The Wrong Rite (21 page)

“We’re not at all sure Mary knew the gunpowder was there,” said Madoc. “Dai, have you any thoughts about that?”

The ex-apprentice shrugged. “Unless it was something to do with those weird telephone calls she’d been putting through.”

Here it came; Madoc could feel the prickling up his spine. “Dai, can you remember any of the things you heard your aunt say during those calls?”

“It was more the way she’d say them. Like the way she’d been paying Aunt Iseult those little backhanded compliments on her emeralds to let people know they’re not really all that marvelous. Anybody who’s not a fool ought to realize they couldn’t be, or Aunt Iseult wouldn’t dare wear them as casually as she does. That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of film stars have replicas made of their real jewels so they don’t have to worry if the stuff gets stolen.”

Madoc wasn’t interested in Iseult’s jewelry. “About the calls, Dai, can’t you remember anything at all about what Mary said? Were these different people she talked to, do you think, or was it usually the same one?”

Dai had to think a minute. “I’d say it was the same one. Mostly, anyway.”

“And was this person a man or a woman?”

“I’ve no idea. She did mention a man’s name every so often, but I don’t think it was the name of the person she was talking to. It was more as if it was somebody they both knew. Arthur, that was it. Arthur.”

“Arthur? Would that have been Lisa’s husband? The chap who died abroad and nobody wants to talk about? Uncle Caradoc, do you know what happened to him?”

“Oh yes, Madoc, I know. Arthur Ellis was found beaten over the head and strangled in an alley in Marseilles. He had been robbed of his money and presumably of gems. The reason people do not want to talk about it is that the place where his body turned up was one in which Arthur would, quite literally, not have wanted to be found dead.”

“Oh.” Dai was staring at the old man, his face flushed beet red. “Then I think I know what the calls were about. I think Aunt Mary was blackmailing somebody.”

“B
LACKMAIL IS A TERRIBLE
thing to be accusing your own aunt of doing, Dai Rhys.”

Constable Cyril was not at all happy with this added complication. Why should he be? A woman who’d been blown up by gunpowder in the midst of an ancient fertility rite was no sort of corpse for a village constable to be stuck with. Making her out a crook might explain why she died, but it still didn’t prove who’d stuck the gunpowder in her pocket.

Janet could see it coming. That petty satrap of a chief constable wasn’t about to call in Scotland Yard. Why should he go flinging the county’s money about on a pack of Londoners when here was a perfectly good Canadian whom he could stick with doing the job for nothing? Nor would Davies strain himself to help Madoc and Cyril, because they were Sir Caradoc Rhys’s kinfolk and he didn’t like Sir Caradoc. Mary’s death would remain a family affair unless the Rhyses absolutely forced Davies to take official action, which they wouldn’t because they didn’t like him any better than he liked them.

But it was just plain stupid to believe a half-cracked woman who’d been systematically milked of her earnings all her working life by that leech of a brother, and had finally got the upper hand of him by milking some other victim in turn, would have turned around and committed suicide in a fit of remorse for her ill-doing. Mary had been riding high yesterday, cocksure of her ability to control a situation whose potential dangers she was too egocentric to recognize. According to her repellent sibling, she’d preened herself on having mystic powers that he was either sane enough or mean enough to realize she couldn’t have possessed; power of some kind was clearly what she’d wanted more than anything else. And no wonder, after having been browbeaten all her life by that awful brother. Janet could believe Dai’s blackmail story, she sensed that Madoc did too. Uncle Caradoc naturally didn’t like having to think of his dead kinswoman as a crook; but after Dai’s revelations about his life with Bob and Mary, a person might as well believe anything.

Dai was sticking to his guns. “I’m sorry, Sir Caradoc. I don’t want to be stirring up more trouble for the family, but if Aunt Mary wasn’t blackmailing somebody, then where was she getting all that money?”

“You’re quite sure she was in fact getting the money?” Madoc asked gently.

“Oh yes, I know she was.” Dai flushed again. “I happened to see her bankbooks one day last week. She’d left her handbag on the workbench while she went out to the back to do something, and I—I suppose it wasn’t the sort of thing good lads do, but there it was, and I thought I might as well have a look. She’d been so strange, you know; I was sure she must be up to something. Anyway, the books showed over a hundred thousand pounds on deposit, and she’d just that morning put in another five hundred.”

Sir Caradoc grasped at the only straw he could think of. “But could this money not have come from her gem-cutting?”

“No, sir, not possibly. Uncle Bob has all the payments sent directly to him. He handles the bookkeeping and banking, and pays the bills. Aunt Mary didn’t get to touch a penny except when she went abroad. He never wanted her to have any, he said she’d only spend it. She had to have some cash when she went on business trips, but he’d make her keep count of what she spent so he could take it off the taxes. He wouldn’t even let Aunt Mary buy so much as a pair of slippers by herself; he’d go with her to the shop and raise a stink if she didn’t like what he picked out. At least he used to, till she started getting that annuity.”

Now that he’d got used to being the center of attention, Dai was becoming quite the raconteur. “I’ve thought right along there must be something awfully fishy about that. Why would anybody in his right mind want to play Father Christmas to a nasty old witch like her?”

“It was shortly after Mr. Arthur Ellis died that the checks began coming, right?” said Madoc. “You’d have been how old then? About eleven?”

“Yes, that’s right. I hardly knew Mr. Arthur. He never came to the house, only to the shop, and I wasn’t there much then, except on weekends to sweep out and tidy around. Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob talked about him a lot, though—they made him sound like Count Dracula. After he died, they really ripped him to pieces. They claimed he’d been killed in a—a place where there are girls who—”

Dai glanced at Sir Caradoc and left off trying to think of a euphemism. “Uncle Bob was livid, not because somebody murdered Mr. Arthur, but because the gossip about how he died might reflect badly on the business. Aunt Mary didn’t say much at the time. She’d just sit there with a revolting smirk on her face, as if she knew something he didn’t and wasn’t going to tell.”

“What did your uncle say to that?”

“I don’t think he ever noticed, till the checks began coming and she told him about her so-called annuity. Then he went straight through the roof. He kept yelling, ‘Where are you getting that money?,’ and she’d just say ‘Through Arthur.’ So he charged off to that place where you look up people’s wills and came back and called her a liar because Mr. Arthur hadn’t left her a penny. I thought he was going to strike Aunt Mary that time, but she wasn’t a bit frightened. She just smiled the way she’d do when she was telling me how stupid I was, and told him that if he ever expected to get anything out of her again, he’d better shut up and quit his bullying. She told him flat out, ‘I’ve got the upper hand now, brother dear. If you don’t like it, I’ll just nip off by myself where you can’t find me, and you may sit here alone and starve to death.’”

“Do you think she really meant it?” said Janet.

“Oh yes.” Dai was grinning now. “After that, every time Uncle Bob tried to bring up the subject, Aunt Mary would simply pretend she didn’t hear. One morning at breakfast, she got him so furious that he threatened to put a curse on her.”

“That is terrible!” cried Constable Cyril. “To lay a curse is the height of impiety.”

“Oh, Aunt Mary didn’t bat an eyelid. She just gave him another of those forbearing smiles and said, ‘But, brother dear, you’ve taught me how to turn a curse back on the curser, don’t you remember? You have always been so ready to instruct your dim little sister, and I have always been so dutiful a pupil. Do go ahead with your curse. I’m itching to practice my lesson.’ Uncle Bob was in such a rage he couldn’t even talk. He sat there all swelled up and purple in the face, gobbling like a turkey. That was the only meal in their house I’ve ever enjoyed.”

Madoc’s lips twitched, partly in sympathy, partly in amusement. “Getting back to the emerald, Dai, what do you suppose your aunt might have done with it? It wasn’t found last night when her room was searched.”

“She wouldn’t have put it there, she’d know Uncle Bob would come snooping. Why not in her handbag? That’s where she kept the bankbooks.”

“That’s a thought, certainly. But it didn’t turn up in the bonfire ashes, I sifted them myself. Jenny, do you recall whether Mary had a handbag with her yesterday?”

“Yes, she did, a soft black leather pouch that she’d strung on her belt like an old-fashioned reticule. But I’m quite sure she wasn’t wearing it when she and Bob were doing their dance in the chapel. Because there were coins inside, I suppose, and metal on the belt buckle. That was one of Bob’s taboos, remember? He may have made her take it off. And I don’t recall her having put it back on when she leaped the fire.”

“Aunt Mary wouldn’t just have left it lying around, though,” Dai insisted. “She’d have hidden it away where Uncle Bob wouldn’t find it.”

“Or anybody else, if that great chunk of emerald was inside,” Madoc agreed. “Right, then, we’d better organize a hunt. Cyril, that’s a job for you. And a nasty one, I’m afraid, Mary was all over the lot yesterday. She could have stuffed it down a rabbit hole or high up in the chapel, there’s no telling. Dai, you’d better go with him and find that ladder of hers, you may want it to climb on. Just don’t break your neck. You might recruit some of Owain’s lot to help, else you’ll never get through.”

“Will we also be asking the grown-ups to join in the searching?” asked Cyril.

“Not yet, I need to talk to them. Particularly Uncle Huw. He’d better know what’s going on.”

There was also the open question of the ram. Huw wouldn’t be able to keep the lid on much longer, not if Scotland Yard had to become involved, and what would be the point? That crude slaughter seemed a paltry affair now, in view of the greater horror. Unless it had, as Madoc suspected, been the first act of some quasi-operatic tragedy, and Mary’s bizarre death perhaps only the second.

This was no time to sit spinning fantasies. He stood up. “We’ll have to search this house more thoroughly too, Uncle Caradoc.”

Sir Caradoc gathered his bones together and rose also. “Whatever may be necessary must be done. What happened last night has made it impossible for us to be nice about observing the usual courtesies. Come, Madoc, you and I will go together to the farmhouse. Dai lad, you have had nothing to eat but a few cakes. You must stop in the kitchen before you go hunting and ask Betty for some proper food to sustain you. Cyril Rhys, we are grateful for your concern and your diligence on behalf of this grievously troubled family.”

The constable stood smartly to attention. “Sir Caradoc, sir, it is an honor and a privilege to be serving you. Mr. Dai Rhys and I shall be procuring from Betty some bread and cheese to be eating whilst we search, and we shall be going directly to the chapel lest some unauthorized busybody will have been finding Miss Mary Rhys’s handbag before we are getting there.”

It needed only a flourish of bugles. Helmet straight, buttons all ashine, the doughty Cyril marched firmly kitchenward. The weedy Dai followed a respectful pace or two behind, as purposefully as he could manage in his scruffy jeans and wilted shirt. Sir Caradoc and Madoc went off together. Left alone, Janet decided she’d better find out what the grandparents had done with her child.

Dai and the constable were already shutting the door behind them, each carrying a great wedge of bread and cheese. Iseult was sitting alone at the long table. The older woman, and Iseult was certainly that, had a cup of tea in front of her but wasn’t doing much about it. Catching sight of Janet, she shrugged and tried to work up a smile.

“No room service at this hotel. Don’t look at me, I haven’t put my face on yet.”

Iseult hadn’t put on much of anything else, if it came to that, just a slinky green wrapper over a nightgown that seemed to be, what Janet could see of it, hardly more than a figment of the imagination. It stood to reason she’d be wearing green satin mules with marabou trimming. Janet peeked under the table on the flimsy pretext of looking for Bartholomew, and she was. The shape those leg veins were in, the silly woman ought to have had on flat heels and support stockings.

This must be why Iseult was so partial to floor-length skirts and floppy-legged pants. Forty if she was a day, and maybe a few years more. Janet began to feel sympathy; at least the old trouper was putting up a good battle, even though she looked right now as though she knew she’d already lost the war.

Betty, true to form, was waving the teapot and suggesting a little something to stay Mrs. Madoc’s stomach until lunchtime. Janet shrugged.

“Why not? I’ll sit here if it’s all right with you, Iseult. What’s happened to Dorothy? Do you know, Betty?”

“Ach, the little love will be up at the farm with Lady Rhys and Sir Emlyn. It was Tib’s pram they were pushing her in, with her sitting up in her pretty bonnet like a daisy in the sun, God bless her. Is it a new-laid egg I could be poaching for you to eat, Mrs. Madoc?”

“Thanks, but one breakfast a morning’s about all I can manage. I might just cut myself a sliver of your wonderful bread, though. Go ahead with whatever you’re doing, Betty, I’m not that helpless. What’s on your agenda for today, Iseult?”

“Good question. Things don’t seem to be exactly bright and peppy around here this morning, do they? I suppose one could hardly expect fun and games after last night’s horror show. I was rather hoping I might persuade Tom and Dafydd to drive me somewhere away from the smell of toasted Rhys. Have you seen them around?”