Rules of Murder (9 page)

“Why, Inspector, I never—”

“You two and Applegate might be old mates, but that holds no water with me. I’ll not have you spoiling any evidence.”

“Upon my honor, Inspector, I will not spoil any evidence.”

H
is questions finally exhausted for the time being, Chief Inspector Birdsong left Drew and Mason to themselves. After a few awkward moments, Drew cleared his throat.

“I have to ask you something, sir, and I hope you won’t take it wrongly.”

“You want to know if I killed Connie.”

Drew looked down. “I hate this. All of it. I couldn’t imagine you doing it, sir.” He looked up again, straight into Mason’s eyes. “But I couldn’t imagine her killing Lincoln or herself, either.”

“I don’t mind you asking,” Mason said. “I’m quite sure the police have me at the top of their list at the moment. But to answer the question, no, I didn’t kill her or Lincoln or anyone. I guess the most damning bit of evidence against me is that no one can imagine who else would have.”

“That is the question, isn’t it, sir?” Drew asked with a weak smile.

“I suppose we’ll just have to let the police sort this all out.”

“What are you going to do in the meantime?”

Mason sighed. “Keep on with my work, I expect. Still things
to clear up on McCutcheon’s desk now he’s gone. Lincoln never did much of anything of consequence, so no worries there.”

“What happens to his share in the company?”

“He inherited his father’s share according to the original partnership agreement, and that’s still in force. Everything goes to the three of us—you, me, and Rushford—since he left no heirs. None we know of anyway, though I expect there will have to be some sort of public notice to any possible claimants before that can be settled. That’s for the solicitors to hammer out.”

“Any way I can be of help, sir?”

Mason’s expression warmed, losing some of the distracted, harried look that had been in it since the night before. “That’s good of you, but I don’t know what you could do in such a matter.”

“I mean to see what I can find out. Obviously the chief inspector is hard at work on the case, but we can’t be the only matter he’s got to see to. Who knows? Maybe I’ll stumble on something he’s missed.”

Mason looked uneasy once again. “Do you think you ought? Murder’s no game.”

Drew grinned. “Don’t worry, sir. I’m not planning to get myself bumped off, as they say in the cinema.”

“I shouldn’t like something to happen to you, Drew. I’d say we’ve had enough of death here for some while, wouldn’t you?”

There was something pleading in his stepfather’s eyes, something grieving, something not wanting to grieve anymore.

Drew nodded, his own expression sobering. “More than enough. I’ll stay out of trouble.”

“There you are.” Nick sprang up from the chair he had dragged into the corridor so he could wait in relative comfort. “I thought you’d be all day about it.”

“You mean it’s still Sunday?” Drew asked as they went into the library, squinting and blinking as if he had just emerged from outer darkness. “What’s happened to Miss Parker?”

“Old Birdsong found her out there and has been at her ever since.”

Drew turned to the windows that looked out onto the garden. Madeline and the chief inspector were sitting on the same bench where she and Drew had sat the evening before. Birdsong was gesturing toward the greenhouse, and Madeline was shaking her head emphatically, her face flushed and her periwinkle eyes fiery.

Drew frowned. “Poor kid. She’s hardly been here a day and this is what she gets.”

“I like her,” Nick said. “She’s not one of these wilting little flowers who’d melt in a drop of rain, but she’s not out to make herself over into a man like some of these modern girls, either. I like her.”

Drew’s expression softened. “So do I. Better than anyone I’ve ever met. I wish I could get her away from all this.” Frowning again, he shoved his hands into his pockets and paced in front of the windows, glaring at the chief inspector.

“Steady on now,” Nick said. “He’s got to do his job. And there
is
a murderer loose somewhere.”

“Don’t be too kind. He’ll have you in next.”

“What’s the theory so far, may I ask?”

“We have rather a neat explanation for all events as it stands,” Drew said. “Either
A
, scorned and blackmailed woman kills her lover and then herself, or
B
, jealous husband disposes of faithless wife and her blackmailing lover. Who else would have killed either of them?”

“Have they brought up the possibility of murder?” Nick asked. “Of your mother, I mean.”

“Not as such, no. But as the inspector reminds me, it’s early days yet. Dr. Wallace has called it death by misadventure so far.”

“Bit of a coincidence to happen just last night, isn’t it?”

“Birdsong is asking me if I didn’t do for them both,” Drew admitted, and Nick raised one eyebrow.

“Because?”

“Because,” Drew said, his voice artificially melodramatic, “Lincoln had stained the family honor and because I didn’t want to lose my inheritance.”

“Your inheritance?”

Drew shook his head, not wanting to wade through the story yet again. “There’s not much you don’t know about me, Nick, old man, but this I didn’t even know myself.”

He told Nick about Constance paying Lincoln’s blackmail to cover up Drew’s father’s indiscretion. When he had done, Drew looked at his friend, waiting for his reaction.

“French, English, or Byzantine,” Nick said, “what’s that matter? I’d still put my last fiver on you against all comers at eighteen holes of golf.”

Drew laughed. “I’m a rotten golfer, and you know it.”

“Bit sticky finding this out just now though, isn’t it?”

Drew exhaled heavily. “Rather. So I suppose I’m
C
, erstwhile son kills to keep sordid family secrets hush-hush.”

“It couldn’t have been you,” Nick said with his usual wry grin. “Father Knox specifically says the detective must not be the murderer. It just wouldn’t be right.”

Drew couldn’t hold back a little grin of his own. “Still on about Father Knox, are we? Anyway, Birdsong’s the detective in the case, and he’ll brook no interference from civilians.”

“That’s as may be, but we mustn’t forget
D
,” Nick said. “Willful murder by person or persons unknown. Lincoln was such a charming fellow, he must have had just droves of admirers.”

“But if someone we don’t know killed Lincoln, why would he kill Constance, as well? Or why would she kill herself over it?”

Nick shrugged. “Perhaps she saw something she shouldn’t have.”

“No,” Drew told him. “If that were the case, the murderer wouldn’t take the chance that she would go up to bed and take the Veronol without telling anyone what she saw.”

“Unless it was someone she thought she ought to protect, and that someone decided she couldn’t be trusted to keep quiet.”

There was a sick feeling in the pit of Drew’s stomach. “Mason.”

“I didn’t say that,” Nick insisted. “I did
not
say that.”

“Who else then?” Drew asked. “Who would have a reason to kill Lincoln and Constance? Her suicide makes sense only if she was the one who killed him in the first place. If she didn’t, then we have to assume the same person killed them both.”

“I saw the inspector had old Peterson in, too. Was he any help?”

Drew shrugged. “Not much. Said the fireworks weren’t the way he’d laid them out and his roses have aphids. He’d never even met Lincoln, so he hadn’t much to say in that respect.”

“Really? I’d have thought Opal would have had him to dinner some Sunday. Perhaps Lincoln was more the sort to wait for a girl in the street.”

“Opal knew Lincoln?”

“If local gossip is to be believed. I never saw them together, but I didn’t really know Opal myself much more than to speak to.”

“I thought she’d gone away.”

“She did. Months ago.”

“I guess Peterson didn’t say anything about her. I suppose there’s more than one father not wise to his daughter’s goings-on.”

“True enough. But that’s not going to help this case. What we need is evidence. We just don’t know enough yet.” Nick’s
voice took on that mischievous tone Drew knew only too well. “But it doesn’t mean we can’t find out.”

“I mean to find out,” Drew assured him, his grim expression returning. “I mean to find out a great many things.”

“I don’t know if the chief inspector will take much to the idea,” Nick said. “He’s not likely to want a couple of nosey Parkers poking about.”

“We won’t interfere with them,” Drew assured him. “I’ve given my word on that point.”

“All right then, where do we start?”

Drew considered for a moment. “If Lincoln was blackmailing Constance, it’s not much of a reach to imagine he had other
clients
as well. I don’t suppose there’s any way they’d let us look at his bank records.”

“Not half,” Nick said with a snort.

“So then, what can we find out? The police aren’t likely to let us search his flat or anything so helpful as that, but they can’t stop us from talking to people. I wonder if Mason would know who his friends are.”

“Mightn’t Rushford?” Nick asked.

“Possible, I suppose, but not too likely. Rushford’s a bit fussy to be spending his off hours with a bounder like our Mr. L. We could get his address from someone at Farlinford. They must send his dividend checks somewhere. Chelsea, if I remember.”

“There’s always a garrulous landlady or maid of all work at the flat of anyone recently deceased, isn’t there?” Nick asked.

“We can only hope,” Drew replied.

“Hope what?” Madeline smiled as she came up to them, but there were traces of red in her cheeks along with a hot touch of temper in her eyes.

“Did the inspector give you a bad time, darling?” Drew asked, and she shrugged.

“I guess that’s his job.”

“Shall I punch his nose?”

She laughed and took his arm. “I’d rather you took me for a walk around the countryside. I’ve hardly seen any of it.”

“Time to cool off a bit, eh?”

“It wasn’t that bad.” She pressed her lips together, chin quivering. “I didn’t like what he was asking me about Uncle Mason.”

Drew’s eyes narrowed. “What was he asking?”

“If he and Aunt Constance had been quarreling. If I saw him talking to Lincoln anywhere around the greenhouse or the garden shed.”

“Hmmm. Nothing too unusual.”

“He asked about you, too,” she added.

“I see. But that didn’t bother you?”

“Oh, that’s all right, Drew,” Nick said. “He probably doesn’t think you’re clever enough to plan a murder, anyway.”

“Nick, old man, your confidence in me is most gratifying. Come along, Madeline.” Drew patted the hand that rested on his arm. “I think a bit of fresh air is well indicated for both of us.” He led her toward the French doors that opened onto the garden, and then he stopped. “I say, Nick? You may want to ring up Miss Stokes in personnel for that address we were wondering about.”

“Right,” Nick said. “Straightaway.”

Responding to the question in Madeline’s eyes with nothing more than a smile, Drew took her across the rose garden, along a wooded path and out onto the meadow.

“There aren’t many things I really love,” he said after they had walked awhile, “but I love this place. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t here for me to come home to.”

“It’s so beautiful, the mossy stone walls and the sheep and
cattle, and everything is so green.” She sighed. “I can understand why you love it. It’s a wonderful place to call home.”

They walked awhile longer in companionable silence.

“What else do you really love?” she asked finally.

He smiled. “You’ll only think me foolish.”

She tucked her arm under his and looked up into his eyes. “Tell me.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve a friend or two I love, I suppose.”

“Nick?”

“Nick’s stuck with me through a lot, especially these past ten or fifteen years,” Drew said. “And Denny’s taken me in, more or less, since my father died. By rights, I should have my own valet, just as your uncle does. But Denny’s looked after me so long, I can’t imagine having anyone else. I fairly much see to myself most of the time, anyway. Much simpler that way, even if it is a local scandal. Now, don’t laugh. You’d have to have a personal maid too if you were to live here. I mean, lady of the manor and all.”

She squeezed his hand. “You’re sweet. Not the least bit subtle, but very sweet.”

They reached the top of a rise in the road, and Madeline pointed down toward the village. “Is that Farthering St. John?”

“In all her glory.”

“How perfect,” she sighed, and then she turned to him, beaming. “How wonderfully perfect.”

“Is it?”

He looked over the village again, trying to see with new eyes something he’d seen practically every day of his life. There wasn’t much to it really—a few rows of houses on the main road, some better kept than others, some shops, a garage, a chemist, and a minuscule police station nearly large enough for the two officers typically on duty there. It was home, of course, and dear to his
heart, but he knew too that there was nothing there over which the average person should marvel. Then again, Madeline came from a country that boasted little more than three hundred years of civilized history. He’d have to make allowances.