Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery (24 page)

Mrs. Romano, on the other hand, seemed less delighted to see St. Just: perhaps wanting to be of use in catching whoever was responsible, but fearing—or so St. Just interpreted her nervousness— her son’s involvement. Had she or he any idea of the kind of money they would enjoy with Sir Adrian out of the way? Was it enough for Mrs. Romano herself to do the old man in?

Looking at her handsome, still-youthful face, he somehow didn’t feel money would be an overriding motive. Passion, yes. Killing to defend her young. That type of crime. Cold-blooded killing for money was a different crime, and a different type of murderer. Still, three hundred thousand pounds—a total of six, for both her and Paulo …

She looked at him warily. It was Watters who seemed to have something he wanted to get off his chest.

“Them boots,” he said. “I told that young copper, someone else used them boots of mine. Put them back wrong, too. He took ’em away. You want to see?”

More out of politeness than anything, for he had seen Sergeant Fear’s meticulous report on them boots, he followed Watters into a utilitarian mud-cum-storage room between the kitchen and the kitchen garden. Here among the raincoats, scarves, and assorted outdoor gear stood several well-worn pairs of green, black, and bright yellow wellies.

“I left them just here,” he said, pointing to an empty spot in the row of shoes, evidently a collection of paired sizes and colors that had gathered in no particular order over the years. “When I came to use them the next day, after Sir Adrian was killed, they was mixed in—tossed in, like—with the others. I would never of done that. Mrs. Romano is most particular. I put them boots away careful like and then the next day they was all tossed about.”

Watters peered up at him to make sure he was taking all of this in. St. Just nodded.

“Right there, they was.”

“Yes, Mr. Watters. That was really most helpful of you to notice that. It would seem whoever killed Sir Adrian borrowed your boots, to obscure his or her own tracks. The ice makes it impossible to say for certain who might have borrowed the boots, and there were no prints on them, but forensics are still running tests.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Watters, pleased at the acknowledgement of how he, single-handedly, was helping solve the case, but at the same time deeply affronted. “Pure evil, ’tis, whoever done that. Trying to make it look as if I had sommat to do wit’ it.”

“Or just finding the boots handy to cover their own shoeprints. You, yourself, heard or saw nothing on the night of either murder— leading up to either murder—that would help us?”

“I was snug at home, thank the Lord. Mrs. Romano didn’t hear nothing either, did you?” He turned to her. “Not until she found him, Sir Adrian. She ain’t been right since, have you, Mrs. R.?”

“For the love of God, Watters. Do be quiet.”

“Yes, well, thank you so much, Mr. Watters. I can’t tell you what it means to us to have the active cooperation of the public. If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll have a word with Mrs. Romano alone.”

It took Watters a moment to realize he was being asked to leave.

“She had nothing to do with it, no more than I done,” he said.

“I just have a few questions. Mrs. Romano was in the house more often than you were.”

While that was patently untrue—from what he could tell, Watters spent most of his time hanging about the kitchen—the old man gathered his things and with a supportive little wave at Mrs. Romano, took his leave.

“He means well, Inspector. And it was a nasty trick to try to involve him, whoever did this. Watters wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

He had to agree, it was difficult to picture Watters worked up to a murderous fury. He sat down in Watters’ place across the table and regarded her.

“You’d worked for him a long time, Sir Adrian, hadn’t you?”

“I knew him for years. Decades. I never thought I would live to have such a shock, finding him like I did. Poor man, he did not deserve this. No one does. Ruthven, either. Whoever did this is wicked and cruel. I will not believe …”

She stopped, evidently fighting back tears, her mouth working.

“Not believe what, Mrs. Romano?” he asked gently, willing her to look up from the tea cup that held her enthralled.

She raised her fine eyes to look at him squarely.

“I’ll not believe any of them did this,” she said evenly. “It’s monstrous. Cold-blooded. And what did it gain them? He was an old man; he would have died soon enough, anyway.”

“Maybe someone just couldn’t wait.”

She nodded. Clearly she had been thinking along the same lines.

“Were you aware that both you and your son were mentioned in the will?”

“Paulo? Paulo, as well? No. No, I had no idea, no expectations. Not for either of us. That would have been wrong, to even think of it. Paulo had no idea either,” she added, staring at him unblinkingly, willing him to believe.

“Three hundred thousand pounds. Each.”

“
Buon Dio
.” Her hand flew to her heart. “
No
.”

“Not as much as was left to his family, of course.”

“Of course,” she said hastily. “Of course. Of course not. Three hundred thousand? Six hundred thousand for us? Are you sure?”

“He was a wealthy man, Sir Adrian.”

“Wealthy.
Sì
,” she said. “In some ways. He had so much, but … Inspector, I have something to ask of you.”

“Go on.”

“I would ask you this: Do not tell Paulo about this money. Money like that, it can ruin a man, but especially—Let me be the one to tell him.”

Nodding, not even knowing why, St. Just saw no harm in agreeing.

As if making the decision as she spoke, she said slowly:

“I will return to my country. Sir Adrian, he must have known: That is what I most wanted. To be with my family, to live my old age where it is warm.”

She might have been speaking of her people or the weather. As he watched, the tears in her large almond-shaped eyes escaped. She made no attempt to wipe them away, crying as openly as a child.

She turned away toward the kitchen window. Outside was the iced-over garden, fallow until spring. Suddenly, everything around her seemed foreign; Sir Adrian had been the only anchor holding her here. She thought of her pre-Paulo days and traveled in her mind the long road back to where she had met her feckless young husband: he a handsome footman with big dreams, she a girl in service. It was he who had convinced her to move south to Cambridge, believing it would be warmer.
Sciocco
, she thought, fondly.

“God rest his soul,” she said.

St. Just assumed she was still speaking of Sir Adrian. It was the first time he’d heard him spoken of with affection.

He found Paulo nearby in the butler’s pantry, to which Mrs. Romano, now dabbing her eyes with a dish towel, had reluctantly directed him. The pantry lay just inside the brass-studded baize doors that led into the servants’ quarters. It was a large room that seemed to serve as both a supply area and Paulo’s personal sitting room, the furniture a mismatched jumble apparently accumulated at random over the years. Two plump armchairs in clashing plaids were drawn up close to the hearth. On a side table lay a stack of magazines, largely concerned with the opposing worlds of women and rugby.

Paulo was in mufti: artfully torn jeans and a Stanley Kowalski T-shirt. He gazed up out of doe’s eyes as beautiful and long-lashed as his mother’s. He struck St. Just as one of those men who had little use for other men and was fully aware of the effect he had on women (unlike St. Just, who was always taken aback). Still, he was friendly enough as he offered the policeman a drink.

“Whiskey, if you have it.”

“We have everything you could want in this house,” said Paulo.

“And more in the cellars besides?”

St. Just could almost hear Paulo’s brain whirring as he parsed the remark for hidden implications.

“Frightful, it was, what happened to Mr. Beauclerk-Fisk. To both of them.”

“Yes. About that cellar,” said St. Just, accepting the glass which Paulo now reluctantly handed him. “I’ve been wondering how a man in Sir Adrian’s condition could have managed those stairs.”

Paulo weighed loyalty to his former employer against the unwanted scrutiny of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, with whom he wanted no repeat dealings. Common sense and a strong sense of self-preservation tipped the scales. No contest: After all, the old man was dead now. Dropping the accent he normally assumed for his role as butler, he continued in his more normal mode of speech, a match for his street clothes.

“He asked me to start hiding this book he was working on down the cellar, a bit at a time,” said Paulo, settling back in his chair. “It was the only place he could think to hide it where his snoopy family might not trip over it somehow.”

“When was the last time you were down there?”

“The day before Ruthven was killed. Honest. Look, I don’t want trouble; it’s not as if there was anything wrong in it. Sir Adrian, he’d give me the pages, a handful at a time, like I said. You’d think I was transporting diamonds, the way he carried on about it. ‘Don’t lose a page. One page missing, it’s the end of you,’ stuff like that.

Tell me to hide them down there, he would—add them to the stack already there, and be careful to keep them in order. The night Ruthven was killed, I started to go down very early in the morning, when I thought they would all be asleep, like. I hadn’t counted on Albert. There he was, in the middle of the bloody night, stumbling down the stairs. I guess headed to the cellar. Because not long after that, he started the holy hubbub about finding his brother.”

“We haven’t found any manuscript down there, and the room’s been sealed since the crime.”

“Well, then, I figure Sir Adrian, he hadn’t counted on that Albert. Said, ‘Albert won’t find it if you put it in with the beer; he always drinks up all the good stuff when he’s home.’ So smart, he’d cut himself, that was Sir Adrian. Thought he knew them all so well. He hadn’t counted on Ruthven, either. That one would move heaven and earth to know what the old man was up to.”

He leaned forward confidingly.

“I can tell you this. Them two were plotting. Or, more exact-like, Ruthven wanted Albert to go to Violet—threaten her—with what Ruthven had dug up on her. Albert wouldn’t have no part of it. They fought. I heard them—just happened to hear them.”

More likely, eavesdropped until he heard them. Still, St. Just didn’t care how he came by his information. Eavesdroppers were always useful.

“And what else?”

“That’s all I heard. Albert, he blew him up; said Ruthven could do his own dirty work or get his men to do it for him.”

“And the manuscript? What was that about?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I? I reckon the old man trusted me with it because he figured I wouldn’t bother reading the thing. Even if I could of made it out, which I couldn’t.”

“You did try, then?”

“Well, sure, all right. I was curious. But there was no hope. I’m what they nowadays call dyslexic anyway, but a genius couldn’t read that scratch. So I just did like he told me. Every day or so, I’d collect more pages, and take them down there to hide. If they’re missing I don’t know bollocks about it. But you’d do well to ask that Albert. Or that Jeffrey bloke. He’d know, you mark my words.”

“Thank you, Paulo,” he said, putting aside his glass and rising. “What excellent advice I am getting on this case. I think I’ll do just that.”

FINE PRINT

_______________________

“I HAVEN’T SEEN THE
current manuscript in several weeks, Inspector. I’ve just kept busy updating files, answering correspondence, and so on. I did rather start to wonder …”

He spoke in a flat American accent reminiscent of a young Jimmy Stewart talking to his horse, but with twice the animation. St. Just found himself leaning forward as he listened, wishing for sub-titles, as he often did during American films. Fear, who had caught up with St. Just in the garden after his interview with Paulo, edged his chair closer.

Looking around Jeffrey’s flat, St. Just said, “This is quite a nice arrangement. Self-contained, I see, and separate from the house, so you have some privacy.”

“Yes, I must say, I’m pleased as punch about the arrangements.” He hesitated, unsure whether “pleased as punch” were a British or American saying. Was it perhaps, “pleased as Punch?” It was important that the Inspector understand him completely. Hands across the water, and all that.

“I’m very pleased with the arrangements,” he amended. “Very, very pleased indeed.”

“Good. Now, about this latest book of his …”

“I only saw the very early chapters, you understand. But I can tell you that it was different from the others.”

“How, different?”

Jeffrey squinted, diving into deep thought. After a moment he said:

“Better, for one thing. His books tended to be very plot-driven, low on characterization. He was often accused by the critics of using cardboard figures. They were right about that. Stick figures. You know, the absent-minded cleric—often the murderer—the sharp-eyed but sympathetic parson’s wife, the horsy county matron, the pukka sahib Colonel, all the rest. They were quite interchangeable, these characters, from book to book. This time was … different. It was almost as if he were describing real people. Which he wouldn’t have done,” Jeffrey added hastily. “Much too careful about being sued, was Sir Adrian.”