The Last Mrs. Summers

by Rhys Bowen

  Having not been directed to a particular room we went into the drawing room where the fire was still giving off warmth. We pulled up armchairs close to the fire. Outside the windows the wind was now howling and thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. Belinda sat hunched over, staring into the fire.

  “Can I pour you another brandy?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want the inspector to smell alcohol on my breath. Then he’ll say I was drunk and not in control of my actions.”

  We waited.

  “Do you think I should mention that Tony came to my room earlier? And that I rebuffed him?”

  “Absolutely not,” I whispered back. “That gives you a motive. You should stick to the story that he was a childhood friend and you haven’t seen him since. That’s what Rose believes.”

  “But what if that awful Mannering woman saw Tony going into my room and has told the inspector? And what if they decide to investigate further and somebody in London remembers seeing us together at Crockfords or at a restaurant? Won’t that look even worse for me?”

  “I think that’s highly unlikely. Why would they ever investigate in London unless somebody told them that you and Tony knew each other? Nobody down here knows that.”

  “But maybe one of Tony’s friends in London might know. Tony might have mentioned to them that he was seeing me.”

  “I doubt it, if he was engaged to Jonquil at the time. No, I’m pretty sure he kept your meetings secret, if he was wise.”

  “Oh God. I hope so,” she said.

  We lapsed back into silence.

  “I wish he’d hurry up,” Belinda said at last after an extra strong gust of wind buffeted the window. “I can’t bear this waiting. What if they do take me to prison, Georgie? I didn’t bring any suitable clothes for a prison cell.”

  “One doesn’t, does one?” I replied, “and anyway, they’ll make you wear a uniform with arrows on it, won’t they?”

  “Oh crikey. I bet it’s a horrid stiff fabric that will irritate my skin and I do mark so easily.”

  We broke off this silly conversation as we heard the tread of heavy feet coming toward us. The inspector came in and stood staring at us.

  “Good evening, or should I now say good morning,” he said. “I am Inspector Purdy from the Wadebridge branch of the Cornish Constabulary. May I have your names?”

  “I am Lady Georgiana,” I said. “Formerly Rannoch but now married to Mr. O’Mara, and this is my friend Miss Belinda Warburton-Stoke.”

  His gaze fastened on Belinda. “Ah, so this is the young lady in question. Miss . . . what was it again?”

  “Warburton-Stoke,” she said.

  “Warburton-Stoke,” he said with something like a derisive snort.

  “Well, we can’t do anything about the names we were born with, Inspector,” Belinda said. Like me, her voice became tight and so posh in moments of stress.

  “No, I suppose you’re right,” he agreed. “My first name is Algernon. Can’t say I like that too much.” He pulled up a chair beside us. “Now I’d like to ask a few questions, if you don’t mind?”

  He seemed pleasant enough. I wondered if this was to trap us into saying something we didn’t intend to.

  Belinda nodded. “This has all been such a horrible shock,” she said in a voice scarcely more than a whisper.

  “So why don’t you start off by telling me how you came to be here, at this house?”

  Belinda was looking down at her hands, her fingers playing with the cord of her dressing gown. “I had just inherited some property nearby. I asked my good friend Georgiana to come with me to take a look at it. It turned out to be a little fishing cottage, not suitable for us to stay in. We were in the village of Rock when we met Rose Summers. She recognized me, but I don’t think I would have recognized her. She was the daughter of my grandmother’s former cook, you see. She’d stay with her aunt all through the school year and come down to visit her mother in the summer. I used to spend my summers with my grandmother, so we used to be part of a group of young people who played together.”

  “How very democratic of you,” the inspector said. “Including the cook’s daughter in your games.” The sarcasm in his voice made me realize that he wasn’t being nice at all. He wanted to catch her out.

  Belinda glanced up at him and frowned. “We were children. We hadn’t yet learned to be snobs.”

  He nodded. “Go on. So this girl recognized you.”

  “I couldn’t believe it when she told me she was now mistress of Trewoma, and that she was married to Tony Summers. He was another boy who used to spend his summers here and we all played together. I had no idea he’d come back to this part of the world to live.”

  “So you hadn’t seen any of these people since your childhood?”

  Belinda shook her head. “My grandmother moved away when I was fourteen. I was sent to school in Switzerland and never came back here.”

  “School in Switzerland. How nice for you.” He had the hint of a sneer on his lips.

  “Only because my stepmother didn’t want me at home, Inspector,” Belinda said sharply.

  “So you had this pleasant little conversation with Mrs. Summers?”

  “And I said we were looking for a hotel while I made plans to update the cottage. And Rose insisted we come and stay with her at Trewoma. I wasn’t very comfortable doing this, as they were practically strangers, but she said they didn’t often have guests and really wanted us to come.”

  “She didn’t check with her husband first?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  There was a pause. Outside the rain still peppered the windows and one of them rattled in the wind.

  “And what did Mr. Summers think when you turned up on his doorstep?”

  “He was surprised to see me after all these years.”

  “Surprised and delighted?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Inspector. Just surprised and pleased to have guests,” Belinda said, her face flushing. “I imagine it’s quite lonely living out here.”

  “And how long have you been here?”

  “This is our second night here,” Belinda said.

  He turned to me suddenly. “And you, Mrs. O’Mara. Had you also known these people as a child?”

  “No, Inspector. I grew up in Scotland.”

  “You don’t sound Scottish to me.”

  I decided that attack was the best form of defense. “I think you’ll find my relatives don’t speak with a Scottish accent when they come up to Balmoral.”

  “Balmoral? The castle? The royal place?”

  “Yes, I am the king’s cousin.”

  “Blimey.” I could see this had really thrown him. I felt absurdly pleased.

  “I met Miss Warburton-Stoke when we were at school together in Switzerland,” I continued. “This is actually my first visit to Cornwall.”

  He was looking at me warily now. “So should I be addressing you as ‘your highness’?”

  “No, Inspector, I am merely Lady Georgiana. I kept my title when I married Mr. O’Mara, who is also the son of a lord.”

  “I see.” I watched his face twitch. “Not the best of circumstances to be introduced to our fine county, is it?”

  “Unfortunately not. My poor friend is in an absolute state of shock.”

  “I understand you have the bedroom next to hers along that hallway. Is that correct?”

  “It is.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything strange? Raised voices? Hints of a struggle?”

  I shook my head. “The last time I spoke to Belinda she said she was going to have a long hot bath. I undressed, got into bed and started to doze off.”

  “How convenient.” The smirk was there again.

  “We had had a long day in the fresh air. I usually fall asleep the moment my head hi
ts the pillow.”

  “You say you’re married?”

  “Yes. I’ve been married three months.”

  “And your husband lets you go off jaunting without him?”

  “My husband is currently out of the country. And if he weren’t, I wouldn’t need his permission to go on a trip with my friend.”

  “A most modern man.”

  “A wonderful man. I’m very lucky.”

  He realized he was losing his line of questioning. “So to come back to tonight. You fell asleep, having heard nothing.”

  “As I said, I was just dozing off when I thought I heard a cry or a scream. I wasn’t sure whether I had dreamed it, so I put on my dressing gown and opened my door. There was a light in Belinda’s room and she was standing there, holding that knife with a look of pure terror on her face. She told me she’d come back from her bath and kicked something in the darkness. When she picked it up, it was that knife. She turned on the light and found Tony Summers lying on her bed as you saw him. Naturally she screamed.”

  The inspector swiveled back to face Belinda. “So, Miss Warburton-Stoke, do you have any idea why Mr. Summers would be lying naked in your room?”

  “No idea at all, Inspector.” She paused, glanced at me, then added, “But I do have an idea who might have killed him and tried to frame me.”

  This made him open his eyes. “You do?”

  “My uncle, Sir Francis Knott. He came to the house this afternoon. He wanted to see Tony Summers because he was angry that Tony had doubled the mooring fees and my uncle lives on his sailing boat and is frankly short of cash. I had met with my uncle earlier and he was also very angry that he had not been included in my grandmother’s will. I was her sole heir. He tried to suggest that he had been cheated and that I divide the spoils with him, so to speak.”

  “She was his mother?”

  “She was.”

  “And why was he excluded, do you think?”

  “He had proved himself to be reckless with money. He had always been untrustworthy and a gambler.”

  “So you think that this uncle decided to take care of Mr. Summers and make it look as if you did it?”

  “I’m afraid that is the only conclusion that makes sense, Inspector,” she said. “With me out of the way, I presume he would inherit his mother’s estate. He could easily have hidden out in an unused room until tonight. He would have seen the weapons displayed on the walls when he took tea with us. He was quite handy with weapons, having fought in the Great War. In fact he boasted about how he had killed Germans.”

  “Ah.” The inspector was nodding now. “And where do we find this uncle of yours?”

  “As I said, he lives on his sailing boat and moors it across the river in Padstow.”

  “Well, we shall naturally have to talk to him, if he and his boat have not fled from the area, that is. And if he really did commit this heinous deed, we’ll find his fingerprints on the knife and around the house. I must say he took a heck of a risk in a house full of servants.”

  “It’s a very large house, Inspector,” Belinda said. “There is one wing that is not used at all these days.”

  “Why is that, do you know?”

  “It’s where Jonquil Trefusis used to have her rooms. Her nursery and her bedroom and also the bedroom where she and Mr. Summers used to sleep. Her death was such a horrible shock to everyone that those rooms are not touched any longer.”

  “There seems to be an awful lot of death associated with this house,” the inspector said. “First the girl’s parents die, then she has a tragic accident and then the new master of the house dies. What do you make of all that?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Inspector,” Belinda said. “As I said, I had not been back to this area since I was fourteen, and that was twelve years ago. Some people might tell you the house is cursed. I believe I did hear that once as a child.”

  “The curse of Trewoma, right?” He chuckled at this. But at that moment a great gust of wind struck the windows, flinging one of them wide open. The inspector jumped to his feet. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. He went over to the window and wrestled it shut again.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to ask us tonight, Inspector?” I said, “because I think Miss Warburton-Stoke needs to rest.”

  “I’m going to need fingerprints from everybody in the house but that can wait until morning. I can’t think of anything else at the moment,” he said. “Naturally you are not to leave this house. You are not to go into your room, miss. The constable will remain on duty.”

  “But all my clothes and things are in my room,” Belinda said. “How am I going to dress in the morning?”

  “You’ll have to wait until the room has been dusted for fingerprints and photographs have been taken. I hope to have an inspector down from Scotland Yard by tomorrow evening. Then it will be up to him when he lets you have access to any of your belongings. In the meantime I expect your young royal friend can lend you some of hers.”

  Belinda shot me a glance that seemed to indicate she didn’t think my clothing choices would be suitable for one so fashionable. She stood up and stalked ahead of me out of the room.

  Chapter 19

  OCTOBER 18

  TREWOMA, CORNWALL

  This has been one of the worst nights of my life. I am so worried about Belinda. I just pray that her uncle is found to be responsible and that we leave this place and go home. I just wish that Darcy was here right now. Or Granddad. Or both.

  I don’t think either of us slept a wink that night. I know I didn’t. Every time I attempted to doze off, disturbing visions flashed across my mind: bloody bodies, knives, Belinda locked up in the Tower of London, Belinda being hanged. I didn’t say a word to her, just in case she had managed to fall asleep, but in the morning the bags under her eyes indicated that her night had been as awful as mine.

  “I wonder when the inspector from Scotland Yard will get here,” she said as she got out of bed and went over to the window, pulling back the curtains to let gray light filter into the room. It was another morning of thick sea fog and the view was limited to ghostly shapes of the first trees. “It’s the waiting and not knowing that’s so terrible, isn’t it?”

  “I know,” I said. I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “I just can’t figure this out. Did Tony really come to your bedroom with no clothes on, hoping to persuade you to change your mind? Surely he risked his wife spotting him coming down the corridor. Or even one of the servants. That seems like a really reckless thing to do. Was he a reckless type of person?”

  “He and Jonquil used to love to take risks when we were young,” she said. “We built a raft that came apart in the current. We climbed cliffs and got stuck once. And of course that time we tried to cross the estuary on foot at low tide and poor Colin—” She broke off.

  “I’m still trying to picture this,” I said. I got up, went across to the door, opened it and peered up and down the corridor. There was no sign of life, except for the constable, now sitting on a chair at the bottom of the stairs and appearing to be asleep. I closed the door quietly again and came over to Belinda. “Was he lying on your bed so that you’d find him when you came back from your bath? And someone followed him into the room and stabbed him unexpectedly? That doesn’t make sense unless he’d fallen asleep. Wouldn’t he sit up when someone came into the room? And if it wasn’t you, wouldn’t he attempt to cover himself? There didn’t appear to be any signs of a struggle, as far as I could see. And Tony was a strong and fit man. He’d have managed to fight off most people.”

  “Including my uncle? I wonder if he was taken completely by surprise,” Belinda answered. “Do you think the local police have managed to chase up Uncle Francis? I do hope he hasn’t sailed off to the Continent already.”

  “We can just hope they find his fingerprints in an incriminating place,” I said, �
�because if it wasn’t him, then it was someone else in this house.”

  “I know.” She gave a shuddering sigh. “I keep wondering if it was really Rose. She was the only one with a good motive to get rid of Tony, wasn’t she? If she really thought he was trying to kill her, then why not kill him first, as you said? And my arrival was perfect timing for her, wasn’t it? She invites us here and then kills him in my room so that someone else is blamed for the murder. I always thought she was not too bright but she might be deeper than we know. This was a stroke of genius.”

  “I don’t see how it could have been Rose,” I said. “It’s a long way from the kitchen. Unless she had only pretended to make cocoa and was spying on Tony all the time, waiting for the right moment to strike. She watches him go into your room, realizes this is her chance and catches him unawares. Then she dashes down again and makes her cocoa.

  “The only thing against that was that she didn’t seem at all out of breath when she appeared at the bottom of the stairs carrying that cocoa mug. You’d have thought rushing upstairs, stabbing someone and dashing down again, all the way to the kitchen and back, would leave her a little breathless. And she’d also have had to go and find the dagger in the first place. She wouldn’t exactly carry a large dagger around with her, just in case she got a good opportunity to stab him.”

  Belinda had to smile at this. “I see your point. And she did sound genuinely shocked, didn’t she? And angry. Perhaps she really loved him.”

  “The worrying part is that if it wasn’t Rose, then who? The servants had gone to bed. Let’s hope the police check into each of their backgrounds. There might be one of them whose family has been cheated out of mooring rights or lobster rights or something. But surely no servant would risk carrying out a murder in one of the bedrooms. They’d follow him around the property and kill him where nobody could see and probably wouldn’t find the body for days.”

  Belinda nodded. “The only other person who was up and around was Mrs. Mannering.”

  “What possible motive could Mrs. Mannering have for killing Tony?” I asked. “Or for trying to pin it on you, for that matter? She hardly knows you and it’s certainly not going to help her in any way. If Rose decides to sell up because she’s had enough of big, gloomy houses, Mrs. M. will be out of a job.”