For a second after the door opened, there was stunned silence. Then the dowager strode across the room and stopped just short of the blood.
“Is it Clara?” Gigi asked, following the dowager.
The dowager whirled around and waved us backward. “Everyone stay out! Yes, it’s Clara.” She advanced on us, and we fell back, returning to the dim library. My knees knocked into a table and sent chess pieces skittering, while someone else bumped into another piece of furniture and muttered, “Blast! Where’s the lights?”
The dowager’s voice rang out. “Someone switch on the lamps.” Spots of illumination appeared throughout the room.
“Elrick, telephone the police.” The dowager drew the doors together and stood in front of them.
I had to admire her aplomb. It had only taken a few subversive statements from Felix to fluster me at dinner. She had just discovered her companion had been murdered, and she barely looked discomposed. The dowager said, “I suggest we all have a seat and wait for the police to arrive.”
She sent for a footman to stand guard beside the entrance to the study and a maid to light the fire, then she took a seat in a wingback chair that gave her a view of the pocket doors.
Shell-shocked by the sight of Clara lying lifeless and covered with blood, everyone was moving quietly now, gravitating to the warmth of the fire, except for Gigi, who remained motionless near the closed doors.
I put an arm under her elbow and guided her to a chair near the hearth. The crackling and popping of the fire was the only sound in the room. Now that the lights were on, I could see that the library was filled to the brim with beautiful leather-bound volumes, but I couldn’t appreciate it, not after what I’d just seen. I shifted a diminutive chair with scroll legs and a needlepoint cushion closer to Gigi and sat down. She stared at the carpet, her arms crossed over her waist.
Inglebrook, still rubbing his shoulder, moved to stand beside Gigi’s chair. Rollo had his arm wrapped around Addie. She was crying, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes as Rollo murmured into her ear. Mr. Tower, looking more somber than he had all evening, stood in the shadows at the edge of the room, while Felix, his face the same gray shade as the faded parchment map on the wall behind him, lowered himself onto the Chesterfield sofa. The earl and Mr. York spoke quietly a little distance from the group.
Essie perched on the edge of a scroll armchair. Her reporter instincts were strong, and she was practically vibrating with energy as her bright gaze darted from the pocket doors to each person. The feather on her headdress quivered with each jerky movement. Then she turned slightly away and seemed to be fascinated with the chair cushion. I strained my neck and saw she’d taken a small pencil from her pocket and was writing in a notebook, which she’d hidden in the folds of her skirt.
I wondered for a brief second if Detective Inspector Longly would be assigned to the case, then immediately remembered he was not in town. We all jumped when Elrick’s voice intoned, “Detective Inspector Makepeace and Detective Sergeant Lawson.” Two young men in nice suits with their hair slicked back from their handsome faces entered the library.
Inglebrook said, “That was incredibly speedy.”
The police had been uncommonly prompt, but I supposed when Alton House rang up, the police didn’t waste any time in responding. “And unusual,” I murmured. “You’d think a bobby would arrive first.” The detective inspector looked familiar. Even though I was a ladylike young woman, I’d been involved in several investigations. Perhaps Makepeace had been associated with one? I searched my memory trying to place him but came up blank.
Makepeace was in the lead and spoke as he crossed the room. “My sergeant and I were Johnny-on-the-spot, you might say. We came along immediately.” He moved across the room unerringly to the dowager and greeted her. Makepeace looked rather young, as if he’d just come up from Eton, while Lawson was a tad older and had a mustache. He held a notebook at the ready.
“How can we be of service, Your Grace?” Makepeace asked. “Something about a body?”
“Yes. So tragic. It’s Clara Clack, my companion. We found her in the small study, which is on the other side of the pocket doors. I entered the study, but no one has been in there since.”
“Very good. I will take a look, then I’ll have some questions for you all.” Makepeace went to the study with Sergeant Lawson trailing behind him. They closed the pocket doors after they went through, and we waited in silence. I thought they’d be in the study for a long time, but a few moments later, Makepeace threw back the doors and reentered the room.
Lawson followed him out, then fastened the doors and stationed himself in front of them. Makepeace crossed the room to our grouping around the fire, shaking his head. “Tragic, as you say, Your Grace.” His gaze skimmed over all of us as he asked, “I assume you were all together this evening for dinner?”
The dowager answered, describing the ladies leaving the dinner table and how she had sent Clara to look for a newspaper for her. “And when Clara hadn’t returned by the time the men joined us in the drawing room, I sent my granddaughter to look for her.”
Makepeace’s gaze skipped from one man to the other as he asked, “Gentlemen, were you all together this evening? As you moved from the dining room to the drawing room, did anyone leave the group?”
Mr. Tower spoke up. “No, I think we were all present and accounted for. But I must say, this isn’t quite cricket, is it, to question us together? Shouldn’t you—”
“Just establishing some basic information, Mr.—?”
“Tower. Perhaps you should take all of our names down.”
“All in good time. My sergeant will speak with each of you in a moment and—”
The dowager cut in, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have shocked Clara with my news at dinner. I should have broken it to her privately.”
“News?” Makepeace asked.
The dowager hesitated and shot a quick look at Felix, then Gigi before she said, “I suppose you’ll find out soon enough. I decided to change my will and leave everything to Clara. I announced the change at dinner. Clara probably needed a few moments alone to take it in—that’s why she lingered in the study, I’m sure of it.”
“I see.” Makepeace managed to infuse the two words with an ominous tone as he turned to look at Gigi. “And from the covert looks everyone is sending your way, I take it you were to be disinherited?”
Gigi had been so still and withdrawn that I wondered if she was taking in what was being said, but at Makepeace’s words, she popped up and faced him. “You’re insinuating I did something to Clara. I would never do that. Granny’s money is her own, and she can leave it to whomever she pleases. And she announces she’s changing her will quite often—don’t you, Granny? I took no notice of it.”
Makepeace looked at Felix. “Is that correct, Viscount Daley?”
Felix, still looking pasty, nodded. “That’s right. Granny likes to fiddle with her will. Nothing new there.”
The feeling that I knew the inspector nagged at me, and I studied his face, trying to place him. Perhaps it had been during a social gathering that I’d met him, not during an investigation? Again, I came up blank, but the thought tugged at me, and I kept mentally cycling through acquaintances.
Makepeace, his hands in his pockets, strolled away from Gigi. “But if the men remained together all evening and you were the only person to leave the drawing room after Miss Clack, then it seems as if you, Lady Gina, are the only person who had the opportunity to stab Miss Clack.”
Gigi looked at the man as if he was babbling nonsense. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t get into the study, even if I’d wanted to. I knocked on the study door, the one that opens onto the hallway, and there was no answer. I tried the handle, and it was locked, as anyone will tell you.”
Mr. Tower stepped forward. “The keys to the hall door and the pocket doors have gone missing. I had to use my pocketknife to open the pocket doors.” During the exchange, Inglebrook had edged slowly away from Gigi’s chair.
Gigi added, “And it wasn’t just tonight that I didn’t go in there. I haven’t been in the study for days.”
Makepeace swung around, his eyebrows high. “Really? Are you sure about that?”
My heart plummeted at the question. I knew it was not a good sign to hear those words from a detective inspector. Inglebrook must have sensed it too because he faded back another few steps.
Makepeace pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and folded back the edges, revealing Gigi’s cigarette holder, which was broken into two pieces. “Then how did this get into the study—under Miss Clack’s body?”
Gigi stared at the cigarette holder, a stunned expression on her face. Mr. Tower moved from the side of the group around to Gigi’s chair. “Lady Gina, don’t—”
Gigi didn’t seem to hear Mr. Tower. She reached for the cigarette holder. “That’s mine.”
Makepeace jerked his handkerchief out of her reach. “Yes, it’s very distinctive. Practically one of a kind.”
A look of bafflement came over Gigi’s face. “I don’t understand. I couldn’t find it this evening. I assure you I was not in the study—or near Clara all evening.” Her voice had changed. It wasn’t quite so confident. I heard a hint of fear in her words. I happened to glance at the dowager at that moment and was surprised to see a glint of satisfaction on her face. In the next second it was gone, but it gave me a cold feeling.
Mr. Tower said, “I must protest. What you have here is circumstantial. Additionally, you’re going about this investigation—if one could call it that—in an extremely sloppy manner.” With his tall stature, he looked formidable, but the inspector didn’t seem to be at all fazed by the big ginger-haired solicitor.
It was wrong—all wrong. The dowager should be protesting, not Mr. Tower. Why was she letting Makepeace carry on in this theatrical manner?
Suddenly it came to me where I’d seen Detective Inspector Makepeace. I jumped up and stood beside Gigi. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Gigi. I’m not sure how it all fits together yet, but this man doesn’t have any right to accuse you of murder. He’s not a detective inspector.”
Gigi swiveled to look at me. “What?”
I spoke over the murmur that ran through the room. “Unless he’s changed careers and rapidly ascended the ranks of the police force, I don’t see how he could be. He was on stage a short time ago in Any Two Can Play.” I turned to the man who was calling himself Makepeace. “You played the role of the rival for the leading lady, didn’t you?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, then he shot a look out of the corner of his eye at the dowager.
Felix leaned forward. “Yes, by George. It is the same chap.”
The dowager’s manner had been cold that afternoon when Gigi introduced me. Now her blue eyes were like ice chips as she glared at me. She switched her attention to Makepeace. “Bravo, sir! Bravo.”
Gigi whirled to the dowager. “Granny, what have you done?”
The dowager ignored her and nodded at Elrick. He rolled back the pocket doors, and Clara stepped forward. Her clothes were still covered in red smears, but she was very much alive. A bright flush filled her cheeks as a babble of conversation broke out.
Clara took a tiny step into the room with her hands gripped together. The dowager said, “Well done, Clara. A fine performance. You fooled everyone. They were all completely taken in.”
Inglebrook, who’d moved further away from Gigi as the “inspector” presented his evidence, was now standing by the study. He said, “I’m happy to see you’re unharmed, Miss Clack,” and her blush deepened.
“But I don’t understand,” Gigi said. “All the blood. There was so much blood.”
“Ketchup,” the dowager said, then went on in a slightly taunting tone. “Don’t you see, Gina? It’s a party—like those extravagant and imaginative ones you’re so fond of. It’s a Murder Party.”