Murder at Maple House

by Hugo James King

  It was probably a lie, he’d probably want to call Nora. “Can we still ask him if he knows who sent the note?”

  “This is why you came out earlier, isn’t it?” he asked.

  It was. “They’re still inside, if they managed to get a note to me, it means they’re inside and they haven’t left.”

  “Or,” Paul tapped a finger to his head. “It means he didn’t work alone.”

  “They, whoever they are, might not have been working alone.”

  Ruth’s phone rang in her hand.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  She gasped. “Just Frank,” she said, “you still have Spencer’s phone.” She turned and walked off.

  Paul’s brow creased into a deep U-shape. “If her husband knows anything, we’ll know already,” he said. “Now, can I have the phone?”

  I pulled the phone from my purse and handed it over. “Frank might be helping solve what type of poison it was,” I said, pulling my shawl over my shoulders once again. “But if we could see Spencer, he might know who sent those notes.”

  Paul rolled his sleeve to glance at his watch. “Five minutes,” he said. “The officers are doing their last sweep for evidence.”

  I knelt and picked Charlie up. “I’m not letting you shoot off through these cars, I’ll never find you,” I said to him, while enjoying the heat he gave off against my body.

  We followed Paul as he walked through the maze of cars.

  In the back row, were the police cars, and one in particular where Spencer’s head rested against a window. A large circle of condensation around fogged the window around his face.

  Knock. Knock. Paul rapped with his knuckles.

  A startled Spencer shot upright, whacking his head from the interior roof of the car. He turned back and looked to us. A gaping mouth and wide eyes.

  “I have some questions,” Paul said, opening the door.

  Spencer sat in his seat with handcuffed hands resting in his lap.

  “I found the note,” I immediately said, a knee-jerk reaction to seeing him. “I know you’re innocent.”

  “Shhh!” Paul said, slamming the door shut.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think he’s innocent,” Paul said. “He’s confessed. He’s guilty.” He took a deep breath and waited a couple seconds before opening the door again.

  “What note?” Spencer asked after a moment of quiet.

  Paul provided the evidence. Showing it to him.

  He gasped. He’d seen it before. His chest raised and dipped with quick breaths.

  “Who’s Nora?” I asked.

  He shook his head. But I already knew.

  “She’s your mistress?” I probed again. “We have your phone too. Your birth year is a bad pin number.”

  “Ok.”

  Paul smiled, pulling his pen from his notepad. “I have to note it all down,” he said. “Especially if you’re going to refute what you’ve already told me.”

  “Nora is the mother of my children,” he said. “Caroline doesn’t know.” He stressed the hands in his cuffs, raising them slightly. “Well, she knows about an affair, but not the children.”

  “Who else knew?” I asked. “Who else knew you had children together?”

  He shrugged. “No one,” his meek voice spoke.

  “But it was reason enough for you to say you killed someone?” Paul asked. “I’m just trying to get your story right.”

  “Did you kill Finley?”

  The smallest of headshakes. Hesitant.

  “Someone did,” Paul said. “You can’t expect us to go back and tell everyone it was a false alarm after the show you put on up on the stage.”

  “But they—they know about her,” he said.

  “You told me you worked with my husband on his charities, was it the one helping young mothers?”

  He nodded. “He made it to protect us.”

  “Protect?” Paul and I spoke together.

  Another shrug. “Some of the people he was in business with, they had children,” he said. “With women, other than their wives, and it was a way to keep the other women quiet. It wasn’t just if the women got pregnant.”

  “And my husband made this?” I asked, once again. My worries creeping up on me.

  “Not why you think,” Spencer said.

  “Harry would never,” Paul said softly.

  My eyes were fixed on Spencer, focused on what he had to say next.

  “We were all paying him,” Spencer said. “To keep our secrets, to keep our names out of it all. Harry was squeaky clean, it’s why it worked for him.”

  My chest deflated. “So, if he knew, then it’s in a box at home,” I said. “So, Nora stayed with someone while receiving money from the charity.”

  Spencer shook his head. “We all got the files back when the charity folded,” he said. “I got all the women I’d sponsored; he got all his, and all the other men got theirs.”

  My face scrunched into a knot. “How many people were you seeing behind your wife’s back?”

  “Just her,” he was quick to defend. “Just Nora. I gave money to other women because it would be weird if I gave only to her.”

  “So, maybe someone else you gave money too, maybe she knew Nora, maybe she’s annoyed or something.”

  His voice turned meek once more. “Maybe.”

  “Who else gave money?” Paul asked. “Did Finley?”

  “Finley,” I repeated. Was this the real reason he’d been mad at my husband? For dissolving the charity. “But, why would he need one? He’s not married.”

  Spencer scoffed. “Finley probably has more kids out there running around than anyone else,” he said. “Think of the charity as a way to pay child support without it coming out of your bank account as actual child support.”

  “So, he had children?” I asked.

  A dull scream sounded from inside the manor house.

  “PARAMEDICS?” a voice screamed from the entrance.

  TWENTY

  Another death? My mind raced.

  It definitely couldn’t have been Spencer given the additional facts.

  Paul, Charlie, and I rushed into the building on the tail of two paramedics in the remaining ambulance. They’d stayed behind for this very instance, in case someone else was sick, or worse, dead.

  The screams grew louder as we approached the ballroom.

  Complete silence from the jazz band, and everyone as they stood to watch from their tables, a safe distance from whatever was happening. The last thing anyone wanted was fingers pointed at them.

  “What happened?” Ruth asked breathlessly from behind me. “I was on the phone to Frank.”

  There was a barricade of officers standing on guard at the kitchen door. Paul rushed through, as did Charlie, jumping from my arms.

  Ruth and I were met with stern looks and scowls. There was no way we were being let through their guard. But between the spaces in their shoulders and arms, I saw a woman on the floor. I heard gasping and choking.

  “The same thing which killed Finley,” I grumbled.

  As Ruth caught her breath, I turned to her and shook my head.

  “Frank doesn’t know anything yet,” she said. “Apparently, they’re still looking for something which could’ve killed him, and anyone could’ve brought anything in.”

  Nobody stood guard at the door when you entered to search your bags, we weren’t exactly going through border security. “I want to see what happened.”

  Ruth sighed. “What did Spencer say?”

  “Remember the charity,” I said. Of course, she remembered. “Finley was a contributor as well. It was a way to have the men pay child support without the women being able to sue if they stopped—well, that’s what I think.”

  “And Finley was a playboy, so—”

  “Doesn’t narrow it down, at all.”

  We were finally clear on one thing. It had to be a woman.

  “Make way!” a voice boomed.

  The paramedics mo
ved swiftly, rolling a woman out of the kitchen on a gurney. She had an oxygen mask around her face, but I knew her, she was the women who’d offered to make coffee earlier.

  “Sandra?” I said.

  The police officers moved, and we were finally allowed into the kitchen were everyone rushed around like headless chickens. The waiters brushed by us, leaving kitchen with their hands wrapped shakily around metal trays.

  Paul approached us, shaking his head.

  “It wasn’t Spencer,” he said, his words a relief. “But the same symptoms as Finley.”

  “So, does this mean you believe us?” I asked.

  “I told you, this could mean two people are in on it,” he said. Slapping the two pages in his notepad shut before retiring it into his pocket. “But this time, it wasn’t him.” He itched at the balding spot on his head. “Sandra was one of four cooks. Another woman said she drank something, coffee, perhaps, and then choked up and fell.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Who?” he repeated back.

  “Which other woman?” Ruth added. “Who saw what happened?”

  Paul turned on a foot to look around the kitchen.

  There were two younger women, talking to the two chefs. They were in their early twenties; I’d spoken very briefly to one of them—I think.

  “Lorraine?” I asked.

  Ruth nodded. “Do you think—”

  “She’s the one who Finley had been with?” I finished her thought.

  “What are you talking about?” Paul’s scowling face glared at us like we were performing sign language.

  “The charity,” I said. “Helping women, if Lorraine was one of those women, and he stopped sending her money, she might’ve been angry.”

  “And when Sandra found out, she tried to kill her too?”

  Paul’s eyes widened. He looked around, in all directions before nodding to a chef. “Let me see.”

  As Paul walked off, Charlie ran straight to my feet, cannonballing into my legs.

  “Ouch,” I mumbled, glancing down at his small face.

  “Did she have a nosebleed when she was being wheeled out?” Ruth asked.

  “She had a mask over her mouth,” I replied. “Why?”

  She stepped forward, leading towards the end counter. “Maybe wherever she was, there’s blood. And Finley bled from his nose before dying.”

  “Where’s the cup she had?”

  “They would’ve bagged it.”

  Charlie walloped himself against my feet once again, whipping his tail at my ankle.

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  He darted to the right, straight for the counter where Ruth and I had been making coffees earlier.

  I followed him, to where he stood, in front of a small brown puddle with a large undissolved white chunk in the centre of it.

  “Eve,” Ruth grumbled. “Get him away from it.”

  “What? What? Why?” I asked, but complied, calling Charlie away.

  “I know what it is,” she said, her fingers pressing into her mobile phone. “I’ll be right back!”

  “Wait? What is—” I droned off as she left.

  Paul approached with a shake to his head. “They haven’t seen her.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “Where’s Ruth?”

  “We found this,” I said. “She’s gone to call Frank, I think.”

  “Is it—the—whatever killed him?”

  Only a shrug could answer. I had no idea. And I wished I knew.

  “Do you have a list of everyone at the party?” I asked.

  “From Diane,” he said, “yes.”

  “Ok. And we’re going to need to call Nora,” I said. “See if she knows who did this, if any names stand out. Maybe she knows who this Lorraine is.”

  “We also have pictures,” he added. “The company photographer was on his way to the station earlier. He’s giving the memory stick to an officer there. But they didn’t come into the kitchen at all.”

  “Lorraine’s the new suspect?” I asked.

  Hesitant to answer with words, he gave a simple nod.

  “Someone should clean this before we have another fatality,” he said.

  Which meant he thought Sandra was dead.

  It made sense, someone from the kitchen, they could go undetected. Nobody noticed the people in the kitchens, they were invisible people. Nobody photographed them, and nobody came to take their statements.

  Paul handed me Spencer’s phone. “You know his code,” he said. “Call Nora. If she answers, come find me.”

  “You want me to call?” I asked, my eyes blinking wildly.

  “You’ve been useful,” he said, “so far.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re not so hostile.” I smirked, although he’d already told me he was on his way out of Briarbury and onto the county constabulary as an investigator. All he wanted right now was a win, and with my short but successful track record, I’m sure he knew how to play the hand.

  As Paul left, one of the waiters approached me.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He gave me an odd look, cocking his head to the side. “I’m just coming to clean the floor.”

  “Oh.” I bit my lips, feeling a flush of heat transcend through my body to my face. “I’ll let you get to it then.” I slapped my thigh to grab Charlie’s attention and moved out of his space.

  I walked out into the ballroom, unlocking Spencer’s phone.

  If anyone had an answer, it was Nora.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The phone rang out. Cutting to the voicemail after several rings. I attempted to call a dozen times before the jazz band started up and the clash of the symbol caught me off-guard, fumbling to catch the phone from the scare.

  Charlie stayed by my side, which was new. He wasn’t running off looking for something to bark about, and for that I was grateful.

  “She has kids,” I spoke to him, and mainly myself. “She’s probably in bed, sleeping. But I’m sure if she woke up from one of those calls, then she’d understand the situation. I know she wouldn’t mind someone coming into contact with her to ask for her help protecting the father of her children.”

  “Talking to yourself?” Diane asked, approaching me with two glasses of champagne.

  “Sorry?” I mumbled, breaking concentration from my thoughts, and the ongoing worry about Lorraine. I hoped Paul was looking for her, if she was the killer, then she was on the loose.

  “What happened?” she asked, handing me a glass of champagne.

  I accepted the glass; it would be rude otherwise. “We think someone tried to kill someone else, the same way they killed Finley.”

  “That’s awful,” she said, teasing at the end of her hair with a scrunched hand. “I mean, truly.”

  “It means Spencer’s innocent,” I said in a hushed voice.

  “Nobody is ever truly innocent, Eve.”

  “Nobody?” Did she know something I didn’t?

  She waved her hand around freely. “It’s a saying.”

  “Diane,” a man said. “Happy birthday!” he said, giving her a hug and a kiss on either cheek. “I’m sorry I’m only just arriving.”

  He was an older man with a full head of grey hair and dressed in a white and black suit outfit pulled straight from Saturday Night Fever.

  “Billy,” she said, craning her head back slightly to look at him. “Let me get you a glass.”

  “Have mine,” I said, handing the glass over.

  A large smile flashed across his face, revealing the porcelain toilet white teeth in his mouth. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, Eve is joining you at the newspaper on Monday,” she said.

  “Eve, Eve,” he said, repeating my name in his mouth, smacking his tongue against the roof. “Nice name.” He shook my hand.

  “This is Patrick’s uncle,” she said. “He’s one of the editors.”

  I smiled, greeting him. “Nice to meet you, Billy.”

  “In fact, I believe she’s work
ing on something right now,” she said.

  He chuckled. “When Julia phoned me and said someone had died, I said, what, there’s been a murder on the dancefloor,” he laughed louder; a cackle. “I had to really get a move on over.”

  While, I enjoyed the Sophie Ellis-Bextor song reference, I felt it was in poor choice to joke about what had happened.

  They walked off, with their arms hooked together. Ruth joined me, shaking her head.

  I’d been waiting to find out what she knew.

  “So?”

  “Castor beans,” she replied.

  “I think they’ve stopped serving food.”

  “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “The white powder, it’s ricin.”

  “The poison?”

  She nodded back. “I tried to contact Frank, but I think he was on the phone with someone else.”

  “But you’re sure?”

  “The symptoms, the signs, and the powder we saw in the clump.” She sighed, combing a hand through her black hair. “But I wouldn’t know how someone creates it, and it can’t be easy, especially if it’s so highly toxic.”

  “But they use beans?”

  “Castor,” she reiterated. “What happened when I left?”

  I wiggled Spencer’s phone in her face. “Tried to call Nora.”

  “And?”

  “No answer.”

  “She has children,” Ruth said. “And she’s practically a single mother without having Spencer around.”

  “Probably in bed,” I said. “Which means we’ll have to wait until whenever to find out if she knows who killed Finley and framed Spencer.”

  “Unless we find wherever the ricin came from.”

  “Unless that.”

  Ruth’s phone rang in her hand. Frank’s name flashed on the screen.

  “Let me get this,” she said.

  “Ask him if he knows how people create ricin.”

  She nodded back before walking away.

  Leaning against the wall, I puffed and pushed my chest. Castor beans sounded like food, and who better to create something from a food than to have a chef or cook do it. Someone like that would’ve had the skills, but poison wasn’t my forte.

  “Let’s go back outside,” I told Charlie.

  The room was becoming stuffy and hot with all the people, now dancing around. Most of them had forgotten what just happened moments ago, and that was possibly because there wasn’t anyone screaming about a dead body.