Helena said with a faint smile, ‘Thank you for listening to me. I feel a bit better now. Still I will sleep a little.’ She went to the bed. There were also bottles on her nightstand and a glass half full with water.
If Helena could simply take a sedative to sleep, why had she wandered around the house on the night of the murder? Had she heard something, suspected something?
Alkmene put her hand on the doorknob and smiled at Helena. ‘Have a good rest. You can be assured your information is quite safe with me.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Writing to your father?’
Alkmene sat upright in shock at the voice disturbing the train of thought she was committing to paper to aid their investigation.
Jake towered over her, a newspaper in his hand. ‘I walked into the village to buy this,’ he commented. ‘An excuse to get away for a while. I also figured the woman in the store might be talkative about the murder. But she was helping customers and snapped at me for not having small change to pay for it.’
He looked around. ‘Nice little spot you have found here.’
Alkmene had settled herself in the boathouse, a wooden construction that was open on one end, offering a view of the small lake that was used to row upon. The sun had warmed the wood and turned the interior into something like a greenhouse. For the first time since she had come here she felt a little relaxed, even though the questions about the deaths kept going through her mind.
She patted the bench beside her. ‘Sit down and tell me what you learned.’
At his quizzical gaze, she added, ‘Come on, I know you walked into the village to telephone. Have you been able to learn anything new from the attorney you hired for your friend Mac?’
‘How do you know I hired an attorney for Mac?’
‘I have my sources,’ Alkmene said, grinning to herself. He’d never guess her information had come from Lady Winters. ‘What did he say? Anything new and shocking? I feel like we can use a big break in this case. Helena just told me that George came home during the night his father died. He was not sleeping off his haze in some inn or even a haystack. He was in the house.’
‘Then it all fits!’ Jake sounded triumphant. ‘George hires a burglar to come steal his father’s precious gems. He makes sure that all the guests at his father’s party see him leave angry and drunk. It is well known that when he leaves like that he doesn’t come back until the next morning, that he can’t even come back because he is too drunk to walk. So he has created a perfect alibi for himself to which several witnesses can testify. Then after it’s gone quiet, he comes back and commits the murder, leaving the body for my poor unsuspecting friend Mac to stumble upon. Now George has the perfect culprit to take the fall for his crime. And with his iron-clad alibi he feels untouchable.’
‘Still it does not explain where the stones are.’ Alkmene stretched her legs. ‘Besides, George could have figured that your friend would tell the police sooner or later that he had been hired for the job and by whom. George would surely be a suspect then. Why hire a burglar to steal from your own father? Did the attorney ask Mac what reason George had given him for asking him to steal his own father’s diamonds?’
Jake nodded. ‘Mac said that he had asked and George had said the stones were all the old man cared about. If the stones got lost, he would be desperate. George would then return the stones to him and the old man would be grateful. Mac had the impression George was eager to trump his older brother who was sort of his father’s favourite. Or so he acted.’
Alkmene nodded. ‘Considering George’s nature, such a scheme would make sense.’
Jake frowned. ‘George could simply have lied to Mac about his reasons for hiring him. He would hardly have told him that he wanted to murder his father and pin it on Mac. What better than some sob story about being maltreated by a domineering older brother and teaching him a lesson by turning up the missing stones?’
Alkmene twirled her pencil.
Jake pushed on. ‘Everything we know so far points at George. I mean, even the motive is crystal clear. He blamed his father for his mother’s death.’
‘So he said. But if she was strangled by someone while his father was away at a banquet that night… How could he make his accusation stick?’
Jake scoffed. ‘That alibi of being at the banquet is worth very little. Albert vouched for him and he vouched for Albert. He is no longer around to say anything as to what really happened there.’
Jake glanced at her. ‘Does that not leave us wondering what Albert did or knew that night when his mother was killed? Still George did not suspect him, did not target him, did not shout abuse at him and did not kill him. How could he be so sure Albert was not involved?’
Alkmene shook her head. ‘Because Albert had nothing to gain from his mother’s death. He had no motive. If my aunt didn’t surprise a burglar and was strangled by that intruder, someone killed her to remove her from the scene. Someone who specifically wanted her dead. George concluded it could have been no other than his father. Nobody else had motive.’
‘That is what you say.’ Jake glanced at her. ‘You want to have a nice image of her as a kind gentle woman, a sweet mother and wife. But we have no idea what kind of mother and mistress of the house she really was. What if she was vicious, hurting people with remarks? Or if she tried to manipulate them by withholding money. We don’t know all that much about their family life, except for the fact that her husband talked about cultures where men could have second wives, suggesting that he wanted a younger wife in addition.’
‘Right,’ Alkmene said. ‘And we only know that because somebody took a lot of care to tell it to us.’
Jake looked at her. His eyes lit with sudden fire. ‘You are so right. Their entire life out there has been shielded from us except for these slightly different versions of the same tale. Coming down to the fact that Father wanted to replace Mother. They all feel differently about it, but they all tell that particular story. Why would they?’
Alkmene pursed her lips. ‘I have no idea. But if we ignore it completely, pretend like there was never any notion in Lord Winters’ head to replace his wife, and we then look at the reasons for strangling a woman in her own home, or for bashing a man over his head in his study, we are left with very different motives and therefore also different suspects.’
‘Right.’ Jake jogged his legs on the floorboards. ‘I also called some contacts at the papers to ask about the stones in Lord Winters’ collection. Especially the ones your aunt wrote about in her letters. The object of the vendetta? There were ten of them like the ten stars forming the constellation Cygnus, so their nickname was the Cygnus diamonds.’
Alkmene frowned. ‘Cygnus is the swan, right? I know a little bit of astronomy, but never enough to satisfy all of my questions about the universe.’
Jake laughed. ‘Well, somebody knew something about the stars, for calling these stones that way. They were dug up by a man out of an African mine. He took them home, but during the sea voyage he was murdered. Then the stones changed hands over and over again, between the families of the first finder and that of the killer. Their names were Pereiro and Matisse.’
‘Matisse? Like the painter?’ Alkmene raked through her hair. ‘Any idea how they ended up with Lord Winters? Was he related to one of these two families?’
‘No, not at all. He bought the stones at auction when the last of the Matisse family, an elderly hermit with no children, decided to put the Cygnus diamonds up for sale. Lord Winters paid a fortune for them and kept them in a special case. He wanted to have them recut and sold under new names.’
‘Would that not have decreased their value?’
Jake shook his head. ‘They had a bad name for the bloodshed connected to them. If they were recut, each individual stone could be auctioned off.’
‘I thought Lord Winters was obsessed with stones and he would never let go of part of his collection.’
‘He might have been obsessed by stones, but not by own
ing them. To him it was the game of acquiring them and then selling them off at a better price. He sort of used them like others deal in real estate or bonds. Your aunt wrote about it in her letters.’
‘Did she say anything else in the letters that has bearing on these specific stones?’
‘Just one thing that I found telling. She had asked her husband to transfer the stones from the safe in their house in the city to their summer residence. She had reason to believe they would be safer there.’
‘Because someone was watching them? A member of either the Pereiro or the Matisse family?’
Jake nodded. ‘Exactly. Lord Winters thought his wife fanciful in most of the things she said, but apparently he did heed her counsel regarding the Cygnus diamonds, for the safe was empty on the night when she was killed.’
‘Ironic that she managed to save his precious stones for him while she herself died.’ Alkmene sighed, studying her notes. ‘I can’t make sense of it. And after the funeral we will have to leave. I can’t just sit around here for ever, you know.’
‘I know,’ Jake said. He rose and slapped the paper against his leg. ‘Mac has a good attorney now, so we can only hope he will be acquitted of the murder. He will have to do time for the break-in I suppose.’
‘Unless George will vouch for him that he asked him to climb in and take the stones. Then Mac would have had permission from one of the inhabitants of the house to arrive.’
Jake pursed his lips. ‘Far-fetched. And besides, George will not vouch for a cat burglar. He is high and above that.’
‘Your words, not his. I could ask him. Perhaps he is not as unreasonable as you think.’
‘If he is the killer, he won’t acquit Mac.’
‘If he is not the killer, he will want to know who is. Especially if there is a relation to his mother’s death. George still seems to be obsessed with it. As Anne is. We have to cut both of them free from the past by finding the truth.’
‘It could be a very unpleasant truth.’ Jake exhaled. ‘The servants all seem to be afraid of something. It can’t have to do with India. Most of them were never there, so the lady of the house then is just a name to them.’
‘And Lord Winters’ death?’ Alkmene asked.
Jake shrugged. ‘Something they’d rather ignore because it happened under their own roof. They are just glad they are themselves still alive. And not under suspicion. Wouldn’t be the first case where a rich family tries to pin a crime on a servant just to keep blame away from themselves.’
Alkmene nodded. ‘Let’s focus on the stones again. The Cygnus diamonds. There were two families feuding over these precious stones. But the stones ended up with an unrelated man. First his wife died, at the foot of a safe that was not holding any stones. Then, seven years later, he himself is killed, again in front of an empty safe. So if the stones are at the heart of the matter, why have they not turned up?’
‘If the killer was in the house and killed him before Mac arrived on the scene, he took the stones from the safe and hid them somewhere.’
‘Right.’ Alkmene jumped to her feet and pushed the notes into her pocket. ‘It is time for some digging. We should have done it before, right after we noticed the spot. They might be gone now.’
Jake followed her hurriedly. ‘I told you then that we can’t go overturning another’s garden.’
‘We have to. Now you go to the gardener’s shack and get us some tools. A wheelbarrow too. Bring his hat so you can wear it and look a little like him.’
Jake sighed. ‘That architect said if I got caught, I’d be charged with trespassing. If we get caught digging, we will be charged with a lot more. Do you really want to end up behind bars?’
Alkmene waved at him over her shoulder. ‘It is all for Mac, right?’
To herself she added, And for Anne and George. They are my cousins. I owe it to them to try and lift the shadows of the past off their lives.
Who knows? If we succeed, George might really help to get Mac off the burglary charge as well. Then we will really have saved the day for everybody.
Chapter Eighteen
Alkmene lay on her knees, ignoring the ache in her lower back as she leaned into the hole and dug up new earth with her hands. On the other side of the flower bed Jake was doing the same. He had first wanted to do it with a shovel, but she had been worried the sharp metal would slash through something. After all they had no idea how the stones, if they were in here, had been wrapped.
The black dirt was ingraining itself firmly underneath her fingernails, even settling into the lines of her palms. Every now and then there were horrid alive creatures wriggling in the earth that she tried to ignore, tossing them aside quickly, right along with their habitat, onto the pile by her side.
The flower bed had looked unruly when she had first seen it, but now that they had been at it for some time, it was a real disaster area.
Alkmene had hoped they would just hit on a leather-wrapped parcel or something soon, but no such luck. As she dug deeper, the walls of the hole kept collapsing inwards, creating new dirt to remove. Her arms and neck strained, and there was the constant prickle of sweat on her neck, from exertion and fear of discovery.
Helena was supposed to be in bed sleeping off her headache, Albert was not at the estate and George might not be either, but there were always servants who might look out of the window and think this was a pretty strange sight.
If Jake had been right with his prediction that the family might get suspicious of them and the killer would start planning their demise, this action of hers was just the thing that could spur him or her into action.
Alkmene took a moment to rub sweat off her face with her sleeve, then leaned down again and felt with her hands for the loot. She was just certain it had to be here. They needed a break badly.
‘I got something.’ Jake sat up looking into his hole. ‘Not sure it is what we wanted though.’
Alkmene started at the idea something was really there. She got up, wincing as her stiff knees locked, and hobbled over to him. She eagerly leaned over his shoulder to look. ‘What on earth is that?’
Jake pulled out a large bundle of fabric, dirty with sand and mud, and put it on the lawn beside him. It was certainly much bigger than a simple pouch with precious stones.
Jake looked up at her. ‘Do you want to open it?’
Alkmene shook her head. ‘You do it.’
Jake folded the flaps aside, revealing a metal box. It was secured with a padlock. The key that should be inserted was not with it.
Alkmene exhaled in disappointment. ‘There is no way to open it.’ She reached up to feel her hair, then remembered her filthy hands and thought better of it. ‘I don’t have a pin on me, you know, to use to pick the lock.’
‘I don’t need one,’ Jake said stoically. He rose and reached into the wheelbarrow and took out a pruning tool. ‘This is pretty sturdy.’
Before Alkmene could protest, he had put it on the padlock and cut right through the link. The padlock fell away.
Alkmene hissed, ‘That was fast, but not smart. You damaged it. Why couldn’t you have taken a more subtle approach?’
‘Whoever buried this here has the key on him or her. He or she is not going to give it to us.’
Jake threw the pruning tool back into the wheelbarrow and stood tall, pulling back his shoulders. ‘You wanted to do this, now I say we do it well. Let’s see what’s in there right now.’
He sat on his haunches and with a dirty hand he lifted the lid.
Alkmene held her breath, preparing herself for the flash of sunshine on diamonds.
But the box was full of papers.
Jake huffed in disappointment.
Alkmene leaned over and lifted a few sheets out, taking a corner between her thumb and index finger so as not to smudge them. ‘Bills,’ she said perplexed, ‘and papers attesting to debts. Quite an amount too.’
No sign in the box of any diamonds. She bit her lip. ‘Whoever hid it here must have wanted
to keep other people from seeing it.’
‘Yes, have you ever heard of the word privacy?’
Alkmene looked up at the incensed voice, into the red features of the present Lord Winters. He slapped his short riding whip against his gleaming boot. The sweat on his face suggested he had only just returned to the estate and had driven his horse hard. As if he had sensed something was wrong to which he should attend.
Albert stared at Jake. ‘How dare you appear in my garden, disturbing my land and appropriating my possessions.’
Alkmene said hurriedly, ‘We didn’t intend to take anything. Just see what was there. This was my idea entirely. I forced Parker here to help me with it. I saw the flower bed earlier, you know, the disturbance of the earth, and figured something had been buried here recently. I thought it might be the missing diamonds. The ones that vanished on the night your father died? I only wanted to make everybody happy by turning up a special find. I am sorry for what I did. I had no idea that it would be something like this.’
Albert’s eyes flashed. ‘That box shall be closed again immediately. I will take it with me to see what it is and why it was hidden. You…’ He pointed at Jake with his whip.
Jake clenched his jaw and said nothing.
Albert bellowed, ‘Go do your chores and do not show yourself in my garden again any time soon. Your employer may give you too much freedom, but I surely do not tolerate forward behaviour from a servant. I will ask the local police if there is anything I can charge you with. You can be assured that if there is anything, even the slightest thing, I will use it to the fullest possible extent to persecute you and make you pay for this insult.’
‘It was all my fault…’ Alkmene began, but now Albert pointed the whip at her and snapped, ‘Shut up, woman, before I really lose my temper. You may claim to be related to us, but you have no manners and no sense of propriety. I wish we had turned you out into the street the very day you showed your face here.’
‘You lift one finger to hurt her, and I will make sure you end up in prison,’ Jake said. ‘You are talking about persecuting me, but assault is certainly against the law.’
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