by Sara Rosett
Amanda carefully put her teacup down on a nearby table, then after a quick glance at Monique, she focused on the back of the sofa. “I…knew Toby,” she said simply.
Her words brought back to mind this afternoon when she’d said the police suspecting me had been foolish because I hadn’t known Toby. I completely missed the easy use of his first name, but now as she said his name again, I picked up on it—the familiarity of her tone.
Monique sensed it too. “You,” she said incredulously. “You were Toby’s old lover?” She ran her gaze over Amanda in a dismissive way. “A cook? No wonder he dropped you.” She seemed to realize that the rest of us were staring at her, and she added, “Before we arrived, Toby told me one of the guests had been his lover. He was cruel that way. But if I’d known it was you,” she glanced back at Amanda then flicked a hand, “well, clearly, I wasted a few minutes worrying. I needn’t have.” She propped her elbow on her knee and leaned forward, chin in her palm as if she were setting up to listen to a good story. “So you killed him because he ignored you?”
“No.” Amanda’s voice was scandalized. “No, I did not kill him. He had…something of mine that I wanted back. He wouldn’t give it back. In fact,” she blew out a long breath then said, “There’s no point in keeping anything back now.” She looked at Beatrice. “As you said about secrets—they’re dangerous things.” She raised her chin and looked down at Monique. “Yes, Toby and I had an affair. It began two months after your wedding.”
Monique looked like she’d been punched in the stomach, but Amanda hurried on, the words flowing out of her more quickly. “I wasn’t proud of it. In fact, I hated myself while it was going on. I didn’t mean for it to happen. He came to the hotel often, on business. Our paths crossed a few times, and I—well, it happened.” She was back to looking at the sofa. “I felt horrible and ended it, but I had done a foolish thing. I made him mad. He didn’t like it that I broke it off. Toby had always insisted that we keep everything quiet. Very discreet. No emails, no phone calls, no texts. And I went along with him…except once. I wrote him a note, a letter. He kept it. And then about three months ago, he happened to be on the same bus as I was on the way home. I’m sure it wasn’t an accident. He never takes the bus. He told me he still had the letter. If I didn’t pay him several hundred pounds, he’d show it to my boss. I’d be fired, and Toby threatened to make sure I wouldn’t get a reference.”
Beatrice said softly, “But surely he didn’t need the money?”
“No, of course not. It was all a game of manipulation with him. He was angry with me and wanted to make me pay emotionally. To make me worry and fret. He wanted to control me.” Amanda shot a look of pity at Monique. Monique looked away at the ceiling then said, “Yes. He was like that. Cruel, as I said.”
“So anyway.” Amanda ran her finger along a seam in the sofa. “Once I received the welcome packet with the guest list, I knew he would be here. And when I saw the map of the house, well, I knew if I could get into his room, I could get the letter back. That night on the bus, he’d shown it to me. He had folded it into a tiny square and kept it in a leather business card holder that he carried everywhere with him. I knew he might have another copy of it somewhere,” she frowned, “but I didn’t think he did. It wasn’t like it was that important—to him, anyway. To me, it was a huge deal, but to him, it was just a way to toy with me. And once I’d seen that he still had the letter…well, that was all the leverage he’d need, wasn’t it? So I figured if I could at least get back the original, then I might be free of the threat. It was a chance I decided I had to take. If I stole the letter, and he had another copy, well, it would come out anyway, but at least if I made the attempt to get the letter and it was the only copy, then I wouldn’t have to live with the continual worry that he could reveal it at any time. I couldn’t believe my crazy idea worked, but it did. There were so many things that had to come together, but everything went off without a hitch.”
We all were stunned, I think because there were a few seconds of silence then Simon said, “Sounds like a perfect motive for murder.”
“I know,” Amanda said. “I knew that’s exactly what it would seem like, but I swear I did not kill him. He was already dead when I got there.”
Chapter 21
AMANDA SAID, “I KNOW YOU probably won’t believe me, but he was already…gone when I got in the room.” She gripped the sofa, her gaze darting around the room. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true. I didn’t kill him. In fact, I didn’t even go near him, at first, anyway. Once I was in the room, I listened to make sure it was quiet. I heard breathing, deep and even breathing, and the bed had those curtains around it, so I couldn’t see much. I crept around the room, looking for the leather envelope.”
I wondered how she had gotten the hook and eye unlatched, but she was speaking quickly, and I didn’t want to interrupt her.
“I found the leather case on the top of the dresser along with some change and slips of paper. I took out the letter and then headed back for the windows, but as I went by the bed, I saw his face through a gap in the bed curtains and I knew…” her voice faltered. She took a deep breath then said, “I just knew. It was horrible. And at the same moment, it hit me that I had put myself in an even worse situation.”
Amanda glanced at Monique. “I’m sure I stood there for at least a minute or two, debating what to do. With you there, out cold beside him…” Amanda shivered, “…it was awful. All I could think of to do was to get out of there and keep quiet. There was no reasonable excuse or explanation for me being inside that room. I wasn’t even sleeping in the same wing so I couldn’t use the excuse that I’d somehow stumbled into the wrong room. There was nothing else I could do, except leave.”
Amanda shrugged, a miserable look on her face. “So that’s what I did. I felt terrible doing it, but I went back across the courtyard on the slackline. I unfastened it, then pulled it across. I’d rigged up a way to use a guideline to get it in place, but once I unhooked it, I knew the trailing end would leave a mark across the courtyard, but it was faint. I could barely see it in the morning. The groundskeeper washed it away before the police arrived. They were only interested in footprints anyway. I knew Toby’s death would be discovered in the morning, but I was afraid that Monique might wake during the night and realize…so I stayed awake most of the night then made sure I was in the vicinity of the other wing most of the morning. As soon as I heard Monique scream, I rushed up there and barged in with everyone else. It was such a confusing scene that I was able to slip out to the balcony and get the anchor for the slackline that I’d had to leave in place. I stuffed it inside my shirt and went back to my room to hide it, but I knew I needed to get rid of it.”
Amanda smiled sadly at me. “Grace’s eyes were too sharp. I thought the police might search our belongings tomorrow before they let us leave, and since I didn’t want to be caught carrying several feet of slackline and a harness through the house, I decided to pack them. I taped up the box and gave it to Thomas earlier today. I asked him to see that it was posted to my home address. I’m sure the police will be able to find it. It’s probably in a stack somewhere to be sent off in tomorrow’s post.”
There were many gaps in her story, questions I wanted to ask, but as weird and crazy as her story was, I believed her. Who would make up a story like that? It was so far-fetched, yet just within the edge of possibility.
“She’s lying.” Monique jumped up, and her envelope clutch tumbled to the floor as she appealed to Beatrice. “She should be locked up until the police can get here. She killed Toby. It had to be her. You all heard her. She had a reason to want him dead.”
When Monique’s clutch hit the floor, the latch released, spilling the contents at my feet: a pill bottle, a phone, and a lipstick tube. The contents were different from last night when I’d seen inside her purse. What was different? Then it hit me. Waverly’s words seemed to echo in my mind. People see what they expect to see.
“Tho
se weren’t sleeping pills,” I said, softly to myself as I worked it out in my head. Things shifted, sliding into place, and I knew what had happened.
Monique stood with her hands braced on her hips, but at my voice, her head snapped toward me. “Of course they were.”
I gulped, wishing I’d kept the thought to myself, but at least I was surrounded by people. “Yes, I’m sure they were tonight. It was last night that they weren’t.”
“What are you talking about? Everyone saw me take a sleeping pill last night.”
“Did we?” I licked my lips and felt an internal quiver. Her face was so adamant and set. But then I thought of yesterday, her spat with Toby and the trash Ella had emptied today. “Or did we see you take something that looked like a sleeping pill after dinner? Something like a mint, perhaps?”
Monique hesitated for a second before sputtering as she stepped so close that she loomed over me, but I kept talking. “Mints would be perfect, wouldn’t they? With their similar color and shape, they could easily pass as sleeping pills, at least at a casual glance. You could take one here in the drawing room, and we’d all be your witnesses that you couldn’t have murdered your husband. All you had to do was dump the mints when you got back to your room—after Toby took one of your real sleeping pills, and you suffocated him, I assume. You could flush the mints and refill the medicine bottle with the real sleeping pills, which you’d kept in the mint package. Very clever, that. You knew the staff would have access to your belongings and two bottles of pills—a real one and a fake one—might be noticed, but hiding one set of pills in a mint package was smart. People see what they expect to see, don’t they? If there are white round tablets in a mint package, then they must be mints. White round tablets in a pill bottle must be pills.”
Monique was breathing quickly and shallowly through her nose, her hands clenched at her side. “This is ridiculous.” She tossed her head and looked first at Beatrice then Sir Harold. “Are you going to let her speak to me this way? She’s obviously insane.”
I licked my lips, glancing around for something that I could put between her and me, in case she lunged at me, which she looked like she wanted to do. The fringed pillow beside my thigh wouldn’t help me, and the decorative bowl on the table between the sofas, which besides probably being a valuable antique, was too far away to reach.
“That’s why you wouldn’t give Toby a mint yesterday when he asked for one,” I plowed on. Better to get it all out there. “I thought it was an example of how far apart you were as a couple—you wouldn’t even give him a mint!—but you couldn’t give him one because they weren’t mints at all. They were your sleeping pills. If you gave one to Toby at that point, he’d know immediately from the taste that they weren’t mints. No one would think twice if they saw them, and after you’d made the switch and put them in the pill bottle, the police would assume you couldn’t have murdered Toby. Of course, you must have given him a sleeping pill after you returned to your room and made the switch, which would make it so much easier to kill him.”
“I can’t believe you’ve let her go on with this obviously ludicrous story. You don’t even have any proof.”
“There’s a trash bag somewhere still on this property with an empty mint package. I saw it when Ella cleaned the Mahogany bedroom today. I know some people consume quite a few mints, but I haven’t seen you pop one in your mouth. Are you saying you ate a whole package between yesterday and today? And I wonder what the police will find when they dig into your finances? How were Toby’s finances set up? Do you inherit? Was he really supportive of your efforts to branch out into being a television hostess? You’ve told us yourself that he was cruel. It sounds as if he’d be just the type of person to tell the press one thing—that he supported your business ideas—but do just the opposite. Was he cutting off his support for your business ventures…like the perfume deal?”
Monique was visibly trembling. I was sure it was with rage, not fear. I gripped the fringed cushion and inched away from Grace. Surely, Monique wouldn’t attack me in a room full of witnesses? She quivered there for a moment, sending me a look of pure hatred, then she darted for the door. I’d been poised to move, and I jumped up, but had no desire to follow her. I was around the sofa in two strides, moving away from the door toward the wall. I yanked on the bellpull. “Someone stop her,” I called, but no one had been standing in the path to the door.
Michael lunged for her, but she sidestepped him.
Monique was only a few steps from the door. Simon stepped on the trailing hem of her dress, but she only clawed the material out from under his foot in a second. She turned back toward the door, but as she whirled with a burst of speed, Waverly opened one of the double doors, smacking Monique squarely in the face.
Sir Harold shouted, “Stop her! She’s the murderer.”
Monique fell backward, clutching her nose, then tried to slip around Waverly, but he caught her, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind as if he was going to give her the Heimlich maneuver. She was taller than Waverly, kicking and thrashing and clawing at his hands, but he lifted her a few feet off the floor and held her tight.
“Perhaps I should escort Mrs. Clay to the Green bedroom?” Waverly asked, his tone bland. “It has a secure lock.”
Chapter 22
AFTER A LONG, BUT UNEVENTFUL night in which Grace slept on a cot in the Rose bedroom with me, Sunday had dawned clear and cloudless with no trace of the rain that had drenched the countryside except for the squishy earth and swollen river. Monique had spent the night locked in the luxurious Green bedroom, apparently on the phone with lawyers, because her team of solicitors arrived via a helicopter that touched down on one of the meadows not far from Parkview, disturbing the sheep on the distant rolling hills, so that they trotted away, their puffy outlines disappearing over the swell of ground. Because it didn’t rain again during the night, the water receded, and Detective Inspector Hopkins and his team were able to cross the bridge, arriving in time to meet the team of solicitors on the gravel in front of Parkview. Alex had beaten both the lawyers and the law, crossing the bridge at first light with the water still sloshing calf-deep over his Wellington boots.
Watching from the windows inside the house, the meeting between the solicitors and Hopkins’s people looked tense. I thought we might be about to witness something similar to a rugby scrum, but Hopkins must have been able to sort everything out because soon he was in the library calling people in one at a time for interviews.
I wasn’t surprised I was one of the first people called. Jo asked that she and Jay be interviewed first because they had a flight to catch. After being closeted with Hopkins for about fifteen minutes, I had a brief glimpse of them as they motored out of the library. Jo gave me a sharp nod and sailed on, Jay ambling along in her wake, his attention focused on his phone. Thomas followed them across the entry with their bags.
My interview with Hopkins was actually fairly short. Monique wasn’t the only one on the phone last night. Hopkins had spoken to me by phone and had taken me through exactly what had happened in the drawing room. Today, with his face as blank as Waverly’s he again went over everything I’d told him on the phone about discovering that Jo and Michael were at Parkview under false pretenses then about how I’d put together the scraps and bits about Monique. When I finished, he removed a sealed plastic bag from an interior pocket of his jacket. “Is this the mint container that you saw emptied from Mrs. Clay’s trash?”
He handed it to me, and I turned it over. “It looks like it. It’s the same brand, but I suppose it could be from someone else.”
He nodded and took the bag back. “There is some residue in the package. We will have it tested. If it is a medical compound instead of simply dust off a breath mint it will help our case. Thank you, Ms. Sharp. You may go.”
I half stood. I had expected to be grilled, taken back and forth over the events of the last days. I sat back down, perching on the edge of the chair. “So, just to be clear, I’m no l
onger a suspect?”
“No, Ms. Sharp, certainly not now. You were not a good candidate to begin with. No motive and no connection to the victim that I could find. You were a last minute addition to the house party. When I looked at the larger picture, I suspected that you were involved purely because of propinquity. The hairpin could have been left at an earlier time, by a different guest as your friend pointed out to me. Or, it could have been an impulsive effort on Mrs. Clay’s part to throw suspicion your way when she realized the investigation wasn’t going as she thought it would. With your door unlocked, she would have had the opportunity to slip inside your room sometime after her interview with me, take a hairpin and toss it from your balcony to hers.” He paused and leaned back in the chair. “Have you heard of Occam’s razor?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Something about the simplest answer is usually right.”
“Correct. This case appeared highly complicated, but it wasn’t. A wife wanted to be free of her husband and murdered him in a way that she hoped would be overlooked.”
“What? She thought that the asphyxiation wouldn’t be noticed?”
“Research is apparently not Mrs. Clay’s strong suit. She is, of course, not talking at the moment, but from statements made yesterday, I think that she drugged her husband then suffocated him, thinking that we would assume that his medical condition had caused his death.”
“She didn’t realize that suffocation would leave traces…evidence?”
“Not everyone is an aficionado of crime novels or television shows…or even Internet research, it seems,” he said with a shake of his head. “Of course, most criminals are not secret masterminds. As in Mrs. Clay’s case. She was simply greedy and rather naive when it came to modern investigative techniques.”
“I guess she should have read more Arthur Conan Doyle and less D. H. Lawrence,” I said to myself.
