“Yes, I thought so too. But my superiors remain unconvinced. They think that Marcie might have gotten rid of it herself.”
“Well, maybe, I mean, if she was trying to hide something.”
Constance narrowed her eyes. “Do you know what she might have been trying to hide?”
“Well, not for sure, no,” said Emma. “But, there was an accusation. Some money went missing from the du Maurier literary society, enough that they couldn’t pay their catering deposits. Marcie was the treasurer, so she got blamed.”
“Hmmm.” Constance took another swallow of coffee. “Now, I didn’t know that.”
“I can’t see anybody killing themselves over a few thousand quid, honestly.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Constance. “But in this case, I think you’re right. You see, after the report came out, I went and had a little talk with the so-called pathologist.”
“Wait a minute, I thought you liked our local pathologist.” In fact, Constance had once described the pathologist as an amazing old broad of thirty years experience dealing with unexpected deaths up and down the Cornish coast.
“The chief path is off on holiday, and her assistant is some new bloke who is very keen.” She said the last word like it left a bad taste in her mouth. “So keen, in fact, that he doesn’t want to stay tucked away here on our lovely seacoast and thinks that kissing up to his superiors is the way to get a posting in Manchester or London.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Very much oh. Anyway, I did, after about a half hour of trying, get him to admit that, while most of the injuries on the body were consistent with a fall from a window, the injuries to the face were surprisingly severe.” She paused. “I asked would they be consistent with Marcie having been struck in the face with some blunt object. He assured me that if she had not been found lying on her face under a window, he might have reached that conclusion. But she was, and I could read all about it in the official report, case closed and I’m a very busy man.”
Emma added more coffee and milk to her own mug. She looked out the garden window. Oliver, she noticed, was sitting on the edge of the new vegetable patch. At first she thought he might be on guard against his local nemesis, a fox that had no respect at all for personal boundaries. But then she realized he was exhibiting a perfectly natural reaction to this very long day. Oliver was sound asleep in the afternoon sunshine.
Wish I was there with you, corgi me lad.
“So, what I’m wondering”—Constance pulled Emma’s attention away from her peaceful garden and dog—“is did you see anything at the grange that might shed some light on this particular little mystery?”
“Erm,” said Emma.
“Are you about to tell me you paid attention to everything I said before, and just went up there to get your catering things and come straight back home.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“Right. Well, we can just skip past the part where I say I don’t believe it, and you protest your innocence and all that.”
“Erm, yeah. Sure.”
“Good. What did you find out?”
Emma swallowed. “I think you’re right. I don’t think Marcie fell. Or I don’t think she just fell. I think she was killed, and the body was moved.”
Constance turned and leveled her with a hard stare. “Would you care to tell me why you think this?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Try me.”
This was exactly the situation she’d wanted to avoid, but she couldn’t see any way around it. So Emma took a deep breath and chose her words very, very carefully. “My dog smelled something by the garage that got him really upset. He’s only been that agitated a couple of times before, and that was when we . . .”
“Found a body,” Constance finished for her.
Emma nodded. “He had the same reaction in the office upstairs and I think I maybe saw some signs that somebody’d been trying to clean the kitchen floor with bleach.”
“Go on,” said Constance.
“So, I was wondering if maybe Marcie was killed in her office, and then the murderer carried the body downstairs, maybe thinking to hide it, but got the idea to put it under the window and make the whole thing look like suicide.”
Constance considered her babka for a moment. “No,” she said. “Wouldn’t work. If Marcie was hit in the face, there’d be spatter and, well, a number of other things you don’t want to hear about over pastry. I did have a look round that office. Nobody on their own would have been able to do that level of cleaning without it being noticed.”
“So, maybe she was killed down by the garage and they took the body upstairs to push it out the window?”
“Messy,” said Constance, “but doable, if you wanted to go with the appearance of suicide and you were smart enough to realize the damage the rain would do to any trace evidence.”
“So, um . . . what do you think they, um, used?”
Constance blew out a sigh. “Hard to say. To damage her face like that, it’d have to be something heavy, that’s for sure. Or something with a handle, so they could swing it. A cricket bat, maybe, or a wooden plank, or a shovel. Something like that.” She paused. “I don’t suppose while you were comforting your agitated dog, you might have found some actual evidence? Maybe something I could take to my superiors?”
“Well, there’re the earrings.”
“Are there?”
“Um, yes. Sorry. Here.” She went and got her bag and dug the tissue out. “I took a picture, on my phone when I found it. Here.” She pulled out her mobile.
She showed Constance the photos. Constance flicked back and forth through them several times. Then she took the tissue and dropped it into her own, much larger bag.
“This doesn’t mean much,” she said. “She could have lost it any time.”
“Except it’s one of the earrings she was wearing when she died, and we found the other up under the window seat cushions in her office, and the window latch is broken,” she added.
“Broken? How?”
Emma described the missing bracket, but her voice trailed off.
“You look like you’ve had a thought,” said Constance.
“Yeah, I did, kind of. What if the killer knew about the broken latch, and they carried the body up to the office, and just, sort of, left it there? Propped up on the window seat or something?”
“Knowing the window would open under the weight, sooner or later, and the body would fall on its own. Which would give them the time to be somewhere else when it did?”
Emma nodded.
“It’s a thought,” said Constance. “But it’s not the kind of detail somebody’s going to think of on the spur of the moment. Which tells us that somebody planned this murder well ahead of time. Maybe even tampered with the latch deliberately.”
Emma wrapped both hands around her coffee and tried not to shudder.
Constance was silent for a long time after that. When she turned her gaze back to Emma, anger sparked behind her calm blue eyes.
“Emma, I cannot believe I am about to say this. But I need your help.”
32
If Constance had a hard time believing she was saying those words, Emma had an equally hard time believing she heard them. But she made herself take a deep breath.
“What can I do?”
“You can find some excuse to get yourself up to the grange again. Talk to the family. Make a pest out of yourself. Let Oliver run about. Find out whatever you can.”
“Erm,” began Emma.
“I know, I know.” Constance cut her off. “Believe me, I know, and if I had any other choice, I would not even dream of asking. But my boss’s boss has made it clear that the case has already been closed. Permanently.”
Emma thought about Bert, and about how sure Daphne was that he was covering something up, and abo
ut the way he’d talked in the pub. He’d already made up his mind it was suicide, or at the very least, he’d made up his mind that that was the story he wanted everybody to believe.
“I do not like string pullers,” said Constance. “I especially do not like murderous string pullers. It’s going to take me some time, and a few favors, and . . . well, never mind that. It’s going to be a job to get any kind of investigation opened, and by then, all kinds of things might have been tidied away.”
“But, I mean, you can still just talk to people, can’t you?” asked Emma. “Off the record, or something?”
“I could,” agreed Constance. “But there’s a catch. I’m an officer of the law. Any evidence I turn up outside of the confines of an official investigation is going to get thrown out of court so fast it’ll make everybody’s head spin. But you”—Constance pointed her fork at Emma—“are a member of the public. If I’m acting because you have come to the police with a concern, that’s an entirely different story.”
Emma swirled her coffee and watched the tan waves rise and fall. Her gaze strayed back to the garden and Oliver sleeping peacefully in the afternoon sun.
“Will you help me?” asked Constance.
“Well, as it happens, Helen Dalgliesh has decided she wants the du Maurier festival to go forward. So I’ll be spending quite a lot of time up at the grange helping out with that. So, naturally, if I hear anything or find anything out about Marcie and what happened, I’ll just have to report it, won’t I? My parents always told me we should do whatever we can to help the police.”
“Well.” Constance sat back. “Amazing how that all worked out.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Emma drank her coffee, then added more milk.
“Right. Time for me to start harassing my bosses.” Constance got to her feet and Emma started to stand, but the detective waved her back. “No, never mind, I can show myself out. Oh, and, Emma?”
“Yeah?”
“We need to be very, very careful about this,” Constance said. “I could lose my job, and you could get charged with interfering in an investigation, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So we never had this conversation.”
“What conversation?” asked Emma mildly. “We’re friends. I invited you over for coffee. And babka.”
“Knew I liked you.” Constance slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out the front door.
Emma sat where she was for a while. Then she picked up her coffee mug and went out the garden door. She sat down on the grass beside Oliver, who was still asleep on his back. She stared at her tomatoes and beans, breathing in the scents of lavender, rosemary and the distant salt tang of the sea.
Oliver’s ears twitched. His body stretched and wriggled and in the next instant, his eyes popped open and he rolled over.
“Hullo, Emma!” He shook his head and scratched. “What’re you doing?”
“Oh, Oliver,” breathed Emma. “We are in real trouble.”
“What trouble?” He sprang to his feet and also wagged his bum, which kind of spoiled any guard dog vibe he might have going. “Where?”
Emma shook her head. “Never mind. I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”
“Yes! Yes! What’s for dinner?”
Emma smiled, and together they headed for the kitchen.
For an hour or so, she lost herself in chopping and mixing and tasting. All the events at the grange were real. She and her friends had all been dragged into them, or jumped into them, depending how you looked at it. And she really had just been asked to help Constance look for reasons to open an official murder inquiry into Marcie’s death.
But for this moment, she was going to set that aside. She was safe in her cozy home. She had her best fur friend with her, and she was going to cook, and she was going to relax and get her head together.
In the end, she had a lovely fry-up of sausage, peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes. She toasted some of the bread she’d bought yesterday at the village co-op. Oliver supervised, as always, and Emma made him eat his kibble before she agreed to let him have some sausage and tomato.
“I’m going to get another lecture from the vet about your diet.”
“We need to take more walks,” said Oliver. “That’s how you take care of sausage.”
Emma sighed. There was no arguing with corgi logic.
After the dishes were done, Emma took her tea, and the remaining slice of babka she’d decided to keep for dessert, and went over to her chaise lounge. This had become her favorite way to spend an evening at home—stretched out on the old fainting couch under her diamond-paned window, Oliver on her lap, watching the sun set over the sea. Unfortunately, a quiet evening with the sunset was not on the docket for today. When they were both settled, Emma took a deep breath, picked up her mobile and dialed Angelique’s number.
“Hullo, Emma,” said Angelique as soon as she picked up. “We heard from Genny that you had the detective there.” Oliver, of course, slid up into Emma’s lap and barked.
“Hullo to you too, Oliver!” laughed Angelique. “Well, if he’s sounding so chipper, you two must be all right.”
“Yeah, mostly,” said Emma. “Did Genny tell you what happened at the grange today?”
“She did. Pearl is here too. Okay if we put you on speaker?”
“Yes, of course.”
There were some shuffling noises on the Delgados’ side. Oliver took advantage of the pause to resettle himself so he was draped across Emma’s stomach, ready to listen in, or be scratched along his spine. Or both.
“Can you hear us all right?” said Angelique.
“Loud and clear.”
“So what happened with Constance?” asked Pearl.
The last thing I expected. Emma laid out her suspicions.
“Is this the part where I get to say I told you so?” asked Pearl. “Because I told you so.”
“I think Daphne actually gets to say that,” said Emma. “And, yes, you were both right. Whatever happened to Marcie, someone is trying to cover it up.” Then she told them how Constance had asked her to keep her eyes open while they helped get ready for the festival.
“Not the circumstances I’d want for taking this job,” said Angelique.
“That’s because you are a rational individual.” Emma leaned back on her chaise. “What are we going to do?”
“Well, you’ve already said what you’re going to do,” said Pearl. “The question is, how soon are you going back to the grange? And do you want me to come get you, or should we leave from here?”
“Um, Angelique, are you okay with that?” asked Emma. “I mean, if Marcie really was murdered, the killer might very well still be at the house.” It was not something she’d let herself think too much about before, but it seemed important to point out just now.
“Pearl is an adult,” said Angelique. “She gets to make her own decisions.”
Emma wasn’t sure her voice would have stayed as steady if she’d been talking about her own daughter, no matter how adult.
“Well, I’m going,” said Pearl. “Daphne needs help, and so do you, Emma. So does Raj, who has got to be pulling his hair out over this. Besides, if we pull off the festival gig, both our businesses benefit. But, Ma, if you don’t want . . .” Her words trailed away.
“No, Pearl.” Emma could picture Angelique shaking her head. “Trevena is our home. If we can do something to keep a . . . person from getting away with this, whatever it turns out to be, then we will do it.”
Emma felt heart and hope swell. “You’re both kind of amazing, do you know that?”
“Thank you, Emma,” said Pearl. “You always had good judgment. Now. What’s the plan?”
“I don’t know that there is one, except to get up to the grange and keep our eyes and ears open.”
“And noses!” mumbled Oliver. “Well, as open a
s you can, because, you know, you don’t pay enough attention to the smells.”
“Oliver doesn’t sound happy about any of this.”
“Oh, no, he’s very excited.” Emma scritched his neck. “He’s going to get to spend lots of time with Dash.”
“Yes, Dash!” Oliver yipped. “He is an excellent dog. He will be a big help, I know he will.”
They talked some more, about who they could get to cover the cake counter and whether Angelique and Genny could handle the tea service while Emma and Pearl (and Oliver!) did what they could up at the grange.
It was almost eight thirty by the time they hung up. The room was dim. Only a thin salmon-pink line of daylight showed above the sea. Emma didn’t move to turn on the light.
“We’re lucky to have friends like Angelique and Pearl, Oliver,” she said. “And Genny.”
“Yes!” He licked her face enthusiastically. “And you!”
“And you, Oliver!” She kissed his nose. “And you. Listen, corgi me lad, these next couple of days are going to be really important.”
“Don’t worry, Emma! I’ll be right there!”
She couldn’t help smiling. “I know you will. In fact”—like Constance, she couldn’t really believe she was asking this—“I’m going to need your help.”
“Yes!” Oliver jumped to his feet, which pressed hard against her chest and stomach and made Emma squeak.
“Sorry, Emma!” Oliver flopped back down, which made her go “oof!” instead. “What can I do? What?”
“Do you think, maybe, you can get Dash to show you around the house and the grounds? Maybe see if there’s anything you can find? Anything that’s out of place and maybe smells like Marcie?”
No one would think twice about a pair of dogs nosing about the grounds. Probably. Hopefully.
“Yes! Yes! Something is missing and I’ll find it!” Oliver barked and wriggled with excitement. “Only, there is one thing you should know.”
“What’s that?”
Oliver put his head down on his paws and looked up at her with his most soulful eyes, so that she would know that whatever came next was really not his fault. “If you want Dash to do something, you’re going to need to bring more roast beef.”
Murder Always Barks Twice Page 20
