Queen of Hearts

by Rhys Bowen

  “Honey, do you really think you should? It will only distress you even more,” Barbara said to her.

  “I have to see him. He was actually killed with one of those damned candlesticks, was he? I told him his stupid obsession with antiques would be the death of him one day, but I didn’t mean . . . I never meant . . .” She gave a big wrenching sob that was quite unexpected.

  “He’s in the library, honey. I’ll come with you.”

  “No, I want to go alone,” she said. “I need to say good-bye to my husband alone.”

  “Make sure you don’t touch anything,” Ronnie said.

  Mrs. Goldman turned to glare at him.

  “This is my house. I’ll touch what I want.”

  “Instructions from the sheriff, Mrs. Goldman.”

  “Oh God,” she said and turned on her heel. I wondered if someone should follow her to make sure she didn’t touch anything, but I realized it wasn’t my place to interfere. But it did start me thinking: What if she had killed him and wanted to make doubly sure that she had left no telltale evidence?

  “I think I’ll pop to the nearest lavatory before we have to face the police,” I said casually.

  “There’s one in the last alcove on the right,” Stella said.

  I sauntered down the hall and hugged the wall until I was out of sight of the rotunda. Then I slipped across to the hallway leading to the library. Well, I had proved one thing—I had managed this without being seen. As I tiptoed carefully over the pieces of armor toward the library I heard something. It sounded almost like an animal either breathing heavily or snarling and my thoughts went instantly to the wild beasts that roamed the grounds. The door was half open and I peered in. Mrs. Goldman was standing with her face in her hands, sobbing her heart out.

  Chapter 21

  Feeling embarrassed and guilty I backed away, only just avoiding stepping into an armored leg that blocked my path. Was the awful remorse I had just seen because she loved her husband or because she had killed him in a moment of temper and now bitterly regretted it? I found the cavernous bathroom, decorated, as Algie had reported, with banners. When I returned there was still no sign of Darcy and the other men.

  “Is my poor Helen still in the library?” Barbara asked.

  I nodded. “I could hear her crying.”

  “Poor thing. She’s devastated,” Barbara said.

  “Devastated?” Mummy looked surprised and amused. “I thought they loathed each other.”

  “Oh, no. They were devoted.”

  “They had a funny way of showing it,” Mummy said.

  “I suppose they did. They fought like cats and dogs since day one, I gather, but they always made up and she adored him in her own way.”

  “She lived in New York and he in Los Angeles? That didn’t sound like too much adoration to me,” Mummy said, leaning forward to stub out a cigarette in the crystal ashtray on the table.

  “He was taken in by her family the day he stepped off the boat as an immigrant from Europe,” Barbara said. “I think he was very handsome when he was young and he’s always had a presence. He went to work for her father’s boot factory but he was ambitious right from the start. He persuaded Mr. Edison to give him a job in his movie company in New Jersey, and when he thought he’d learned enough, he headed out to Hollywood and started making his own movies. But Helen never liked the West Coast. She wanted to be in New York, near her family, and far away from his long string of mistresses—” She paused, looked up and stared at Stella. But Stella was staring out of the window and apparently quite unaware of her so the gesture was wasted.

  “Did they ever have any children?” I asked.

  Barbara shook her head. “She had one miscarriage and the doctor said she shouldn’t have any more pregnancies. I think that was a blow to both of them. But he’s always lived for his work—like a maniac, never taking a moment to rest, as you’ve seen. I don’t think he even noticed that Helen wasn’t there.”

  She broke off as Mrs. Goldman came back into the room. She was white-faced but one could no longer see that she had been crying. Her makeup had been repaired and she looked ready to address a meeting of volunteer ladies back in New York. Had she ever gone to bed? I wondered. If so, she had dressed again and put on her makeup very quickly. I studied her, wondering if her grief was a little overdone. Of everybody she had the best opportunity for murdering her husband. I now knew she could have crept around the rim of the foyer without being seen from the rotunda. She also had several good motives for murdering her husband—jealousy of his mistress, being excluded from his life, and who knew what kind of financial restraints he was trying to put on her. Someone would have to talk to Mr. Goldman’s lawyer and tax accountant to see if he’d planned to cut off his wife’s allowance, or at least trim it back. And then there might be a large life insurance policy, recently taken out. . . .

  “Come and sit by me, honey,” Barbara said, patting the sofa beside her as Mrs. Goldman came into the rotunda. “Would you like a drink? Charlie will fix you one.”

  Mrs. Goldman shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing will ever matter again.” Then she looked up at us. “Who could have done this to him?”

  Nobody answered her.

  “The sheriff is on his way,” Mummy said. “I’m sure everything will be sorted out in good time.” She was the only one who seemed unaffected by what had happened, other than being a little annoyed that it had disrupted her own schedule for the evening. But then that was typical of her. If it didn’t concern her personally, it didn’t matter. Just like a cat.

  Feet crunched on the gravel outside.

  “You see. There he is now,” Mummy said, but instead a draft of cold air wafted in as Darcy returned with Algie and a disheveled Juan, who stood blinking in the light. He was wearing striped pajamas and had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He was shivering and looked decidedly uncomfortable.

  “The sheriff not here yet?” Darcy asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Did you see anything suspicious out there?”

  “Not a thing. Of course it’s quite foggy so anybody could be hidden within a few feet of us. And it would be very easy to escape into the parkland without leaving any kind of trail.”

  “I thought I heard something,” Algie said. “Something like a sinister growl, or a groan. Or maybe a snarl. Or a snort.”

  “That was Juan clearing his throat.” Darcy gave him a withering look. “I told you at the time. When you grabbed me and nearly yanked me over backward.”

  “It sounded jolly sinister to me,” Algie said. “Like an animal, you know.”

  “How are you feeling, Juan?” Stella went over to him and guided him to a big armchair.

  “How do you think I feel, eh?” he demanded indignantly. “I am in a deep sleep. Suddenly I am rudely awoken. Now my head throbs.”

  “He bally well was in a deep sleep,” Algie said. “Talk about the sleep of the dead. We had to shake him before he finally surfaced.”

  “I must have drunk too much wine with dinner. When I am depressed I drink too much wine,” Juan said. “It does not agree with me.”

  “You’d better have some coffee.” Stella picked up the pot. “Oh, it’s gone cold again,” she said. “I’d better have Maria make more. Has anyone told her yet about Cy? Oh God. She’ll have hysterics. She worshipped the ground he trod on. You should do it, Mrs. Goldman.” And she tried to hand Helen the coffeepot.

  “Helen is in no fit state to go anywhere,” Barbara intervened. “You’re the one who is here more than anybody. You do it.”

  “I don’t think I could bear her weeping and wailing all over me,” Stella said. “I’m only just holding my own emotions together at this point. Ronnie, sweetheart, would you be an angel?” And she handed him the coffeepot.

  Ronnie looked at it in his hands and tried to come up with a good reason w
hy he shouldn’t go in to face Maria. Then he sighed. “Oh, very well,” he said. He set off in the direction of the kitchen.

  And an interesting thought struck me as I watched Stella go over to perch on the arm of Juan’s chair. I would have said that she was with us in the rotunda all the time, but she had left once before when she went to ask for more coffee. So really only my mother, Charlie Chaplin and I had never left this area after dinner. Craig and Darcy had come in together, which cleared both of them. But all of the others had been alone and unaccounted for at some moment. I looked around the room. It was hard to picture any of them sneaking up on Cy Goldman and hitting him over the head with his own candlestick. Maybe it was a slick and agile intruder after all. When the groundsmen returned perhaps we’d know more.

  Almost immediately we heard the predicted weeping and wailing coming from the kitchen. Actually more of a cross between shrieks and eerie keening. I pitied Ronnie. Everybody gave him the unpleasant jobs and he just accepted them. I supposed that it was the lot of a secretary to be the general dogsbody. He returned soon after, empty-handed.

  “I don’t think we’re likely to get more coffee in the immediate future,” he said. “I warned her that the police would want to talk to everybody and that just made the hysterics worse. She’s gone to find Francisco. I’d go and make the coffee myself but that stove is a temperamental monster and only Maria knows how to work it.”

  “It is no matter. I do not need coffee,” Juan said. “I just want to return to my bed.”

  “Well, you can’t do that until the sheriff gets here,” Darcy said. “I wonder when the men will come back from checking the fence?”

  “It’s an enormous property,” Stella said. “I forget how many hundred acres. And a lot of it is rough terrain, steep hillsides, rocks, gullies. I doubt they’ll be able to check every inch of that fence.”

  “Then the murderer could be long gone,” Craig said. I could see the relief in his face.

  We all froze as the telephone rang. Ronnie went to answer it. “Yes, of course,” he said. Then he returned to us. “That was Jimmy at the gatehouse. He said he had the sheriff there and wanted to know if it was all right to let him in.”

  “You see how conscientious he is about his job,” Stella said. “Nobody could have got past him at the gate. If they don’t find anything wrong at the fence we have to presume the murderer is still on the premises.”

  “Or is one of us,” Charlie Chaplin said with obvious relish.

  There was a gasp from around the room. “You’re joking, surely, Charlie,” Stella said. “Which of us would ever want to hit Cy over the head to steal a candlestick? It doesn’t make sense. If any of us was inclined to take the dratted thing all we’d had to do was sneak in sometime during the night, not go into the library when we knew Cy was still there.”

  “I have to disagree with you there, Stella honey,” Craig said. “When Darcy and I left Cy he said he was going to put the candlesticks in the safe for the time being. Mrs. Goldman had asked him to do this since he didn’t have them properly insured yet.”

  “That’s right. I did,” Mrs. Goldman said. “I told him he was an idiot to have such valuable objects just sitting there on a table when the house was full of people. And what about the Mexican servants, I said. How do you know whether you can trust them or not? The candles could be over the border in no time at all and mean a lifetime of luxury for one of them.”

  “Oh, come now,” Stella said angrily. “Maria and Francisco worshipped him and they have been with him for years.”

  “Yes, but what about those guys who work on the grounds? How much do you know about them, huh?”

  “That’s a good point, I suppose,” Darcy said. “The sheriff will want to interview all the outside employees, Ronnie.”

  “So whoever took that candlestick had to take his chance before Cy locked it away.” Barbara gave Mrs. Goldman a knowing look. “And I agree. I’d like to take bets it was one of those Mexican gardeners. I have to keep a close eye on my Mexican maids. I know one of them has been helping herself to the sugar.”

  She broke off as we heard the scrunch of tires on the gravel. Ronnie was on his way to the front door when there was thunderous knocking.

  “Good evening, sir,” we heard him say. Then a rough gravelly voice responded. “This better be good, son. If I find out it’s you movie people’s idea of a joke and it’s some kind of dummy crime scene you’ve got in here, I’ll have you all locked up in the slammer.”

  “No joke at all I’m afraid, Sheriff,” Ronnie said. “Mr. Cy Goldman, head of Golden Pictures, has been murdered.”

  A big man, unshaven, with heavy jowls lumbered into view. He was wearing a Stetson hat and cowboy boots. To my outsider’s eyes he looked like a caricature of a Wild West sheriff. He was staring at us with contempt.

  “Sheriff Billings,” he said. “Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. And who have we here?”

  Ronnie cleared his throat nervously. “Well, we have Mrs. Goldman, Mr. Goldman’s widow. And then we have Stella Brightwell, Claire Daniels, Craig Hart, Charlie Chaplin . . .”

  “You making fun of me, boy?” the sheriff demanded.

  “I assure you he’s not,” Charlie said. “I’m Charlie Chaplin.”

  “You mean to tell me that you’re really Mr. Chaplin?” the sheriff demanded. “You don’t look a bit like him.”

  “Do you want me to stick on a false mustache, put on a porkpie hat and do my funny walk with a cane to prove it to you?” Charlie asked. He didn’t seem in the least put out, almost as if he was enjoying himself. “Or would you rather see my driver’s license?” He fumbled in his pocket, produced his wallet and handed it to the big man, who glanced at it, turned a little pale, then handed it back. “Sorry, Mr. Chaplin, sir. You can’t blame me for being too careful, can you? These movie types—they leave Hollywood for the weekend and think it’s amusing to play little jokes on the country bumpkins. And we’re stretched thin as it is, trying to cover a county of this size. We’ve already got a suspicious fire out of control in the hills above Simi so I’ve had to leave most of my men there. But I’ve got volunteer deputies on their way with the medical examiner.”

  “Volunteer deputies?” Mrs. Goldman demanded. “Amateurs? What good can they do? This is a murder case, Sheriff. You need trained professionals. Shouldn’t you call Los Angeles and see if they’ve got some real detectives they can lend you? Or even Ventura?”

  The sheriff drew himself up to all of his six feet in height. “Ma’am, we may be a rural force but we get just as good training as any city slicker. Now, if we can get down to business, one of you can take me to the body. The rest of you stay put until I tell you that you can move.”

  “This way, sir,” Ronnie said.

  “And are you a movie star too?” the sheriff asked. “Don’t recognize you.”

  “No, I’m Mr. Goldman’s secretary,” Ronnie said. “Ronald Green.”

  “And is everybody in the house together in that room? I want everyone in one place, where I can see them until my men have searched the house.”

  “We assembled everyone for you, in anticipation of your arrival,” Ronnie said. “Apart from the servants.”

  “How many of them?”

  “There’s only Maria in the house. She cooks and cleans. Local women come in to help when we have a big party here. Her husband, Francisco, helps with the heavy work. We have four groundsmen but they are out driving around the fence to see where an intruder could have gotten in. They should be back soon. And there’s Jimmy on the gate. You met him.”

  “Yeah. I met him all right. Nearly booked him for obstructing justice.” He scowled in the direction of the door as if he could see all the way down to the gate. “Wouldn’t let me in even when I showed him my badge. Well, as soon as those guys show up I want to talk to them. And the cook and her husband.” He turned away. “S
o which way to the body?”

  “Over here, Sheriff.” Ronnie went ahead of him.

  “I hope nobody’s touched anything.” We heard the sheriff’s voice echoing from the high ceiling. “And what’s this dang fool stuff all over the floor?”

  “It’s armor, sir. The suit of armor fell down and we didn’t think we should move it. Just in case.”

  “Suit of armor? You movie types live in a fantasy world, don’t you?” And the sheriff’s voice got fainter as he entered the library.

  But that was another interesting thing. We had heard him quite clearly when he was beside the suit of armor. Would we have heard a loud exchange, a shout for help, a cry coming from the library? Wouldn’t that mean that Mr. Goldman knew his attacker and didn’t think he needed to shout for help?

  Chapter 22

  The sheriff’s face was somber when he returned to us. I noticed he still hadn’t taken off his hat. The dowager duchess Edwina, with whom I’d been staying, would have been affronted but here nobody seemed to mind.

  “Someone made a nasty mess of his head, didn’t they?” he said. “That blow was administered with a lot of force. But don’t worry. I have no doubt we’ll find the perpetrator soon enough. He was stupid enough to leave a bloody fingerprint on the window frame. Then he must have jumped out and run off into the woods. If he’s a known thug, we’ll find him.”

  “And if he’s not?” Stella asked.

  “He won’t get far, will he? If the fence runs all the way around the property and he can’t get past that gatekeeper of yours. I’d say he was stuck here, hoping to hide out until we all leave. But don’t you worry. We’ll bring in dogs in the morning. They’ll flush him out.”

  “I don’t think dogs would be a good idea on this property, Sheriff,” Stella said.

  “Oh, and why not?”

  “Not unless you want a stampede of zebra, giraffe and wildebeest.” Stella said the line deadpan. “For all I know there are a few lions patrolling the grounds as well.”