Chapter 24
I looked from Michaelson, back to Mabel Easton, and back to Michaelson, incredulous. Where had he come from and where was Sophie?
“What are you doing here?” I demanded of Michaelson first.
“I knew you wouldn’t let this go. I took Gracie home and came back to keep an eye on you. I’ve been out on the patio since you arrived.”
As incredible as that was, the presence of Mabel Easton was even more flabbergasting.
I ran to the side of the bed and shook Hinatu. He finally sat up, groggy and looking confused and disoriented.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said, his words slurring.
“I’d say you’ve been drugged,” Michaelson chimed in, shaking Mabel. “What did you give him?” he demanded.
Mabel turned away sullenly.
I grabbed a tissue and picked up the vial that had fallen to the floor from the nightstand and held it up to Michaelson. “She had this in her hand.” It was empty now, spilled on the rug in the struggle.
“Leave it where it is,” Michaelson said. “There’ll be plenty of residue to examine.”
“Let me go,” Mabel insisted, struggling to wriggle from Michaelson’s firm grasp.
“You have a few questions to answer,” Michaelson said, hauling her to her feet and planting her firmly in a chair. “Let’s start with what you are doing in this guest’s room in the middle of the night.”
“Why don’t you ask her what she’s doing here?” Mabel said, glaring at me.
“I was waiting for a killer,” I said. I could have kicked myself. Right idea, wrong family member. My thoughts had turned so quickly to children, to Joey in fact, I’d ignored the other possibility. I stared back at Mabel, struggling to get my head around this new piece of information. Mabel Easton the sweet, lonely widow. I’d presumed her married name was Easton, but now I was sure I was wrong.
“With Richard gone, and Archie gone, there was just Hinatu left, wasn’t there, Mrs. Gates? The only one of the three who went to the police who hadn’t paid for what happened to your husband.”
“They had everything in the world.” Mabel’s usually well-modulated voice had taken on a shrill edge. “Those boys had money, position, education, but it wasn’t enough. They were thieves. They took and took, and in the end they took the only thing my Bill had—his reputation. They ruined him and then just walked away without a backward glance. I couldn’t even go by my married name in the High Street. People would mock me.”
Hinatu was still shaking his head, trying to clear away the fog.
“Why didn’t you just move away?” I asked. “You could’ve started a new life somewhere together.”
“Why should we have to sneak away?” Mabel demanded. “Our life was in Oxford. Bill didn’t want to leave and I still had a job at the college as a scout. I tried to fix things. I even went to the head and begged him to issue a statement clearing Bill’s name when the police closed the file, but he just said it wasn’t necessary.” Mabel looked disgusted, her voice rising to a falsetto. “Not necessary ’cause it might make people ask more questions and try to find out who the dirty little bugger really was.” Mabel spat the words out violently. “So no, no retraction. And no, he couldn’t have his job back; he’d already been replaced. The school closed ranks like they always do when one of their own goes bad.”
It was a horrible situation, and it must have been devastating for a proud man. I could see why Mabel would want to run away in the end. “So you moved up here, as Mabel Easton,” I prompted.
“After Bill died, I left Oxford behind and I tried to forget. I never forgave, nor never would, but I tried to forget. I moved around till I finally settled here. Found a job, a home, and a family.”
Mabel slumped in the chair and stared at her hands.
“And you found out recently that those former students would be here this week?” Michaelson asked.
“I saw the names in the paper along with the nominations for the Quaich, and I couldn’t believe it. God was handing me a chance to get revenge for my poor Bill.” A light flickered briefly in her eyes. “I couldn’t ignore it. And then, sure enough, there it was in the guest book for anyone to see. I read about them one by one, hardly believing that this was really happening. All three here at the same time. They’d never come before, but now with the competition they were coming. Here to my home, bringing their nasty ways. Smug and complacent. Still boozing it up without a care in the world. And that Sir Richard Simpson, he was the worst of the lot.”
“When did you figure out Richard Simpson was the thief?” I asked.
“I had my suspicions at the beginning. Rumors were all round college that it was one of the boys. One of the untouchable ones. Richard was always in trouble but never punished. High spirits, they called it. Youthful indiscretions. I was suspicious, but I couldn’t prove it. Then I saw the entry in the guest book. That’s when I knew. He’s a thief now, and he was a thief then.”
“But Archie wasn’t,” I pointed out.
“He was just as bad,” Mabel insisted. “He could’ve spoken up, but he didn’t. He must’ve known. None of ’em ever cleaned up the messes they left behind. They were just a bunch of spoiled children, and here I am thirty years later still cleaning up after them.”
“Where did the nicotine come from?” Michaelson asked.
“They always had it at the kennels,” Mabel said. The wind seemed to have gone out of her sails and the words flooded out. It seemed almost cathartic. “Joey uses a tiny bit with the dogs to get rid of worms. He treated my Sally once. I knew it was there, and I’d seen the news on the telly ’bout the boy who killed his father and it seemed so simple. I stole what I needed from the kennels and mixed it with some of that flavored garbage people like these days. One of the guests had bought some in town, and I swiped the half-empty bottle. It was perfect.”
“How did you know how much to use?” I asked, sure that the newspaper hadn’t been that specific in reporting the story of the boy who poisoned his father.
“I had no idea.” Mabel laughed mirthlessly. “I just relied on them both being weak and greedy. Sir Richard drank like a fish, and that MacInnes ate anything that wasn’t nailed down. We had to restock the mini-fridge every night. I knew he’d never be able to leave those truffles alone. Both in poor shape, I just threw in a large helping and prayed that they’d be gone and my Bill would finally rest in peace.”
“What about Trevor?” Michaelson asked.
Mabel shrugged. “You were already hot on his trail, so I ditched the bottle of flavoring in his room to help you along. Mostly, I just wanted to stop you from looking at Sophie. She’s a good girl. I didn’t want her to get into any trouble.”
“And me?” I asked.
“You were clever and you were nosing around too much. You needed to go away. I didn’t mean to do you any real harm, and certainly not Mr. MacEwen.”
“Is that why you were trying to poison Liam, too? To get me to go away?”
Mabel looked genuinely shocked. “I never did. I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“So humans are no problem, but you draw a line at the dog,” Michaelson said in disgust. He shook his head and began to read Mabel her rights before placing her in handcuffs. She fell silent at that point and seemed to shrink in stature. The end had finally come.
Chapter 25
Later that morning I sat with Hinatu and Patrick, enjoying a well-earned breakfast feast. Once at the station, Michaelson managed to get Mabel to confess that she’d added a heavy-duty sleeping pill to Hinatu’s nightly vitamin regime. He’d downed it without noticing, which explained the deep sleep, but he was awake now and none the worse for wear. He was tucking in to a plate of smoked salmon and rice with gusto.
The sun had finally made an appearance and the icy slush was melting off the lawn that stretched out in f
ront of the windows of the dining room, revealing patches of green. On the horizon, a delicate dusting of snow still lingered like powdered sugar on the hills, glistening in the morning light.
“What I don’t get,” Patrick said through a mouthful of toast and bacon, “is how you landed on the Gates story at the last minute after chasing Keenan around for so long.”
“Working with Michaelson was enlightening,” I said out loud. “He’s all evidence, and I tend to be much more reliant on instinct. We tracked down a lot of hard evidence and interpreted it as best we could, but we didn’t always get it right. There’s art to the process of investigation, not just science.”
“Like making whisky,” Hinatu said.
“Indeed, and in the end I actually credit the whisky for the inspiration,” I said. “Everyone was toasting my success at putting Keenan in jail. But something still didn’t feel right to me. I was overtired and overanxious, and I couldn’t figure out what was off—so I just kept on drinking. At some point all the things I thought I knew and all the things I kind of knew started swirling around in my head like a tornado and I got lucky that the pieces fell into place. But I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t told me the story of the wrong man, Hinatu.”
“You’re usually so good at assessing people,” Patrick lamented, “and yet even when you latched onto the right motive, you were still looking at Joey and Sophie.”
“I’m good with people, but I’m not flawless.” I sliced off another piece of sausage and handed it down to Liam. “I’d spent so much of the evening thinking about Michaelson and his daughter that I guess kids were at the forefront of my mind. When I looked up the obituary and saw William Joseph Gates, and it mentioned family, my mind led me straight to Joey. He was the right age, and his father had died when he was young. It made sense that he might be named after his dad, plus he had the nicotine hidden in his office. It was circumstantial and I leapt in too fast. Michaelson’s influence perhaps, or maybe you’re right and my instincts are failing me.”
“I wouldn’t say they failed you,” Hinatu interjected. “Intuition is a valuable tool. It has always served me well in business. But killers are complex human beings—not one-dimensional. Good is easier to sense, but there are many shades of bad.”
“I suppose,” I conceded.
“You sensed the good in Joey and in Sophie, and had your doubts about Bruce—I could tell when I spoke to you that night before dinner. You missed on Mabel Easton because she was a good person at heart. If someone who kills is simply seeking justice, I think it would be much harder to recognize the bad intent.”
I had to smile. “Thank you, Hinatu. You are always so gracious. And for what it’s worth, Patrick, Liam didn’t raise any flags about Mabel.”
“I never would’ve guessed Mabel Easton,” Patrick admitted.
“It made sense in hindsight,” I said. “After all, no one would think to question the head of housekeeping going in and out of a guest’s room—any room, in fact. Moreover, she had easy access to the brass keys for all the rooms. Michaelson thinks he’ll find the missing keys in her room. We knew she went to Sir Richard’s room when Sophie was there to inspect her work. I suspect she was making sure there was some whisky left. Later she came back with the brass key and left the tainted glass by the bedside, poisoned the remaining whisky, and removed the other glasses.”
“And the chocolates?”
“Same thing. She must have used the brass key to enter Archie’s room and poison the chocolates. I have to say she was good at thinking on her feet. She overheard the argument between Archie and Trevor over the shares. She told me she couldn’t hear anything through the door, but when Grant and I were in Hugh’s room we could hear you two talking in the hall before you entered. She had to have been lying about not hearing. As you said, Trev was loud at the best of times. She realized that Trevor would take the heat for killing both his brother and Archie if she played her cards right.”
“So she left the empty bottle of flavored vaping liquid under Trevor’s bed to ensure the police continued to focus their attention on him?” Patrick asked.
I nodded. “I’m guessing she came in while Ethel was making up the room. One of her snap inspections. Ethel went to make the bed, and even she couldn’t miss it.”
“And the toothpaste?”
“Mabel had been very solicitous to me. She must also have come to realize how much I was involved with the investigation. She tainted the toothpaste in hopes that it would make one or both of us ill and send us packing.”
“And we were too busy following Hugh Ashworth-Jones around to notice.”
“Right. I don’t think she intended to do us any real harm, and she certainly wasn’t planning to injure Grant.”
“When did you realize that Richard had been our thief at school?” Hinatu asked.
“As soon as you told the story. Richard was still a kleptomaniac. It was noted in the guest book. On top of that, you mentioned at one point that you and Richard had a falling-out in your final year. I knew his cavalier behavior and his lack of honor would be deeply disturbing to you. His unwillingness to put his own reputation at risk to save someone else.”
“The staff is disposable,” Hinatu said sadly. “I should have spoken up, but I was an outsider then, just as I am now. I had one year left to complete at Oxford and I didn’t want to put that at risk. I, too, was selfish.”
Patrick slipped a piece of bacon under the table to Liam. “You really have a knack for detection, you know.”
“Not at all,” I insisted. “I nearly blew it completely. There were so many other clues I could’ve seen if I’d been focused. Liam kept getting ill. I blamed Joey, thinking it was something he ate while he was out running with the pack.”
“What was it?”
“Mabel always had a supply of dog bones in her pocket for the canine guests. She hadn’t thought that it was the same pocket she’d used to keep the bottle of liquid nicotine in. The residue in her pocket got onto the biscuits. Fortunately not a lot, but enough to make Liam sick to his stomach every time he ate one.”
“Poor old boy.” Patrick leaned down and scratched his ears.
Liam was thrilled to be back on an all-sausage-and-bacon diet. He’d had a grand time at the Lodge. He’d made friends and enjoyed the facilities. More than the rest of us, but the time had come to go home.
* * *
—
I was struggling to pack everything back into the bags we’d brought with us. Our piles of stuff seemed to have grown during our occupation. Trevor had sent up a bottle of Islay for Liam. It was his way of thanking us for what we’d done to clear his name, and congratulatory flowers and chocolates kept coming. A knock at the door heralded the arrival of Sophie. She stood in the hall with another huge bouquet of flowers.
She stepped in and hugged me spontaneously. “These are from Joey and me—me especially. I wanted to apologize for being so rude yesterday. I should’ve known you wouldn’t let us down. Thank you so much for helping to clear up this mess.”
“I take it Joey’s back at home,” I said with a smile.
“He is. And we’re going to announce our engagement as soon as he comes back to work. No more hiding, no more sneaking around.”
“That’s wonderful. How is everyone taking the news about Mrs. Easton?”
“About like you’d expect,” Sophie said. “They’re shocked. I certainly never would’ve thought it. Not in a million years. She’s been like a second mother to all of us. The Lodge meant the world to her. She was such a stickler for proper behavior. I just can’t believe she could do something like this.”
I thought of my own assessment of Mabel. Precise, proper, and fastidious. She liked order in her world. Richard Simpson and his lies had disturbed the equilibrium of her life. Robbed her of her husband and called his good name into question. It must have eaten
away at her all those years. To see them suddenly here where she could reach out and touch them must have been more than she could stand.
Killing them would have ensured that they got what was coming to them and restored balance to her world. In her mind, I’m sure it was a suitable punishment for their crimes.
Sophie bent down and gave Liam a scratch. “We’re going to miss you, boy,” she said softly.
“He’s going to miss all of you, too. Tell Joey we’ll come out for a visit soon,” I said. “Who knows? Maybe I can sign Liam up for an obedience class.”
At that Liam leapt gracefully into the middle of the queen-sized bed and looked back at me with disdain.
Sophie laughed. “Good luck with that.”
* * *
—
In the end I arrived at the hospital much later than I’d intended. Michaelson had insisted that I stop by the precinct in Stirling to file my official statement in writing, and the paperwork took forever. Afterward I made a quick stop at Oliver Blaire’s store to thank him for all of his help.
Now I was running up the stairs to the critical care ward. I may have been slow to realize who the killer was, but I’d quickly figured out just how much I cared about Grant the moment he was taken away in that ambulance. Suddenly all my excuses for not becoming involved seemed ridiculous. It was nothing more than my own vanity and stubbornness getting in the way of my happiness. Today that was going to change.
Louisa had called to say that Grant was no longer in a coma. The swelling was down significantly and he was sleeping peacefully. I suddenly felt as if I could breathe freely again. I had to go to him. He might still be asleep, but I needed to be near him for a while. To watch over him and reassure myself that all would be well.
I reached the door to his room and pushed it open gently. He was still asleep, his arm wrapped around the sleeping form of Brenna. Her shoes were on the floor beneath the bed and she lay with one leg draped over Grant’s, her hand resting on his heart, rising and falling in time with his breath. I stood there for a moment, feeling as if I’d just been sucker punched.
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