by Elsa Hart
“But Mr. Warbulton, you—”
“Go!” he shouted. “Be gone, demons!”
He was beginning to shake again and looked as if he might rush forward at them. Meacan took Cecily’s arm and pulled her toward the door. “This is a trouble he’ll have to solve himself,” she whispered. “Come.”
They reached the door. Just before they left, Cecily stopped. “Mr. Warbulton, were you in the library the entire afternoon? From the time Sir Barnaby left the tour until the time the murder was discovered?”
He looked slightly startled by the simple question. His face returned to a more normal set. “I—I was, yes.”
“And during that time, did Otto Helm at any point come to the room?”
Cecily watched carefully. Whatever fears tormented him, they did not prevent him from answering her with calm certainty. “No,” he said. “No, I am certain he did not.”
CHAPTER 26
It was nearing eleven by the time they arrived back at the Mayne house. Meacan, who had expected a reprimand from Lady Mayne for her late return, was relieved to learn that the widow had ordered a carriage and gone out, taking Susanna with her. According to Martha, the unplanned errand was prompted by a letter that had been delivered shortly after Lady Mayne returned from church that morning. Of the contents of the letter and of Lady Mayne’s intended destination, Martha was ignorant, but she said the widow had left in a state of considerable excitement.
Martha was cleaning the floor outside the study, which meant that further attempts to open the locked cabinets would have to wait. To Cecily’s surprise, Otto Helm had made a painful journey down the staircase and ensconced himself in the Serpent Room. Thursby and his assistants had arrived earlier in the morning. As soon as he heard that Meacan had returned, he summoned her upstairs and set her to work in the library amid piles of lists and registers.
The appearance of the undertaker, come to bear the body away to await burial at the estate, incited a flurry of activity in the house that drove Cecily upstairs to the Plant Room. She needed a quiet place in which to think. Alone in the sanctuary of dry leaves, she worked patiently through the identification of another specimen. The pathways of her mind, warped by distractions and obfuscations, began to straighten.
An hour later, reoriented within her own thoughts, she was standing at the window where the light was best, studying a tiny cluster of petals, when she saw movement in the garden. Through the thick glass, she recognized the figures of John and Martha standing outside the open door of the greenhouse. It was clear from Martha’s furious gesticulations and John’s defensive ones that husband and wife were in the midst of a heated argument.
Cecily returned the specimen to its place and hurried downstairs. The quarrel had not abated when she stepped out onto the veranda, and it continued as she started down one of the gravel paths. John’s eyes beneath their bushy brows flickered toward her as she approached the greenhouse. Martha, caught up in her tirade, didn’t appear to notice her.
“Is this all?” Martha demanded. “Or have you more to confess? Perhaps you’ve used one of his fossils to replace the cracked brick in the fireplace? Or filled an ancient urn with your berry preserves? Well?”
John’s hands, dusted with soil, extended in a placating gesture. “Now Martha, there’s no reason to—”
“I’m the only one,” snapped the housekeeper. “The only one in the house giving the collection the care the master would expect. The only one, now that he’s gone.”
“Please, Martha,” said John. “You know that’s not the way of it. See, here is Lady Kay. Let us put the issue before her. I’ll wager she won’t condemn me so harshly.”
Martha swung around. Two spots of color burned on her thin cheeks. “Yes? Is there something you require, Lady Kay?”
“Only a little air,” said Cecily. “But I would be happy to contribute my judgment to whatever matter has led to such a difference of opinion.”
Cecily’s presence had altered the balance of the interaction. Martha’s anger, buoyed on the intimacy of enduring partnership, eased from her jaw. John, relieved that the storm had passed, wiped his hands on his jacket. “It is still my opinion that I didn’t do any great wrong.”
“How can you say so?” Martha pointed into the greenhouse. “Just look what my husband has had the effrontery to do.”
Cecily moved to the open door. Inside the greenhouse, the ceiling of which was barely high enough to accommodate a standing adult, were a few raised beds and pots planted with herbs that filled the moist, heavy air with fragrance and added a green cast to the light. She guessed at once what it was Martha wanted her to see. Five bright baubles hung in front of one of the glass panes. There was a gold ring, three jewels that looked like drops of liquid color bisected by the thin twine looped around them, and a clear, faceted pendant that was casting a single, wan rainbow onto the basil leaves.
Cecily turned to John. “Are these from—”
“The cabinets!” cried Martha. “He’s taken them and used them as ornaments! In the greenhouse.”
Cecily turned to John. “Did you take these from the cabinets?”
John shook his head adamantly. “I never did. I swear it.”
Martha ducked into the greenhouse and pinched the twine of the jewel nearest to her, lifting it so that the stone became an accusing pendulum, twinkling as it swung. “Of course you did. Where else could you have come by them?”
John lifted his chin defiantly. “I do admit I found them among the master’s things, but they’d been forgotten. There was no place for them. They didn’t even have labels.”
“What do you mean when you say they’d been forgotten?” asked Cecily.
John was eager to explain. “It was when Lady Mayne arrived. You remember there wasn’t room for her carriage”—he nodded toward the carriage house—“and I had to shift that great painted coffin out of the way. Well, when I was doing so, I heard rattling inside. It gave me a turn. I assumed it must be old bones knocking about. I thought I’d look, though, just to see, as there was only a small latch holding the lid shut. So I opened it, and there were no bones inside at all, only these jewels. And I thought to myself, if I hadn’t found them, they’d have stayed closed up in that dark place. And I thought, seeing as how I wasn’t taking them from the property, what was the harm in putting them in the light when they shine so prettily?”
As he spoke, Cecily bent to look more closely at the objects. The ring was formed by two golden dolphins that held between them in their jaws a bezel containing a blue gem. Of the colored jewels, one was red, a garnet perhaps, cut roughly into the shape of a heart, through which light pulsed like living blood. The next was heather purple, and engraved with the proud figure of a man with the head of a jackal.
But it was the green jewel that arrested Cecily’s gaze. It was as green as a translucent strand of seaweed soaked and glistening in the sun. On one side, surrounded in stars, was a creature with the body of a snake and the head of a lion, on the other a ring of Greek letters. She recognized the stone. It was the same one Alice Holt had seen Carlyle put in his pocket, the emerald that only yesterday had rested in its drawer in the Stone Room.
After a moment’s deliberation, she turned to John and Martha. “I do think,” she said crisply, but not unkindly, “that an effort should be made at least to identify the objects. A description of them should be added to the registers, if they are not listed there already.”
“Good,” said Martha, starting to untie the twine. “That is what the master would have wanted.”
John shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked embarrassed. “I had no ill intent,” he murmured. “I only thought they would look well in the light.”
“And so they do,” said Cecily. “In my opinion, after Mrs. Barlow and I have given their identifications our full attention, I see no reason why they should not hang here until Inwood takes possession of the collection.”
Martha’s expression soured, but before s
he could object to the plan, Cecily had the gems in her hand and was promising to use every deductive faculty she possessed to do with them just what Sir Barnaby would have wanted done. She turned then and strode briskly back to the house.
There was no one in the Stone Room. Cecily crossed it as quickly as she could, winding between display tables covered in rocks shuffled from the shoulders of mountains, pebbles polished by the sea, and vials of sand taken from distant deserts. She knew the drawer she wanted. When she reached it, she pulled it open and stared down at the neat compartments filled with stones. None were empty. The emerald was still in its place. She compared it to the gem resting in her open palm. They were identical.
* * *
“Duplicates.” Meacan sighed the word as she contemplated the ten jewels arranged on the table in Cecily’s room. “False mermen I do not mind. But duplication—” She shuddered. “It makes me uneasy. A reflection shouldn’t be able to leave its mirror. How did you find them?”
An hour had passed since Cecily had stood over the emerald in the Stone Room. In that time, she had located doubles of each of the items. Of each pair, only one was affixed with a red label. “They would have been more difficult to locate if they had been shells or skulls or plants,” she said modestly. “But there are very few gemstones in the Mayne collection, and their color makes them easy to pick out from their more humble neighbors. The emerald, as you know, was in the Stone Room. The amethyst etched with the god Hermanubis was in the drawer below it. The pendant is a Roman Imperial gem. It was in the Antiquities Room, as was the golden ring. And this, the garnet heart, was in the Artifact Room. According to the label, it was found in a Germanic hoard.”
Meacan touched one of the red tags. “The ones in the house were labeled.”
Cecily nodded. “And the ones John found in the painted coffin were not.”
Meacan’s expression flickered between distrust and admiration as she picked up the two emeralds and held them to the light, one pinched between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Cecily waited, wondering how long it would take Meacan to see what she had. Cecily had a keen eye for detail that she had honed over years of squinting at plants, performing such tasks as distinguishing sepals from petals, noting minute serrations, and spotting the telltale bracts that distinguish leaves from leaflets.
But she had underestimated Meacan, who had spent many more years than she learning how to spot deception. Meacan spoke almost at once, and with relief. “But they aren’t identical at all,” she said. “The color, for one, isn’t quite the same. And the etchings aren’t either.”
“Try the rings,” said Cecily.
Obediently, Meacan set the emeralds down and picked up the two golden rings. “This one is much lighter than the other,” she remarked. “And the gold—” She scratched the tail of one golden dolphin with her nail. “It’s only paint.”
“The same is true of the other pairs,” said Cecily. “In each set, one is a cheap trinket, and the other a genuine gemstone.”
Meacan compared the rings again. “The one that has the label is the imitation,” she said. “Which means that the one John strung up in the greenhouse was the true one.” She clicked the rings together as she concentrated. “After Alice told you she saw Carlyle put the emerald in his pocket, we looked for the emerald, found it exactly where it was supposed to be, and so concluded that it had not been stolen. But if—” Meacan paused and closed her eyes.
Cecily, who wasn’t going to begrudge her friend the moment of revelation, waited patiently.
Meacan’s eyes opened, alight with triumph. “If Carlyle did put the real emerald in his pocket, surely he was the one who put the false stone in the drawer. I told you he seemed the type. He must have assumed that by the time the deception was noticed, it would not be possible to trace it back to his visit. After all”—Meacan looked at the emeralds again—“they are good copies. It isn’t easy to tell the difference unless you can hold them beside each other.” Her eyes lifted to Cecily’s face and the triumph abated slightly. “You’d already come to the same conclusion,” she said.
“I’ve had more hours to consider it,” said Cecily. “And you did mention in the library the other day a collector recently embarrassed by the discovery that a number of jewels in his collection were forgeries.”
“And I didn’t think you were listening,” said Meacan, looking gratified. The corners of her mouth tightened into a frown again as she resumed her thinking. “He would have needed to study the objects in advance in order to prepare the copies.”
“I thought of that also,” said Cecily. “He had visited the collection before. Sir Barnaby referred to it. I thought at the time that it was odd he would return to see the house again, given his apparent lack of interest in the cabinets. But Sir Barnaby also mentioned that on his first visit, he brought a sketchbook.”
“That fits perfectly,” said Meacan. “He must have made drawings of the objects he wanted to steal, and arranged to join another tour once he had the copies ready.” She paused. “But how did the stones—the real ones—come to be in the coffin?”
“Carlyle put them there,” said Cecily.
“How do you know?”
“Consider that afternoon. When Carlyle, Inwood, and I entered the study and found Dinley standing over Sir Barnaby’s body, it was Carlyle who went in pursuit. I think he did so not out of determination to apprehend a murderer, but out of fear of being caught with a pocket full of stolen jewels. In that moment, all was confusion. He could not know whether a constable would arrive ready to make indiscriminate arrests. He realized that chasing after Dinley would give him an excuse to leave the room without inviting suspicion. When Dinley escaped through the garden door, it would have been the work of a moment for Carlyle to slip into the carriage house and drop the jewels into the coffin. And that would also explain why I saw him go into the carriage house on the first day of the wake.”
“He was trying to retrieve the jewels,” said Meacan.
Cecily nodded. “But by then, John had already moved the coffin and found them.”
Meacan picked up the false heart-shaped garnet and turned it over in her fingers. “So it’s to be a call on Carlyle, then?”
“I have another idea,” said Cecily. “Tomorrow is the day Inwood is to give a tour of his collection. Carlyle said he means to attend. I suggest we do, also.”
Meacan’s eyes were suddenly catlike. “So we confront him there,” she said. “We will have to come up with another excuse for me to leave the house, but that is easily done. The question is, do you think he’s a murderer, or only a thief?”
Cecily tapped her fingers against the table as she pondered the question. “If Sir Barnaby had discovered Carlyle’s scheme, it would give Carlyle a motive. But the timing does not make sense.”
“How does it not?”
“Remember, Sir Barnaby had already been dead for some time when the murder was made known to the house. If Carlyle had killed him and wanted to be rid of the jewels, he would have had plenty of time to jettison them before the body was found. Why wait?”
Meacan set the rings down and leaned against the side of the bed, her arms crossed over her chest. “The lover, the gambler, the grieving sister, the madman, and now the thief. Each still as likely and as unlikely as they were before.”
Outside, they heard the click of hooves and jingle of reins. Meacan looked out the window. “That’s Lady Mayne returning,” she said.
A few minutes later, Susanna came to the door. “You’re to come to the dining room,” she said. “Lady Mayne wishes to make an announcement.”
CHAPTER 27
Lady Mayne sat at the head of the table, waiting in silence for the household to assemble. The ancient coffin loomed in the corner behind her, its smooth bulk making her look smaller than she was. Her shoulders, encased in black silk, appeared slight, the bones of her face pronounced and fragile. And yet, despite this seeming diminution, she held her position with the confidence of a ra
ven on a promontory.
Cecily and Meacan took their seats in the places indicated by the widow’s thin, commanding hand. Across from them, Thursby sat squinting through his glasses at the crowded walls, from which ballooned various musical instruments, their strings loose and untuned. His two assistants sat beside him in their identical wigs. Otto Helm, wan and bruised, occupied the more comfortable chair by the fireplace. John and Martha, the last to arrive, remained standing beside the door.
“Early this morning,” Lady Mayne began, “I received news most unexpected and unsettling in its nature.” Despite the gravity of the words, it seemed to Cecily that Lady Mayne was trying to keep the corners of her mouth from drifting up into a smile.
“I believe you are all acquainted with Giles Inwood,” Lady Mayne continued. “The man my late husband counted as his dearest friend, and to whom he entrusted his great legacy. Early this morning I received a letter, the accuracy of which I have since verified, informing me that Inwood has perpetrated a gross deception. Not only has he failed to uphold the terms of his promise to my husband, but he has taken advantage of my own unutterable grief to mislead and manipulate me.”
“Inwood?” Thursby blinked through his glasses. “Giles Inwood? Surely you are mistaken. There’s no better or more honorable man than Inwood among us.”
“I, too, was taken in,” said Lady Mayne. “He was ever gracious in his manner. He appeared most genuine. And yet it has been revealed to me that he succumbed long ago to sin. He is a gambler, Mr. Thursby.”
Thursby gave a dry, affronted cough. “I’ve heard nothing of Inwood frequenting card tables or cockfights, my lady, and I would question the source—”
