by Morgana Best
“Nonsense,” Ruprecht said cheerily. “If he had been arrested, I would have heard from my lawyer friend by now. I’m sure he is simply being detained for questioning.”
“Don’t worry, Amelia, Chris will see to it they don’t arrest Alder. After all, he’s innocent.” Mint bent down and patted my head.
“Yes, and no innocents have ever gone to prison before,” I said sarcastically.
“Chris won’t let anything happen to Alder.” Mint had conviction in her tone, but I wasn’t so sure. Barrett was the senior partner, after all, and he had a propensity to jump to conclusions.
Thyme returned with a bottle of merlot and a wine glass. She sat beside me and poured me half a glass of wine. She offered it to me, but I declined and seized the bottle. I took a large gulp.
Ruprecht lowered himself to the ground and sat in front of me. “Amelia, it’s best to keep a clear head because it’s likely the police will call you down to the station for questioning. It won’t be any good if you arrive under the influence.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” I said. “Alder didn’t do it, and I didn’t even know his aunt. She seemed mean, but Alder didn’t kill her.”
“Of course not,” the others said in unison.
The house turned up the volume again. “Please turn that TV down, Grandmother,” I said. “I’m beginning to get a crushing headache. Besides, I don’t think Murder on the Orient Express will help us figure out who killed Bertha.”
“Actually, the house is watching Murder on the Blue Train,” Ruprecht pointed out.
My ears pricked up. “You think there is a clue in there?”
“No.”
My spirits fell. “Ruprecht, what are we going to do?”
“Things aren’t as bad as you think, Amelia,” Ruprecht said. “Sure, the victim spoke up at your wedding and objected to your marriage, told everyone Alder hated her, and then died just before your reception could begin, effectively ruining your whole wedding. Still, it could be worse.”
Everyone looked at him. “How could it be any worse, Grandfather?” Mint asked, frowning.
“Well, it would have been worse if Alder had stood up Amelia,” Ruprecht said. “At least he showed up and took his marriage vows. That should make you feel good, Amelia.”
I thought about it, but I couldn’t quite follow his logic. “Sure,” I said, just to make him happy.
“I think you should stop cheering Amelia up now, Ruprecht. Let’s make her some coffee.” Camino took him by the arm and all but dragged him out of the room.
“Think of it this way,” Thyme said. “You’re married to Alder, and you can always have another reception.”
“I suppose I should look on the bright side of things,” I said. “Anyway, it’s not so much the horrible reception and everything happening at the wedding that’s upset me, and that poor woman dying. She might have been mean, but no one deserves to die, but what really worries me is that someone has set up Alder to take the fall for his aunt’s murder. That’s the reason I’m so upset. Everyone likes Alder. He has no enemies at all, so I can’t understand why someone would want to frame him.”
Thyme took the wine bottle away from me and removed the wine glass from Hawthorn who was about to stick his head in it. “Like I said before, it’s not necessarily someone who has a grudge against Alder. The murderer obviously wants the police to look elsewhere.”
“It’s not a nice thing to do,” I said.
Thyme shrugged. “Murder isn’t nice in the first place.”
I nodded slowly. “You do have a point.” I stood up to stretch my legs, when there was a knock on the door. “Alder!” I cried, forgetting he had a key.
I pushed my dingo snout upon my head and hurried to the door. I flung it open, only to see Detective Barrett standing on the doorstep. “Miss Spelled, I’d like you to accompany me down to the station. We need you to help us in our inquiries.”
He looked me up and down. “We’ll wait while you get changed.”
“I’m not going to get changed,” I said, thinking it would somehow spite him. Sure, I wasn’t thinking clearly, being filled with copious amounts of wedding cake washed down with wine.
Ruprecht appeared at my shoulder. “Does she need a lawyer?”
“Not at this stage,” Barrett said. “We’re questioning her about her husband. New evidence has just come to light.”
Chapter 11
It was a silent ride to the police station. Detective Barrett was not forthcoming, even though I tried to press him for answers. He would not even tell me if Alder had been arrested. I hadn’t heard from Alder, and was on the verge of a panic attack.
Barrett marched me through the waiting room past curious eyes. I felt like a big-time criminal. He wasted no time showing me into an interview room that was halfway through being painted. Bits of plaster clung to the walls in spots which I assume had previously sported picture hooks. The result was a strange mosaic of beige paint, older yellowing paint, and white plaster in patches all over the walls. Still, I had more problems than being within the confines of an interior design disaster.
Barrett indicated I should sit on a grey metal chair, but as I did so I noticed that one of the legs was shorter than the other. Consequently, the chair rocked backwards and forwards which was entirely irritating. I pointed this out to Barrett. “I don’t suppose you have a piece of cardboard or something?”
Typically, he ignored me, so I wedged the end of my dingo tail under the short leg.
Barrett asked me to state my name and address for the record and asked if I had any objection to being recorded. It all sounded a bit too official and scary to me. And what was this new evidence they had uncovered?
I was soon to find out. A grave-faced Chris Bowes entered the room and after doing a double take at me, took the seat next to Detective Barrett. He would not meet my eyes, which I took as a further bad sign.
“Where are you going for your honeymoon?” Barrett asked.
I was surprised by the question. “I don’t know.”
Barrett rocked back in his chair, his fingers locked behind his head. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“Aloud please, Miss Spelled.”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
“How can you not know where you’re going for your honeymoon? You should be on your honeymoon right now, but you’re telling me you don’t know your destination?”
I was annoyed. If Alder hadn’t been falsely arrested, then I would be on my honeymoon at that very moment. A woman had been murdered, but Alder was not the perpetrator. “It was a secret,” I said.
“A secret,” Barrett said in a tone that just fell short of mocking. “Please explain.”
“Alder had chosen the destination and wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Did you pack summer clothes or winter clothes?”
“He told me to pack both.”
Barrett leant forward. “And had you expressed a wish for a particular destination?”
I shook my head and then remembered I had to speak. “No. I mean a tropical island would be nice, or maybe the Greek islands, but I had no idea if Alder intended our honeymoon to be in Australia or out of Australia.”
“Did he drop any clues at all?”
“No.”
“Did he mention buying the tickets?”
“No, he didn’t. What does it matter anyway?”
“It is we who ask the questions,” Barrett said. He opened his folder slowly and took out a photograph. I wondered what it was—I could only see the back of it. Barrett stared at it for a while, and then slammed it down in front of me with a flourish. “Do you know what that is?”
I bent over and stared at the photo. I recognised it at once. The six sides and the amber colour of the bottle were a giveaway, not to mention the fact that the word ‘Thall-rat’ was plastered across the front. “It’s a bottle of Thall-rat,” I said. “It’s clearly labelled.” I jabbed my finger on the photo.<
br />
“And have you ever seen it before?” he asked me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Detective Bowes interrupted. “Detective Barrett means to ask if you have seen this particular bottle of Thall-rat, not bottles of Thall-rat in general.”
I was confused, and said so. “I really don’t know what you mean. How can you tell bottles of Thall-rat apart? I’ve only ever seen one bottle of Thall-rat and I have no idea if this is the same one. How could anyone tell? I didn’t get a good look at the one I saw, but it was dusty. This might be the same bottle, but this one looks cleaner.”
Detective Barrett looked as though he would explode. “There’s no point trying to fool us by your incoherent ramblings, Miss Spelled!”
I was incensed. “I’m not trying to fool you! You asked me a question and I answered it to the best of my ability.”
Barrett’s cheeks puffed up. “When did you last see a bottle of Thall-rat?”
“It was when I first moved to Bayberry Creek,” I told him. “There was a woman called Melanie Simpson who murdered her fiancé, Brant. She was an environmentalist and he wanted to introduce coal seam gas to the area. Plus she caught him playing around with that nosy mail lady, Kayleen. Her fiancé was murdered in my shop.” I thought I had better not go on with my story, because I would have to mention that my friends and I investigated, and I did not think that would sit well with Barrett.
“Do go on, Miss Spelled,” he said. His lip curled up on one side.
“What do you mean?” I said, stalling.
“How and where did you see the bottle of Thall-rat?”
I wiped my sweaty palms on my dingo onesie. I had no choice but to continue. “My friends and I wondered if Melanie had murdered Brant, so we looked in her barn. We found a bottle of Thall-rat in there. We knew that Brant had been killed with thallium, so we thought she had killed him, and it turned out we were right.”
Barrett leant forward. “So you were snooping into police business, were you, Miss Spelled?” His expression was entirely smug.
“Yes, and we solved the murder, and I hope you’re going to solve this one and not falsely accuse my husband.”
I thought my words would enrage Barrett, but he simply shifted in his seat.
“So you’re fully aware of the dangerous effects of thallium?”
I realised he was trying to lead me into a trap. “Yes, because Brant McCallum was killed by it, as I already told you,” I said slowly.
His interest in thallium could only mean one thing, that Bertha Bunyons was killed by Thall-rat. I wondered if the vial in Alder’s pocket that someone had planted contained Thall-rat. This must be the new evidence of which they were speaking, but I had no idea their lab worked so quickly.
Barrett pushed on. “When were you last in Alder Vervain’s apartment?”
“It was over a week ago,” I told him.
“I find that very hard to believe, Miss Spelled. You were about to be married, but you didn’t go to his apartment for the entire week before the wedding?”
“I could hardly go there with his aunt staying with him,” I said. I did not elaborate.
He appeared to be thinking it over for a while. He didn’t challenge me, so I assume he accepted what I said. “Have you ever seen this bottle before?”
“I hope you’re not going to ask me the same thing over and over again,” I said. “I already told you the only time in my whole entire life I have ever seen a bottle of Thall-rat was in Melanie Simpson’s barn. I haven’t seen one since. It was banned in Australia in the 1950s, so bottles of Thall-rat are quite rare. Why would I have seen one since?”
He leant back and put his hands behind his head once more, and then landed forward with a thud. “We have conducted a search of Alder Vervain’s apartment, and found a bottle of Thall-rat concealed within the bathroom.”
I gasped. “Someone planted it there obviously,” I said. “If Alder did want to murder someone, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave the evidence behind.”
Chris nodded slightly, but Barrett was not so easily convinced. “As you say, Thall-rat is an old rat poison and has been banned in Australia for many decades. Sadly, I am sure there are many bottles of Thall-rat remaining in barns across Australia, so it isn’t too difficult to procure. I can only assume Mr Vervain thought everyone would assume his aunt died of a heart attack.”
“You know Alder’s a private detective and he’s worked with the police before,” I told him. “Why don’t you contact those police? I’m sure they will give him a good reference.”
Barrett grunted and waved a hand at me. “Good upstanding citizens have been known to murder people. People who have worked with the police have been known to murder people. That’s not evidence. What is evidence is that Thall-rat was found in your husband’s apartment, and a syringe and a bottle of what we at this point believe to be Thall-rat was found in his pocket. We’ve sent it off for analysis, but for now, it seems to be an open and shut case. We only need to ascertain your involvement in the matter.”
I ignored the latter remark, and asked, “But what’s his motive? I’m sure his aunt wouldn’t have left him any money.”
Barrett snorted. “You’ve been watching too much American TV, Miss Spelled. We don’t need a motive under Australian law. I’m sure the evidence we have to date is plenty.”
My stomach clenched. “But you can’t arrest Alder,” I said. “Can’t you see, someone is trying to set up Alder for his aunt’s murder? It’s obvious. Someone somehow got into his house and planted the Thall-rat.”
“There was no evidence that the apartment had been broken into,” Barrett said.
I thought quickly. “Maybe someone stole his key when he was out and had it copied.” As soon as I said it, I realised it sounded quite lame. “Maybe his aunt let someone in. Maybe they pretended they were from Telstra or Foxtel, coming to fix something,” I said. “And you can’t ask his aunt because she’s dead.”
Barrett waved his finger at me. “Precisely, and that’s the problem.”
“But you can’t arrest Alder,” I protested once more.
Barrett pursed his lips. “Miss Spelled, I already did.”
Chapter 12
I’d had a sleepless night, the first night as a married woman and I was alone in my bed. Well, Hawthorn and Willow had slept in my bed, although they didn’t really count. To make matters worse, Hawthorn got up in the night and loudly attacked his reflection in the window. He had never done that before, so I assume he was reacting to my nervous energy.
Alder’s bail hearing was today, in the next big town. Ruprecht was calling for me early. We had decided that Camino and Thyme would work in the shop as usual, and Mint would be there to help them. The show must go on, as they say. I couldn’t afford to lose business. Besides, I was a bundle of nerves and figured having my friends around me would be more a hindrance than a help, as strange as that sounded.
Ruprecht drove around for some time before he found a parking spot. A sign partially hidden behind a tall shrub threatened heavy fines if a car stayed there for more than two hours. Ruprecht muttered to himself. Finally, he said, “Amelia, please remind me to move the car in two hours.”
“Do you think we’ll be here for longer than two hours?” I asked in dismay.
He nodded. “I’m not exactly sure how it will work, but we’ll have to wait for Alder’s case. His lawyer will know where Alder is on the schedule, but it will depend how long the magistrate takes with the cases before Alder.”
I nodded. Ruprecht patted my shoulder. “Come on—let’s get coffee before we meet with Alder’s lawyer.”
There was a café directly opposite the courthouse. It was not particularly busy, so we soon stood on the paved courtyard between the café and the courthouse, clutching our polystyrene cups. The coffee wasn’t particularly good, but at least it was warming up my hands. Ruprecht looked at his watch. “Alder’s lawyer should be here any minute.”
No sooner had he said the words,
than a tall man appeared, clutching an ancient briefcase to his chest. He had something of the look of a hawk about him. I wondered if he was a wizard. For a frail-looking man, the lawyer’s handshake was certainly firm. I flexed my fingers once he released my hand. “Let’s get to a room,” he said with no further preamble.
The room was large but dimly lit, pale mint green walls above old, scratched wood panelling. It all looked very official. I took a large gulp of coffee and wished I had asked for more sugar. I certainly needed the energy boost.
“There’s no point beating around the bush,” the lawyer, who had introduced himself as Ridgewell Giggleswick, said. “I’ll come straight to the point. The news isn’t good, I’m afraid. I wish I had better news for you, but I don’t believe in sugar-coating anything. It’s best if you know the facts.”
My hand flew to my throat. “What’s the bad news, Mr, err, Giggleswick?” Had I got his name right?
Apparently so, as he answered without hesitation. “There’s more than one lot of bad news,” he said. “Firstly, the magistrate we have isn’t one of the lenient ones. This magistrate is particularly stern and upright. He is particularly…” He paused and tapped one long finger to his pointed chin. “Stern and upright,” he repeated. I figured that was the censored version of what he wanted to say but was too polite.
“Then it’s the hanging judge, so to speak,” Ruprecht supplied.
Mr Giggleswick nodded. “Precisely. Some news you haven’t heard—there was a syringe mark on the victim’s hand.”
“What’s the other piece of bad news?” I asked him.
“In the search of your husband’s apartment, they found a bottle of Thall-rat concealed in the bathroom.”
“Yes, the police told me that.”
He waved one finger at me. “That in itself is not the bad news. The bad news is they found something else in his apartment.”
“What was it?” Ruprecht said.
“They found two one-way tickets to Burkino Faso.”
I scratched my head and rotated my coffee cup. “I really don’t understand.”
