Murder in the Manor

by Fiona Grace

  “Do you think the sons will come to the funeral?” Lacey asked Nigel. “Flights from Australia and South Africa to the UK must take ages and cost a ton. Based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like neither of them liked their mother enough to visit her while she was still alive, let alone for her funeral.”

  “Coincidentally, all three were in England at the time,” Nigel replied.

  Lacey paused. Slowly, she raised her eyebrows. Well, now that was suspicious! The three children of a dead wealthy heiress just happened to be in the country she lived the day she died?

  Nigel must’ve read her expression, because he started to shake his head. “It’s not them. I thought the same, believe me. But no. Henry was in London, a two-hour drive away, visiting Clarissa at the time the coroner’s report says Iris died. Benjamin was in Devon for a business conference. Clarissa begrudgingly gave Henry an alibi—although I suspect she was tempted not to, just to see him stew in jail—and Benjamin’s key card shows he was inside his hotel room at the time of the murder.”

  “So all three have alibis,” Lacey said. “And the police have checked they hold up?”

  “I assume so,” Nigel replied with a small shrug. “Really, they may be awful people, but I can’t see any of them purposefully harming their mother. Clarissa’s so mentally fragile she needed grief counselling for a year after the family dog was put to sleep. She faints at the sight of blood. She closes her eyes if there’s so much as a dead body on television! I doubt she’d be able to see one in the flesh, much less cause someone’s death. And Benjamin wouldn’t hurt his mother, either. He’s more of the manipulative type. He’s a ‘don’t get mad, get even’ type. If he had a reason to harm his mother, he’d do it through lawsuits and cruel words rather than physical harm. And Henry…” He paused. “Well, from what Iris has told me, Henry has been violent in the past. But she wrote most of that off as stress from his gambling addiction. Since he found his wife and settled down and started his surfing business, he’s been much calmer. If Henry was angry with his mother, he’d be more likely to just distance himself from her. Indeed, as he has done.” He shrugged again. “The children aren’t suspects. If only because they had nothing to gain from their mother’s death.”

  Lacey let his words sink in, absorbing all the tidbits he’d given her and padding out the picture the papers had formed. Along with Nigel and herself, the three children would definitely be high on the police’s suspect list, and by the sound of things they’d already found enough evidence to exonerate them all.

  Just then, Lacey heard the sound of car tires coming from the gravel drive outside. She looked to Nigel and frowned.

  “Sounds like we have guests,” he said, curiously, pacing over to the window to peer out. Then he gasped and glanced back at Lacey. “You’ll never believe it. It’s them! The children!”

  Lacey hurried to the window and glanced out as two vehicles parked in the drive. Out emerged the three children of the late Iris Archer.

  Well, well, well, Lacey thought. Things are about to get very interesting.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The siblings were already hammering on the door by the time Lacey and Nigel hurried down into the corridor. The valet opened the door to them. The three were clearly in a foul mood, with matching scowls plastered across their features.

  They barged inside, overpowering Nigel, not waiting to be invited.

  Lacey hung back, Chester at her ankles emitting a low growl, but Clarissa noticed her.

  “What is she doing here?” she demanded.

  The sons turned their attention to Lacey as well.

  “Who is she?” the youngest asked. His skin was bronze, evidence of how he’d only recently come over to England from Australia.

  “The antiques dealer!” Clarissa exclaimed indignantly. “The one the police think killed Mother!”

  Lacey balked. But Nigel stepped up as if to protect her.

  “The police are following a number of leads,” he explained calmly. “Your mother personally hired Lacey. She trusted her and so do I.”

  The kids glared at her. It was all very tense, and Lacey felt like she’d prefer to be anywhere in the world right now rather than here.

  “Please,” Nigel stammered. “You know you’re no longer allowed to be here. This isn’t your home, it’s my private property and you’re trespassing.”

  “Not yet,” Ben said, waving some papers in Nigel’s face. “You obviously didn’t read the will closely. There’s a clause right here! We’re allowed anything that belonged to us when we were children, and we have the right to enter the house in order to do so. You can’t block us access from the things that are rightfully ours.”

  Lacey wondered about the character of these three people, that they’d barge in here and demand some old toys. They didn’t seem to be sentimental types, and she wondered why they were so adamant about getting their hands on their old stuff. Sure, there was a chance that some of the items were valuable—like the vintage annuals Lacey had enjoyed reading in her father’s old store—but even they didn’t fetch much. Were they so determined to profit from their dead mother’s estate that they’d settle for anything over nothing?

  Nigel flashed Lacey a look that told her he’d been very aware of the clause in the will, and let out a weary sigh. “You’ve read the will very diligently,” he said through pursed lips. “So I presume you’re aware that there’s also an itemized ledger, and that there must be lawyers present to prepare documents indicating who is taking what from the property.”

  Lacey thought of the neat ledger she’d been working from.

  Ben brought his face up close to Nigel’s. Chester began to growl.

  “Then we’ll just look,” Ben said through clenched teeth.

  Despite his threatening demeanor, Nigel stood his ground. “By all means,” he replied.

  With a harrumph, the three Archer children marched past him and thundered up the staircase.

  Lacey caught Nigel’s eye, then they both followed after them.

  “Keep an eye on them,” Nigel whispered out the side of his mouth as they ascended the staircase. “We must make sure they don’t sneak anything out they’re not supposed to. Knowing them, they’ll take something then sue me for theft.”

  Lacey nodded.

  They went into the playroom. The children were already waltzing around, examining things.

  “Where is the grandfather clock?” Ben demanded. “It used to be right here!”

  He gestured to a patch on the floor where the wooden boards were a different color, the perfect size and shape of the base of the clock Lacey had just minutes earlier been admiring.

  So that’s what they were really here for! The unique clock was surely worth a fortune, even in its unworking state. One of them must’ve realized it was their best bet at getting some money out of their mother.

  “Iris had it moved to her study,” Nigel explained calmly. “It was amongst the items she wanted Lacey to value and sell.”

  His words sent a bolt of confusion through Lacey. She was under the impression that Iris had hired her to value a drawer full of jewelry and nothing more, certainly not a rare grandfather clock. Had Iris actually intended for her to undertake significantly more work than Nigel had led her to believe?

  She held her tongue, not wanting to fan the flames by admitting to her cluelessness, instead choosing to put on a united front with Nigel in the face of these angry individuals.

  “Show me where it is,” Benjamin demanded. “It’s ours.”

  He seemed quite agitated. Lacey wondered why the clock was so important to him, beyond the fact that it was evidently more valuable than any of the other items in the playroom.

  He’s money hungry, Lacey noted. Addicted to getting it, as much as Henry once was to gambling it away.

  Nigel remained stoic in the face of Benjamin’s mounting fury. “You cannot take the clock,” he said.

  “Why not?” Henry interjected.

  It was th
e first time he’d spoken, Lacey noted. Unlike his siblings, he appeared quite calm on the surface. There were no hints of the past streak of anger Nigel had mentioned—indeed, if she’d had to guess which of the brothers had a troubled past, she would’ve picked Benjamin, who had anger etched into every furrow on his brow. Henry, on the other hand, just seemed exhausted. During the tense altercation inside the manor house, his golden skin had turned pale, giving him an unwell appearance. Of the three, he looked like the only one who was actually grieving.

  Lacey tuned back into the conversation.

  “The wording of the will was very precise,” Nigel was saying to Benjamin. “You are entitled to anything inside the playroom.”

  “That’s wrong,” Ben spat. “We’re entitled to anything that belonged to us when we were children.”

  The standoff was extremely uncomfortable.

  “Iris had the clause reworded,” Nigel finished.

  Silence swelled like a balloon.

  “What?” Clarissa asked, her voice meek in comparison to her overbearing brother.

  She seemed like a shell of the woman Lacey had met in the alleyway. She was pale, like Henry, her anguish expressed in her face in exactly the same way as his. Henry was reserved, showing few signs of the angry streak he’d apparently once possessed. In stark difference, their bulldozer of an older brother showed no outward signs of grief at all. Lacey filed all her thoughts and suspicions away in the back of her mind.

  “The wording was changed?” Henry asked, as if he had not fully comprehended what that would mean.

  Nigel nodded. “Yes. Her lawyer came the day before she died. The clause was rewritten in a manner that ensured it could not be misinterpreted in any way.”

  Misinterpreted? Lacey thought ruefully. More like deliberately twisted…

  The three children were stunned into silence.

  “She really had such low opinions of us,” Clarissa finally said. She folded her arms with a bitter look on her face.

  Justifiably so, Lacey thought wryly, considering how you’re now acting…

  “I don’t believe you,” Ben accused Nigel. “I bet Mother changed the will and then you moved the clock yourself, so it wasn’t inside and could be amongst the items you sold for profit.”

  Nigel shook his head. “I can assure you I do not set to profit from the sale of any of Iris’s items. The money will all go to charity. Every last penny.”

  Lacey didn’t know what to believe. The grandfather clock was very large in the small study offshoot, not to mention the fact it didn’t even tell the time. Whether Iris had moved it there, or Nigel had after her death, there was evidently only one reason for it—to prevent her children from getting their hands on it.

  But why? Why had the woman gone to such great lengths to stop her children profiting after her death? Because she was afraid they may harm her for her money? Or because she was attempting to prevent the same squabbling and drama that had torn her own childhood family apart?

  Whatever Iris’s intentions had been, Lacey felt suddenly relieved that she came from a humble background; the only things she and Naomi would have to squabble about in the event of their mom’s death was her flat-screen TV and a double-sided refrigerator.

  Clarissa and Henry’s gazes went to their feet, but Benjamin kept his chin up and glared squarely at Nigel.

  “We’ll be back,” he finally said. “And we’ll be bringing our lawyer.”

  “I think that’s for the best,” Nigel replied.

  The three marched out of the room and Nigel and Lacey followed them as they thundered back down the stairs and out the door, slamming it shut behind them.

  The whole thing left Lacey stunned. She felt like she was standing in the aftermath of a hurricane.

  “What delightful people,” she said.

  Nigel turned to her. “I’m so sorry about all that, Lacey. You shouldn’t have had to bear witness to that kind of behavior. I’m sorry you were dragged into it.”

  Lacey folded her arms. “You mean about valuing the grandfather clock?”

  He nodded. “It was me who moved it, on Iris’s instructions, I must add. And not a moment too late, evidently.” He shook his head. “I should have been honest from the outset about what Iris wanted you to do here. She wants everything in the house valued, then auctioned so the profits can go to charity. The jewelry was meant to be a trial run, you see, to gauge whether you were indeed the right person for the job. But I can tell she absolutely would have gone on to hire you for the rest of it. So, what do you say? Will you appraise the rest of the furniture?”

  “Well,” Lacey said, thinking about all the doors she’d seen, each one containing a room that must be filled to the brim with treasures. “That will be a lot of work to do alongside my store.”

  “Please,” he added. “You saw what the children are like. They’re vultures. I’ve no doubt they’ll try to find loopholes to claim things that weren’t really their childhood items. You saw what they were like with the clock, for goodness’ sake! I thought Iris was overreacting when she instructed me to move it to the study. But now I can see where she was coming from.”

  Lacey was filled with empathy for Nigel. His grief was real, more so than that of Benjamin and Clarissa, Iris’s own children, who seemed to be dealing with the death with anger and hostility.

  “Yes, okay, I’ll do it,” she told him.

  Nigel sagged with visible relief. “And you’ll auction everything too?”

  “Auction it?” Lacey repeated.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again, almost too stunned to speak. She’d been dreaming of holding an auction and now suddenly the opportunity was here!

  “Me?” she asked, timidly, feeling suddenly intimidated.

  “You,” Nigel said, nodding with affirmation. “There’s no time to waste. The children are probably calling their lawyers as we speak, searching for a loophole that will let them bleed the estate dry against Iris’s express wishes. I have the estate’s lawyer on speed dial. Let me call and see if he’ll oversee the handover.”

  “Now?” Lacey squeaked.

  This was all going so fast. On the one hand, Lacey was facing the most exciting opportunity of her new career. But the circumstances surrounding it were gruesome at best, and the suddenness of it all was intimidating her.

  “Maybe I should take a day to think about it,” she said. “The manor has a security system, doesn’t it? You can keep the children out one night.”

  Nigel shook his head and spoke firmly. “All it would take for them to get inside is a call to a locksmith. There’s not a single person in Wilfordshire who’d question whether the children should have access to the estate or not. And even if they did, who in their right mind would be able to stand up to Benjamin? You saw him.” He looked frantic. “Lacey, we must take everything to your store for safekeeping. Nothing is safe here.”

  Lacey had to admit he was right. She had specialist insurance to store antique items. And she was also itching to appraise everything, like Golem with his precious ring. But would Lacey be putting a target on her back if she transported Iris’s items to her store? Nigel seemed to think the children were capable of theft, and at the moment none of them knew where she worked. How quickly would that change?

  But the look of anguish on Nigel’s face made Lacey’s mind up for her.

  “Okay. I’ll store them. And I’ll learn everything I can about how to hold an auction.”

  Nigel grabbed her hand and shook it with gratitude. “Thank you, Lacey. I’m eternally grateful.”

  Lacey took his gratitude gracefully, though she felt less than comfortable about her part in the plan.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  That evening, Lacey sat cross-legged on the floor of her store’s large back room. It was no longer empty, now stuffed to bursting with some of the more treasured items from Penrose Manor.

  It had all happened so fast—Nigel calling the lawyer, arranging the specialist deliverers, the pap
erwork being signed, following the large removal van from the manor to her store. Lacey felt like she’d blinked and her back room was suddenly full.

  It was only once the flurry of activity had died down that Lacey was able to take stock. Some of Iris’s items weren’t covered by her specialist antiques insurance. The gold Grecian harp, for example. She knew from her rare instrument contact in Suffolk that there were only a handful of specialist companies who would insure such a rare and magnificent item.

  And then there was the unique, handcrafted, one-of-a kind grandfather clock. Lacey didn’t even know where to begin with regards to insuring that.

  She sat staring at all the acrylic boxes filled with jewels and looked over at Chester lying beside her, his flank butted up to her left knee so she could feel his steady, rhythmic breathing. He was a very patient companion, Lacey thought, considering how her schedule seemed to be all over the place at the moment.

  She gazed back at the gems laid out before her, her mind going to the woman they’d previously belonged to. Iris Archer. She wondered if there had been motive after all for the children. Even if it was public knowledge they were set to inherit nothing, Nigel had said Benjamin was convinced the law would favor him as the male heir. At the very least he thought he could gain from Iris’s death, and he’d seemed like the instigator of the playroom raid as well. But if he had murdered his mother for her wealth, was an itemized ledger really enough to stop him from taking Iris’s treasure? He’d had to have been pretty confident the law would fall in his favor to risk leaving everything behind. Wouldn’t it be easier to steal the items and amend the ledger than leave them all behind on the presumption the clause in the will could be twisted?

  And besides, was a few thousand pounds really worth murdering your own mother for? Benjamin was a successful businessman in his own right. He probably worked with six figures on a daily basis. While she understood the power of addiction—the one Nigel said ran in the Archer family’s genes—something didn’t quite add up.