CHAPTER 37
AN UNEXPECTED TURN OF EVENTS
THUNDER RANG IN my head. “Does this mean…that Mr. Mooney and Kitty Sivam were…accomplices?”
Mr. Mooney’s last words to me suddenly took on a different color. I did not kill Roger Corker. What if that were true?
“Do you suppose…,” I said, “that Kitty Sivam is also a murderess?”
“Kitty Sivam?” said Lucy.
“The men, they are having an argument,” said Hector, “but not expecting it to become deadly, as they are longtime friends…”
“Except that Kitty doesn’t know or care about Mr. Corker,” I said. “To her, he is merely an obstacle. She stabs him with the paper knife and a heart of ice.”
“Mr. Mooney puts Mr. Corker’s dagger into the back,” said Hector, “because he wishes to disguise the real weapon and to confuse the police.”
“The wrong boots were upstairs,” I said, “because Kitty put them there! Was she trying to make her husband look guilty? And then, moments before he is to speak with the detective about seeing boots in the wrong place, Stephen is pushed down the stairs by a woman…”
“Kitty and Mr. Mooney are adorned with blood,” said Hector. “So Mr. Mooney kindly burns such evidence in his little grate.”
“He leaves his own boots with Mr. Corker,” I said, “not thinking about bunions, because wouldn’t it look odd to have a sock-footed corpse with no boots nearby?”
“Very odd,” said Lucy.
“He uses the magnifier,” said Hector, “and discovers that the jewel is false. He wishes so much to know where is the true emerald that he abducts Mr. Sivam, but does not tell the wife.”
Grannie Jane stopped knitting altogether and put her needles and wool back into their bag. “I wonder…” She squinted down at the watch pinned to her bodice. “Is Mrs. Sivam assisting her husband to heal while we sit here discussing her motive? Or is she extracting from him the location of the real Echo Emerald?”
Hector and I, with Lucy following (for a change), raced to find James and Marjorie, who were drinking tea with Inspector Willard in the drawing room.
“Please excuse that we are intruders,” said Hector. “But it is an urgent matter.”
“Listen! Listen!” Lucy hopped from foot to foot.
“We have a dire idea,” I said.
“Whatever can it be?” Marjorie plunked down her teacup.
“You must come with us,” I said.
“Now, Uncle James,” said Lucy, pulling on his arm.
“Is this a game of some sort?”
“Non, non!” said Hector.
“You mustn’t let Kitty leave,” I said. “She is part of the plot.”
“She what?” Inspector Willard rose from his chair as if its seat were suddenly alight.
We told them the quickest version we could manage.
Marjorie’s eyes got wider and wider. James’s eyes narrowed almost to slits.
They both began to mutter, “Of course! You’re perfectly right! It all makes horrible sense!”
The inspector was already at the door. I galloped after him, heart a-pounding, as Marjorie said she would go to sit with Grannie Jane. Hector and Lucy and James pursued us toward the Juliet suite.
Inspector Willard and Constable Worth were the only policemen who remained at Owl Park after the departure of Mr. Corker this morning. The constable stood at the top of the stairs and came to sharp attention at the sight of his hurrying superior.
“He seems to be awake again, sir,” murmured Constable Worth.
Indeed, as we approached in stealthy silence, I heard Mr. Sivam speaking—or rather, growling, for his voice was not yet his own, still having a rasp to it. We now were a clump of five, hovering just beyond where the Sivams could see from inside the room.
“Only you and I knew where the two stones were hidden,” Mr. Sivam was saying. “This confuses me, Kitty. If I had not been inspired to exchange one for the other—”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lakshay,” came Kitty’s voice, higher than usual, brittle almost.
James shooed us down the passage, where we stood beside the door to the second bedroom of the Juliet suite, Kitty’s door. This turned out to be a fortunate banishment.
“May I have a word, Mrs. Sivam?” The inspector tapped abruptly on the door frame. “Out here, if you will, to let your husband rest?”
We heard her say, “Certainly, Detective Inspector, I’ll be right with you.” We heard her footsteps click across the floor. We heard the connecting door between the two rooms whine slightly as she went through it.
Inspector Willard politely greeted Mr. Sivam, with James close behind.
“Lakshay, my friend!” cried James. “It does my heart good to hear your voice.”
The door beside us, right beside us, flew open. We startled; she flinched. Our presence was a nasty shock for Kitty Sivam. She pushed Hector aside in a desperate sweep, and stomped on Lucy’s foot so hard that Lucy fell over.
For half a moment, I could not move. But then—using a reliable villain-snaring technique—I put out my foot and tripped her. Hector pounced on her legs and held on while she kicked. I sat on her bottom until Constable Worth and then Inspector Willard stepped in to complete the arrest. James staggered away carrying a howling Lucy, to inform Marjorie that all was well.
All was not well, of course. Frederick and John were rallied to help the police contain a hissing, scratching Kitty Sivam. She was eventually put in the Avon Room and guarded by three men, tied to a chair with her own silk scarf, because her wrists were too delicate for the heavy handcuffs.
We were not permitted to witness the interview, but Inspector Willard was quite generous afterward with the grisly tale that Kitty Sivam had been provoked into telling.
Kitty Cartland first knew Sebastian Mooney five years ago, before she’d met Lakshay Sivam. They acted together in The Taming of the Shrew and then a musical piece where they sang romantic duets. They had a romance, but, as work in the theater meant separation at the end of every production, they eventually said goodbye. Their next encounter was a surprise, last spring, at a weekend party in a manor house near Lyme Regis.
“One of the houses,” Inspector Willard told us, “where a diamond bracelet was reported missing. Not the first in a series of jewelry thefts that coincided with the engagement of a theatrical troupe.”
Kitty was now married but already unhappy, a misfit in the cultured and elegant life that her husband was used to. She and Sebastian were delighted to find each other again, and began to meet whenever they could manage. When the Sivams traveled to Ceylon to visit Lakshay’s dying father, Kitty wrote to tell Sebastian of the priceless family emerald, and her intention of possessing it—with his help.
She staged a robbery attempt before the actors arrived, to avoid their being suspects. The next night, while Lakshay was sleeping, she took the emerald from its box and passed it to Sebastian, waiting at her door. He was set to depart with his theatrical companions the next morning and could easily remove the stolen gem from Owl Park before Lakshay knew it was missing. Her plan had gone exactly as Kitty had imagined, until she went downstairs to say goodbye to Sebastian in the library.
Roger Corker, snoozing in a chair with his boots off, had awoken to find Sebastian holding the emerald, and had challenged him. Kitty came in to find the men wrestling, and saw her careful plan fall apart at the hand of this drunken old actor. In a fury, she scooped up the paper knife from the desk and plunged it in, unknowingly accurate in severing the artery in his neck.
Her nightdress was heavily splashed with blood, her dainty bedsocks ruined. Sebastian handed her the dead man’s boots to wear upstairs, so as not to leave smears of blood on the floor. They made a hurried arrangement, and he came a few minutes later to receive a bundle of her bloodstained clothing, thrust into his hands before the door snapped shut. Her things were burned, she assumed, along with his shirt.
It had all gone so terribly, terribly wrong. She avoided a morning encounter with her husband by sitting in the conservatory, wondering whether these were the last flowers she would ever see. When the screams began, she prepared to act her part, of a concerned and loving wife.
Sebastian had pushed the emerald into Kitty’s hand right there in the library, with everyone arriving at the scene of the crime. It’s a fake, he’d whispered. Put it back.
A fake! The fake. Kitty was livid. Her husband, vexed with her for exhibiting the stone at the party, must have taken the precaution of secretly switching the stones—and accidentally outwitted her! It was too late to obey Sebastian’s instruction to return the copy to its box. Lakshay had already announced that it was missing! Putting it back would call attention to herself.
And then Lord Greyson asked her to assist the swooning actress. The moment Kitty entered the dingy little bedroom, she thought to hide the emerald there. She slid the jewel into the toe of Miss Day’s boot, not concerned with what happened next. Worthless to her, the fake gem might cause distracting trouble for Miss Annabelle Day—and so it did!
Kitty did not confess to Sebastian that she had hidden the gem. He was too fond of Miss Day and would object to using her this way. Let him be surprised. Far worse, in Kitty’s opinion, was that Sebastian had abducted Lakshay without telling her. After a day or two, when her husband had not been found, she began to suspect that Sebastian might be responsible. But had he gone so far as murder? There’d been no opportunity to meet privately. She could think of no reason for Lakshay to disappear—except to protect his precious emerald. But from whom? It occurred to her to fear his return, in case he now suspected her of trying to steal the gem. She had to keep up a show of worry for Lakshay, but she had been a professional actress. She was an excellent liar.
She was far worse than only a liar.
Late in the afternoon, a fresh team of constables arrived from the village to take Kitty Sivam away in the police wagon. The prisoner requested a chance to say goodbye to her hostess, and my soft-hearted sister agreed—on condition that I be with her. Oh, happy me, to see the ending!
After only a few hours in custody, Mrs. Sivam seemed to have paled and thinned the way a rose bloom fades when deprived of water.
“I suppose this will be the end of our friendship,” she said to Marjorie. “As it is the end of so much else.”
“I do not believe we ever had a friendship, Kitty.” My sister’s voice held such bitterness that it scarcely sounded like her. “You killed a man. You tore Lakshay’s life apart and exposed us all to dreadful wickedness. You hurt a child! This is all unforgiveable.”
“Hurting anyone was never part of the plan! We were to take the emerald and travel to some distant place and—”
“That there was a plan of any kind is enough to sicken me,” said Marjorie. “Even at school you were not to be trusted. If only I’d remembered that, Mr. Corker would not be dead.”
Kitty winced.
“Marjorie!” I cried. “The blame is not yours for a moment!”
Marjorie turned abruptly away. “Please take her, Inspector Willard. I do not wish to see her again.”
I kept watching, though. Hurt and fury passed over Kitty’s face like storm clouds across a meadow. I would cherish this memory of her, brought low and rejected.
I followed into the Great Hall where Grannie Jane, Hector, and Lucy, of course, gathered to watch Kitty Sivam walk to the police wagon, as if to the scaffold itself. Inspector Willard paused to shake our hands, Hector’s and mine, and to thank us for bravery and cleverness.
“I say cleverness,” he said, “but the word conniving also springs to mind. I hope—for your sakes—that your wits are never again tested on such a puzzle as this…and yet I wish for you a path that keeps those wits sharp.” He leaned a little closer. “Do send word when you uncover the Echo Emerald, as I have no doubt that you shall. I’d like to have a look at something so famous, before it leaves the country. I’ll be back to check on Mr. Sivam in a day or two.”
“Goodbye, Inspector! Goodbye!”
The villainess and the policemen had scarcely reached the end of the drive when Frederick appeared.
“Miss Morton? Master Perot?” he said. “Mr. Sivam would be obliged if you could come to his suite? He wishes to confer.”
“To confer, Frederick?”
“That is what he said, miss.” Frederick’s eyes flicked in the direction of Grannie Jane, who was making her way toward the drawing room. “I hope that is not an improper suggestion?”
“Only a surprising one,” I said. “Come on, Hector!”
“He must be pretty shaken by having his wife dragged away,” I said to Hector, as we climbed the stairs. “What do you suppose he wants from us?”
“Before the dragging,” said Hector, “he is telling her, ‘only you and I know there are two stones’—”
“It did sound like the start of an accusation,” I said. “So, you think he’d realized that she’d—”
“His brain cell friction is reduced to sluggish bumps, but still he is seeing the truth, and—”
“And despite the heartache it must cause, he knows that his wife is a thief and a murderess,” I said. “Ouch.”
“The question now,” said Hector, “is whether he knows also the location of the Echo Emerald.”
“I was wondering,” I said, “whether anyone had looked in his pockets?”
“His pockets?”
“Isn’t that where you put the vial of chloroform when you found it? Isn’t that what I made to carry the paper knife to Inspector Willard? A pocket is for—”
We had arrived at the door of the Juliet suite.
Mr. Sivam was sitting in a high-backed chair beside a tall diamond-paned window, a steaming porcelain cup on a table by his elbow. His fingers drummed the doilies that decorated the armrests and his feet bounced in agitation on the footstool.
“Ah!” he whispered, when we tapped. “The young detectives. Please come in.”
He looked…like a man bearing a heavy weight. As a tiger might, with an injured forepaw. Like someone whose world had suddenly splintered.
“We’re so sorry for your…for your…” Loss did not seem the right word, though he had lost his duplicitous wife. “For your circumstances,” I finished lamely.
Mr. Sivam appeared to drag his small smile out from somewhere deep within, and for that it was all the kinder. “My circumstances are much improved, thanks to you both,” he said. “But we mustn’t linger on past misery. Mr. Corker’s death is a terrible shadow. Not, as you well know, the result of a curse, but of greed. Greed itself is the curse! Will you assist me in recovering the gemstone that prompted such a brouhaha?”
“Yes, yes,” we agreed, and, “Where is the Echo Emerald?”
Mr. Sivam took a swallow from the cup. I caught a faint whiff of warm honey.
“After Kitty’s lamentable act on Christmas Eve,” he said, “of exhibiting what she did not realize was the copy, I took the real one from its hiding place—in a pouch with my razor—and slipped it into my trouser pocket. To keep it close.”
“Your pocket!” I cried.
Hector grinned at me.
“After the grievous discovery of the actor’s body next morning,” said Mr. Sivam, “I went to my room to compose myself. I knew the emerald must in some way be the cause. I remember holding it, inside my pocket, wondering whether I should throw it out the window into the snow. Within minutes came a knock at the door. Mr. Mooney stepped inside the room and before I could puzzle what he might be doing there, he had struck me and held a cloth against my face with surprising force.” He paused to wipe a hand over his eyes. “When next I awoke, my hands were tied, my mouth gagged, and my thoughts as scrambled as if I’d drunk two bottles of whiskey by myself. Most often he was there to bully me, but occasionally I was alone. My head was heavy, my thoughts so slow…My legs would not carry me far. I made it to the door one time, out to the yard, but then he appeared to push me back inside…”
Dot’s courtyard monster! He’d nearly escaped.
“Mrs. Sivam, she searches your room,” said Hector.
“But Mr. Mooney never checked your pockets?” I asked. “Is it still there?”
Mr. Sivam shook his head, no, and allowed a twinkle of mischief to light his eyes.
“This is where I need your help,” he said. “Imagine that your plight is reckless. You have a valuable jewel in your pocket…And on Christmas Eve you watched a tableau depicting the hiding of a valuable jewel in a most unusual place…”
Without another word, Hector and I were hurrying—yet again—to the coach house at the far end of the service courtyard. Inside, among the actors’ bins and crates, we easily retrieved what we’d come for, and soon were back in the Juliet suite, presenting Mr. Lakshay Sivam with the plump and painted plaster goose.
He opened the compartment in the bird’s gullet and withdrew the Echo Emerald. For a moment, he shut his eyes and exhaled, a deep breath of gratitude. Then he laid his palm flat to let us gaze at the deep green loveliness of the mesmerizing stone.