Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (29 page)

“But you think some kind of exchange has been going on.”

“Precisely.”

“The real goods, so to speak, substituted with fakes.”

“Precisely.” She beamed at him, a teacher acknowledging a promising student.

“George’s art gallery …”

“Those who can, do. Paint, that is. Those who can’t, buy art galleries. Those who really can’t make a go of that, steal, paying a starving artist to create passable substitute paintings or bits of furniture. Adrian was quite near-sighted; I tested him on that myself. He never knew the difference. If anyone else noticed, they assumed he’d been ripped off by a shady dealer, or that he was just exercising his naturally appalling taste.”

An electronic bleating erupted once again from the direction of Fear’s jacket.

“Jingle Bells,” laughed Natasha. “I say, that is jolly.”

“I thought I told you to get that thing seen to, Sergeant.”

“I tried, Sir. I.T. couldn’t figure it out, either.”

“Get Emma to change it back then.”

“She refuses, Sir.”

“For God’s sake …”

Turning again to Natasha, he said:

“How long has it been going on?”

“Since George developed expensive habits, at a guess. Drugs being the most expensive. He’s rather frugal when it comes to women. I have a theory—not yet proven—that in addition to the art theft, he’s found some of the furniture leaving the country is extremely useful for concealing whatever one wants to conceal. The earlier centuries were very clever about hidden compartments, for which the modern drug dealer has found much the same uses.”

“It’s Chloe Beauclerk-Fisk, Sir,” said Fear. “She’s been calling the station all morning, wanting to talk with you.”

“Later, Sergeant. So you’ve insinuated yourself with George, winning his confidence, to find out who the receivers are.”

“Precisely.”

“This deception includes having a child with him? Are you quite mad?”

“Of course not, Inspector. ‘All in the line of duty’ can be taken too far. That was George’s harebrained scheme, to get in good with his father. To stay on George’s good side, I had to play along. I was appalled, but what could I do? God, this family. When Ruthven was killed, I knew I was in over my head, but even then I couldn’t risk calling for instructions, not with your men crawling all over the house. You must realize, it was almost certainly George behind that, but I don’t know why or how he did it yet. I can promise you I’m working on getting it out of him. As far as I
knew
, he was asleep all night next to me when Ruthven was killed. As long as I can keep his confidence, he might just let the truth slip. I had to keep playing the game. It was too important—and I was closer to unraveling the case than anyone had been able to get—to blow my cover. We’re talking about two men killed over this, not to mention millions of pounds in stolen treasures, taken not only from here but from museums all over the world. We’re closer to the truth than ever before, now.”

Sergeant Fear was wishing she’d be quiet. He got it, got it,
got
it
. It was known that Scotland Yard had its own agenda, and sometimes played by its own rules when it suited them. It wasn’t the first time they’d elbowed the “provincials” out of the way over an international case deemed to be of overriding priority. He just resented being made to feel like some kind of fucking Cambridgeshire goatherd.

“Look, Chief Inspector; Sergeant. I know you’re angry at being left out in the cold. I would be, too. I couldn’t help it; I had no control, no real authority. This is not your average smuggling scheme. We still don’t know all the receivers in Europe and the Middle East, let alone all the suppliers. It would seem George was not only stealing from his father, but using this house as sort of a warehouse for incoming goods. Paulo is in on it with him, I’m sure, but I doubt Paulo knows the magnitude of what he’s involved in.”

“Natasha, I would suggest, with all due respect, that neither do you.”

MEMORY LANE

_______________________

THE TWO POLICEMEN CAME
stomping down the staircase into the hall to find Paulo taking Chloe’s fur coat at the main door. Just before Paulo kicked the door shut, St. Just glimpsed the black limousine that had transported her in state to the house.

The Hollywood-style sweep of staircase left him nowhere to hide. Inwardly, St. Just groaned, imagining she was there for a hand-holding session for which he had little time or inclination.

“God, but the press is vile,” she informed him. “One of them practically flung herself on the bonnet trying to stop us on the way in.” She took off her leather gloves, flapping them in his direction. “Needed to talk with you. And Mohammed wouldn’t come to the mountain.”

She marched into the library. At least, judging by her sturdy progress, she was relatively sober this time. Reluctantly, after a whispered conference with Fear, he followed, closing the door behind them.

“Seem to have been a few changes here,” she said, hands on hips, taking in the vast room. “All that military crap in the hallway is new since my time. As for this—” she waved one arm, taking in the paintings cramming the walls—“Adrian never could tell a racehorse from a plug mare. That much hasn’t changed. Speaking of plug mares, why haven’t you taken that one into custody yet?”

“I assume you are referring to Lady Beauclerk-Fisk.”

“Of course I mean Violet. What does she have to do, come running in here waving a poison-tipped spear and threatening to run us all through?”

“There’s no evidence …”

“Evidence? Her first, wealthy husband dies under ‘mysterious circumstances.’ She no sooner has her hooks into wealthy Adrian than he’s dead. What more evidence do you need? Oh, I see the truth now. Poor Ruthven. He probably got wind of what she was planning, so she killed him. She should have been locked up years ago, but all she had to do was bat those baby blues at male officialdom and off she flies to Gstaad or Monaco or wherever it was she disappeared to.”

“‘Baby blues?’ Had you met Violet before, then?”

“It’s just an expression.” She shrugged. “Oh, all right. I did know her, in the way one did know people in those days,” she said vaguely, not quite willing to meet his stare. “All the same crowd at the same wretched parties every weekend. Violet was always included because of the way she looked; I because of my money. I knew, and I didn’t care. Daddy sent me to England to snag a title and, by golly, I did.”

Her round, plain face brightened momentarily. Was marriage to Sir Adrian the singular accomplishment of her life, in Daddy’s eyes? And what would Daddy have said if he’d known the background to that title?

“You must have recognized her name on the invitation.”

“That’s exactly it, you see. I did
not
recognize the name Violet Mildenhall. I knew her as Violet Winthrop. You think I wouldn’t have mentioned that to Ruthven, if I’d put it together in time? I might have warned him to stay away from her, from this house, at a minimum.”

“All right.” Here St. Just felt it was time to divert the conversation into more procedural paths. There was still the looming question of what she had been doing when Sir Adrian met his demise. Feeling like a BBC news announcer forced to lurch from headline to unrelated headline, he put the question to her.

“At home, of course.”

“Can anyone vouch for you?”

“Mrs. Ketchen, of course.”

From what he had seen of Mrs. Ketchen, he thought it unlikely she had any idea whether on any given day her employer was at home, pinned under a lorry, or planting gunpowder in the basement of Westminster.

“All right,” he said patiently. “Tell me what you know, now, about that weekend in Scotland. And I mean,
all
that you know: gossip, facts, and innuendo. Let’s start with Violet. Everything you can remember. She was popular with men, Violet was, I take it?” “Popular?
Pop
ular?” Chloe, who had been peeking at the ending of a Graham Greene novel, swung on him, astonished, in an “is-there-no-limit-to-your-ignorance?” way. “Good God, man.

People nearly brought back dueling for Violet’s sake. She was a force of nature, no question about it. Pamela Harriman had nothing on her. Pam, of course, was
older
, but there was an enormous competition between them, at least on Pamela’s part. Quite deadly. Oh, yes, indeed. All the kiss-kiss in public, gloves off in private, if the rumors were true. I remember Averil—”

“Were you jealous of her? Then, I mean?”

“Then and now: no,” she said flatly. “You could really only gaze in dumbstruck awe where Violet was concerned, as at … oh, I don’t know. A thunderstorm. Or a train wreck. Somehow, she didn’t inspire jealousy, only wonder. Oh, there was the expected cattiness over her marriage to that old lizard Winthrop. But do you know, the more I saw them together, the more I came to believe that was a love match. Didn’t she have
me
fooled.”

“You were not in the camp that believed she killed him, then?”

“I wasn’t then. I am now. Do you really believe this is coincidence? Everywhere she goes, there’s a trail of bodies, or hadn’t you noticed? The problem was …” She didn’t seem to want to meet his eyes. “The problem was, I couldn’t imagine why she would kill him. It’s not as if he held her captive, you know. She was free to … you know …”

“I don’t know.”

Again the look of surprise. “To have discreet affairs, of course,” she said. “If she wanted them. It was quite the done thing in that crowd. I never got the impression that she did. Want affairs, I mean. Rather cold-blooded, she was, I always felt. All the men hoped differently, but I don’t think any of them got too far.”

In spite of her denials, St. Just wondered if there weren’t just a bit more jealousy here than she was willing to own to. And more than a shade of bitterness. She was taking Sir Adrian’s death with less hand-wringing than might have been expected, given the manner of his death, if nothing else. But then, it had been decades since their divorce.

He sat down, first leading her by the arm away from the bookshelves in front of which she’d planted herself and repotting her in a seat across from him.

“You weren’t entirely truthful with me when we first met, were you?”

“As truthful as the situation warranted. She killed Adrian, all right, but for the life of me I don’t see how Ruthven was a threat to her. Unless he knew she was planning to kill Adrian. And how could he? And—why wouldn’t she have waited a decent interval before killing him, if only to make it
look
good? Oh, I don’t know. I go ’round and ’round about it in my mind, and I can’t see the motive there. Not unless she’s insane. Do you think that’s possible?”

Again feeling like a news announcer, skipping now to the tabloid news, he said:

“You didn’t feel we needed to know that Ruthven was not Sir Adrian’s natural son?”

She could make a quick recovery; he had to hand that to her. Hesitating only for a second, she said defiantly:

“No, I didn’t. What possible bearing could it have?”

“Quite a lot, I should think.”

She shrugged her shoulders, spreading open palms before him. Think what you like.

“How did you find out?” she asked at last.

“He was working on a book when he died. A work of nonfiction thinly disguised as fiction.
A Death in Scotland
was the title.”

He was watching her closely for a reaction. She blinked several times, but otherwise her expression remained frozen.

He kept pitching, hoping to catch her in contradiction. And now for news from the publishing world …

“Are you aware Sir Adrian had already made arrangements to leave you the proceeds from this manuscript?”

“No,” she said slowly. “No, I wasn’t …” She paused, clearly thinking through the ramifications, then said, “ But it was precisely the kind of joke he enjoyed.
A Conception in Scotland
might be a better title, for his purposes. For that, of course, is where Ruthven was conceived. By quite a dashing young man with a title who dashed off and left me holding the baby, literally. Said young man had decided this was all getting much more serious than he had intended, you see. And not long after that I met Adrian, who … shall we say … turned his attentions to me.

“I honestly didn’t know—to an absolute certainty, Chief Inspector— whose child it was. God—
that
didn’t quite come out the way I meant it to sound. What I
mean
to say is, I didn’t
know
I was pregnant when I took up with Adrian. Then later … perhaps I suspected Ruthven wasn’t his, but I didn’t
know
. As the years went on, and I came to the point I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Adrian, I came to believe Ruthven wasn’t his, because I preferred to believe that. Then, the first time Ruthven had to have his blood typed, when he was sent off to school—then …Well. I said nothing to Ruthven at the time—that came later—and certainly not to Adrian. You don’t know how it was in those days. Although I don’t suppose that kind of announcement would go over big today, either. So that’s what Adrian chose to write about in this wretched book: How I trapped him into marriage, and with a child that wasn’t even his.”

“That was part of his topic, certainly,”

She wasn’t listening. He imagined she was trying to piece together, as he had been, the implications of the rest of the family’s learning of Ruthven’s true parentage.

“I wonder how Adrian found out?”

“When Ruthven was in hospital. Ruthven was type A. Sir Adrian was type O. You had to be type A yourself for Adrian to have been the father of Ruthven.”

“Which I’m not. However did he?—wait. That explains what he was doing, coming to visit me. I carry a medical card in my purse—I’m a diabetic, as Adrian well knew, so all my information is there in case they have to tow me out of Harrods on a stretcher one day. Sneaky, creeping little bastard. Adrian paid no attention to Ruthven while he was growing up; it doesn’t surprise me it took him this long to tumble to it.”

“The book seems to have been some form of revenge, from what I know of it, or of him, yes. He seems to have started on it right about the time of Ruthven’s operation.”