A Testament to Murder

by Vivian Conroy

  Jasper shook his head and tutted. “I have the evidence to support my claims. You wanted a position as a nanny, that is true, but the position you got with the family who crossed to England never came through the agency where you were registered. It was set up separately. You went on board, knowing Hugh Bryce-Rutherford would also be on the ship and you hunted him down. You snared him and you seduced him and you forced him into marriage with you. And then you had access to his house and his riches and all that was yet to come. Just payment.”

  “I guess people think I needed something as reward for being married to Hugh,” Patty said trying to laugh. “I can honestly say he wasn’t that bad.”

  “Oh, so you even felt some sort of… pity for your victim?” Jasper said. “Can I dare hope that despite your cold-hearted plan to marry him and get your hands on his fortune you had feelings for him?”

  Patty didn’t say anything. She wondered if this was the time to ask for a lawyer. But that would be like an admittance of guilt.

  Jasper said, “When Hugh was in America, gambling and womanizing, he caused an accident. On a stormy night his car ran a motorcycle off the road. The young man riding it was killed. His sister who was with him wasn’t hurt. She declared to the police that a flash of lightning had blinded her brother and he had lost control of the vehicle. But later she realized it hadn’t been a flash of lightning but the headlights of a car blinding them. A car that was in the wrong lane. Hugh Bryce-Rutherford wasn’t arrested. He was never brought to trial. But the sister of this young man found him. And she brought him to her own trial. I think that sooner or later Hugh Bryce-Rutherford would have died and you would have inherited all of his money. I don’t think you planned on killing him quite so soon. But this situation here provided you with the perfect opportunity. First someone else had to die, then Hugh. Suspicion would never fall on you as no one was looking for a motive having to do with Hugh. It all concentrated on Malcolm and the will. How convenient.”

  “I didn’t kill Theodora,” Patty said. “I had no reason to.”

  “Cover,” Jasper said. “You found Kenneth’s pocket knife where he had lost it when he had washed up on the shore. You used it to cast suspicion on him. You didn’t care if a sixteen-year-old boy would be accused for your crime.”

  “That’s all so weak,” Patty protested. “You can’t prove I ever had the knife.”

  Jasper said, “It was about Hugh all of the time. You only committed the first murder to hide what the second was really about. Do you deny you are the sister of the killed motorcyclist in America? Do you deny you meant to marry Hugh Bryce-Rutherford even before you boarded the steamer?”

  Patty said nothing.

  Jasper said, “So what if we see it like that? That the murder that mattered was Hugh’s and that Theodora just had to die as a diversion?”

  Howard held his hands to his head. “You keep twisting this around,” he said. “It can’t all be true.”

  “Can’t it?” Jasper asked. “I grant you that not all of you are killers. Only one of you is. One of you committed both murders. And I know who it is. But the others all had motives, reasons, they told lies and they even tampered with evidence. You did it to protect yourselves or someone you love. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful. It made it so much more difficult for me. I could have gone astray. I could have arrested each one of you based on the theories I just put forward. But I agree with you that, for all that fits, something is missing. It doesn’t quite come together, does it?”

  He looked at nurse Cane. “I come to you now. Anna Cane. Allegedly the daughter of a lido girl in Brighton. Malcolm’s daughter too. Theodora knew about the lido girl. She also knew the lido girl died. Is that why you wanted revenge? To get even with your father for your mother’s death? And did you have to kill Theodora because she had worked it out?”

  Jasper waited as the nurse stared at him, not betraying in her facial expression what she thought or felt.

  Patty, eager to shift the blame, cried, “How clever to become nurse to the man you hate. She could have slipped him poison any time.”

  “Yes, but she did not. She did nothing to harm Malcolm. Or did you, nurse Cane? Did you push the chair down the rocks? I asked you to wear the same clothes as the ones you wore on that day.” Jasper rose in a flash and was beside Anna Cane, lifting up the seam of her long dress. The inside was a fiery red.

  They all gasped.

  Jasper said, “Was it you Theodora saw pushing the chair over the edge?”

  “Why push an empty chair over the edge?” Anna asked. Her voice shivered ever so lightly. “I had no reason to do something so pointless. Besides, I was getting the basket for lunch from the car.”

  “Oh yes, with Hugh Bryce-Rutherford, who isn’t alive anymore to confirm or deny. He said so at the time, but…”

  “He lied to get himself an alibi. He wasn’t with me. But I was at the car, I swear. I don’t know why he needed an alibi. What if he did it?”

  “And who then killed him?” Patty asked. “You’re just trying to divert attention.”

  “He says there is but one killer. How does he know? Why can’t one person have killed Theodora and another Hugh?”

  “You were far too friendly with Hugh,” Patty cried. “And he trusted you. Maybe you two set up this whole idea of him posing as Malcolm, together!”

  Anna Cane laughed softly. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “No.” Jasper spoke with quiet finality. “You didn’t kill anyone. But you nearly got killed yourself, and for a lie too. You are not Malcolm’s daughter. You told Kenneth to gain sympathy but he realized that perhaps it meant you were related and he could never love you. That is why he attacked you. You told him to strengthen your position. Kenneth wanted you dead because you were the rightful heir. Or didn’t you put it quite that way?”

  Anna swallowed.

  “Bitch!” Patty said.

  Jasper raised his hands. “You are not the daughter of the lido girl that died. You are the daughter of her best friend. You knew the story by heart from your mother’s frequent retellings. You thought that you could come here and perhaps work on the old man’s sick and tired mind to get a little something out of it. When he announced his plans for the will, you were confused. If you stayed and he died, would the finger immediately point at you? Here under false pretences and with access to medication too? But Kenneth talked you into staying and let’s be honest: you yourself wanted nothing more. You had become quite used to the idea that Malcolm owed you something and if he felt that same way, perhaps you could even get all of his money. Houses, cars and horses. More than you had ever dreamed about.”

  “But I didn’t kill anyone,” Anna said.

  “No, you did not.” Jasper leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath. “None of the heirs killed anyone.”

  * * *

  There was a silence in which confused looks were exchanged. None of them seemed to grasp what all of this meant.

  Jasper felt a twinge of pity for them, for having let them squirm one by one, but then he reminded himself of their cold and heartless behaviour to incriminate each other and take advantage of the situation and he felt strong again. Determined to finish this.

  He said softly, “Here’s the point where the story gets uncomfortable for me to tell because I have to admit my own part in it.”

  “You killed them,” Howard cried, “to see what we were going to do. You were the mastermind all along.”

  Jasper said, “I have to admit to all of you that I was played. That I was tricked into becoming a part of this. To help out a man I considered a friend. But who was in fact coldly using me.”

  He focused on Malcolm, so quiet in his chair. Had the old man sensed that it was coming to this? That the game was up?

  Jasper said, “Malcolm and I became friends when we both came to live here on the Riviera. I like to talk about the past, about my cases, and I think Malcolm worked out pretty quickly that I’m proud of all the cases I ma
naged to solve. I think he concluded that he could play me if he tried to present me with one last phenomenal case to crack. Something so ingenious that I would need every part of my brain to unravel it. Something so cunning it would be the crown on my career. So many suspects, so many motives. So many possible solutions. Which one would I choose? Did it really matter?”

  He held Malcolm’s gaze now. “As long as you went scot-free.”

  “What does he mean?” Howard asked.

  Jasper said, “I tried to talk you out of this will plan, but you were determined. You told me time and time again how sick you were and how little time you had left. But I have talked to many doctors in these parts and none has treated you. None of them knows exactly what ails you. I think you have eaten less and less to lose weight and you have stayed indoors so you’d look more sickly and you have assumed this shuffling gait. But you are not sick, Malcolm, and you are certainly not dying. That was just your little ploy to get us all to dance to your tune.”

  Malcolm was still not responding, and for one dreadful moment Jasper wondered if he was wrong. If this man would simply laugh at him and say he couldn’t prove anything. But then again he remembered all he knew and pushed on, “You worked on my sense of pity for your position: an old man, hated by your relatives and former friends, people who would easily kill you just for your fortune. You pretended to be plagued and haunted by that thought and that you had to know if it was true. You said that because you were dying anyway it would not be bad if you got murdered. But you knew all along, Malcolm, that whoever died here over these few days, it would not be you.”

  “That is a rather big assumption,” Malcolm said quietly. “Couldn’t they have slipped poison into my soup or in the water beside my bed? Couldn’t they have fetched the revolver from the study to shoot me in my sleep? I took a chance.”

  “Yes, perhaps. You took a chance. But for two people who arrived here their fate was already sealed. When you set all of this up, you knew who would die. It was not random: it wasn’t meant to scare the heirs. It was deliberate. It was done consciously to get even with the two people who had harmed you: Theodora Cummings and your own nephew, Hugh Bryce-Rutherford. You knew that if you killed them in a normal scenario, the threads might lead back to you. But not here. You were ill, you were in bed, you were weak, you were the intended victim. They died by accident: it should have been you, right?”

  Malcolm’s eyes flickered a little, but he was not protesting.

  Jasper continued, “You had never suspected that Theodora might have killed your wife until someone told you. And from the moment you knew you had to have your revenge. Because contrary to what people around you believed, people like Kenneth and nurse Cane who thought that they might be your children, or acted like they were, you knew that you had never had a child besides the baby that died when your wife was run down in the street so close to your offices. You hated Theodora for that with a bitter hatred, because you knew that her motive had been passion. She had wanted you, and for that she had killed what you cared about most in this world. You had to kill her and you wanted her to know why. That is why you set up the incident with the wheelchair. Yes, you did that, Malcolm. You shoved your own empty wheelchair down the rocks. And you knew that Theodora in her desire to be important to you would come to you to tell who she had seen do it. She hinted at it over dinner. She came to you. You stabbed her with Kenneth’s pocket knife. You had taken it out of Howard’s possession. Perhaps you hoped his prints would be on it? Anyway, you killed her after telling her to her face what you knew.”

  “And she denied it,” Malcolm said softly. “She denied that she had driven the car and killed my wife. I couldn’t stand her simpering denials. Her emphatic expressions of how much she had loved me and had always taken care of everything for me.”

  “You stabbed her and then you laid her out like she was resting peacefully and you put the rose in her hand. A symbol of the love that had turned her into a killer.”

  “She brought it with her. To the conversation. As proof of her love for me. I was just thinking she had to be crazy. She had to be absolutely completely insane. I had to kill her. It was just self-defence.”

  “And Hugh?” Jasper said. “Was that self-defence too? Bashing someone’s skull in from behind?”

  Malcolm didn’t respond. He just kept saying he had to kill Theodora because she was mad.

  Howard asked in a strangled voice, “Are you really saying that Malcolm, the testator, is the killer?”

  “Yes. Wasn’t that a clever plan? Who would ever suspect him? You would all be eyeing each other. Planting evidence or destroying it, making agreements, then not trusting each other. Kenneth’s attack on Anna with the plant juice in the facial cream. The cut brake lines on Hugh’s car. Malcolm didn’t have to do much. You did it all for him.”

  “You mean, he didn’t cut the brake lines on the car?” Patty asked.

  “No.”

  “But then who did?” Howard asked. “I don’t understand any of this. Why would Malcolm want to kill Hugh?”

  “Because he believed that Hugh had put Theodora up to the murder of his first wife. That he had stolen the car for her and given her a few elementary driving lessons so she could handle it enough to create the accident. Or perhaps Malcolm even believed Hugh drove the car? Dressed up as Theodora? Whatever way, he had to kill his nephew as well.”

  “So this whole game with the changing will was just a ruse to get us here and to conceal the murders he wanted to commit?” Cecily asked.

  Jasper nodded. “He was using you and he was using me. He knew that as soon as somebody died I would take charge. That the French police would let me. That I would dig deep and find the leads back to the old matter of the accident. I don’t think he knew Howard had been an eye witness to it, but that all made it easier. There had been a driver looking like Theodora and…”

  “But wait!” Howard cried. “If Malcolm didn’t know I witnessed it and I have certainly never told him, then how did he know about it at all?”

  “Ah…” Jasper sighed heavily. “That is a very important question, Mr Jones. One that throws an interesting light on this case. That provides us with a whole new angle that I don’t think even Malcolm knows about.”

  He looked Malcolm right in the eye. “I should be angry with you for using me. I should perhaps even applaud you for having been so incredibly clever. For having such insight in the darker recesses of the human mind that you could predict ahead of time how these people would react and would all assist you in covering up your crimes. I should perhaps feel a moment’s pity for the pain you still feel over your wife’s death, or rather the death of your unborn child, that you had to kill for it even after so many years. But there is really but one thing I do feel as I stand here. I feel exhilaration that I know more than you ever did. And I feel a deep sadness that I have to tell you this, for I’m certain you haven’t known it and it will change everything forever.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  They were all waiting, watching.

  Jasper said, “Malcolm, you will be arrested and prosecuted for two murders. You will probably die by hanging. For you are not ill and you will not die before you come to trial. And that – your execution – has always been the intention of this entire game.”

  Malcolm watched him with a bleak look. “I do not follow,” he said. “I would certainly not have planned my own death, would I? Especially not if I am, as you have just claimed, not ill at all.”

  Jasper said, “But you didn’t plan your own death, Malcolm. Someone else did. All of this, with the will, the guests here, the things that happened, you believed you were planning it, executing it, playing everyone. But someone was playing you. You are the killer. The blood is on your hands. But the murders, both of them, were orchestrated by someone else. I would like to call him the murderer by intention. I’m not sure we can prosecute him. But I assure you I will do everything in my power to discover if there is a way. Because if anyone should
pay for this, it’s him.”

  Malcolm frowned. He looked about him, focusing on Howard, then letting his gaze shift to Kenneth. Then he even looked at his butler and his chauffeur. “Who then? I don’t understand.”

  Jasper said, “Let me help you. For this whole plan to work, everything had to be aligned just right: you had to look ill and change your will over and over; people had to come and stay here, and have motives for murder. Now the problem with the scheme was of course that your will seemed to provide a motive for murder, but only for your own murder. Not for the murders of the people who did die, unless you want to assume that the killer was just getting rid of all heirs until only he or she was left. So for this plan to work, to real perfection – and with me in the game you had to be careful that everything was perfect or I might see through it – you needed people here who also had motives to want each other dead. Now those motives had to be set up in advance. I mean, nurse Cane had to be hired. Not just any nurse, but her, the daughter of the lido girl’s best friend. Who hated you for what you had done to her. Patty had to marry Hugh, wanting revenge for her brother’s death. Kenneth had to come along with his parents and we had to find out, rather easily, what he had done in Provence, so he would prove to be volatile and violent, a ticking time bomb. Everything had to be there for me to find. And while you believed, Malcolm, that you yourself were in charge of all of this, it was really somebody else who had figured it all out for you. The mastermind who wanted you to kill Theodora and Hugh, and then be brought to trial and hung yourself. You had to die. No, I’m not putting that right. All three of you had to die.”

  Malcolm said, “I don’t understand.”

  “Patty was recommended to the people she came to work for by a lawyer. Nurse Cane came here with references put together by a legal firm. When I called the colleagues in Provence, I learned that the case of the beaten boy was taken up by a lawyer. See the connection? A lawyer. A legal mind. A paper trail. Proof.”