Текст книги "A Fright to the Death"

Автор книги: Dawn Eastman

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

33

“What did you think?” Mac asked.

We walked toward the buffet that Emmett had set out, talking quietly.

“It’s hard to trust someone who has lied to everyone he knows for years, but he lied in order to do something he loves, not to hatch an illegal plot.”

“True, but it makes me wonder if he’s telling us the truth now about his relationship with Clarissa.” Mac took the mug of coffee I handed him and began dumping sugar and cream into it.

“You think they were having an affair?” I asked.

“Not necessarily, just that he seemed very forgiving of a blackmailer.”

“Jessica has been upfront about not liking her cousin; maybe she had a reason to really hate her if she thought Clarissa was seducing René.” I piled my plate with cheesy scrambled eggs and sausage. I needed to stockpile before Seth arrived.

“It doesn’t make this case any easier knowing Clarissa ticked off everyone she knew,” Mac said.

We walked back to our table and I told Mac the rest of my story about my middle-of-the-night meeting with Emmett and Linda.

“That seems like a strange couple.”

“I don’t think they were together . . . ,” I said.

“I just mean, what is the owner of the hotel and the assistant chef doing meeting in the middle of the night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t get the impression it was an everyday thing. Besides, Emmett wouldn’t normally be staying here overnight.”

“I guess.” Mac stared into his coffee cup. “Mrs. Garrett just strikes me as a bit snobby and fraternizing with the help doesn’t go along with that.”

“It is a really small staff . . . but you’re right. Jessica seems more down to earth than her mother.” I stirred my tea and considered Linda and Jessica.

“Speaking of the Garrett women, we’ll need to talk to them again,” Mac said. “How many people are likely to know about the tunnel to the cottage, or the secret room?”

“I suppose most of the staff might know. And maybe Isabel as well—she and Jessica have known each other for years. Unless Jessica was sworn to secrecy, a lot of people might know.”

“We seem to be adding people to our list instead of crossing them off.” Mac slathered grape jelly on his toast.

“Vi is pretty sure it’s Kirk, or maybe René . . .”

Mac snorted. “I thought you said the pendulum pointed to a knitter.”

“Hey, you’re right. I keep forgetting about that. I’ll have to ask Vi how she can reconcile the pendulum and the cards being wrong.”

“Unless she thinks Kirk likes to knit . . . ,” Mac said and smiled.

“He is really good at the yarn bombing,” I said. “Apparently, you’re a knitter, maybe we should add you to the list.”

Just then Tina, Amy, and Heather came into the dining room whispering and giggling. They stopped as soon as they spotted us.

“Hello,” I said.

They mumbled hello and headed toward the buffet.

“What are they up to?” Mac asked.

“I’m pretty sure they’re plotting ways to get Kirk to climb a ladder.”

“What?”

“I heard them talking the other day—they think he’s ‘dreamy’ and they’re pooling all their knitting to give them a reason to interact with him.”

Mac shook his head. “How did this happen? We should have been on a beach all weekend.” Even though we had both said this before, he sounded as though it was finally getting to him.

“Beach? What are you talking about?” Lucille had come up to the table quietly and Mac and I jumped.

“Just bemoaning our fate, Mom,” Mac said.

“Well, that never gets anyone anywhere,” she said. She sat across the table from us with a mug of tea and a piece of toast. She eyed Mac carefully and pressed her lips together.

“What’s on the agenda today in the workshop?” I asked to deflect the tension that seemed to settle over the table.

“I heard Isabel saying she would add a couple of extra classes since no one can leave today,” Lucille said. “Are you sure you don’t want to give it a try?” She turned to me and smiled. “It looked like you took to the continental method like a duck to water.”

“I think I should help Mac with the investigation and Seth needs help with the dogs throughout the day.”

“Your mom is going to read everyone’s cards today,” she said. “I just love your mother’s readings. She has a real talent.”

I had a sudden upsetting thought. “Did Vi put her up to this?”

“I don’t know.” Lucille set her teacup gently on its saucer. “Rose said she would do all of the knitters and I heard Vi saying she was going to invite the staff as well.”

I groaned to myself. Vi must be trying to track the murderer by having Mom read cards. This was classic Fortune family behavior. They relied heavily on hints and innuendo from the divination technique du jour and then ran with whatever they thought they had discovered. I couldn’t decide if this was a good or bad development. If Vi was busy helping Mom interpret cards, she would at least stay out of our way. But, I shuddered to think of what Mac would say. I’d been able to keep the full extent of my family’s obsession with solving crimes from him so far.

Mac tilted his head at me. “You okay?”

“Yup. Just thinking about all those tarot readings . . . ,” I said.

“When does the tarot extravaganza start?” Mac turned to his mom.

“I think she said it would be around ten—after the first workshop.” She smiled. “Are you going to join us? I think you’d really like it, Mac . . .” She stopped when Mac began to shake his head.

“Sorry, no. I just wanted to know what time to make myself scarce.”

Lucille sighed.

Fortunately, the rest of the gang arrived and we were all distracted by Seth’s stories of Baxter and Tuffy.

I noticed that Isabel sat with the table of younger knitters instead of Mavis and Selma. I would have thought that she was just trying to be a good workshop host except she was completely silent while the young women chatted animatedly next to her. Mavis and Selma cast menacing glances toward the table and it had me wondering if there had been trouble in knitting paradise.

“Mom,” I whispered across the table. “What’s up with Isabel and Mavis?” I tilted my head in the direction of their table.

Mom swiveled slowly in her chair; she did discreet the way Vi did blatant.

She turned back toward me and shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess Isabel wanted to get to know the other knitters.”

I watched them for a moment. “She looks miserable. I don’t think she’s even talking to them, and Mavis is glowering at her.”

Mom sighed. “Mavis can be difficult.”

I snorted. I thought that was one of her larger understatements. Mac turned to see what had me making strange noises. I shook my head at him to signal that I’d tell him later.

He turned back toward Lucille and I thought about how our table was burdened with its own set of tensions.

The rest of breakfast was a quiet affair. Gone were the giggles and loud exclamations from the young knitters, Mavis and Selma sat off by themselves, and Vi had stopped speculating on the murder in light of our wager. And there was something going on between Mac and his mother. I was glad when Seth asked me to help him with the dogs, and Mac said he needed to go check in with the police again.

34

Seth and I stood by the back door zipping coats and pulling on mittens and I sensed that the heightened tension had permeated the whole building. I caught a glimpse of Jessica’s angry face as she shut her office door—René sat inside looking like he was visiting the principal’s office.

I sighed.

Seth looked at me and then leaned his shoulder into mine and pushed—his version of a hug. I opened the door and it flew out of my hand as wind struck it full force. I took a deep breath and plunged into the cold. We hurried along the path to the cottage, heads down, holding our hoods up to block the wind.

The dogs wagged tails and barked when we entered the cottage. Baxter pushed his head against my leg and stayed attached to me while I looked for his leash. His tongue lolled out of his mouth as he smiled up at me in adoration. I’m sure he didn’t understand why I kept leaving him. I thought that Seth would be a good replacement, but Baxter and I had bonded last summer and I missed him almost as much as he missed me. After a moment of petting on my part and slobbering on his, I grabbed his leash. Both dogs danced around making it nearly impossible to clip the leather straps to their collars. Finally, they stood ready by the door, tails wagging. Then Seth opened the door and another gust hit us. The dogs hesitated and glanced up at us with an “are you kidding me?” look. With forceful encouragement, they stepped outside and quickly did their business. Tuffy waited for Seth to clear a path for him onto the grass and then rushed back to Seth’s legs and cowered. Baxter didn’t even seem interested in chasing snowballs.

“I hope we can get out of here soon,” I said as we ushered them back into the cottage.

They gratefully allowed us to dry them off and then they raced into the kitchen for a treat.

“It’s not so bad,” Seth said. “Wally said there’s no more snow expected, just this wind and then a couple of days of sunshine.”

“It seems like the whole hotel is going stir-crazy,” I said as I broke off a piece of chicken jerky for Baxter.

Tuffy, ever alert to possible poisoning by his caretakers, carefully sniffed the entire treat before accepting it from me.

“Have you guys figured out who’s been stashing cell phones?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Mac talked to the police about it and they’ve been working the same case from another angle. He didn’t tell me any more than that.”

“If the murder is connected to the cell phones, it kind of lets the knitters off the hook, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t tell Vi’s pendulum,” I said. “She’s also stalking the cat to see what she knows. Apparently, the cat is smarter than most of the humans at the castle—she’s successfully avoided capture.”

“She’s probably just scared,” Seth said. He sat on the floor near Tuffy and the little dog crawled quickly into his lap. Baxter glanced at me as if he thought maybe he could sit on my lap.

“Not a chance, dude,” I said to him. He dropped his head and leaned against Seth.

“Someone would have made a lot of money on those phones,” Seth said. “I wonder if he or she has realized that we were there yet.”

A cold shiver ran down my spine. I had known there was a murderer among us. Someone who might be sharing a meal, or cleaning a room, or knitting a scarf for a chess queen. But, I hadn’t allowed the thought that we might all be in danger to really sink in. I had assumed that Clarissa had been killed because she was unpleasant, but what if she was killed because she knew too much? What if she died because she had discovered the cell phones?

I left Seth with the dogs and braved the weather to get back to the hotel. I thought Mom’s tarot reading would be a good time to do some more rummaging in Clarissa’s room. Now that we knew she had been blackmailing at least one person, I began to wonder if we had missed something in our earlier searches. We’d been looking for any clues that might have been left by the killer. Maybe there were clues left by Clarissa. She had made enemies since she moved to the castle, but maybe she had also truly threatened someone. If we could find other evidence of blackmail, we might be able to narrow down our suspect list.

I found Mac in the front reception area. He hung up the landline and smiled when he saw me.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“The dogs are happy, if that’s what you mean.”

“It sounds like they’ll get that tree moved today,” Mac said. “The power lines have been dealt with and they have a tree removal service working on it. Now that the snow has stopped, they should be able to clear the road so people can get home.”

I felt a tightening in my gut. I knew they could pursue the murder investigation after people had left, but I felt very strongly that we needed to wrap this up before the group scattered.

“I think we should check Clarissa’s room and her office again,” I said.

Mac leaned back against the front desk. “Okay, what do you hope to find?”

“Clarissa came here six months ago and stirred everything up. I wonder if we should be looking into her activities a bit more. It seems everyone had a reason to want her dead, but maybe she had information or plans that were particularly threatening to someone here.”

“Your mother seems to be holding the entire hotel in thrall in the lounge right now.”

I smiled. “Just what I was thinking.”

We quietly approached the door to the lounge and peeked inside. Mac was right; the entire group watched Mom lay out her cards. Emmett, René, Linda, and Jessica were all there, as well as all of the knitters—even Selma. They focused on Mom’s hands as she shuffled and cut the cards. We went to the back hall and peered around like a couple of kids skipping out of school.

With most of the hotel staff occupied in the lounge, it seemed a good time to rummage in the office. Mac and I split the room and searched quickly through the small desk and file cabinet. Nothing. It was all bills and invoices for supplies for the inn. A stack of glossy flyers sat on the corner of the desk touting the benefits of deep-tissue massage and regular facials. This must have been Clarissa’s promotional campaign. I thought again about the family and their conflicting wishes for the future of Carlisle castle.

With no new information, we climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked toward the turret room stairway. I had climbed this set of stairs enough that I hardly got dizzy anymore as we twisted up and up into the tower.

We entered the room again. This time there were no thumps from Vi, or howling winds from open windows. It was just a silent, still room with a silver wintry light lending a gray cast to the white furniture.

“Let’s check the dresser and bedside drawers and see if she kept any papers here in her room,” Mac said. He handed me a pair of plastic gloves and donned a pair of his own.

Mac headed to the bedside table that had two shallow drawers.

I took the dresser and started at the top. I swept my hand toward the back of her underwear drawer, feeling for anything that wasn’t silky. It was all just as it should be—clothing, scarves, and sweaters. I didn’t have that feeling that tells me to keep looking in a particular place. Sometimes it feels like an actual pull toward a certain location, other times I get flashes of an area—often even after I’ve looked in that spot. It reminds me of a camera flash in the dark and it means I’ve missed something. It wasn’t until I had checked the whole dresser that I decided to pull the drawers out of the dresser and check the backs.

Still nothing. And Mac appeared to have come up empty as well.

“If she hid anything up here, it wasn’t anywhere obvious,” I said.

If she was a seasoned blackmailer, she probably knew better than to put evidence in a drawer where anyone could find it.

A secret staircase seemed like a good place to stash something unless the people you were blackmailing used that staircase to deliver their payoffs. I reflected that I had been spending too much time with Vi—my own imagination was starting to sound like her. Blackmail, payoffs, and nefarious schemes were more Vi’s area than mine.

I wandered to the window and looked out at the snowy view. From this vantage point, the woods were quite beautiful with each branch outlined in white. I sat in the chair by the window and tried to think of any other place she might have hidden her blackmail evidence.

I closed my eyes, and breathed deeply. I tried to relax and clear my mind as Neila had taught me to do. After a few moments I felt a tug. That’s the only way to describe it—a gentle pull toward the wardrobe. I opened my eyes and looked across the room.

Mac rummaged in the wardrobe, which seemed to contain a lot of dresses and shoes. The shoes spilled out of it and I began to realize why they always littered her floor—the woman had a serious problem. She even had shoeboxes stacked on top of the wardrobe.

I got up to help Mac sort the shoes out and counted fifteen pairs that had been tossed into the bottom of the freestanding closet under the dresses. She had tossed high-end couture in with drugstore flip-flops.

The tug was stronger here, but didn’t seem connected to her shoes. Then I looked up again at the shoeboxes.

“Mac, can you reach those shoeboxes up there?” I pointed.

He caught my eye and grinned. “Good idea—she didn’t seem to care about organizing her shoes.”

He brought down the three boxes, which didn’t rattle like shoes and were heavier than I would expect.

The first two contained journals dating from fifteen years previously going up to about two years ago. The third contained a locked metal box. It was one of those heavy fireproof things that are nearly impossible to break into. And underneath, a worn leather notebook.

Mac picked up the notebook with his gloved hand and flipped to the back. The pages were filled with letters and numbers in what looked like a code. He snapped it shut and slipped it into a large baggie. I examined the metal box.

“Did she have a key on her when she died?” I asked, hoping we wouldn’t have to go to the shed and search her body.

“I don’t think so. She wasn’t wearing a necklace and I did check her pockets.”

“Now we’re looking for a key,” I said. “That’s even harder to find.”

“Let’s check the bathroom.”

We took everything out of the medicine cabinet and lined it up on the counter. No key was attached to the shelves or taped to the bottom of her face lotion. I felt another nudge. Something was wrong here, but I couldn’t place it. Now that we had taken everything off the shelves, it looked different to me. We put the pain reliever, birth control, bandages, and toothpaste back on the shelf. I still couldn’t place it. Mac took the lid off the toilet and checked inside. He ran his hand along the back. He stood and shook his head.

We went back out to the bedroom and I ran my hands along the hems of all her dresses and skirts. Mac checked the pockets of all her jackets. Still nothing.

I was systematically going through each piece of clothing in each drawer when the door to the bedroom slowly eased open.

35

“Oh, it’s you guys again,” Vi said from the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

She pulled her hand behind her back and said, “Nothing. Just thought I’d look around while your mother does her card readings.”

She’d been quick, but I had spotted the deep purple drawstring bag in her hand.

“What are you going to do with the pendulum?”

“Pendulum?” Mac said.

Vi brought her hand out from behind her back and sighed. “I wanted to see if it would tell me who else had been up here that night.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mac said.

Vi drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches. “Detective McKenzie, just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

“You’re trying to solve this case using a piece of glass on a string?”

“What are you using? Intuition and gut feelings?”

“No, I’m using my experience in solving murder cases,” Mac said.

“Well, I’m using my experience in answering questions with a pendulum.”

“We’re pretty much done here, Mac,” I said. “We might as well let Vi swing her crystal around.”

Vi pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes at me. We all stood staring at one another.

“Well, are you going to ask some questions or not?” Mac asked.

“I’d prefer to be alone,” Vi sniffed. “The pendulum doesn’t respond well when there is negative energy in the room.”

I figured she also thought we’d steal her top-secret pendulum information if we hung around.

“Ms. Greer, you have to promise not to move anything or touch anything,” Mac said.

“Don’t you think the crime scene has been fully contaminated by now, what with cats and ghosts and who knows who else wandering through here—plus what do you think Clyde is doing?” She pointed at the clothing piled on the floor. “I know Clarissa left her shoes everywhere, but I don’t remember her storing her clothing on the floor.”

Mac rubbed his forehead. He glanced at me for guidance.

“I’ll put it all back and then you can ask your questions,” I said to Vi. “Just try not to disturb anything.”

Vi humphed. “Don’t tell me not to disturb anything. I know how to act at a crime scene—I’ve been Googling police procedure for months.”

I tidied up Clarissa’s clothing without finding a key, and Mac and I went back downstairs, leaving Vi and her pendulum alone in Clarissa’s room.

As soon as we exited the stairwell, Mac grabbed my arm and propelled me toward my room.

“We need to talk,” he said, “privately.”

I pulled out my key and unlocked the door.

Mac ushered me inside, locked the door, and put the chain into the metal slider.

“I need to tell you something that you absolutely cannot share with anyone,” he said. He held my gaze and all I saw were his cop eyes.

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Not Vi, or your mother, or even Seth. Don’t even think about it around that kid—sometimes I think he can read minds.” Mac held Clarissa’s notebook out and flipped it open.

I stepped toward him to get a better look.

He pointed to the column of numbers and letters.

“I think this is a list of cell phone types and numbers of units.” He ran his finger down the column.

I followed his finger and it became clear—IP, BB, NK, SS, for iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung. The numbers looked like they would correlate with what we had found in the storage room. There were way more iPhones listed than BlackBerries.

“Great,” I said. “But, what do we do with it?” I didn’t think this was any big secret—she kept a list of the inventory—if anything it just proved that she had her nose in everyone’s business.

“That’s the part you can’t tell anyone,” he said. “Kirk is an undercover cop working this cell phone case.”

“What? How do you know?”

Mac flipped the notebook shut inside the large baggie. He hesitated. “I recognized him. He worked a case in Saginaw a few years ago. I didn’t know him well, but I’m pretty sure he made the connection as well. We talked about it when we took the snowmobiles out to check the road. I need to let him know what we found without exposing him. I don’t want to mess up his case, or put him in danger.”

“Okay. It’s probably better if we don’t both go looking for him,” I said. “I guess that explains why he’s such a terrible maintenance man.”

Mac shoved the baggie-wrapped notebook into his waistband and covered it with his snowman. I noticed that his sweater had sprouted buttons. It seemed Mavis was still finishing.

“Let’s leave the box here until we find a key or can turn it over to the police,” I said. “Who knows if there’s even anything in there worth hiding. It could just be legal documents or jewelry.”

Mac nodded and looked around for a place to put it. “I don’t know about that. You’re sharing a room with Vi.”

“As far as I know, she can’t pick a lock, so she’s not likely to take much interest in it. She might try to wave her pendulum over it to see if it contains anything she would consider important . . .”

“Still, we should put it somewhere she’s not likely to find it . . .”

I pointed to the closet. The wall safe wasn’t big enough, but the top shelf was deep and we could push it to the back. Unless she really was on the hunt, she wouldn’t notice it up there.

After we stashed the box and Mac double-checked that the notebook was well hidden behind his sweater, we opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

Mavis was there. She shut her door and clicked the lock with her key.

“Oh, Detective McKenzie,” she said. She hurried toward us on her sturdy shoes, her purple pants making that zip-zip sound of polyester rubbing against itself. It was clear she had reapplied her lipstick without benefit of a mirror when she smiled.

Her jaunt down the hall had left her breathless, or maybe it was just Mac’s proximity, but she put a hand to her ample chest as she caught her breath.

“I need to speak to you,” she said. She glanced at me and added, “Alone.”

“Mrs. Poulson, if you have something to tell me about the investigation, you can speak to both of us. Ms. Fortune is a police officer as well.”

Mavis sniffed and her mouth pursed as if she’d been given a lemon to suck on. It became clear to me why she bothered Vi so much—they were exactly alike.

“Very well,” she said. She turned to me, “I hope your professionalism will override any family loyalty you may have.”

Mac gestured toward the stairs, but Mavis balked.

“This needs to be a very private conversation,” she said. “Selma is still downstairs; we can go in my room.”

She led us to her room and reapplied her key to the lock. Swinging the door wide, she waved us inside.

This room was obviously the pink fantasy room. The curtains were heavy velvet in a deep rose color. The dark wood of the furniture glowed pink in the misty light from the window. Mavis and Selma had evidently been working hard on their yarn-bombing project. Large swaths of knitting draped over the chairs and the couch.

Mavis gestured toward her sitting area, and Mac and I perched on the small loveseat and tried not to upset the rainbow of knitted items. Mavis pressed her lips together and took the wing-back chair.

“I need to confess,” she began. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth earlier when you asked me about my movements on the night of the . . . of poor Clarissa’s death.”

Mac leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. I noticed he hadn’t whipped out his notebook.

“When I came up to get my medicine, I saw Isabel coming back down from the turret room,” she said.

Mac and I exchanged a glance—the tilt of his head told me that this had piqued his interest.

Mavis held up her hand. “That’s only part of what I want to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t mention it before because I just know Isabel didn’t hurt Clarissa. I’ve known them both for many years and if anyone was going to turn into a murderer, it would have been Clarissa.”

“Did you speak to Isabel when she came back down?” Mac asked.

Mavis shook her head. “She didn’t see me. I had just opened my door and I heard someone coming down the stairs. She wasn’t very quiet.” Mavis took a deep breath and continued. “I popped into my room and cracked the door just enough to see who it was. Isabel came out of the doorway. She was rubbing her head like it really hurt and then she passed by my door and must have gone on to her own room around the corner.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” I asked, unable to hide my irritation.

Mavis had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn’t want to get Isabel in trouble, but now I know who really killed Clarissa.” She leaned forward in her chair and looked at each of us in turn. “Violet Greer is your killer, I’m sure of it.”

I stifled a snort and turned it into a cough. Mac put his hand on my leg to steady me and probably to keep from laughing himself. It took him a moment to speak.

“Why do you think that Violet is the killer?” Mac asked.

“I know it will be hard for you to hear.” She looked at me. “She’s your aunt, after all.” She turned to Mac. “And a good friend of your mother’s. But that woman is not to be trusted.” Mavis held her finger up in such a likeness to Vi, I wondered for a moment if these two were punking us.

“Okay, let’s stick to the evidence you have against her,” Mac said and this time he did pull out his notebook, I assumed for show.

“She’s been sneaking around the castle ever since Clarissa died, acting very suspicious if you ask me.” Mavis held up one finger. “She didn’t like Clarissa because Clarissa had made fun of her pet-psychic business and the knitters in general—which annoyed all of us, but only Vi had a murderous gleam in her eyes.”

“So, your evidence is that Vi had a murderous gleam and she’s been sneaking around?” Mac asked.

I thought that if that were enough to arrest Vi, we would have been visiting her in prison on a weekly basis.

“And I saw her steal that cable needle.” Mavis nodded and sat back in her chair, having given us the clincher.

“Cable needle?” Mac said.

“Jessica told us that Isabel’s fancy new cable needle was found at the crime scene—I saw Violet slip it into her bag on Thursday afternoon.”

I wondered what Vi would have to say for herself. The sad part is I didn’t doubt she had taken the needle. She probably wanted to sneak it up to her room to conduct some sort of knit-swatch experiment. She must have returned it at some point or someone took it from her.

“Tell me about seeing Isabel,” Mac said. He casually slipped his notebook back in his pocket as if the Isabel information wasn’t worth writing down.

Mavis flapped her hand as if waving away an annoying bug. “Oh, that was nothing. I talked to Isabel about it.” Mavis’s mouth pulled into a frown. “She wasn’t pleased when I told her I was going to discuss this with you, but you need all the facts, and not telling you was wearing me down. She accused me of being a traitor.” Mavis huffed and took a moment to breathe heavily in indignation.

Mac and I waited for her to continue.

“She said she made a mistake and went the wrong way. She never went up to the room—I just saw her coming back out. That’s what she told me and I believe her.”

“Mrs. Poulson,” Mac said, “this has been very helpful and I’m grateful you came forward with your information. I would just like to say, that if you are ever in a position to be questioned by the police in the future, it would be best to tell your whole story up front.”

Mavis’s face fell from a broad smile to a contrite countenance. She nodded.

“So, will you arrest Violet?” Mavis asked. “It would be really nice if she wasn’t snooping around the castle the whole time we’re stuck here. Where will you keep her imprisoned while we wait for the police to arrive?”

“Unfortunately, we’ll need to gather some more information before we can make an arrest,” Mac said. “But you’ve given us something to think about.” He stuck out his hand and Mavis grasped it eagerly.

She showed us to the door and as I passed into the hall, she put a hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry to have to be the bearer of such distressing news. You have certainly shown grace and poise under these difficult circumstances.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Poulson,” I said. “I try to remain professional in these situations.”