Joan Wolf (37 page)

Adam gave me a crooked smile. “I was very careful to provide you with bills for all of my purchases, Annabelle.”

Stephen said to me, “There is nothing wrong with your books, Annabelle. There is always a bill to back up an expenditure; everything is neatly recorded and balanced.” He looked back to Adam. “It is only when one starts to make inquiries about the veracity of the bills that things begin to come apart. I made a number of such inquiries in Brighton, Uncle Adam, at a few of the shops which supply food to Weston. Their records of the amounts they sold to
us were considerably lower than the amounts recorded in Annabelle’s books.”

“The sugar!” I exclaimed suddenly. “I always wondered how we could consume so much sugar!”

“I regularly doubled the sugar bill,” Adam said. At this point he was looking exhausted.

The sheer audacity of the scheme took my breath away.

Adam said slowly, “I can’t help wondering, Stephen, what it was that put you on to me. It was clear as can be that from the moment you first picked up my books you were looking for something. What was it that raised your suspicion?”

“I told you; it was the storm,” Stephen said.

But Adam shook his head. “You were looking for embezzlement before the storm hit, my boy.”

Stephen picked up a silver letter opener from the desk and balanced the length of it between his fingers. “That is true,” he admitted.

“Why? “ Adam demanded. “As you yourself just said, by themselves the books are perfectly in balance.”

Stephen’s grave blue eyes regarded Adam from across the barrier he had made of the letter opener. “ It just seemed so odd to me that Gerald would name me and not you to be Giles’s guardian,” he said quietly. “The only explanation I could imagine was that Gerald suspected something was wrong with the way you were handling the estate.”

Adam’s travesty of a laugh made me wince. “Now there’s an irony worthy of a Greek dramatist,” he said. “Is that really the reason you suspected my bookkeeping? “

Stephen lowered the letter opener until it hovered only a few inches above the top of the desk. “You must admit that Gerald and I were hardly the closest of brothers.”

“Oh God,” Adam said. He rested his gray blond head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes. “He didn’t name me, Stephen, because it would never have occurred to Gerald to name his
agent
to be his son’s guardian. That is all that was involved in that decision.”

He looked so old, so tired, so... defeated. I heard myself saying, “I’m sorry, Uncle Adam.” And, strangely enough, I
was
sorry. Sorry for what he had done and sorry that he had felt compelled to do it. Most of all, I was sorry for all the years of liking and trust that had been destroyed today by Stephen’s disclosure.

But Uncle Adam’s embezzlement was only the tip of the iceberg. The other person Stephen and I had summoned to meet us in the library today was infinitely more dangerous than poor Uncle Adam. The person we were awaiting now was not an embezzler, but a killer.

“What are you going to do with me?” Adam asked Stephen.

The library door began to open.

“Wait,” said Stephen, “and see.”

The door swung open all the way, and Jack stood upon the threshold. From Jack’s place in the doorway, Uncle Adam would be completely hidden by the wing chair in which he was sitting.

“Annabelle,” Jack said with pleasure, and began to advance into the room.

* * * *

“What the devil are you doing here, Jack?” I said crossly.

He halted in surprise, but by now he was abreast of Adam’s wing chair.

“Oh, I say, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t see you, Adam. I was just going to talk to Annabelle about an idea I had for the new stud farm.” He looked at me. “I’ll see you later, shall I?”

He went quiet as he realized that both Stephen and I were staring past him at the next person who had appeared in the doorway.

“Come in, Jasper, and close the door behind you,” Stephen said. He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the desk from him. “We need to have a talk.”

Jack backed slowly up to the wall, leaned his shoulders against, it, folded his arms, and prepared to stay.

“Jasper, my boy,” Adam said heartily.

Jasper came forward, his bearing military straight. “Are we having a family conference?” he said lightly, but his gray eyes, so like his father’s, looked wary.

When Stephen did not immediately reply, I said rashly, “We are gathered here to discover which one of us has been trying to kill Stephen.”

The silence in the room was nerve-racking.

Adam broke it, saying quietly, “Are you saying that you have reason to believe it is one of us?”

“Yes, Uncle Adam,” I said. “That is what I am saying.”

Adam’s eyes moved from my face, to Stephen’s, to
Jasper’s, until they finally came to rest upon Jack. He said, “If someone in this room is truly guilty of such a terrible thing, Annabelle, it is Jack who has the most compelling motive.”

Jack’s face was impassive; he said nothing.

“If something happened to Stephen and Giles, he would be the next earl,” Adam continued. “That is a powerful motive indeed. Especially for someone as purse-pinched as Jack is.”

Stephen spoke quietly. “I do not think that the attacks have been directed against Giles. He was involved only because on two of those occasions he happened to be with me.”

Jack spoke from his post along the wall. “Killing Stephen and not Giles wouldn’t do me any good at all.”

“How do you know the attacks weren’t aimed at Giles?” Jasper asked suddenly. “Rigging the boat had to be aimed at him. Giles is the one who has been fishing all summer long.”

Stephen carefully placed the letter opener he had been holding back on the polished mahogany wood of the desk. He said, “I know because when the shooter in the woods missed me, he didn’t follow up his advantage by coming after me to try again. He didn’t want to risk being seen by Giles because he didn’t want to have to kill the child.”

“He may not have come after you because he thought you had a gun,” Jasper said.

“Everyone in this room knows very well that I never go out with a gun,” Stephen returned.

Jasper shifted on his feet impatiently. “You say you can name this would-be killer, Stephen. Well, I for one would like to know how you plan to do this. Do you have any evidence that would point to a person in this room attempting premeditated murder, as opposed to some poacher taking an accidental shot at the wrong target? “

“Yes,” Stephen said. “I do.”

Someone’s breath hissed audibly. Adam came to attention in his chair. “What is this evidence?” he asked crisply.

“Jem found it on the path near where I had left Magpie,” Stephen said. “Someone dropped it while he was loosening
the girth on Magpie’s saddle. When Jem showed it to me I recognized it immediately.” His blue eyes met the gray gaze that was waiting for him on the other side of the desk. “It was a cavalry glove, Jasper. One of a pair I’ve seen you wear many times.”

Jasper’s eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say a word, Adam cut in.

“I was the one who loosened the horse’s girth, Stephen. Jasper had left his gloves in the stable, and I picked them up there, intending to give them to him when next I saw him. One of them must have fallen out of my pocket.”

“Papa, stop talking!”
Jasper hissed furiously.

Adam looked at his son. “I am sorry to have embroiled you in this business, Jasper,” he said. “But you see, Stephen has discovered that I have been embezzling from the estate. I knew he was on to me, and I wanted to stop him.”

Jasper’s face was a mask of white rage. “Papa, will you please just
stop talking!
There were no cavalry gloves near Magpie! Stephen is trying to trick you!”

Jack said in a measured tone, “How do you know that there were no cavalry gloves near Magpie, Jasper?”

Jasper gave him a hard stare and did not reply.

Jack went on, “Is it because you know that you were not wearing cavalry gloves that day? “

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jasper said contemptuously. “What would I have to gain by killing Stephen?”

“You knew your father was embezzling from the estate,” Stephen said. “You didn’t believe that story about your mother’s rich cousin any more than I did. You were afraid I was going to discover Adam’s fraud, and that is why you tried to kill me.”

“That is ridiculous,” Jasper said. He looked at me. “Surely
you
don’t believe this malicious fairy tale, Annabelle?”

I said, “It is extremely painful for me to believe such a thing, Jasper, but someone is most certainly trying to kill
Stephen, and it has become increasingly clear that the person must be someone residing within this household,”

“And you have come to the conclusion that this someone must be me.” Jasper’s voice was indescribably bitter.

Adam said, “Of course it is not you, Jasper. I have already said that I am the guilty party. I saw ruin staring me in the face, and I acted to prevent it.” He looked at Stephen. “I am very sorry, my boy, but there it is.”

“I am sorry, too, Uncle Adam,” Stephen said.

Jasper said in a hard voice, “You know very well that my father did not try to kill you, Stephen.”

Stephen said, “He has just confessed.”

Jasper looked at his father. “You should never have jumped at the bait of those cavalry gloves, Papa. Stephen tricked you. There is no proof.” He turned back to Stephen. “Is there, Stephen?”

Stephen’s face did not change expression, but I could see the muscles tense beneath his deeply tanned skin. “No,” he said, “there is no proof.”

“I am responsible, of course,” Jasper said. “Once you started digging into Papa’s books, I knew the game was up.”

“Don’t listen to him, Stephen—” Adam began.

“Enough,
Papa,” Jasper said. His eyes no longer looked contemptuous or even angry; instead they looked as cold and bleak as a winter sky.

Adam took one look at his son’s face and fell silent.

I looked around the room, at the beloved faces I had known since childhood. I think it was then that the reality of what was happening finally registered in my brain.

Jasper had tried to kill Stephen.

“How could you, Jasper?” I whispered, staring at him in undisguised horror. “How could you even think of such a thing?”

The merciless face that looked back at me was the face of a stranger. It was the sort of face a man might carry into battle, I thought, and it came to me then that killing was not as foreign to Jasper as it was to the rest of us.

It was Jack’s voice that broke the sudden silence. “I
don’t imagine it was just Adam’s peccadilloes that spurred you on, was it, Jasper?”

For the space of several charged seconds, the eyes of the two cousins met across half the width of the room.

“You poor, besotted devil,” Jack said, and to my stunned amazement he sounded as if he truly meant it.

I said, “What on earth are you talking about, Jack? Jasper tried to kill Stephen!”

No one answered me, but Stephen got up and came around to stand behind my chair, as if he were getting into position to protect me.

Jack pushed his shoulders away from the wall. “It is really very simple, my dear Annabelle. If Stephen were to die, Jasper knew he could count on becoming your next husband.”

I looked from Jack, to Jasper’s hard, closed face, and then back again to Jack. “Why on earth would he think that?” I asked in bewilderment.

Jack ambled slowly toward Stephen’s now empty chair. “Because he knows you, Annabelle—as I know you. You would inevitably marry again, if only for the reason that you would want more children. With Stephen and Gerald gone, that would leave Jasper and me as the only remaining candidates for your hand. And as I have found someone else, the road would be wide open for Jasper.”

Jack lowered himself with loose-limbed ease into Stephen’s empty chair.

“What would stop me from marrying someone else altogether?” I demanded.

Very slowly Jack shook his head. “Not you, Annabelle,” he said. “Not you.”

It didn’t take me long to recognize that Jack was right. Under the circumstances he had just described, I would most probably have ended up married to Jasper.

Jack said, “You would want to marry someone who was connected to Stephen; and Jasper, poor bastard, would end up living the rest of his life in a losing competition with a ghost.”

Jack’s professed sympathy for Jasper was making me angry. “He would have had my money!” I retorted.

Jack gave me his attractive, crooked smile. “Annabelle, darling, I can assure you that no one in this room is interested in your money.”

Stephen’s thin, strong hands closed reassuringly on my shoulders. “That’s enough, Jack,” he said softly.

Jack picked up the paper knife that Stephen had discarded earlier. The light from the window fell slantingly onto his hair, giving him an almost uncanny resemblance to Gerald. He said to Stephen, “Gerald did love her, you know, but she never even noticed. She only married him to punish you.”

Stephen must have felt the tension in my shoulders, for he said again, “That’s enough, Jack.” This time his voice was crisply authoritative, and Jack fell silent.

Stephen went on, “It is ridiculous to blame Annabelle for Jasper’s murder attempts, and you know it. He is a grown man, and his decisions are his responsibility, no one else’s.”

I stared intently at the small Chinese vase filled with tiny white roses, which was set on the far side of the desk directly opposite my chair. Stephen’s thumbs rested on the bare nape of my neck, and the rest of his fingers were spread out, fan-wise, across my shoulders. He said to Jack, “If you must assign blame for Jasper’s cold-bloodedness, then blame the war, not Annabelle.”

My head came up as I heard him echo my own thought of a few moments before.

Jack looked up at the sharp letter opener he still held between his fingers. He said, “There is that, of course.”

Jasper spoke at last, his voice hard and tight. “Are you going to have me arrested?”

With difficulty, I brought myself to look at him. “Did you sabotage that boat, Jasper? “