Peril at Owl Park

by Marthe Jocelyn

  She was far worse than only a liar.

  * * *

  —

  Late in the afternoon, a fresh team of constables arrived from the village to take Kitty Sivam away in the police wagon. The prisoner requested a chance to say goodbye to her hostess, and my soft-hearted sister agreed—on condition that I be with her. Oh, happy me, to see the ending!

  After only a few hours in custody, Mrs. Sivam seemed to have paled and thinned the way a rose bloom fades when deprived of water.

  “I suppose this will be the end of our friendship,” she said to Marjorie. “As it is the end of so much else.”

  “I do not believe we ever had a friendship, Kitty.” My sister’s voice held such bitterness that it scarcely sounded like her. “You killed a man. You tore Lakshay’s life apart and exposed us all to dreadful wickedness. You hurt a child! This is all unforgiveable.”

  “Hurting anyone was never part of the plan! We were to take the emerald and travel to some distant place and—”

  “That there was a plan of any kind is enough to sicken me,” said Marjorie. “Even at school you were not to be trusted. If only I’d remembered that, Mr. Corker would not be dead.”

  Kitty winced.

  “Marjorie!” I cried. “The blame is not yours for a moment!”

  Marjorie turned abruptly away. “Please take her, Inspector Willard. I do not wish to see her again.”

  I kept watching, though. Hurt and fury passed over Kitty’s face like storm clouds across a meadow. I would cherish this memory of her, brought low and rejected.

  I followed into the Great Hall where Grannie Jane, Hector, and Lucy, of course, gathered to watch Kitty Sivam walk to the police wagon, as if to the scaffold itself. Inspector Willard paused to shake our hands, Hector’s and mine, and to thank us for bravery and cleverness.

  “I say cleverness,” he said, “but the word conniving also springs to mind. I hope—for your sakes—that your wits are never again tested on such a puzzle as this…and yet I wish for you a path that keeps those wits sharp.” He leaned a little closer. “Do send word when you uncover the Echo Emerald, as I have no doubt that you shall. I’d like to have a look at something so famous, before it leaves the country. I’ll be back to check on Mr. Sivam in a day or two.”

  “Goodbye, Inspector! Goodbye!”

  The villainess and the policemen had scarcely reached the end of the drive when Frederick appeared.

  “Miss Morton? Master Perot?” he said. “Mr. Sivam would be obliged if you could come to his suite? He wishes to confer.”

  “To confer, Frederick?”

  “That is what he said, miss.” Frederick’s eyes flicked in the direction of Grannie Jane, who was making her way toward the drawing room. “I hope that is not an improper suggestion?”

  “Only a surprising one,” I said. “Come on, Hector!”

  * * *

  —

  “He must be pretty shaken by having his wife dragged away,” I said to Hector, as we climbed the stairs. “What do you suppose he wants from us?”

  “Before the dragging,” said Hector, “he is telling her, ‘only you and I know there are two stones’—”

  “It did sound like the start of an accusation,” I said. “So, you think he’d realized that she’d—”

  “His brain cell friction is reduced to sluggish bumps, but still he is seeing the truth, and—”

  “And despite the heartache it must cause, he knows that his wife is a thief and a murderess,” I said. “Ouch.”

  “The question now,” said Hector, “is whether he knows also the location of the Echo Emerald.”

  “I was wondering,” I said, “whether anyone had looked in his pockets?”

  “His pockets?”

  “Isn’t that where you put the vial of chloroform when you found it? Isn’t that what I made to carry the paper knife to Inspector Willard? A pocket is for—”

  We had arrived at the door of the Juliet suite.

  Mr. Sivam was sitting in a high-backed chair beside a tall diamond-paned window, a steaming porcelain cup on a table by his elbow. His fingers drummed the doilies that decorated the armrests and his feet bounced in agitation on the footstool.

  “Ah!” he whispered, when we tapped. “The young detectives. Please come in.”

  He looked…like a man bearing a heavy weight. As a tiger might, with an injured forepaw. Like someone whose world had suddenly splintered.

  “We’re so sorry for your…for your…” Loss did not seem the right word, though he had lost his duplicitous wife. “For your circumstances,” I finished lamely.

  Mr. Sivam appeared to drag his small smile out from somewhere deep within, and for that it was all the kinder. “My circumstances are much improved, thanks to you both,” he said. “But we mustn’t linger on past misery. Mr. Corker’s death is a terrible shadow. Not, as you well know, the result of a curse, but of greed. Greed itself is the curse! Will you assist me in recovering the gemstone that prompted such a brouhaha?”

  “Yes, yes,” we agreed, and, “Where is the Echo Emerald?”

  Mr. Sivam took a swallow from the cup. I caught a faint whiff of warm honey.

  “After Kitty’s lamentable act on Christmas Eve,” he said, “of exhibiting what she did not realize was the copy, I took the real one from its hiding place—in a pouch with my razor—and slipped it into my trouser pocket. To keep it close.”

  “Your pocket!” I cried.

  Hector grinned at me.

  “After the grievous discovery of the actor’s body next morning,” said Mr. Sivam, “I went to my room to compose myself. I knew the emerald must in some way be the cause. I remember holding it, inside my pocket, wondering whether I should throw it out the window into the snow. Within minutes came a knock at the door. Mr. Mooney stepped inside the room and before I could puzzle what he might be doing there, he had struck me and held a cloth against my face with surprising force.” He paused to wipe a hand over his eyes. “When next I awoke, my hands were tied, my mouth gagged, and my thoughts as scrambled as if I’d drunk two bottles of whiskey by myself. Most often he was there to bully me, but occasionally I was alone. My head was heavy, my thoughts so slow…My legs would not carry me far. I made it to the door one time, out to the yard, but then he appeared to push me back inside…”

  Dot’s courtyard monster! He’d nearly escaped.

  “Mrs. Sivam, she searches your room,” said Hector.

  “But Mr. Mooney never checked your pockets?” I asked. “Is it still there?”

  Mr. Sivam shook his head, no, and allowed a twinkle of mischief to light his eyes.

  “This is where I need your help,” he said. “Imagine that your plight is reckless. You have a valuable jewel in your pocket…And on Christmas Eve you watched a tableau depicting the hiding of a valuable jewel in a most unusual place…”

  Without another word, Hector and I were hurrying—yet again—to the coach house at the far end of the service courtyard. Inside, among the actors’ bins and crates, we easily retrieved what we’d come for, and soon were back in the Juliet suite, presenting Mr. Lakshay Sivam with the plump and painted plaster goose.

  He opened the compartment in the bird’s gullet and withdrew the Echo Emerald. For a moment, he shut his eyes and exhaled, a deep breath of gratitude. Then he laid his palm flat to let us gaze at the deep green loveliness of the mesmerizing stone.

  JANUARY 1, 1903

  THURSDAY

  AN EPILOGUE

  “CAN YOU EVER forgive me?” said Marjorie to James, on the first day of the new year, 1903.

  “What have you done that must be forgiven?” James embraced her as she pressed her cheek against his chest.

  “For allowing the wicked Kitty Cartland to manipulate me into inviting the nearly as wicked Sebastian Mooney to Owl Park! Our first Christmas together! What a drea
dful way to start.” When she lifted her face, it displayed the indent of one of his jacket buttons.

  “I should have seen it!” cried Marjorie. “She tricked me.”

  “You wanted to think the best of her,” said James. “How could you have known? Didn’t you say ‘Poor Kitty,’ and ‘Who could ever imagine that awful Oinks would grow up to be so lovely’?”

  “She made me almost think that she’d changed,” said Marjorie. “But frankly, Kitty was always pretty awful. I expect I was a bit of a pill myself. I suppose I thought if I’d grown up and become nicer, she likely had as well.”

  “You became very nice indeed,” said James, kissing her on the button spot.

  “But will your mother ever say out loud that she forgives me?”

  James laughed. “My mother has much higher standards than I do,” he said. “As all mothers seem to have.” He kissed her again. “As you must now remember.”

  Marjorie hugged him and turned sly eyes to me. “We meant to tell you on Christmas morning, Aggie, but our plans went awry. We have wonderful news. You are to be an aunt! And Hector an honorary uncle, naturellement!”

  An aunt! A baby! Could anything be better than this?

  “Does Mummy know? And Grannie Jane?” I said. “Oh! But Grannie was knitting something very small and white!” Of course she knew!

  “Grannie knows and so does Mummy,” said Marjorie. “She is the happiest mummy in England.”

  “Or possibly the second happiest,” said James. “We told my mother this morning, and she smiled so widely I was afraid her ears might pop off the sides of her face. That smile is quite out of practice, you may have noticed.”

  “You’ll be happy to hear, Aggie,” said Marjorie, “that I told Lady Greyson I hoped I could turn to her for help. I said that her own record of motherhood is stellar, what with James being the loveliest man on earth…” She stopped there because he kissed her again.

  “My sister’s all right too,” said James.

  “I think she was tickled,” said Marjorie, “that she might be useful, instead of simply old Lady Greyson.”

  “We will have a nanny too, of course,” said James.

  “And an aunt,” I said. “A supremely, divinely, ecstatically happiest aunt.”

  * * *

  —

  “Perhaps you don’t want to talk about this,” I said to Hector, later, “but I have a question…”

  I’d been fiddling with a poem in my notebook. He was using the new pencils from his stocking to draw the new torch from my stocking.

  “Oui?” said Hector.

  “Our guess was that Mr. Mooney put you into that terrible packing case because you appeared unexpectedly, and he was afraid you’d notice Mr. Sivam imprisoned in the motorcar.”

  Hector was nodding. “This is true.”

  “So…logically speaking…what do you think he was going to do next?”

  Hector colored in a beam of yellow light coming from the torch in his drawing.

  “Why does he not kill me?” said Hector. “I spend much time considering this question. I believe that he is merely a thief, not a killer. When all this begins, he loves Kitty and he loves jewels. He hopes to take both these loves and find a new life far away. Perhaps he plans for the packing case to fall from the caravan in a distant town. Inside is a confused foreign boy who will not say anything sensible to the person who finds him.”

  “That might have worked,” I said. “Keeping two prisoners must have been a wearying enterprise…But killing you would have been so much harder. What to do with the bodies?”

  “Indeed, bodies are troublesome,” said Hector. “This is likely the reason it does not occur so often, to have multiple corpses in the same house.”

  “Not in an ordinary house…” I said. “But it nearly happened here. First Mr. Corker, and then Stephen so badly hurt, even though he is himself again. And you, and Mr. Sivam…I can’t bear to think of it.” I shivered.

  “It would make a good story, though,” I said, after a few minutes’ consideration. “A houseful of people trapped together with a murderer because of a snowstorm, or on an island, maybe. The guests are all invited to a weekend party because the host carries a grudge against each of them. And one by one they die horrible deaths, not knowing who to blame…”

  “This host you describe is demented,” said Hector. “Not, I think, a good description of Lord Greyson.”

  I laughed. “The only person James gets cross with is his mother. But only cross, not actually murderous.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Perhaps Hector was thinking of his own maman. I certainly was thinking about Mummy and had a surge of longing to see her.

  Luckily, we would travel home tomorrow.

  I turned back to my notebook. “I am trying to think of a rhyme for sanguinary,” I told him. “For bloody, there’s muddy or ruddy. For knife, there’s life. For blood, there’s thud or flood…or cud, but how to fit a cow into a bloodthirsty poem?”

  “Sanguinary,” said Hector. “Must it be used at the end of the line?”

  TORQUAY VOICE

  DECEMBER 30, 1902

  LATE EDITION BREAKING NEWS!!!!

  CHRISTMAS CORPSE UPDATE!!!!

  A SECOND ARREST!!!!

  KITTY SHOWS HER CLAWS

  by Augustus C. Fibbley

  Further to the Case of the Christmas Corpse, a second vile person has been arrested. Yesterday this newspaper reported the violent yet successful apprehension of the actor Mr. Sebastian Mooney at the manor house of Owl Park, accused of murdering his former friend and colleague Mr. Roger Corker. A further confession has made clear that it was not he who performed the assassination. Mr. Mooney’s troupe, recommended by a friend of the family, was hired by Lady Greyson, formerly Miss Marjorie Morton, to perform tableaux for the household on Christmas Eve. This friend is now revealed to have been no friend at all, but a partner-in-crime with the notorious Mr. Mooney.

  Mrs. Lakshay Sivam, née Katherine Cartland, known to her intimates as Kitty, used her claws to lacerate the fabric of the Owl Park family holiday celebrations. She appears to have masterminded the theft of the legendary Echo Emerald, and when her plan went awry, viciously attacked Mr. Corker with a paper knife and left him to bleed on the carpet. The bronze-handled dagger, discovered in the victim’s back, was placed there merely to confuse the police—morbidly symbolic of the villains’ betrayal?

  Mrs. Sivam’s estranged husband, Mr. Lakshay Sivam, was also a victim in this mendacious game, being drugged, bound and robbed. His rescue was devised by the enterprising children, Miss Aggie Morton, Master Hector Perot and Miss Lucy Chatsworth, guests of Lord and Lady Greyson. Mr. Sivam is once more, though temporarily, in possession of the stolen gem.

  The temple from whence the jewel was removed, early in the last century, has gratefully acknowledged Mr. Sivam’s mission of restoring the statue of the goddess Aditi to her original glory. The monks have no intention of prosecuting Mr. Lakshay Sivam, as he is acting immediately and honorably to return the missing property upon learning of its existence. A copy of the emerald will remain in Mr. Sivam’s private collection.

  This woeful episode has been brought to a close by the dogged resolve of Detective Inspector Thaddeus Willard and his team. D.I. Willard has proven to his detractors that creative thinking as well as tenacity and reason are essential elements to the successful outwitting of crime.

  A happy footnote to the central story is that Miss Annabelle Day [third member of the beleaguered acting troupe so blighted by its time at Owl Park] has announced her retirement from the stage as a result of this harrowing episode. She is to be married in April to Sergeant Charles Shaw of the Tiverton constabulary and will remain in the vicinity.

  TELEGRAM

  GREAT THANKS FOR KINDNESS IN TIME OF TREMENDOUS UPSET STOP RECOVERY OF EMERALD HIGHLY VALUED BY MYSELF A
ND ALL MY COUNTRYMEN STOP WILL SAIL FOR CEYLON ON 21ST JANUARY STOP MAY YOU BE REWARDED WITH SERENITY FOR TREATMENT OF YOURS TRULY COMMA LAKSHAY SIVAM

  January 1, 1903

  Dear Miss Morton,

  I am writing to thank you for your understanding on my recent visit to your sister’s home. Although the circumstance—the murder of Mr. Roger Corker—was unspeakably distressing, your kindness and discretion turned a difficult time into a rewarding one. I do not know what my future holds, but I will hope our paths may cross again.

  With affection,

  B. Truitt

  January 3, 1903

  Dear Marjorie,

  This is to tell you that we arrived home safely. Mummy and Tony are both delirious to see us. Tony wagged his tail for an hour, and Mummy would have too, if she had a tail.

  Thank you for inviting us, including Hector, to your lovely home at Owl Park. I had a marvelously stimulating holiday. I am very, very, very happy to become an aunt. I hope your baby will grow up to like teapots and owls and macaroni in cheese sauce and good stories.

  I have written for her (or, I suppose—2nd choice—for him) a poem to tell about our week.

  ODE TO CHRISTMAS, 1902

  Outside, the snow fell soft and white

  Near magical in pale moonlight

  Within the walls, another mood

  An actor slept, his feet un-shoed

  A villain lurked with vengeful heart

  And soon did play her wicked part

  Vicious wielding of a knife