“Nope.” He leaned up against his shovel. “So – head or feet?”
“Excuse me?”
“Head or feet?” he repeated, indicating the body. I simply gaped at him.
“I – what?”
“Well I can't carry him up to the master bedroom by myself,” he said, “and I doubt any of them are going to help me.”
I wasn't sure it was a good enough reason to ask me, and I quickly regretted not going inside when I had had the chance. My stomach turned unpleasantly, and as I imagined grasping John around the wrists to tug him up, the feeling of his fingers on my own wrist came back to me and bile rose in my throat.
“Feet it is, then,” Kneller said, deciding for me. He grabbed John below the arms. “Come on then.”
I reached down and tentatively grasped the hems of the dead man's tuxedo pants, but upon giving it a pull, I realized that there was no way we would be able to lift him. Even if I had been capable of mustering the strength needed, the body was so stiff and weighed down that we would be lucky to drag him a few inches.
“You're going to have to try a bit harder, Alexandra,” Kneller said. “Put your back into it.”
“He's – stuck –” I replied, yanking on his ankles to no avail. Kneller watched me impatiently.
Snow crunched somewhere behind me, then a voice called over to us.
“Here – let me.”
I turned to see Lennox walking toward us. He took my place and wrenched John's legs from the snow to lift him. Kneller gave him an irritated look but, seeing as I was useless to him, agreed to his help.
I followed them to the house, hurrying around them to open the door, and then led them up to the Augustus Suite. As they maneuvered John's body onto the window seat, I looked over at where Mrs. Marlowe still laid upon the bed. Her hands laid at her sides and a large silver ring adorned with diamonds and sapphires caught the little light that was in the room. I blinked and snapped the rubber band around my wrist. When I had first seen her there, her hands had been clasped together. Someone must have moved her, I knew, though I couldn't help but imagine that she really was sleeping, just as I had first assumed, and that she would awaken at any moment and chide us for disturbing her slumber.
I ran my hands over my arms to ward off a shiver, then looked over the room to see if anything else had changed. The silk pillows and fur rugs were still in place, though there was an extra pair of women's slippers by the foot of the bed that I hadn't noticed before. They were askew as though someone had kicked them off to get into bed. Cold wind raked in from the window and I was no longer able to suppress my shiver. I clutched my arms, trying to think clearly rather than give into the notion that the house was haunted, but the alternative was no better: that there was something else going on in the house that was strange and frightening, and it would explain exactly how John Marlowe had wound up dead.
“Well, that was enough excitement for me for one day,” Kneller said briskly, clapping his hands together as though to rid the death from his palms. “If you'll excuse me …”
He exited the room and returned downstairs, leaving me and Lennox alone. Lennox was staring down at John's body with the same troubled frown he had worn upon first seeing him dead. As I observed him, I wondered if he was beginning to suspect the same thing I was; I was certainly hoping so. For if someone truly had killed John, then that meant I was in a house full of people I neither knew nor trusted who might have been the ones to do it, and Lennox was momentarily the only one I had reason to believe was innocent because he had been locked in the nursery when John had died.
I pulled my swing coat further around me, not eager to let the cold creep upon my skin.
“The doors really were locked,” I told him. “I'm not confused.”
“I believe you.”
I took a step closer to him.
“So he must have been murdered,” I said.
Lennox hummed. He didn't seem quite as convinced, or perhaps he simply didn't want to believe it was so.
“Or someone else locked the door,” he said.
“But if he was just locked out he could have rung the bell, like you said. And even so, why didn't anyone admit to it?”
“Perhaps they were frightened.”
My mind flashed back to the odd look Bill had given him at the table, and though I knew that it was possible, it didn't stop me from thinking the worst. John Marlowe hadn't gone out and frozen to death in the snow: it was too coincidental. No, I corrected, too convenient for the people who would now hope to inherit his money.
“Perhaps they were frightened because they knew they'd done someone wrong,” I argued. “To John.”
Lennox glanced up at me, then returned his eyes to the dead man.
“I guess we'll find out,” he said. “If there was any foul play, it'll be found in the autopsy.”
“Not if moving the body messes up the results, like you said.” I took another step closer. I was now standing only two feet away from him.“Could you tell? You're a doctor.”
“Technically, I suppose,” he responded uncertainly. “But I haven't done anything akin to an autopsy since medical school, and I certainly don't have the supplies –”
“But you could take a look. See if he's been hit on the head or something.”
Lennox stared at me. It was a patient look, though not without hesitation as to why I was so anxious.
“The family wouldn't like that,” he said. “They're not particularly fond of me, as I'm sure you've noticed. I think it's best to wait for the police.”
“But no one called the police: the phone's out.”
“It'll come back on, I'm sure. And if not, then Kneller can go to the mainland and alert them himself.”
“Not until the weather gets better.” I took a final step toward him so that I was standing directly in front of him. I could feel myself becoming fixated on what had happened to John in a way that had only happened to me once before: when my mother had started to lose her memory. The intense urge to fix what had happened had gripped me for years – and still gripped me now – and I had a feeling that I wouldn't rest until I figured out what had happened to John, just as I wouldn't rest until I did everything that I could for her. And though I couldn't begin to wonder why it was happening now, I couldn't deny that it was exciting – almost freeing – to be able to focus on something new for the first time in over a decade. “Wouldn't you rather know now?”
“I'd rather not get into trouble for tampering with the body,” Lennox responded. His tone was gentle but his voice was firm. I sighed.
“Alright.”
I stepped past him to get to the window seat.
“Alright what?” he asked.
“Alright, I'll take a look myself.”
I leaned over to gaze at the dead man. On the surface he looked more or less intact: there were no cuts or scrapes on his face, nor were any of his limbs bent at an odd angle. To all appearances there was nothing wrong with him – except, of course, his unnatural stiffness and the lack of color in his flesh.
“I don't mean to be rude,” Lennox said from behind me, “but I rather doubt you have any idea what you're doing.”
I ignored him. My heart was pounding as though I had just run a mile in the cold, and the urge to know what had happened was too strong to suppress. I ran my eyes up and down John's form, trying to detect how he could have been killed. Poison? Strangulation? Blunt force trauma?
“Even if something happened to John,” Lennox tried again, “it won't change anything to know at this exact moment.”
I put my hand on John's head, no longer repulsed by the thought of touching him as my resolve spurred me on, and pushed back his thinning hair to search for any cuts or bumps on his skin.
“If you're uncomfortable, Dr. Lennox, then you don't have to stay,” I said as I forced the dead man's head to the side to check the back of his skull, “– but I'm not uncomfortable. I'm curious. I'm perplexed. I'm – quite frankly – a bit angry, be
cause I was counting on John Marlowe staying alive. So if you'll excuse me, I'd like to find out if I should blame the universe for striking him down, or someone under this roof.”
I fumbled with John's rigid coat, and the thin layer of ice that clung to it snapped as I pulled it open. The thick wool slumped away to reveal the dead man's chest, which was just a tuxedo coat, vest, crisp white shirt, bow tie and a gold bauble. I frowned and leaned in closer, knowing that he hadn't been adorned with any such ornamentation when I had seen him the previous night. The object upon his chest was surrounded by a dark brown stain.
“I know you have no interest in an autopsy, Dr. Lennox,” I said slowly, “but you might want to take a look at this.”
I didn't move my eyes from the gold spot on John's chest as Lennox leaned down to see what I was pointing at. The smell of cigarette smoke from his clothing wafted into my nostrils and made my eyes water, but the image of what was in front of me had burned itself into my memory and floated in front of my mind as clearly as ever. The golden bulb was so delicate and embellished that it looked like a Christmas ornament. But it wasn't an ornament. It was the hilt of a knife. The blade of which, I knew, was buried in the dead man's chest.
Chapter 4
The Marlowe women and Bill gathered around John's body for the second time that day, though this time there was an altered air about them that had nothing to do with the return to their usual attire. Their eyes went from the knife handle sticking out from beneath his tuxedo jacket to his lifeless face, and their breaths came out around them in puffs of white from the frigid air, seemingly waiting for Lennox to backtrack and announce that John had really died of alcohol-induced hypothermia after all. I stood by the dead man's feet with Mrs. Tilly. Her hand was clutched around her necklace and she was rocking back and forth. Kneller was further back in the doorway.
Finally Edie spoke.
“Who else is on this island?”
“It's just us, Edie,” Marjorie said, her voice crisp. “You know that.”
“No, there must be someone else,” Edie said. “A vagrant, a wanderer – someone that Mum hired that we don't know about. That's who did this.”
“I've been here for four weeks now,” Bernadette said. “There's no one else on this island.”
“There must be,” Edie said. “None of us killed John!”
“What do you think happened?” Marjorie snapped impatiently. “A madman hijacked a boat, came to the island, stabbed John, then ran off again?”
“He might not've run off,” Edie said. “He might still be here –”
“There's no one else on the island, Edie!”
“Maybe we should organize a search, just in case,” Bill said, putting a hand on his wife's shoulder. She flinched and pulled away.
“You want to search the island, Bill? Be my guest,” Marjorie said. “A foot of snow and thirty acres of woods sounds like great exercise.”
“Maybe this isn't what it looks like,” Rachel said. “Maybe – maybe John just fell –”
“Oh yes, maybe John just fell backwards while holding a knife in the middle of the yard, and it plunged into his chest, killing him –”
“You're not helping, Marjorie!”
“Neither is standing here pretending that this is something that it's not!” Marjorie countered, her cheeks growing redder than her hair. “Someone killed John, and last time I checked, there were only eleven possible suspects!”
“Twelve, actually,” I corrected automatically.
The family turned to look at me.
“No, eleven,” Marjorie said, “because I know it wasn't me!”
“Well, it wasn't any of us, either,” Rachel said. “And James certainly couldn't have done it.”
James was still downstairs in his wheelchair. As the siblings continued to echo that they weren't killers, either, I glanced around at everyone's faces. Marjorie was belligerent, Bernadette quizzical, Rachel pained, Edie terrified, Bill tense, Lennox rigidly composed, Mrs. Tilly disbelieving, and Kneller mildly amused. Amalia was downright livid.
As Lennox looked over and caught my eye, I quickly turned away. I had the feeling that he had been taking a similar survey of expressions, and I wondered what he had decided mine was. Unmoved, perhaps. Or unsympathetic, or uncaring, or unemotional, or detached. It didn't matter: I had heard them all numerous times before.
“It had to have been you,” Amalia said, looking shakily at Rachel. “You've wanted this ever since – ever since what happened!”
Rachel looked half flabbergasted, half sickened.
“I would never –” she began, “ – never have hurt John. He was my brother. My twin. It was – we all know it was a – an – an accident –”
“Everyone knows it wasn't you, Rachel,” Bernadette said. “Amalia's just upset.”
“Of course I'm upset!” Amalia exclaimed. “I'm – I'm – I'm too young to be a widow!”
“Don't flatter yourself: we all know you're nearly sixty, despite what you claim,” Marjorie said. “And I, for one, think it's interesting that Lennox here just showed up out of the blue, and suddenly our brother is killed.”
“It couldn't have been Dr. Lennox,” I said, correcting her before I could stop myself. Lennox glanced at me, his mouth still open with the intention of defending himself. I avoided his eyes.
“Oh?” Bernadette said, looking toward me and drawing out the word for much longer than necessary, her large midsection swelling as she went. “And how do you know that, Alexa?”
“Because I locked him in the nursery last night.”
Raised eyebrows met me from all directions, and Bill sent me an odd look as though he thought me a liar. Lennox closed his mouth. His expression shifted uncertainly for a moment, but then he appeared quite relieved.
“You locked his door?” Bernadette asked. “And where did you get the key? I don't remember issuing you one.”
“I took it from the Pantry.”
“Oh? So you stole it?”
“No, I just wanted to lock his door –”
“And why would you lock his door?” Marjorie asked.
“Because I wasn't about to sleep in an adjoining room with a stranger,” I said. I folded my hands behind my back and then added, “I didn't think it would be proper.”
Marjorie crossed her arms.
“You're in the nanny's room, you mean? Whose idea was that?”
“Tilda hasn't been able to collect all of her belongings from the maid's room yet,” Bernadette said. “John didn't think it was fair to let her replacement rummage through her things, so he had me put her in there.”
“Well, that's very close quarters,” Marjorie said, her voice dripping with disdain. “You two must have been comfortable.”
“I'm not sure it matters who's sleeping where,” Rachel said quickly, though her ever-present smile was a bit tighter than usual. “The point is, Isidore had nothing to do with this.”
“And who did, then?” Edie said. “It wasn't one of us!”
“Of course it wasn't,” Marjorie said. She looked at Amalia. “It was you!”
“Me?” Amalia exclaimed. “I wouldn't – I had no reason to – I didn't kill my husband!”
“You're the one who gets his life insurance and newfound fortune,” Marjorie said.
“Not if you contest the will!” Amalia returned. “We all know your mother wanted the money to go to a male heir, and I don't have any sons!”
“It's not my fault you stopped procreating after two,” Marjorie said. “You were more worried about your figure than your lineage –”
“I never expected John to die right after Sylvia!”
“Come to think of it,” Bernadette said, reaching down into the container of biscuits on Mrs. Marlowe's bedside table and taking one out to munch on, “wouldn't the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act come into play?”
“The what?” Amalia asked.
“The Uniform Simultaneous Death Act,” Bernadette repeated, her words barely audible be
tween the crunching of the cookie in her teeth. “It states that if two people die within 120 hours of one another, they're legally both said to have predeceased the other.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“That John wouldn't inherit Mother's fortune.”
Amalia's face twisted unnaturally in anger. Her hands clamped around the ends of her hair, and she looked ready to yank it from her head.
“He what?” she whispered dangerously.
“It's just the law, dear,” Bernadette said unsympathetically. “No need to get upset –”
“So you did do this!” she screeched, looking around at her sisters-in-law. “This is exactly what you wanted! For the estate to be split up among the rest of you –!”
“It won't be split up among any of us if the will states it has to go to a male heir,” Bernadette said matter-of-factly. “If anything, it would go to Bill.”
Bill gave a startled shake of his head. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his crooked nose and swallowed, suddenly looking like he wanted nothing more than to crawl next to Mrs. Marlowe and play dead until the conversation was over. From the way Amalia's eyes had narrowed on him, I hardly blamed him.
“Oh, well – I don't – I never expected –” he stuttered.
“She wouldn't leave it to Bill,” Amalia said scathingly. “He doesn't have any children – nor will he.”
She threw her brother-in-law a withering look, but it was Edie whose cheeks burned, sending red blotches over her white skin.
“Well, that's the only option –” Bernadette said, but Marjorie cut her off.
“No, that's not the only one,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes went to Lennox. Her sisters' followed.
“She wouldn't leave it to him,” Amalia said in disgust. “He's not a part of this family!”
“You know how he wormed his way into Mother's good book –”
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