Murder at Longbourn (34 page)

Joan spun around, her eyes riveted on the necklace. Forgotten, her gloves dropped to the floor and her face drained of color so quickly that I thought she might follow after them. Pulling Joan to him in a steadying grip, Henry eyed me with ill-concealed fury. Belatedly, I wondered if this was what Detective Stewart meant by something stupid.

“Detective Stewart is on his way here,” I said. “Why don’t we wait in the reading room for him?” Joan’s face was deathly white. Henry’s, on the other hand, was purple with anger. Mutely, they followed me.

Joan sank down onto a chair. “What is this all about?” Aunt
Winnie asked me. Next to her, Randy stepped back toward the bookcases.

“Joan was Gerald’s sister-in-law,” I answered.

Aunt Winnie gasped. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “When I first met Joan, she told me her older sister had died in an accident. Her name was Vicky. I didn’t think about it at the time, but this morning I was thinking about nicknames and I remembered that Vicky is short for Victoria. Gerald’s first wife’s name was Tory, which is also a nickname for Victoria. As we all know, she also died in an accident several years ago. I confirmed it today by pulling up information on the late Mrs. Victoria Ramsey from the Internet.” I brandished the printout of my discovery. “Victoria’s maiden name was Baxter,” I said, waving the paper at Joan. “And you told me that your antiques store was named Miss Baxter’s Things of Yore. Now I understand your relationship with Polly—you’re her aunt.” Henry was standing next to Joan’s chair. His hand gripped her shoulder tightly. Turning back to Aunt Winnie, I said, “I think we now know who Joan was calling from your office—Polly.”

Joan stared at her lap, ruthlessly twisting her hands. I held out the necklace. “The night I found you in the dining room, you were looking for this, weren’t you? It’s Victoria’s, isn’t it?”

Joan threw her head back and stared at me defiantly. “Yes. I lost it the night Gerald was killed. But as loathsome as Gerald was, merely having once been related to him by marriage is hardly a reason to murder him.”

“It is if he killed Victoria,” I retorted.

A terrible silence followed, but Joan did not avert her eyes from mine. “He did kill her,” she said finally. “I know it in my heart, even if the police never were able to prove it.”

“What happened?”

Joan closed her eyes. “Victoria married Gerald after knowing him only a short time. She thought he was charming, and … and I think she really thought she was in love with him. He was very wealthy, which I’m sure helped, too. Vicky wasn’t mercenary, but she had struggled so hard after our parents died.” Joan opened her eyes and added, “Who knows? Maybe she saw what she needed to see. At first she was happy, but soon enough Gerald showed his real stripes. Vicky wanted to leave him, but then she found out she was pregnant.”

Joan shook her head sadly. “She was so excited. She’d always wanted to be a mother and she thought that having a baby might change Gerald. But it didn’t.” Joan paused. “Gerald was disappointed that Polly wasn’t a boy, and after she was born, he ignored them both. Vicky was determined to make a good life for Polly, but she was lonely. And then, well, she met someone.”

No one said anything, but Joan continued as if we had. “You have to understand, Vicky was a good person, but she was in a miserable marriage. In the end, though, she couldn’t go on with it. She didn’t like what she was doing and she thought Gerald was suspicious. That scared her because Gerald was pathological about people lying to him. Anyway, she was coming home from meeting this person for the last time when a car ran her off the road. According to witnesses, it matched a general description of one of Gerald’s. But Gerald produced several of his buddies to swear that he was with them all night. I kept pushing the police to arrest him—I knew he had done it—but in the end they just didn’t have the evidence. Vicky’s death was listed as an accident.”

Henry silently watched his wife, anguish etched into his face. She took a deep breath and continued. “Afterward, Gerald got rid of everything of Vicky’s, like he was trying to erase any proof of her
existence. Tell me, does an innocent man do that? The only thing I had that belonged to her was her necklace. Over the years, I tried to get in touch with Polly, but Gerald always blocked me. He refused to let me have any contact with her.”

“Why?” I asked.

Joan shrugged. “Who knows? He couldn’t take his anger out on Vicky, so maybe he tried to take it out on me. Maybe he didn’t want me telling Polly my suspicions about how her mother died.”

“Did you?”

Joan looked at Henry before answering. Something unspoken passed between them. “No,” she said.

“But she knew, didn’t she?”

This time Joan didn’t need to confer with Henry; she knew how to answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “We never spoke of it.”

“What happened to Vicky’s lover?”

Joan paused and lowered her eyes. “I have no idea,” she said. “I … I never met him.”

“So how did you and Polly finally connect?” I asked. “It wasn’t a coincidence that you came here, was it?”

“No. Polly contacted me about six months ago. She didn’t know I existed until she accidentally came across Vicky’s obituary. It took her some time to find me—I was married to Henry by then and had changed my last name—but Polly is a very determined young woman when she wants something. She and I spoke on the phone a few times, but we hadn’t been able to meet face-to-face. Gerald kept a pretty tight rein on her. When Polly told me there was to be a party here, it seemed the perfect chance for us to meet. Henry and I would come up and stay at the inn and she would convince Gerald to come to the party.”

“Weren’t you afraid that Gerald might recognize you?” I asked.

“Not really,” said Joan. “I was away at school when Vicky and Gerald were married. I saw him only a handful of times. And he wasn’t the type to pay attention to people he found inconsequential.” Behind her wire glasses, Joan eyed me with a steely expression; Polly’s strong will hadn’t come only from Gerald’s side of the family. “I just wanted to meet Polly. But once Gerald was killed, I was afraid to come forward and tell everyone who I was. I’m sure the police still have the records on Vicky’s death. I made it pretty clear at the time that I thought Gerald was involved. Once all that came out, it would look as if I tried to take justice into my own hands. Polly and I agreed it would be best if we just pretended not to know each other.”

Without warning, the doors to the room flung open and Detective Stewart stormed in. He briefly glanced at Joan before homing in on me. It wasn’t pleasure I saw staring at me in those eyes. He was livid. In case there was any doubt he yelled—loudly. “Just what in the name of God do you think you’re doing?”

Startled, I stammered out what I had learned. “Joan Anderson. I told you there was something about her, and there is! She’s Polly’s aunt!”

Detective Stewart’s face was a mask of controlled fury. Through clenched teeth, he bit out, “We already knew that, Ms. Parker. We have been conducting our own investigation—an investigation, I might add, that is now totally blown!” There was no restraint in these last words—they were shouted.

Out in the hall, I heard the front door open and two very familiar voices floated in from the foyer. A second later, Bridget’s bright red head popped around the door frame. Colin, looking like a rumpled teddy bear in a tweed blazer, stood behind her. Bridget’s smile of greeting faded as Detective Stewart continued his tirade.

“You are not a police officer!” he boomed. “You are a private
citizen. A private citizen who has no authority to do anything in this case!”

My temper flared and I shouted back. “Authority!? I don’t need your authority to help my aunt. It’s absurd that anyone would suspect her even for a moment of having anything to do with this! And yet that is precisely what is happening. My aunt is innocent, Detective Stewart, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and watch her go to jail because you and the rest of the police department want to pin this on her!”

The room was silent as everyone waited for Detective Stewart to respond. He took his time, performing some sort of breathing exercises first. When he did speak, his voice sounded strained and unnatural. “No one is trying to pin anything on anybody. Two people have been brutally killed and a third is recovering in the hospital. We are doing our best to find the killer before he or she strikes again. Your intentions may be good”—he paused, glaring at me as though he found this hard to believe—“but you have interfered with official police business. I am warning you, Ms. Parker, don’t do it again, or the only one going to jail here will be you!”

With that, he turned on his heel and slammed out of the room, charging past Bridget and Colin. They watched him go with identical startled expressions. In the foyer, I could hear him talking with Ichabod.

Henry turned to the rest of us, his face tight with anger, and said, “I will not stay in a place where I am going to be spied on and accused of murder. I’m confident that Detective Stewart can suggest a
reputable
inn for us to stay in while he concludes his investigation. And you can be sure that I will relay this entire incident to Mrs. Dubois. When she hears of this outrage, you can be assured that she will make certain that none of her many acquaintances ever come
here!” Reaching down to grab Joan’s hand, he pulled her to her feet. “Come on, Joan,” he said. “We are leaving.”

Joan did not meet our eyes as she followed her husband out of the room. In the foyer, I could hear them speaking with Detective Stewart.

None of us spoke. Finally, Bridget turned to me with a smirk and intoned slowly, “And you were just going to catch up on some reading.”

W
ITH THE INN empty of people who could seriously be considered suspects, we all stayed up late bringing Bridget and Colin up to date on the investigation and swapping murder theories. They were alternately horrified and enthralled by what we told them. And they laughed far too long and hard at Peter’s imitation of me falling out of a chair. By the end of the night, Colin and Peter were apparently on their way to becoming bosom buddies, and even Bridget was giving me none too subtle nudges about Peter. At one point, when everyone else was talking, she leaned over to me and whispered, “Peter’s gorgeous! Why don’t you like him, again?”

“Because as a child, he was the spawn of Satan,” I whispered back.

“Well, he’s not a child now,” she said.

I rolled my eyes at her and merely said, “Once a spawn, always a spawn.”

But I knew I wasn’t being completely fair. I didn’t really hate Peter anymore, although I was still mad about the inn. A psychiatrist might diagnose my feelings as misdirected anger over the injustice of Aunt Winnie’s current situation, but I don’t really hold much
with psychiatrists. And besides, it’s just easier to be mad at Peter—after all, it’s an emotion I’m familiar with.

Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair. Daniel was still at Lauren’s house, leaving the inn to us. Aunt Winnie, Randy, Bridget, and Colin were drinking their coffee in the reading room when I came downstairs. I didn’t know where Peter was and I told myself I didn’t care. I got myself a cup of coffee from the kitchen and walked down the hall. In the foyer, Ichabod was again at his post in the green brocade chair. He nodded in my direction but said nothing. The front door opened. It was Daniel. His face was drawn and haggard.

I studied him with a newfound detachment. I had impulsively decided to like him before he’d even said two words to me. I could see now that he had never had any partiality for me. Daniel merely attached himself to anyone who gave him the slightest encouragement. He’d jumped from me, to Susie in the acting troupe, to Polly all in a matter of days. What I
didn’t
know was whether his affair with Polly was just another step in his fluctuating affections or had a more sinister explanation. Cool analyses aside, I was still pissed at him. He was, in my opinion, simply one of the most worthless men in all of Great Britain.

“Rough night?” I asked.

He grimaced. “You could say that. I spent most of it with Detective Stewart.”

“I see. And how’s Polly?”

“About the same, I’d say. He grilled her pretty hard, too.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, adding further emphasis to my next words.
“How’s Polly?”

He gazed at me uncomprehendingly before the gist of my meaning
penetrated his brain. At least he had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Elizabeth,” he began, “it’s not what you think …”

That was the second time in forty-eight hours that someone had told me that. “Really?” I snapped. “And what do I think, Daniel? That you’re a rat bastard? That you used me to keep your relationship with Polly off the radar screen? Or do I think that you and your little girlfriend killed Gerald so you could both get what you want? Now which one is it? A, B, C, or all of the above?”

He stood very still. The only indication that he was upset was the appearance of two spots of red that blazed on his cheeks. He glanced uneasily at Ichabod. Ichabod gazed back with open interest. “I didn’t have anything to do with Gerald’s death,” Daniel said. “And I didn’t use you. Polly and I, well, we fell into that after Gerald died. It wasn’t planned—”