“There’s a case to be made for charging her with Sharon’s—a public threat, no alibi, and a motive, if not as strong as one as we’d like, control of the Charlotte document. Jessica’s not helping herself refusing to give details of it. What else is she hiding, eh?” He bit off a piece of the sandwich half and chewed meticulously.
“Good question. She’s still saying she bought the document in London?”
“Oh aye. There’s only us that heard her playing silly beggars with it, and blaming absent-minded Wesley, come to that. All she’s saying is that it’s being authenticated in D.C. Stephanie . . .” He stopped, perhaps considering whether it would be safer to say “Detective Venegas,” then giving up that thought as unworthy. “She’s making inquiries at the National Archives and the Smithsonian. Time’s closing in on her, Jessica needs to be charged or released soon as may be.”
“Tell Stephanie to try the Folger Library.”
He looked up, meeting Jean’s eyes for the first time since he walked into the house. “Who?”
She met his eyes back again, as cautiously as touching her tongue to a frozen flagpole, and detailed her conversation with Louise. “The Folger Library in D.C. specializes in Shakespeare. If Charlotte said something about Macbeth, they’d be interested. And they’re quite capable of dealing with paper, ink, handwriting—all the literary forensic stuff.”
“Well done, Jean,” he said gravely. Lowering his gaze, he ate the rest of the sandwich half and picked up the steaming cup of tea.
“Maybe. Here’s your list of phone numbers.” She reached into her bag and shoved the wee bittie paper across the table. “Matt had it. He saw us with the Dingwalls Friday night and thought we were working with them, so he followed us here. And then he checked us out.”
Alasdair shot a glance in the direction of the college that would have pulverized the stones of Matt’s building. When he looked back at Jean his eyes were no longer frosted.
She intercepted his question, running through Matt’s testimony and concluding, “He’s very frustrated, both personally and academically. Whether that’s enough to make him a killer on top of a sneak—and whether he’s enough of a sneak that he actually wants to pin the murders on Jessica . . . I don’t know. I’ve been fooled before.”
“No matter. You’ll not be seeing him on your own again.”
She chose to interpret that statement as professional concern, not personal possessiveness. “I don’t intend to. Just one thing—I’m not sure Matt was with Rachel last night after all.”
“Rachel’s claiming to know next to nothing about her mum and Sharon. And I’m not thinking she does. We didn’t know to ask her about her dad.” Alasdair’s forehead crimped. “Dylan now, she knows a thing or two about Dylan. But she’s not saying. No more than either Kelly or Quentin’s saying anything about the theft from Blair. Mind you, Kelly admitted last night she’d had words with Sharon at the hotel, and Quentin confirmed it. Now Olson’s turned up a housekeeper who heard the women screaming insults at each other, and found a broken glass in Sharon’s room as well.”
“It was more than Kelly’s ‘mild disagreement,’ then,” Jean said. “I wondered if Kelly had a motive to kill Sharon.”
“She’s claiming not to know about the insurance policy Tim had on his wife. If Tim’s as desperate for money as Quentin was saying, well then.”
“Well then,” repeated Jean. Oh yes, money was a time-honored motive if ever there was one. “And there’s something else. You remember that Hugh was on the plane with Kelly? He says she said they had a Witch Box for their movie, they’d hired actors to re-enact scenes with it and everything. Maybe they anticipated getting Blair’s replica. Or maybe they asked Wesley to make them one, but either he refused to cooperate or Jessica asked him not to.”
“Hmmm. Good thought, that.” Alasdair drained his cup. “Hugh’s speaking to Stephanie, is he?”
“Oh yes.” Jean freshened her own cup of tea. Here they were, a team, just like old times. You could be a team without personal feelings for your teammates. “What else has Stephanie—have you and Stephanie—found out since last night?”
He didn’t object to her teaming him with Stephanie. Why would he? “The chair spindle was taken from a stack outside the cabinetmaker’s shop. Unless a visitor, a child, perhaps, pinched it and left it beside the tree, its use argues pre-meditation. Just as you were saying last night.”
Thank you. “And that points to someone who knew where Sharon was going to be. Someone with no alibi. Jessica, Tim, Kelly. Matt.” She hurried on. “Are there fingerprints on the wood?”
“A few smudged ones, likely belonging to the craftsmen. The killer might have worn gloves. The problem with fingerprints—or the hair caught in Sharon’s mobile, come to that—is having a sample for comparison.”
“There was a hair caught in her cell phone? She might have struck at the murderer with it.” Jean imagined the scene, then drew a curtain over it.
“They’re testing to see if it’s Jessica’s or Sharon’s own, but that’s taking time and might could end proving nothing. And Tim’s saying he knows nothing about burgling Wes’s flat. So far we’ve got no evidence to make a case against him, not ’til we turn up Dylan and the carrier bag.”
“Well, yeah, but when it comes to the murder cases, you’ve got the evidence of Tim’s temper as well as the insurance policy.”
The faintest trace of wry amusement loosened a corner of Alasdair’s mouth. “You mind what Quentin was saying, Tim punching the wall when Sharon would not do something? Well, he’s now allowing that what Sharon would not do is stop hitting him. She was the violent one, he’s saying.”
“Oh my.” There was another image, more sad than comical. Jean remembered Tim’s shamefaced glance at Sharon when Kelly’s phone calls kept interrupting the interview. “There’s a bit of reverse sexism on Jessica’s part, calling Tim a brute and a savage. Or size-ism, perhaps.”
Alasdair pushed back from the table and collected the folder. “When you’re considering domestic abuse, size doesn’t matter.”
Jean’s mind didn’t send up any cheap jokes, only an image of Sharon’s body gutted like her chicken sandwich on a cold, sterile, metal table.
“Come along, lass, let’s be getting ourselves to the scene of the crime. The first crime.”
She grabbed her bag and made it to the door as he opened it. He held it for her as politely and as impersonally as he’d help an old lady across the street. Despite the affectionate “lass” he’d let slip, she didn’t want to talk about it right now, either. “You want me to drive?”
“I’m the one’s been shown where we’re going.”
By Stephanie, in the office, with a map, Jean thought.
As she walked out the door she saw from the corner of her eye that the Bellarmine bottle was now sitting on the other end of mantel. And neither of them had noticed it move.
Chapter Twenty-three
Driving on the right turned out to be another of Alasdair’s unsuspected skills. Without turning a hair, blond or gray, he pulled out of the Inn parking lot onto South England Street and zigzagged southeast.
Jean seized the opportunity to tell him about Robert Mason’s gravestone and her encounter with Barbara Finch—he raised his left eyebrow—and Mary’s daughter Thomasina who was surely the household ghost—he raised his right eyebrow—and how their destination had once been Duckwitch Pond, named after the unfortunate moment in 1685 when Mary Napier was accused of following the family tradition.
“Why Dunwich, then?” He parked the car in the parking lot of a well-tended but elderly apartment complex, probably not a pit stop on Williamsburg’s singles circuit. A sign out front read, “Dunwich Grove. 756 Columbia Road.”
“It’s a respectable name from the old country canceling out the embarrassing memories. And there’s a great legend about Dunwich, England. The town was swallowed by the sea and you can still hear drowned church bells.” She didn’t add anything about the number of
bells she’d been hearing recently, drowned, stabbed, or belfried.
“Right.” Alasdair climbed out of the car.
Opening her own door, Jean got to her feet and looked toward the building, a double tier of doors, windows, and either patios or balconies ranged in front of what looked like forest primeval but was more likely abandoned farmland reclaimed by trees and brush.
“Hagedorn’s flat was round the back, ground floor, overlooking the trees. Easy enough for the thief to cut through a window screen and force open the casement. Here’s the list of objects stolen, and the ones dredged from the pond this morning. It’s just this way.” Alasdair handed over the folder, then started off along a path curving around the end of the building. His feet swished through the fallen leaves, his eyes focused not ahead but casting a chilly look at the inoffensive windows of the apartments. “No one saw anyone walking down by the pond with Wesley the afternoon he died, more’s the pity.”
Jean shuffled along, trying to manipulate folder and lists without tripping over any rough places on the path. Rays of sun broke through the clouds, vanished, broke through again, brightening and then dimming the fall colors. Sun or no sun, the wind was cold, and colder still in the shadow of the trees. The traffic noise faded away, replaced by the rustle of leaves and twigs, the harsh cry of birds, and Alasdair’s steady footfall.
“Did Stephanie’s crew search Wesley’s flat? What about the Dingwalls’ hotel rooms?”
“Aye to the former—the man was uncommonly tidy, she’s saying, everything organized just so, making the burglars’ work easy. For the Dingwalls’ rooms, now, she was obliged to get a warrant, and than meant howking out a judge late on a Saturday night.”
“Giving Tim and everyone time to get rid of anything incriminating.”
“They’re being watched, no worries there.”
Who, me? Worry? Jean looked down at the lists. “They found a chisel in the pond. The murder weapon, right? Well, along with the weight of the murderer’s own body.”
“Oh aye, it matches the mark on Hagedorn’s neck a treat. Any fingerprints are all a blur, like on the spindle. The technicians are doing their best, but . . .”
“Forensics only goes so far.” Jean raised the papers again. “Aha, the list of things dredged from the pond matches the list of things stolen. A silver pitcher and platter, a commemorative gold coin, a silver picture frame, a turquoise tie clasp—you were right, the thief stole some valuables to cover up what he really wanted.”
The path ran out of the dank, still shadow of the trees and she stopped dead. Duckwitch or Dunwich Pond lay before them, its pewter-colored surface pierced around the rim by tall reeds. Wind sighed in the branches overhead, the water rippled, and the reeds bowed and straightened. Here, too, Jean wouldn’t have been surprised to glimpse the faces of green men, perhaps not malicious, but certainly not indifferent.
To one side lay a row of bricks overgrown by what could just as well have been poison ivy as honeysuckle, all that remained of one of Middle Plantation’s seventeenth-century farmsteads. Most of the farm buildings had been built of wood or wattle and were long gone, along with the fields its owners and their workers had cleared with sweat, blood, and tears, all reclaimed by nature.
A gleam of sunlight burnished the slow swell of water, then faded. Leaves glided down onto it but didn’t break the surface tension. Jean imagined the tower of Bruton Parish Church sunk below that surface. She imagined Tolkien’s Watcher in the Water reaching through it to snake a tentacle around her ankle. Or Alasdair’s ankle, since he stood closer to the edge of the pond, where the bare dirt of the path ran down to a muddy bank.
“Is this where Mary Napier’s tormentors launched their boat? Where they tied her up, hand to foot, put a rope around her waist, and threw her in?” Her own voice seemed unusually loud.
“If she sinks, then she’s innocent, but good luck not drowning. If she floats, she’s guilty. Mary floated, did she?”
“Oh yes. So she went to trial. Jessica’s script to the contrary, despite her confession Mary was whipped and pilloried, but that’s too graphic for the tourists, I guess. The true story’s in the book. Having paid her debt to society, such as it was, Mary survived until 1729—that was the year her will was probated. She had a bit of property to leave Thomasina, some linens, household items. The little house—our little house—belonged to the governor.”
“No mention of the charm stone, then.”
“Not in that version of the book, no. I can see why Jessica wants to include it in a new one.” Another beam of light bathed the surface of the pond, and for a minute the reds and yellows of the surrounding trees reflected as though in a mirror. “I wonder if this place would seem so melancholy if we didn’t know what happened here, to Mary and to Wes both.”
“Right.” Alasdair was inspecting the squashed reeds and rectangular marks in the mud that indicated a temporary plank boardwalk, all encircled by yellow police tape. Of course Stephanie’s people were much too skilled to turn a crime scene into a hippopotamus wallow. Taking a wary step closer, Jean made out footprints overlaid indecipherably by more footprints, smears, blotches, and scrapes, and deep parallel gouges perhaps caused by Wesley’s feet in their death throes.
Quelling her imagination, she looked back at the lists, comparing the things stolen to the things found—the pitcher, the coin . . . “Wait a minute. Some polished agates and small pieces of silver plate were stolen, too, but they didn’t turn up with the other valuables. Even if some of them were too small to be caught in the net, you’d expect to find a few.”
“Significant, are you thinking?” Alasdair strolled fifty yards or so back toward the eave of the grove and eyed the wide, knee-high stump of a tree and some tumbled chunks of wood.
“Hell, yes. Wesley was going to replicate the charm stone, too, maybe send it to Blair, maybe use it on the Dingwall replica, the one for their movie. Assuming there really was going to be a second replica.” She frowned, trying to visualize the photos she’d glimpsed so briefly on the tabletop before Sharon swept them back into her bag. Whether the photo was of the original or the replica Witch Box didn’t matter. Sharon or Tim had circled the slot for the charm stone in red ink.
The pond mirrored the trees, and the sky, and several black birds flying overhead. Assuming the charm stone still existed, Jean thought, and assuming it existed somewhere it could be found by someone who knew what it was—two big assumptions, there, but ones the Dingwalls had obviously made—then its silver setting wouldn’t reflect anything. It would be blackened with tarnish. As for the stone itself, was it an agate or an emerald or something else green? Even the word “green” itself covered a lot of territory, from olive drab to lime.
“I bet Robert Mason showed Thomasina off to Charlotte, for a curtsey and a nod of noblesse oblige, although if I were Charlotte, I’d have asked questions. What if the Dingwalls think Thomasina gave the stone back to Charlotte, and she took it home and tucked it away with the note? Or with the Witch Box, for that matter? Like Jessica said, Charlotte didn’t think it was anything more than a family curiosity, like great-grandpa’s moustache cup or the equivalent.”
“Who’s to say Charlotte didn’t have it, oh aye.” Alasdair crouched over the stump, ran his fingers across its truncated top, then bent sideways to sight across it.
“Sharon knew about Wes bringing home that document, and I bet she knew it was from Blair, not a London street market. What if she and Tim thought he’d found the actual charm stone, too? They’d be frantic to get their hands on it.”
Alasdair picked up something from the ground and rolled it between his fingers. “That’s not so much of a leap as some of theirs, when they’re holding Olympic long-jump records.”
Jean sent a smile toward him, but he didn’t notice. She said, “Sam Gould and the other man at the cabinetmaker’s shop said Wes was looking over his shoulder. Worried. Jessica said he was getting threatening calls. I bet the Dingwalls were nagging him to make the replic
a, hand over the stone, cooperate somehow.”
“No matter him telling them he didn’t have the stone, they’d not credit anything they didn’t want to hear.” Alasdair stood up and glanced around, eyes bright as the sky overhead and the sky, reflected, at Jean’s feet. “When he would not cooperate, they burgled his flat for the plans and all, thinking of finding themselves another craftsman. But Kelly had other ideas.”
“They kept the agates and silver pieces—probably not thirty pieces, like Judas—and tried them on Robert Mason’s headstone, but nothing happened. So then they finally believed Wes didn’t have the stone and they started poking around with that probe of theirs. The question is, did one of them kill Wes out of spite? For revenge? Or did they think he was holding out on them? Were they trying to question him here, and the situation got out of hand?”
Alasdair indicated the muddy area next to the pond. “The forensic boffins are having a right headache working through that lot. Looks to be the killer tried obliterating his own prints.”
“No surprise there. But what if the killer’s a her? Sharon?
“We’ve got no evidence against Sharon,” Alasdair said.
“Well no, just that she could get violent.” Jean looked across the pond, around the encircling trees, at the forlorn brick wall. All were witnesses to the crime, and none of them could testify. No help there.
Think, she ordered her brain, even though it already felt like a punching bag. “Maybe what the housekeeper overheard was Sharon giving Kelly a piece of her mind for calling just when she did, so I got a look at the photos and heard the bits about playing the patsy and working on the cipher. And Sharon couldn’t have been happy that Kelly was pushing the movie prematurely. She did slander and scandalize, like Jessica said. She was a scold. Not that she deserved . . .” Jean let the sentence float away like yet another leaf wafting down on the pond.
Alasdair picked up a flat piece of wood leaning against the stump. “They ducked scolds as well. There’s still the odd ducking stool in village museums in the U.K.”
Charm Stone Page 25
