Текст книги "Stranger on the Shore "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

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“She painted that,” Mrs. Truscott said.

And Griff had no doubt “she” was Gemma. It was interesting how everyone spoke Gemma’s name in a certain respectful tone of voice, as though she had been the victim, as though she had been the one who had never returned that night.

But that was the truth, wasn’t it?

Brian’s parents had been victims every bit as much as Brian. And yet no one really talked about Matthew. It was always “Gemma” or “she” in that hushed tone as though everyone was eternally attending Gemma’s funeral.

The focus of the mural was a giant and genial-looking dark green sea monster. Its wide smile revealed many, many sharp white teeth, but his big purple eyes were kind and friendly. The pupils of his eyes were two stars...

Griff reached out to steady himself on the hindquarters of a giant wooden giraffe. He felt as though a great wind were rushing through his head, the roar of a hundred howling voices growing louder and louder, coming closer and closer.

“What’s the matter with you?” Mrs. Truscott’s voice was sharp, jerking him back to the present.

Griff opened his eyes. “Nothing.” He said again, more firmly, “Nothing’s wrong.”

But just for a moment it had reminded him so strongly of his own...it had been so easy to picture...it seemed so real.

What had seemed real? What did that even mean? He wasn’t sure. The feeling was fading as suddenly as it had swept over him. He was starting to identify too much with Brian. Empathy was one thing. He wouldn’t be able to do his job if he lost his ability to preserve a neutral distance.

Mrs. Truscott was staring at him, her expression one of surprise and wariness.

Griff managed, “I guess it’s just easy to imagine...”

She made an impatient sound. “Imagination is what gets people into trouble.”

Too much imagination, he could hear his mother’s voice as clearly as if she was standing there with them. He retorted, “Imagination is also what allowed men to walk on the moon.”

“That’s what I mean,” Mrs. Truscott said. She was still watching him like there was something wrong with him, as though she could see right inside his head.

He made an effort to get back to business. “Was the household staff a lot bigger in the old days?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She was always going to be a hostile witness. In fact, the only reason why she didn’t walk away now was because Jarrett had ordered everyone, family and servants alike, to cooperate with him. That, and having brought Griff up here, he was in a sense her responsibility.

“How many people on staff now were working for the Arlingtons back when Brian was taken?”

“Me and Newland. I’ve got a couple of girls who come in every day but they weren’t here back then. Cook—Molly Keane that is—has been working for the family about two years.”

Griff gave the giraffe’s hindquarters an absent pat and walked over to the toy shelf. He could feel Mrs. Truscott’s gaze like a physical weight. Was there a Mr. Truscott? Was Mrs. Truscott a completely different person behind closed doors? You could never tell about people.

He glanced at her. “What do you remember about that night?”

She raised her chin as though he had challenged her. “Almost nothing. It’s the next day I remember. The police and the reporters and everything that followed.”

“Did the Arlingtons have a nanny? I’ve never been able to tell from the news reports.”

“No. Mrs. Arlington took care of Brian herself. She didn’t believe in handing her son off to another woman’s care. She said those exact words many times. She wanted Brian to have what she called a normal upbringing.”

“Did Chloe have a nanny? Michaela couldn’t have been more than a kid herself.” Not to mention the fact that nothing he had seen or heard of Michaela so far led him to think she was the maternal kind.

Mrs. Truscott hesitated. “No.” She pressed her lips together as though to keep from saying more.

“Was Michaela a good mother?”

“It’s not for me to judge.”

“Was Gemma a good mother?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Truscott said at once. She seemed to struggle inwardly before saying, “Miss Michaela was young. It was natural for Mrs. Arlington to take care of both children. She loved children.”

There were a number of possibilities here, but Griff focused on what he believed was the key question. “The night of the party. If there was no nanny, does that mean no one checked on Brian after he was put down for the night?”

It wasn’t a criticism, but the housekeeper said defensively, “Mrs. Arlington checked on both children after midnight. That was when we learned Brian was missing.”

In actuality, at least according to what Griff had read, Gemma hadn’t checked on Brian until one forty-five in the morning. That still wasn’t a criticism; he could see no reason why she should have been hovering over her child’s bed. Though he had no doubt she’d been eaten alive with guilt because of her failure to do so.

Mrs. Truscott seemed to follow his thoughts because she pointed to the dresser next to the crib. “The baby monitor was right there. Mrs. Cameron—she was housekeeper back then—could hear if either of them cried. She had me look in on them early in the evening. They were sleeping.”

“Early in the evening when?”

“Ten o’clock or so.”

“Is it true the former butler, Mr. Tuppalo, hired Odell Johnson?”

“Yes.”

“His daughter still lives locally, doesn’t she? Tuppalo’s daughter, I mean. May Chung?”

“Yes.”

“And her husband’s name is Bill?”

Mrs. Truscott frowned. “Charles.”

“Charles, right. What did you think of Johnson?”

“I didn’t see much of him. Johnson lived over the garage. He had his meals there.”

“Were you surprised when he was arrested?”

Mrs. Truscott hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She seemed to weigh and then discard a couple of replies before saying reluctantly, “He didn’t seem like the type.”

No one ever did. That was something Griff had noticed working the crime beat. No matter how surly, unsocial, even openly hostile someone was, when they did finally snap it still usually came as a surprise to everyone else.

“Did you ever think that maybe the police got the wrong man?”

Her throat moved. “The money was under the tool shed in the place where he was living. He admitted to writing the ransom note.”

Griff asked carefully, “This is completely theoretical. If Johnson wasn’t involved, did you ever have a suspicion—”

“Of course not! What a thing to ask!” She sounded almost frightened.

No, she was frightened, he realized. And that meant two things. She did suspect someone else of being involved in Brian’s kidnapping. And the person she suspected was a member of the family.

Chapter Ten

“I wanted to write a book,” Benjamin Copper said. “But not only did the Arlingtons not authorize it, their lawyer threatened to slap me with three different lawsuits.”

He was laughing, so maybe it wasn’t too much of a sore spot. Copper, who had covered the kidnapping for the Oyster Bay Runner, was in his mid-fifties. A roly-poly man with silver hair cut in an early Beatles style. He wore a white collarless shirt and bell bottom jeans. He’d arrived for their lunch meeting in a beat-up Volkswagen. Even their meeting place, Copper’s suggestion, was a funky diner straight out of the sixties. The place was called Coffee Shop and it was located in a strip mall in Plainview.

“Was that Pierce Mather?” Griff asked, reaching for his grilled cheese sandwich. One thing about the Coffee Shop, maybe they didn’t do French dip, but they knew how to make a mean grilled cheese. And the fries were great too.

“Thomas Mather, his old man. The guy was a polar bear. Although the son isn’t much better, as I’m sure you’ve had opportunity to find out. Anyway, ask me whatever you want. Just spell my name right. Twice the AP credited Benjamin Cooper.”

“You covered the story from the very beginning, right?”

“Yep. I was listening to the police scanner that night. I do that the nights I can’t sleep. I showed up at Winden House with the police. Which is how I managed to get inside before anyone realized who I was.” He winked at Griff and speared a chunk of chicken in his chopped salad.

“I’ve read all your articles. Would you just walk me through everything you remember from that night?”

“Sure.” Copper put his fork down and sat back in the booth. “We got there about two-thirty in the morning. Believe it or not, the party was only just winding up. Nobody but the family knew the kid was missing. There were all these would-be flappers and swells in straw boaters staggering out of the sunken garden to find the place crawling with cops. It was pretty much the worst-possible-case scenario for finding Brian. No one could pinpoint when he’d disappeared, and the place was wall-to-wall strangers. There were over a hundred invited guests and half as many non-invited guests, and most of them in fancy costumes.”

Griff glanced up from his notepad. “Party crashers?”

“Always. In those days, everybody went to the parties the Arlingtons threw. So you had the guests, invited and otherwise, and then in addition to the household staff, you had the caterers, which just happened to be a company the Arlingtons hadn’t used before. You had the musicians.” Copper shook his head. “You had a hell of a lot of people inside and out of the house all night long.”

“That clarifies a lot right there,” Griff said. “What I don’t understand is why there wasn’t any kind of security presence?”

Copper laughed. “It would never have occurred to the Arlingtons they needed security. That wouldn’t be quite nice would it? All those nasty men with guns?” Copper shook his head. “They don’t have security now, as far as I know. They have security systems, I guess. Well, I know that for a fact. If someone had gone for one of the safes or one of the Monets that night, all hell would have broken loose. But the heir apparent could be tucked under someone’s arm and carried out like a football—and nobody was the wiser.”

“That’s crazy.”

Copper shrugged and picked up his fork. “The Arlingtons live in a different world from you and me. Hell, they don’t even live in the same world as most rich people.”

The waitress came by and topped off Copper’s coffee. They flirted amiably for a minute or two, she replaced Griff’s empty glass with another vanilla Coke and moved to the next booth.

Copper said, “The other issue, and I personally don’t think the cops can be blamed for this, is it took everyone a while to realize the kid hadn’t just wandered off. He apparently used to do that, so the initial fear was he’d fallen into the pool or a pond or a stream or was lost in the ornamental woods they have out there. The focus was on searching the grounds. Initially nobody was thinking kidnapping.”

“Until the ransom note came?”

“Yeah. The ransom note arrived around noon the following day. By then everyone was worked up into a frenzy. The mother was convinced the boy was dead, but then the note arrived and that put a more sinister light on the situation, but it also gave hope that maybe Brian was okay.”

Griff said, “Am I wrong? It seemed to me that the tone of your articles was...”

Copper said, “I was in the minority, but I was never convinced Johnson was lying. For one thing, if he did kidnap Brian, you’d think he’d come up with a better story.”

“Criminals aren’t always the smartest guys in the room.”

“You’re right about that, and Johnson is definitely no genius. Even so, I don’t know. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I believed him, but I didn’t disbelieve him. You see what I mean? If he was involved, he wasn’t the mastermind.”

“Who do you think the mastermind was?”

Griff threw it out there. He wasn’t really expecting an answer, so it was a surprise to hear Copper’s prompt, “The youngest girl, Michaela.”

“You’re kidding.”

Copper shook his head. “No, my friend, I’m not. The girl was up to her ears in it. It didn’t get into the papers—that was Mather Senior’s good work again—but she had something going on with the chauffeur. And afterwards they couldn’t ship her out west fast enough. My theory is either she put Johnson up to it, or Johnson knew what she was after and tried to cash in on it. And maybe cover for her. Or maybe not.”

“What would be in it for her though? She can’t have been short of cash.”

“She didn’t have access to her trust fund yet, so I think cash could have been a motive. I think she wanted out from under the old man’s thumb. Which she did get after the fact. She had that kid Chloe out of wedlock. Kloppel was the name of her first husband, but he wasn’t Chloe’s father. That was all afterwards.”

“I’m getting lost here,” Griff said. “You think Michaela arranged for Brian to be kidnapped in order to finance her escape from the family compound?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I doubt she intended any harm to come to Brian. I’m not saying she’s a monster. But back then she was as wild as they come. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. She wanted out, but old man Arlington wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted she learn to be a good mother and a responsible citizen.” Copper grimaced. “So much for that.”

“So the local theory is Michaela was behind the kidnapping?”

“It’s more like the alternative version. The people who don’t believe Johnson had the brains to plot something like that believe Michaela was the driving force. Like I said, I’m inclined to agree. Needless to say it wasn’t the view of the Arlingtons or the police.”

“That’s some theory.”

“If you really are going to interview Johnson, you’ll have a chance to decide for yourself. See if you don’t agree.”

As hard to believe as Copper’s theory was, it was one explanation for why Brian had been grabbed rather than Chloe.

“Did you know Mather’s two kids were in the room next to the nursery that night?”

Copper stared at him. “No. Where did you hear that?”

“Pierce Mather told me himself. They were watching TV and eating shrimp puffs or something. He claims they didn’t see or hear anything, but I thought it was strange it was never mentioned anywhere.”

Copper thought it over. “I’ll guarantee you no one ever knew. Or at least I never got a whiff of that. They were minors. I guess in a way it makes sense their folks scrambled to keep their names out of the papers.”

“Out of the papers, sure,” Griff said. “I’m just wondering what else they were kept out of.”

* * *

The cops at the Second Precinct were cooperating, but it was clearly as a courtesy to the Arlingtons.

Griff didn’t take it personally. He understood that an unsolved, high-profile crime, especially one in which a child was the victim, was always going to be a sore spot for law enforcement. He pored over reports and crime scene photos, drank several cups of bad coffee, and found himself no further ahead.

Benjamin Copper’s memory was accurate. The initial call had come in as a 10-31 missing/lost child. The assumption had been that Brian had woken during the night, heard the music and had wandered off in search of his mother. The only items missing from his room—his robe, his slippers and a small stuffed bear known as Tiny Teddy—seemed to support that theory. Brian’s parents described him as “smart and self-reliant.” Hope had been high that the child would be swiftly and safely recovered.

By breakfast, optimism had given way to dread, and the ponds and streams on the estate were being dragged.

In Griff’s opinion it was typical that from the instant the ransom note had arrived, police had focused their attention on the Arlington household—meaning The Help. The lead investigating officer had been a Detective Woody Hinder. Hinder had retired and moved to Florida in 2000. According to the stout female sergeant who brought Griff the storage box of files on the Arlington case, at one time Hinder had considered writing a book about his experiences investigating the Arlington kidnapping, but once again Thomas Mather had acted to convince the former detective otherwise.

Under Hinder’s directive the domestic staff had been thoroughly investigated, financial records checked, and all possible connections—family and friends and business acquaintances—followed to trail’s end.

Griff had to give Hinder credit. Even before the FBI arrived, Hinder and his team had uncovered several promising lines of inquiry including Mr. Tuppalo’s poor credit rating and bounced checks, Mr. Newland’s fondness for betting on the ponies, and Mrs. Cameron’s faked references. Mrs. Truscott—known then as Miss Wilma Truscott—had a younger sister who had died in a mental institution. Mrs. Woolly, the cook, had been widowed twice in household accidents. And of course there was Johnson’s criminal record, which a week earlier had resulted in his losing his position as chauffeur. According to Johnson it was this injustice that had triggered the ransom demand after Brian had gone missing.

The Arlingtons, with the exception of Muriel, agreed that Johnson had been a good employee. But when he had been hired, he had neglected to mention a youthful conviction for attempted robbery, and Jarrett Arlington was quoted as saying, “Robbery, attempted or otherwise, is a violent crime and not like writing a bad check.”

Even without Muriel’s helpful suggestion, Johnson was an immediate and obvious suspect.

As far as Griff could tell, the family had never come under the shadow of suspicion. Wherever Copper had picked up that nugget about Michaela, it hadn’t been through the police investigation. But then Copper was a local. The Nassau police were...the police. People, even innocent people, tended to close ranks against the police. So while Michaela’s wild-child reputation might be common knowledge among the good folks of Muttontown, it was possible no one had shared their suspicions with Hinder or the FBI.

Griff studied the crime scene photos—in ‘93 most police departments were still using crime scene stills, not video—prepared for another strange reaction like he’d had earlier that day standing in the nursery. But he felt nothing. Maybe it had been low blood sugar. Maybe he was just tired.

The transcript of Johnson’s interrogation was interesting but not particularly enlightening. Though Johnson stuck to his story that he had only thought of sending the ransom note after he’d heard that Brian was missing, he contradicted himself and changed his mind about all kinds of nonessential details.

Not a credible witness.

And there were no other viable suspects.

Open and shut. Which still didn’t explain what had happened to Brian.

Chapter Eleven

The Arlingtons were fighting when Griff walked into the elegant cream-and-gold drawing room at Winden House that evening. The voices were all low and restrained, like you’d expect if an argument broke out in a drawing room, but that couldn’t completely conceal the harsh tones and fierce emotions. They were able to cut off when he stepped through the double doors, but they needn’t have worried because Griff’s attention was on the music playing in the background. A lead clarinet rolled lazily through lush strings in a hauntingly familiar melody.

He stopped dead. “What is that?”

Not surprisingly, everyone in the room stared at him.

“What is what, my boy?” Jarrett asked.

“That music. That tune.” This was the very same music that had woken him his first night on the estate. He was sure of it.

Marcus, who was standing at the alcove bar, said, “That’s Acker Bilk. ‘Stranger on the Shore.’”

“Were you playing this the other night? The night I arrived? I thought I heard it coming from the house.” Griff belatedly noticed Muriel and Michaela exchanging looks. They did not actually mime the gesture for crazy, but he was clearly not making a good impression. So what else was new?

“Was I playing it?” Marcus asked in surprise. “No. I just found the record this afternoon.”

Record? These people still played records? And they thought he was crazy?

“We mentioned it at dinner, Mr. Hadley,” Muriel said. “That’s why it was on your mind.” She spoke kindly, as if to an imbecile.

“Come in, my boy,” Jarrett said. “No need to hover in the doorway. We haven’t seen you today. What have you been up to?”

“Yes,” Michaela said. “What have you been up to?” She wore brown lipstick and black nail polish. It was sort of attractive and sort of scary—like her paintings, which Griff had done some research on the night before.

“Rum and Coke?” Marcus asked.

“Uh...sure.”

There was no sign of Chloe. A tall, bearded man with long blond hair sat on the sofa next to Michaela. He wore a navy blue suit and a burnt orange shirt, and as awful as that sounded, it somehow worked on him. This would no doubt be the Viking. Chloe’s detested stepfather and Michaela’s newest husband. Loki, Chloe had called him. And he did look like Loki. A Wagnerian Loki, not a Hollywood Loki.

He made a striking figure, dwarfing the brocade sofa’s fragile frame, dwarfing the very room.

“I don’t think you’ve met Ring yet,” Jarrett said, following the direction of Griff’s gaze.

Loki—Ring—half rose, shook hands with a crushing grip, and sank back on the sofa. He didn’t speak. His eyes, pale blue crystal, met Griff’s and his mouth curled in a baring of teeth that was probably supposed to be a smile. He seemed like a good match for Michaela.

Marcus delivered a tall glass of rum and Coke, and Griff sipped it gingerly. Yes, he had definitely outgrown rum and Coke, but he’d be stuck drinking it for the duration of his stay at Winden House.

“Did you have a profitable day, my boy?” Jarrett asked.

“I did,” Griff said. One thing he had learned from the Nassau police, and it had considerably reduced the compass of his investigation, was that there was absolutely no doubt that Matthew and Gemma Arlington had died in an accident. They had gone sailing on their Whitewater yacht despite warnings of bad weather, and they had radioed for help once they ran into problems. Investigators had a play-by-play transcript of the tragedy. Bad judgment, bad luck and bad weather. It was that simple. It was that sad.

“How so?” Michaela asked.

“Did you attend university, Mr. Hadley?” Muriel asked at the same time.

Attend university? Did she think she was in an English drawing room comedy? Well, maybe she was.

“U Rock,” Griff said. “University of Wisconsin—Rock County. It’s a two-year college. My mother died during my second year, so I was never able to go on and complete my bachelor’s. I have an AAS degree with emphasis on Communication Arts.”

“How difficult for you. Your mother must have been quite a young woman. You’re how old?”

They were all looking at him expectantly.

“Twenty-eight this June,” Griff answered Muriel.

Was it his imagination or did the entire room seem to breathe a quiet sigh of relief? He remembered Jarrett saying young men about the age Brian would be now periodically showed up claiming to be the long lost Arlington heir. Was that part of what they feared? That the book was just an excuse to try and ingratiate himself with Jarrett, position himself to make some dramatic claim to be Brian?

If that was the case, he wasn’t sure if he was more amused or offended. He disapproved of everything about these people. Did they really think he was willing to lie and cheat his way into becoming one of them?

Michaela said, “We heard you had a little accident last night.” She grinned broadly. “You lost your camera and all your notes?”

“There weren’t many notes to lose,” Griff said. “And it was an old camera.”

She was still smiling as though it was fabulous news. For the first time he gave serious thought to who could have sabotaged the bridge, assuming the bridge had been sabotaged and he wasn’t letting his imagination run away with him again.

It would take someone tall, physically strong, and possessing a rudimentary knowledge of architecture. Also a rudimentary knowledge of how to use a saw—and where to find one. Or someone who could ask Nels Newland to do the job for her.

In fact, the only person in this room he could be sure had nothing to do with sabotaging the bridge was Jarrett. He couldn’t even be sure that the real reason Pierce hadn’t hurried back was to make sure Griff wasn’t accidentally knocked out and drowned after Pierce booby-trapped the bridge.

Although it was very hard to picture Pierce in one of his five-hundred-dollar suits grimly sawing through the bottom of the bridge.

It was a funny image. Even funnier was how much he didn’t like picturing such a thing.

“How come you’re so interested in the Arlingtons?” Ring asked. He had a deep, raspy voice and a West Coast accent.

“It’s an interesting case. It’s still unsolved. And nobody’s written a book on it yet. It seemed like maybe it was time someone took another look.”

“And you think you can succeed where the police and the FBI failed?” Michaela’s smile was mocking. Tonight she wore a perfectly ordinary full-length black-and-blue beach dress. Of course her beach dress probably cost more than most women’s formal dresses.

“Well, he can hardly do worse,” Marcus muttered, and his sister threw him a surprised look.

Mrs. Truscott appeared and announced dinner was ready. They filed into the dining room leaving Acker Bilk to play “Sentimental Journey” to an empty room.

The food was once again very good. Poached salmon—wild caught not farmed, per Muriel—with cucumber and dill sauce, delicata squash with pomegranates, cauliflower with pine nuts, currants, and fresh Italian parsley—

“Muriel, will you kindly shut up and let us eat,” Michaela intervened.

Muriel turned a ladylike shade of purple and glared at her sister.

“Yes indeed,” Jarrett said, fixing his youngest daughter with a kindling eye. “Do inform us as to what constitutes proper table manners, Mike.”

It was Michaela’s turn to redden.

Ring gave Jarrett a narrow look but said nothing. Marcus continued to drink his dinner. Getting plastered seemed to be his nightly goal. Griff was surprised Chloe didn’t choose to eat out more often.

Had they always been this uncomfortable to be around, or had this dynamic evolved through time and tragedy?

Griff quietly ate his dinner, watched and listened. With the exception of Jarrett, who made regular efforts to draw him into the conversation, the others were happy enough to ignore him. He didn’t think they forgot him though.

At one point Muriel mentioned Chloe being on a date and Griff said without thinking, “Are Chloe and Pierce...?” He didn’t finish it because as the words were leaving his mouth he realized that to even ask the question was a mistake.

An astonished silence followed.

“Chloe and Pierce?” Muriel said as though she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“No,” Jarrett answered quietly. “They’re not.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters, Mr. Hadley?” Muriel asked, and the conversation swirled away again like water parting to make a new course around a boulder.

“No. I was an only child,” Griff said.

“That’s sad. No family at all?”

Michaela said impatiently, “I’m sure Mr. Hadley has all the usual extended family.”

He didn’t. But he wasn’t going to share that with these people. His mother had been estranged from her family—and apparently his father’s family too. Which, given his mother’s temperament, wasn’t that much of a surprise. In fact, as Griff grew older he had begun to wonder if his father had simply taken off, not died at all. He had found no death certificate, no insurance papers, nothing in his mother’s effects.

She wasn’t an easy woman to live with, that was for sure. It was the kind of thing she might have lied about. She had always been very proud.

The Arlingtons kept up their dinner conversation, chatting about a new restaurant that had opened in Oyster Bay, about flower shows, about a planned spring wedding for the daughter of one of their neighbors. Maybe it was for his benefit. Maybe when they didn’t have a distrusted member of the fourth estate at their table they talked about something more meaningful than fashion shows for charity.

They didn’t talk like people who liked each other. Heck, they didn’t talk like people who even knew each other very well. And a lot of that had to be Jarrett. As much as Griff liked the old man, Jarrett was the patriarch. Jarrett was the alpha in this pack, and if dog eat dog was the rule here, well, Jarrett was the guy who made the rules.

It was kind of sad. Not that Griff’s own family life had been The Brady Bunch. But he liked to think that maybe somewhere outside of television there were families, even if the family was just two people, where trust and respect and liking was the rule not the exception.

He had hoped for that with Levi, and for a time it had seemed like maybe that might happen. But in the end, it turned out they didn’t like each other much. Which just went to prove that enjoying the same movies and same books and same music didn’t mean as much as you might expect.

Dessert was a coffee-flavored crème brûlée with a crackly brown sugar crust. It was served with some kind of wine called a sauterne. Griff rarely drank wine, but he had never had anything in that house that wasn’t delicious, so he went ahead and gave it a try. The sweet wine with its hint of vanilla and honey turned out to be a good match for the delicate and creamy dessert. Crazy to think these people ate like this all the time. No wonder they were divorced from reality. Had anyone here ever done without a meal?

Ring had probably done without a few meals. Maybe Michaela. She had a perpetually hungry look.

At last dinner was over and the Arlingtons adjourned to the drawing room for more bridge. Even Ring seemed okay with the idea of bridge, so maybe it was a match made in heaven.

Griff stopped Jarrett in the doorway. “Can I speak to you?”

Jarrett raised his brows. “Of course, my boy.”

As they stepped into the hall, Griff said, “I wanted to ask if it would be all right for me to take Gemma’s journal down to the cottage this evening.”

Jarrett looked relieved. What had he expected to hear? “Of course. Of course.”

“Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to read the whole thing in the amount of time I have.”

Jarrett repeated, “My boy, it’s a reasonable request. Come with me.”

Griff accompanied him down the long hall to the library. The walls were lined with gold-framed portraits, family portraits going by the physical resemblance of the subjects to each other.