by Morgana Best
My stomach churned. “We’ll have to hurry up solving this murder. How can we start looking for Collier Cardon’s heir?”
“More to the point, what was Collier Cardon doing in town?” a deep voice said behind us. I swung around so hard that I nearly fell off the edge of the seat. It was Lucas, but he was not wearing the huge sunglasses, baseball cap, or the faded jeans he had been wearing earlier.
My heart raced, as it always did when I saw Lucas. I’d have to get that response under control. “Lucas,” I said weakly. Why did he always have that effect on me?
Lucas shot me a smile, and continued. “The most obvious answer would be that Collier was here to see Agnes, but surely he would have let you know he was coming.” He fixed Agnes with a steely gaze. “Did you have any idea he was coming to visit you?”
“No?” she said in a tone that didn’t convince anyone.
“You knew!” I said, unable to keep the accusation out of my voice.
Her head turned right to left and back again as if she were watching a tennis game. “Maybe I knew he was.”
“Agnes!” Maude and Dorothy said in unison.
“It was secret Council business,” Aunt Agnes said in a haughty tone. “The two of you are always harping on, asking me questions you know I can’t answer, when it’s secret Council business.”
“Secret Council business, my…” Maude began, but then paused, obviously thinking the better of finishing her sentence. “You say everything is secret Council business, whether it is or it isn’t.
“How do you know it isn’t?” Agnes said. “It’s a secret, and it’s a secret from you, so you wouldn’t know whether it was a secret or not.”
The logic of that was lost on me. I groaned and put my head in my hands. “What was he coming to tell you, Aunt Agnes?”
Aunt Agnes sighed long and hard. “If I knew that, Valkyrie, then he wouldn’t need to visit me. He simply told me he had urgent matters to discuss. If he had already told me what they were, then there would have been no need for him to visit me, would there?”
Lucas raised one eyebrow at me. Clearly, he couldn’t make any more sense of the aunts than I could.
“Well, that’s something else we’ll have to keep from the police,” Maude said, to a murmur of agreement.
“I have to get back to the winery,” Lucas said. “I just wanted to come back here to check that you’re all okay.” His hand lightly rested on my shoulder for a moment, sending a thousand butterflies on their way through my stomach.
I watched Lucas leave, and then dragged my mind from his muscles to the murder. “Aunt Agnes, did anyone know that Collier intended to come here?”
“I certainly didn’t,” Aunt Dorothy said.
“Me either,” Aunt Maude said, clearly put out.
Aunt Agnes nodded. “Yes, someone certainly did.”
I sat on the edge of the seat. “Who?”
“Why, the murderer, of course.” Aunt Agnes’s tone was smug.
I thought that over. “Did he arrive on time?”
Aunt Agnes nodded again. “Yes, Collier was always punctual.”
My leg had gone to sleep, so I stood up and walked around to face the aunts. “So either someone else knew he was coming, or someone saw him at the door, took fright, ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and stabbed him. Come to think of it, now that I’ve said that, it all seems too far-fetched. No one else was lurking around, and if you don’t count Lucas, the only guest is Barnabas Butler.”
Detective Oakes marched over to us. “Ladies, did you notice any of your knives missing?”
Aunt Agnes shook her head. “No, we have so many knives, and I don’t keep them in the one place.”
Aunt Maude interrupted her. “We keep some in drawers, some in the knife block, and sometimes we find them lying around in strange places.”
“So you didn’t notice the murder weapon missing?” The aunts all shook their heads. “What about you, Miss Jasper?”
“I never know where to find anything in that kitchen,” I said truthfully. “They must have about fifty knives in there. No one would notice one go missing.”
“Well, you all saw the murder weapon,” Oakes said, exasperation evident in his voice, “so do you have any idea where it came from?”
Aunt Agnes looked at the sky, presumably for inspiration. “I think it was one of the knives in the knife block,” she said.
“The knife block, out in the kitchen, in full display,” Oakes said.
“We weren’t expecting a murderer to grab a knife from it,” Agnes said defensively.
Oakes sighed. “Quite so, quite so. Well, thank you for your help, ladies. We’ll be in touch.” He and Mason walked to their silver Ford, but then Oakes hurried back. “Ladies, I don’t want to worry you, but just as a precaution I’d ask you to lock your doors at night. The perpetrator could well be someone known to you all. If you have any concerns, please call me direct on my mobile number.” He handed Aunt Agnes his card, and then hurried back in the direction of his car.
Other police officers streamed from the house and followed the silver Ford up the road.
“Well that’s a relief,” I said. “They haven’t taken any of the laptops or anything from the house.”
“I wouldn’t expect that they would,” Agnes said. “We have red brick dust under the welcome mats at the front and the back of the house for protection, and red brick dust across every windowsill in the house. We also have fennel seeds under the mats. Fennel seeds have long been used to keep the law away.”
“And we have a floor scrub to keep away the law, too,” Aunt Maude added. “We always mix oil of bergamot, oil of cloves, and oil of cedar in a bucket and wash the house outwards towards the front door. That’s a really good traditional floor wash to keep the law away.”
I raised my eyebrows at all their measures to keep the law away, but I supposed it wouldn’t do for centuries-old vampires to have too close a brush with the law. “Do you think it is Barnabas Butler?” I said.
Aunt Agnes frowned. “Do I think what is Barnabas Butler? Do I think he is the murderer?”
I shrugged. “Collier Cardon was murdered on the porch in broad daylight, while you were all home. I know it wasn’t you three, and I know it wasn’t Lucas, so that only leaves Bella Barker or Barnabas Butler.”
“That’s a lot of Bs,” Maude said.
Dorothy swatted her face. “Bees? They must be attracted to the lavender and the rosemary.”
Maude groaned. “No. Bella Barker, Barnabas Butler. Their names start with B.”
Aunt Agnes crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, that isn’t illegal, last time I looked, but Valkyrie is right. It was either Bella Barker, Barnabas Butler, or someone we haven’t thought of yet.”
“And that someone must be lurking around the manor,” I pointed out. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Now don’t get ahead of yourself, Valkyrie,” Aunt Agnes said in a placating tone. “We mustn’t think that someone is lurking around. After all, the murderer could well be Barnabas Butler.” As she spoke, she smiled and nodded, as if that were a good thing.
CHAPTER 7
We all agreed that we should investigate Barnabas Butler first. And so, only hours after I had discovered a murder victim, I was attending an exhibition at the local art gallery. Barnabas Butler wasn’t exhibiting. Far from it—he probably thought exhibiting was commercial and so beneath his notice, but he had told Aunt Agnes the previous day that he would be attending the exhibition. We thought the social setting was a good place to start investigating, somewhere we could speak to Barnabas and ask him questions. The exhibition was Aboriginal art, by an up and coming Indigenous artist from Queensland.
I was light headed and still quite shaken after the day’s events. I would have preferred to be at home in bed with a good book, or lying on the sofa and watching mindless TV. Instead, I was mingling with the town socialites and looking at artwork I could not afford. My firm favourite already w
as a vividly painted scene of dolphins swimming through the Great Barrier Reef.
The gallery director called us all to attention. A portly man with a walrus moustache, he was clearly used to people doing what he said. He introduced one of the country’s patrons, a tall, thin woman. She gave a speech, which mercifully was short, as it was delivered in a high pitched, nasal tone and was more a catalogue of her achievements rather than anything to do with art. When she finished, the gallery director took the microphone.
“Much Aboriginal art is based on the Dreamtime,” he began, “which, as you all know, was the period of creation, and those stories have been passed down generation after generation. Australian Indigenous peoples had no written language in the Western way of understanding, but their stories were passed down in written form as symbols in their art. Of course, it goes without saying that different areas have vastly different styles.”
I was relieved that the director’s speech was interesting. “Aboriginal art on canvas, on board, only began a few decades ago,” he continued. “You are probably all most familiar with Dot Painting, which was originally developed to disguise iconography, to hide the secret meanings from the European population and from other tribes. That’s one theory anyway. These days, some artists are branching away from Dot Painting. To date, the record for any Australian female artist’s work is just over one million dollars for an Indigenous painting, and the record for an Indigenous painting is over two million dollars.”
I heard someone shuffle beside me. “Huh! If that’s all that’s important to you,” Barnabas snapped. “Money!”
“It’s pretty important to me,” I admitted.
He regarded me with narrowed eyes. “Art done for money is worthless.” He shook his bottle of water at me.
I could have said something about his definition of worthless, but I thought it better to hold my tongue. After all, I didn’t want to alienate him. Now that he was speaking to me, I wanted to ask him something to see whether or not he was a firm suspect, but my mind went blank. Finally, I thought of something. “I didn’t see you painting outside the cottage this morning.”
He stared absently at me by way of response. This was hard. “Were you working on another painting?” I asked him. “Did you finish your painting of the sand dunes?”
Barnabas looked at me as if I had gone completely mad. “Finished?” he asked me. “Of course not! It takes years to finish a painting. In fact, I haven’t finished one yet.”
“Oh.” I was at a loss. “Um, were you doing any painting this morning?”
He nodded. “I was painting just behind the lighthouse.”
I thought fast. “That was such an atmospheric mood, with the storm approaching.” He agreed. I pushed on. “I cut my walk at the beach short this morning, because I was worried about lightning.” He continued to nod. “I didn’t really see anyone else at the beach this morning. Did you see anyone else at the lighthouse?” That, of course, was my roundabout way of asking whether anyone could verify his alibi.
He rubbed his chin. “Only the other guest.”
“The other guest?” I asked him, perplexed. “Oh, do you mean Lucas O’Callaghan?”
“Yes, that’s him. I forgot his name for a moment. He was skulking around in the sand dunes, acting suspicious. I saw him on my way back, but I don’t think he liked the fact that I saw him. He was hurrying away from the manor, heading for the beach.”
“Are you absolutely positive it was Lucas?”
“Yes, I practically tripped over him before he took off.”
Lucas had told me he was at the winery all morning. Why had he lied? Surely he didn’t have anything to do with Collier Cardon’s death? Could Lucas have murdered Collier? If so, then did that mean Lucas was Cleaning after a crime committed by Collier, or worse still, could Lucas be part of the faction?
I shook my head in an attempt to clear it, but that brought on the beginnings of a headache. Barnabas had already lost interest in our conversation, and was staring angrily at the price of the nearest painting.
Should I tell the aunts? I hadn’t told them about Collier’s dying words. Yet, if I didn’t tell them that Barnabas had seen Lucas, then Barnabas was likely to tell them. In that case, they would know I was keeping something from them. I glanced around the room, to see that Aunt Agnes was striding towards Barnabas.
On the spur of the moment, I made my decision. I would tell them that Barnabas had seen Lucas around the time of the murder, but I would not tell them what Collier had said. I needed to speak to Lucas first.
In fact, I had thought Lucas would be here tonight. Where had he been lately? I had simply assumed he was working on something, and maybe he was. I certainly hoped that something hadn’t involved Collier Cardon.
I walked over to stand near a bright red and orange painting featuring two white fish. I was captivated by the painting, as it looked like a galaxy, a dark background with bursts of white and orange light. The aunts soon joined me. “Did you get anything out of Barnabas?” Aunt Maude asked Aunt Agnes.
Aunt Agnes shrugged. “He said that he was at the lighthouse at the time of the murder, doing one of his paintings. Oh, I didn’t actually ask him where he was at the time of the murder. I asked him in a roundabout manner. So, he said he was painting at the lighthouse and that he saw Lucas on the way back.” She shot me a look as she said it.
“He told me exactly the same thing,” I admitted.
“He said that Lucas was acting furtively,” Aunt Agnes continued.
I nodded. “He said the same to me, but Lucas was at the winery all morning.”
Something flitted across Aunt Agnes’s face, but then her features formed into their usual controlled façade. “So he said.” She tapped her chin. “Has Lucas been acting strangely, lately, Valkyrie?”
“I don’t think so,” I said honestly. “He hasn’t been around much, um, not as much as I thought he would,” I added lamely.
“Perhaps Barnabas was lying about Lucas,” Aunt Maude offered. “He doesn’t know our association with Lucas, and for all he knows, Lucas is just another guest. Barnabas might have murdered Collier, and he’s trying to throw the suspicion onto Lucas.”
Why hadn’t that occurred to me? “That makes sense,” I said, and Dorothy and Agnes agreed. “What do we do next?” I asked them. “How can we investigate him any further? I suppose the first thing we need to do is find out if Barnabas was related to Collier.”
Aunt Agnes took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, and sipped it before answering. “I’ve been thinking about that. I just don’t know how to go about it.”
“I suppose there’s no chance that it’s on record with the Council?” I asked.
Agnes shook her head. “No. Remember I told you that the Council members are kept secret now? Well, it’s the very same reason that no one knows who is next in line. It would make it too easy for people to kill the line of succession, to get their own members in.”
I was dismayed. “Does this sort of thing happen often?”
Aunt Agnes hurried to reassure me. “Oh no, of course not. It hasn’t happened in hundreds of years.”
I sighed long and hard. “What do we do now?” I asked them. “Who would know who Collier’s relatives were?”
Aunt Agnes shot a look around the room before answering. “His lawyer would know.”
“Great idea, Agnes,” Aunt Dorothy said, patting Agnes a little too hard on the back. “How do we find out who his lawyer is?”
Aunt Agnes’s face fell. “No idea.”
“How can we find out?” Dorothy had turned and was now addressing a painting of a tree.
I wandered away, not wanting to get in the middle of the aunts arguing about whether Dorothy did or did not need glasses. I looked at the paintings, wishing I could afford one of them, when I heard laughter. It was a young woman at the far end of the gallery, partially obscured by a pillar. I turned back to admire the painting in front of me, when I saw her companion. I gasped. The
lighting there was dim, but surely that couldn’t be Lucas?
I had only managed a brief glimpse before he ducked back behind the pillar. I could hardly walk down there—there were no paintings down that end, so I had no reason to be there. Still, it was eating me up. I decided to walk over to the other side of the gallery in case that gave me a better look. As I did so, I cast another glance in the woman’s direction, and the man caught my eye for a second, before looking away. I was sure it was Lucas. But if so, why didn’t he speak to me? Why was he hiding from me?
I reached the other side of the gallery, and then turned back, pretending to look at another painting. It was all I could do not to gasp. Lucas and the woman were embroiled in a passionate embrace. He was kissing her thoroughly.
I stood there, frozen to the spot. Why was Lucas kissing another woman? And why would he do so, given that he knew I had seen him? Was he undercover? If so, he was enjoying his work rather too much for my liking.
One question after another assaulted me. Was this Lucas’s way of getting rid of my obviously unwanted attentions? Had I got too close to him and this was his means of pushing me away?
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I forced myself to walk calmly back to the other side of the gallery, where I wouldn’t be able to see Lucas and the woman. Everything I thought I had known about Lucas was wrong. One thing was certain, if he was kissing that woman due to some sort of secret Cleaner business, he surely wouldn’t have done so when he knew I was watching. What was he up to?
CHAPTER 8
I was pretty miserable by the time I got home that night. I hadn’t told the aunts what I had seen, though not telling them was against my better judgement. I just couldn’t seem to come to grips with the fact that Lucas was kissing another woman.
The aunts were adamant I not walk to my cottage in the dark, and insisted I stay overnight in my old room, the room I had stayed in when I had first come to Lighthouse Bay.
