Murder at Teatime (22 page)

“Yes,” said Marion, wiping her eyes. “That’s it—exactly.” She sat for a moment, struggling to regain her composure. She lit a cigarette, and then continued: “He started going to the track years ago with his colleagues, on Wednesday afternoons, the way doctors play golf. Then he started buying shares in racing syndicates. Small shares at first, but in the last few years, he’s been investing heavily. He says it’s a tax shelter.”

“Is he losing money?” asked Charlotte, mentally congratulating herself on pegging him as a racetrack type.

“I don’t know. It’s true that the cost of keeping these horses is enormous, but I don’t think it’s that as much as his lifestyle. He’s trying to keep up with people who are way out of our league. These are the kind of people who buy and sell million-dollar horses the way most people buy and sell … I don’t know, stocks and bonds or something.” She spoke more animatedly now, carried along by the momentum of getting her story off her chest.

“For instance?”

“For instance, he flies all over the country to watch his horses race. Last year, he bought a share in a stallion syndicate in Ireland, so now he’s flying over there all the time. I don’t know—the fancy hotels, the entertaining—I don’t think we have that kind of money.”

“Is that how he met the Chartwell people?” asked Charlotte. The family that controlled the Chartwell Corporation was known for its horse breeding.

“Yes,” she said. “Meanwhile, he’s been neglecting the business. He hardly spends any time at the office anymore.”

From outside came the sound of a car pulling into the driveway.

Marion looked up in alarm. “He would kill me if he knew I was telling you this,” she said earnestly. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

“No. Don’t worry.”

In a moment, Chuck entered. Seeing them, he paused in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his burly frame propped up against the doorjamb. He bared his teeth in a smile, the cold blue-gray eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses squinting in contempt. “My, my! What do we have here? An inquisition?”

He may have been hobnobbing with millionaires, but he still had the smell of Southie about him, Charlotte thought. The streetwise hustler with a deal always in the works and big dreams of striking it rich on the next horse, or the next picture. In Hollywood, they were a dime a dozen.

Marion nervously introduced Charlotte and Tom, and explained that they were helping the police with the investigation into her father’s death.

“And what have you been telling them, Marion dear? About how well your beloved hubby got along with dear old dad?”

Marion sat frozen to her seat.

“She’s been telling us about her whereabouts on the afternoon of the murder,” lied Charlotte. “We’d like to ask you the same question.”

“Oh, you would, would you? Well, I’d like to ask you a question or two myself,” he said belligerently. “Starting with what the hell gives you license to go poking your nose into other people’s business?” He pointed at the door. “Get out of my house,” he bellowed. “Now.”

“Why don’t you call the police?” Charlotte suggested. “I’m sure Chief Tracey would be interested to hear how you refused to answer questions about your quarrel with your father-in-law.” She added: “In case it’s escaped your attention, that quarrel makes you a prime suspect in his murder.”

He leaned back against the doorjamb in a relaxed pose, but his fists were clenched inside his pockets. “Who says I quarreled with him?”

“I do. I heard you. And so did Daria Henderson, John Lewis, Felix Mayer, Grace Harris, and Wes Gilley, to name just a few.”

“Then you must know what the argument was about.”

“No, we don’t. But we’ve been told you might have been arguing over your father-in-law’s will. Our source told us that your father-in-law wanted to change his will, leaving the Ledge House property to the State instead of to Marion. To prevent your selling it to Chartwell against his wishes.”

Chuck’s ordinarily florid complexion turned lobster-red. “Who told you that? That sot Gilley?”

Charlotte nodded. She wondered how accurate it was. Why would Chuck have told Wes about the will? Then again, why not? They were old buddies and unofficial partners in the Chartwell venture.

“Did that lying son of a bitch also tell you that he was the one who let the air out of the jeep’s tires, that he was the one who shot out the library window, that he was the one who sent the poison-pen letters? Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Miss Hollywood Sleuth.”

Their eagerness to implicate one another reminded her of the bandits in the Westerns who give the game away the minute the heat’s applied. “So I can assume that you did quarrel with your father-in-law over the will.”

“You can’t assume a goddam thing,” shouted Chuck. “As a matter of fact, we quarreled about something else.”

“What was that?”

“None of your goddam business. Now,” he said, “get out before I have to throw you out. I’d do it, too.”

“Gladly,” she said, rising from her seat. She headed toward the door, followed by Tom. “Thank you for your cooperation,” she said icily. She marched out with all the dignity of a dethroned monarch.

Between Wes and Marion, a lot of questions about Chuck’s motives had been answered, she thought as they headed down the walk. He needed the money, he needed it immediately, and there was a good chance that Thornhill was about to cut him, or rather, his wife, out of his will.

“I’ve been thrown out of better places than that,” said Tom jauntily as they left. Once they were beyond the hedge surrounding the house, he took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Look at this,” he said, handing it to her.

It was a piece of stationery bearing the letterhead of Carolyn Freeman, bookbinder. The text, headed “Der Gart der Gesundheit, Peter Schoeffer, Mainz, 1485,” contained detailed descriptions under various headings, including “Condition when received,” “Work done,” and “Binding materials used.” The text ended with the sentence: “This job was completed in my studio on December 16, 1959.” Underneath was the signature of Carolyn Freeman.

“Where did you get this?”

“From Chuckie baby’s desk,” replied Tom. “It was in with a bunch of other papers, telephone bills and that sort of thing. If you spend enough time sitting at desks waiting for politicos to get off the phone you can learn all sorts of important skills. I can also read letters upside down.…”

“Plummer, shut up for a minute,” said Charlotte, who was studying the piece of paper intently. “Do you know what this means?”

“I think it means Chuckie baby took the books,” said Tom smugly.

Charlotte smiled. “My, aren’t you proud of yourself.”

“They’re called binder’s reports,” he continued, leaning over her shoulder. “Daria puts them in the books she works on. I figure this one either fell out of
Der Gart
by accident or was removed deliberately by the thief—namely our friend Chuckie baby—before he sold it.”

“And you think Chuckie baby stole the books to keep up his fancy lifestyle, figuring that, if he was caught, Thornhill would be reluctant to press charges against his own son-in-law. Right?”

“Right.”

“Well, there’s something else about his little piece of paper I’ll bet you haven’t figured out,” she teased, waving it in front of his nose.

“What?” he asked, annoyed that he’d missed something.

“Daria told me that her mentor, Carolyn Freeman, had worked on
Der Gart
when it was still part of the MacMillan collection. But this report is dated December,
after
the books were supposedly sold to Thornhill.”

“Another piece of evidence incriminating Thornhill as a book thief?”

“Exactly.”

They walked side by side in the dusty wheel tracks, which were separated by a swath of green dappled with hawkweed and buttercups. (What a shame—she would never be able to look at buttercups again without thinking of hemorrhoids.) Overhead, the air was filled with the strident screeching of the gulls, intermingled with the soft mewing of the terns. Their wheeling silhouettes were black specks against the meek, feeble sun, which seemed to be fading in submission to the mass of gray fog that stood poised offshore.

“Tom,” said Charlotte after a minute. “Remember the other day when we found out that Felix knew Thornhill had stolen the books?”

Tom nodded. He was walking with his hands in his pockets, deep in thought.

“We figured that the person who knew Thornhill had stolen the books—we were thinking in terms of Felix then—could have stolen the books himself, counting on the likelihood that Thornhill wouldn’t report the theft for fear of being exposed as a book thief himself.”

“Do you think Chuckie baby knew that Thornhill stole the books?”

“I don’t know. But let’s forget the books are missing for a minute. Let’s say that someone knew that Thornhill had stolen them. Now, let’s say that that person wanted something important from Thornhill, like, for instance, his cooperation in a scheme to develop Gilley Island.”

“Blackmail. Very good. Chuckie baby says to Thornhill: ‘Either you sell out to Chartwell, or I’ll let everyone know that you’re a book thief.’ The binder’s report is his proof that Thornhill stole the books.”

Charlotte nodded. For that matter, she thought, the blackmailer could also have been Felix. He could easily have applied a little gentlemanly pressure to ensure that Thornhill followed through on his promise to let him handle the sale of the collection after his death.

She said as much to Tom.

“Or the blackmailer could have been any of the people at the Ledges on the day of the poisoning,” replied Tom. “Wes, out of the same motive as Chuck; John, to advance his career; Grace, to promote her love life …”

“Even Daria, I suppose,” interjected Charlotte with a mischievous smile. “She could have used her knowledge of the theft to encourage Thornhill to direct his bookbinding business her way.”

“
Not
a likely scenario, Graham,” said Tom, lifting an eyebrow in an imitation of Charlotte’s famous expression. “I’ll give you the blackmail theory. But the problem with it is that blackmail victims are more likely to kill their blackmailers than the other way around.”

“This is true.”

The wind blew at their backs, as if it were pushing them along. It was a steady, nervous wind, the kind that makes people pick quarrels with their best friends. Out on the bay, the fog crept slowly inward, swallowing the outer islands in its path, and reaching ghostly tentacles toward shore.

Suddenly they heard a sharp crack. For a moment, Charlotte’s heart leapt into her throat: the image swept through her mind of Chuck shooting his wife in his anger over her betrayal. But it was only Kevin setting off cherry bombs in the yard. She and Tom exchanged relieved glances.

“I’m as nervous as a cat,” he said.

“Me too.”

13

On the way back from the east end they stopped at Ledge House to talk with Fran. She was the only suspect with whom Charlotte hadn’t yet spoken. They looked for her in the herb garden, but she wasn’t there. Passing through the witches’ garden, Charlotte pointed out the monkshood bed to Tom.

“Does it have a fragrance?” he asked, leaning over to smell. Suddenly he pulled back and started sneezing, the tears streaming from his eyes.

“I’d be careful,” said a voice from behind. “Even the pollen can make the eyes swell when the plant’s in full bloom.”

They turned to find Fran approaching from the direction of the barn. She was again dressed entirely in green, except for white tennis shoes.

“Hello,” she said to Tom as she joined them in the witches’ garden. She extended her hand and gave him a wide smile, “I’m Frances Thornhill.”

“Glad to meet you,” he replied, introducing himself. He wiped the tears from his eyes. “Pretty powerful stuff.”

“Yes,” she said. She bent over to rub a delicate, chrysanthemum-like leaf between her thumb and forefinger. “Try touching it.”

Charlotte and Tom followed her example. Charlotte felt the same numbness that she had felt after touching the leaf at the Midsummer Night festival. “It’s numbing, like the feeling in your gums when you’ve had Novocaine,” she said.

“Exactly,” said Fran. “In fact, monkshood is still used in some places for dental surgery. Here, try rubbing some on your gums.”

“No thank you,” said Charlotte, “I’ll take your word for it.”

“The numbing effect is what makes it so effective in the treatment of rheumatism,” Fran continued. “The danger is in getting the dose too strong.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tom, who was rubbing a small piece of leaf on his upper gum. “The poison might be absorbed through the skin?”

“Yes. Witches used to rub their skin with an ointment made from monkshood and other plant poisons. They called it flying ointment because it caused the sensation of rising and falling—a hallucination, really.”

The same sensation her uncle had had on his deathbed, but Fran didn’t mention that. She spoke even more rapidly than usual. Charlotte wondered if she was nervous. In addition to rounding out the list, they had another reason for wanting to talk to her: Tracey had told them that the handyman, Maurice Deslsles (he pronounced the name
Dezizzle
, with the Yankee talent for making a hash of French names), had reported seeing Fran digging in the monkshood patch a couple of weeks before the murder. Initially he had refrained from saying anything out of loyalty to Fran, but had finally decided to come forward. The fact could mean nothing—Fran would naturally spend time working in her garden—but it could also mean that she had dug up the roots with the intent of poisoning her uncle. She had motive—no groom, no wedding. It was true that she would lose the herb garden either way, but with Thornhill dead she would at least have a stake to get started somewhere else. But despite her motives, she didn’t strike Charlotte as a murderer. It seemed a fair enough assumption that the person who took out her anger against herself, which was what the herb garden was, would be unlikely to take it out against someone else.

They were still standing in front of the monkshood bed, which Maurice had replanted. Looking at the flower, Charlotte thought how menacing it looked now that she knew that it carried the deadly alkaloid in its delicate veins. Even the color seemed sinister: the luminous dark blue of nightmares, and death.