CHAPTER 29
A DETERMINED DUET
RIDICULOUS! IMPOSSIBLE! Absurd and out of the question.
Just because a person knew something that no one else knew, did not mean that he used his secret to kill people! A killer must have a reason to kill—or to steal a valuable gemstone. James did not have reason to do either of those things. And yes, he had access to the paper knife with the silver owl on its handle, but so did everybody else in the house! It was sitting right there on the desk!
“Aggie.”
My name, quite clearly spoken, made me clutch my chest in fright. I looked to the door, but no one was there.
“Aggie, here.” Accompanied by tapping. From the bookcase right in front of me. “Are you alone?”
I peered carefully, and yes! I could distinguish a bright green eye peering back at me from the spy-hole above the novel by Wilkie Collins!
“Hector! Let me in!”
Obeying my instructions, he found the handle on the other side and opened the door. I did not let him exclaim or enjoy the new find, but dragged him quickly through the secret passage to the morning room.
Back in the light, he laughed. “You have the smudge,” he said.
I rubbed at the spot.
“Now it is worse.” He led me to a gilt-framed mirror mounted on the wall.
I had a grimy smear under my eye, from all my spying. Hector offered his pocket handkerchief which I used with vigor. Despite its grubbiness, he folded it neatly and returned it to his pocket.
“And your hair,” he said. “It is…loose.”
Half of it, anyway, because I’d used the ribbon elsewhere.
“I have so much to tell you,” I said, the paper knife digging into my calf.
“Miss Truitt is gone,” said Hector, at the same moment. “She leaves before the police can speak with her. This makes the good detective inspector most disconsolate. I am puzzled where you might be. Mr. Mooney is looking in every room. From a window, I see the bereaved lady hurrying toward the woods. A most irregular enterprise, but I say nothing, as you are not here to share counsel. But where, I ask myself, is Aggie most likely to be hiding that no one finds her?”
“Good,” I said. “You found me!”
“The inspector and his constables go chasing down the drive and have not yet returned.”
The knife would have to wait a while longer.
“What was Miss Truitt wearing?” I said.
“There is a logical reason to ask such a question? She is wearing the same dark and cumbersome ensemble as when last we met.”
He went to the window and pulled aside the drape. Outside, the afternoon met dusk with snowy yellow light that dimpled the blanketed gardens. Plump flakes quite sedately continued to fall.
“Where the low wall divides the garden, you see?” Hector said. “That is where Miss Truitt is running. In such ugly weather! She will be cold.”
“I expect she has hidden her other clothes,” I said, “under a rock or behind a tree, though I suppose they’ll be heavily dusted with snow.”
Up went his eyebrow. I told him as much as I knew. Miss Truitt was Mr. Fibbley in disguise. Or, Mr. Fibbley was Miss Fibbley in disguise (not believing for a moment that Fibbley was her real name), who was briefly pretending to be Miss Truitt. In any version, she had no intention of speaking with Inspector Willard, nor could she provide any insight or information about the murder. She was merely a sly reporter, fulfilling what she believed to be her duty to report the news. She had failed the test of Mr. Mooney’s scrutiny and made her getaway as speedily as she was able.
“She borrowed clothing from the trunks already packed in the coach house,” I said. “That’s how Mr. Mooney knew she was a fraud. She’ll be a man again by now. And we have pledged to keep her secret, remember?”
“I am—how do you say in English? Étonné?”
“Astonished,” I said.
“Also, I am an idiot,” said Hector.
“Not at all,” I said. “I only realized because she looked me straight in the eye and dared me to realize.”
“But, as you say, this escapade does not tell us what happened to Mr. Corker, or why.”
“I think I know more about that than I did an hour ago.” I pulled the paper knife from its odd sheath and put it into his hands. “What do you think of this as a murder weapon?”
“Ooh la la,” he said.
“You see, there?” I pointed at what I’d swear to be blood.
“I wonder,” said Hector, “if we might find a room with a fire?”
It seemed a small request in a house so grand but each firelit room we peeped into seemed also to contain a person. When we passed the footman, Norman, I asked him to tell Marjorie I’d gone upstairs to wash my hands—to keep her from worrying that I’d not reappeared after escorting Miss Truitt to see the corpse. That gave us the idea of going to the nursery, where we found a fire burning and some shortbread biscuits in a tin.
I pulled my notebook out from under my pillow—at the same time sliding the paper knife beneath my quilt, halfway down the bed.
I wrote the heading: Things That Seem Odd . And below that I made a list:
disappearance of Mr. Sivam
“wrong boots”
missing pirate shirt
false Echo Emerald
genuine Echo Emerald?
disappearance of the magnifying glass
false murder weapon
probably true murder weapon
chloroform missing from Dr. Musselman’s bag
“Ready?” I said. “It’s a terribly long list. And we must speak with Stephen to discover anything more about boots.”
“I believe we may also dismiss for now the pirate shirt and the magnifying glass,” said Hector. “These items we must locate, but what is there to say?”
“Well, I’ve had a thought about the magnifier,” I said. “What if someone used it that night, not to look in the dictionary, but to examine the Echo Emerald? Or to examine two Echo Emeralds? Identifying the true one and leaving the copy behind? Would knowing a jewel was true or false be a reason to kill someone?”
Hector’s eyebrows did a small dance while he considered. “There may be a circumstance where this is so,” he said, after a while. “As we continue, such a reason may become clear.”
“The more I think about it,” I said, “the more certain I am that both stones were brought to Owl Park. Mrs. Sivam knew that. Her only surprise was that the one stolen from the box was the copy. If Mr. Sivam made the switch without telling her, he probably still has it with him.”
“Why does Mr. Sivam leave without writing a note for his wife,” said Hector, “or asking a servant to deliver a message? Or alerting his old friend, Lord Greyson? It is a puzzling lapse in manners for so genteel a man.”
“It does seem very strange,” I added, “that he left by some means other than his own motorcar. Especially as he so dislikes the cold. But how could a person be missing inside a house? On the other side, if he has not departed from Owl Park, he must either be dead—or he is the villain! He’s hiding in the wine cellar, wearing a bloody shirt. Or lurking on the servants’ stairs, ready to push innocent boys to their doom.”
“We know he is not wearing a bloody shirt,” said Hector. “He is perfectly clean and well-attired on Christmas morning.”
“Unless he’d already had a bath to wash off Mr. Corker’s blood,” I said. I looked at my notebook, and wrote: the matter of Mr. Sivam, to be pursued.
“Chloroform is on the list because it is missing from Dr. Musselman’s bag, one more item that is not where it should be, causing great misery for old Lady Greyson.”
“Possibly the doctor, he is forgetful, does not bring the bottle he imagines?”
“He gave her a dose when he first got here, so he did bring it. But his bag was in a terrible jumble,” I said. “It took three of us to find the smelling salts. Perhaps the chloroform has been there all along. I don’t see how toothache medicine is connected anyway, do you?”
“Chloroform is not only for the aching tooth,” said Hector. “It is used to remove pain by permitting the patient to go to sleep. But let us worry another time about that. We have still the mystery of killing a man with two blades.”
“Do you suppose Mr. Corker was the object of such loathing that two different killers crept in and stabbed him?”
“The second killer is awfully foolish not to notice that he is plunging his dagger into a dead man,” said Hector.
“I’m afraid none of our suspects can be described as foolish,” I said, “though Frederick, I suppose, is a teeny bit thick. Wouldn’t it make a deliciously morbid story, though? If there were a despicable millionaire with lots of enemies, and they all took turns killing him in different ways, not realizing?”
“This plot is not believable,” said Hector. “And meanwhile, we have no solution to the puzzle before us.”
“The one puzzle we do have a solution for,” I said, “we can never tell the police or anyone else. The identity of Miss Beatrice Truitt.”
Hector grinned. “I predict,” he said, “that when the actors next create a tableau that includes a mourning widow, the meticulous Miss Day will find that her gown and veil are not folded to her liking.”
“Or she won’t find the costume at all, if Fibbley leaves it in the wood,” I said. “Buried under snow until spring! And perhaps Miss Day will be in prison for theft and murder, and a rumpled weeping veil won’t matter at all.”
“Another gong!” said Hector. “What now?”
“It’s the dressing bell, for dinner. Aren’t we lucky not to be dining down tonight?”
Lucy arrived one minute later. James had allowed, in gratitude for her hours of attending to her grandmother, that Lucy could have dinner with the grown-ups. Hector went to his room while Lucy changed into a peacock blue velvet frock—and filled my ears with gossip.
The blizzard had prevented Detective Inspector Willard, his team of sergeants, and Constables Gillie and Worth from driving or riding back to the village. There were not enough snowshoes to go around.
“Poor Aunt Marjorie has to sort out where they’ll all sleep. Uncle James came to warn Grandmamma so she’d have time to adjust her mood, he said, because the detective inspector will be at table with us. Grandmamma is even more vexed than usual. What a surprise. Uncle James said the police are performing a noble service and the least we can do is to feed them and find them beds. Grandmamma said they were only here because Aunt Marjorie thinks that theater was a suitable entertainment, and that actors always mean trouble, especially ones who ended up being murdered. Uncle James was furious that his mother was being narky about his wife, and that’s when Grandmamma sent me to find her barley water so I wouldn’t hear more. Will you do my ribbons?”
I did her ribbons, which were lovely and wide and matched the dress, but very fiddly to keep tied properly. Especially as my mind was fiddling with a different puzzle. If the police were remaining in Owl Park all night, might I have an opportunity to speak with Detective Inspector Willard about the paper knife?
Lucy went off downstairs and Hector came back just as Dot delivered our suppers. Hector was transported with happiness at the taste of macaroni with cheese sauce. I composed a couplet while we ate:
You never feel groany
When you eat macaroni.
Then we had chocolate cake for pudding and were utterly sated.
When Dot came back to clear our supper things, she brought the news we’d been longing to hear. Stephen was awake! He looked like a mushroom, Dot said, with his head still swaddled in layers of brown paper. Cheeky as ever.
Hector and I must visit right away. We had two important questions to ask.