A Scandal in Scarlet

by Vicki Delany

  “That’s enough, Brad,” Dan said.

  “Enough for now.” Brad wandered away, heading for the refreshments table.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Dan said. “My children didn’t take Kathy and my divorce well.”

  “Common enough,” I said.

  “Brad’s mother died when he was a baby, and Kathy was the only mother he knew. I wanted an amicable divorce, but … well, it didn’t go that way, and the children were forced to take sides. Elizabeth and her first husband never had any children. She had … difficulty warming to mine. Divorces can get expensive. Brad needed money to keep his band together, and I had to turn him down.”

  “You don’t have to explain to us,” Jayne said.

  As I was attempting to be subtle, I refrained from adding, “But please do.”

  Two elderly women joined our small group. “Dan,” they said stiffly. “It’s been awhile.”

  “So it has,” he replied without smiling.

  Jayne and I walked away. “Can we go now?” Jayne whispered to me. “This is all incredibly awkward.”

  “I see one person I want to talk to. Why don’t you have a chat with Crystal? She’s helping herself to a coffee at the moment and not talking to anyone.”

  “What am I going to chat to her about?”

  “Noticeably, she hasn’t so much as glanced at her father in the time we’ve been here. Find out if she’s as angry with him over the divorce as her brother is.”

  “Easy for some people,” Jayne muttered.

  I made my way through the crowd to the West London Yacht Club circle. One of Ashleigh’s favorite outfits is people-who-lunch-at-the-yacht club. This bunch took that up a notch. Dyed, sun-kissed hair, dark tans, heavy gold jewelry, blue and white jackets with epaulets, white or striped trousers, deck shoes worn without socks. That was the men. The women’s shoes were either espadrilles or designer heels.

  “Gemma. Nice to see you.” Jock O’Callaghan welcomed me to the circle with a hearty hug and a kiss on both cheeks. I was somewhat taken aback, not only by the power of his aftershave, but because I hadn’t thought we were at the hugging stage yet. “Some of you must know Gemma Doyle, from the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop.” He introduced them, and I caught a blur of names.

  Everyone nodded politely. Most of these people had been at the tea. They were an older group, all of them old-money New England.

  “Was Kathy a member of your club?” I asked.

  “For many, many years.” Jock shook his head sadly. “She’ll be sorely missed.”

  “She enjoyed sailing then?” I said.

  He laughed. “Kathy? No, she never went out on a boat if she could help it, but she loved the sailing community and was a vital part of our group.”

  “And we at the club loved her in return,” an elderly man with a blue cravat tied at his neck said. “You could always count on Kathy to pitch in when she was needed.”

  “Everyone was so dreadfully sorry that we were going to lose her at the end of the year,” a woman said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “I don’t think we need to talk about that anymore,” the older man said. “And certainly not here.”

  “It was Kathy’s husband who sailed.” Jock’s eyes moved to where Dan sat all by himself. The women who’d greeted him with no enthusiasm had moved on.

  “I’m surprised Dan had the nerve to show up here,” another one of the women said. “After the way he treated her over that woman.”

  “She, at least, had the good sense not to come,” someone else said. Everyone nodded.

  “Who are you talking about?” I asked. I had no need, I decided, to try to be subtle. This bunch were eager to dish the dirt.

  “Dan’s new wife,” said a woman with a Boston Brahmin accent and a face that might have been born with a disapproving frown. “Elizabeth Dumont.”

  “The Black Widow herself,” her friend said.

  I gave them questioning looks.

  “Edward Dumont, Elizabeth’s first husband, was a close friend of mine,” Jock said. “A good man and a great sailor.” Everyone nodded. “He died seven years ago.”

  “He was murdered seven years ago,” the man with the cravat said. “By her. Elizabeth.”

  “Blimey,” I said. An English expression I rarely use, but it would serve to remind them that I’m an outsider and might not know the details.

  “You’re not from around here, dear,” the sour-faced woman said. “So you might not have heard about it.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Why isn’t she in jail?”

  “Because it couldn’t be proved. Elizabeth had an alibi for the time, but we all know she put a hit out on him.” She went on to give me a detailed, and highly sensationalized, version of what Ryan had told me.

  “She denied it all.” Jock shook his head. “Bad business.”

  “She didn’t even offer her resignation from the club. Can you believe the nerve!” the woman said, and her friends shook their heads.

  “I was forced to have to tell her to leave,” Jock said. “It was all extremely unpleasant.”

  “We kicked her to the curb. She went to the Cape Cod Club,” the man said. “I wasn’t surprised. They’ll take anyone.”

  “Anyone with money,” Jock sniffed. As though his fees weren’t more than Fiona or Jocelyn’s annual income.

  “You can imagine our shock when we heard that Dan had left Kathy to take up with her, of all people,” the first woman said.

  Dan’s a fool. Always was, always will be. He didn’t even have the sense to know he wasn’t welcome at the WLYC any longer. He showed up, all smiles and all ready to go sailing, the day after his engagement to Elizabeth was announced.”

  “Which was the day after he told Kathy he wanted a divorce,” one of the women said.

  “Like Elizabeth before him, he had to be ordered to leave,” Jock continued. “It wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you.”

  “You managed it perfectly, Jock,” the woman said. “Anyone else would have lost their cool and embarrassed us all.”

  Thank you,” Jock said. “Now, I, for one, am ready to toast Kathy with something stronger than tea. Anyone interested?”

  The group chorused their agreement, and I slipped away. I found Jayne chatting to Tina Norman, an Emporium regular. “The newest Victoria Thompson book’s come in,” I told her.

  She grinned at me. “Can’t beat that for customer service. You know what I like better than I do.”

  “What brings you here today? Did you know Kathy Lamb?”

  “Not really. I went to school with Crystal and Brad. I dated Brad for a short time until I realized that before he and his band had even reached the big time, they were already gathering groupies.”

  “I’ll take a guess the big time never arrived.”

  “Nope. I haven’t heard from him since school, but I read about his mom’s death in the paper, so thought I’d pay my respects.” She blew out a puff of air. “I shouldn’t have bothered. He wasn’t interested in talking over the old times.”

  “I’m surprised you were in school with him. I’d have put him at a great deal older than you.”

  “He’s thirty-seven. Same as me.”

  Brad was leaning up against a wall, not talking to anyone, just looking around the room and scowling. Life on the road as a musician can be hard. So can a life of bitterness.

  “Ready to go, Jayne?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll pop into the store tomorrow for the book,” Tina said.

  People were beginning to leave, and we followed the West London Yacht Club out.

  “What did Crystal have to say?” I asked once Jayne and I were settled into the Miata and heading back to town.

  “I assumed you wanted to know what sort of relationship she had with her mother, and you sent me to talk to her, thinking that she’d get on better with me than with you.”

  I gave her a grin. “I’m impressed. You read my mind.”

  “Your influ
ence must be rubbing off. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I’d say Crystal had a good relationship with her mother and is taking her death hard. She might have been putting on an act, but I don’t think so. I asked her where she worked, and she’s a vice president at a bank in Boston.”

  “Which bank?”

  “She didn’t say. I guess I should have asked.”

  “Unlikely that matters. Her clothes are expensive, but that position should pay well. She’s unmarried.”

  “You know that because she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, right?”

  “A simple observation.”

  “What she did say that I found interesting is that she hates her stepmother.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Crystal and Brad are really angry about their parents’ divorce. Crystal hasn’t spoken to her father since he left Kathy.”

  “Did she give you any idea why they’re so angry?”

  “According to her, Elizabeth’s a home wrecker and Dan too weak and spineless to stand up to her.”

  “Always the woman’s fault,” I said.

  “Yeah. Anyway, one other thing you might find interesting.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The divorce was very bitter and got drawn out for a long time. That means expensive. Kathy spent almost everything she had on lawyers. It was only finalized about six months ago. She ended up getting a fair settlement, but Dan didn’t have all that much left to share with her. She got the house, but she couldn’t pay the taxes and upkeep on it and had to sell it. She moved into an apartment that she hated. Crystal thinks Elizabeth was paying Dan’s legal fees, egging him on to keep fighting Kathy.”

  “That would cause a lot of bitterness, all right.”

  “So, are we getting anywhere?”

  “If Elizabeth was the murder victim, I’d say we were. Crystal and Brad to start with, Dan if he regretted marrying Elizabeth, not to mention that she’s not too popular with her late husband’s friends from the yacht club. We’ve found all those people with motives, and we’re not even looking into Elizabeth. Elizabeth wasn’t murdered—Kathy was, and I don’t know that I’ve learned much that will help.”

  “What about Elizabeth? Maybe she did it. She was at the tea.”

  “Ah, yes. Elizabeth. The yacht club people call her the Black Widow.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I told Jayne what I’d learned about the death of her first husband before saying, “I’m going back to the shop. Do you want me to drop you at your place?”

  “Please.”

  I made a detour to take Jayne home. As I drove through town, I thought about the afternoon. Not only did I not have any good suspects for the murder of Kathy, I had a plethora of groups to sort out. Kathy’s family, including Dan, her former husband. Dan’s new family, meaning Elizabeth. The West London and Cape Cod Yacht Clubs. The museum. Not to mention the ubiquitous person or persons unknown.

  Chapter Twelve

  I made it back to the Emporium in time to relieve Ashleigh for her dinner break. As I helped customers, rang up purchases, gave recommendations and directions to local restaurants, tidied the shelves, and rearranged stock, I thought about what I’d learned about the death of Kathy Lamb.

  Nothing I could take to the police. I hadn’t forgotten Robyn Kirkpatrick, thrown off the board of the museum in a power play by Kathy, or Sharon Musgrave, who not only needed to keep working at the museum because she loved it, but because she needed the small income she got from doing their books. Did Sharon know Kathy wanted to fire her because her carelessness had caused the fire?

  Not for the first time, I regretted having no authority to make people let me into their houses and talk to me. I’d love to go with Ryan when he called on the suspects, and observe their reactions to his questions, but that, I knew without even asking, wouldn’t happen. Any help Ryan wanted from me had to be kept strictly unofficial.

  I’d spoken to Dan Lamb, his children, the people from the West London Yacht Club, and Robyn and Sharon from the museum. The one person I hadn’t yet talked to was Elizabeth Dumont.

  Before going any further, I’d have to do that. All I knew of Elizabeth was what I’d observed at the auction tea and what others had told me, but that was enough to indicate that she wasn’t the sort of woman who’d simply open up and tell me all I needed to know.

  I waited impatiently until the shop was empty of customers, and then I accessed the computer behind the sales counter. I called up the activities page of the Cape Cod Yacht Club. As it was July, they were busy. Tomorrow the club was holding a regatta for the under-twelves: no use to me. Classes every day for teens ages thirteen to sixteen: again, no use to me. Cocktail party and initial meeting on the veranda for members interested in planning next year’s anniversary celebrations: bingo! Should be right up Elizabeth’s alley. Dan had mentioned that she was an active organizer at the club.

  My phone pinged with an incoming text from Uncle Arthur.

  Nothing.

  Arthur was a man of few words, and that one word was enough. On the off chance someone had commissioned a theft of a Conan Doyle first edition, I’d asked him to see if there was any talk in the shadier parts of the collecting world. He had done so, and had come up empty.

  Which didn’t mean there was nothing to find, but Uncle Arthur would have done what he could, and I was satisfied.

  * * *

  Tuesday morning I brought a few extra things into work with me, so I drove rather than walked. I opened the shop at the regular time, and Ashleigh arrived promptly at one.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you again,” I said to her, “but I need to go out for a few hours this afternoon.”

  “Not a problem,” she said. Moriarty jumped onto the counter to greet her.

  “If you need any help, I can try to hurry back.”

  “I’ve got this, Gemma. We’ve got this, don’t we, big boy?” She scratched behind Moriarty’s ears. He purred.

  “There are people I can call on to help in a pinch.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “It can get busy in July in the afternoon.”

  “Busy is good, isn’t it, Moriarty?”

  He meowed his agreement.

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Don’t spare me a second thought,” Ashleigh said.

  Today she looked as though she were about to head off to ballet class, with her hair scraped back so tightly the edges of her eyes lifted. She wore a black tank top and black tights under a lacy pink skirt accented by thick wool socks and flat shoes.

  “Maybe I won’t go out after all,” I said.

  “If I need help, I have your phone number,” she reminded me. “You can help me here, can’t you, buddy?” The cat’s body shivered in delight.

  I sighed. “Okay. I guess that’ll be all right.”

  Moriarty looked at me for the first time. He smirked.

  * * *

  At three o’clock, I climbed the seventeen steps to my office. I did not plan on going to the Cape Cod Yacht Club as myself. Using the things I’d brought from home, I went to a great deal of trouble to prepare for the visit. When I came back down, the bottom step creaked under my weight, as it always does, and Ashleigh looked up.

  “You can’t go up there,” she said to me. “The second floor’s private.”

  Moriarty arched his back and hissed. Ashleigh put her hand on his back. “Sorry. He’s usually quite friendly. Can I help you find anything?”

  “Do you have From Holmes to Sherlock by Mattias Boström?” I asked.

  “Yes, we do.” She came out from behind the counter. “It’s over here.” She crossed the floor to the nonfiction section, and I followed, trying not to trip on the unaccustomed high heels. Moriarty jumped off the counter and bolted for his bed beneath the center table.

  Ashleigh put her hand on the volume in question and began to draw it out. “Are you looking for a book for yourself or for a gift? We have a good selection of—”
/>   “Don’t bother,” I said in my normal voice.

  She whirled around. “Gemma?”

  “The one and only.”

  “What the heck?”

  “I’m off to the yacht club. I’d prefer not to be recognized. Pop into the tearoom and tell Jayne I won’t make our regular meeting, please. Carry on!” I went out the back door to the parking spot in the alley where I’d left the Miata, feeling rather pleased with myself.

  As I’d told Ashleigh, I didn’t want to be recognized. It’s not as hard, I have found, as some might think to dramatically change one’s appearance. People expect to see what they expect to see. A gray-blond wig, a pair of giant sunglasses, a bit of makeup to add lines to the edges of my mouth and nose, a silk scarf around the throat to hide the lack of loosening skin, the sort of clothes I’d normally never be caught dead in, shoes with higher heels than I ever wear, to add height, and a bit of padding to my chest and hips. All that, plus an upper-crust New York accent, and we have a wealthy, widowed lady in her well-preserved fifties recently moved to West London from Manhattan and hoping to join a yacht club for the social life.

  My disguise might make me look a bit plumper than is fashionable among wealthy East Coast women, but I can’t make myself look thinner than I am, nor can I become shorter, so I had to add weight and height.

  I drove past the harbor to the Cape Cod Yacht Club. It was another beautiful day, and the sun sparkled on the Atlantic Ocean. Plenty of boats were out, their brightly colored sails and hulls brilliant against the dark water. The CCYC is newer than its rival, the West London club, so it doesn’t have quite as much prestige, but otherwise it’s on par in the quality of the sailing and sailors (excellent) and cost of membership (eye-watering). According to Uncle Arthur, it’s not quite as snooty.

  I parked in a lot crowded with expensive vehicles, plucked my Louis Vuitton clutch bag off the front seat, and walked to the front doors of the main building. My steps were slightly hesitant; I was not quite sure where I was going or whom I hoped to meet. I opened the door and almost collided with Detective Louise Estrada on her way out. My stomach turned over.