The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes (33 page)

Owain slurped his tea very noisily. I could tell he wasn't going to admit defeat until he was surrounded by gold tiles and plaques.

“So did David work that all out then?” asked Rhian in disbelief.

“No,” I said, “he didn't. Though he did work out that the plate was much more modern than Owain believed, and I think it likely that he was on the right track about the mirrors. I noted as I looked around the castle, and particularly in the music room, that anything that was metal, and everything that was gold-colored, was scratched and marked. I know that everything here has age, but I don't mean in that way. I found a collection of items in David's desk in the stables that are used to test for gold. Magnets don't adhere to gold, so metal can be checked that way. But, otherwise, if you rub a stone against an object you want to test, then apply certain liquids to that scraping, you can find out if it's gold. Being in everyone's rooms to ‘fix their radiators' would have allowed David to test everyone's mirrors, metal radiators, and even furnishings. Of course, it allowed him to partake of other activities as well.” I glanced toward Janet, who blushed. “If David was, as you told me yourself, Rhian, one for the ladies, and I understand there's been a fairly good supply of young ones coming and going as Alice's nurses, then he'd have probably been in many parts of castle, at many times of day and night. Lots of chances for snooping.”

“But I still don't understand why he got pushed down the stairs, or who did it,” cried Rhian with frustration.

I said, “Rhian, there's no easy way to say this. I'm pretty sure that your mother had her suspicions about David's less-than-husbandly activities, and I think even you had more than a clue, too. I knew that he and Janet were involved because she had the faintest trace of his aftershave about her uniform—which is why being close to her yesterday gave me a bit of a sore throat.” I responded to the puzzled expressions around the table by saying, “But that's a long story involving childhood tonsillitis. And I picked up a note he'd written to her on what I discovered to be a pad of paper he used for ordering items he needed for his ‘handiwork.' That said, there's one person here who cannot have been in any doubt about David's penchant for Janet, and the other nurses, and that's Alice. Right?”

“He was a very unpleasant, and frequently unfaithful, husband, Rhian,” said Alice sharply. “I saw what he did to those poor girls. They were disposable to him. He broke their hearts. You said I could probably tell a tale or two about men, Cait, and you'd be right. I was a very attractive girl, and I don't deny that I made a very good marriage, at a young age, to a man much older than myself, with whom I had little in common. I will also not insult you all by denying that my husband and I had relationships outside our marriage. But it was David who really turned me against all men. Showed me how nasty they all are when it comes down to it. When the nurses came to me, desperate to leave, I told them to say it was my fault that they were resigning, so that no blame would attach to them. Then I'd see him do the same thing to the next one. This one? Janet? She wasn't here a week before he started on her.”

I added, “He liked to work on women who thought themselves less than perfect, invisible in many ways. Women who hadn't had much attention paid to them, am I right?”

Alice's lips wrinkled into a sneer. “Easier for him to control them that way. And I put up with it. Until he started on Mair. I'd heard it all before, and when I heard him try it on with her, well, that was it. You know, don't you?” she said, directly to me.

I nodded.

“Very well then, no point denying it.” She sounded resigned.

“What do you mean, Mother?” asked Mair. “David never made any moves on me.” She sounded almost disappointed. “We were friends. We had adventures.”

Alice shook her head sadly as she looked at her daughter. “There's no point denying it, Mair. I heard him. You know very well the way sound travels around this place. It's all those passages in the old walls. I was having a nap. Janet had given me some of that lovely milk I like so much. It was yesterday afternoon. Oh no, it can't have been yesterday—it must have been the day before. Or before that? Anyway, I was lying there, just dozing, when I heard him tell you that you had to slow down, that you wanted it too much, and that he'd have to start to ration you. You were very upset, Mair, don't deny it. I heard you crying, and I've heard a lot of them like that. Of course I was shocked—especially when he said you wanted ‘too much.' But then I'm your mother, I think of you as a child still. But I knew I had to act. I got into my chair right away, took my walking stick so I could close the door of my little lift, and got myself down to the top of the stairs to the kitchen. But he wasn't there. So I went to the other door under the main stairs, and tried that side. I found him. And I told him in no uncertain terms that he was to leave you alone. He laughed.
At me!
And I pushed my little controller to go forward to be able to smack him one with my stick, because he deserved it, but my foot pedals must have hit him and pushed his legs from under him, because the next thing I knew he was bouncing down the stairs on his chin.”

Silence.

Alice looked more deflated than usual. “I didn't mean to hurt him more than a slap. But I had to save you, my dear child. You mean the world to me, you and your brother, and I didn't want you to have your heart broken. Because that's what he would have done.” Alice's voice was more tender than I'd heard it, and Mair was beginning to cry.

“Mother, he wasn't my
lover
. Nor would he have ever suggested that. We were arguing about my cigarettes. He used to buy them for me, and bring them to me, here. Yes, we've been having a bit of an adventure grubbing around in the temple, but even I knew he was a bad lot, and I wouldn't have done that to you in any case, Rhian. You have to believe me—there was nothing between us.”

“I believe you,” said Rhian quietly.

“Cigarettes?” said Alice in disbelief.

“Yes, Mother, cigarettes. David was the one who brought them to me. You know very well I hardly ever leave this place. How did you think I got them?”

After a moment Alice said to me, “How did you know it was me?”

I said, “There was a transfer of paint from the interior of the door of your little chair lift to your foot pedals, and then onto the front of David's jeans. The line where your pedals hit him left a mark. By the way, Dilys, did you change David's trousers after he was dead? Just to make sure he looked neat and tidy when he left here?”

Dilys nodded. “I wanted him to look respectable,” she said. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“But you couldn't change his sweater because his body had already become rigid?” I pressed.

Dilys nodded.

“But what about the hand prints on his back?” asked Bud.
A good question.

“Janet? Maybe you'd like to explain that,” I said.

All eyes turned to look at the young woman, who was anything but bright and bouncy.

She flushed. “I didn't have a date with David that day, because he had a meeting with you, Bud. So I really did go for a nap. But something woke me. I didn't know what it was at the time, but this place is weird—banging and knocking and voices from nowhere. With what you've just said, Alice, it might have been you going back into your room, I don't know. Anyway, I decided to go down to see if I could find him after all, and there he was, at the bottom of the steps, dead. I didn't know I'd left handprints. I rolled him over a bit, just to see if he really was dead, so maybe that's what happened.”

“Probably transfer of coal dust from his jeans to his back,” Bud said. “About that coal dust,” he added. “Why did he have so much on his clothes? Didn't you and he have coveralls, Owain?”

Owain blanched. “A bit of fisticuffs earlier on, I'm afraid,” he said. “We'd been in the cellar just after lunch, and he told me I wasn't working hard enough to break through the cistern walls. I was still in my coverall, and he'd taken his off.”

“And how did you know it was David and Owain down there, Cait?” continued Bud.

I allowed myself to smile. “The boots in the cellar. I eventually realized that the sizes on the boots were British sizes, not Canadian ones, and I didn't even know if they were men's or women's sizes. I take a size 4½ in the
UK
, but a 6½ or a 7 in Canada. It was quite possible that the British size 7, so a Canadian women's size 9 or 9½, could belong to a man—especially one with small feet. Although I noted the selection of shoes that David had in his room, I didn't look at the size he wore, which was a serious omission on my part. But I'd seen for myself that he had small feet, and that fact had also been commented upon by others. Also, there isn't a woman here with feet that large. So David, plus someone with size 11, or Canadian size 12 or 13, feet. Idris's feet are too small, but Owain's are large.”

Everyone was silent for few moments, then Alice Cadwallader asked quietly, “What will happen to me? I didn't mean him to die, Rhian. It really was an accident. I—I was very upset when I found out he was dead. I'd never have done that to you. Nor him, of course. You do know that, don't you?”

Rhian nodded.

Gradually, Bud became the center of attention. He looked uncomfortable. “Please don't expect me to have an answer about anything that relates to British police procedure. I don't know what might happen.”

“Will they arrest me for murdering him?” asked Alice. She sounded like a small, scared child.

Bud looked worried. “Alice, I just don't know. Of course I, we, are duty-bound to tell them the truth, when they get here. We can't change what happened, but how it's handled by the authorities from this point on remains to be seen. All I can do, all we can do, is present them with the facts.”

“Rhian—you won't let them do anything to her, will you?” said Dilys. “The missus is ninety-two. It would kill her.”

Rhian sighed. “I'm not sure it's got anything to do with me, Mam. It'll be up to the police when they get here.” The young widow turned to her aged employer and said, “Oh, Alice. If only you hadn't decided to do something so spiteful—even if you were doing it for what you thought was a good reason . . .”

Silence.

EVENTUALLY MAIR BLURTED OUT, “WELL,
Cait. You've told us that our family is wealthy, and that Mother is a killer. But none of that explains all the other things that have been going on here, does it? What about all those terrible, malicious things? You said everything came out of love, Cait.” She looked at her mother. “I can see that Mother might have loved me enough that she wanted to save me from a man she thought was going to break my heart. But the rest?”

I nodded. The only way I could press on was to try to compartmentalize things. Two puzzles explained, one more to go. I plunged in. “You admired, and maybe even loved David, didn't you, Gwen?” I said.

Gwen tensed.

“It's alright,” I continued, “you don't have to answer that, I know you did. David gave you the attention you craved—and you let him use you too. I don't mean like he used Alice's nurses, but he used you to carry a heavy load for him with the choir, used you to run about and fetch and carry for him, I heard. But you put up with it all, because you got to be in the limelight with him. And, when he died, you immediately suspected that someone here had something to do with it. Slashing the painting, breaking the plate and the Christmas decorations? At first I thought they'd all been done to throw people off the trail to the treasure, but your only plan was to destroy things beloved by certain people—Alice, Owain, Idris and Eirwen, and, last night, Mair, when you wrecked her apartment, all to avenge David.”

“But what about Mair's Ravelry account being hacked weeks ago?” asked Siân.

“Shall I tell her, or will you?” I said to Mair.

Mair shook her head, so I spoke. “Mair wasn't hacked. She wrote a lot of nasty messages in a fit of temper, directed toward herself. Last night, when we saw her rooms, Bud, we both thought she might have done something to harm herself, that the mess up there was a symptom of self-loathing. It wasn't, it was Gwen's work, but I believe that the online incident was Mair's. An attempted escape, if you will, but one she regretted. After posting angry messages, she covered her shame by saying she'd been hacked. That's right, isn't it, Mair?”

Mair nodded.

“So there weren't two different modus operandi in play,” said Bud.

“No,” I replied, “just one. And I believe that Gwen has acted this way for many years. I suspect you managed to make your ‘good friend' at school so sick that she didn't do well enough in her exams to get into university, so she had to go to college with you, Gwen. I dare say that if someone took a good look at your life, they'd find other, similar examples of your spite, vindictiveness, and ruthless pursuit of your own ends and desired outcomes.”

“
You
told me to do it,” snapped Gwen. “You told me I shouldn't let anyone, or anything, get in my way. And I haven't.” She looked around the room at the assembled group. “You were all horrible to David, and you all deserved what you got,” she spat. “Not you, of course, Rhian. I really like you. You're my friend. I did what I did for you, as much as for David.” Rhian looked shocked.

I said, “And what about
me
, Gwen? What did I do to deserve you sneaking into my room and ruining the clothes I was to wear for my marriage ceremony?”

Gwen looked at me with the coldest stare I'd ever seen. “I told you yesterday that I'd done you a big favor, and you never even said thank you. You should have said thank you, that's what.”