• eighteen •

“I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like.”

—Mrs. Reed to Jane, Jane Eyre

Luke took the box of gloves and drove to Tillamook. After a stop at Gifts from the Sea to collect the caterers’ gloves—only to learn they’d already been sent to the laundry—he went by headquarters to drop off the ones he had for analysis. No results on any of the other clothes yet—analysts didn’t have to work weekends like investigators did.

He was on his way out when Sheriff Tucker called him into his office. “Have a seat, Luke.” Tucker eased his bulk into his leather desk chair and linked his hands over his ample stomach.

“What’s up, boss?” Tucker could take his time coming to the point, and Luke wanted to get moving.

“Carter Newhouse came around to my house last night. Wanted to know what progress we’re making on his boy’s murder.”

“Good grief, it’s only thirty-six hours since it happened. I won’t have labs back for days yet.”

“I know it. But he’s a grieving father and he’s used to getting results. He asked—no, demanded—I put more men on it. My best men, he said. Or he was going to call in the state police.”

“He doesn’t have the authority to do that, does he? He’s just a lawyer in private practice.”

“That he is, but he has friends in high places. The commissioner’s his cousin or some such.”

Luke groaned. “Look, sir, I can handle this, I know I can. I just need a little time.”

Sheriff Tucker leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. “I have every confidence in you, Luke. In fact, I told Newhouse I already had my best man on the case—you.” Luke breathed again, but the sheriff continued, “But I had to promise him, if we haven’t made an arrest by Friday, we’ll call in the state police.”

Friday. He’d be lucky to get anything back from the lab by then. He’d have to rely on his wits—and Emily’s intuition. Nothing like a nice little ticking clock to make life exciting.

He drove back to his office, where he went through the pile of statements again and plotted out the exact times and positions of everyone involved, hoping to find someone else with means and opportunity. If he found those, he could pretty much take motive for granted with this victim. He was left back where he started: The only people who could have been in the stairwell during the crucial few minutes were Matthew, Roman, Cordelia, Abby, Devon, and Katie. Everybody else was vouched for as being elsewhere—unless somebody else was lying.

He would’ve so loved to eliminate Matthew, Abby, Devon, and of course Katie on character alone. But if he was going to do that, he might as well pick up the phone right now and call in the state police himself. And turn in his badge to boot. He’d just have to pray the lab came through with negatives on all of them before Friday.

At the bottom of the statement file he found the photos of fingerprints taken from the walls and rail of the stairwell, the bedroom, and the upstairs bathroom. How had he missed these yesterday? Distracted by the gloves issue and then Jamie’s fake confession, he guessed. He went through them now, painstakingly matching them all up to the prints taken from the people present Saturday night. That fingerprint training course he’d taken last year was sure paying off—if he couldn’t do this himself, he’d have had to wait days or weeks for a forensics report.

The bathroom yielded prints from Devon, backing up his story, but none from Abby. No surprise there—they couldn’t have both been using it at the same time, and he’d known Abby was lying, anyway. The bedroom was a mass of smudged and overlaid prints from all the guests who had crowded in there after Katie screamed and before he himself could secure the scene.

The stairwell was a little cleaner. His own prints came up at the bottom of the stairs, some from his investigation—he hadn’t had any gloves on him at the time—and some probably dating back to when Emily had first shown him the secret passage. He smiled at that memory, but it had a kick to it—Emily hadn’t kissed him that way in a while.

On the paneling at the top of the stairs was a good clean set of Matthew’s prints, where he’d huddled against the wall while Luke was examining the body. More Matthew on the top railing; not much in that. Jake’s on the railing, too, overlaid by Matthew’s. Luke stopped and thought that out. Suppose they’d struggled and Jake leaned on the banister for support. Matthew stabbed him and pushed him down the stairs, then leaned on the banister to watch him fall. But if it’d played out that way, Jake would have had his hands behind him. Luke stood up and experimented on the edge of his desk. The way the prints were arranged meant Matthew and Jake both must have been leaning forward. That didn’t fit with any scenario he could think of for Jake being stabbed in the chest. So he had nothing more on Matthew than he’d had before. Which was actually a relief.

He turned back to the pile. Cordelia Fitzgerald’s prints here and there, but she would’ve been in there legitimately, planning out the play. Devon Penhallow’s on the library entrance. Luke perked up at that until he saw Veronica Lacey’s right next to them. Devon had told him Emily showed the two of them over the whole house—apparently that included the secret passage. The library entrance made no sense for Devon as the murderer, anyway; if he’d gone in, it would’ve been from above.

Then he found it: a clear set of Roman on the wall of the upstairs landing. Left hand only. Say he steadied himself on the wall with his left hand before stabbing Jake with his right. Luke checked the photographs for blood on the floor near that spot. No, the bloodstains began right at the top of the stairs, a couple feet away. So the prints were only suggestive, not conclusive. Dang. Could Roman have been there at some other time, for some other reason? Or did he go in and see Jake, either alive or dead, but not kill him? Or did he lean on the wall while talking to Jake, then stab him at the top of the stairs? Absolutely no way to know, short of Roman suddenly getting talky.

Another set of prints mingled with Roman’s. Both hands this time, in several different spots on that section of wall. They didn’t match any in Luke’s pile. He stared at them, went back through the stack and compared them again. No joy. Agnes or Beatrice? But Katie had cleaned the place pretty thoroughly since their time. He’d have to ask Emily if any of the workers had been there on some lawful errand. Or if she’d had some visitor in there other than the people at the party. The prints were big, spread like a big hand, now that he thought about it—almost certainly male. He gritted his teeth at the thought of Emily being in the secret passage with some other man. But he shook off that thought. No matter how mad at him she was, she wouldn’t go behind his back with somebody else. And anyhow, she hadn’t been mad at him before Saturday night.

He was still puzzling over the prints when the phone rang. “Luke? It’s me. You’d better come over here. I persuaded Abby to talk.”

*   *   *

Abby had left for her shift at Gifts from the Sea by the time Luke arrived, and Katie was busy about her regular duties. Emily’d had quite enough wallpaper stripping for one day; she’d changed into decent clothes and was relaxing in the library with Jane Eyre. Levin snoozed on her lap while Kitty and Bustopher curled on the hearth.

She nodded Luke to the opposite chair. “Abby had to go to work. She asked me to tell you what she told me.” That wasn’t strictly true. In fact, Abby had agreed under pressure to allow Emily to pass on a carefully edited version that would implicate neither Abby nor Katie.

Luke took out his notebook. “Won’t be admissible evidence, y’know. Gotta hear it straight from the witness’s mouth to use it in court.”

“If it turns out to be important, you can always talk to her directly.” She crossed her fingers under her skirt, praying it wouldn’t be important—at least not for the Parker sisters. If it implicated Cordelia Fitzgerald, Emily’s compunction would fit easily within the tightly laced bodice Cordelia had worn for the party.

“So. Why’d she really go upstairs?”

Emily had worked this all out as she waited for Luke. “Oh, she did go up to use the restroom. But then she heard a noise from the bedroom and went to investigate.” Levin lifted his head and blinked at her. She hadn’t thought cats could frown, but he seemed to be frowning.

“Why’d she do that? Didn’t she know there were supposed to be people up there at that point?”

“She said it sounded suspicious for some reason.”

Luke cocked one skeptical eyebrow. Levin’s expression echoed his uncannily. “Then what?”

“She saw the door to the stairwell was open, so she peeked inside. And she saw Cordelia Fitzgerald with Jake.”

“Cordelia told me this morning she’d been in to check Jake was in position.”

“Well, according to Abby, it was a bit more than that. Apparently they were embracing.”

He whistled. “No wonder she didn’t want to admit where she’d been at first. Doesn’t sound like a motive for murder, though. Doggone it.”

“But we don’t know the whole story. Abby said Cordelia had her arms around Jake, not the other way ’round, and she only saw them for an instant. Maybe he rejected her advances and then she stabbed him.”

“Could be. That all Abby had to say?”

“That’s the gist of it. She saw them and ran downstairs.”

“What was she crying about in the kitchen, then?”

Emily had hoped Luke wouldn’t ask that. “The episode just shocked her. Their age difference and all.” That didn’t sound very convincing even to Emily. She improvised. “Abby had admired Cordelia, and it was devastating to see her with one of her former students.”

At this Levin jumped off her lap and marched to the hearth to join the other two. All three cats now glared at her as if she were no longer worthy to be called their mistress. Great. Her own conscience was sore enough without this feline Greek chorus to chastise her for covering up the truth. She ignored them and turned to Luke. “Abby’s a very sensitive girl.”

“I’ll say.” He flipped his notebook shut, put it in his pocket, and stood. “Guess I better go talk to Cordelia. Again. That woman gives me a pain in the you-know-where.”

Flush with her success in getting the truth from Abby, Emily said, “Would you like me to talk to her? She might be more open woman-to-woman.”

“Would you?” Relief flooded Luke’s face. “That’d be fantastic. I’ll have to talk to her myself eventually, but if you could soften her up, that’d help a lot.”

He shot her a glance as if sizing up her attitude, and she realized her offer might have sounded as if she were relenting toward him. She steeled her expression against any such presumption and watched his face fall. Her rebel heart threatened to melt at that, but she willed it frozen again. Not until Katie was well and truly crossed off his suspect list would she let Luke back into her good graces.

He headed toward the door, then turned back. “Say, I almost forgot. I found some prints of Roman in the stairwell. On the wall of the top landing.”

Emily leapt to her feet. “Do they prove he did it?”

“No such luck. Don’t prove a dang thing except he was there at some point. He ever go in there before Saturday that you know of?”

She frowned, remembering. “I did take him and Jeremiah in there a while back. I had some idea of maybe replacing the stairs with an elevator all the way to the third floor.”

“That could solve another mystery—bunch of prints I couldn’t identify. Could be Jeremiah’s. One set was pretty high up, like a tall man made it.”

“Yeah, he’s too tall for his own good. Come to think of it, he banged his head on a doorframe on Saturday and refused to let me call a doctor—maybe that’s why he didn’t come in today.”

“Could be why he disappeared Saturday night, too. I better go check on him, get his prints while I’m at it so we can rule that set out.”

She followed him to the door but kept her distance as he put on his coat. “Call me after you talk to Cordelia?” he said.

“Of course.” She almost invited him to come to tea and reconnoiter in person but stopped herself just in time. She couldn’t allow him to enjoy Katie’s cooking until her name was cleared.

After closing the door behind Luke, Emily went in search of Katie and found her cleaning the upstairs bathroom. “Katie, I need an excuse to talk to Cordelia Fitzgerald. Did she leave anything behind that I could return to her? Or mess up anything I could complain about?”

“Actually, yeah. I found one of the feathers from her headdress in the hall. I left it on the hall table.”

“Perfect.” Emily phoned Cordelia at the high school and asked her to come by after work. Emily would need the slight advantage she might get from being on her own turf—and the site of the murder.

As she waited, Emily attempted to conjure an appropriately disarming sleuthlike façade. Kindly, gossipy old lady like Miss Marple or Miss Silver? Dithering upper-class twit like Lord Peter Wimsey or Albert Campion? Absentminded, clueless detective like Columbo? Unfortunately, Cordelia had already met her being simply herself, and Emily knew from long experience that people rarely mistook her for being less intelligent than she actually was. Must be something about the eyes, or perhaps her habitual reticence was presumed to conceal wisdom. She’d have to try for sympathetic fellow middle-aged woman and see how far that took her.

Cordelia arrived at four o’clock. Perfect. Emily handed her the feather and said, “Won’t you stay for tea? Katie’s teas are to die for, and you look like you could use a break.” Cordelia did look rather haggard—dark shadows showed through the careful makeup under her eyes, and her whole face sagged as if it had just taken off its corset.

She hesitated, then said, “That sounds heavenly, thank you. I’ve been on my feet all day, getting all those costumes sorted and cleaned and ready to return. And all the while, knowing poor Jake is lying cold on a slab in the county morgue, his murder unavenged. It wrings my heart.” She clasped her hands over her bosom, but the black ostrich plume waving over her shoulder rather spoiled the effect.

Emily led the way into the library, where the tea was already laid out. She’d asked Katie to keep a low profile this afternoon. “I imagine you must get quite attached to some of your students. I know I did when I was teaching.”

“Oh, indeed I do. They’re all wonderful young people, of course, but once in a while one comes along who has that extra special something, you know? Good looks, charm, talent—real star potential.”

Emily tried to look worldly wise as she poured the tea and handed her guest a cup. “I had a student like that a couple of years ago.” True—she’d had one young man who reminded her of Luke, except that he was headed for a brilliant career as a writer. She’d had a bit of a struggle to keep her feelings strictly professional in his case. “They can make you feel like a teenager yourself again, can’t they?”

Cordelia drew herself up. “My art keeps me ever young. To act, one must always keep one’s passion near the surface and draw on it freely.”

“And sometimes, no doubt, life imitates art? Passion overflows into real relationships. Even if the man is younger in actual years.”

Cordelia flushed but kept her eyes full on Emily’s. “When hearts are aflame, age is irrelevant. Soul calls to soul across any merely conventional gap.”

What a nice fantasy. Emily wondered if Cordelia could actually believe it. “That’s true of us femmes d’un certain age, as the French say. But young men don’t always hear that call of the soul so clearly. The call of a firm young body can sometimes shout it down.”

Suddenly, shockingly, Cordelia’s carefully constructed face seemed to crack apart, and a raucous sob burst from the ruins. Her cup rattled in its saucer so violently that Emily took it from her hand before it could break. She handed Cordelia a handkerchief and patted her back, waiting as she cried herself out.

“He said he loved me,” Cordelia managed between sobs. “He said he adored older women, we were so experienced and mysterious, so much more interesting than young girls. He asked for that role, you know—I was going to use only my current students, but he wheedled and cajoled until I gave it to him. And then Saturday night—” She stopped to blow her nose and seemed unable to go on.

“You went to meet him in the secret stairwell, didn’t you?”

“We hadn’t had a minute alone all evening. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. I’m ashamed to say I practically threw myself into his arms. But he—oh, I can’t talk about it, I can’t!” She wrung the handkerchief in her hands, her head tossing against the high back of the wing chair. Even in the midst of her obviously genuine distress, Emily wondered if she was capable of any gesture that wasn’t pulled from melodrama.

“He rejected you?” she said as gently as she could.

Cordelia sat forward, eyes suddenly flaming. “He spurned me! He called me—” Her voice lowered to a whisper as her eyes dropped. “An old hag. He admitted flat out he’d only been using me to get the part.”

Why would Jake have wanted that role so badly? Certainly not in service of any inflated dreams of a theatrical career. More likely as an excuse to get back into Windy Corner—and back to Katie. A confrontation—a live one—between those two during the party was looking more and more likely.

“You must have been terribly angry.”

“Not then. Anger came later. At that moment I was simply devastated. I had to summon every ounce of my training to appear normal so I could go back downstairs and dismiss the guests.”

Emily chose her words carefully. “You didn’t—hurt him? You must have wanted to.”

Cordelia blew her nose again. “Oh, I was tempted. He had a knife, you know—he was playing with it when I went in. At first I thought it was the stage knife, but Matthew had that. Jake’s knife was real.” She sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. “For one moment I considered trying to get the knife away from him, but I knew I’d never have the strength. I’d been humiliated enough already, I didn’t need more. He was quite well when I left him, I assure you. Well—and whistling.”

With a sinking heart Emily accepted her story. Drama queen though she was, Cordelia had dropped her guard to reveal what was possibly the most painful humiliation of her life. Emily didn’t think at this moment she was capable of a lie.

Which meant Katie was deeper in the soup than ever. If Emily didn’t find a lifeline soon, Katie would be sunk.