by Blake Banner
“So that is two strokes against suicide.”
“Dehan?”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
She gave a girly giggle which should have been totally out of character but wasn’t, rested her head on my shoulder and said, “Ah, you know, just playing detective.” Then she added in a mock French accent, “Exersahzing zee little gray cells, ’Estings!”
I fingered her hair absently while I gazed at the horizon. “It’s a pretty little mystery, I’ll grant you that.”
“One thing would clinch it…”
She slid down so her head was on my lap and she was squinting up into my face. I smiled down at her and said, “The handkerchief.”
She frowned. “My god, you are a freak. You do read minds.”
I laughed. “It stands to reason.”
“The only way he could have avoided GSR on his hand is if he’d had a handkerchief or something similar over his hand and his sleeve. Is that what you were thinking?”
“Yup. It fell off after he shot himself and was lying on the floor. It was disregarded as evidence because nobody thought it was important.”
I made a face and shook my head. “I don’t believe, Dehan, there was any such handkerchief. If he wanted to avoid GSR on his hand, his only motive for that would be to frame somebody. If he was going to do that, he would have left a door or a window open and planted some kind of evidence. But what was done was exactly the contrary. There is no attempt to frame anybody here, unless the person being framed is Gordon. We can check the newspaper reports from the time and see if there are any crime scene photographs, but we’ll find there was no handkerchief or anything of the sort. This was a murder set up to look like a suicide, not the other way around.”
She sat up and got on her knees in one fluid movement. “So you do think it was a murder.”
I nodded. “I have never had any doubt.”
She spread her hands and shook her head in a silent question.
I echoed her gesture. “It was too impossible. It couldn’t be impossible that it was both murder and suicide, could it? That only happens if somebody is managing the scene. And the scene was managed in such a way that, after scratching your head, you have to conclude it was suicide…”
I shrugged.
She nodded. “So it had to be murder. Totally circumstantial, Stone, but I agree with you. The suicide is the impossible.” Then she frowned like she had a headache. “But…”
I laughed, got to my feet and pulled her up. “Come on, this was just a little gray cells exercise, remember? What do you say we head for the village and have a traditional pub lunch?”
“I say you are a wise man, Sensei. Lead on.”
FIVE
We were approaching the hedge and wall that encircled the castle, on our way to the only road on the island, intending to follow it for the half mile down to the village and the pub, when we saw, about three or four hundred yards away, Bee, sitting on some of the wall’s fallen stones, looking out at the landscape. She was wearing a flimsy white summer dress and a large, white hat with a broad blue ribbon around it. She spotted us approaching and waved, and we made our way toward her. As we drew closer she waved again and called, “Halloo! Hallo, you two! What a glorious morning! Where have you been? I demand you tell me!”
She beamed at us and Dehan laughed. “We went to the stones. What are you doing out here?”
She rolled her eyes and raised her hands in mock despair. “Oh, I simply had to get out! I couldn’t take that woman for another moment!”
I didn’t ask because I didn’t really want to know. Dehan did because she did. “Which woman would that be, Bee?”
“Well, there is only one.”
“There were two last night.”
Bee raised a baleful eyebrow. “Oh, you mean that appalling Sally. No, she is not a guest at the castle, not, at least, in the conventional sense. I refer to Pamela.”
“You two not pals, huh?”
“My dear, you have a gift for understatement. I despise the woman and she has the cheek to despise me back.”
In spite of myself, I frowned and asked, “Isn’t that how it normally works?”
“Oh, my dear boy, how delightfully American of you. Give me a hand down, will you, I’ll walk you to the gate.”
I handed her down from the rock she was sitting on and she took my arm. We began to walk and Bee smiled at Dehan. “You chose well. My mother used to tell us, ‘Only marry a man if you feel safe on his arm, otherwise he’ll turn out to be queer or a sissy.’ That’s what they call ‘gay’ these days, and of course it’s all the rage. But when I was young, we wanted men to be men.”
I smiled and changed the subject. “You have a sister.”
She smiled up at me. “Had. She died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was many years ago. Oh…” She paused and looked up at the sky, calculating. A warm breeze moved her dress and her hair in a sudden gust, and suddenly I could feel the storm in the air. “Oh, it must be nearly forty years ago.” We started walking again. “She was engaged to Charles.”
Dehan came around and took Bee’s other arm. “Bee, do you mean that your sister was engaged to Charles Gordon Sr.?”
“Oh yes. Old Man Gordon was all for it, even though we weren’t clan, because they’d be marrying into the aristocracy, albeit minor aristocracy. Would have been the cherry on the cake for him. The title is hereditary, you see. We’ve held it since we backed the Tudors against Richard. It would have given him a legitimacy he could not have dreamt of otherwise.”
“So what happened?”
“Maggie, that was my sister, Lady Margaret Butterworth, went out to Boston during his last year at university. Then she came back and he followed after he’d graduated. She was terribly in love with him. He is, after all, a rather fascinating man, isn’t he?”
Dehan smiled noncommittally. “She was older than you.”
“I was a mere slip of a girl back then. Barely twelve years old when they met. But even then I was aware of his intensity, the sheer power of the man. He was like his father, but more so. His father could never control him, you know.” She sighed. “To Charles it was only ever a marriage of convenience. But to poor Maggie, he was the love of her life. She was besotted.”
We were approaching the end of the wall. Around the corner were the gate and the driveway. Dehan was frowning and there was almost a sense of urgency to her questions.
“So when did he meet Pamela?”
“Well!” She said it as though it were self explanatory. “Imagine! Accustomed to Boston and New York, moving to live on Gordon’s Soma, he was out of his mind with boredom. He spent some time in London, but his father wanted him by his side. He wanted to infuse him with the same insane passion that he felt for this godforsaken lump of rock.” She sighed again. “But Charles never felt it, and besides, he was a rebel at heart. I believe he would have done anything at all to defy his father. So he began to frequent the pub, where you are about to have lunch, and there he met Pam. She was the publican’s daughter. She was very different back then, I can tell you!”
We had reached the corner and Bee drew to a halt.
Dehan asked, “Different in what way?”
Bee burst out laughing. “Well, for a start she was amusing! She was a very, very naughty girl! She and Charles used to get up to all sorts of outrageous things. She was a hoot! I was really quite fond of her back then. She was just that bit older than me but quite anarchic and, honestly, my recollection of her was that she was always laughing. Always had this mischievous, outrageous twinkle in her eye. And then…” She spread her hands. “Then Charles, foolish, foolish Charles went and ruined everything by falling in love with her.”
I was intrigued in spite of my better judgment. “How did that ruin everything if he was in love with her, and she was in love with him?”
She looked at me with big, round blue eyes. “Dear boy, she was not in love with him.
She was just having fun. She never for a moment believed that it would lead anywhere. She was the publican’s daughter, for heaven’s sake! He, even though he was an American, was to all intents and purposes the Laird—the Lord of the Manor. She fully expected that they’d have their summer of shagging and then he’d be on his merry way. Instead of that, he proposed to her!”
I raised an eyebrow. “A fairy tale…”
“Precisely! And it only works in fairy tales. Suddenly this happy-go-lucky live wire was presented with the chance of becoming the lady of the manor. Her life was turned upside down. Of course she went for it, but all her priorities changed overnight. Suddenly she was concerned with appearances, form, manners, behavior!” She grunted. “By the time they were married, she had become the stuck up old prig she is now.”
I made a face and nodded. “A cautionary tale.”
“Indeed.”
Dehan asked, “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to your sister?”
She took a deep breath. “She was a frail little thing. Delicate constitution, you know. She became very depressed and died within a few months. They said she died of a broken heart. I think that’s all tosh and nonsense. I believe she topped herself and Daddy hushed it up.”
Dehan narrowed her eyes. “Topped herself?”
I said, “Committed suicide.”
“Wow…”
Before she could say any more, Bee flapped her hand. “Never had much sympathy, really. It’s a harsh world, Carmen. If you’re not strong you go down. That’s the way it is.” She grinned. “I knew he’d grow tired of Pam before very long, so I hung around in the wings and waited for him to notice me. It didn’t take long.” Dehan’s jaw dropped and Bee started to laugh. “That is why Pam can’t stand me. Stupid woman should be grateful I’ve taken him off her hands.”
She patted my arm. “I shan’t keep you any longer. You take your lovely wife to lunch. But take my advice, Mr. Stone, don’t let that rake near her. He is insatiable!”
She turned and made her way up the drive toward the house, with a saucy swing to her hips. We watched her a moment, then Dehan took my arm and we started down the road toward the village.
“Can you believe that woman?”
“I think she’s a gas. The world needs more people like that.”
“You could be right. But what a set up, Stone…”
“I know what you were doing, Dehan.”
“What?” Her face was a picture of innocence.
“You were fishing for motives.”
She looked away, frowning. “No, I wasn’t. Not as such.”
“And you didn’t find one. Bee’s resentment for her sister’s death, if she felt any, would have been directed entirely toward Charles, not his father. If anything, she would have felt some sympathy with his father.”
“You’re getting into this as much as I am, you fraud. OK, so she has no apparent motive to kill the dad. But if the son is a rake, who’s to say that was not learned behavior, or hereditary? And if the dad was as much a rake as the son, then maybe he upset somebody on the island.”
I made a face that was skeptical. “You’re speculating.”
“Yeah, but we’re not on a case, Detective Stone, and we are not going to arrest anybody, so I can speculate if I want to.”
“In that case, it is possible.”
We had entered among the trees, mostly tall, whispering pines that seemed to arch over the road like the nave of a cathedral. There was a soft, green light in the air and our voices acquired a muted echo. I took hold of Dehan’s arm and stopped her gently. She smiled at me.
I said, “Don’t make any sudden movements. Very gently turn around and look.”
Through the pines I could see a glade, dense with ferns maybe three or four feet high. A shaft of sunlight was leaning in through the canopy above and, caught in its beam, there was a stag with great, spreading antlers, motionless, watching us. It was a scene of perfect beauty and it made Dehan gasp. The quick intake of breath alarmed the stag and it turned and bolted, leaping through the ferns until it had vanished among the trees.
She didn’t say anything. We walked on in silence, going ever down, deeper into the woods without speaking until after twenty minutes or so we came upon the first house, an old stone cottage with flowerpots suspended beside the door, set back a little from the road. After that, the houses became more numerous and the woods fell back until we came to a large clearing with a green, a post office, a grocery store, and an inn.
The inn was half timbered with a red slate roof and a tall, red brick chimney. A sign swinging outside proclaimed that it was the Gordon Arms. We pushed open the door, a bell clanged, and the warm sound of conversation greeted us, along with the good smell of roasting meat and baking pies.
There were a few men at the bar drinking dark brown beer with no froth. I leaned on the counter and the publican, a cheerful, round-faced man in his forties grinned at me and said, “What’ll it be, sir?”
“Two pints of best, and we’d like to have lunch.”
“Nay problem. Thus the dining room though thar. I’ll bring yer pints to yiz.”
I followed the direction he’d pointed in through an open door into a long room with a large, open fireplace and a dozen tables set with cutlery. Only one of them was occupied. It was occupied by a woman who sat staring at us. She attempted to smile, but failed.
Dehan came up beside me. “Hello, Mrs. Gordon,” she said. “Are you having lunch here? Would you like to join us?”
Pamela opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“No… I mean, I am not having lunch. I just stepped in for a quick drink and wanted to get away from the…” She waved her hand at the public bar next door. Then she tried to smile again. “I’ll join you for a drink, then I’ll leave you to your lunch. I had better get back. Charles will be wondering…” She trailed off, then gestured at the chairs opposite her. “Won’t you join me?”
As we sat, Dehan went straight in. With a bright smile she said, “We bumped into Bee on the way down here.”
Pam sighed and looked away. “That woman!”
I said, “Have you known her long?”
“Forever!” She said it with feeling. “It feels that way, anyway.”
Dehan nodded, with big innocent eyes. “Were you at school together?”
Pam laughed without humor. “Gosh, no. I went to the local comprehensive. Lady Bee went to Benenden.”
Dehan frowned and shook her head. “What is that? Local comprehensive and Benenden?”
I let Pam explain. She sighed and there was a whiff of condescension about her. “Comprehensive school. What you would call state school. And Benenden is the private girls school that little aristocrats go to, to learn to be proper ladies.”
There was no mistaking the vitriol in her voice.
“Oh.” Dehan glanced at me. “I hope my question wasn’t intrusive…”
Pam shook her head and sighed. “No, sorry, you weren’t to know…” The barkeep came in with our pints, handed us the menu he had under his arm, and Pam said, “Bring me another G&T, would you, Len?”
“Comin’ right up, Pam!”
He went away and she flopped back in her seat. “It just gets so wearing sometimes. Keeping up the pretense. I tell you, sometimes I think, if I could turn the clock back and do it all again…”
Dehan nodded, smiling ruefully. “I hear you. I tell you.” She pointed at Pam across the table. “Sister, you can get it right a million times, but you only need to fuck up once to regret it all your life.”
Pam seemed to thaw. Her smile became more human. “You got that right. But you know? The biggest mistakes? The ones you will definitely regret all your life? They’re the ones where you are not true to yourself. It sounds cynical, but it’s true: you let somebody else down and that’s bad. You’ll regret that. But let yourself down and you will pay for it your whole life long!”
I made a face and nodded a lot. “That sounds like wisd
om. I’ll drink to that.”
I raised my glass to her and pulled off a long draught while she watched me curiously.
Dehan took a long pull, then wiped her mouth on the back of her arm and looked at me wide-eyed. “Man! That is something else! This is beer?” She held up the glass in front of her face and said with feeling, “Where have you been all my life?”
Pam burst out laughing. I did too, but as my laughter subsided, Pam laughed more. It was as though Dehan had opened a valve with her sudden expostulation, and Pam covered her mouth with her hand and squealed a strange, half strangled outburst. Dehan joined in and I sat and watched them both, smiling to myself and shaking my head.
Then Dehan was leaning across the small table, gripping Pam’s arms, repeating, “This is beer? They’ve been lying to me all my life! Man! I just died and went to Scotland!”
She leaned back with a foolish grin on her face, chuckling and watching Pam through hooded eyes, while Pam wiped hers and said, “Oh! I’m sorry! I don’t know what came over me. I haven’t laughed like that… I can’t remember since when.”
Dehan’s expression changed. There was just a hint of compassion in her eyes. “Too long,” she said, and then, “Say, what’s so important? Join us for lunch.”
After a moment, she smiled and turned to me. “Do you mind? You’re on your honeymoon with this lovely lady. I don’t want to intrude…”
“You’re not intruding,” I said.
Dehan added, “Please, stay, and tell us all about yourself, your castle, your life…”