Black Moonlight

by Amy Patricia Meade

  His primary suspect safely behind bars, Sergeant Jackson returned with Marjorie and Inspector Nettles to Black Island. Weary from the day’s events, they passed the boat ride in silence. The silence was broken by the constable, who met them at the Black Island dock.

  “Sergeant. Inspector,” the tall, thin constable saluted. “The boys from the morgue are gone. Took the bodies with them. And the lads doing the grounds search have left for the day.”

  “They find anything?” Jackson inquired.

  “A necklace, sir, in the stables. They believe it belonged to the dead woman. Constable Worth can show it to you. He’s up at the maid’s cottage.”

  “Is she awake?”

  “Yes, sir. Worth’s been keeping guard at the cottage until you or Inspector Nettles could question her.”

  “Good work, Smith,” the Sergeant addressed the constable before making his way up the cliff-side staircase.

  With a tip of his hat, Inspector Nettles followed the Sergeant up the stairs and across the grounds to the front door of the cottage. Marjorie, uncertain as to whether or not she was welcome during this round of questioning, followed closely behind the men.

  “Sergeant Jackson,” Worth welcomed. “Inspector Nettles.”

  “Constable Worth,” Jackson greeted in return. “Constable Smith said you have something for me.”

  “I do,” Worth confirmed as he pulled a cloth-wrapped packet from the pocket of his uniform and passed it to Jackson.

  Marjorie and Nettles each peered over a shoulder as the Sergeant unfolded the handkerchief to reveal a green teardrop necklace. “This was found in the stable?”

  “Yes, in the stall behind the body,” Worth clarified. “We believe it belonged to the dead woman and was knocked loose by either the blow to her head or the fall afterwards.”

  Jackson nodded and carefully turned the pendant over. In the golden rays of the low-hanging sun, the trio could distinguish a series of symbols engraved upon its back. “What’s this? Hieroglyphics?”

  “No,” Nettles dismissed. “It’s something else.”

  “It’s Cyrillic,” Marjorie identified. Seeing the vacant expression on Jackson’s face, she then paraphrased, “Russian. Judging from the light color of the jade, I’d guess that it’s also Russian, most likely from the Lake Baikal region.”

  Simultaneously, the three men turned their attention from the necklace to Marjorie.

  “The heroine in my novel, Slaughter in Samara, wore a ring made of the stuff. It was a great story, but since Samara isn’t Samara any longer, my publisher pulled it from the shelves. Shame, really. I consider it one of my best.”

  “Miss McClell—er, Mrs. Ashcroft!” There was a sharp edge to Jackson’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “You mean what am I doing, aside from sharing my depth and breadth of seemingly useless information which has, so far, saved you and your men countless hours that might have been spent analyzing crime scene evidence? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  Jackson quietly passed the necklace back to Worth and, with an exaggerated smile and a wide sweep of his arms, motioned toward the door. “After you.”

  Marjorie curtsied slightly and proceeded through the cottage door.

  As Marjorie sashayed past him, Jackson lifted his leg to kick her in the rear, but, thinking better of it, stepped over the threshold instead.

  “Hello?” Marjorie called into the dimly lit dwelling.

  “Mrs. Marjorie?” a weak voice answered.

  She followed the sound to a small back bedroom. There, they found Selina, lying in a single bed, her head propped against two cotton-encased pillows.

  “Hi, Selina,” Marjorie greeted. “How are you feeling?”

  Selina reached for the younger woman’s hand. “I’m all right, child. I’m just sorry to have put everyone to so much trouble. I remember screaming and Mr. Creighton trying to calm me. He gave me brandy. Lord, now I know why I stick to rum. It’s suppertime and I’ve only just woken up.” She shook her head. “And all you poor people fussing over me.”

  “We liked fussing over you for a change. And you weren’t any trouble. You were shocked and scared,” Marjorie said softly. “Anyone would have been, given what you had seen.”

  “I went to the dining room that morning to clean up the dishes from the night before. I didn’t pay much attention to anything else around me. When I had finished with the dishes, I swept up the broken glass and came back with a mop to clean up the wine. That’s when I saw the blood,” Selina recounted. “Lots of blood. I should have left the lid closed … I should have …” She covered her eyes as if doing so would block the memory of her gruesome discovery.

  “Don’t think of it,” Marjorie instructed as she clutched Selina’s hand with both of hers. “Put it out of your mind now.”

  Selina closed her eyes and grasped Marjorie’s hands tightly. “I will, child. You’re a good soul. No wonder Mr. Creighton loves you.” She opened her eyes and scanned the faces of the two men in the room. “Where is he? Where is Mr. Creighton?”

  “Sergeant Jackson here has him locked up under suspicion of murder,” Marjorie punctuated the statement with a dirty look in the sergeant’s direction.

  “Why? Because he was so angry? That boy and his father …” Selina shook her head ruefully. “Now that Mr. Ashcroft is gone, I need to talk to you about that, child. All the pain in Mr. Creighton’s heart, it’s all over nothing.”

  “Well, we can talk later,” Marjorie assured. “But right now Sergeant Jackson and Inspector Nettles need to speak with you.”

  “All right Mrs. Marjorie, I’ll talk to them, so long as I can talk to you in private later. Because you need to tell Mr. Creighton that not everything he thinks about his father is true.”

  “It isn’t, eh?” Jackson goaded. “I suppose that’s why you were so in love with the man.”

  “I was in love with Richard … Mr. Ashcroft, yes,” Selina admitted. “But that was years ago. Before he pushed love aside in the name of making more money.”

  “Pushed love aside? Mr. Ashcroft just remarried, didn’t he?”

  “Oh,” Selina waved the notion aside in annoyance. “He didn’t marry her for love. He married her for the same reason a man buys a pair of diamond cuff links. To prove that he can.”

  “Sounds to me like you were jealous of the new Mrs. Ashcroft,” Jackson surmised.

  “When I first heard of his marriage to Mrs. Griselda, I must admit my heart did sink. It’s nice, after a love affair, to believe that your beloved could never find another soul to replace you. I lived under that belief for eighteen years,” Selina frowned. “But when Mr. Ashcroft arrived here in April, and he announced his upcoming marriage, I was not sad. I was not jealous. He was no longer the same person I fell in love with years ago; he had changed. And so, I suppose, had I.”

  “Oh?” Jackson prompted Selina to continue.

  “I had raised a child on my own. Of course, Mr. Ashcroft paid me my wages and gave me a stipend for George’s clothes and shoes, but I handled the day-to-day living: the illnesses, the bullies, the schoolyard fights, the homework, the chores. And there were the small celebrations too: the good report cards, the first school dance, and now, his graduation.” Selina smiled proudly. “Nothing takes away your romantic notions faster than raising a child alone, but nothing else makes you realize that, apart from giving you a beautiful boy, perhaps you didn’t need that man around in the first place.”

  “You may not have needed that man around,” Jackson prefaced, “but you needed his money, didn’t you? You needed his money to send that ‘beautiful boy’ to university.”

  “I didn’t need the money,” Selina said defiantly. “I would have found a way to get it … eventually. But I didn’t want George to wait. All his friends were making plans, moving forward with their lives. Why shouldn’t he? Those children are no better than my son.”

  “So you asked Mr. Ashcroft for the money,” Nettles put forth.

  �
��Yes. He was always proud of his boys’ education. He had sent both Mr. Creighton and Mr. Edward to some of the finest schools in England and the United States. Expensive schools. So, I didn’t think that paying for George to go to university—a less-expensive, colored university—would have bothered him so much.”

  “But it did,” Marjorie stated.

  “Yes, it did. He was outraged. He felt that he had already done enough for me and a son he … he … never wanted. He said that sending a bastard to university didn’t make him any less of a bastard,” Selina broke down.

  Jackson offered her a handkerchief from inside his jacket.

  Selina took the handkerchief and blew her nose loudly. After a few seconds she continued her story. “I went mad, I think, when he said that. I became possessed. I started hitting him, pounding him on the chest. I swore I would tell everyone that he was George’s father.”

  “How did he react?” Marjorie asked.

  “He smiled. Not a nice smile, but the smile someone makes when they are up to something. Then he took me by the wrists, pushed me away, and left the room.”

  “And when did this occur?” Nettles questioned as he jotted notes into his notebook.

  “Day before yesterday. George had picked them up in Hamilton that morning and, during the boat ride over, Mr. Ashcroft offered him a permanent job here on the island. While Mrs. Ashcroft unpacked their things and got settled in, Mr. Ashcroft came to see me here at the cottage. He wanted to tell me about the generous offer he had made,” Selina gave a wry laugh.

  “Did you speak of the incident again?” Jackson inquired.

  “No, not until last night, at dinner, when Mr. Ashcroft made his announcement. Despite my threats, he knew I wouldn’t have told anyone. I’ve spent the past eighteen years keeping that secret, telling everyone that I married a boat captain and that George was a product of our wedding night. I’ve spent the past eighteen years lying to my boy, because I didn’t want to disgrace him. Mr. Ashcroft knew that and he used it to punish me.”

  “How did you feel?”

  “I was furious,” Selina answered frostily. “To tell it to the family that way was bad enough, but for George to find out like that—in front of everyone—Richard may as well have stabbed me in the heart.”

  “And so you wanted to stab him in his heart,” Jackson proposed. “Or perhaps just grab the closest heavy object and hit him over the head.”

  “I did not!” Selina sat upright. “I swear to God I did not kill that man.”

  “No? But you wanted to,” Jackson provoked.

  “Yes, I wanted to,” Selina admitted. “Wouldn’t you? George is all I’ve ever had. I put my whole life into that boy and with a few words he had taken it all away.”

  “So you killed him,” Jackson hypothesized. “You were filled with rage—not yourself. You stuffed him into the trunk before someone saw him there and then went to bed for the night. When you awoke you wondered if it had all been a dream; a terrible dream. But then you walked into the dining room and saw the blood. You screamed with the realization that it was all true. You had murdered Mr. Ashcroft. You had stuffed his body into the—”

  “Sergeant Jackson,” Marjorie interrupted as she jumped from the edge of the bed and onto her feet. “I will not listen to you berate this woman any longer.”

  “It’s alright, child.” Selina patted Marjorie’s hand and urged her to sit down. “A braver woman might have taken the course of action you described, Sergeant Jackson. But I am not, and have never been, brave.”

  “Really?” Jackson replied skeptically. “Then where did you go after dinner?”

  With that, George’s voice came from the front door of the cottage, followed by the sound of Constable Worth trying to restrain the young man.

  “Mum!” George called. “Mother, you don’t need to say anything. I didn’t tell them.”

  Jackson gave a questioning look to Nettles, who nodded his reply.

  “Let him in, Worth,” Jackson called.

  An out of breath George appeared in the bedroom door a few moments later. “They questioned me, Mother. But I didn’t say anything.”

  Marjorie rose from her spot on the bed and gave it to George, who accepted the seat without missing a bet. “I couldn’t tell them. I wouldn’t—not until I spoke to you first.”

  Selina’s eyes welled up with tears. She leaned forward and threw her arms around her son. “Then I haven’t lost you,” she cried.

  “You could never lose me,” the young man promised. “I know why you kept my father’s identity a secret all this time. I know you were trying to protect me. That’s why I tried to protect you.”

  “This is all very touching,” Jackson said sarcastically, though with a sniffle that conveyed that he had, perhaps, been moved by the emotional scene. “But we’re conducting a murder investigation and neither of you have been very forthcoming as to your whereabouts the night Mr. Ashcroft was murdered.”

  Selina released George from her embrace and leaned back against the pillows. “As I was saying earlier, Sergeant Jackson, I am not a bold woman. A bold woman would have clawed Mr. Ashcroft to pieces that first day, when I asked him for the money. A bold woman would have, as you say, stabbed him in the heart that night at dinner. But I am not a bold woman or a brave one. I am a coward. A bold woman would have put an end to Richard’s tyranny by ending his life; I, took the coward’s path and tried to end my own.”

  Selina’s startling announcement blanketed the room in a somber silence.

  “Suicide?” Marjorie whispered, for the volume of her normal speaking voice would have seemed, somehow, too intrusive.

  “Off behind the house, to the left and off the path, there’s a trail through the forest. So narrow and overgrown it is, that if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never notice it.” Selina’s face softened as she recalled, “George was the one who created the trail. When he was a boy, he knew every last bit of this island: each tree, each rock, each little blade of grass. One day he came running to me saying he had found the most beautiful spot in the entire world. There was always work to do in those days—”

  “But you always came when I asked,” George rejoined. “No matter how foolish.”

  “I always tried,” Selina qualified. “That day I was especially glad I had. George had discovered the loveliest spot, if not in the whole world, then the whole island. It was a grassy ledge, high on a cliff, looking out at nothing but the ocean. It became ‘our spot.’ In summers, we’d take lunch or supper there. In winter, we’d go out after a heavy rain and watch the storm clouds blow out to sea. George even said he would take a bride there someday-”

  “Still planning on it,” George interjected.

  “—just the two of them, a minister—”

  “And you, of course,” George added.

  “But, most of all, it became the place we went to when things weren’t right—when we were sad or worried or angry. Last night, when Mr. Ashcroft told you the truth,” Selina looked at her son, and began to cry, “I thought you were gone. I thought you would never forgive me, that you would hate me forever.”

  George patted her hand soothingly. “I was angry, but I could never hate you. It took Mr. Edward to point that out to me, but when he did, I knew I had to find you and tell you that everything was going to be fine.” He turned to Sergeant Jackson and Inspector Nettles, “When I left the drawing room, I started heading in this direction and then I thought about our spot. And it’s a good thing I did, because my mother was … was … about to jump.”

  “That wasn’t my reason for going there,” Selina quickly clarified. “I went there to look for George. I wanted to explain why I had lied and to ask for his forgiveness. I ran through the forest as fast as I could, but when I arrived, and he wasn’t there, my heart sank. See, no matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, I always knew where to find him. For him to go elsewhere … well, I thought the worst. I wondered if he’d ever be able to forgive me. I wondered what I
would do if he were never to speak with me again. I imagined my future without him in it: never seeing him attend university, never seeing him get married, have children. A mother gets used to the idea of her son going off into the world and making a life of his own; but to never see or speak to him again … and all because of something I had done …” She shook her head. “I couldn’t bear it. So I …”

  “That’s alright, Miss Pooley,” Nettles interrupted. “You needn’t go any further.”

  “Don’t speak so quickly, Inspector,” Jackson corrected. “Why didn’t you tell us all this in the first place, George?”

  “Why didn’t I tell you that my mother thought of ending her life?” George repeated in disbelief. “Isn’t it bad enough that my name will be in tomorrow’s paper, listed as that man’s son? Do you know what all of Hamilton will be saying tomorrow? About my mother? About me? Would you want to hear those things said about someone you loved?”

  Jackson looked beyond George, into the near distance, before answering in earnest. “No, son. I would not.”

  “Then please, let us be,” George pleaded.

  Jackson bit his lower lip. “I will, after one more question.”

  “Go ahead,” the young man consented.

  “Miller saw you come in from outdoors just after the time Cassandra was murdered. Where had you been?”

  “I went outside to stretch and walk around—I had been in that stuffy drawing room all morning. When I went outside, I heard a scream; I immediately thought of mother, so I came here to check on her. Mr. Creighton was on the sofa in the living room and mother was here in bed. They were both sound asleep.”

  “Yep, that sounds like Creighton’s idea of standing watch,” Marjorie deadpanned.

  “When I saw they were asleep and all was well, I turned back to the house. I assumed the scream was Mrs. Prudence being led to the boat. But,” George’s jaw dropped. “But it wasn’t Mrs. Prudence, was it? It was Cassandra.”

  “Given the timing, I’d have to say so,” Nettles acknowledged.

  “If I’d known, I could have gone to the stables and—and—”