Chapter Twenty-three

 

 

Driving on the right turned out to be another of Alasdair’s unsuspected skills. Without turning a hair, blond or gray, he pulled out of the Inn parking lot onto South England Street and zigzagged southeast.

Jean seized the opportunity to tell him about Robert Mason’s gravestone and her encounter with Barbara Finch—he raised his left eyebrow—and Mary’s daughter Thomasina who was surely the household ghost—he raised his right eyebrow—and how their destination had once been Duckwitch Pond, named after the unfortunate moment in 1685 when Mary Napier was accused of following the family tradition.

“Why Dunwich, then?” He parked the car in the parking lot of a well-tended but elderly apartment complex, probably not a pit stop on Williamsburg’s singles circuit. A sign out front read, “Dunwich Grove. 756 Columbia Road.”

“It’s a respectable name from the old country canceling out the embarrassing memories. And there’s a great legend about Dunwich, England. The town was swallowed by the sea and you can still hear drowned church bells.” She didn’t add anything about the number of bells she’d been hearing recently, drowned, stabbed, or belfried.

“Right.” Alasdair climbed out of the car.

Opening her own door, Jean got to her feet and looked toward the building, a double tier of doors, windows, and either patios or balconies ranged in front of what looked like forest primeval but was more likely abandoned farmland reclaimed by trees and brush.

“Hagedorn’s flat was round the back, ground floor, overlooking the trees. Easy enough for the thief to cut through a window screen and force open the casement. Here’s the list of objects stolen, and the ones dredged from the pond this morning. It’s just this way.” Alasdair handed over the folder, then started off along a path curving around the end of the building. His feet swished through the fallen leaves, his eyes focused not ahead but casting a chilly look at the inoffensive windows of the apartments. “No one saw anyone walking down by the pond with Wesley the afternoon he died, more’s the pity.”

Jean shuffled along, trying to manipulate folder and lists without tripping over any rough places on the path. Rays of sun broke through the clouds, vanished, broke through again, brightening and then dimming the fall colors. Sun or no sun, the wind was cold, and colder still in the shadow of the trees. The traffic noise faded away, replaced by the rustle of leaves and twigs, the harsh cry of birds, and Alasdair’s steady footfall.

“Did Stephanie’s crew search Wesley’s flat? What about the Dingwalls’ hotel rooms?”

“Aye to the former—the man was uncommonly tidy, she’s saying, everything organized just so, making the burglars’ work easy. For the Dingwalls’ rooms, now, she was obliged to get a warrant, and than meant howking out a judge late on a Saturday night.”

“Giving Tim and everyone time to get rid of anything incriminating.”

“They’re being watched, no worries there.”

Who, me? Worry? Jean looked down at the lists. “They found a chisel in the pond. The murder weapon, right? Well, along with the weight of the murderer’s own body.”

“Oh aye, it matches the mark on Hagedorn’s neck a treat. Any fingerprints are all a blur, like on the spindle. The technicians are doing their best, but . . .”

“Forensics only goes so far.” Jean raised the papers again. “Aha, the list of things dredged from the pond matches the list of things stolen. A silver pitcher and platter, a commemorative gold coin, a silver picture frame, a turquoise tie clasp—you were right, the thief stole some valuables to cover up what he really wanted.”

The path ran out of the dank, still shadow of the trees and she stopped dead. Duckwitch or Dunwich Pond lay before them, its pewter-colored surface pierced around the rim by tall reeds. Wind sighed in the branches overhead, the water rippled, and the reeds bowed and straightened. Here, too, Jean wouldn’t have been surprised to glimpse the faces of green men, perhaps not malicious, but certainly not indifferent.

To one side lay a row of bricks overgrown by what could just as well have been poison ivy as honeysuckle, all that remained of one of Middle Plantation’s seventeenth-century farmsteads. Most of the farm buildings had been built of wood or wattle and were long gone, along with the fields its owners and their workers had cleared with sweat, blood, and tears, all reclaimed by nature.

A gleam of sunlight burnished the slow swell of water, then faded. Leaves glided down onto it but didn’t break the surface tension. Jean imagined the tower of Bruton Parish Church sunk below that surface. She imagined Tolkien’s Watcher in the Water reaching through it to snake a tentacle around her ankle. Or Alasdair’s ankle, since he stood closer to the edge of the pond, where the bare dirt of the path ran down to a muddy bank.

“Is this where Mary Napier’s tormentors launched their boat? Where they tied her up, hand to foot, put a rope around her waist, and threw her in?” Her own voice seemed unusually loud.

“If she sinks, then she’s innocent, but good luck not drowning. If she floats, she’s guilty. Mary floated, did she?”

“Oh yes. So she went to trial. Jessica’s script to the contrary, despite her confession Mary was whipped and pilloried, but that’s too graphic for the tourists, I guess. The true story’s in the book. Having paid her debt to society, such as it was, Mary survived until 1729—that was the year her will was probated. She had a bit of property to leave Thomasina, some linens, household items. The little house—our little house—belonged to the governor.”

“No mention of the charm stone, then.”

“Not in that version of the book, no. I can see why Jessica wants to include it in a new one.” Another beam of light bathed the surface of the pond, and for a minute the reds and yellows of the surrounding trees reflected as though in a mirror. “I wonder if this place would seem so melancholy if we didn’t know what happened here, to Mary and to Wes both.”

“Right.” Alasdair was inspecting the squashed reeds and rectangular marks in the mud that indicated a temporary plank boardwalk, all encircled by yellow police tape. Of course Stephanie’s people were much too skilled to turn a crime scene into a hippopotamus wallow. Taking a wary step closer, Jean made out footprints overlaid indecipherably by more footprints, smears, blotches, and scrapes, and deep parallel gouges perhaps caused by Wesley’s feet in their death throes.

Quelling her imagination, she looked back at the lists, comparing the things stolen to the things found—the pitcher, the coin . . . “Wait a minute. Some polished agates and small pieces of silver plate were stolen, too, but they didn’t turn up with the other valuables. Even if some of them were too small to be caught in the net, you’d expect to find a few.”

“Significant, are you thinking?” Alasdair strolled fifty yards or so back toward the eave of the grove and eyed the wide, knee-high stump of a tree and some tumbled chunks of wood.

“Hell, yes. Wesley was going to replicate the charm stone, too, maybe send it to Blair, maybe use it on the Dingwall replica, the one for their movie. Assuming there really was going to be a second replica.” She frowned, trying to visualize the photos she’d glimpsed so briefly on the tabletop before Sharon swept them back into her bag. Whether the photo was of the original or the replica Witch Box didn’t matter. Sharon or Tim had circled the slot for the charm stone in red ink.

The pond mirrored the trees, and the sky, and several black birds flying overhead. Assuming the charm stone still existed, Jean thought, and assuming it existed somewhere it could be found by someone who knew what it was—two big assumptions, there, but ones the Dingwalls had obviously made—then its silver setting wouldn’t reflect anything. It would be blackened with tarnish. As for the stone itself, was it an agate or an emerald or something else green? Even the word “green” itself covered a lot of territory, from olive drab to lime.

“I bet Robert Mason showed Thomasina off to Charlotte, for a curtsey and a nod of noblesse oblige, although if I were Charlotte, I’d have asked questions. What if the Dingwalls think Thomasina gave the stone back to Charlotte, and she took it home and tucked it away with the note? Or with the Witch Box, for that matter? Like Jessica said, Charlotte didn’t think it was anything more than a family curiosity, like great-grandpa’s moustache cup or the equivalent.”

“Who’s to say Charlotte didn’t have it, oh aye.” Alasdair crouched over the stump, ran his fingers across its truncated top, then bent sideways to sight across it.

“Sharon knew about Wes bringing home that document, and I bet she knew it was from Blair, not a London street market. What if she and Tim thought he’d found the actual charm stone, too? They’d be frantic to get their hands on it.”

Alasdair picked up something from the ground and rolled it between his fingers. “That’s not so much of a leap as some of theirs, when they’re holding Olympic long-jump records.”

Jean sent a smile toward him, but he didn’t notice. She said, “Sam Gould and the other man at the cabinetmaker’s shop said Wes was looking over his shoulder. Worried. Jessica said he was getting threatening calls. I bet the Dingwalls were nagging him to make the replica, hand over the stone, cooperate somehow.”

“No matter him telling them he didn’t have the stone, they’d not credit anything they didn’t want to hear.” Alasdair stood up and glanced around, eyes bright as the sky overhead and the sky, reflected, at Jean’s feet. “When he would not cooperate, they burgled his flat for the plans and all, thinking of finding themselves another craftsman. But Kelly had other ideas.”

“They kept the agates and silver pieces—probably not thirty pieces, like Judas—and tried them on Robert Mason’s headstone, but nothing happened. So then they finally believed Wes didn’t have the stone and they started poking around with that probe of theirs. The question is, did one of them kill Wes out of spite? For revenge? Or did they think he was holding out on them? Were they trying to question him here, and the situation got out of hand?”

Alasdair indicated the muddy area next to the pond. “The forensic boffins are having a right headache working through that lot. Looks to be the killer tried obliterating his own prints.”

“No surprise there. But what if the killer’s a her? Sharon?

“We’ve got no evidence against Sharon,” Alasdair said.

“Well no, just that she could get violent.” Jean looked across the pond, around the encircling trees, at the forlorn brick wall. All were witnesses to the crime, and none of them could testify. No help there.

Think, she ordered her brain, even though it already felt like a punching bag. “Maybe what the housekeeper overheard was Sharon giving Kelly a piece of her mind for calling just when she did, so I got a look at the photos and heard the bits about playing the patsy and working on the cipher. And Sharon couldn’t have been happy that Kelly was pushing the movie prematurely. She did slander and scandalize, like Jessica said. She was a scold. Not that she deserved . . .” Jean let the sentence float away like yet another leaf wafting down on the pond.

Alasdair picked up a flat piece of wood leaning against the stump. “They ducked scolds as well. There’s still the odd ducking stool in village museums in the U.K.”

“Yeah.” The sun faded again, and the water dulled. “Even if Tim didn’t kill Sharon himself—even if Kelly didn’t kill her, eliminating an annoyance—they’ve lucked out that someone did. They’ve got ‘proof’ that somebody took their theories seriously enough to try and shut them up. And Tim’s got the insurance money. I bet he sees Sharon as the sacrifice bunt for the good of the team.”

“Eh?” Alasdair asked.

“Baseball analogy. Never mind. What are you looking at?” Jean walked with the occasional squish to where Alasdair was standing.

The broad stump was surrounded by bits and pieces of wood, some of them splintered and covered with bark, some weathered, others fresh and smooth. A sprinkle of wood shavings and sawdust atop the stump, along with grooves cut across its rings, indicated it had been used as a cutting surface and makeshift worktable. “This is what I was after seeing for myself,” Alasdair said. “Most of the photos are focusing on the body. Hagedorn died where he was found, half in, half out of the water. That’s clear enough.”

 

“This must be the place where he liked to sit and work on small projects, then. Like Hugh and his friends will play music just for fun, because it calls to them. The shavings are wet from the rain but they’re still pretty fresh, considering.”

“The photo of this is none too clear. I’m seeing now just what it is.” Alasdair picked up the flat piece of wood and held it out to her.

Rudimentary carvings of leaves, tendrils, and the small leering faces of green men were roughed into its pale, mud-flecked surface. The initials were not “F” or “B”, but “J” and “E”. “The designs from the Witch Box,” Jean said. “You’d think that was on Wes’s mind, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh aye.” Alasdair’s forefinger touched an empty, three-sided slot. “Here’s a place for a stone.”

Jean went on, “This Box looks smaller than the actual Witch Box. Maybe he intended it to be a jewelry box, a peace offering for Jessica. Maybe he was just playing, and she was on his mind, too.”

Alasdair crouched again, drawing Jean down beside him. “See the footprints? Big shoes, the tread worn down. Wesley’s, I’m guessing. They’ve shifted back and forth as he moved about the stump, as he sat down on it and stood up again.”

“And what about those?” Jean waved her hand over another set of prints, small shoes, smooth soles edged with a rim of stitching. They skewed first to one side and then the other, and beside them . . . “Oh my. You do have evidence against Sharon. You do have a sample for comparison.”

“The prints of those shoes?”

“She was wearing mules, clogs—shoes without heels, Miranda would know the right name for them. Sharon had them on Friday night at the reception. And last night—one of them fell off her foot when she, ah, went up into the tree. Those rounded, cup-shaped marks beside the prints of the shoes are where her heels came out of them. Mud is slippery, and so is leather when it’s wet. She was having trouble keeping her balance.”

Alasdair nodded, not so much following every word as developing the scenario simultaneously.

“I bet it was a spur-of-the-moment killing. She was horribly frustrated—no charm stone, someone she needed as an ally making gifts for the enemy, her annoying sister-in-law pushing events too fast. Maybe she went into a tirade and Wes argued with her. Was it Jessica who said when it came to his work Wesley could show some temper?”

“Something of the sort, aye.”

“As for how Sharon got him to the edge of the pond, she could have confessed to breaking into his apartment and pointed out where they threw his valuables. He left the chisel lying on the stump when he went to look and she picked it up. Maybe she even told him one of his agates or something was lying just at the water’s edge, to get him to squat down. And she stepped out of her shoes, planted her feet, braced both hands on the chisel and . . .”

Jean seemed to hear the sound of the blows echoing across the surface of the pond, and a gasp or two, and the squelch of mud and bubble of water, until all was still except a woman’s heavy breath. With a sigh she concluded, “He wouldn’t have seen her as a physical threat even if she’d been larger.”

“As Stephanie was saying, jabbing a chisel into someone’s neck eliminates the size issue, particularly since Hagedorn was not such a big bruiser to begin.” Standing up, Alasdair offered Jean his hand. It was chill, hard. He pulled her to her feet, released her, and looked over at the crime scene. “I’m thinking some of the same prints are showing up there.”

“Her feet got muddy. So did her socks. There’d be mud inside her shoes as well as outside, even if she tried to clean them off.”

“Likely her socks are in her room. The M.E.’s got her shoes.” Alasdair held out his hand.

Like a surgeon’s assistant, Jean dug out her cell phone and placed it in his palm. She strolled a few steps away, toward the ruined wall, listening to Alasdair make his report—the carvings, the sawdust, the shoes. The scenario.

But why, murmured that logic-circuit in Jean’s mind, why would Sharon kill Wes, when the Dingwalls needed him . . .

They didn’t need him, not any more. Kelly and Quentin had provided another Witch Box. If the irritatingly not-with-the-program Wes was gone, he couldn’t tell any nosy authorities that he’d made only one replica and the one in the movie was the one stolen from Blair. In fact, with the craftsman who made the replica dying a mysterious death, Tim and Sharon would have yet another marketing ploy, proof that enemies were after them.

And yet—and yet, they still had no charm stone. What? Had Sharon returned to Tim, admitting what she’d done? That would explain why her cheeks had been red and her eyes glittering at the reception that night, and why Tim had been so insufferably smug. Bold action had been taken. A problem had been solved.

And then Kelly had pushed them even further into a corner already crowded by the charm stone and Francis Bacon.

“Very good then,” Alasdair said into the phone, switched it off, and handed it back.

“So now we’re pretty sure we have two murderers,” Jean told him. “Fine, but if Sharon killed Wesley, who killed her? Back to Tim and Kelly, not just eliminating an annoying gadfly but disposing of a loose cannon. Although having Sharon up on a murder charge would have gotten them lots of sensational publicity.”

“Or was someone who felt guilty about putting Wes into his predicament after getting herself a bit of revenge?”

“Jessica. Though you could make a case for Matt being the killer. Or go out on a limb and say it was . . . No, not Rachel, she was at the play, not Barbara, she was at the church concert, not Louise Dietz, she was in a meeting, not Sam Gould, he was in jail, not Rodney Lockhart he was, well, maybe he was disguised as that custodian who almost saw the murder. Maybe the custodian was the murderer.” Crawling back along that metaphorical limb, Jean reminded herself that motivation was as important as opportunity.

Alasdair turned his gaze from the stump to her, a slip of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah, I know, there’s steam coming out of my ears. In another minute I’ll be suggesting one of the twins found out about the insurance policy so did the deed to stave off unemployment. But no, Quentin was chatting up a girl in the ticket office. I’m sure Olson’s checked on that.”

“Just now we’re analyzing data, not reaching conclusions.”

“Not yet. But soon. I hope.” Jean looked down at the derelict panel of wood and its initials “J” and “E”, and said silently, once again, I’m sorry, Matt.