by Connie Berry
Mother, the eternal optimist. But she was right about noticing details, things that shouldn’t be together. That principle had come in handy when I was raising my children. Finding crumbs in the pocket of Christine’s pink jacket after the cookies I made for the school bake sale vanished. Noticing the smear of lipstick on Eric’s collar after the junior high youth group hayride. They’d called me Sherlock Holmes.
So why had Elenor put Guthrie’s novel in the marquetry casket? What was the connection?
“Sorry.” Devlin returned to the bathroom. “That was Mrs. Spurgeon’s doctor. He began prescribing the sedatives six months ago when she said she couldn’t sleep. Lately she’s been asking for more. He was concerned about addiction.”
Addiction? I’d known Elenor to overindulge in alcohol on occasion but never drugs.
Devlin glanced at Guthrie’s book, still in my hands. “We’ve already examined the book. Take a look at page 112.”
I turned to that page, finding in the margin a notation in Elenor’s handwriting: HS6uprtgrnlft51bluedn3rd.
“Mean anything to you?”
“Some kind of code?”
Devlin snorted. “And here’s me without my secret decoder ring.”
I bit back a remark about boys who never grow up. “I’m serious. When we price antiques at the shop, we use a code to record the price paid and the date of acquisition. If it’s a consignment piece, we include the initials of the owner. HS could mean Hewie Spurgeon, Elenor’s husband. He died in a plane crash more than a decade ago. Maybe he left a safe deposit box somewhere, or a Swiss bank account.”
“We’re checking that.” Devlin sounded testy.
No unsolicited opinions. I’d broken the rules again.
“Is it all right if I ask my mother to do some research on the casket? She’s an expert. I’d like to send her photos.”
“The crime scene team should be finished later today. After that, help yourself. Just don’t mention it to anyone.”
I replaced the book and closed the lid. As I did, I stepped on something, a paper clip, pulled apart to make a tool. Knowing that old lock mechanisms can stick, I hoped Elenor—impatient as she was—hadn’t caused damage. I turned the key a few times, and the mortise moved up and down, smooth as silk. I laid the clip on the porcelain sink.
“There’s something else I want you to see.” We returned to Elenor’s bedroom.
Devlin pulled out the bottom drawer of Elenor’s desk and removed three sheets of plain white writing paper, each with its own envelope. He laid them on the desktop. Three messages had been printed by hand in capital letters.
The first sounded almost biblical: DECEIVERS WILL PAY FOR THEIR SINS.
Devlin cocked his head. “Mrs. Spurgeon didn’t tell you she was being threatened?”
“No. She said she was afraid. She didn’t tell me why.”
“Does the message have any significance to you?”
“It’s a veiled threat, obviously. When did she receive it?”
“Postmarked in Fort William on October third, so possibly the fifth.”
I read the second message: MY HOUSE SHALL NEVER BELONG TO STRANGERS.
“My house?” I said. “Sounds like someone pretending to be Flora Arnott.”
Here was a possible link between Elenor’s death and Flora Arnott, but instead of shedding light, it only deepened the mystery. “I think someone was trying to frighten Elenor out of selling the hotel to that Swiss company. The problem is no one admits knowing the hotel was for sale.”
I read the final letter, postmarked October seventeenth. This one upped the ante: ENJOY THE BALL, ELENOR. IT WILL BE YOUR LAST.
I felt a chill.
Three letters, each mailed in Fort William on a Monday, a week apart. Elenor would have received the final one—I counted the days—on Wednesday, the nineteenth. The nineteenth. A memory pricked at the back of my neck. “Look at the date,” I said, tapping the postmark. “October nineteenth. The day Elenor called the antique shop, begging for my help.”
Devlin made a note in his little black book. Then he gathered up the papers and slid them into an evidence bag. “We’ll have the printing analyzed. You’d be surprised what an expert can glean, even from block letters.”
Block letters? The jolt of recognition came like a punch in the gut. “Wait a minute. I received a note like that. In block letters, anyway.” I told him about finding the note in the pocket of the borrowed dress. “I assumed the message wasn’t for me.”
“Do you still have it?”
“It’s in my handbag in the kitchen. I’ll get it.”
I returned in minutes and handed him the folded paper.
He read it and looked up. “Someone told you to go home. Why?”
“I don’t know.” My standard answer. But should I have known? Had I missed something?
Devlin put the note in another evidence bag, sealed it, and scrawled some words on the outside. He gave me his card. “If you receive any further communication, or if anything happens that doesn’t feel right, call me immediately.”
DS Bruce appeared in the doorway. He waved a piece of paper triumphantly. “Got it, sir. Name of the plow guy. They’re sending a couple of constables to pick him up.”
Chapter Twelve
I climbed the stairs to Agnes’s apartment and knocked softly on her door. No answer. I knocked again, more loudly. “Agnes, are you there? It’s Kate.”
“Come in.” She sounded sleepy.
Agnes’s flat was identical to Elenor’s in layout. What drew my eye were the paintings. Agnes collected landscapes in oil, mostly mid- to late-nineteenth century I judged. Not masterpieces but skillfully executed.
Where Elenor had a dining room, Agnes had made a library. That’s where she sat, prostrate in an overstuffed chair, her eyes covered with a damp cloth. Two tall windows admitted the dull afternoon light.
“Should I come back later? I see you’re resting.”
“Nesting?” Agnes grabbed the cloth and struggled to sit up. “I’m trying to pull myself together. Come, sit.” She slid an accusing look in my direction. “I suppose you knew all about the sale of the hotel.”
“I didn’t, actually. I don’t even know why Elenor wanted me to come.”
Agnes’s nut-brown eyes fluttered. “Maybe she hoped with you here, the serfs wouldn’t organize a lynching party.”
I marveled again at the change in Agnes’s attitude. I’d met Agnes more than twenty years ago when Elenor (Elenor Hamilton then) had been hired as the sixth-form English teacher by St. Hilda’s School for Girls near Aberdeen. Naturally she couldn’t cope, so Bill and I had left our two toddlers with my mother and flew over to help her find a flat, set up a bank account, and settle into her new job. She’d made quite a splash. The dress code at St. Hilda’s tended toward boxy business suits and sensible pumps. Elenor—platinum blonde, pencil thin—wore cashmere and Italian wools and silk blouses in luscious colors. The other teachers were jealous, of course, especially when Elenor chose Agnes MacLeod, the primary school art teacher, as a special friend and confidante. Why Agnes was singled out as the recipient of Elenor’s favor was obvious to me if not to anyone else. Elenor needed to be adored. Or at least envied. Agnes fit the bill on both counts, following Elenor around with a kind of starry-eyed gratitude. It made me sick.
Disaster was inevitable. Elenor was intelligent and knowledgeable in her field, but she had little interest in the students and cared nothing about the traditions and reputation of the school—St. Hilda’s one unforgivable sin. Then there was The Scandal. Both Elenor and the headmaster were dismissed, and back we flew to pick up the pieces.
Elenor’s teaching career was in shambles. She’d never get a recommendation from St. Hilda’s. She didn’t need one, as it turned out. Two weeks after her dismissal, Elenor met multimillionaire Hewie Spurgeon, sprinting from girlfriend to wife to merry widow before the year was out. After Hewie’s death—he crashed his Gulfstream IV twinjet, making Elenor the fortunate f
ourth (and final) Mrs. Hewie Spurgeon—she counted her millions and declared that her life’s dream was to turn her family’s estate on the Isle of Glenroth into an upscale country house hotel. And Agnes MacLeod would help make that dream a reality.
Little Agnes had traveled a long way from hero worship to contempt. Realizing the situation called for diplomacy, I said, “I figured if anyone knew what’s been going on around here, it would be you.”
The implied compliment brought a flush of pleasure. “What do you want to know?”
“Had anything happened lately that caused you concern?” I wanted to say like threatening letters but waited for her answer.
“I don’t think so.” The corners of Agnes’s mouth turned down.
“What about Elenor’s behavior? Did anything strike you as strange?”
“Stranger than usual?” Agnes pursed her lips. “She’s been going on about people stealing things. Did Nancy tell you about the missing silver tray? Elenor blamed me. What was I supposed to do—post an armed guard? I told her it was dumb to keep something like that on display. She never listened.”
“The tray was valuable?”
“Geoff Brooker said it was made in London by Hester somebody. He showed us the marks on the bottom.”
I knew all about Hester Bateman, the eighteenth-century silversmith who had taken over the family workshop after her husband’s death. A tray by Hester Bateman would be valuable indeed.
“The tray was engraved,” Agnes said. “Y for Young—Flora’s maiden name—and A for Arnott. Workmen found it in the attic when we had the roof repaired a few years ago. There was a wee article about it in the newspaper. The twins thought it should go to them, but Elenor’s solicitor said that legally it went with the house. We use it sometimes to serve tea in the conservatory. Guests love the Flora connection.”
So it wouldn’t be easy to shift locally. I knew from experience that easily identified pieces stolen in one part of a country are usually disposed of in another, even sold abroad. “Was anything else stolen?” I wondered if Agnes’s version of events would agree with Nancy’s.
“Not from the hotel,” Agnes said, “but Elenor insisted someone was stealing things from the Historical Society, too, although I can’t make out how anyone would know. Have you seen the place? More car-boot sale than museum.”
“What do you think happened to the tray?”
“Who knows?” Agnes said tartly. “Maybe the ghost of Flora Arnott took it.”
“Bill told me about the ghost.”
“Did he tell you she still walks the halls? Pure blather, of course, but I’m certain that’s why Elenor wanted me to live in the house. Afraid to be alone. She claimed she saw disappearing shadows, heard creaking floorboards.”
“Did you ever hear footsteps?” Foolish question. With Agnes’s hearing, an entire platoon of ghosts could troop through the house undetected.
Agnes tsked. “This is an old house. Windows rattle, things settle.”
“You’re not a believer in the Arnott curse?”
Her upper lip curled in disgust. “Ghosts, curses, superstitions. Elenor’s way of getting attention.”
“I don’t think she enjoyed the attention she got last night. Did you have a chance to talk with her after the party?”
“No.” Agnes plucked a bit of invisible fluff off the arm of her cardigan. “I finished my work and came straight up to bed. Well, I might have turned on the telly to relax a bit first. I’d been awake since dawn. Never even stuck my nose outside the house after lunch.”
“The police said you heard Elenor’s phone ring at eleven thirty. You didn’t know she went out?”
“I heard her phone ring, yes. You can, you know, in an old house. I knew it was eleven thirty because the weather presenter had just signed off, but once I take my sleeping pill, I’m out like a light.” Agnes’s eyes were little round moons in a full-moon face. “In fact, I had a bit of a lie-in this morning. Nancy had to wake me up when the police came to tell us Elenor was”—she swallowed hard—“dead. I didn’t find out she’d been murdered until Nancy told me. The police made me wait all that time, wondering. It was cruel.”
Her choice of words surprised me. Overly cautious, maybe, even insensitive. But cruel?
“Did Elenor ever mention old newspapers?”
Agnes’s face went blank. “If you mean Historical Society stuff, you’ll have to ask Dr. Guthrie.”
“Did you know Elenor was in love with him?”
“I’d have sworn in a court of law she wasn’t. Guthrie isn’t her type at all. Elenor liked a challenge.” Agnes tapped the side of her nose. “Not strictly available, if you know what I mean.”
“I know about the headmaster at St. Hilda’s.”
“And Hewie Spurgeon. He was still married when they … got together.” Agnes struggled to sit up. “Elenor craved excitement. Secret meetings, forbidden fruit. Or maybe the pleasure of being adored without the commitment.”
The comment was so insightful I had to adjust my assessment of Agnes. She must not have been quite as starry-eyed as I’d thought. Elenor did crave attention. I’d always thought it was the reason she resented me. I’d knocked her off center stage in Bill’s world.
“I told her she was playing with fire,” Agnes said with the knowing air of someone who’s had vast experience with the opposite sex. “She laughed it off, but I got the idea there’d been a pregnancy.”
I blinked. This was the last thing I’d expected to hear. “Are you telling me Elenor had a child? An abortion?”
“I don’t think she would have done that.” Agnes chewed her bottom lip. “Look, I don’t know for a fact she had a child. It’s an idea I got from something she said once.”
Bill had never mentioned a pregnancy. Of course he wouldn’t if Elenor had sworn him to secrecy. But if Elenor had a child somewhere, then I had a niece or nephew. Eric and Christine had a cousin. There would be records.
I refocused on what Agnes was saying.
She lay back, half closing her eyes. “The second year after Elenor came to St. Hilda’s, she invited me to spend my summer holiday with her on the island. When the hotel was still her family home. But my father got ill, and I had to leave. Elenor stayed alone, which she never liked. Later she told me she had an affair with a married man, a much older man. It broke up his marriage. There was a child involved.”
Something stirred in my brain. Was I wrong after all about the connection with Flora Arnott? A broken marriage could be a motive for murder years later, especially with an unexpected pregnancy. “But Elenor would have returned to teaching at the end of summer. How was she able to hide a pregnancy?”
“That’s the thing. She was present for fall term but left school after Christmas for a special course at London University. At least that’s what we were told. We were allowed to take a sabbatical every ten years. She said she talked the headmaster into waiving the rules so she could go early. Created quite a fuss among the faculty, as I remember.”
I remembered it, too. Bill had sent her money. Had it really been to cover the cost of housing in London or to offset the costs of a pregnancy and adoption? With Bill gone, I’d probably never know. “Was her lover someone from the island?”
“Elenor never said who the man was.”
“What happened?”
“Happened?” Agnes opened her eyes. “Nothing. Elenor wasn’t serious about him. What I mean is, I can’t see Dr. Guthrie as a challenge, can you? Now his mother—that’s another story.”
True. I thought about the face-off between Elenor and Margaret Guthrie at the Tartan Ball. Boadicea versus the Queen of the Amazons. “Why was Margaret Guthrie opposed to the marriage?”
“You mean apart from the fact that they sprang it on her like that? Frankly, though, I don’t think she’d have accepted the engagement under any circumstances. They say Cilla Arnott took a shine to Hugh Guthrie once, years ago. Margaret Guthrie put a stop to it. Weird relationship there, if you ask me.”
/> “What’s Hugh Guthrie like?” I was poking at shadows, hoping to hit something solid.
“Born and bred on Glenroth. The Guthries were one of the families who settled here with James Arnott in 1809. Hugh’s mother is one of the Aberdeen Parkers, the fishery people who got in on North Sea oil in the late sixties. They say he has a whopping trust fund. They also say he’s been a disappointment to his mother.”
“Why?”
“The Parkers are a prominent family. Very proud. Hugh never made a name for himself academically. He’s considered an expert on those ancient stone circles, but he never promoted himself. No ambition.”
“Writing a book’s pretty ambitious.”
“A bit of a fuss?” Agnes cocked her ear.
“Am-bi-tious.”
Agnes looked thoughtful. “He’s writing a sequel. There’s even talk of a movie.” She spread out the damp cloth, smoothed it, and rolled it into a fat sausage. “One thing bothers me. That constable—Mackie—told us Elenor’s body was found just after seven this morning. But Bo Duff begins plowing early. Four AM. Never varies. He would have passed the Historical Society around five. If he saw a body, he would have called the police.”
A trickle of fear ran down my back. If Bo Duff plowed the island roads, then he was the one who’d inadvertently destroyed potential evidence the night of Elenor’s murder. And he was the person the deputies were on their way to pick up right now.
I shook off the worry, or tried to. Agnes was right. Bo was kind, caring. No way would he find a body and fail to tell someone.
Agnes ran her fingers through her hair, revealing several angry scratches on her forehead.
“You’ve hurt yourself,” I said.
“Hurt myself? Oh … aye.” Agnes finger-combed her hair over her forehead. “Bumped into a door, if you can credit it.”
I couldn’t credit it, but I let it go. “What will you do now? Will you stay on at Glenroth House?”
Agnes snorted. “We’ll all be turfed out. If Elenor had an ounce of decency, she’d have tried to save our jobs. Did you know she promised me part ownership in the hotel? That’s why I gave up my career, my future. I even cashed in my pension to tide me over—just until things got going and she could afford to pay me more. That never happened. And then, after all I’d done for her, she ups and sells the place.”