“I’m sure he’d be grateful if he were awake to appreciate it.”
“I’ll light the fire, then I want to go and check on him again.”
“Again?”
“Yes. If he was in a hospital he’d be hooked up to monitors, but here, I’ve got to check on him in person.”
I didn’t like to ask what would happen if she checked him and didn’t like what she found. Could she do anything but watch him pass away?
“You’re doing a good job, Maeve. With everything. The meals, the house, the rooms, and now looking after Norman. We all appreciate it.”
She nodded and then walked to the fireplace. It was on the right-hand wall of the room, dividing up two of the massive bookcases. On top of the fireplace was an ornate mantel, upon which sat several old black and white photographs. Beryl’s ancestors, I assumed.
“I’ll go and get another chair.” Ian hurried out of the room.
Maeve crouched down in front of the fireplace and began to fill it with kindling and larger sticks from a large wood basket.
I went behind the desk and sat in Beryl’s chair. In front of me, wrapped with the red ribbon, was the last will and testament of Beryl Braithwaite. Carefully, I pulled the end of the ribbon, and the bow released.
Maeve lit a match, and it hissed to life. She placed it into the small heap of kindling. The wood began to catch. After a few seconds, Maeve began to blow into the flames. The wood began to crackle.
I watched as she stared into the fire. I wondered what she was thinking. With the sudden death of her employer, her life was about to change completely.
Maeve fed more sticks into the fire, and then stood up.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
As she left to go and check on Norm again, Ian returned with one of the chairs that had been against the drawing room wall.
“Up you go, Tiffany,” he said to me.
“Hmm?”
Ian pointed at the chair that was in front of the desk.
“Look, this one and the one I brought in match. We’ll put them behind the desk for us. And then we’ll put Beryl’s chair in front of the desk for our suspects. Make it even. Balanced.”
“Do we have—” I could tell from the look on his face that yes, we did have to. “Fine.”
I stood up and dragged Beryl’s chair around to the front of the desk. It was an old, worn leather chair with brass studs all around its edges to hold the material in place. It had probably been comfortable half a century earlier, but was now showing its age.
Ian dragged the other two chairs around to the far side of the desk.
“There. Now we can do a proper inquisition!”
“Interviews, Ian. Let’s call them interviews.”
“Are you sure? Don’t we want our victims to be on edge?”
“Suspects, Ian. Not victims. And no, we want them relaxed and cooperative. We’re probably only looking for one, maybe two perpetrators. And it’s probably going to be someone else who leads us to them. So we want everyone to be comfortable.”
“But if we think someone did it… then,” Ian smashed a fist into the palm of his other hand, “we can turn up the heat, huh?”
“Maybe. But let’s try having some nice, friendly chats first.”
“Who’s first?”
“Maeve will be back in a few minutes. We might as well start with her.”
“Good thinking.” Ian picked up the ribbon that held the will together. “Is that the will?”
“It is. I suggest we keep the contents of it to ourselves for the time being.”
“What does it say?”
“I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Sit down and let’s have a look.”
Maeve’s will was short and to the point. There were no complicated legal trusts arranged. No long lists of beneficiaries. No contingency clauses and plans. Just a very short list of beneficiaries and their bequeathments.
We both read through it a couple of times. Ian pulled out a pad and pen from the pockets of his cargo pants and made a couple of notes. “So that’s it? There’s no more?”
“Nope.”
“So first we have, Taki, Joe and Beryl’s daughter in Japan. She gets ten grand.”
“Yep.”
Ian wrote it down.
“And Maeve, she gets ten grand too.”
“That’s right.”
“And everything else, in its entirety, is left to our concussed lawyer, Norman?”
“Yep. Just like she said she was going to do yesterday.”
Ian sucked in air through his teeth.
“So she writes her will leaving everything to him, and then dies that same day. Pretty suspect, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I agreed. “But remember, she told us she planned to do exactly that beforehand. In fact, she said she was going to leave everything to him. I guess the other two bequests are a slight improvement.”
“Yeah, but still…”
“And this Norman is a lawyer, right? They’re supposed to be pretty sharp. Killing her the very same day would be a bit on the nose, wouldn’t it?”
“You often say the simplest explanation is the most likely.”
“I know I do. But anyway, Norman was out of it with his concussion. And we saw what the morphine did to him. He didn’t look to be in any state to be murdering people last night.”
“Then maybe she wasn’t murdered for money.”
“Exactly. We need to keep all our options open.”
The door to the library swung open again. It was Maeve, and she was back, her brow creased with worry.
“Any improvement?” I knew the question was futile.
“No improvement. But the dose of morphine I gave him when he came back last night was wearing off. He was babbling. Incoherent.”
“We wouldn’t get far interviewing him?”
Maeve chuckled. “He was talking about sheep. On a beach. I doubt it’s relevant.”
“No. Probably not.”
“I gave him some more morphine. He’s resting quietly again now. With head wounds, you want to keep them as still as possible. The less disturbance, the better. I’ve closed the curtains to keep his room dark. Hopefully he’ll sleep all day, and when he wakes up he’ll be a little better.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Maeve crouched down by the fire again and began to feed some bigger logs into it. The fire cracked and popped as some of the existing branches were pushed down into the hot embers at the bottom, snapping and breaking and burning.
When she stood up again, she brushed down the front of her apron with her hands to smooth out the wrinkles. “The fire should be fine until lunch. Then you can just add a few more logs.”
“I can handle that,” Ian said with a knowledgeable nod. “Fires are kind of my thing.”
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
I shook my head at Maeve. “No. But as you heard earlier, we’re planning to talk to everyone. Since you’re already here…”
“Me?” Maeve looked surprised. “But Beryl was my employer. Twenty years I worked for her.”
I smiled and laughed to try and put her at ease.
“Please, we’ve got to talk to everyone. If we don’t, it’ll upset the others. And anyway, we’re mostly looking to get background information. And you know this house and Beryl better than anyone.”
“I see.”
“Please,” have a seat. I gestured toward the leather chair we had just moved to the front of the desk.
Maeve gulped. “That’s her chair.”
“Not anymore!” Ian said with a little too much cheer.
Reluctantly, Maeve sat down.
And so, our interviews began.
Chapter Nine
Ian leaned forward on the desk, pen in hand, notebook at the ready.
Maeve was leaning forward on Beryl’s old chair, looking at us intently. Her fingers were squeezing her white housekeeper’s apron.
“So you worked for Beryl for
twenty years?”
“That’s right. And I worked for her grandfather before that. Just for five years. When he passed away, she moved in.”
“So you came with the house?” Ian asked.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Did you and Beryl ever get along?”
Maeve looked down at her knees before looking up again and answering. “No.”
At least she was being honest.
“Why not?”
“She was a difficult woman. When she first came here, I tried. I really did. But everything I did was wrong. So I—” Maeve looked up to the ceiling as if the right words might be there. “I gave up. I mean, I did my work, but I stopped caring about what she thought. It made it easier for me. I just started to ignore her criticism and complaining. My life became a lot smoother after that. Simpler.”
“Had things become worse recently?”
“No. In fact, in some ways they were getting better. She was getting forgetful, meaning she didn’t always remember if I didn’t do something. It gave me some respite.”
“Did she talk to you much about this family gathering that was supposed to be happening on Sunday?”
Maeve nodded. “Yes. I had to organize the supplies. Our pantry’s full, by the way—we don’t need to worry about running out of food, even if the roads take days to clear. Or weeks!” Maeve smiled to herself. “But yes, she was excited. She kept saying she couldn’t wait to see the look on Joe’s face when she told him it was her ninetieth birthday. I didn’t understand why. I guess I do now. He thought she was ten years younger.”
“Did she have many friends?”
“Friends? Her? What do you think?”
“No?” Ian guessed.
“Exactly. Only Norm. And he’s, well…”
“What?”
“I think their friendship was based on him wanting to be in her will.”
“You think so?”
Maeve nodded. “Oh, yes. It started about two years ago. They met at a small festival in Mount Washington. It was one of the last times Beryl left the house, actually. She wouldn’t stop talking about him for days. After that, she started to invite him over. Third Sunday of every month, he’d be here for lunch.”
“Did you hear anything that made you suspicious of him?”
“No. But you saw what she was like. The fact that he would put up with her is what made me suspicious. And you saw what he looks like. With that slick gray hair and his fancy car—you could tell he was a typical lawyer, couldn’t you? Rich and looking to get richer. That’s what I always thought.”
“So you think his friendship with her was simply to get put in her will?”
“I can’t prove it. But that’s what I think.”
“But he made her happy?” Ian asked.
“I suppose.”
Ian shrugged. “Then maybe he deserved to be in her will. She didn’t have much family, and if he was her only friend…” Ian spread his palms in front of him.
“Maybe you’re right. So,” Maeve nodded at the table, “am I right? Is he in the will?”
“We’d prefer to keep the contents confidential for the time being,” I said to her. “It might be useful to reveal the contents at a later time.”
“Oh. It’s just…”
“What?”
“I was wondering if she left me anything. That’s all.”
“We’ll let you know soon.”
“Can I go now?”
Ian shook his head at her. “We need to talk about last night.”
“You arrived at almost the same time as me,” I said to her. “Where were you coming from?”
“Downstairs. I have a small suite, like a mini-apartment, just off the kitchen. I was down there and I heard a noise.”
“You could hear, all the way down there?”
“Oh, yes. I’m used to this house. Even a slight change and I know in an instant. With all of you staying here, I could barely sleep as it was. So the second I heard the smashing and screaming, I was up like a shot.”
“You came up the little staircase next to Beryl’s bedroom?”
“That’s right. The servants’ staircase, that’s what Beryl called it. She always refused to use it herself. But I guess that’s what I was. A servant.”
“But you used to be a nurse?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Why’d you quit being a nurse to do this?”
“I was a nurse in the military. I joined near the end of Vietnam. I thought I could help. I saw—” Maeve shook her head to herself. “I couldn’t stick with it. Not for a career. Not after all the soldiers, and the…”
I waited for her to continue. She didn’t.
“Did you see anyone, apart from me? Last night?”
“I… When I first came up the stairs, just as you left your room, I thought I saw someone behind you. Like they had just passed your room and were heading in the other direction. But I knew the sound had come from Beryl’s room.”
“You saw someone?” Ian asked, leaning halfway across the desk like he was reaching for her. “Who? Who was it?”
Maeve shook her head. “It was so dark. All I could make out was a shadow. A silhouette.”
“And? What kind of silhouette?”
“It was so fast. Such a blur. I think they weren’t that big. You know, slim. Kind of lithe, if you know what I mean? They seemed to be moving very smoothly, and lightly.”
“I didn’t hear anyone behind me,” I said.
Maeve nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly! They were fast, but quiet. Like a… dancer or something. It was probably a woman.”
“But you’re not certain?”
“Not at all. It’s just an impression I had. I could be wrong. I don’t think they were old though. They were too fast, too smooth.”
“Could it just have been Tiffany’s shadow when she lifted up her lantern?” Ian asked.
Maeve’s face scrunched up. “I don’t think so.”
“Moving the lantern quickly could have made it seem as if the shadow was moving.”
Maeve pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I think I saw someone. But I can’t tell you any more. I don’t know.”
“Thanks, Maeve. That’s a big help.”
“Should I go now?”
“One more thing. Do you recognize this?” Ian leaned right across the table and held his phone in front of her. He was showing her the photograph of the knife handle.
“No. I’ve never seen it before. It looks oriental.”
“It wasn’t Beryl’s?”
“Not that I know of.” Maeve slowly shook her head. She didn’t seem entirely certain.
“Thanks. And one final thing. Roman has been here for, what, a few weeks?”
“About two months now.”
“And how have he and Beryl been getting along?”
“About as well as you would expect, now that you know her. They met in here every morning while he interviewed her. Then he would make notes and work on the memoir in his room in the afternoon. I don’t think they argued, but he often left the room with a frown.”
“Just a frown?”
“And maybe a heavy sigh.” Maeve laughed quietly. “He was very patient with her.”
“They didn’t have any big arguments recently?”
“No.”
“Okay. Thank you, Maeve. It’s been really helpful talking to you, and it also allows the others to see that we’re talking to everyone, not playing favorites.”
“I get it now. I understand. I’m going to check on Norm again, and then I’ll get started on lunch.”
“It’s been a tough night, Maeve, please don’t put yourself to too much trouble.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got to stay busy. I don’t want to dwell on—I don’t want to think about her, upstairs, in her bed. I’ve got to keep moving.”
“Just don’t exhaust yourself. We’re relying on you.”
She smiled, said goodbye, and left us.
“You know,” Ian said to me when she was gone, “she actually seems more relaxed today.”
“Maybe losing Beryl wasn’t such a bad thing for her. She must be about ready to retire.”
“Yeah. Okay, who’s next?”
“Let’s see if we can speak to Uncle Joe. If we leave him too long, it’ll look like we’re playing favorites with him. We don’t want that.”
We both stood up and stretched. Ian walked over to the fire and began to bother it, jabbing at it with a brass-handled poker from a small rack below the mantelpiece.
There was a gentle knock at the door.
“Come in!” I called,
“Hi, guys!” Amber said brightly.
“Hello!” Angel said with a big grin. She was wearing a thick jacket, boots, and little woolen gloves.
“What’s up?”
“The snow’s slowed down. We’re going to go outside for a little bit. Angel’s never been in the snow—not real snow, like this. Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay! But stay close to the house.”
“Good. I just wanted to check, in case you wanted to speak to me next.”
“No, you guys go and play.”
“We’re going to make snow angels!” Angel shouted.
“A snow angel?” Ian said quizzically. He crouched down in front of the little girl. “Angel’s going to make an angel?”
She nodded her little head up and down. “Yes!”
“You should give it a name,” Ian said. “What are you going to call it?”
Angel scrunched up her face in thought. Then inspiration struck. “Angel!”
“Angel’s angel Angel?” Ian asked. “That’s Angel cubed.”
Angel shook her head at him. “Cube? No. Angel!”
“I mean—never mind. Have fun. Make one for me as well!”
Angel shook her head. “You make your own.”
“Angel!”
Her face was the picture of innocence. I couldn’t help but giggle as we sent them on their way, with the repeated admonishment to stay close to the house.
I followed them to the front door and took a look outside. The world had been transformed to a perfect, pristine white. Snow was still falling, lightly, but there were ominous-looking clouds still hovering overhead. It looked like it would pick up again before too long.
“Ain’t it something?” Joe said from behind me. “When the world looks like this, it’s hard to imagine there’s anything bad in it.”
Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery Page 7
