“HE HAS NOT DIED. He is, at this moment, struggling to slip the bounds into another state of being.”
Sarah, George, Albert and Natasha had all gathered by unspoken agreement in the library, where Sarah sat stoking the fire to dangerous reaches as she expounded her theories on Ruthven’s whereabouts.
Paulo had been the one to bring them the news, waking them from their beds-and not without a certain satisfaction at seeing them all up and about at his own usual hour.
“I wonder if they organize redundancies in the afterlife? That would be Ruthven’s idea of heaven, I imagine,” said George. “Frankly, I prefer to think of him as dead and gone, Sarah. If you would mind not prattling on right now I’d be grateful.”
“He hasn’t yet passed; I feel that strongly,” she said. “The chains that bound him to earth were too strong. He has issues.”
Albert fought to suppress a smile, in spite of the appalling situation in which they found themselves. Sarah must have gleaned the “issues” word from her reading of self-help books, which always seemed to be American in origin, the British not having yet gotten around to writing Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip on Your Inner Child.
“Whatever,” said George, patiently, for him. “Sarah, please, I beg of you. My head is throbbing.”
“I know just the thing for headache,” said Sarah. “You make a paste of ground cloves and almonds and then apply it to your forehead.”
“Really? And you walk around all day like that, do you?” said George. “I think plain aspirin would be fine.”
Albert was starting to marvel at George’s self-control. Normally, that kind of remark from Sarah would have rated at least a sneer. He suddenly realized that for the first time in memory, he himself was without a hangover and not in need of aspirin. It was disconcerting, like walking from a dark room into daylight, and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it.
Natasha rose.
“I’ll go and fetch some for you.”
They made sure she was gone before they resumed speaking.
“I suppose I should offer belated congratulations,” said Albert. “She seems an extraordinary woman.”
“Like you would know. What do you think happens to the will now? With Ruthven gone?”
Albert shrugged. The question didn’t surprise him, considering the source. “Father will have to write another. Nothing’s changed, has it, really? He’ll just start to play the old shell game again, only with fewer peas.”
“Except my slice of the pie just got bigger, didn’t it?” said George.
“Did it? Well, if you want to pursue food metaphors, it’s not as if the pie were ever evenly divided. And we still don’t know what provisions he’s made for Herself.”
“Violet, you mean. Yes, of course. Still…”
But Albert was no more in the mood for speculation about money and inheritance than George was prepared to discuss Natasha and the impending, suspiciously convenient, birth.
“You do realize, George, don’t you, that Ruthven was murdered. Here, in this house. Possibly by one of us here, in this house?”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to say, “in this room,” but that was certainly what had him preoccupied.
“One of us? Don’t be silly. An intruder-”
“An intruder wouldn’t be much of an improvement on the situation, would he? What if this intruder comes back?”
“Do you really think so, Albert?” said Sarah. “That he might come back?” She shivered, rubbing her hands before the fire. “It’s awful, isn’t it? Poor Ruthven. He must have been terrified.”
“I refuse to feel sorry for him,” said George. “When did he ever feel sorry for me?”
Albert felt the “for me” was rather typical. Ruthven had been dreadful to all of them.
Sarah might have been thinking along similar lines.
“It’s not always all about you, George.”
George seemed honestly baffled by this comment.
“Who else would it be about?”
Sarah sighed.
“Really, George. I must say, your self-absorption is quite… complete at times.”
“Self-absorption? That’s a nice way of putting it,” said Albert. In a portentous voice, he said: “Send not to ask for whom the world turns: It turns for thee, George.”
“And just look who’s talking.”
“Not now,” said Sarah. “I won’t be able to stand it if we all start fighting now. If ever there were a time to close ranks-”
She was interrupted by the arrival of law and order, in the person of Sergeant Fear. Having been listening outside the door in an attitude reminiscent of Paulo the night before, Fear had been trying to decide which of them sounded sufficiently strung out to be ripe for questioning. None of them sounded serene. But if Fear understood the situation correctly, this George person was now the eldest and next in line for the throne, his brother having conveniently been painted out of the picture.
One thing St. Just had drilled into him was first to ask, “Who profits?” Judging from the look of George (once he had settled on which of the two men he was-there was not much choice between the handsome blonde one and the handsome dark-blonde one), they might be able to wrap this one up by lunchtime.
Snotty little upper-class twit, was Sergeant Fear’s summing up-the kind he used to revel in pulling over for speeding before he’d been elevated to the detective ranks. Not that he didn’t still enjoy doing that from time to time, but he had less time in his schedule for it now. Priorities.
“Mr. George Beauclerk-Fisk,” he said, with elaborate, and deceptive, politeness. “If you would be so kind, DCI St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary would like a word.”
George looked as though he might like to claim a prior engagement, but could think of none. Languidly, he unfolded himself from the sofa and followed Fear out of the room.
Albert leaned over to say something to Sarah, but just then his eye caught a movement in the doorway. No sooner had Fear left his listening post than he had been replaced by a young constable, who stood fidgeting there uncertainly, trying and failing to become invisible. Clearly he had his marching orders: Keep an eye on this lot.
St. Just found George, as he slouched into the conservatory in his male-model way, no more inspiring than Sergeant Fear had done. As much as he tried to quell the natural tendency, St. Just’s own experience was that fleeting first impressions-positive or negative-were often perfectly correct. While outwardly George was the image of the hip young man about town beloved of sports car manufacturers, St. Just was more strongly reminded of the lads he’d had to pull in for questioning when he first joined the force. That haunted look around the eyes meant drugs, in those cases, nearly always. Drugs in this case, also?
He motioned George to the cheetah-patterned chair opposite and quickly ran through the preliminaries-name, address, occupation. The beginning of an investigation seldom allowed time for in-depth questioning, although St. Just had a feeling George would have a lot more to contribute as the inquiry progressed. For the moment, St. Just was simply flying without instruments, using visual cues as his guide. Frequently, it was not what people told him that was of value-so often people took forever to get to the kernel of what they knew-but how they behaved during the telling. At times, he found just asking questions to which he knew the answers perfectly well to be a useful technique.
“Now, Mr. Beauclerk-Fisk: What was your relationship with your brother?”
“Quite civil,” George replied evenly. “Of course, we saw little of each other, which helped.”
“No sibling rivalry to speak of?”
“Not beyond the usual.” George began to study his manicure with riveted interest.
“Ruthven was the eldest?”
“Yes. I was second eldest, followed by Albert and Sarah. We came along at quite regular intervals; in fact, we all have nearly the same birthday, in April. We concluded from this that the mating season for my father was every August, when my parents took their annual holiday in Torquay. They never seemed to get along the rest of the year. These were all in the line of miracle births, Inspector.”
“Your parents are divorced, I take it?”
“Yes,” George said flatly.
“I see. Now, about your movements last night…”
“You would have to ask Natasha. My, er, fiancée. I would have said my movements were quite spectacular-even better than usual.”
It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in.
“I take it from that you claim to have been in bed. Together.”
“You take it correctly. And, not asleep, either. Well, at least, not until the small hours.” He smiled complacently, his pale eyes unfathomable, ice on a winter lake.
Sergeant Fear wrote down George’s alibi, putting a little star by it, meaning “Check out this statement.” He had developed his own five-star system over the years, much like a travel guide or a restaurant critic. One star meant: Probably True, for Sergeant Fear trusted no one completely. Five stars meant: Certainly a Lie. After some hesitation, he gave George three stars-somewhat the benefit of the doubt, for Fear, who struggled to be fair with suspects, did not like George. He hadn’t cared for the comment about the mating season; the delivery had shown disrespect, in his view. Moreover, Sergeant Fear, who wore his blue collar on-well, on his neck, rather than his sleeve-could see that George was the kind of blue blood born to be Fear’s natural enemy.
Sarah sat down in a swirl of billowing fabric, looking like an unsorted pile of hemp atop the cheetah chair. Her large eyes in her pretty, round face regarded St. Just anxiously.
“Your brother George tells me you are all quite close in age,” said the detective.
“Yes. All of us are Taureans, too. My father, as well. That didn’t half cause some friction among the five of us.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Taurus,” she explained, taken aback by his ignorance. “The Bull. Stubborn, you know. Oh, our external personalities are quite different, but at basic core we are similar. Very. I, Inspector, write cookbooks. If you don’t think that requires a stubborn, bulldog nature… Just because the cake falls doesn’t mean you give up. No, it’s try, try again. Now, Capricorns, on the other hand-”
St. Just felt it was time to divert the astrology lecture into more useful channels.
“And your brother, Ruthven? Stubborn, would you say?”
“Ha! I would indeed. But, again, our personalities revealed themselves in different ways, shaded by our experiences.” She began worrying at one of the folds of her tent-like garment as she talked. “Ruthven as the eldest was the hyper-achiever-the responsible one, if you like. Made lists, set goals, achieved them-quite, quite driven. The rest of us-George and Albert and I-well, no. Not to that degree. No.”
“You say he was responsible. He looked after all of you?”
“He looked after himself.”
There seemed to be no rancor behind her words. She was simply stating a fact. Quietly, Sergeant Fear gave her comment one star.
“But, who would want to kill Ruthven?” she said. Then, realizing that the answer to her question, as with Lillian, might be, “Everyone,” she added, “I mean, really kill him?”
“Not just think about killing him, you mean?”
“I suppose that is what I do mean. He was horrid, my brother. Anyone who ever worked for him or with him, I suppose, would wish him ill. But to actually-oh, you must know what I mean! It’s… it’s horrible, what’s happened.”
St. Just nodded. As conversant as he was with murder and all the motives for murder, it was never less than horrible. Seeing her agitation, he changed his approach slightly.
“Were you surprised at George’s news?”
“About the baby, you mean? I was gobsmacked, as Watters would say. We all were.”
“A baby on the way is not that rare an event, in the grand scheme of things, though, is it?”
“It is if you knew George’s track record. I think his longest relationship lasted three months. I doubt Natasha’s been around that long, in fact. And…”
“And?”
“It’s hard to put into words, but she is entirely the wrong type for George. I mean, the right type, but not the type he’d ever had the sense to become involved with before. Completely different from his usual run of girl. Not a girl, for a start, but a young woman. Bright, well-educated. A classy brunette rather than a trashy blonde. No, not at all George’s usual sort.”
“I see,” said St. Just. “Perhaps he’s just maturing, your brother.”
“I doubt it.”
As the point didn’t seem worth debating, St. Just changed tack again. “Now, your mother left Sir Adrian when all of you were quite small, I gather.”
“Yes.” Her mouth closed shut like a gate on the word. No need to ask how she felt about that.
“Must have been hard on you,” St. Just said mildly. “On all of you.”
“I don’t suppose we noticed, really. I was two.”
“Did she never explain why she left?”
“You’d have to ask her yourself.”
St. Just said nothing. Fear shifted restlessly, feeling the entire line of conversation was irrelevant. He never understood St. Just’s patience in drawing out witnesses, although he had to admit it paid dividends more often than not.
St. Just continued to wait, apparently absorbed in watching a spider knit her web across a nearby jade plant. Sarah struck him as the anxiously polite type of woman who would rush to fill a void of silence. He hadn’t long to wait.
“I understood her leaving,” Sarah said then, softly. “If I’d been old enough to walk I would have been right behind her. But I didn’t understand her leaving all of us. She never gave an explanation for that that made sense to me. Maybe you can get it out of her. I’d love to know.”
St. Just imagined this was a conversation she had held inside her own head many times, for having started on it, it seemed now she couldn’t resist the opportunity to run it by an audience, brought here especially for the occasion by her brother’s murder.
“Ruthven was her favorite-he kept in touch with her more than the rest of us. Because he was the eldest, I suppose. I always heard that the baby of the family was supposed to be the favorite, the spoiled one. That’s what all the experts say.”
How old was she? Forty-two? Older? Far too old to be thinking of herself as the baby, in any event. St. Just felt irritation rising, but in the next moment, a rush of compassion, remembering the many troubled, abandoned children he’d come across in his years on the force. He didn’t imagine that money filled the void, any more than reaching adulthood automatically effected a cure for that unique brand of loneliness. Part of the problem seemed to be that if at too young an age you lost the voice that taught right from wrong, danger from safety, you never learned to internalize the necessary restrictions.
“Last night-” he began.
“I went to my bedroom straight after that ghastly dinner,” she said quickly. “I came down after a bit to get a book out of the library. But I heard nothing, saw nothing. All night.”
“I see,” said St. Just. “Did you ever wish him dead, your brother- the favorite?”
“‘If wishes were horses,’ Inspector?” She studied her hands. “Honestly, no. No, I don’t think I ever did.”
By bad chance or design, St. Just’s interview with Natasha Wellings followed hard on that with Sarah. The contrast between the two women was painful. St. Just felt he had never seen any human being so extraordinarily flawless. Just managing to keep from staring, seeking out the flaw-there must be one, he reasoned-he began to ask about her background.
“Oh, the usual,” she shrugged, pushing a shiny lock of hair back into line. “I worked as a chalet girl in Switzerland and later as a nanny. Hardly career-builders, so once I caught on to the fact I needed a real job, I returned to England and started a course in interior architecture. Turned out to be the thing I most enjoyed, much to my surprise. I met George when he was looking around for someone to redesign his gallery.”
“I had no idea. Isn’t the whole point of galleries that they just have walls on which to hang paintings?”
“Oh, my, you are behind the times, Inspector. No, the whole idea is to create an ‘experience’ for the viewer, beyond just looking at things hanging on walls. There’s a science to it, as well as a lot of smoke and mirrors. You’d be amazed.”
“I imagine I would. Now, you came down here this weekend with George. How did that come about?”
“I called him, just to chat. He mentioned this… situation… with his father. He seemed to feel he would need moral support. I gather I was also brought along to prove that little Georgie was becoming a grown-up with responsibilities, at last. I was curious to meet the famous author, Sir Adrian. So naturally I said I’d come along. Rather wish I hadn’t, now, of course. I say, are we going to be held here long? George and I were planning to leave Monday.”
“I’d change my plans if I were you.”
“Would you really?”
“Tell me a bit about what’s gone on in this house since you arrived.”
“Until now, nothing. A bit of argy-bargy last night at dinner- George had warned me the family was quarrelsome but I had no idea. Of course, they all had nearly as much to drink as Albert, which didn’t help. I couldn’t get away fast enough and went upstairs as soon as I could.”
“With George?”
“He came up about an hour later.”
“And you were together all night?”
“As far as I know, yes. Excepting the parts where I was asleep, of course.”
“Hear or see anything unusual?”
“Not a thing. Sorry. Wait… wait-I’d nearly forgotten. Ruthven made a telephone call. Or someone rang him. I overheard part of it, on my way toward the stairs-there’s a phone in the hall there. He didn’t sound happy, whoever it was.”
“Did you overhear a name?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. An unusual name… Manda. I don’t recall the exact words, but it was clear he was trying to-extricate himself from something unpleasant. When he saw me walking toward him, he rang off.”
“I see. We’ll need you to stay around, indefinitely, of course.” He held up a hand, fending off her look of dismay. “No, I can’t tell you for how long. When you’re free to go my sergeant or I will be in touch. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”
Natasha looked about to say something but decided against it. With a shrug, she rose and glided out. The woman seemed to move on wheels.
“Crikey,” said Fear. “Whatever is a woman like that doing with a prat like George?”
“It’s a mystery, Sergeant. Well, is that it-the whole lot?”
“Well bred, well spoken. One of these modern women, but less annoying than most.”
“Yes, thank you, Sergeant. My impression, generally speaking, as well. Your other thoughts? For example, is she telling the truth?”
“They’re all more or less telling the truth. It’s what they’re not saying that’s important. George didn’t just dislike his brother, he hated him.”
“Right you are. So, who’s left?”
“One more. The other son, Albert. Oh, and the secretary. Jeffrey Spencer.”
“Let’s first see what this Jeffrey person will or will not share with us. At least he may have a more objective view than the others.”
Barely awake, Jeffrey appeared in the conservatory in due course, sleepy eyed and wearing the standard-issue uniform of jeans and sweatshirt.
“I see you played for the Vikings, Sir,” said St. Just. He shook Jeffrey’s proffered hand and then waved him to a seat.
“What? No, no, just showing my support. Paulo told me the news. Jeepers, I can’t believe this has happened.” His blue eyes opened wider, as if that would somehow help him process the news.
Beneath what appeared to be Jeffrey’s genuine shock, St. Just felt he could detect that frisson of excitement so many people seemed to experience at being in the thick of a murder scene. Often, the one who turned out to be the killer seemed just as excited as everyone else.
Just wait until they’ve seen a hundred scenes of crimes, he thought wearily.
“What time was he killed?” Jeffrey was asking.
St. Just saw no reason not to answer, since they had only the vaguest time frame to go on at the moment, anyway.
“At a guess, between ten and two AM. The medical examiner is the only one who can be more specific.”
“I think I can help with that. I ran into-the victim-in the library around midnight, it must have been. He said he was looking for a book.”
“What book was that, sir?”
“Crime and Punishment. Awful coincidence, what? Then Sarah came in. We spent some time chatting. Well, a long time, actually. A long, long time. Very long.”
Sergeant Fear peered at him skeptically from beneath raised eyebrows. Jeffrey had just earned several stars for his insistence on the time. Fear’s experience was that the more people repeated themselves, the more doubtful it was they were repeating the truth. It was a bit too obvious this bloke was trying to give Sarah an alibi.
“You won’t have to look far for a motive. Cherchez la femme. Like father, like son.”
Albert had to some degree composed himself by this point, although he still looked like a man emerging from a sleep-deprivation experiment. Still, St. Just could see the resemblance to his siblings, who all had that undefined, eerie likeness of brothers and sisters.
“Ruthven tended to philander, like his father, do you mean to say, Sir?”
“Dear God, yes. They once chucked Father out of Yaddo-hardly known as a monastery-years ago. He dined out on that story for ages. Ruthven was worse, if anything.”
“And how did Lillian, his wife, react to this behavior?”
“She didn’t care.”
“Surely, Sir-”
“No need for the ‘Sir’ and no need for the disbelief, either. I tell you, she didn’t give a tinker’s damn. Lillian’s attitude seemed to be, let someone else bonk him-just don’t let it interfere with my shopping.”
“All right. About your brother’s movements before he was killed. Did you see him during the day?”
“At breakfast, yes. And at dinner.”
“What did you talk about at breakfast?”
“He’d dug up the old dirt on Violet. Quite a bit of it, in fact. In brotherly fashion, he shared this news with me. I wish I had done what he wanted, now.”
“And what was that?”
“He wanted me to-what is it they say in the gangster films?- grass her out? Spill the beans on her past. I refused. I doubt it would have made any difference. Oh, I don’t really know if it would. But if you’re looking for a killer, we are reputed to have quite a catch right here. Violet Winthrop. You must have heard of her.”
St. Just barely managed to hide his shock. Fear was drawing a blank, but carefully wrote down the name.
“Yes, I’ve heard of Dr. Crippen, as well. Thank you. Do you know, the others didn’t actually mention anything about that.”
“Not surprising. They know it would antagonize the old man. Lillian especially will be wondering if she’s even in the picture any more, but she won’t want to scuttle her chances.”
“I see. We’ll certainly be following up on that train of thought. But what possible motive could Violet have to kill Ruthven?”
“Do deranged killers need a motive?”
“She struck me as anything but deranged,” said St. Just mildly. “However, to answer your question, they do, without exception, have a motive, these deranged killers. It’s just that it’s not a motive that makes sense to normal people.”
“I can understand why you would look to Ruthven’s near and dear for a motive,” said Albert. “But I can tell you this much: My sister is incapable of this. Absolutely. So am I. My father-I can’t see him having the physical strength. And George doesn’t have the gumption. You’ll need to look elsewhere than the immediate family.”
“Thank you, Sir. We’ll certainly keep that in mind. How did you come to be the one to find the body?”
“I went down to the cellar in the small hours to get a drink.”
“There must have been an easier way to get a drink in this house.”
“Not without provoking comment on how much I drink in general, Inspector. Besides, I wanted a particular kind of brandy. Bourgogne. Father has everything you can name stashed away down there.”
“I see. You saw no one there, or on your way there?”
“Not a soul. Except… I did think I saw a door closing into the servant’s stairs. I can’t be sure…”
They talked for some minutes more, but Albert did little more than reiterate that no one could possibly have killed Ruthven, while it was patently obvious someone had. At last, St. Just gave Albert the usual warnings of staying within easy reach, to which Albert acquiesced with surprising ease-enthusiasm, even.
“Well, Sergeant, what have we got?”
“Part of the truth, as usual.”
“Yes, as usual. They’re all scared, that’s obvious. But of what?”
“I would venture to say, Sir, that it’s a case of ‘all hands to the pumps’ in the current crisis. That Albert doesn’t want us looking too closely at his sister as a suspect, that’s for certain. He would prefer that we take a close look at Violet. Or one of these supposed mistresses of Ruthven’s.”
“We’ll do both-all.”
Sergeant Fear looked encouragingly at his superior. The sheer physicality of the man should have had witnesses quailing, so Fear had always thought. Instead, it was comforting-walking reassurance that the great British public was safe in his large, capable hands. While St. Just kept some arrows in his quiver for special occasions, overall his demeanor was genial, disarming, and entirely effective in getting witnesses to say more than they intended.
Fear had never known him to fail. Still, it seemed to him the more questions they had asked, the more the motives became blurred. And all of them, especially that actor fellow, he was sure, were keeping something back.
He was about to ask about Violet when his mobile erupted again. Maybe, thought Fear, his wife could talk Emma into reprogramming it back to the way it was. Or at least talk her into helping him find the volume control.
Albert had once been in a play where he carried the part of a drunken polo-playing prat who lied to the police about his involvement in a hit-and-run accident. That had not ended well for the prat, as he recalled. But in many another play, Albert’s character had gotten away with all kinds of things, up to and including murder.
Albert wondered if his moral compass were being constantly reset by the last part he had played, the last movie he had seen. It was a sobering thought that made him reach for the glass of whiskey at his elbow. He sat back, looking at the faded tapestry hanging on his bedroom wall, a depiction of Cain bashing in Abel’s head as a naked Adam and Eve watched, wringing their hands, from a distance. Surely they had learned to clothe themselves by the time the children came along? Albert wasn’t sure if the wall-hanging were yet another example of his father’s macabre sense of humor or his poor taste in decorators. Probably a bit of both. Given the circumstances, something about the portrayal struck him as prophetic. Albert looked away.
He drained his glass and thought some more about his find in the cellar-not Ruthven’s body, but his father’s manuscript. Instinctively, he wanted to know what was in that manuscript-the manuscript he had carefully avoided mentioning to St. Just-before he handed it over to the police and unleashed heaven-knew-what furies on himself, Sarah-on all of them, for that matter. One thing was certain: With Adrian as the author of whatever secrets it might contain, the manuscript could only be a ticking time bomb.