by Fiona Grace
With her heart rate now back to normal, Lacey decided it was time to open up fully, and so she raised the shutters and wedged open the door with a heavy metal paperweight. Chester, evidently satisfied that it was business as usual, took his spot beside the counter.
Lacey stayed by the door, watching the streets. The morning tourists were milling around, as well as many of the locals. A lot of folks seemed to be turning their heads and whispering to one another as they passed her store.
In the patisserie opposite, Tom’s store was filled with customers as per usual, and there was an average amount of footfall going into Taryn’s boutique next door. It was only Lacey’s store that everyone ignored.
With a horrible crushing sensation, Lacey realized just how damaging the rumors were going to be to her business. This wasn’t just Taryn whispering to a few people in the Coach House, this was a whole town of folk who no longer trusted the outsider. People genuinely thought she was a murderer! How long before they got their pitchforks and ran her out of town? She was going to have to ramp up her investigation if she stood any chance of not only keeping her business afloat but perhaps even keeping it from an arson attack.
Feeling panic begin to rumble through her body, Lacey heard her cell ringing. She took it from her pocket and saw an unfamiliar number on the screen.
The sight of an unrecognized number made her panic even further. What if the same person who’d bombarded her landline with accusations of murder had gotten hold of her cell number as well? She was already rattled, the last thing she needed was another accusation thrown at her.
Cautiously, Lacey hit the green button and answered the call, her breath stalling in her lungs.
“Lacey?” came a man’s voice.
The accent was familiar to Lacey, but she couldn’t quite place it. Where had she heard that voice before?
She frowned, panic giving way to curiosity. “Yes. Who am I speaking to?”
“It’s Nigel. Nigel King.”
Lacey gasped. Iris’s valet? The man currently claiming bronze-medal position on her list of suspects? What was he doing calling her?
But before she had a chance to ask her question aloud, Nigel answered it.
“Can you come to the estate? I think we need to talk.”
*
Lacey couldn’t work out if she was crazy or desperate, but she found herself agreeing to meet Nigel that evening at Penrose Manor.
Ending the call, she looked over at Chester. He gave her an alert look of contemplation.
“What do you think, boy?” she asked. “Am I crazy or desperate?”
He tipped his head to the side, raised an eyebrow and whined.
“That’s what I thought, too,” Lacey replied.
At the end of a customer-less day, Lacey locked up the store, collected her car from Crag Cottage, and drove to Penrose Estate. It was the third time she’d visited the manor house, and far from the awe it had inspired in her on first sight, the place now looked foreboding and unfriendly. Lacey shivered.
“Come on, Chester,” she said, getting out of the car.
The English Shepherd hopped out after her and walked in perfect synchronicity beside her up the rosebush-lined path to the front door. Last time she’d been here, Nigel had accused her of killing Iris Archer herself. Returning felt extremely unwise, but with her whole life in England on the line, what other choice did Lacey really have?
Squaring her shoulders, Lacey raised her fist to knock on the door. To her surprise, it swung open. She staggered forward and slammed right into someone. Nigel.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“Sorry,” he said, catching her by the elbows. “I heard your car coming up the drive.”
Lacey looked over her shoulder at the old Volvo.
“I guess its engine is pretty loud,” she conceded, brushing herself down.
Nigel moved back from the door, gesturing for her to enter.
Swallowing her nerves, Lacey went inside.
They walked together into a drawing room.
“Please sit,” Nigel said.
Lacey did, perching awkwardly on the edge of the elegant couch. She felt extremely uncomfortable to be sitting on a dead woman’s furniture to have a chat with someone who might be said woman’s killer.
“Why did you call me?” Lacey asked, jumping into the deep end with both feet, in an attempt to get this over with as soon as possible.
“I realized what you said was true,” Nigel told her. “The collection of items Iris wanted to appraise was right where she left them. If you’d killed her in an attempt to steal her expensive collectibles, well then you’d done a terrible job of it because you’d left every single one of them behind.”
“Thank you,” Lacey said, relieved. At least someone was seeing sense at last!
“I can only apologize,” Nigel continued. “For being so suspicious of you. I guess I fell for all the rumors.”
Lacey squirmed. She was suspicious of Nigel, after all. She’d pegged him as a suspect.
“Will you come and look at the items?” Nigel asked. “Iris wanted them appraised by you. In a way, it was her last living wish. I feel we ought to honor that.”
Despite her wariness, Lacey felt humbled. And curious. “Of course.”
Nigel led her up the vast, sweeping staircase into a room at the front of the house. It was a very regal study—a big desk with a banker’s lamp took up one corner, a stack of papers and letters on it. There was a large bookshelf filled with crimson leather-bound books, beside an archway that presumably led into a separate, more private, offshoot of the room. Beneath the large windows was a chaise lounge with a small table beside it. Lacey could imagine Iris sitting there, reading the morning paper as daylight streamed through the windows.
“Here,” Nigel said, opening a drawer in a matching dresser that sat behind the desk. “I stored them all away for safekeeping, but these were all the items she had laid out ready to show you.”
Lacey gasped as its contents twinkled under the lights. It looked like there was a lot of stuff in the drawer, and a lot of sparkly treasures too.
Nigel began to carefully remove each boxed item, laying them on the desk side by side. There were watches, rings, and necklaces—a lot of things Lacey had no real understanding of, her experience being in furniture and ornaments. She didn’t have any real working knowledge of how to appraise jewelry.
“I can’t value these,” Lacey confessed, her stomach dropping at the realization she was woefully underqualified for the task that had been presented to her. “I don’t know if Iris realized, but I value ornaments rather than jewelry.”
“I’m sure she knew,” Nigel assured her. “She wanted you to do it. She was insistent about it. She didn’t even want me to go to your store and speak to you, she wanted to do it herself. To see you with her own eyes. Iris was a strong believer in intuition, you see, and she trusted you to do the job. I don’t want to go against her last wishes and find someone else. Please. It has to be you.”
Lacey recalled the way Iris had stood in her shop and told her she reminded her of her father. She felt a lump form in her throat. Though she didn’t understand, a feeling of resolve overcame Lacey. She could do this. For her father. For Iris.
“Well?” Nigel asked. “Will you do it?”
Lacey nodded. “I will.”
Nigel visibly sagged with relief.
“But it will take me a while,” Lacey qualified, thinking of all the antique dealer contacts she’d have to hassle. “I’m going to have to make a lot of phone calls.”
“In which case, I’ll fetch you some refreshments,” Nigel said, his mood instantly lightened. “Tea? Coffee? Cakes? Or some fresh-pressed apple juice from the estate’s orchard?”
“How about all of the above?” Lacey said with a grin. “Like I said, this will take some time.”
“Take as long as you need,” Nigel told her. “I’ll be back shortly.”
He left the room, and Lacey flopped into
the desk chair, losing herself in the welcome distraction of work.
*
The voice of Percy Johnson, Lacey’s Mayfair contact, crackled through the earpiece.
“Ten. Possibly eleven if the right auction house sold it. Thousand pounds, I mean, of course.”
Lacey’s grip on the telephone handset tightened, and her mouth dropped open as she penciled the price of the ring onto her list of items.
Unsurprisingly, Iris Archer’s items had turned out to be extremely valuable. Amongst the treasures, Lacey had found artisan crystal and Swiss pocket watches, the types of things that fetched tens of thousands of dollars in New York auction rooms, the types of things that even an untrained eye would know were very valuable. None had been taken by the murderer—the itemized ledger she was working from listed them all—despite them being laid out and in plain sight. And since none of them were particularly rare, traceable only by a serial codes that could easily be filed off by your average dodgy pawn-store clerk, then money couldn’t have been the motive. It was all very strange.
“Tell me, Lacey,” Percy said in his doddering manner, his accent about as close to an English king as Lacey could imagine, “Where did you come across this hoard?”
“It’s a long story,” Lacey replied. She rubbed the furrow between her brows. “And a little too complicated to get into right now.”
“Fair enough,” Percy replied kindly. “But if you’re planning on auctioneering it, I’d be very interested in buying some of the pieces. Some of them are very easy sales that fetch a lot indeed!”
“Oh, no, I won’t be auctioning them,” Lacey explained. “I’m just valuing. But I can let you know what auction house it does eventually go to, once it’s decided.”
“Thank you, my dear. That’s most kind and attentive. I shall await your correspondence with bated breath.”
Lacey responded to Percy’s extreme Britishness with her own Americanness. “You bet!”
She put down the phone and uncurled herself from the desk chair. Every bit of her ached from the hour she’d spent hunched over, totally absorbed in the valuations. In fact, it had been so enjoyable, Lacey hadn’t even noticed the time passing. She’d been “in the flow,” that creative Zen-like state where time lost all meaning. Maybe she really did have a natural flair for valuations. Maybe it ran in the blood, passed down to her through her father. The thought comforted her.
In desperate need of a stretch, she stood and cricked her back. No use. It still ached. She’d have to pull out the big guns—yoga poses. Naomi had taught her yoga after a “transformative” trip to India. Well, taught might not be the right term for it. Forced was more apt. Every morning for a month she’d dragged Lacey to the park for sun salutations and positive affirmations, only to give up on the whole spiritual thing after a particularly gin-soaked work event reminded her how much she loved liquor. But Lacey had secretly gotten a lot out of their sessions, and often found herself returning to the practice in order to calm her frantic mind.
She went through some of the postures, mirroring her breath to her movements in that way that was so calming. As she maneuvered herself into downward dog, her gaze went through the gap in her legs and to the archway in the wall. Her curiosity about what was on the other side was piqued, and so she straightened up to standing and paced over, peering inside.
The small room on the other side was in darkness, the window covered by a red velvet curtain so thick its effect was like a blackout blind. There was a couch and armchair, positioned in such a manner as to remind Lacey of a therapist’s office, the coffee table, plants, and vases making it even more so. A large fireplace took up one wall and, looking rather out of place in the otherwise serenely decorated room, was a large grandfather clock made from walnut wood.
Lacey was immediately drawn to the clock. Her father had loved clocks, and she paced over to get a better look.
It was beautiful. It had clearly been hand-crafted, a pattern of twisting roses etched into the dark mahogany wood by an artistic and skilled carpenter. The pendulum was bronze and it hung motionless behind the glass door.
The sound of the study door opening made Lacey turn. She headed back through the archway into the main part of the study to see Nigel holding yet another cup of steaming coffee for her, and a pouch of kibble for Chester tucked under his arm.
“There you are,” he said, handing her the mug.
“Thank you,” she said, gratefully. “I was just stretching my legs. The grandfather clock in there is stunning.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Nigel agreed, straightening up from where he’d been filling Chester’s bowl. “I can’t remember the full story but it’s a one of a kind. It doesn’t work anymore, sadly. No one can fix it because the cabinet is locked and the key lost. Iris got a locksmith to look at it once, one who was experienced in antiques, and he explained that if he picked the lock, it would scratch the piece and devalue it by a few thousand pounds. Iris decided it would be better to have an unticking clock than a damaged one.”
“That was a smart call,” Lacey said, thinking how her father would have done the exact same thing if presented with the same dilemma. Altering an antique was basically sacrilege as far as he was concerned. “Besides, it functions just as well as an objet d’art.”
Nigel looked over to the desk, at all the acrylic boxes containing the treasures Lacey had been appraising. “How are you getting on here?”
“At the moment, we’ve topped over a hundred thousand pounds’ worth. And I’m barely a quarter of the way through. Is it true that she’s leaving everything to charity?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Nigel explained. “She vowed to pass all her wealth to charity. She had an extremely strong moral compass, and thought the laws of inheritance were deplorable. She didn’t want her children doing nothing with their lives, resting on their laurels while they received monthly allowances. She had nephews and cousins who lived like that, throwing money away on gambling. Some of them ruined their lives over it. There’s quite an addictive streak in the family for gambling and she didn’t want to enable that behavior in her own children. So, no allowances and no inheritance. The children knew there’d be nothing for them in her will once she died. If they wanted to become a neurosurgeon or an astronaut or anything their passions desired, then she’d pay for them to go to the top university to train. She’d pay for all the tutors and the equipment. Everything. Even if they changed their mind, she never complained. Clarissa spent years being schooled in piano by one of the finest teachers money could buy, only to decide she was done with music and wanted to be a sculptor! More courses and training from the best of the best, and what does she decide to do at university? Business!” He sighed. “But Iris never ever complained. As long as her children could show her they had passion, drive, and a strong work ethic, she’d do everything she could to support them. But handouts? Absolutely not. She was a very principled woman.” His voice cracked with grief.
Lacey felt for him. “What did her children make of that?”
“I honestly don’t think they really believed her. Benjamin especially seemed convinced the law would protect his male heir rights. I’m sure he’s shocked now he’s seen the will for himself and knows how precisely it was worded, in order to prevent it being twisted in any way.”
“Do you know them?” Lacey asked. “The children?”
Nigel shook his head. “Not well. The daughter, Clarissa, lives in London, so I’ve met her a few times when she came over to see Iris. Can’t say I cared for her much. It seemed like every visit ended the same way—her getting furious that her mother wouldn’t buy shares in her failing business or help her out of debt. The sons, I’ve never met. They both live abroad.”
“Sons? Plural? You mean to say Iris had three children?” Lacey was surprised. All the research she’d done in the papers had only ever spoken of two. One son, one daughter.
“Yes, that’s right. The eldest son runs a business in South Africa. He’s
a bigshot CEO with a model wife and three perfect model children and couldn’t care less about his family back in the UK. All he cares about is money and beautiful women. The youngest lives in Australia, and as far as I understand, he inherited the gambler’s gene. Iris doesn’t invite him over to the house because of his temper. He once clocked the chef square in the face for spilling soup in his lap.”
Lacey listened attentively. “Why don’t the papers ever mention the third child?”
“Ah,” Nigel said, with a knowing nod. “There’s a bit of a story behind that. You see, there’s quite a gap between Clarissa and the youngest. Eight years, I believe. By the time he came along, Iris had gotten injunctions against the press reporting on the kids because of this terrible scandal with Benjamin being awarded inflated grades by the headmaster—to make sure those expensive school fees kept coming in, you see—and some awful business over the paparazzi stalking Clarissa. Iris became especially protective over Henry. His birth was never announced, or printed, and his name never publicly made known. He went to a different school to his siblings. As far as I understand, his famous connection was never actually discovered.”
Lacey was becoming more intrigued by the third mysterious son by the second. “And how did Henry feel about all that?”
Nigel let out a rueful laugh. “Well, let’s just say there’s a reason he chose to move to the opposite side of the world.” He sighed. “Poor Iris. What a waste of energy. She was trying to do the best by them but the three turned out bitter. And the boys were terrible to their sister, too, because she was ‘only a girl.’ Ben must’ve spotted the devious streak in Henry off the bat, because he used him like his gofer. Henry would do anything Ben asked of him; trash Clarissa’s stuff, spread rumors about her, all kinds of nasty things. She became quite troubled over it all, and still has therapy for anxiety to this day. Whether it was nurture or nature with Henry, I’ll never know, but he never grew out of that mean spirit. At least he channeled it into his work eventually. He wasted his twenties partying, but he settled eventually, and I believe his chain of surfing stores are quite profitable now.”
