Death Wears a Mask (34 page)

She laughed again. “The photographers follow me around. They like to see interesting things. And you, Milo,” she purred his name, “are very interesting indeed.”

She was laying it on rather thickly. If Milo was entranced by such obvious charms, I had greatly underestimated him.

“What did your wife say?” she asked with a giggle that made me grit my teeth.

“She was not pleased.” Milo had always had a knack for understatement.

“Did she curse and hit you and throw things at you?”

I felt a surge of indignation. What did she think I was? A sailor?

“Hardly,” Milo replied, and I could hear the humor in his tone. “But she was displeased, nonetheless.”

She sniffed. “You English are inclined to take things much too seriously. Did you tell her it was only a bit of fun?”

“I told her that we were photographed at an inopportune moment and that it went no further.”

“So sad,” she lamented. “But there are no photographers now.” The invitation in her tone was very clear, but she said the words anyway. “Kiss me.”

I tensed, waiting for a telling silence as he acquiesced. I was rather surprised when I heard his answer.

“No, Helene,” he replied, in the same calm tone. “As I told you before, I'm not interested.”

“I think you are teasing me,” she taunted him. “Perhaps you think to drive me mad with desire. Is that it?”

I clenched my teeth. For pity's sake. She spoke exactly as if she was playing a role in some absurd melodrama. I had never seen one of her films, but if this performance was any indication of her talent, I was not missing anything.

I recognized the growing impatience in Milo's tone. “I'm not teasing you, Helene. And I'm not going to kiss you.”

She gave a little sniff of displeasure.

“I hope you don't think I don't appreciate the offer,” he continued. “You're a very beautiful woman, and I am flattered, but I'm afraid the answer is still no. You see, it may be dreadfully English of me, but I'm very fond of my wife.”

I stood very still, relief coursing through me. I felt oddly as though I might cry. Naturally, a husband should care for his wife, but it was different to hear it from Milo's lips when he didn't know that I was listening.

He was going to come out of the room soon, so I passed quickly by and moved toward the stairway.

I must have looked quite the fool rushing up the stairs, a ridiculous smile on my face.

*   *   *

ONCE UPSTAIRS, I
tapped at the door of the bedroom across from the card room. It was opened instantly by a portly sergeant who must have been hovering just inside, waiting for the culprit to make an appearance.

“Good evening,” I said, brushing past him and into the room. “No sign of a thief yet?”

He was, I think, caught a bit off guard by my arrival, but he recovered quickly. “Not a peep out of anyone yet, ma'am,” he said.

I felt a nagging bit of worry. Perhaps the trap had been too ridiculous to work. Or perhaps one of the Barringtons or even Lord Dunmore was the killer and was privy to the entire thing. In retrospect, it all seemed quite hopeless.

I took a seat in a brown velvet chair. I might as well wait a bit longer. It was still possible that something would happen.

The sergeant seemed ill at ease with my presence. I thought it possible he wasn't entirely sure who I was and what I was doing bursting in upon his clandestine assignment. Nevertheless, he was too polite to say so, and we chatted for a few moments about the weather.

The door opened a moment later, interrupting the sergeant just as he was beginning to regale me with his own highly developed theory regarding the best climates in which to catch criminals. It was Inspector Jones, and Milo was behind him. “Good evening, Mrs. Ames,” said the inspector as they entered and he closed the door behind him, leaving it open the barest of cracks. “I thought we might find you here.”

I looked at Milo and found his eyes were already on me. I smiled. “Hello,” I said.

He gave me a little smile in return, and I felt a rush of love for him. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but I knew perfectly well that now was not the time.

“Nothing yet, eh?” Inspector Jones said, calling my attention back to the matter at hand.

“No, no one has taken the bait yet,” I said glumly.

“Well, with any luck it won't be much longer.”

The sergeant stationed himself near the door, where he could see through the crack out into the hallway. Milo and Inspector Jones both took a seat, and we waited in expectant, yet not exactly optimistic, silence. I thought how dull the evening would prove to be if we had only sitting around looking at one another to keep us entertained. Someone should have thought to bring a deck of cards. We might have played bridge.

As it turned out, however, we did not have long to wait. As usual, the inspector's instincts were correct. It was only a short while later that the sergeant signaled to us. Then I detected the faint sound of footsteps outside the door. The inspector held up his hand for silence.

We waited a moment, and then Inspector Jones moved silently to the door and eased it open a bit wider. I couldn't see from my vantage point, but a moment later he pulled the door open fully, and I could see out into the hallway.

Marjorie Echols stood there, the Dunmore Diamond dangling from her hand.

I stood, my eyes wide. I couldn't believe that it had worked. It seemed almost absurd that it had. Yet there she stood, as guilty as you please.

“Good evening, Miss Echols,” Inspector Jones said in a tone that somehow managed to be both polite and accusatory at the same time. “Would you mind telling me what you're doing with that necklace?”

I saw something flash across her face, and I thought that she was going to be stubborn about it, make up some preposterous excuse. Then it seemed almost as though she wilted a bit. “I suppose you've found me out, haven't you? I knew it was too good to be true.” She shot an angry glance at me. “I should have known it was some sort of trap.”

“Perhaps you'd better step into this room,” Inspector Jones said. He took the diamond from her hand and deposited it in his pocket.

“Oh, wait!” cried another voice. “She hasn't done anything.” It was Felicity Echols who had come down the hall. She was pale and wringing her hands. “Please don't arrest her. She didn't mean it.”

“Be quiet, Felicity,” Marjorie said, though her tone was kind.

“If there is an explanation to be had,” Inspector Jones said calmly, “it would be best if you gave it to me now.”

They filed after him, and he closed the door. We all sat down, and Inspector Jones looked at Marjorie Echols. “Now, why don't you tell me what's been going on.”

She let out a sigh and shrugged. “If you must know, Jim had been giving me pieces of his aunt's jewelry to sell.”

This surprised me. James Harker had been stealing his aunt's jewelry? This I hadn't expected. In fact, it didn't make sense.

“Why would he do that?” Inspector Jones asked pleasantly.

She smiled, a flash of confidence returning. “Because I asked him to.”

“I see. He was in love with you, then?”

She shrugged again. “I don't think Jim ever really thought of it in those terms. We were just great friends. He wanted to help me when he could. And he wanted to help Felicity. Truth be told, I think he was perhaps a little in love with her. Felicity cared for him, too, in her own way. She was very fond of him.”

Inspector Jones glanced at Felicity, who was quite pale, and then back to Marjorie. “He wanted to help your sister how?”

Marjorie looked at her sister, and I saw Felicity give an almost imperceptible nod.

“She was being harassed by Mr. Foster.”

“Harassed?” Inspector Jones repeated skeptically. I marveled again at the way in which the man could convey so much while saying so little.

“Yes, he is quite mad to get Felicity to … succumb to his charms. She doesn't like him and never has, but he doesn't let that worry him. He's been rather relentless about it.”

Her words had the ring of truth to them. I had, unfortunately, had a glimpse of the lengths to which Mr. Foster would go. And Mrs. Garmond confirmed that he would stop at nothing to get what he felt was being denied to him.

I had been able to escape him, but I wondered if Felicity had been less fortunate in the past. I hoped not. I remembered what she had told me that night at the Sparrow. She had been drunk and confused about who had brought me there. It had not been Lord Dunmore she had been warning me against, but Mr. Foster.

“We were going to wait a while to sell the things, and then we were going to leave London and go abroad,” Marjorie went on. “Jim gave us a few pieces, but then he thought his aunt was growing suspicious that the things were disappearing in her house. So he said he would meet us at the ball and give us one last piece. However, when he met up with us that night, he said that his aunt had decided to wear a paste bracelet and we would have to wait.”

So Mr. Harker hadn't taken his aunt's bracelet. Then who had? I felt as though we were turning around in circles.

“The night of the murder, did he have a gun with him?” I asked suddenly. Inspector Jones looked as though he didn't quite appreciate my butting in.

“Yes.” She let out a laugh. “Poor fool. He said he would protect us from Mr. Foster, if need be. It was his own gun that he was killed with, wasn't it? I was afraid something like that would happen.”

“Did you kill him, Miss Echols?” Inspector Jones asked.

“Oh, no!” cried Felicity.

Marjorie looked genuinely surprised. “Certainly not! I was truly fond of Jim.”

“Despite the fact that you were forcing him to steal from his aunt and give you the jewels,” Inspector Jones said.

She shrugged. “I needed the money. Mrs. Barrington has a lot of jewels. I didn't think it would matter that much in the end.”

“We shouldn't have done it,” Felicity whispered. “We shouldn't have taken those things. Jim didn't mean to be a thief. He thought of us as a charity, people who needed his help. He was so very sweet. He only wanted to…” She broke off suddenly, weeping into her hands. The sergeant handed her his handkerchief.

“It wasn't all that nice to take advantage of Jim, perhaps,” Marjorie admitted. “But he said that he wanted to help us, and I wasn't going to say no. Besides, he didn't help us much in the end.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Things escalated quickly. Mr. Foster began turning up everywhere we went, trying to get Felicity alone. Even that night at the ball, he arrived in the same mask as Jim. I think he meant to try to trick Felicity into going off alone with him.”

So that accounted for the duplicate mask, why he had called Mr. Bertelli about a “joke” he wished to play. Mr. Foster had meant to use it as a trap of his own. I found the man utterly detestable.

She looked at me. “That night we had dinner with you and the Douglas-Hugheses, Felicity stayed home because we expected Mr. Foster would be there. I thought maybe if I tried to talk to him, he would leave her alone, but it was no use. He's a cad through and through. So I decided to sell one of the pieces sooner than we had planned. And that's when I found out.”

“Found out what?” Inspector Jones asked.

“That all the things Jim had given us were paste.”

 

30

I STARED AT
her. For just a moment, the room was silent and I could hear the loud ticking of the clock on the wall. I think we were all a bit stunned at this newest revelation.

“What do you mean?” Inspector Jones asked at last.

Marjorie sighed, as though we were quite dense and explaining all of this was becoming a great inconvenience. “I took them to sell them, and the proprietor told me that they weren't real. Just costume pieces, he said.”

I frowned. James Harker had been giving them paste jewels all along? Then where were the real things? None of this seemed to make any sense.

“Are you certain?” I asked.

She looked at me impatiently. “The jeweler ought to know, I think.”

Then the piece she had attempted to sell hadn't been the piece Mr. Gibbs had found for me in Whitechapel. He had insisted the pin tonight was genuine, and I was inclined to believe him.

“Either James was very stupid and took the wrong things,” Marjorie said, “or he did it on purpose.”

“Oh, no,” Felicity insisted softly. “He wouldn't have done that.”

Inspector Jones glanced at me and then rose to his feet. “You ladies had better come with me, nonetheless,” he said to the Echols sisters. “There are a few more questions we'll need to ask you.”

Inspector Jones and the sergeant led the Echols sisters, Marjorie sauntering and Felicity sniffling, out of the room. I sat back in my chair with a sigh.

Milo lit a cigarette, his eyes on my face. “I can see the wheels spinning. That's rarely a good thing.”

I sat forward. “Something isn't right. There is something that we're missing. It's all so very unsatisfactory.”

“Alas, such is life. Perhaps that's all there is to it. Perhaps they'll confess to the murder after a thorough interrogation.”

I shook my head. “I don't think so. I believe Miss Echols's story.”

“It's very bizarre,” he said skeptically.

“That's just why I think it's true. Why should she make up something like that?”

“I imagine Foster would have a rather different account of events if questioned.”

“I wouldn't put him past theft and murder,” I said darkly. “The way he behaved this evening…” I stopped. I had not really intended to share that with Milo.

As usual, however, he missed nothing. His gaze, I thought, was suddenly very sharp. “Exactly how did he behave this evening?”