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VERA WAS JUST BEGINNING to stir when Anna and her mistress reentered the suite. Rosemary jumped onto the bed to rouse her friend, a returned favor for all the times she had been on the receiving end of such a display.
“Get up, get up, get up,” Rosemary chanted at her friend, receiving a cold look from Vera as she sat up and tried to smooth down her disheveled hair.
“What exactly have I ever done to you, besides be a good friend?” Vera asked with a glare.
“Just get up,” Rosemary said and walked back into the sitting room. She could hear Vera grumbling while she readied herself.
The sun had risen, bright and hot, begging for the people of Cyprus to come and lounge on sandy beaches or dip their toes in the clear cerulean water. It would have been easy for Rosemary to allow herself to descend into a maudlin mood, despite the breathtaking surroundings. She was broken up about what had happened to Cecily, but she knew she had to keep her spirits up if she wanted to exact justice on whoever had killed her mother’s dear friend. And so, she instructed Anna to pack her and Vera’s beach things.
“Anna, where is my sun hat?” she asked after scouring the wardrobe and coming up empty-handed.
Always with an answer to that type of question at the ready, Anna pointed to a low bureau situated along one wall of the sitting room. “I thought that the best place to keep all the things most easily forgotten.”
Rosemary opened the top drawer, and sure enough, there was the missing hat. She removed it and began to shut the drawer when she noticed something else lying at the bottom.
“Anna,” she said as she picked up a familiar-looking envelope clutch. She racked her brain for where she’d seen it before, and then suddenly remembered that Cecily had brought it into the suite with her the afternoon she died. “How did this end up in here?”
“Oh,” Anna explained, “I’d forgotten. I found that on one of the end tables the other day. I didn’t recognize it as either of yours. Did you buy it here on the island?”
Rosemary shook her head. “No, it belonged to Cecily. She left it here the evening...well, the evening she died.”
Anna watched as Rosemary chewed her lip while attempting to make a decision. “I don’t think Miss DeVant would mind if you looked inside,” she said quietly.
Rosemary sighed. “Yes, you’re probably right, Anna, and unfortunately, she isn’t here any longer to have an opinion on the subject.” With a shake of her head, she opened the thin purse and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Letters, to be more precise, as she realized what she was holding.
“Oh no,” Rosemary said as she began to read.
Vera poked her head out of the bedroom door. “What on earth is going on?” she asked.
“We found Cecily’s handbag, and it’s filled to the brim with threatening letters. You underestimated me, but I know things about you. Give me what I want or else. That sort of thing,” Rosemary explained, her eyes still on the pages.
“Let me see,” Vera said, coming to look over Rosemary’s shoulder. “They’re typed, which means you won’t be able to work your magic on the handwriting.” As an artist, Rosemary had a knack for such things, but Vera was wrong. That skill could still help her this time. Just as the hand fell into a rhythm with writing to create similar loops and whorls, a typist used patterns in tapping the keys, so that some letters might be darker than the rest. Moreover, with consistent use, worn strikers might jig to the left or right, to create a unique signature.
“Whoever wrote these was clever, I’ll give them that. There are no envelopes either. No return address,” Rosemary noted. “No way to tell where they came from.”
Vera grimaced but then brightened. “They do, however, seem to clarify the motive for her murder. Obviously, it was about blackmail,” Vera said proudly, though her grin quickly turned into a scowl. “Drat, that’s a point in your brother’s favor.”
Rosemary wasn’t certain she fully agreed. “Perhaps. Love certainly doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it. Revenge, possibly, but I rather think you’re right. Someone wanted money, or perhaps leverage.”
“You don’t think Freddie’s cockamamie idea about Charlotte having something on Cecily could actually be right?” Vera exclaimed.
Considering, Rosemary shook her head. “No, not really. She’s new, she’s inexperienced, and yet somehow, she managed to find enough evidence against Cecily to warrant a threat of this nature? Only to keep a job for which she clearly isn’t suited?” Rosemary waved the letters around. “I don’t think so.”
“Besides, she certainly doesn’t have enough clout to follow through if the threats didn’t goad Cecily into giving in to the demands. There’s only one person I can think of who fits the bill: Richard Wright.”
Rosemary settled on the settee, all thoughts of the beach having flown for the moment. When Vera joined her, she passed the letters over, then pressed her fingers over her mouth while she thought through everything she knew about the man. She compared him to some of the bad actors she had run across while working cases with Andrew. The more she thought, the more he seemed to fit the profile.
“This has him written all over it. He’s in the hotel, so he could have slipped these letters under Cecily’s door. It explains why there’s no return address. He’s obviously invested a lot of time into whatever scam it is he’s running here if he’s been here as long as Cecily said he has. Maybe he was getting anxious, worrying it might have all been for nothing.”
“What kind of scam do you suspect him of running?” Vera wanted to know.
“Get them to sell at a low price, then flip it to another buyer, perhaps,” Rosemary postulated. “There’s money to be made here, scads of it. Whatever his endgame is, it has something to do with getting his hands on this property.”
“It does seem to add up, but we’ll need proof. The typewriter! Unless he sneaked into the office to write those letters, right under Cecily’s nose, it would have to be in his room. But how would we get in there...?” Vera had taken Rosemary’s suggestion with gusto and now was off and running with it.
Her heart pumping at the thought of nailing Richard Wright to the wall, Rosemary began to pace. “We could sneak the key out of the office and check. It wouldn’t take much. A couple of distractions, perhaps. You’re always a champ when it comes to that. Fancy a reconnaissance trip downstairs?”
Vera gestured to her disheveled appearance. “Certainly. Just let me make myself presentable.” She hurried into the bathroom while Rosemary continued to sift through the letters.
“Should we tell Freddie and Des what we’re up to?” Vera’s voice carried from the other room.
At the mention of Desmond, Rosemary realized she’d committed the number-one best-friend gaffe. “No,” she answered definitively. “Things are somewhat awkward right now after he kissed me last night.” She let the statement fall out of her mouth casually and waited for the fallout.
Vera’s face appeared in the doorway, half her hair combed and her eyes the size of golf balls. “Excuse me? Desmond kissed you? Well, the old boy has more guts than I gave him credit for. How was it? When was it? Why didn’t you tell me before?” The questions flew at Rosemary like shrapnel.
“Which do you want to know first?” she asked, winking at Anna, who was just as avid with curiosity but too polite to question her mistress the way Vera had.
All she received in response was a glare as Vera stood there, arms akimbo, in the doorway.
“All right, all right. It was last night on the beach, during our walk. It was...nice. Normal, really,” Rosemary explained.
“Sounds scandalous, Rosie,” Vera replied sarcastically.
Rosemary sighed. “It was sweet. Not exactly passion-filled, but nice, and likely the best widow’s first kiss one could have asked for.”
“I feel a however coming on,” Vera said with an eyebrow-raise.
“No, not exactly. Well, maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
“Of course you are.” Rosemary returned the eyebrow raise. “I don’t know what the however is, that’s why a little break from seeing him might do me some good. And, it will keep you and Freddie from bickering, which in and of itself is a good thing. Hurry up now; we can dissect my love life later.”
When Vera was ready, they prepared a plan. “Anna, are you in?” Rosemary asked. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“No,” Anna said with conviction. “If there’s a way I can help, I will.” It was settled, and the threesome descended to the first floor via the stairway rather than the lift, which appeared, once again, to be out of order. When they were at the bottom, Rosemary raised herself up on her tiptoes and peered out the little window that looked onto the lobby.
“Gloria must be off today. Margaret is still manning the reception counter.”
“Good,” Vera replied, “she’ll be an easier target.” Her shoulders squared, she strode out of the stairwell and approached the desk. Rosemary and Anna followed, pretending to have urgent business with the brochure stand near the entrance door, and waited.
“I seem to be having a problem with my room key,” they overheard Vera explaining. “And I simply must get back inside quickly.” Poor Margaret tried to insist upon sending up the porter, but Vera pressed until the girl sighed, retreated into the office for a moment, and then accompanied her to the stairs.
Anna muttered under her breath. “I wish I had half of Vera’s powers of persuasion.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much she can’t wheedle out of a person, does there?” Rosemary agreed. “Now, you stand watch and give the signal if anyone approaches the office door.” Putting her trust in Anna, she looked surreptitiously around and slipped inside. The place was deserted and the office empty.
What she found, Rosemary hadn’t expected. Cecily had been a stickler for procedure, and it made sense that her office would have been ruthlessly organized. Except now, there were file folders and papers stacked high on every surface; drawers had been overturned and rifled through. She knew from experience the police didn’t often care whether they made a mess, and suspected they’d thoroughly searched the office for any clue as to who might have killed Cecily.
She reached for where the keys were hung, and her hand hovered over the one labeled with Richard Wright’s room number while she wrestled with what she was about to do. Too late to change her mind now, she grabbed the key and pocketed it. With a peek out the door to ensure nobody was coming, Rosemary took the opportunity to poke around. Her eyes landed on a cabinet marked “employee files,” and she quickly crossed the space to take a look.
Just as she opened the top drawer, she heard Anna’s signal and grabbed the first file she could get her hands on. It was labeled with Benny’s full name, and since there was little time for dalliance, she shoved it beneath her blouse and tiptoed back out of the office and around the corner to where Anna was stationed, just as Margaret returned to her post.
An irritated-looking Benjamin Marlowe marched into the lobby and passed by where she and Anna were huddled. He didn’t look up but made a beeline for the lift. “Let’s wait; I am in no mood to endure even a moment spent with that man,” Rosemary said, receiving a nod of agreement from Anna.
Charlotte emerged from the stairwell just as Benjamin Marlowe realized the lift was out of order. He appeared to be in quite a hurry and started when she bustled out in front of him. Rosemary couldn’t see Charlotte’s face, her view obstructed by Benjamin, but she saw the girl quail when she nearly bumped into him.
She also couldn’t hear their conversation, though by the way he cocked his head to one side while speaking with Charlotte, Rosemary guessed he was having a go at her the same way he had with Vera.
She and Anna took the opportunity to slip into the stairwell and avoid speaking with the abhorrent man.
“It’s interesting,” Rosemary said when they’d returned to the suite and filled Vera in. “That he would be chatting up Charlotte like that, after seeing her come out of his room in tears just this morning.”
“He has positively no decorum, has he?” Anna replied in a shrewd assumption of the situation. It wasn’t the first time a similar comment had been made about Benjamin Marlowe.
Rosemary shook her head. “None that I can see. What could Geneviève possibly be thinking by agreeing to marry a man like that?”
“Some women simply don’t care whether their husbands are faithful, as long as they’re taken care of in the manner to which they’ve already become accustomed. Unfortunately for Mr. Marlowe, I don’t believe he has twopence of his own to rub together.”
“What makes you say that?” Rosemary wanted to know.
Anna grinned, and there was an uncharitable glint in her eye. “I saw him stealing toiletries off one of the maid’s carts. Why would one need to steal soap if he had money to spare?”
“A very good question, Anna.”
Rosemary found Benny’s file quite disappointing, as it consisted of little more than his address and a recommendation from his former employer. According to the short missive, Benny was a good and conscientious worker who required more training than average to understand his duties.
“According to one Aloysius Highbrown, Benny is a loyal soul, but slightly slow to learn.” It all added up to what Rosemary had observed since her arrival. “I see no mention of violence, nor of any untoward incident whatsoever.”
“Could be this Highbrown fellow was eager to palm his problems off onto Cecily,” Vera offered as a possibility.
“Hmm, you could be right. Besides, I lean towards Mr. Wright as the more valid suspect. I shall be very interested to see what we find in his room.”
Except that the pursuit of illicit information would have to wait, for Mr. Wright, without knowing how his actions annoyed them, remained entrenched in his room the entire day, leaving the intrepid sleuths no opportunity to snoop. A situation Vera found highly amusing for a time, but eventually she became bored to the point where she forced Rosemary to abandon all hope and try again the next day.
“This is, after all,” she insisted, “a holiday. Cecily would want us to enjoy ourselves to the extent that we can.”
Whether or not that was true, Rosemary allowed herself to be carted off to the beach where Vera attempted to bake away her sniffles.
