A Will To Murder (33 page)

Hamilton continued.  “Richie scattered the toy soldiers as he fell over the side.  Jac went downstairs, found a stone, and arranged both stone and boy so it would look like her son had hit his head after falling.  Then she went back to the carriage house.”

“Was he--dead by this time?” Rose asked.

“The blow knocked him unconscious, Mrs. Cummings, but the fall killed him.  His neck was broken.  Willowby didn’t hear any noise, and suspected nothing.  Jac wasn’t carrying the wrench when she appeared at the carriage house, so she must have hidden it temporarily.  The chauffeur told her that he was frightened about Lance’s murder, saying it was one too many, but Jac only scoffed.  She insisted they take a drive to talk things over.  Jac had a bottle of whiskey with her, and offered him some.  Willowby didn’t suspect it was drugged, and drank several swallows.  Then he asked why she didn’t have a drink as well, but she replied, ‘I’m driving, remember.’  They went up an abandoned logging road and had sex in the car.  At some point while dressing, Jac slipped the fake suicide note into his pocket.  Foolishly, she made another mistake.  Her fingerprints were on the suicide note, and Willowby’s were not.  This is how the police confirmed the chauffeur’s statement.”

“Sloppy,” said Mrs. Marshpool, “but not surprising.  She failed to get the right set of fingerprints on a necklace, once.”  

Hamilton waited, but the housekeeper added nothing more.  So the lawyer continued.  “In the car, Willowby asked Jac whether Colette and Katherine’s deaths were natural or not, and she explained how she had killed them.  The chauffeur told her he was too frightened about the police to return to Rollingwood.  Jac said she’d tell everybody he’d taken a leave of absence like Sheila, and offered to let him hide out at a cabin owned by a friend of hers.  The cabin wasn’t far, and he could walk there.  Jac told him the directions, but of course the cabin didn’t exist.  Willowby says he was pretty drunk by this time and didn’t sense that Jac was trying to kill him, too.  She dropped him off and drove away, and Willowby passed out after walking half a mile.  Of course he was far from any road, and ought to have died before he was found.  

“Jac returned to Rollingwood and put the bloody wrench in the carriage house.  Since it was Willowby’s, it already bore his fingerprints.  Then she drove into Chichiteaux and bought her supplies at a drugstore, being careful to tell the clerk that she had just spent an hour at the discount warehouse and was disgusted because they didn’t carry what she needed.  She appears to have chucked the surgical gloves out of the car window during the drive.  After that, Jac returned to Rollingwood and called you in apparent panic.”

“Didn’t she say anything?” Rose asked urgently.

“Ma’am?” asked Hamilton.

“Anything at all about Richie?”

Hamilton looked uncomfortable. “Ma’am,” he replied slowly.  “All your sister said was that she wished her son to be buried in a good suit.  She did not want people to think she was without class.”

Rose dropped her face into a tissue.  Bert’s expression was nauseated.

“She was an unmitigated narcissist,” said Armagnac flatly.  “Father would never face it, though.  Once, she got caught shoplifting jewelry and spent a few days in jail, and Father was sure she was innocent.”

“I never heard she went to jail,” said Bert, glancing at his wife.  

“Rosey never liked to think anything was wrong with her sister, just like Father,” said Armagnac sarcastically.  Rose’s face was flushed, but she did not reply.

“Then there was the boyfriend with the bloody head wound,” Boyle continued.

“What!?” exclaimed Hamilton.  

Armagnac smiled unpleasantly at the lawyer.  “Father must not have told you about that one.  A boy she dated in high school, Adam Mayfield, tried to break up with her.  Jac was livid, for nobody dumps Jac.  He was found unconscious in the forest from a blow to the head.  Adam didn’t press charges.  Father, of course, believed Jac’s denials, but I knew she did it.”

“Why didn’t she wack this fellow Irv if she had that kind of guts?” Bert asked.

Hamilton laughed slightly.  “You don’t assassinate a man like Irving Moore.  His business associates, if I may call them that, would only have appeared to collect the debt in his place, and then killed her afterwards.  But we still can’t explain one thing.  James’ dressing gown had been slashed.  Neither Jac nor Willowby admits doing it, and the children were puzzled when we mentioned it to them.”

“That was me,” said Armagnac slowly.  “Father and I had quarreled, and I was in such a rage that I shredded his bathrobe afterwards.  It was about my allowance, and Letitia.  He had cut off the former because he had learned about my um, close friendship with the latter.  Jac, damn her, told him.”  

“Mr. James Boyle could be quite unreasonable,” said the housekeeper, “and Mrs. Salisbury knew how to take advantage of his temper.  She was trying to get Armagnac disinherited.”  

“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain this to the police, Mr. Boyle,” said Hamilton.

“Fuck ‘em,” replied Boyle.  “I will not.  They haven’t done anything except stand around while my relatives get killed.”

“Escott says that Douthit and Linzy Fowler caused most of their trouble.  You have to admit that your mortician did mislead the police.”

“Bullshit,” Armagnac replied.  “The whole town knows Douthit’s a fool, and Jac knew it, too.  She would never have tried to kill that many people otherwise.  Christ, she even fed Douthit his diagnosis about Colette.  I remember her hinting him along on the phone, but I didn’t realize what she was doing.  The police should have suspected murder after my aunt’s death, at least.  So what about Fowler?” he added darkly.  “How did he contribute to the general incompetence?”

“His brother Floyd had a partnership with Irv, and the D.A. had been trying to get him to drop the connection.  Floyd, I understand, is stupid and easily impressed.  Linzy had been taping Irv’s conversations, but didn’t know Jac was anything except a debtor to Irv--and a girlfriend.  Because of his brother, Linzy had avoided arresting Moore, though he had plenty of evidence of Irv’s ill-doings.  If Moore had been in jail where he belonged, he couldn’t have pressured Jac for money.  My suspicion is that when the D.A. heard about the deaths at Rollingwood, he immediately guessed that Jac might be involved.  Yet he hesitated to act.  Now Linzy’s been forced to turn his brother’s case over to another prosecutor and Floyd’s being charged with attempted murder.”

“What’s going to happen to Heydrick?” Bert asked.

“Linzy’s dropping charges against him in exchange for his testimony against Willowby and Jac.”  

The front door opened, and everyone startled.  It was Phil, holding Briarly’s hand.  The girl looked awful, with tear tracks on her face, and Bert was glad that he had refused to let Arthur stay and listen to the lawyer.  He felt terrible for the girl.  

“Glad to see you,” Cummings said to Phil, and shook his hand.  Rose put her arms around her brother-in-law and her niece.  

“How--,” said Rose to Phil, nodding slightly to Briarly.

“Badly,” Phil said.  “It was a shock to me, too.  I thought I knew my wife.”

“Bert,” said Rose.  “I need to stay with Briarly for a while.  Could you go talk to Arthur?”

After Hamilton left, Bert climbed the stairs to his bedroom.  “What did the lawyer say?” Arthur asked.

Cummings sat down and gave a very abbreviated account, and Arthur began to cry when he heard about his Aunt Jac.  “I would have given her my penny if she needed money,” said the boy tearfully.  

“Kid, that’s a noble thought, but it’s just wrong.  Jac would only have gotten into debt again.  She was addicted to gambling like someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs.  She would have killed her father eventually, even if you had given her your penny.”

“No!” the boy wailed.

“Yes,” said Bert firmly.  “Jac had been thinking about killing one of her own family even before her father’s death, because she had taken out those life insurance policies.”

“No,” Arthur insisted, shaking his head.  “She was nice to me.”

“Your aunt was nice to you because it helped her manipulate you.  You say you would have given her your penny.  That only shows how easily she could have obtained it, if she’d simply thought to ask you for it.  You got the nice treatment because you weren’t her kid.  Briarly and Richie received different, and you could tell what it was by the way they were terrified of her.  Your aunt was an evil woman, and Phil and Briarly are better off without her.”  

“No,” the boy protested, though with less passion.  

“Kid, I know you don’t want to believe it, but sometimes people are just bad, and sometimes they’re the ones you like a lot.”  Arthur began to cry hard, and Bert stopped talking to comfort him.

Chapter 19

“It says here that Linzy Fowler’s promised a press conference this afternoon,” said Bert, reading from the newspaper the next day.  His wife ignored him.  A car was coming up the front driveway of Rollingwood, and Rose was watching it through the window.  Smith had taken Bernie and Arthur out to breakfast, and the trio had been gone nearly three hours.  Rose was feeling jumpy about her son.  Hamilton had just arrived a few minutes ago, and was waiting for Bradley as well.   

Mrs. Marshpool, commanded by Armagnac to defend the house against all proles, was guarding the front gate after having chained it shut.  Eric was talking on the phone to Wendy.  This time, though, his face was far more troubled than it had been during any of his previous conversations with her.

“Oh, there they are,” Rose said.  The borrowed Honda was coming to a stop.  “What took them so long?  I thought Bradley said they were only going to the pet store after breakfast.”

These innocuous little words made Bert fly off the couch, and Cummings threw aside the curtain in horror.  Arthur and Bernie were stepping out of the Honda, and Bradley was removing a large cage from the back.  Arthur was running circles around Bradley as Smith carried the heavy cage up to the front door.  

“Look what he got me!  Look what he got me!” Arthur screamed.  “He got me Flopsy and Mopsy!”  

Bradley held the cage up for everyone’s inspection, and looked pleased with himself.  Inside were two live rabbits.

“Great,” Bert groaned.  “The two hundred bucks we inherited will have to go for neutering and vaccinating those fucking rabbits.”

“The white one is Flopsy,” Arthur hyperventilated to his parents, “and the black one with the white-tipped ears is Mopsy.”  

“Oh, how nice,” Rose cooed.  Bert’s seasick face said all that was necessary for him.

Bradley put the cage down, and he and Bernie retrieved the three cats from the car.  Purrball and Muffin endured Bernie’s arms with good manners, but Bradley was having trouble with the squirming ginger.  “He kept trying to bat at those poor little rabbits in their cage all the way home.  He’s obviously picked up some bad habits from his former owner, Irv,” Smith said.  “Bad kitty.”

He and Bernie swept past.  They were followed by Rose with the rabbit cage, shrilling in a motherly way over the contents.  Arthur paused by his father’s stomach to yell, “They had littler rabbits but Bradley thought they might be too hard for me to take care of.”

“Nice that Bradley had some consideration for me,” groaned Bert.  “Like offering lethal injection instead of hanging.”  

Rose set the cage on the summer room table, Arthur bouncing excitedly next to her.  “Thank you so much,” Rose said to her cousin.  

Bradley shrugged.  “I thought he needed cheering up.”   

“Mr. Smith,” Hamilton interrupted, “I need to speak to you about the Boyle trust.  I should have discussed it earlier, but I've been far too busy.”

“Anyone would have been.  But why do you need to talk to me?”

“James Boyle had arranged for the disposal of the family trust after what he assumed would be many more years of support for his sister Katherine.  He had intended the details of this to come out during the will reading, but Mrs. Salisbury’s fit of temper interrupted us.  Mr. Boyle had provided for a second beneficiary after his sister.  Namely, you.”

Bradley blinked politely at the lawyer, petting his ginger cat.

“You’ve inherited all the money!” Bernie hissed.

“Me?” said Smith, surprised.

Hamilton nodded.  “You can’t spend the money inside the trust, but you’ll receive an allowance from it.”

“Why Bradley?” Cummings asked, ignoring the shushing motion from his wife.

“James Boyle arranged this in recognition of the fact that of all his relatives, Mr. Smith was the only one who had a job.”

“Hey, I tried to get a paper route, but they said I was too young,” said Arthur.

“Kid, you got a coin, okay?” his father growled.

“But who do you plan to leave your money to?” Armagnac asked ingratiatingly.  Everyone startled.  No one had seen Boyle sneak out of the library and enter the summer room.

Bradley was still petting his ginger cat.  “Well, I can’t leave my kitties poor, can I?”     

Ghastly expressions flowered around the room.  “You’d leave the trust to your cats?”  Armagnac gaped.

“Why not?”

Boyle wobbled as if considering a faint, and moaned, “At least the public doesn’t know the details of what’s been happening here.”

“Not for long,” said Smith.  “Eric was phoning in a feature story about the murders this morning.”

Boyle stamped off to the library, crying, “What was wrong with that blasted Irv’s aim?!”

Bradley shook his head.  “Goofball.  Why was he so upset?  Even I know kitties don’t need that much money.  They’ll do all right on a few hundred thou or so.  I can leave a little bit to other people, after I pay my fines and stuff.  Those creeps at the FAA are getting me for everything--flying without a license, failure to have charts, failure to obtain information about my destination before flying--as if I had a destination picked out, for God’s sake.  And the stupid airport claims I owe them for a hanger.  By the way, where’s Eric?  I hear his voice.”

“He’s on the phone,” Bert said. “I suppose we’ll see you two again when the trial starts.  Nice place to meet, huh?  Start packing, kid.  We’re going home.”