Advertisement for Murder

by Nadine Doolittle

  “Your assailant must’ve thought so too.” Elliot’s phone was pressed to his ear as he prowled over the spot where they’d found Karen. “That was a piece of luck. When you lost consciousness, your assailant relaxed his hold.”

  Avery examined Karen’s neck in the beam from the flashlight. Her blood froze. “It’s the shell necklace,” she breathed. “He used the shell necklace! The marks match the description given by Detective Denton of the ones found on Jenny Blake’s neck.”

  She looked up, in search of Elliot and found him kneeling in the tall grass, the top of his head visible in the foggy glow from the lamps. Avery ground her teeth. He had drifted off into his own private world again.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard. I did indeed,” he muttered absently. “I believe Mrs Haggerty heard it too. Mrs Haggerty,” Elliot turned his head, “what were you doing out here?”

  The question seemed to rattle poor Karen.

  “I-I take a walk every night. I have done for twenty years. I usually finish by walking through the Abbey gardens. I live on the corner over there, in my parents’ house. I moved in when they got too old to take care of themselves. My daughter and grandchildren visit at Christmas and holidays. I need a big house.”

  Why she felt the need to explain the reason she was living in her family home was a mystery to Avery. It was probably just the shock.

  “Who knew you would be here at nine o’clock?”

  Karen hunched over, her blonde hair falling gracefully around her face. “Everyone in St. Ives knows my schedule. None of them would’ve done this,” she sobbed. “I was attacked by a stranger. Maybe he thought I had money. I never carry a purse. There are too many strangers in St. Ives these days. I almost put on a turtleneck and changed my mind at the last moment. I thought it was too warm. Can you imagine?”

  Karen was wearing a nylon padded jacket that fastened with snaps in the front, the sort of jacket that was perfect for walking and hiking in early autumn. The collar lay flat and she wasn’t wearing a scarf. Her assailant must’ve found her a tempting target.

  She lifted her head and gazed at Avery. “Thank God you came along, but what are you doing here?”

  Avery blinked. “Karen, you sent me a note asking me to meet you here tonight. Look, I have it here.” She produced it from her pocket and handed it to the woman.

  Karen unfolded the square of paper and glanced at the text. “I didn’t write this. This isn’t my handwriting. Who gave this to you?”

  “And there we have our answer,” Elliot crowed triumphantly. “We were meant to interrupt the attack. This was a shot across the bow.”

  Avery ignored him. “Are you sure? My neighbour gave it to me. It was shoved in her mailbox by mistake. She and her family were away at the time. It could’ve been there for days.”

  Elliot waded toward them after doing heaven knows what to the stone window. “We can discuss this at a later date. Mrs Haggerty needs to see a doctor now and the police will need a statement from us.”

  He offered to help her up but Karen refused his assistance with a brave smile. “I set out to take a walk after dinner and I won’t be intimidated from walking in my own village.”

  She stood up and swayed dizzily. Avery reached out her arm and Karen rested against her until the vertigo passed. Elliot loped ahead to bring the car around to the curb and then helped get Karen into the back seat.

  Avery thought of staying back to search for the necklace but decided against it. If the attacker dropped it, the police would find it in the morning. And if the attacker didn’t drop it, she didn’t want to be the next woman strangled by a string of shells.

  ✽✽✽

  THURSDAY EVENING, the murder club convened in the Abercrombie library where Avery recounted the events of the previous night for the group over a bottle of red wine. No one was drinking tea tonight. Their nerves were frayed.

  Karen was miraculously unharmed, though her neck would be sore and bruised for a few weeks. The police had taped off the area to the dismay of the St. Ives Spa, and conducted a thorough search of the sanctuary. The item used to strangle Karen was not found. The note was taken in evidence. When a handwriting expert became available, there was a chance they’d be able to identify the sender.

  “It is safe to assume that’ll take months if not years,” said Elliot. “As for the weapon used to attack Mrs Haggerty, I’m not surprised it wasn’t found at the scene. I imagine the assailant took it with him—or her—and has put it away for safekeeping.”

  Josie tilted her head. “Why for safekeeping? Why not destroy it?”

  “It could be useful later,” Elliot replied vaguely.

  He was looking particularly tweedy tonight, Avery thought. Their host was wearing a button down Oxford shirt, a lumpy vest and a houndstooth jacket. Brown woollen slacks completed the ensemble. Was the Abercrombie house full of drafts and that’s why he favoured wool? She could only speculate. A fire glowed on the hearth. The temperature in the library was comfortable.

  Dennis jumped to his feet and paced up and down. “Useful for future murders you mean. A woman almost died because of us and she would have if you two hadn’t shown up! What if we aren’t so lucky the next time?”

  “You knew something like this was going to happen.” Hector interjected. His mind was obviously on something else. He stared at Elliot. “You said there would be another victim.”

  “Yes, yes, I did. And there was. Just not the victim I expected. No, not at all,” he muttered.

  “You referred to the assailant as he or she,” Josie interrupted. “Surely you don’t think the killer is a woman. Our two main suspects are men.”

  Elliot pulled on his chin thoughtfully. “Let’s take our concerns one at a time, beginning with Mr Potter’s. It was arranged by the assailant that Avery Holmes would be there in time to save Mrs Haggerty’s life. The note made that clear.”

  “Are you saying Karen’s attacker wrote the note?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.” Elliot glanced at their astonished faces. “I can’t be the only one to see it. The handwriting was not Mrs Haggerty’s and it was not found in Mrs Holmes house, but in her next door neighbour’s. Those are two very important points. The purpose of the note was to put a stop to the attack and it worked.”

  “It was delivered to the wrong house!” Dennis protested. “Anything could’ve happened to prevent Avery from reading that message.”

  “You are correct. The attacker was taking a great risk. This person did not want Mrs Haggerty to die, but to teach us a lesson.”

  “And the lesson is to stay out of it,” Helen said hotly. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She appealed to her husband. “We talked it over last night and we’ve decided this has gone far enough. We think we should quit the club. This isn’t a puzzle or a brain exercise anymore. This is life and death.”

  “It is because it is life and death that we must keep going,” Elliot replied calmly.

  “Going where? We’re going in circles,” Josie said. She pulled out a ball of wool and a pair of knitting needles. “Let’s get back to the original point. I don’t think a woman did this. I think we should concentrate on the men who were at the party that night. I have a theory. Duncan Carmichael’s team mates were there that night. They had the means and opportunity and after hearing what Councillor Duncan had to say, I believe I have the motive.”

  She took a breath. Her expression was grim.

  “Out of loyalty to their captain, his team mates killed poor Jenny for making their leader look bad. They provided one another with an alibi, ensuring they would never be suspected. Jesse makes a handy scapegoat, being a bit of an oddball. All we have to do is break one of them and the rest will talk.”

  Her knitting needles clicked rapidly, giving Avery an idea of how Josephine Gaskell would go about getting the truth out of an ex-jock.

  “You’re forgetting that Jesse Sutcliffe remembers seeing the boys sitting in the living room watching the
girls do The Hustle. Otherwise, it’s a great theory,” Hector added kindly.

  “There is a complication,” Elliot said. “Karen Haggerty knows the device used to strangle Jenny was a puka shell necklace. Mrs Holmes made the mistake of letting the information slip when she was examining her injury.”

  “Why is that a problem?” Helen’s shoulders lifted as she glanced at Avery.

  “If we were trying to rule Karen out as a suspect, it’s a problem,” Dennis replied heavily. “She could claim to know how Jenny was killed because Avery told her. The necklace was our leverage.” He gazed at Avery. “Don’t worry about it. It could’ve happened to any of us.”

  “But surely we can rule Karen out after last night,” Avery said. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly looks that way,” Elliot replied in that abstracted way of his that left Avery wondering if he cared one way or the other.

  If so, he wasn’t alone. The hunt had gone out of all of them. Avery could sense the deflation in the room.

  They all fell silent, nursing their misery with wine and taking comfort in the fire. Helen echoed what they were all thinking when she expressed the wish that they were discussing a fictional murder because real murder was too hard.

  The stack of Louise Penny’s latest was on the coffee table, nestled between the smoked almonds and the pâté. There was even a copy for Solomon and Pearl but they were both absent tonight. Solomon had a good excuse—he had to cover the attack on Karen. He would be up all night writing copy to make the deadline before the paper went to press.

  Pearl didn’t have a reason for skipping the meeting, but Avery guessed her father probably had something to do with it. Hector and Elliot had filled them in on Ivor Hansen’s ultimatum.

  Pearl Hansen was the first casualty of this investigation. Karen was the second. Would there be a third?

  Chapter Fourteen

  IN THE COURSE of Avery’s thought process, musing on potential victims opened the door to a potential suspect. She bolted upright, snapping her fingers. “If our killer is a female, I think I know who she is!” She turned to Helen and Josie. “Do you want to tell them about Ida Greb or should I?”

  “You mean the librarian?” Hector spread a cracker with pâté, his third in as many minutes. He’d skipped dinner again, Avery noted. Joyce must be in final rehearsals and clearly Hector Mandela, decorated naval officer, didn’t know how to work a microwave.

  “Ida showed us another side to Jenny Blake,” Josie said, “and it was not pretty. The short version is that Miss Blake could be cruel when she was crossed and Ida had crossed her in the spring of ‘75. Women can get very nasty when pushed. Ida certainly had a good reason to want Jenny dead. She admitted it herself. She even said she sympathized with whoever did it.”

  “She didn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder. She knew about the party, knew Jenny would be there. She could’ve been watching from the Abbey grounds and seized the moment. It was probably unintentional, but there was no remorse. No remorse at all.”

  “Ida could be Karen’s assailant as well!” Helen pounded her knees with her fists. “And we were the ones who tipped her off! We told her Karen knew more than she was letting on.”

  “The police should get a sample of her handwriting to check against the note.”

  Elliot made a noise that expressed his not-so-silent dissenting opinion.

  Avery turned to him. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “After working very hard to establish the shell necklace as the murder weapon, how did Miss Greb get her hands on it when it was last seen in the bedroom of Karen Haggerty? Jenny threw it at Duncan if you recall.”

  “We only have Duncan’s word for that. Has Karen corroborated his story?”

  Avery flipped through the notebook to the minutes of the previous meeting. “I don’t have a record of her saying anything like that. The trouble is we’re not organized. We’re going off in all directions, hearing different versions of the same event and jumping to conclusions—which reminds me.” She looked up at Dennis. “How did your talk with Jesse go? Did you learn anything new?”

  Dennis took a seat in one of the generous armchairs that furnished the Abercrombie library. “What I learned was another reason to call it quits on this hobby of ours. Someone is gaslighting Sutcliffe. Whoever it is, they’re going to great lengths to make him believe he did this.”

  “Maybe he did.” Elliot’s eyes were fixed on Dennis.

  “You don’t believe that! None of us do, or else what are we talking about here? I’m a rational guy—if he did it, he did it. But I ask you this—if he did do it, then why is someone going to trouble to convince him he did it?”

  Dennis Potter told his story very slowly, leaving nothing out. Avery scribbled down every word the retired train conductor said. By the time he was finished, she had a cramp in her hand and a gnawing sense of dread in her heart that Sutcliffe would be the next victim.

  JESSE SUTCLIFFE was smart. Not street smart—that was obvious or he would’ve been more suspicious of the package that was left at his campsite.

  “I thought it was gloves and a toque. The weather is turning cold. This time of year the ladies at the church usually drop off their winter packages,” he had told Dennis.

  He explained how he had torn the padded envelope open and a shell necklace slid out onto the ground. He’d stared at it, not making the connection. There was a note inside.

  This is what you used to kill her. You don’t remember, do you? Think hard. It’ll come back to you. You drink to block out the memory but I remember. I saw what you did. Confession is good for the soul. Without it, you’re going to burn in hell, Sutcliffe.

  The note and the shells shook him up pretty badly. He needed a drink.

  “I found a bottle and that never happens. But I found a full bottle of rye in a recycling bin. I was digging around for cans that I could return for cash and here was this bottle. Looks like someone made a mistake and chucked it out. I wasn’t going to question it. I drank the whole damn thing in one sitting. Probably gave myself alcohol poisoning ... maybe that’s what I wanted. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was sitting here in front of my little fire. I keep it small so the cops don’t have a reason to chase me out. And then—I don’t know where it was coming from—but I heard a voice. I wasn’t hallucinating. I swear I heard it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That I strangled Jenny Blake and I didn’t remember doing it. I told the voice I didn't, but it kept insisting you did, you did, you did! It said I’d blocked it out of my mind because I couldn’t face the truth of what I did that night. I told it I don’t remember strangling her—I would remember something like that! There was no answer.”

  Jesse faced Dennis, baffled and defensive. “I used to be good in school, good in math. I got good grades. There was nothing wrong with my brain back then, but maybe there was something wrong with me. You know? Maybe I hurt her and blocked it out. Maybe the voice is my subconscious trying to get me to remember—to confess so Jenny can find some peace.”

  Dennis asked if he still had the necklace and Jesse fetched it from inside his shanty. He held up the strand of puka shells between his dirty fingers. “Is it true that she was strangled with this?”

  “We believe she was strangled with something like this. There’s no forensic evidence. Can I take this with me?”

  Jesse nodded. His skin was grey, his mouth slack and trembling. “I did it, didn’t I? Even if I say I didn’t do it, I did it,” he said bleakly. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I was there. I saw her on the stone altar. I touched her. Her body was warm. How can I be sure I didn’t black out and strangle her? Somebody saw me that night. Somebody witnessed the whole thing! They’re going to come for me sooner or later. I might as well turn myself in and get it over with!”

  He was becoming agitated. Dennis calmed him down by saying he’d ask around about the necklace but Jesse had to promise not to do anything stu
pid until he got back to him.

  “I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth,” he said with a shake of his head. “The number of times I’ve called the cops on that guy and there I was, negotiating like mad to keep him from turning himself into the police.”

  “May I see the necklace?” Elliot asked. His face had grown leaner and his expression was hawk-like.

  Dennis passed the white shells to Marks who examined it. “Not our murder weapon,” he declared. “The clasp is new. This was purchased recently. That’s good news. If it had been the original necklace, I would’ve had to revise my entire theory.” He handed it back to Dennis. “Whoever sent this to Mr Sutcliffe certainly wants to convince him he’s guilty of murder. A dangerous thing to do to a man’s mind, particularly a man who is already broken.”

  “Then you don’t believe he did it,” Dennis stated with an exhalation of relief. “I thought the way this was going, Jesse was going to have to fall on his sword.”

  “Interesting expression,” murmured Elliot thoughtfully. “Suggestive of a man willing to take responsibility for a wrong he feels he may be indirectly responsible for causing. I wonder if Jenny Blake’s killer is aware of the guilt Mr Sutcliffe has been carrying for over forty years. Or was this theatrical performance just a coincidence?”

  “Whose theatrical performance?” Avery leaned back against the sofa with a groan. “Really, Elliot, you’re going to have to stop muttering your thoughts aloud. We are here, you know. We’re in the room, listening to every word.”

  He turned to her, a bemused expression his face, looking the part of the charmingly distracted, absent-minded professor. Avery’s eyes narrowed. Was that just an act? Was Elliot Marks the bumbling amateur sleuth he made himself out to be? Or was he something altogether different.

  “I am referring to the eerie voice coming out of the wood,” he said. “The necklace arriving in a plain brown envelope accompanied by a poison pen letter. A bottle of rye appearing in a recycling bin in time to lower the victim’s defences. Theatrics—stagecraft. It took planning and effort to pull it off—and risk. Jenny’s killer must’ve felt certain that Sutcliffe would be driven to confess to the crime. It almost worked. Jesse would be in prison right now if Mr Potter hadn’t shown up and the case of who killed Jenny Blake would be closed.”