Murder at Rough Point (25 page)

At the foot of my bed, Patch stirred and then crawled up the mattress until his moist nose nudged my chin. A low whimper begged the question: Is something wrong?

“Yes, dear Patch, something is.” With one hand settling on his warm neck, I wriggled my legs free of the covers and sat up. “Come on, boy.”

I made my way downstairs, using the scant glow from a moon obscured by clouds to guide me. Rain pattered at the windows, no longer relentless but steady nonetheless. The house was silent but for the ticking of numerous clocks, a sound that went unnoticed by day but now seemed deafening to my ears. At the bottom of the stairs I paused to listen for any sound not made by nature or mechanics. A footstep . . . a breath . . . I needn't have worried. Patch waited patiently beside me. Had I not been alone in this part of the house he would have alerted me immediately.

Quickly I traversed the distance through the dining room to my uncle's office, all the while praying the repaired telephone lines had held. My hopes were rewarded, and the night operator put through my call. The ear trumpet reverberated with the ringing on the other end . . . ringing and ringing, until losing hope, I very nearly ended the call. But I heard a click and then a voice, heavy with sleep and edged with no small measure of irritation.

“This had better be important.”

“Jesse?”

“Emma?” His tone altered immediately. He sounded fully awake and doubly anxious. “Emma, what is it? Do you need me out there? I never should have left you there—”

“I'm all right, Jesse. Please, just listen. Miss Marcus is innocent.”

“What are you talking about? You heard the evidence. She had motive aplenty and more than enough opportunity. Unless you've discovered evidence pointing at someone else . . .”

“No, it isn't that. I don't know who did it, I only know who didn't. Please, can you come here first thing in the morning?”

“I'm supposed to present our evidence to the prosecutor in the morning.”

“But Miss Marcus is innocent. Please, come here first. It doesn't matter how early it is. I'll make sure everyone is up. What I have to say is best said before the others. I believe once they hear, they will agree with me, and so will you.”

Jesse's exasperation was palpable across the wires. I could almost see him pressing his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.

“Can't you just tell me now, as long as you woke me up?”

I wouldn't back down. This was too important. “It would be better to tell you in person, and with the others present.”

He made no attempt to stifle a sigh of impatience. “All right, I'll be there at seven thirty sharp. See that everyone is awake and assembled. And this is assuming the rain doesn't worsen in the meantime.”

The reminder of the dangers of traveling, of asking him to brave the mud of Bellevue Avenue once again, produced a pang of guilt. If anything happened to him I would never forgive myself, but if a woman went to prison or worse, was hanged for a crime she didn't commit, and I might have prevented it, I would never forgive myself either.

“Thank you, Jesse. I'll see you in the morning.”

“Emma,” he called out to prevent me from hanging up. “Assuming Miss Marcus
is
innocent, then you're not safe there. Please, go back to your room and lock your door. Is Patch with you?”

I smiled down at the dark and light figure lying comfortably at my feet. “He is, and he's completely relaxed at the moment, meaning there is no immediate threat. But yes, I'll return to my room now and lock my door. Good night, Jesse.”

Patch and I hurried back upstairs, but once there I found the prospect of sleep daunting. I dozed, but got very little true sleep in the ensuing hours. In fact, I found myself envying Patch's deep slumber, evidenced by his steady breathing, occasional twitches, and sweet little snorts. I, on the other hand, turned my theory over and over in my mind while wondering if I had taken leave of my senses or allowed my idealistic fancies to color my judgment.

Before dawn I crawled out of bed and dressed. Doubts once more crowded my resolve, but I could not discount even the most outlandish notion if a shred of possibility existed. I knocked on Mrs. Wharton's door. She surprised me by answering almost immediately, as if she had awaited my summons. In a hastily donned robe and a mussed braid falling over one shoulder, she squinted out at me. “Emma?” Her features scrunched in bewilderment, but in the next instant her gaze became alert. “Dear heavens, what has happened?”

“Nothing,” I hastened to say. “Except that I don't believe Miss Marcus is guilty, and I can tell you why. Please get dressed. Jesse will be here in a little while.”

“But . . .”

I was already on my way back into the servants' wing to my parents' room, where I repeated my message, told them their questions would be answered shortly, and doubled back into the main corridor toward Vasili's room. A faint glow kissed the watery horizon beyond the Great Hall windows, but shadows draped the gallery, so that I felt rather than saw my way across.

At the other end I knocked softly on Vasili's bedroom door, waited, knocked again. Finally, I tried the knob and it turned in my hand. My first thought was that Vasili had neglected to lock his door, but since he and the others believed in Miss Marcus's guilt, he would have seen no reason to continue locking himself in at night. I opened the door and stepped in.

He lay sprawled on his back on top of a tangle of covers. I hesitated, thinking I should have my father wake him. But I needed everyone up and dressed by the time Jesse arrived if we were to have ample time before his meeting with the prosecutor. With that in mind, I crossed the room.

“Mr. Pavlenko.”

Nothing. I tried several more times before reverting to his given name, loudly and inches from his ear. That produced a groan. I tried again, this time adding a firm nudge to his shoulder. He rolled to his side facing away from me. “Whoever you are, get out.” One of his unintelligible oaths completed the command.

“Vasili, you must get up. Detective Whyte will be here in a little while, and you'll be needed downstairs.”

He turned slightly, so I could see his pale cheek and his sunken right eye. “Why needed downstairs? He is accusing me now?”

“No, not at all.” I stopped. If indeed Miss Marcus proved innocent, I might very well be coaxing a murderer from his bed. The day Claude Baptiste was killed, Vasili hadn't been with the rest of us in Miss Marcus's bathroom. He had been in his own room after spending time with Monsieur Baptiste in the upper sitting room—or so he had said. “There is new evidence about Miss Marcus.”

“She is the killer.”

“No, I don't believe so.” I tugged his wrist until he rolled onto his back again. He threw an arm across his eyes and groaned louder than before.

“My head . . . it is exploding.”

“Yes, well, that's your own fault. Please get changed—” I broke off as I acknowledged that he was already dressed, albeit in yesterday's clothes. “Or don't, as it pleases you. But be downstairs in half an hour. I'll make sure Mrs. Harris has plenty of strong coffee waiting for you. If you're not down, I'll have to send Detective Whyte up.”

His guttural cursing followed me out the door.

M
rs. Harris provided us with another simple breakfast of toast and eggs, along with that promised coffee. I had left Patch in her charge, since I couldn't always depend on him to behave in any given situation. Little conversation broke the monotony of the repast, while more than a few puzzled and annoyed looks were sent my way. The latter mostly came from Vasili, who sat with his head cradled in one hand while he nibbled on dry toast and gulped hot coffee until I was certain he'd scalded his throat.

Jesse arrived at seven thirty sharp, bringing with him Uncle Frederick who had opted not to stay overnight at Rough Point. Sir Randall had been assigned Uncle Frederick's room, and the latter decided he had no wish to sleep in a bed last inhabited by a dead man. I had tried reasoning with him that Sir Randall hadn't died in the house, much less in the bed, but Uncle Frederick would hear none of it.

“More than ever I wish to take my leave of this place and never return,” he told me yesterday before accompanying Jesse back to town. “Louise is quite correct. There is a troubled spirit at work in this corner of the island—a mariner who met with a violent end, perhaps—and I'll never rest easy here again.”

Normally I considered superstition nothing more than hokum, but even I couldn't deny a sense that some dark force had descended on the property. And in a matter of moments I would plunge our remaining group back into a state of uncertainty and danger.

“All right, Emma, I'm here, and I've brought Mr. Vanderbilt at his insistence,” Jesse said, dispensing with greetings and pleasantries. He removed his bowler and shrugged out of his overcoat, both misted to a light sheen from what had tapered to a drizzle outside. Uncle Frederick passed by him and without a word took a seat near the head of the table. “Now will you tell me what this is all about?”

“Would you like any breakfast?” I asked first.

My uncle shook his head and Jesse sent me a stare that held impatience and incredulity in equal measure. I pushed away from the table and stood. “Shall we adjourn to the drawing room?”

“No.” Vasili lifted his head from his hand. “I am not moving again, unless it is to crawl back to my bed. You will speak here and make it quick.”

My indignant retort was forestalled when the door to the servants' wing opened and Carl and Irene came in to clear away the breakfast dishes. I waited, my heart thumping in anticipation, until they left the room.

“Now then,” I began once the door closed securely behind them. “About the matter of Miss Marcus's guilt. I have given this serious thought, and once you've heard what I have to say I believe you'll agree that she is innocent.”

Uncle Fredrick neither made a comment nor looked surprised. Obviously Jesse had filled him in on the situation on their way over.

Mrs. Wharton didn't look surprised either, but decidedly skeptical. “You said that upstairs. I can't begin to imagine how you can refute so much evidence. Or why. It's not as if there is any love lost between you and Josephine, is there?”

“No, indeed there is not. In fact I rather abhor her. She ill-used a kindly gentleman, has no sense of common decency, and possesses not a shred of empathy for God's four-legged creatures. But whether or not she committed murder is an entirely different matter. I won't see an innocent person hang if I can do anything about it.”

Clapping ensued—slow, loud, and mocking. Vasili's hands came together several times as his lips curled around derisive laughter. “Very noble, Miss Cross. We are all very impressed by your selflessness. But I think perhaps you have been sipping from my vodka.”

“Shut up, Vasili.” Father stood up for good measure and aimed a threatening glower at the man across the table. My mother reached up to grasp his forearm.

“Arthur, sit. Let's hear what Emma has to say.” She offered me a smile of encouragement, as if I were a schoolgirl about to recite lines of poetry. “Go ahead, darling.”

I shook away my frustrations and cleared my throat. “I'll begin with that fragment of cigarette Mrs. Wharton and I found out beyond the kitchen garden. It is next to impossible that my uncle's gardeners would have been so careless on the very grounds they keep in near perfect condition. Isn't that so, Uncle?”

“No gardener who values his position on my estate would do such a thing,” he confirmed.

I nodded my thanks to him and continued. “Then my theory is that whoever pushed Sir Randall from the footbridge disposed of the end of the cigarette before reaching him.”

“Yes, and that would be Josephine.” Vasili leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “She smoked like the rest of us. And Randall would not have suspected anything if he saw her approaching the bridge. He simply would have waited for her to join him. That gave her the advantage.”

“Did it?” I admit to studying Vasili down the length of my nose with no shortage of disdain. “Do you have your cigarettes with you?”

He shrugged and reached into the pocket of his velvet morning coat, extracting a thin gold case studded with pearls. With a snap he opened the lid.

“Would you please light one?”

He regarded my request with a look of bafflement, but took one of the slender cigarettes and struck a match. A moment later a thin trail of smoke streamed from both his nose and mouth.

“Do you see how you did that?” I pointed at the smoke drifting in the air. “You inhaled deeply into your lungs, and let out a semitransparent, grayish vapor. I have observed that with each of you who smokes.” I leaned with my palms on the tabletop. “Except with Josephine. When she smokes, she puffs out fluffy white clouds. It took me a good while to understand the significance of that, but it finally occurred to me that she doesn't inhale—not at all. Which suggests that cigarettes are nothing more than an affectation for her. Something she does for show because she believes, one would deduce, that it makes her look modern and independent.”

“Even if that is so, what of it?” Vasili drew on his cigarette and forcefully blew a haze in my direction. “This is ridiculous.”

I blinked and coughed and fanned at the air.

“No, Emma's right.” Mother tilted her head as she considered. “I've noticed, too, that Josephine never pulls the smoke into her lungs. In fact I questioned her about it once and she joked that smoking gave her something to do with her hands, and she enjoyed how it often shocked the more staid members of society.”

“My guess is she didn't bother to smoke unless she had an audience.” I directed my next statement to Jesse. “It's very doubtful Miss Marcus would have bothered to light a cigarette if she had been on her way to murder Sir Randall.”

Jesse, who had been standing all this time, dragged out a chair at the head of the table and sat. His eyes narrowed on me. “All right, so the cigarette didn't come from Miss Marcus. That still doesn't rule out the possibility that she killed Sir Randall. She had motive.”

Unwilling to be daunted, I said, “Let's move on to Claude Baptiste. If you'll remember, when I removed my shoes and tested the rug in his bedroom, I detected more moisture than logically would have been tracked in by your men. Don't forget, they entered through the front door—where they left their overcoats—walked to the Stair Hall and up the steps. Their feet would have been mostly dry by the time they reached the bedroom.”

“That points even more directly at Miss Marcus,” he countered. “After the mishap with the broken water pipe, she must have gone directly to Monsieur Baptiste's room.”

“We know she didn't.” I addressed my next comment to my mother and Mrs. Wharton. “You both helped Miss Marcus change after that fiasco. You escorted her from the spraying water in her bathroom to her bedroom, where you helped her into dry clothing. Isn't that right?”

Mother and Mrs. Wharton traded nods, and Mrs. Wharton said, “Yes, that's exactly what happened. Josephine was completely dry when we left her.”

“She could have wet her feet forcing Claude under the water,” Vasili doggedly pointed out.

“But there were no wet footprints on the bathroom floor,” I replied without hesitation.

I turned back to Jesse. He spoke before I could. “I suppose you have a theory about Niccolo Lionetti's attack as well.”

“I do. First, we found no gloves in her possession that would have protected her hands from the friction of the cello string.”

“She might have disposed of them directly after the crime,” Jesse said.

“But why would she have brought such gloves to Newport in the first place? It's early autumn, not cold enough for thicker gloves, and judging simply by Miss Marcus's temperament and physical bearing, I am going to venture a guess that she did not ride horses. Mother, is that correct?”

“It is,” Mother said, and then compressed her lips as she took a moment to consider. “I cannot remember Josephine ever speaking of horses. I certainly never saw her on horseback.”

“No, nor I,” Mrs. Wharton confirmed. “Not even the times we spent at Randall's estate. He kept horses, you know, and some of us did ride. But not Josephine.”

“Secondly,” I continued briskly, “Josephine Marcus would never, and I do mean
never
, have damaged Niccolo's instrument—no matter who she wished dead or otherwise.”

“Emma, how can you possibly know that?” An edge of anger sharpened Jesse's question. “You of all people have learned we can never fully know what is in another person's heart and mind.”

“That is most often true, but in this case I believe I can know of a certainty what is in Josephine Marcus's heart.” Remaining calm, I walked the length of the table and stood in front of Jesse. “Her life is about music. About the making of beautiful, glorious, harmonious sound. The night Niccolo played for us, she spoke to me about how fortunate I was to hear him play. She explained to me that an instrument made by Domenico Montagnana was not merely an instrument, it was a work of art with a soul, one that mingles with the soul of the musician. A fire burned in her eyes, Jesse, a passion—not for the man, but for the music, for the heaven he created with his cello. And while he played, it was the only time I had ever seen Miss Marcus appear truly tranquil, as if the demons inside her—of which I believe there are plenty—were awed into silence.”

I glanced along the table for approbation, and found it in the expressions of the others. Tears glittered in Mother's eyes, and a pained look gripped my father's face. Vasili had crushed the head of his cigarette against his plate, leaving a mess of ash and yolk, but even he compressed his lips and stared back at me with something approaching respect. And Mrs. Wharton . . .

Mrs. Wharton rose and came to me. She embraced me and kissed my cheek. “You are completely right. Josephine could no more have damaged that cello than she could have tossed one of Bizet's or Mozart's or Verdi's original scores into an open fire. Some things are sacred, and say what you will about Josephine, there is no doubt about the things she held sacred.”

Jesse let out a deep sigh. “So that leaves us where we began, with three victims and a house full of suspects.”

“Whom do you suspect? Me?” Vasili lit another cigarette. “Did I kill Claude, my dearest friend? Or perhaps Arthur did it?” He jerked his chin at my father. “Did you kill them for fear they'd expose your painting forgery? Perhaps it was no joke after all, but an attempt to make your fortune.”

“Vasili, you can't mean that,” Mother exclaimed, but Father reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Don't encourage him. The more you protest, the more he'll insist I'm guilty.”

“But you
are
perhaps connected to these crimes, Father,” I said. He and my mother turned to view me with horrified expressions that hastened my explanation. “Of course I don't mean you're guilty. But we never ruled out the possibility that your painting was the catalyst that set events in motion.”

“I thought we
had
ruled it out,” Mother said in a plaintive voice. “Why murder Claude? Why Niccolo? And why
not
your father?”

Father's shoulders slumped. “Because it's possible whoever bought the forgery is making us all pay for Randall's and my mistake—no, it was
my
mistake alone.”

“Randall played a part in it too, darling,” Mother said, but Father shook his head miserably.

“Only because I talked him into it. The idea was mine.”

“You finally admit it,” Vasili mumbled.

Mother spoke at the same time. “Yes, because that beastly art critic, Henri Leclair, said unfair and untrue things about Randall's work.”

“And now Randall is gone.” Father collapsed forward, elbows on the table and his head in his hands. His color suddenly mimicked the drab clouds reflected through the windows and the colorless ocean in the distance. If I didn't know better I'd believe he had been drinking with Vasili all night. But no, my father's malaise resulted from guilt and regret and an inability to change the past.

“Then whoever purchased the forgery on the black market traced us all the way to Newport and hired someone to come after us.” Vasili drew heavily on his cigarette, which crackled as the end lit up in a burst of orange. He smiled—almost. “It could still be one of us, couldn't it? It could be you, Miss Cross.”

“Don't be an idiot,” my father snapped.

Vasili seemed to enjoy his game. “It could be me. It could even be our illustrious Mrs. Wharton, daughter of one of America's first families.”

If Vasili expected shock or wounded denial from the lady, she disappointed him by remaining calm. “How could I possibly benefit from murdering my friends?”