by Connie Berry
“I’m fine,” I said for the ninth or tenth time since arriving on the island. “It’s Elenor. She’s dead.”
There was a moment’s silence. “Tell me what happened.”
My mother let me talk, as she always did, without questions or interruptions. I told her everything, including the note in the pocket of the black dress and the searching of my cottage.
Finally I took a breath. “It’s Nancy’s story about Bo Duff I can’t get out of my mind. How could Elenor treat him like that? It feels like watching someone strike a child.”
“Perhaps for Bo, the hurt faded quickly. Have you spoken with him?”
“I tried to call him. He’s not answering.” My shoulders tightened. I’d been telling myself not to worry, but I was worried. Things happen to the people you love.
“When are you coming home?”
“After the funeral, I guess, although I don’t know when that will be. I won’t be able to visit Christine now. And if you need to get home, just say so. I’ll call one of my part-time helpers to fill in.”
“I’ll stay as long as you need me. When will you learn your duties as executor?”
“Monday, probably. I have to set something up with Elenor’s solicitor.”
“You will lock the cottage from now on, won’t you?”
“Of course, but I’m not in danger.”
“Think about what you just told me, Kate. Do you know why Elenor wanted your help?”
“No.”
“Do you know why she was murdered?”
“No, but—”
“But you believe the two are connected.”
I was silent.
“Someone else may believe they’re connected, too, darling. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
After we hung up, I sat at the kitchen table and watched the wind ruffle the sea.
Years ago I’d typed up handouts for Bill’s ever-popular class on Investigative Techniques. A line came to mind: Most violent crimes are personal. Begin with those closest to the victim. Those closest to Elenor lived on the island, worked at the hotel. Elenor’s killer might be someone I knew, someone I’d thought I could trust.
Reasons to dislike Elenor were as plentiful as cold germs in January. But none, as far as I knew, had the slightest connection to the death of Flora Arnott. I thought about the casket and the word that had formed in my mind: murder. Had it been a warning?
Get a grip. I pulled my quilted jacket from the closet.
If there was a link between Elenor and Flora Arnott, something that led to Elenor’s death, the answer would come from research, not talking furniture.
* * *
I set out for the hotel at twelve forty-five. Nancy had insisted on preparing lunch, saying that everyone needed to eat and she needed to keep busy. What I needed was answers.
The ever-present wind carried the briny smell of the sea, layered with the mustiness of fallen leaves and the raw dampness of melting snow. I turned up the collar of my jacket, not that it helped. If my suitcase didn’t arrive soon, I’d have to go shopping.
Nearing the main house, I saw Agnes. She stood on the service drive near the post box, rubbing her arms against the cold and shifting from foot to foot. She hadn’t taken a sleeping pill after all. I was about to call to her when the rear porch door opened and Nancy waved me inside. “Come in, lass. Warm your wee bones.” She took my jacket and hung it on one of the brass hooks in the back hall.
The kitchen was fragrant with the aromas of peat and baking bread. Sofia stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing leaves of romaine lettuce. She was taller than I’d realized. Today she wore a long black wool skirt and a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her eyes were as dark as obsidian over bruiselike shadows that suggested anxiety. Or insomnia. “You have my sympathy,” she said, pronouncing it zeempaty.
The first words I’d heard her speak. Eastern European? “Thank you,” I said. “It was a shock.”
“A shock, a beeg surprise.” She reddened. “’Scuse my English.”
“Your English is wonderful. Where are you from?”
“I was born in Bulgaria, but I am in this country for many years.” She returned to her task, transferring the lettuce to a large ceramic bowl and placing it on the counter.
The back door opened and Agnes appeared, wiping her sturdy shoes on the rug. She pulled off her dark woolen coat and hung it on a hook. “The post,” she said, handing a packet bound with a thick rubber band to Nancy.
“Do you think I forget?” Sofia asked. “I was going now.”
“No need to get hostile,” Agnes snapped. “I was just passing the letter box.”
No you weren’t, I muttered silently. You were waiting for the mail delivery.
Sofia’s lip quivered. “Is my job.”
“Never mind.” Nancy put her arm around Sofia’s waist. “Agnes is tired.”
“I’m not wired,” Agnes said. “She’s the one who’s wired.”
“Tired,” Nancy repeated. “Honestly, Agnes, if you don’t get your hearing tested, we’re going to have to buy you an ear trumpet.”
Agnes scowled.
Nancy and Sofia laid out a buffet lunch on the long oak table near the hearth. Along with the romaine salad and a lemony dressing, there was a loaf of freshly baked whole-grain bread and a soup of winter squash and apples. Becca joined us, and Nancy ladled a generous portion of soup into her bowl, topping it with a dusting of nutmeg.
Most murders are personal. Begin with those closest to the victim.
I looked at the three women and lost my appetite. That was a first.
Apparently Agnes and Sofia weren’t hungry either. They sat staring into their soup.
Sofia sat slightly apart from the rest of us, as still as the doe rabbit I’d found nesting under my porch one March, nearly invisible in her spring camouflage. I’d given her privacy, rejoicing over the tiny balls of fluff that bounced across my lawn five weeks later.
Sofia’s coloring didn’t lend itself to invisibility.
“Where’s Frank?” I asked, breaking the silence.
“Looking for Bo,” Nancy said.
Again I felt that frisson of fear. Why was Frank looking for Bo if he wasn’t concerned?
Agnes stirred her soup in little figure eights. Getting people to talk wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d imagined.
I tried a new tack. “What will happen to the hotel between now and January when the new owners take over?”
That did the trick.
“We carry on as usual,” Becca said. “We’ve got a genealogy seminar in two weeks. No time to cancel now. Christmas is fully booked.”
“And we do have a guest,” Nancy said. “Poor wee man takes a holiday from crime, and next thing you know there’s a murder.”
No one batted an eye at the word murder. Either Nancy had filled them in or they’d figured it out on their own.
Nancy cleared her half-eaten bowl of soup. “What will you do this afternoon, Kate?”
“DI Devlin asked me to meet him at Elenor’s flat. Later I should work on emails.” I turned to Becca. “My cell phone’s dead, and the charger’s in my suitcase. Would you mind if I used your computer?”
“Of course not. It’s always on during the day. No password. Use it whenever you like.”
“Did Elenor have a laptop?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Elenor had been a dyed-in-the-wool technophobe. She didn’t email or text. She barely returned phone calls. “If you want to contact Elenor,” Bill quipped once, “you’d best send a herald on horseback.”
“Elenor didn’t trust computers,” Agnes said.
Nancy covered her face with her hands.
“What’s wrong?” I pushed back my chair.
“Nae, lass.” Nancy waved her hand. “It’s the uncertainty, the way we’re all looking at each other. Things will never be the same.”
“You’re right about that,” Agnes said. “By May we’ll all be gone.”
Nancy stared at her. “What
do you mean?”
“The new owners will ‘bring in their own people’?” Agnes put air quotes around the phrase. “Think about it.”
“She didnae mean replacing us.” Nancy shook her head. “No’ without giving notice.”
“Maybe she meant the new owners will bring in a larger staff,” Becca said.
“That’s right.” I nodded. “You could use more help, couldn’t you?”
“We get along grand as we are,” Nancy said. “Locals help in the off-season. They’re glad for the extra income. During the season we have the wee summer girls, a whole busload from the Ukraine this year.” Nancy put her hand on her heart. “They come to learn English and get work experience, but they get homesick and stop by for cookies and hugs.”
“If it’s cookies and hugs they want, they should stay at home with their mothers,” Agnes said. “They’re here to work, and most of them aren’t qualified. I guarantee the new owners will do a more thorough job of vetting than Elenor did.”
Sofia stood, waving away help as she succumbed to a paroxysm of coughing and ran from the room.
“Was that really necessary?” Nancy asked, the first time I’d heard her angry.
“It’s the truth. Face it.” Agnes stood. “If you want me, I’ll be in my flat.” She stumped out of the room, the Eeyore-like cloud over her head almost visible.
Nancy’s cell phone rang. She picked up. “Did you find him?”
She listened for a moment before ringing off. Her eyes were wide. “That was Frank. Bo’s pickup is at the croft, but he’s not there.”
Chapter Eleven
I stood outside Elenor’s flat while DI Devlin used two keys from a set on a jeweled key ring to open the double-locked door.
Now I really was worried about Bo Duff. He knew I was going to call him today. He was looking forward to our pub meal. Besides, where would he go without his truck?
Calm down. There’d be a simple explanation. Maybe someone picked him up.
Devlin handed me a pair of latex gloves. “We have to wear these. Regulations.” He slipped a pair on his own hands with practiced ease. On my hands, the gloves looked like oversized balloons. I rolled the wrists to keep them from falling off.
“Ready?” He gave me a tight smile.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Let me know if anything strikes you.”
At least he wasn’t chewing gum this time.
Devlin opened the door into Elenor’s small foyer. A jacket and furled umbrella in Burberry plaid hung on a brass coat tree.
Elenor’s living room looked more like a furniture store than a home. Everything matched impeccably. Yesterday her personality had filled the space with sharp angles and saturated colors. Today the angles seemed blunted, the colors bleached.
A white sofa and matching love seat faced a gray-veined marble fireplace. Between them, a square glass coffee table held a heavy art-glass bowl in swirls of cerulean and white and an oversized book entitled One Hundred Years of Fashion & Style. I ran my gloved hand across the top of a sofa. “No one’s dusted in a long time. That’s not like Elenor. She was fussy.”
In the dining area, a pendant lamp hung over a round table draped in a subtle blue-and-white print cloth. On the table stood an open cardboard box on which someone had scrawled Historical Society in thick marker. I peered inside. The box was filled with kitchenware—utensils with chipped Bakelite handles, an aluminum percolator, an iron pot. Someone’s castoffs.
I suppressed an urge to dash into the bathroom to see if the casket was still there. Instead, I followed Devlin into Elenor’s pristine kitchen.
He opened the built-in refrigerator. “Didn’t cook much, did she?”
“I wouldn’t either if I had Nancy Holden to cook for me.”
In the bedroom, Elenor’s bed was loosely made with a pale-blue damask coverlet. Expensive, custom-made. A framed photograph of Bill, the one I’d sent her for Christmas the year he died, rested on the bedside table. One of the hotel’s signature waffle-weave bathrobes lay across a chaise lounge covered in the same pale-blue damask. Elenor’s blue velvet dress and Hamilton tartan sash lay in a careless heap on the floor. I imagined her dematerializing, leaving them to collapse in place.
A handbag in soft cream-colored leather lay on the bed.
“Take a look inside,” Devlin said.
I did, finding the usual items—sunglasses, Kleenex, a comb, several tubes of lipstick, a powder compact, an assortment of pens, and a leather organizer well stocked with cash and credit cards. I shook my head. “Nothing unusual.”
Elenor would have hated the idea of people picking through her things. I half expected her to march through the door, eyes blazing, demanding to know exactly what we thought we were doing in there.
A vanity table with an oval mirror and a small plush bench filled the space between two tall windows. The middle drawer hung open, exposing a hodgepodge of creams, foundations, lipsticks, eye makeup. The glass top held a lighted makeup mirror, a prescription bottle, several expensive-looking flasks of perfume, and a blue velvet ring box.
“May I?” I indicated the ring box and Devlin nodded. The box was empty, but gold lettering under the domed lid spelled out PATERSON & SON, JEWELERS, INVERNESS.
The prescription had come from a local chemist in Mallaig. The label read ESZOPICLONE. NO REFILLS. I opened it and tipped several round blue tablets into my hand. Each was marked S193. “What’s eszopiclone?”
“Let’s find out.” Devlin typed something into his cell phone. A moment later he read aloud: “Eszopiclone may be effective in the treatment of insomnia where difficulty in falling asleep is the primary complaint. If drug therapy is appropriate, it should be initiated at the lowest possible dose to minimize side effects.”
“Sleeping pills.” I tipped the blue pills back into the bottle and closed the cap.
“Was Mrs. Spurgeon in the habit of taking sedatives?” Devlin asked.
“I don’t know. She’s been under stress.”
Devlin gestured around the bedroom. “Any thoughts?”
“Yes, actually. It looks to me like Elenor was already undressed when the phone rang. Someone insisted on meeting her at the Historical Society, so she threw on some clothes and redid her makeup. That tells me the caller was a man.”
“Romantic evening?”
“No. If she were leaving for a romantic evening, she would have taken her handbag.”
“Why’s that?”
“Lipstick, compact, comb.” Men don’t have a clue. “The fact that she left it behind tells me she was planning to come right back.”
Devlin raised an eyebrow, and I couldn’t help a brief gloat.
“Take a look in the bathroom,” Devlin said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. There it was, the casket, resting on its towel-draped plinth. I ran my hand over the velvet-smooth surface, half dreading and half desiring a repeat of the experience I’d had the day before, but today the casket was keeping its counsel.
“Some kind of chest, right? Looks old.” Devlin perched on the edge of a claw-foot tub so large you could swim laps.
“I saw it yesterday when I arrived. It’s probably eighteenth century, and technically, it’s a casket.”
“Small for a casket, unless you’re talking a pet hamster.”
“Not to bury someone. That’s a coffin. A casket is a case for valuables—documents, coins, jewelry. The decoration is called marquetry, inlaid designs using the grain and colors of thin veneers, usually wood, but sometimes other materials like tortoiseshell or ivory or precious metals. The workmanship is exceptionally fine.” I looked up, wanting him to understand. “This piece is valuable. Museum quality.”
“Why keep it in the bathroom?”
“I assume Elenor set it up to be photographed. I can think of three reasons she might do that: to document it for insurance purposes, to inquire about its provenance—its history—or to offer it for sale. May I check the underside?”
“Help yo
urself.”
“British cabinetmakers of the period rarely marked their pieces, but you never know.” I lifted the casket, judging the size-to-weight ratio, one of the indicators of age and quality. The piece might have been made by one of the famous London houses—Sheraton, Chippendale, Hepplewhite—but their work was well documented, and I’d never seen anything remotely like this casket. I considered the lesser-known houses—Frederick Beck, maybe, or Ince & Mayhew—but even that was unlikely. Holding the key in place, I turned the casket over, feeling something shift inside. The underside of the casket was beautifully constructed, the boards fitted side-to-side to minimize shrinkage and expansion. “No marks,” I said, replacing the box on the table, “but there’s something inside.” I turned the key and lifted the lid.
Within the faded red-leather-lined compartment was a copy of Guthrie’s book. I opened the cover and found an inscription: To Elenor with love, Hugh.
DS Bruce poked his head in the room. “Message, sir.”
Devlin excused himself and stepped out.
I looked at the casket, then at the book in my hands. What was it about Elenor and that book? Look for the details, my mother would say. When you see things together, things that shouldn’t be together, there’s always a connection.
Once, in a box of old pearl buttons, my mother found an unused train ticket. Stoughton, Wisconsin, to Chicago, dated 1932. “What do you think the woman was like who owned this button box?” she asked me, then about fourteen. “Why would she keep a train ticket in with her buttons?”
“Stuck it in there one day and forgot about it?” I hadn’t especially cared.
“No, look. The buttons are sorted and sewn onto pieces of muslin. The needles are pinned into squares of felt in order of size. This woman was orderly. And she’s saved thread, winding it around bits of folded paper, so she was thrifty, too.”
“What do you think?” I asked, interested in spite of myself.
“I think she was a seamstress, and she saved up money for a long time to get away from her small town and start a new life. She hid the ticket in a place no one would look. But she never had the courage to go. Or maybe”—my mother’s eyes had brightened with a happier thought—“she met a wonderful man and decided she didn’t want to leave after all.”