exactly what he’ll do.”
Fleur cleared away Eulalie’s plate and processed her credit card payment.
“What do you have lined up for this afternoon? Something more exciting than what I’ll be doing, which is going over branding proposals?”
“You’re not rebranding again?”
“Just my organic sugar products. I feel like we haven’t hit the sweet spot with that yet. No pun intended.”
“I thought your flavored sugars were selling well.”
“They are, but I want to start pitching them to hotels and B&Bs. We live on a sugarcane-growing island, for heaven’s sake. It’s our main export crop. And somehow not one single person before me thought to trademark the name Prince William Island Sugar. I think I deserve to cash in on that.”
“You do.”
Fleur had been trying to turn organically grown sugar into a tourist-friendly product for years now. The global move away from sugar had hurt her a little, but people tended to relax their dietary rules when they were on holiday.
“While you’re deciding on logos, I’ll be interviewing the old man, Josef Egger. He should have woken up from his nap by now. Then if there’s time, I want to talk to the middle brother and his wife.”
“I still think the husband is a hot lead because of the pregnancy thing.”
“I agree, and I’m sure the police are on it. It was Chief Macgregor who told me she was pregnant in the first place.”
Fleur made shooing motions with her hands.
“Off you go to your glamorous and exciting life, while I stay here and compare fonts.”
Chapter 9
“This is a good time for you to speak to him,” said Talia. “He has eaten. His energy levels are high, and his mind is quite clear. You might be lucky and get some sense out of him.”
“Does he know I’m coming?”
“It is hard to say what he knows these days, but I have told him. He will see you in the blue drawing room.”
“That’s where the family was when Mrs. Egger was murdered?”
“Most of them, yes.”
“Can you remember who was where?”
“No, I was in the scullery, helping with the washing up after dinner. You’ll be doing me a favor by keeping Mr. Egger occupied this afternoon. It will give me a chance to pack up his room. If he sees me doing it, he’ll only get upset.”
“Why, where is he going?”
“To Mr. Richard and Mrs. Jane’s house. He was supposed to stay with us for three months, but Mr. Mark says it is too much. His father must go back to Mrs. Jane’s house.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Two weeks”.
“I can’t imagine Mark getting involved in the daily care of his father. Why is he so keen to get rid of him?”
“Mr. Mark gets tired of the sight of his father shuffling around in his slippers. Shloof, shloof, shloof. That is the sound he makes. He is never happy to sit quietly in a room. He always has to go to where the people are. When the girls are doing their homework, he goes up to them and says, ‘But why are you always on zis computer, hey?’ and then they go and complain to their father. The three Mr. Eggers - Mr. Joe, Mr. Mark, and Mr. Richard, are meant to share their father three months and three months and three months. But Mr. Joe and Mr. Mark always have an excuse. It is Mrs. Jane who has him most of the time.”
“I’d like to speak to her this afternoon. Do you think I’ll find her at home?”
“Mrs. Jane will be at home if she isn’t taking the children to violin or dancing or kayaking. Mr. Richard will be at the Eggerton factory until five-thirty.”
Talia led Eulalie into the blue drawing room.
Eulalie noticed that the staircase wasn’t within sight of the drawing room. Anyone on the staircase would not have been able to see who was in the drawing room, and vice versa.
“Here is the private investigator I was telling you about, Mr. Josef,” said Talia.
Josef Egger had obviously been a big man in his younger days. He was still big-boned and long-limbed, despite the sunkenness of age. He sounded very German, although Eulalie could hear the hard G sounds and flattened vowels that identified him as Swiss.
Talia placed a cup of coffee on a side table next to him and withdrew. He greeted Eulalie in a courtly fashion and invited her to sit on the couch next to him.
“Your son Mark has
hired me to investigate the death of his wife Emma,” said Eulalie. “I hope it’s okay if I ask you a few questions.”
He nodded and sipped his coffee. His eyes were bright and alert.
“Mr. Egger, do you remember Mark’s second wife, Emma?” She held up her iPad and showed him a clear head-and-shoulders picture of Emma Egger.
“Yes, yes, of course I remember. Blonde hair. Nice body. Beautiful face. Mark always had an eye for a pretty girl. But with this one, the heart was not quite so beautiful as the face. My wife’s voice was low and musical – very desirable in a woman. This one had a voice like metal scraping on metal. Angry. Bad-tempered.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Emma?”
Mr. Egger chuckled. “We have a house in Switzerland. For the skiing, you know?”
Eulalie nodded.
“My wife and I bought it in … in 1972. She decorated it herself. It was her favorite place in the world. All of her special things were there. When the boys and I wanted to remember her, we just had to go there, and the memories would come to us. We had a cupboard full of her clothes. I could put my face in there and breathe and I would smell her, and it would be like she was standing next to me.”
“Smells have that power.”
“She was a great needlewoman, my wife. She did fine embroidery and crochetwork. The house in Switzerland was full of samples of her work. We used to frame her embroidery and hang them up on the walls. She embroidered our initials on all the linens and crocheted the bedspread in the main bedroom. When she died, that house was all we had left of her.”
A single tear rolled down Josef Egger’s cheek. Eulalie sat paralyzed with awkwardness, wondering how this conversation had got so off track, and how to get it back again.
“We were talking about Mark’s new wife, Emma …?”
The old man sat up. When he spoke, it was in a stronger voice. “Yes, I was telling you about the house in Switzerland. My son Mark met this new woman. They had been seeing each other for a month when he asked her to go to the house in Switzerland with him. He took a week’s leave from the company and off they went. While she was there, she threw out everything that had belonged to my wife. The embroidery, the bedspread, the linens, all her old clothes. She put them outside in a pile and lit a bonfire to get rid of everything. She pulled all the wood paneling off the walls and tore down the light fittings my wife had chosen over the years. She painted everything peach and laid down that fake wood on the floors.”
“But what about your son? Why didn’t he stop her?”
“My son told me I would like the new look. He said it was very clean and open. It made the house look much bigger.”
“But that’s appalling.” Eulalie tried to maintain a neutral tone in interviews, but this had shocked her. “You say they had been dating for a month? Does the house in Switzerland belong to your sons now?”
“No, it is still mine. I am the sole owner. It is the house my wife and I bought in 1972.”
“Did you say anything to her?”
His shoulders sagged. “I am an old man. What can I do? Some days I wake up and I can’t even remember why I was angry with them. Mark was our youngest, you see. The last of our little lambs to come along. I’m afraid Maria and I spoiled him. We were much more lenient on him than on the older boys. And unfortunately, he has a tendency to marry women who bring out the worst in him.”
“Was there anyone in the family besides you who didn’t like the new wife, Emma?”
“The other wives didn’t like her. She was much more beautiful than them. Women don’t like that, do they?”
In Eulalie’s experience, women managed to deal with their varying degrees of attractiveness perfectly well.
“Any other reasons, besides her ‘beauty?’”
“Who knows why women fight?” He shrugged his shoulders at the mystery of womanhood. “I am sure they have their reasons.”
“On the night Emma was murdered, you were down here in the drawing room having coffee after dinner. Can you remember who was with you?”
“Of course. My mind is as good as it ever was.” He tapped a finger against his temple. “My sons were all here. Joe and Richard and Mark. And their children were here too. From the tall and beautiful girls to the little ones running around. And their wives were here. I can’t remember their names, but the wives were all here. And there were other people too. Family of Mark’s wife. Were their children also here? I can’t remember. They might have been. Then we heard a scream, and I sat here while everyone else went to look. I’m not very good in the evenings. I get tired. It’s better for me not to be standing up and sitting down all the time.”
Eulalie’s expectations had not been high, but she had thought he might remember something useful about that night. But all he remembered were the people who had been there for the dinner, not who had been in the drawing room at the exact moment of the murder. It was a shame, but not unexpected.
She rang the little bell that Talia had left on the coffee table for her. The housekeeper appeared quickly.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Egger. You’ve been very helpful.
He struggled to his feet despite her protests. She thought he wanted to shake hands, but he seized her in a bear hug. His mouth slobbered against her ear and one of his hands moved down to grip her buttock. Not even trying to suppress her shudder, Eulalie pulled back and used her sleeve to wipe her ear.
“That’s enough, Mr. Josef.” The housekeeper pulled at his arm. “Come and sit on the veranda now. The sun is in a good position.” She led the old man out of the drawing room, casting a look of apology at Eulalie as she went.
Eulalie scraped her sleeve across her cheek so hard it burned.
Richard and Jane Egger also lived in Edward Heights.
If she hadn’t just come from Mark and Emma’s mansion, Eulalie would have thought their house very grand indeed. But six bedrooms paled into insignificance in the face of eleven, and three stories looked small next to five.
Eulalie had taken the precaution of phoning ahead. Jane Egger was willing to speak to her and promised to be available at four-thirty.
There was no guard at the gate, so Eulalie rode up the driveway to the front door. Jane answered the door herself. She was a pleasant looking woman of about fifty. In terms of appearance, she fell somewhere in between the over-groomed glamour of Emma Egger and the defiant frumpishness of Lily Egger. She looked like what she was – a busy mother who prioritized comfort over glamour.
“My husband told me that Mark had hired a private investigator.” She closed the door behind Eulalie and ushered her into the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thank you. Cream, no sugar, please.”
As Jane switched on the coffee machine, she turned to glance at Eulalie. “Who else have you spoken to?”
“Let’s see.” Eulalie counted them off on her fingers. “Lily Egger, Priscilla Bosworth, Talia the housekeeper, and Josef Egger.”
“So, Lily and Joe are still staying with Mark, even after everything that’s happened? You’d think a murder in the family might convince them to move into a B&B, wouldn’t you? But you’d be wrong, because B&Bs cost money and Joe and Lily would never pay actual money for something they could get for nothing.”
“I heard they’re staying with Mark while their house is being renovated.”
“They are indeed.”
“That must be costing them money.”
Jane Egger poured cream into Eulalie’s coffee, gave it a stir, and put it in front of her.
“Ah, but you see, building costs can be borne by the company and then written off as an expense for tax purposes. And don’t go wild thinking that Joe and Lily live in Edward Heights. We’re talking about a modest three-bedroom ranch house in Sea View.”
“I thought the company was set up in such a way that the three brothers and their father owned equal shares in it and earned equal percentages of the profits.” Eulalie had done her homework on the
registration details of Eggerton and its profit-sharing system.
“Correct. All of us - the three families and Opa - have the same monthly income.”
“Then why were Mark and Emma living such a lavish lifestyle while Joe and Lily’s kids wear hand-me-downs?”
Jane laughed. “You noticed that, did you? Every few weeks, Lily knocks on my door and asks if my children have any clothes that they’ve outgrown. At least I have two daughters, so her girls can get their old clothes, but she takes my son’s clothes as well. It doesn’t matter how dirty and stained they are, she’s always glad to have them.”
As far as Eulalie knew, there was only one way that a family could blow through a huge monthly income so completely that they couldn’t afford clothes for their children.
“Forgive my bluntness, but do either Joe or Lily have a gambling problem?”
Jane threw her head back and roared with laughter. “A gambling problem! That’s a good one. I must tell Richard. No, no. It’s just terminal miserliness. They hate spending money. Like, on anything. All the characteristics that make Joe a really good accountant who keeps Eggerton in the black no matter what the world markets might be doing also make him the world’s biggest Scrooge. His brothers thought he would never get married because wives cost money. Then he was lucky enough to meet a woman after his own heart. Lily is even tighter than he is. He’s been saving more money since they got married, not less.”
“Why did they have three children though? Kids are supposed to be the most expensive decision you ever make. There’s private school, and then college, and …”
Jane’s laugh echoed through the kitchen. “Private school. That’s a good one. Home-schooling is quite good enough for Lily’s three daughters. And it’s free.”
“But still, kids cost money, whichever way you slice it.”
“Who knows. Maybe Joe cheaped out when it came to buying condoms.”
Eulalie smiled. Jane Egger was her favorite kind of witness. She was gossipy and indiscreet, and she enjoyed a good chat. There was no better person to shake all the skeletons out of the family closet.
The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 1 Page 29