The Marlowe Murders

by Laura Giebfried

  “You're going to have to be more specific,” I said. “I get that they were bad parents – but what actually happened to make their children – like that?”

  “I told you: I really don't know. Anything I do know is hearsay. Apparently Sylvia came from money. A lot of money. She was the daughter of an earl or something similar, but she always had … problems. Anxiety. Phobias. Her parents couldn't marry her off in England so they married her off in America, and it certainly wasn't because Malcolm found her charming. He wanted her money, and she knew it but couldn't do anything about it. I don't know whose idea the island was, but she either trapped herself here because of her fears or was trapped here by him and developed more fears. By the time she was middle-aged she was a full-blown agoraphobic and her husband had turned her money into a fortune that was, by society's standards, his.”

  “Was he abusive?”

  “I wouldn't know. He died long before I came into the picture. But … Sylvia always said that John reminded her of him.”

  My mind went back to the portrait of the red-haired man with the wide smile in the East Room. He looked friendly enough, especially in comparison to Mrs. Marlowe's scowling face in the portrait next to him. It was, however, the same smile that John had given me on the occasions when he had reassured me that he was going to help me.

  “Maybe we're going about this all wrong,” I said, dropping the butt of my cigarette to the ground.

  “How so?”

  “Maybe it has nothing to do with an inheritance at all. Maybe someone just killed him because they hated him so much.”

  Lennox raised his eyebrows. I shivered, suddenly remembering how I had let slip the words, I'd see him dead before I let him mere hours before John had been killed. My mind traced over the wet floorboards and my misplaced shoes that I had found the next morning when I'd awoken, and a terrible thought came over me that I quickly pushed aside. I hadn't killed John Marlowe. The pills knocked me out: I couldn't have possibly gotten up and done such a thing.

  “Someone just happened to kill him after he'd inherited everything?” Lennox repeated. “It seems highly coincidental.”

  “But it's still possible. Maybe the killer was seething when they heard John got all the money, or maybe they didn't want to do it while Mrs. Marlowe was still alive, or maybe it was the first time they'd seen him in years and they didn't want the opportunity to pass by.”

  “Maybe,” Lennox said, though he didn't sound convinced. He took out another cigarette and lit it, stowing the lighter back in his pocket as though trying to cram his distaste for the other man down with it.

  “I'm just trying to think of every possibility,” I said, taking the cigarette as he offered it to me. “He was probably killed because of the inheritance – but he might have been killed solely because he was a bastard.”

  “And I'm inclined to agree. I just think that – if he someone was willing to kill him solely because he was a bastard, as you've so delicately put it – then he probably would have been murdered years ago. John was cruel. The only thing I ever saw him derive joy from was other people's pain.”

  I shifted my jaw, considering his point, but before I could ask more, crunching footsteps came from behind us, and we both turned around. Kneller was walking toward us.

  “Enjoying the outdoors, Isidore?” he called.

  “I'm enjoying my cigarette,” Lennox replied.

  “Yes, I can tell,” Kneller said, eyeing the cigarette still clutched in my hand as he came closer. He gave Lennox a wide, almost goading smile. “Taking another walk over to the cemetery?”

  “No; the snow's a bit too deep. Maybe if you shoveled a path.”

  “Did you see the yew? Or do you need me to shovel a path to that, too?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Sylvia had me plant it.”

  “Well, you did a good job, judging from its height.”

  “Yes, I gave it a lot of love and care … something you wouldn't know about, of course.”

  Lennox's jaw clenched; Kneller smiled triumphantly.

  “Am I missing something?” I asked as bluntly as possible, for neither man seemed to realize that I was still standing there.

  “No, nothing at all,” Kneller said, not moving his eyes from Lennox's face. “Though Frances was looking for you.”

  “Well, she'll have to wait,” I said, finding myself rather unconcerned with what Mrs. Tilly needed.

  Kneller shrugged.

  “Suit yourself: I'll tell her to haul over the coals while she waits for you. It'll be good practice for when she reprimands you for skirting your duties.” He turned and sidled back to the house, reciting as he went. “And would it have been worth it, after all, after the cups, the marmalade, the tea, among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, would it have been worth while to have bitten off the matter with a smile –”

  I shook my head as he departed and took another drag of Lennox's cigarette. When I tried to hand it back to him, though, he waved it away.

  “You finish it. I think I've had enough.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked off into the distance. “I think I'll take a walk down to the water … The optimistic part of me hopes I might see a boat in the distance that I can flag down.”

  He didn't invite me to join him. Giving me a nod, he quickly departed, leaving me alone. I dropped the cigarette and stamped it out, then begrudgingly went back to the house to see what Mrs. Tilly wanted.

  She wasn't in the kitchen when I returned. I glanced around the vacant room, then went to the Pantry to see if she was getting something off the shelves. Not seeing her, I heaved a sigh and turned away, but then a voice spoke out of the shadows.

  “You should stay away from him.”

  I jumped and swung around. Kneller was leaning up against the radiator by the door, his form mostly hidden by the shelf and shadows.

  “Excuse me?”

  He turned his hands over, warming them over the hot steel. He didn't turn toward me.

  “You should stay away from that man,” he repeated, and there was a harshness in his voice I seldom heard. “I'm surprised at you: aren't you concerned that he might be the killer?”

  “No.”

  “Oh? Why not? Because he's handsome?”

  “No, because I locked him in his room that night,” I said evenly, though I couldn't deny that his tone had shaken me. In the low lighting, he looked more like a skeleton than ever, and his worn, element-stained clothes gave the impression that he had crawled out of the earth from a grave. “– which I told everyone already, in case you've forgotten.”

  “He's taken quite an interest in you,” he hummed. “I wonder why.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “He's not interested in me,” I said. “He's interested in proving who killed John so he doesn't get the blame.”

  “Ah, yes – poor Isidore is always trying to outrun blame, isn't he?”

  “Do you care to explain yourself, or is this just one of your poetic reflections that you throw out in the air to provoke me?”

  “No, it's because I have known the eyes already, known them all – the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase. And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin – when I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?”

  “If that was actually a question, then I don't have the answer.”

  “It wasn't a question: it was an analysis – of you. You in your little maid's uniform, trotting around the Dining Room while they're all shouting and arguing, nothing more than a moth that's been pinned to a specimen board, still alive and wriggling and desperate to get out.”

  “I don't wriggle – and I'm not a moth.”

  “Oh, my apologies. I would have said a butterfly, but a moth seemed more appropriate. Attracted to the light, you know. Or in this case, a certain doctor.”

  He pulled his hands away from the heat. Taking his gloves from his pocket, he put t
hem back on and readied to go outside.

  “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “A man never wants a woman for any reason other than wanting a woman. You'd do well to remember that.”

  When he disappeared through the door, I stalked away to find Mrs. Tilly. Upon checking the nearby rooms and going to the third floor, though, I found her in her room taking a nap. She evidently hadn't been asking for me at all: Kneller had just wanted to get me away from Lennox. I went to the second floor to make up the rooms, feeling myself seethe from his antics, though his distaste for the other man unsettled me, and I began questioning the household's dislike of Lennox with more seriousness than I wanted to.

  Only the door to the yellow Mabel Room where Edie and Bill slept was open, indicating that I could clean it. I set to work getting it in order, hoping that the mindless work would steer my thoughts away from trusting Lennox. It was its usual mess: the sheets were strewn around the bed, the blanket was piled in a heap at the foot, and the comforter was hanging off the side, half dumped onto the floor. I yanked everything back in place, crossing from side to side as I worked to ensure that it was perfectly symmetrical, though I doubted that either of them would complain. When I had finished refilling the water pitcher and straightening the shoes beneath the tufted bench, I took the maid's cap from my head and wiped at my brow, then loosened my hair from the knot at the nape of my neck, wishing that I was still outside in the cold.

  Floorboards creaked behind me, but I didn't register them until a startled gasp pierced the air, too. I turned around in time to see Edie in the doorway, though I nearly didn't recognize her. She had shriveled in on herself as though she had taken ill, her entire form hunching in a pose somewhere between a recoil and the fetal position, and she was gurgling as though the words she wanted to say had gotten locked in her tightened throat. Her pale face was frigid and even her lips had drained of color.

  “Are you alright –?” I began, but I had barely spoken when she bolted from the room. I followed her to the hallway, catching sight of her as she fled down the stairs, and was just debating whether or not to follow her when a giggle sounded from down the hall.

  I turned my head. Cassandra's veiled form was peeking out of the Lillet Room.

  “What?” I asked harshly as she let out another giggle.

  Cassandra drummed her glove-covered fingers over the door-frame.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” she said in a sing-song voice. “How does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row …”

  I opened my mouth to inquire none too politely if she was feeling alright, but was saved from making the comment by Lennox coming up the stairs. He paused on the landing and looked over at me, his eyes running over my hair, but as Cassandra let out a third giggle, his eyes snapped away to focus on her.

  “Is everything alright?” he asked, though his tone was still tense.

  “Yes, Isidore,” Cassandra replied. “Is everything alright with you?”

  “Just fine,” he said carefully, throwing me an inquiring look. “Alexandra, I was hoping you could show me where the washing machine is: I'm afraid I'm running out of clothes. Unless you needed her, of course, Cassandra.”

  “No, no,” Cassandra said sweetly. “She's all yours … for now.”

  She slunk back into her room and shut the door. I glanced at Lennox, then hurried upstairs with him to the nanny's room. He shut the door behind us.

  “And you think she's just a character?” I said, raising my eyebrows at him.

  “I don't know what else to call her – other than something ungracious, that is.”

  He came to stand at the end of my bed. The hems of his pants were soaked from his walk to the dock.

  “I take it you didn't see a boat heading our way?” I asked.

  “No, I'm afraid not. Though it gave me a chance to think more about how John died, and it's still bothering me to think that such a short blade could have killed him.”

  “Alright, but the handle matches the sheath perfectly.”

  “But it's – what? A three inch blade at the most?”

  I took the sheath from my nightstand drawer and let him judge for himself. He turned it carefully in his hands.

  “This just doesn't make sense,” he murmured.

  “Is it not big enough to kill someone?”

  “Not where he was stabbed – at least not immediately.”

  “So you think I'm wrong?” I said, irritated that he was questioning my memory.

  “I think that it might be possible that we have the wrong murder weapon.”

  “So you think I'm wrong.”

  “No, I – well, I'd like to be certain. It just seems very unlikely that the knife belonging to this sheath would have killed him.”

  “So maybe he died of hypothermia like Bernadette said.”

  “But that would mean that the killer left him there still alive and trusted that the cold would take care of him. That seems a bit risky to me. What if he had stumbled to his feet and gone back to the house?”

  “Well, they knew he couldn't get back inside. The door was locked.”

  “He could have rung the bell, though. I think there has to be something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like … something that we could find if we take a closer look at the body.”

  I stared at him. He was so collected, so nonchalant, that had I not heard the words he had spoken, I might have guessed he was discussing his favorite medical journal.

  “You're rather bolder than you give yourself credit for, Dr. Lennox.”

  He smiled the smallest of smiles.

  “Not as bold as I'd like to be, I'm afraid,” he replied, and his tone left me with a hammering in my chest and a warmth on my skin that had nothing to do with the heat in the house. I quickly cleared my throat, hoping that my voice wouldn't give me away.

  “I did tell you to look at the body two days ago, if you remember,” I said. “And now it'll be harder to do. Unless you have a theory of how to convince Amalia to let us, that is.”

  Lennox handed me the sheath back.

  “I thought, perhaps, we wouldn't ask for permission,” he said.

  “Didn't she say she was going to lock the door?”

  “Yes. But I have the key.”

  “So she didn't lock the door?”

  “No, I believe she did. I just … happened upon the key when I went into her room.”

  He put his hands into his pockets. I continued to stare at him, marveling at his nerve and yet unable to keep Kneller's warning from echoing in my mind.

  “Mr. Kneller says I should stay away from you,” I said, running my thumbnail over the intricate birds decorating the sheath.

  I had thought that he might look affronted, or perhaps scoff at the ferryman's advice and tell me why it was incorrect, but he barely changed his expression.

  “And what do you think?” he asked.

  “I think it's possible that you somehow sneaked out of your room and killed John that night, just like I think it's possible that someone killed John for a reason entirely separate from getting any of the inheritance.”

  “And I suppose it's possible, as well, that you sneaked out of your room that night and killed him,” he replied, and though it was clear from his tone that he was teasing me, I couldn't help but think of the puddle that had been on my floor the morning after John had been killed. It had been in the exact spot that he was now standing at the foot of my bed. “I suppose we'll just have to trust one another.”

  The bell by my door jingled, indicating that someone from downstairs was looking for me. I sat up straighter and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then tossed the sheath up onto the bureau.

  “I'm afraid I can't do that, Dr. Lennox. I know better than to trust men I hardly know. John Marlowe taught me that.”

  “Why take the chance of working with me then?”

  “I don't know,” I said, standing up and fixing the maid
's cap back over my hair. Because he's handsome? Kneller's voice said in my head, but I pushed his words away. “Maybe I just like the adventure of it all.”

  Chapter 9

  “You rang?” I asked Mrs. Tilly blandly as I stepped into the kitchen. She glanced up from the table where she was rolling out dough without responding.

  “Yes, I did,” came a voice to my left. Marjorie was standing by the stove. She had a kettle on the burner, though I had never seen her drink tea, and I had certainly never seen her anywhere near the servants' corridors. She crossed her arms as she looked me up and down. “Mrs. Tilly has informed me that you've been slacking on your duties.”

  I felt my jaw clench, though I didn't look at the cook. I gave Marjorie my most feigned polite smile.

  “I didn't realize that, Mrs. Pickering,” I said. “She didn't inform me of any problems.”

  “It's not her job to inform you of anything. You saw the kitchen was a mess this morning and didn't think to clean it up? What exactly did you think you'd been hired to do?”

  My smile tightened, becoming strained.

  “My mistake, Mrs. Pickering. I'll try to be more … aware.”

  “Don't think I haven't had my eye on you,” Marjorie said. “I think we all know that John didn't hire you because Tilda was getting old. Birdie said he paid you quite generously, and yet you clearly have no work ethic. Do you care to explain why?”

  “It's my first time being a maid, Mrs. Pickering. I guess I just don't understand all of the rules.”

  The kettle began to whistle, but Marjorie didn't so much as glance at it. Her eyes were fixed on me.

  “I think you understand quite well what you're doing here,” she said in a low voice. “Better than any of the rest of us, undoubtedly. So let me ask you again: do you care to explain yourself?”

  The kettle whistled louder. The screech filled the room as steam poured from the spout.

  “I really don't know what you're talking about, Mrs. Pickering,” I said evenly. “I'm afraid this is all just a misunderstanding.”

  “Do you like working here, Alexandra? Do you like cleaning rooms and serving food? Being a maid?”

  It was clear that she already knew the answer. I saw no reason to pretend anymore.