A Deception at Thornecrest

by Ashley Weaver

  She said these things about Darien without being the least bit self-conscious that he was in the room. When I glanced at him, he seemed as unmoved as she did.

  “Why didn’t Imogen come herself?” he asked at last.

  Her eyes flashed. “She was too proud. She’d never run after you … no matter how much you hurt her.”

  “It was only a lark,” Darien said. “She knew that.”

  “You … compromised her for your own amusement.” She said the words in a flat, hard tone that was somehow much more piercing than a loud voice might have been.

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What was it like?” she asked. “You seduced her, had your fun, and abandoned her. If I hadn’t come looking for you, she never would have heard anything about you again. Do you deny it?”

  Darien was unmoved by this attempt to make him feel guilty. Indeed, it seemed to have the opposite effect, for I saw his face harden ever so slightly. “It’s nice you care for your sister, but she knew what it was all about.”

  She glared at him and then averted her gaze.

  “Is that why you told the police you saw him in the field?” I asked, curious.

  “No! I really did see him there,” she said. “I didn’t do it to be cruel, but if he had killed someone, he deserved to be caught. Anyway, I didn’t kill Bertie, and I certainly didn’t kill Miss Hodges. I had no reason to kill her.”

  “Neither did I,” Darien said. “I didn’t care a thing about Bertie, but I liked Marena a great deal.”

  None of us said anything at this lukewarm praise of the woman he had lost.

  “If you weren’t truly vying for Darien’s affections,” I asked Eloise, “why was it that you came to see Marena here at the vicarage?”

  “I … I was going to try to tell her the truth about Darien.”

  “But you didn’t tell her that you weren’t really her rival?” Inspector Wilson put in. “It was a good time to make the truth known, I’d say.”

  “She didn’t give me much chance. Our conversation grew heated. She was accusatory. So I left quickly.”

  It didn’t entirely rule her out. If vengeance was in her heart, she might have killed Bertie to keep him quiet and Marena to clear the path for her sister. It was a weak motive, however. Eloise Prescott, despite her deception, did not strike me as the kind of woman who would be that obsessed.

  “You weren’t at the boardinghouse that evening when I came to see you,” I said. “But when I stopped by the vicarage, you weren’t here either. The vicar told me only Lady Alma was visiting.”

  “I took a walk before I came here,” she said. “Sorting out what I wanted to say to Miss Hodges.”

  “She arrived shortly after you drove away, Mrs. Ames,” the vicar said.

  “Then I must have just missed her when I spoke to you at the gate.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, then added thoughtfully: “You told me that you wanted to discuss the possibility that Marena knew what Bertie had been hiding.”

  “Interesting, then, that she died shortly afterward,” Inspector Wilson said mildly, echoing what I was thinking but too well-mannered to say.

  If the vicar was alarmed by this, he didn’t show it. “That’s true,” he said. “The timing might be considered strange. It seems a very long time ago. To think, a few days ago my biggest worry was my missing garden boots, and now…”

  I stopped suddenly, a strange shock of something like revelation coursing through me. “Your boots?” I asked.

  “Yes. My old leather garden boots, you understand. I had them in the shed, but they’d gone missing. I asked Mrs. Busby, Marena, and May, but they knew nothing about it … Oh, what does that matter!”

  He said something else, but I had stopped listening. With this one tiny bit of information, everything began to fall into place. My mind whirled as the various strands of clues began to work themselves into a complete picture.

  Start from the end and work your way back, Inspector Jones had said. Not who had wanted to kill Bertie, but who might have killed Marena. If one looked at it like that, it all began to make sense.

  “Inspector,” I said suddenly. “I … think I might have an idea.”

  He didn’t seem overly enthusiastic, but he was too polite to dismiss me out of hand. “What is it, Mrs. Ames?”

  Another spasm went through my midsection just then, and I paused for just a moment to let it pass. The baby was apparently growing as excited as I was. I forced myself to calm down.

  “It was clear from the beginning that Bertie knew a secret,” I said. “After all, he said as much to Mr. Ames and me shortly before he died. I knew that whatever it was must weigh against his conscience, his sense of duty.”

  “But you didn’t know whose secret it might be?” Inspector Wilson asked.

  I shook my head. “Not at first. My first thought was Mr. Busby.” I looked at the vicar. “I’m sorry. One doesn’t, naturally, think that a vicar is capable of such a thing. But the truth of the matter is that one never knows what is in anyone’s heart, and Bertie asked me that question shortly after I’d seen an exchange of money between the two of you.”

  “You’re right to not think anyone above suspicion, Mrs. Ames. ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’” he quoted with a small smile. “I know I cannot be immune to questioning. My position makes me no more infallible than any other man, perhaps even less so.”

  “Why did you give Bertie that money?” I asked.

  A small frown flickered across the vicar’s forehead, and then he sighed. “Confession is good for the soul, they say.”

  He glanced at his wife. She was watching him with a serene expression, as though there was nothing in the world he could do to shake her faith in him.

  I looked over at Milo. He stood near the door, his handsome, impassive face taking in the scene. His gaze caught mine as I looked at him, and his mouth turned up ever so slightly at the corner. It might have been almost imperceptible to anyone else, but I recognized it as a gesture of both affection and encouragement.

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” the vicar said. Then he turned to me. “I told you the truth when I said I didn’t give Bertie any money.”

  I was momentarily caught off guard. I hadn’t expected him to continue denying it.

  “Perhaps you’d better explain, vicar,” Inspector Wilson said. “There was, after all, an envelope of money found in Mr. Ames’s—Mr. Darien Ames, that is—room with Bertie’s things.”

  Mr. Busby nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true, but, you see, I didn’t give it to him. He was trying to give it to me.”

  “Trying to … give you money?” Inspector Wilson said, the faintest hint of disbelief in his tone.

  The vicar glanced at his wife again. “He took it from his pocket, but I refused it, and he put it back. I didn’t want to be seen taking it at the festival, though I can see how you might have assumed the opposite, Mrs. Ames.”

  “But why was Bertie giving you money, dear?” Mrs. Busby asked. “Was he trying to pay you back for the things he took from your desk?”

  “I wish that were the case,” the vicar said. He drew in a breath and let it out. “You see, I’d been giving money to Bertie to place bets for me at Alexandra Park Racecourse. I’m afraid once I’d won a time or two, it became rather a habit. I’ve been making a good deal of money.”

  I stared at him. This was his secret sin? Behind me, I heard what seemed to be a snicker from Darien.

  “Gambling is not, I suppose, a noble hobby for a vicar. Indeed, there are many better ways in which I might have spent my money … should I have lost it, that is. But I should like to say that a great deal of my winnings were given to good causes.”

  It accounted for the frequent deposits and also the withdrawals.

  It was a bit unsatisfactory that the vicar’s secret was that he was donating his gambling winnings to charities. Granted, I had sincerely hoped he would not be the killer, but this was almost disappointingly ta
me.

  I looked at Inspector Wilson. He looked as nonplussed as I felt.

  Clearing my throat, I continued. “Then I thought perhaps the secret had to do with Lady Alma.” I turned to her. “That he had perhaps discovered something working for you that you didn’t want anyone to know.”

  Lady Alma, uncharacteristically, flushed. “Like what, for example?”

  “Like the fact that Medusa wasn’t really sired by Damocles.” This came from Milo. I looked over at him, surprised.

  Lady Alma was surprised, too, and I thought she might deny it. Instead, however, she charged ahead. “How did you know?”

  “I’m afraid I guessed,” Milo said. “When I went to London, I stopped by my club and saw an old friend in the racing game and asked him about Damocles’s foal. He said he’d heard something about it from a friend but couldn’t remember what.”

  I shot Milo a look that said how much I appreciated his keeping this information from me. Granted, it wasn’t much, but I would have liked to have known that he cared enough to look into things.

  “He telephoned me this morning,” he went on. “He informed me that the foal had been sold a year ago and then broke her leg in a fall. She had to be put down.”

  She sighed. “I’d wanted that foal for a long time. It was going to be excellent breeding stock. When I came across this horse, I thought I might be able to pass her off as a breeder. Not just for the money, mind. She’s a beauty of a horse. Why should such fine blood be passed over just because she hadn’t a pedigree? So I paid Medusa’s owner for her papers.”

  It was astounding to me how many imposters had been masquerading about in Allingcross. Darien, Imogen, Medusa. Who might be next?

  “How did Bertie find out?” Milo asked.

  “He knew from the beginning. It was he who told me the original Medusa had died. He met one of the grooms from the stable of her owner. I gave him a bit of money for helping me with the transaction. It’s how he bought Molly.”

  “You paid him off,” Inspector Wilson said.

  She met his gaze with a slightly imperious one of her own. She was an earl’s daughter, after all. “Call it what you will. Nothing came of it, so I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Not where the horse is concerned, perhaps,” he said. “But what about Bertie?”

  “He was a good boy, a fine young man. I didn’t kill him, but I think perhaps I know who did.”

  She looked directly at Mrs. Hodges.

  Mrs. Hodges returned her gaze, her stern face unchanging.

  “Lady Alma,” I said. “You told me that Bertie mentioned to you that he had a secret, one that concerned Mrs. Hodges.”

  This brought a response from Mrs. Hodges. “I told you, I haven’t any secrets.”

  “I’m not entirely sure that’s true,” I told her carefully.

  She stared at me, as though challenging me to come up with one.

  “There was the matter of your husband dying in prison after killing a man,” I said. I didn’t want to embarrass her, but it was important that the truth came out. Hopefully she would realize it.

  There was not much reaction to my announcement, at least not from Mrs. Hodges. The others, however, turned to look at her.

  “It wasn’t a secret, not really,” she said. “It just wasn’t something I cared to talk about.”

  “But you hid it from Marena all these years. And from the other villagers.”

  “There was no need for anyone to know. Least of all Marena.”

  “But she started wondering, didn’t she?”

  Her expression darkened. “She did. She’d begun asking questions about her father. I think she thought he was living the high life in London somewhere and hoped she could go off and meet him there. She was never satisfied with life in the village.”

  “There’s also the matter of you bringing her the honey that was used to poison her,” Inspector Jones said.

  “I told you. I had some of that honey myself that very morning. There was nothing wrong with it. Someone must have put it in the jar once it arrived at the vicarage.”

  “But why would they do that?” he asked. “How could they be sure that no one else would eat it?”

  “I can only suppose it was because it was the rosemary honey. No one else much cared for it but Marena and me.”

  “And everyone here at the vicarage knew that,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’ve brought a jar of it here before. Marena said the Busbys wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

  “Too strong for my taste,” the vicar said, then added, so as to avoid giving offense, “though it has a very pleasant aroma.”

  “Then that’s another reason to rule out strangers. No one else could have known that Marena specifically would be killed by the poisoned honey.”

  “That’s right,” Inspector Wilson said. “That narrows it down to Mrs. Hodges and Mr. and Mrs. Busby, doesn’t it?”

  “I also wondered about you, Mrs. Busby,” I admitted.

  She looked up at me from her chair, a slight flushing coming to her cheeks. “You thought I might be a murderer? Goodness me.”

  “Yes, you see, I recently discovered that it was not you who was driving the car that killed your daughter. It was Marena.”

  Mrs. Busby’s face went white, and her eyes again filled with tears.

  “Elaine, I’ve told Mrs. Ames all about the accident,” said Mrs. Hodges, apparently both unmoved by the woman’s distress and willing to connect the poisoning to a possible motive.

  Mrs. Busby opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She swallowed and tried again. “Yes, it’s true that she was driving when the accident happened. She wanted to drive, and I didn’t see any harm in it. But then she and Sara started quarreling about some silly childhood matter. What it was I don’t even remember now. And then suddenly the car was going off the road. It’s the last thing I remember…” Her voice broke off with a stifled sob, and the vicar went to her side, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  “But I didn’t blame her,” she said at last. “I blamed myself. She was just a child, and I shouldn’t have let her drive the car.”

  “There, there, dear,” Mr. Busby said soothingly. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

  “Mrs. Busby, I didn’t think it would be possible for you to kill Bertie, not with your wheelchair. But when Marena died, and the poison was purchased in your name, things looked bad. It made me begin to fear you might be involved. But then an old friend told me I should consider things from a different angle.”

  I looked again at Milo, and he gave me a nod of encouragement.

  I took a deep breath, preparing to plunge ahead. I wasn’t sure Inspector Wilson would believe me, but I had to try.

  “Just now the vicar mentioned his missing boots. They had been in the shed, where the poison was kept.” I turned to Inspector Wilson. “And that’s what made me realize there isn’t a murderer to be arrested here after all.”

  He looked at me as though I had lost my senses. “What do you mean, Mrs. Ames?”

  My stomach clenched again; the excitement was becoming too much for me. I gritted my teeth and let out a breath through my nose.

  “Because…” I said. “Because Marena wasn’t murdered. She killed herself.”

  28

  EVERYONE STARED AT me, dumbfounded by this announcement. I suppose I would have been skeptical myself had someone proposed the idea to me a few hours ago. Now, however, I was very certain.

  Mrs. Hodges was the first to break the silence. “Nonsense,” she said. “Marena would not have done such a thing.”

  “No, no,” Mrs. Busby agreed, her voice still thick with grief. “Something like that wasn’t in her nature.”

  Inspector Wilson paid little attention to either of them.

  “Killed herself?” He stared at me, his gaze sharp. “You think she gave herself the poison.”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid so. Only she didn’t mean to do it. It was all an unfortunate accident.”
r />   Inspector Wilson frowned. “You mean to say there was no crime committed here? Begging your pardon, madam, but that’s preposterous. After all, the poison was in her tea.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “And she put it there. Though she didn’t know she did.”

  He was looking at me strangely, so I knew I needed to start from the beginning. It was still coming together in my head, though I was as certain of the solution as I had ever been of anything. I tried to think of how best I could explain.

  The next part was the most difficult, but I had to come out with it. “You see, the entire time, Marena had been hoping to poison her mother.”

  This was met with a stunned silence. I knew that it was going to be difficult to believe, perhaps even more difficult to prove. But it made sense, if one looked closely at the facts.

  “Marena and her mother had never seen eye to eye.” Everyone knew that Mrs. Hodges was not at all liked by many of the people in the village. Marena had been clever and beautiful and ambitious, and she had wanted to use those qualities to her advantage, not hide them as her mother had hoped she might.

  “Always thought herself destined for something more,” Mrs. Hodges said, following up on my train of thought. I noticed that she had not come to her daughter’s defense. She didn’t even look shocked at my revelation.

  It was Mrs. Busby who rallied to defend Marena, just as she had always done. “But I really don’t think…”

  “Let her continue, if you please, Mrs. Busby,” Inspector Wilson said.

  “As you told me, Mrs. Hodges,” I said. “Marena was often dating boys from the village, looking for someone who might sweep her off her feet and give her the sort of life for which she longed. I think that’s also why she began asking questions about her father.”

  Mrs. Hodges nodded. “She wanted to know who her father was. There was no good that could come of it. I told her again and again.”