Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (27 page)

Could it be George had decided it was time to go straight—and killing his father looked like a way to get the cash influx that would allow him to do so? There was a certain weird logic to it that St.

Just decided he wouldn’t put past George.

“There was also the title—”

That brought a short bark of laughter from George.

“Yes, well, the ‘Bart.’ was hereditary. And it’s mine now. But you don’t seriously think I’d kill anyone over that? Let me tell you just how valuable that title is: It was bought and paid for. You see what I mean? He was a phony, to his fingertips.”

“He bought the title?”

“You can arrange that, you know, if you have the ready cash. Some distant, elderly, impoverished relation—very, on all counts— with no direct heirs, got in touch with father some years ago. Or maybe it was the other way around. But he wanted money for an operation or some such. Father forked over—he must have borrowed the money from someone, because it was before he came into the serious cash—in exchange for being named heir to the title in the old man’s will. There were a few other potential and equally minor claimants in America, so his being British born became the deciding factor. Obligingly, the relation didn’t survive the operation.”

“I see.” St. Just regarded him. Something George was telling him, he felt, was important to the case, but he couldn’t think for the moment what it could be.

“Did you see your father often?”

George hesitated slightly before answering. St. Just detected the familiar indecision of an interviewee debating whether or not telling the truth were the best course.

“Not often,” said George. “No more often than the others.”

St. Just nodded in Fear’s direction, a nod that told Fear to put a mark by that statement for later verification. Ostentatiously, Fear licked his pencil and drew several big stars on the page. As if suddenly realizing Mrs. Romano would surely be able to put the lie to his statement, George amended:

“Oh, fairly often, I suppose, in recent years. It depends on what you mean by often.”

“You tell me, sir,” said St. Just. Sergeant Fear noticed the familiar frown forming, the one that could make St. Just’s eyes nearly disappear beneath his brows. Young George here, he felt, would do well to notice it, too.

“I made rather a determined policy to stay in his good graces, that’s all. I think the old man was lonely. It rather explains this stupid marriage, doesn’t it?”

“The marriage acted as some kind of catalyst, didn’t it? You must feel as I do that none of this would have happened but for the marriage?”

Dishonesty having failed as a policy, George made a further attempt at open frankness.

“It was part of his usual shock treatment. But we were used to it, Inspector. In a way. ‘Numbed by it’ might be a better expression.

Isn’t there an animal that eats its young? Being around him—it was like that for all of us, except Ruthven, perhaps.”

“There were bad feelings between you and Ruthven because of this—competition—your father encouraged between you.”

It was a statement rather than a question.

“There were no feelings at all, Chief Inspector. I tell you, we were simply numbed by it. Ruthven might be on top one year, but it was simply a matter of waiting my turn to catch the King’s eye.”

After fifteen minutes in which George reiterated his indifference, and his alibi for Ruthven’s murder—none of them had a verifiable alibi for the time of Sir Adrian’s death—they left George preening before a mirror.

“Alibis are a two-way street,” said Sergeant Fear as he shut the door, just loudly enough to be sure George could hear.

“With a roundabout in the middle,” said St. Just. “Yes, I realize that if George and Natasha are both lying for each other about being together, it means both have no alibi for Ruthven’s murder at all. I am glad to see you were paying close attention during your interrogation training.”

They walked farther down the hall, pausing near an alcove holding a dusty stuffed crocodile, jaws ajar, in a glass display case. St. Just shuddered and turned away.

“Interesting morsel of information about the title,” he said. “Perhaps Sir Adrian was an even bigger phony than George had sussed.”

“St. Drudmilla’s, you mean.”

“Yes. You and I know now that Sir Adrian was raised in an orphanage— the place Coffield mentioned to me—so we can discount the part of Sir Adrian’s novel where the sensitive young boy left his family behind in Wales. Looks like it was the other way around—someone abandoned
him
—and it was still very much a sore spot. Since St. Drudmilla’s is a home for unwed mothers, he must have flat-out purchased the title in an even dodgier deal than George believes. I doubt ‘Sir Adrian,’ as we may as well continue to call him, could have learned of some remote blood tie to the Beauclerk-Fisks—the 1976 Adoption Act hadn’t been passed at the time. How did he manage it? Forged documents—had to be. In any event, he was willing to tell the truth about other people’s secrets, but he still couldn’t bring himself to come entirely clean about his origins. He’d look a fool after so many years of passing himself off as to the manor born.

“More than that, I think that coming from a poor background was one thing, but being born on the wrong side of the sheets, to someone of his generation, was another. He would have wanted to take that one secret to his grave.”

Sergeant Fear shook his head in disbelief.

“Who would care, in this day and age?”

“Sir Adrian, apparently. No wonder he felt that nothing would do but that Natasha and George had to get married, and the sooner the better. Well, what next? The lady of the house, I think.”

They found her in the sitting room that separated her bedroom from Sir Adrian’s, flipping through a fashion magazine as thick as a telephone directory. Perhaps she felt the occasion of the murder of her new husband called for a freshening of her wardrobe.

She looked up and smiled wanly. There were signs of strain around her eyes, perhaps a smudge of shadow beneath that hadn’t been there before, along with a fine etching of wrinkles, but she was remarkably composed for someone who had sustained such a shock. Her hair was pulled back in the gleaming black, sleek chignon that was apparently her trademark, her lips were carefully lined in dark red, and she wore a dress of soft, dove-gray wool. Perhaps there were degrees and shades of mourning, and pale gray was the best she could manage.

St. Just greeted her and accepted her invitation to sit down. Sergeant Fear took up a position at the window, apparently just watching snow melt against the panes, but listening closely.

“According to Mrs. Romano, you and Sir Adrian were together in his study before he died. But according to our examiners, he was dead well before five, when she heard you in there together. Can you explain the discrepancy?”

“Quite easily. Mrs. Romano is either lying or she is mistaken.”

“You claim you were not in Sir Adrian’s study the afternoon or evening that he died?

“I was not, Inspector,” she said flatly. “Adrian in his study was like a tribal chief in his hut. It was well understood by all that he was not to be disturbed, without permission, which I gather was seldom granted. If he wanted to see anyone, he commanded them into his presence. One did not just casually drop in.”

“Even his wife?”

“Rules of the house. I was no exception, Inspector. Mrs. Romano was granted more leeway than most. She’s been around since the last ice age, and seems to think she owns the place. Perhaps she has her own reasons for implicating me. Not the first time, as you must know by now, that I’ve been in that position.”

“Your first husband—”

“Was murdered. Yes. But not by me.”

Suddenly she smacked the magazine down on the table in front of her, looking straight at him.

“Not by me,” she repeated. “Let me tell you, Chief Inspector, something about Winnie Winthrop and myself, since you’re so curious: No matter what you read or hear, or what you choose to believe, that was a love match. He was rich and I was young. People put two plus two together and came up with four, or so they thought. But I can tell you Winnie was the kindest man who ever lived. Anyone would tell you the same. Also, they would tell you I was devoted to him. He was my best friend, Inspector. I trusted and respected him. To my astonishment, he felt the same, for which I will always be grateful to whatever God allowed me that brief time of happiness. I simply adored the man. Do you have any idea how rare that is, for two people to feel that way about each other?”

St. Just, long a widower, said quietly, “I have some idea. Yes.”

“No one else has ever taken his place for me. No one.”

“Not even Sir Adrian?”

She laughed.

“Especially not Sir Adrian.”

His face must have registered his surprise.

“Does my honesty shock you, Inspector? If you want the whole truth, you will find I am capable of nothing but. I have nothing more to fear, you see. Those of us who have been unjustly accused of a crime can fear nothing, ever again. The truth is I did not murder my husband.
Either
of my husbands. Believe me or not; I don’t care what you think or what I say to you. I am quite used to being called a liar, ever since Winnie … I don’t care. Because you see, whoever killed Winnie, killed the best part of me as well.”

“Why did you marry Sir Adrian, if you felt that way about him?”

“Do you really need me to spell it out? He promised me security. A retreat from the probing eyes of the world. More money than Zeus, he had, and that was the kind of money I needed to escape the notoriety once and for all. You may think it a terrible reason to marry, but I had no other reason. He loved me, so he said. That I did not love him, he was well aware. I told him so, many times, when he proposed. He said many times it didn’t matter. Somehow, I doubted that and I doubt it still. Don’t most people want more than anything to be loved? But he took me on my own terms. That was our bargain. Life was hard for me after Winnie … died. All the accusations, the suspicions. Sir Adrian offered me not just a refuge, but a comfortable old age, and an unassailable position. ‘He who laughs last,’ after all. If you see anything wrong with my wanting that financial shield against the world, Inspector, you are not a realist. Perhaps, you are just not a realist when it comes to women.”

Somehow, St. Just didn’t doubt that for a moment. What she said about this marriage of convenience struck him as true. What that said about her character, he could only imagine. As to the rest of her story …

“Here is another dose of reality for you,” she was saying. “Sir Adrian was in failing health. He knew he would not live many more years. That was part of his calculation, part of the deal he struck with me. I had no reason to kill him. The odds were he would be dead long before I was. He knew this, even if you do not.”

“And Ruthven?”

“Ruthven was no threat to me,” she said, a tinge of exasperation in her voice. “Not once Adrian and I were married. There was plenty of money to go around, and Adrian was always generous— with me. I am many things, but greedy is not one of them. You want a motive—I’m the only one in this bunch
without
a motive.”

Her
sang-froid
was admirable, he had to admit. But was it the poise of innocence or the arrogance of a woman born without a conscience? St. Just had long ago given up believing he could, at first go, tell the difference.

BOOK OF REVELATIONS

_______________________

“YOU WERE TOLD, SIR,
to keep the police apprised of your whereabouts,” St. Just was saying. “Imagine my surprise to learn you were in Felixstowe yesterday.”

Paulo had telephoned the station with ill-concealed delight to report the prodigal’s return to Sergeant Fear.

“Trying to escape and changed his mind,” was Paulo’s verdict.

“He’d be hard put,” Fear told him. “We had a man trailing him the entire time. But thank you for your vigilance, Sir. We’ll put a gold star on your form.”

Now a tired and somewhat chastened Albert was being questioned in his room by St. Just and Fear, under the embroidered eyes of Cain and Abel.

“I understand there was a plan in the offing between you and Ruthven to go to Violet, offering an inducement that she leave the field.”

Albert answered wearily.

“I am not an organizer, a joiner, nor a leader of men, Inspector. I left all that to Ruthven.”

“It was your brother’s idea, then?”

“Of course.”

“Would you say that was a plan likely to meet with a great deal of success?”

Albert wouldn’t say; he simply shrugged.

“I understand, Sir, you’ve had some little trouble with the law.”

“I’ve had some trouble with alcohol, if you want to be strictly accurate. About which I’ve been giving considerable thought the past few days. Do you know, Chief Inspector: I’ve decided I’m through with roles that are all wrong for me, now. Aging gracefully might be the toughest role of all, but I’m willing to give it a try. Somehow, Adrian’s being gone allows me to breathe for the first time. Not—
not
, I hasten to add, that I would have done anything to hasten his end. I’m just finding it surprising—astonishing— how freeing it is, his being gone. Awful thing, the truth, isn’t it?”