Jasper narrowed his eyes. “What do you know, Medea?”
“She picked her flowers in the mornings and sold them. They were all gone by nightfall. But I’ve seen her here recently at the hotel around dinner time. It made no sense for her to be selling flowers then.”
“So what do you think she was doing?”
Medea swallowed. “I think she was watching Mrs Ramsforth.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But Mrs Ramsforth killed her. So they must have been enemies.”
“We don’t know if Mrs Ramsforth killed her. And why would they be enemies?”
Medea sighed. “There were beetles in her room. Portents of death.”
“But Mrs Ramsforth wasn’t the one who died.” Jasper frowned hard at Medea. “What are you trying to say?”
Medea shuffled her feet. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Nonsense. I want to know the full story.”
“Well, people here are superstitious. Afraid of bad omens. So when you want to make someone afraid, you could ensure that the omen comes.”
“You mean, leave the beetles in the room? Put a skull on someone’s pillow?”
Medea nodded. “I think she did that. To warn Mrs Ramsforth to go away again.”
“Go away?” Jasper rubbed his forehead. “Why would your grandmother want to drive Mrs Ramsforth away?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. I mean, I didn’t know she was my grandmother, but I thought she had wanted to make sure Mrs Ramsforth went away.” She paused. “She might have known she was in danger—?”
“In danger? From someone else? And your grandmother tried to warn her? But why with such a ruse? Why not tell her to her face?”
“She might not have believed it.” Medea knotted her fingers. “I wondered. Her husband was quick to accuse her of murder. Perhaps he wants to have her out of the way?”
“And your grandmother knew that and wanted to warn her against her own husband?’
Jasper thought of Eureka accusing Mrs Ramsforth of infidelity, thus driving a wedge between the couple. Had she done that not out of spite or a need for revenge but to protect Mrs Ramsforth against her husband’s plans?
Had the husband killed Eureka because he realised she was on to him? Had he then framed his wife for it?
The theory left a few questions open. Why would an old woman feel the need to protect a foreign tourist she had never seen before?
Or… had she already lived on the island when Mrs Ramsforth’s mother had died? Had she cared for the poor girl who had seen her mother’s dead body and screamed out as she saw the killer, or alleged killer, flee?
“How long ago did your grandmother leave your grandfather?” he asked Medea.
“Before I was born. So I don’t know exactly.”
“Kyrioudis mentioned to me that Eureka came to this island thirty years ago. So could she have known Mrs Ramsforth when Mrs Ramsforth was just a little girl?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t mention that to me.” Medea kept knotting her trembling fingers. “I feel like it’s all my fault. I suspected her after the skull appeared. But I didn’t tell you. And then she died.”
“I might not have been able to save her, anyway.” Jasper stared into the distance. The sky was a wonderful blue and it was a perfect day for boating or swimming. But he was knee-deep in murder and it all got more mysterious with each revelation. Had Eureka been trying to protect Mrs Ramsforth from some plot against her? Was the husband at the heart of this plot? The money, his immediate action to invest it with a friend, seemed to support this idea.
“We must get back to the hotel.” Jasper broke into a walk. Red immediately trotted ahead of him. “I want to talk to Mr Ramsforth.”
“You won’t tell him I accused him of anything, will you? He has a vile temper. He looks so nice, so handsome, but he is a really nasty man. He doesn’t love her. He is meeting with someone else.”
Jasper froze. “Ramsforth is meeting with someone else?”
“Yes. I saw him with another woman.’
“Were they kissing?”
“No. It seemed sooner they were arguing. But why would they? It was a very pretty woman too.”
“Describe her to me.”
“Tall, brown hair, expensive dress. Oh, and she wore hairpins with diamonds in her hair. I would love some of those.”
A rich woman on this island. Could it have been Robin Hawtree?
Jasper lengthened his stride. He was becoming more and more interested in what Teddy Ramsforth would have to say for himself.
* * *
Teddy wasn’t happy when the former inspector’s tall figure came sailing down upon him. His honeymoon, which should have been spent in an endless row of sun-soaked days and wine-filled nights, was rapidly turning into a nightmare from which he couldn’t escape. It was all the fault of Damaris’s excitable nature. If she hadn’t made such a fuss about the beetles, the skull…
“Good morning,” Jasper called out to him. “What a lovely day for a beach walk. Mind if I join you?”
Teddy shrugged. “It depends on what you want to talk about.”
Jasper seemed taken aback by this outright attack. Good, Teddy thought, I can surprise you. He added, “My wife’s health isn’t something you need impress upon me, Inspector. It’s consuming my every waking minute.”
The words were a bit pompous, perhaps, but now that he had decided to be bold, he had to push on. “I’m afraid she needs professional help.”
“I agree.” Jasper folded his hands behind his back as he came to walk beside him. “She has already been treated by a psychiatrist – after her mother’s murder.”
Teddy hid his surprise. This was going down better than he had expected. “Really? I knew nothing about her mother’s murder. She said both her parents had died in a railway accident.’
“That is what she herself believed. I assume that it was thought better at the time of her trauma to deny to her what had really happened and acquaint her with another story which might be easier to accept.”
“Is that even possible? If she saw what happened, she knew.”
“Yes, but young children are impressionable. I assume that the man who treated her changed the story gradually in her mind. No doubt to protect her and give her a fair chance to build a new life.”
“Yes, I can imagine one wishes only the best for a girl who’s traumatised like that. I can’t really blame Damaris for not knowing and not telling me, but it does make for an awkward honeymoon experience.”
“Yes,” Jasper said slowly, “about as awkward as it must have been for her to realise she was honeymooning with you on the island where friends of yours are staying who need money, which you can, all of a sudden, miraculously supply.”
Teddy drove his heels harder into the sand. He kept his eyes on the former inspector’s dog who was frolicking in the shallow water ahead of them. “I don’t follow.”
“Let me put it more bluntly, Mr Ramsforth. You have big business plans. But you have no money to invest in it. Your wife hears she has access to money. Naturally, as she loves you and wants to support you, she agrees to give you money.’
“Lend me money,” Teddy corrected. “We are going to put everything down in writing and I will repay her. It’s not a gift. Not charity. I wouldn’t want that either. I have my pride.”
It wasn’t hard to put the indignation in his voice as he really did hate to beg people for money: Father could have made different arrangements so it had all been better, so he needn’t have asked his new wife for money.
Jasper said, “Oh, yes, you would make up a written agreement of course, but what would it matter in the instant where she was declared insane and you would be made keeper of her assets?”
“You make it sound as if I had expected she would go insane. I had no idea she would start behaving in such an odd fashion.”
“So you didn’t know about her earlier treatment for nervous shock?’
“How could I have? She herself didn’t know.”
“Let me spell it out for you, Mr Ramsforth. No, the woman whom we know as Damaris Ramsforth didn’t know that she had been treated as a child because she had witnessed her mother’s murder. But people who knew her at the time, when she was this little traumatised girl, would of course know. People who had been friends with her family, for instance. Staff at the villa. So it isn’t so impossible you could have known when you met Damaris Ramsforth and started wooing her that she was in fact that girl, and that she might show signs of nervous strain again.”
Jasper waited a moment, then added, “Especially as you decided to come here for your honeymoon, of all places.”
“So you imply that I actually knew about her family having lived here, her mother having been murdered here, and I would have brought her here on purpose so she would have another shock and would be declared insane and I could manage her money? This is so preposterous no one would ever believe you.”
“Not even if I told them that you didn’t come here alone but you also arranged for someone else to be here? The woman you really love, although you profess affection for your wife?”
Teddy felt like someone poured cold water across his back. He tried to look indignant. “I beg your pardon? How dare you say such things to me?”
Jasper raised a hand to stop him. “You did know Robin Hawtree back in England, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but she is married. And so am I, now.”
“Yes, now. But Mrs Hawtree married well before you did. Is it possible that you loved her and she chose another? And, as time went by, she discovered that the man she had married wasn’t what she believed him to be and she returned her attention to you, setting up this holiday here so she could meet you? You were honeymooning here, so no one would think much about it.’
Teddy felt cold to the bone. This former inspector could of course check on things and find out that he had been close with Robin in the past. That they had spent time together before Gideon had come along and had taken her away from him – or rather, her greed had taken her away from him. Robin had known that Gideon could offer her more in the long run when his inventions became a success and she could travel the world as the wife of this celebrated man.
But Gideon’s inventions weren’t successful yet. It was taking time, far more time than Robin had anticipated. So she needed Teddy. She needed him whether she wanted to or not. Gideon’s invention would never become a reality without the money he could provide her with, through Damaris. It had been such a clever plan. He’d make himself indispensable to her. She would smile at him again like she had. And in due time…
Jasper said, “Do you deny it, Mr Ramsforth?”
Teddy said, “As you well know, things change over time. Perhaps I once hoped that Mrs Hawtree would see me as more than a friend. But she’s married after all, and I’ve fallen in love with Damaris.”
“Yes. Wasn’t that quite sudden?” Jasper eyed him. “Was it by any chance right after you understood you needed money and she might provide it? Mrs Ramsforth told me her life was fairly uneventful until she met you, at a play, and you swept her off her feet. The ticket for the play was delivered to her letterbox, allegedly after a draw selecting random people.” Jasper’s tone was ironic. “Would it be going a little too far, Mr Ramsforth, to suggest that her being at that particular play the night you met was no coincidence at all? That you consciously set up your meeting to gain access to her money?’
“Money she didn’t have at the time,” Teddy protested.
“No, but which she would get when she married. So the moment you said ‘I do’ to her, you could hear the coins clink into your bank account.” Jasper leaned over. “Or should I say: your greedy little hands?’
Teddy fought the rage jumping to life inside him. “All of this is suggestion! Outright lies to blacken my character and my motives! I loved Damaris when I married her.”
Jasper shook his head. “If you had really loved her, you wouldn’t have been so eager to accuse her of murder.”
“What else was I supposed to think when I saw her leaning over a dead body, her hand on the knife?”
“I will look much closer at you, Mr Ramsforth. At the way you met your wife, any previous connections between you and her family, your family and her family, anything connecting you to this island. If I can prove you knew about her past and you brought her here on purpose, I will go very far to also prove you believed you could mentally unbalance her enough to have her committed to an asylum and then have control of her assets. Who was better placed to scare her with the beetles and the skull than you? Both times she went into the hotel room alone because you had made up an excuse not to be with her.’
Teddy wanted to splutter that he didn’t know what the man was going on about, but Jasper didn’t give him the chance, pushing on relentlessly: “The first night you claimed to have forgotten your lighter on the dinner table. The second night you acted like you were drunk and lost the room key. Both times this ensured she was going into the room alone to see the frightening objects placed there for her to find. By the time you arrived they were gone and she would be thought to have imagined it. Or even be suffering from hallucinations. You planned it all.”
“That is not true! I know nothing about the beetles or the skull! I did forget my lighter. I did lose the key. I can’t understand how you—”
Jasper touched his arm. A light but insistent tap. “All I have to do is prove that you knew about the money before Mr Fennick came here to tell your wife about it and then I will go a long way to convince a jury of all the rest.”
“A jury?” Teddy asked, with a sudden chill.
“Yes, the jury that will convict you of murder. You killed the old woman and made your wife seem the murderer. Part of your perfect plan to incriminate her.”
“That’s insane!” Sweat dropped down Teddy’s back. He knew this man meant business. That he would do what he said he would. That he would prove the first piece of his accusation and then…
Teddy took a deep breath. “All right. So I knew she’d get money upon her marriage. But I swear I didn’t know about her past, that she had lived here, that her mother was murdered here. I only knew that she was entitled to money, and lots of it, as soon as she married. I only wanted the ruddy money, OK, nothing else. No ruse with beetles and skulls.” He eyed the former inspector. “You have to believe me.”
Jasper leaned back on his heels and studied him. “How can you have known about the money but not about her past?’
“Because I didn’t know where the money would be coming from. Just that she had money coming, from a relative, once she married. It was too good a chance to let it pass.”
“So you admit you set up your first meeting?”
“I didn’t do that. The person who told me about the money did.” Teddy shuffled his feet. “It was a joke, you know.”
“A joke?” Jasper repeated in a threateningly soft tone. “You married a woman by way of a joke?’
“No, of course not.” Teddy lifted a hand to ward off the other’s tangible anger. “I discussed my financial troubles. Then I was told there was a young woman, not bad looking, who stood to get a lot if she married. Why not snare her? I said that it wasn’t as easy as that. How would we meet? Why would she like me? But the arguments that it could work were strong. I’m not bad looking myself. I could charm her. She never went out much. She would be flattered. I could…’
“Seduce her? For her money?”
“Don’t sound so righteous. I married her. It’s not like I robbed her and left her in the street.”
“That’s exactly how she will feel when she hears about this.”
Teddy’s heart sank. “You needn’t tell her,” he said weakly.
“Oh, but I will.” Jasper gave him a look that could scorch any man off the earth. “I won’t leave her in the dark about what kind of despicable man you actually are.”
Teddy raised both hands
. “What was so bad about it? She wasn’t attached. Neither was I. We were free to marry if we wanted to. I wooed her, she liked me. I gave her everything. A ring, a nice trip. Just what women like.”
“But you didn’t mean it, Mr Ramsforth. All the while you had something different in mind. While you kissed her, you were already mentally counting her money. That’s not very romantic when you come to think of it.’
Teddy hung his head. He should never have told the inspector. He had let Robin down. All because the mention of a jury had scared the wits out of him.
Jasper asked, “And who suggested this wonderful scheme to you?”
“Gideon Hawtree. He taunted me that I couldn’t raise the money for his invention. Then he suggested I could snare a rich woman.”
“How does Hawtree know about your wife’s past?” Jasper asked.
Teddy shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Look, I didn’t know he’d be here, waiting like a vulture, to collect the money. I had thought he would have the decency to wait until we were back from the honeymoon.’
“Hawtree,” Jasper said. “Why does that name ring a bell with me?”
Teddy looked at him. “It’s probably not him, but his brother, Hector, that you remember. Frightfully talented, too bad he died so young.”
Chapter Fifteen
Yes. That was it. The wonder boy compared to Mozart. Who died suddenly. Leaving his family, tutors and admirers devastated. Gideon Hawtree’s brother.
By his side Ramsforth lamented, “Look, I know it was wrong of me to enter into this agreement with Gideon, to snare Damaris for her money. And after a while I was sorry I had started it. I did care for her. Honestly. You must believe me.”
Perhaps the young man had merely been weak and eager for easy money?
Perhaps he hadn’t known about Damaris’s tragic past and he had really not planted the beetles or the skull.
But Jasper wasn’t about to show any doubt to Ramsforth. Let him squirm. He might make a wrong move and give away what was really behind all of this.
Jasper snapped, “I don’t believe a word you say. But thank you for speaking with me anyway.” He turned away abruptly, calling for Red to follow him. He was sure that Ramsforth wasn’t telling him everything yet, but some parts of the scenario Jasper could picture as if he had been present at the occasion:
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