Cruel as the Grave (14 page)

She scratched her nose. “Like I said, yesterday he talked to every one of us, I guess, except maybe Lavinia. He never wanted to talk to her if he could help it.” She and Ernie smiled over this. “Anyway, Gerard had a long talk with him, and then, for some reason, Henry got a bee in his bonnet and had to talk to the rest of us. Me, Harold, and Retty. Claudine, Adrian, and Sylvia he saw every day anyway—they had the most contact with him.”

“Then,” Maggie said, in answer to her own question, “since you all talked to him after my father did, you would all have seen the baseball bat there near the bed.” She had another queasy moment as she recalled stumbling over the thing the previous afternoon. Steady now, she told herself.

“Exactly,” Helena said.

“So you had all seen the baseball bat there,” Ernie repeated. “It would have been handy, but I daresay that, even if it hadn’t been, there would have been something else that would have done the job just as well.” She looked grimly at her companions, and Maggie was thankful not to be on Ernie’s list of suspects.

“Let’s move on to the second question, then,” Ernie suggested. “What caused the murderer to act last night? Was it simply that a good opportunity had presented itself? Or did the murderer know Henry intended on changing his will?” She subjected Helena to a keen glance. “Do you have any idea about the provisions of Henry’s will, Helena?”

Helena folded her arms across her chest and leaned back into the corner of the sofa before replying. “Despite all his other sterling qualities, Henry wasn’t one of those who was always threatening to change his will every time he got irritated with one of us. And that was often enough, let me tell you. The last time the subject came up wasn’t long after Henry’s first stroke. I think he made some revisions then, and he told us all flatly that we didn’t have anything to worry about—he’d made provisions for all of us. Even you, Ernie, because he’s always been fond of you.” She nodded in her cousin’s direction. “I don’t know exactly what the proportions are, but Henry gave the impression that he had pretty well divided things up among the family, with the major portion going to Gerard and Maggie, of course. He included Claudine and Adrian as well.”

“So,” Ernie concluded, “every one of us stood to gain by Henry’s death.” She chuckled. “That starts everybody off even with one motive in common—money. When we start adding up the other motives, we’ll see who had the most motives.”

Maggie had an objection. “You can’t say that everyone had a motive just because of the will. I mean, sure, everyone would probably like to inherit money, but first you’ve got to prove that it would mean enough to one of us to kill for.” At the moment she pushed aside thoughts of her own possible inheritance.

Ernie shrugged. “That’s a good point, but the murderer wouldn't necessarily want the money right now. He or she was probably just thinking about the future, and being cut out of Henry’s will might have been a prospect somebody didn’t want to entertain.”

Maggie nodded thoughtfully, then turned to Helena. “Just what would have made my grandfather cut someone out of his will? I mean, he seems to have been pretty tolerant in at least this respect. Most people in his position wouldn’t have kept a so-called prodigal son in.”

“Henry had strict notions about the money remaining in the family,” Helena responded. “I can’t swear what was in his will before his stroke—maybe he really had cut Gerard out before—but afterward he mellowed, and I guess he was thinking forward to a reconciliation.” Her eyes glinted briefly. “Thank goodness he lived to see that,” she added, her voice soft and sad.

Ernie shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, then, what would have made Henry cut someone else out of his will?”

Helena frowned in thought. “I’m just not sure. Somebody would’ve had to make him awfully angry, and I can’t think of anything one of us has done lately that would have brought on a reaction like that.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“I have an idea about that,” Maggie said slowly, but before she could elaborate, a knock sounded at Helena’s door.

“Come in,” Helena called, and the door opened to admit Gerard, followed closely by Lavinia.

As Gerard greeted them, Maggie watched as Lavinia’s eyes swept familiarly—and dismissively—around Helena’s room. Obviously she found Helena’s eclectic taste in furnishings questionable. Maggie caught the expression in the woman’s eyes and felt a surge of annoyance. She then had to laugh inwardly at herself.
You hardly know the woman,
she thought,
yet you’ve already accepted Helena's and Ernie's assessment of her.

Lavinia arranged herself comfortably on one corner of Helena’s bed, while Gerard settled in a low chair at Maggie’s elbow.

“What’s going on now?” Ernie asked.

“The police have just finished grilling us about what we were doing last night during the movie,” Lavinia said peevishly. “Can you imagine—Arthur Latham actually had the nerve to ask me how long I thought I took in the bathroom! I told him I had never timed myself and wasn’t about to start now.” She snorted in outrage.

Maggie didn’t dare look at Ernie or Helena. Helena’s shoulders quivered slightly, and rather than surrender to a fit of the giggles, Maggie managed to cough instead.

“It’s all rather trying, I know, Lavinia,” Gerard interjected soothingly. “But these are, after all, rather unusual circumstances, and Arthur is only doing his job.”

Lavinia snorted again. “Asking a middle-aged woman how long it takes her to pee still seems odd to me. If I didn’t know better, I'd have sworn he was enjoying it.”

Maggie coughed loudly, followed in rapid succession by Helena and Ernie. Lavinia glared suspiciously at them but relaxed her gaze when they all stared blandly back at her.

Ernie cleared her throat. “Was Arthur able to figure out anything from what y’all told him about your movements last night?”

Gerard rolled his eyes. “Who knows? Arthur certainly isn’t going out of his way to tell us too much. He’s obviously told us about as much as he wants us to know for the time being, and that’s that.” He smiled. “That’s a big change from the Arthur Latham I went to high school with. Back then the surest way of having the whole school know something you wanted to keep a secret was to let Arthur get wind of it. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut for anything.”

“Wonderful,” Lavinia commented sourly. “And this is the man who’s been asking me about my bathroom habits.” She shifted on the bed, while the other women coughed, less noticeably this time. “The thing that really gets me in all this is that Henry was going to change his will. I wonder who he was going to cut out?” Her eyes glittered with malice.

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” Gerard commented, frowning in distaste. “Unless it turns out that that was the motive for the murder.”

“Could be,” Lavinia responded. “But old turtle-face Levering was awfully closemouthed. You notice he never said anything else about his conversation with Henry last night. For all we know, Henry might actually have told him who he wanted to disinherit and why.”

Lavinia's air of smug satisfaction was for once justified, Maggie admitted to herself. Henry McLendon might have identified the object of his intended testamentary changes. This idea had escaped them all in the general excitement of the morning’s happenings.

“But,” Maggie objected as she thought of something, “if they do know whom he intended to disinherit, wouldn’t they have taken some action by now?” As quickly as she voiced her question, she answered it herself. “But such evidence would be circumstantial, I suppose, and wouldn’t necessarily make the intended person the murderer. Unless, of course, he or she knew what he... er... my grandfather planned to do.”

Ernie and Helena both nodded vigorously. “And I’d be willing to bet,” Ernie said, “that’s what they’re waiting for. To get some indication, I mean, that the murderer did know about it.” She frowned. “There must not be much physical evidence, if they’re having to go for things like this.” She turned toward Gerard. “Did Arthur ever say anything about fingerprints?”

He shook his head. “He told us that the... it had been wiped clean of prints. The murderer didn’t even try to leave mine or anyone else’s on there to try to incriminate someone.”

“That brings us right back to opportunity and motive,” Helena remarked. She glanced wickedly at Lavinia and then turned to her nephew. “We were discussing that before you and Lavinia came in, Gerard, and I have to tell you we decided that you certainly both had the opportunity.”

Lavinia snorted and stood up from the bed. “I know you’d love for me to be the murderer, Helena McLendon, but I wouldn’t have run up those stairs to bash in Henry’s head. He wasn’t worth the effort.” She strode toward the door.

“Tsk, tsk,” Ernie commented. “Still using that persimmon douche, I see, Lavinia.” Her answer came as Lavinia slammed the door behind her.

Maggie and Helena were convulsed with laughter on the sofa. “I can’t believe you said that!” Maggie told her cousin when she could finally stop laughing.

Ernie rolled her eyes. “I just never can resist taking those cheap shots at Lavinia. She’s such an easy target, and the Lord only knows she gives you plenty of opportunities.” She grinned. “You have to admit that the idea of her running upstairs is a mite ludicrous.”

Helena snorted, in perfect imitation of Lavinia. “Are you kidding? That woman hasn’t produced one iota of sweat since the Eisenhower administration. She wouldn’t exert herself for anything.” She paused. “I take that back. She would exert herself for one thing—money.”

Ernie said, “Maybe,” while Gerard remained silent. Maggie had noticed that he hadn’t joined in their laughter at his aunt’s expense. Now he was frowning at the three of them.

“Lavinia can be a bit much sometimes, I know,” Gerard commented repressively, “but to think that she would have murdered my father for money...”

“I know it’s difficult, Dad,” Maggie responded softly, “but it has to be somebody in this house. I know it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Helena or Ernie. That leaves six people, and Lavinia is one of them.”

He sighed in resignation. “I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier to think about.” He stood up. “I think I’ll go wash up before lunch. That’s really why Lavinia and I came up here anyway. Adrian said lunch would be served at one today.”

He bent forward to touch Maggie lightly on the head. “And I think it would be a very good idea for you to stick close to Helena and Ernie or to me until all of this is settled. Okay?” Maggie nodded.

“Don’t you worry about her,” Ernie assured him. “I’m not about to let anything happen to this girl. You have my word on that!”

“Then that’s enough for me,” Gerard responded affectionately. “See you at lunch.” The door closed quietly behind him.

Ernie consulted her watch. “We have about twenty-five minutes until lunch. Shall we continue our discussion, or shall we take a break until afterward?”

Maggie was about to say that she’d like to go back to her room to freshen up a little, but Helena forestalled her.

“I want to know,” Helena said firmly, “before we go any further, just what it was Maggie was about to say when Gerard and Lavinia came in.” She turned toward her companion on the sofa.

Maggie frowned as she tried to remember what she had said. There had been something, some thought, about the motive for the murder. “Oh, I know.” She returned Helena’s gaze with a decidedly curious one of her own. “Was there anything odd or suspicious about my grandmother’s death?”

Chapter Ten

Helena looked back oddly at Maggie. “That’s uncanny,” she muttered.

“What do you mean?” Ernie asked.

“Both of you.” Pointedly, Maggie waited for Helena to speak first.

“That’s mostly what Henry wanted to talk about yesterday,” Helena responded, shaking her head. “I couldn’t imagine why he wanted to dwell on a day we’d all just as soon forget, but he asked me to tell him what I remembered about that day.” She nodded at Maggie. “Your turn.”

“The second time we—my grandfather and I, that is— talked yesterday,” Maggie answered, “was after he had spoken with my father. During our conversation, he made an odd remark. He said that, while he couldn’t do much to make up for the years of estrangement, he could do something about my grandmother’s death.” She shrugged. “I thought it a strange thing to say at the time, but he was so obviously tired I didn’t feel I could ask him about it. In the light of everything that’s happened, though, it seems likely that maybe there was something suspicious about my grandmother’s death.”

Ernie frowned. “I suppose. Well, Helena, do you think there was anything fishy about Magnolia’s death?”

“At the time, no," Helena replied slowly. “It was a terrible, tragic accident, or so we all thought. But now”—she threw out her hands in a gesture of frustration—“I’m not quite so sure. I told Henry everything I could remember about that day: I wandered by accident into the room where he and Gerard were arguing, but I got out of there the second I realized what was going on. I went into the library to read, and by the time I came out again, Magnolia was lying there, dead at the foot of the stairs.”

“You aren’t much help, then. I guess the only thing we can do is to question everyone about it. Who was in the house that day?” Ernie demanded of Helena.

Helena thought for a moment. “All of us, I guess. Henry, Retty, and I, of course, and Sylvia, who was about seven years old at the time. Harold was here, too. It was July, so he had the summer off from his university. Lavinia was here.” She frowned. “Oh, and Claudine and her mother, of course. Claudine was probably eleven or twelve. The daily help we had at the time I think we can count out. Otherwise, that’s everybody.”

“Then we have our work cut out for us,” Ernie said briskly. “I think Maggie had better try talking to Lavinia, don’t you think, Helena? I doubt she’d take kindly to answering questions for either one of us. But she might talk to Maggie. The curiosity value alone might get something out of her.” She stood up. “Do you mind, Maggie?”

“I guess not,” Maggie answered with manifest reluctance. She, too, stood up. “But I think I’d rather try it on a full stomach.”