Murder at Beechwood (11 page)

Turning away, I moved to the helm and placed both hands on the wheel. One question I hadn't asked yet was if Virgil had been holding on with two hands, how much force it would have taken to dislodge his grip and send him overboard. My back still to Neily, I started to do just that when I heard a grunt and a thud.

“Neily?” Before I could turn around, hands encircled my neck. Fingers wrapped around my throat, followed by something rougher, harsher.

Rope. Tightening, squeezing. I flailed my arms, trying to reach behind me. My throat closed and the night turned blacker. Screams ripped through the air, not my own but from somewhere far off, strange and echoing....

 

Consciousness exploded into a thousand watery shards. Bitter salt flowed into my mouth, my throat; I bobbed and coughed and thrashed. The salty sting blinded me as a shattered blur of dim light and inky blackness shot terror through me. My ears filled and the brine enveloped me whole. I kicked and struggled, my body weighted, legs tangling, arms grasping at nothing. The world slipped around me as I sank....

I fought back, and a burst of air knifed my lungs. I tried to scream, but only a rusty groan emerged through the sandpaper coating my throat. I went under again, knowing I must make myself heard; knowing I'd die otherwise.

Something solid struck my shoulder. Immediately I twisted and found it with my hands. A piling. I wrapped both arms around it and tipped my head back as far as it would go, until my lips and nose inched above the waterline. The air stung going in, but I sucked greedily, desperately, and clung to a single thought, only one: Stay alive.

Those screams I had heard reached my ears again. Now they formed my name and I recognized Grace's voice. Footsteps shook the pier. Two pairs, one clattering and light, the other heavy, clunking over the boards and making the piling tremble against my ribs. I tried to call out but again my voice emerged like an unused hinge.

A pair of hands thrust beneath my shoulders and tugged, hurting me, threatening to rip my arms from their sockets. I didn't resist but kicked against the water to propel myself upward. The harbor and my soaked skirts warred with our efforts, but those determined hands won out, hauling me up and over the side of the pier. The rough edges of the boards scraped cruelly against my hip bones, thighs, and knees, but again I didn't resist, almost welcomed the pain as a sign I lived, that my end would not come at the bottom of the bay.

My body convulsed, sending me onto my side in a fit of coughing and retching that purged the water from my body. The force of it all but turned me inside out, rent me in two, and seemed to go on forever.

And then I lay on my back with the night sky arcing above me and the water pouring from my clothes to soak the boards beneath me. My lungs heaved and clawed with every breath. My mouth and throat burned. Beyond that, numbness claimed me, and even my brain swam in a sea so devoid of thought even my terror flowed gently away. That was, until Grace sank to her knees beside me and seized my hand. Her cheek fell against my shoulder, and she sobbed and shook and for some reason repeated over and over again how sorry she was. Her own horror filled me, reminding me how close I had come to never gazing up at the stars again.

It was the night watchman who finally lifted Grace from me. His concerned face blocked the sky from my vision, and he asked me if I knew my name.

As good a question as any, I supposed, in the process of reclaiming one's life.

“I'm Emmaline Cross,” I rasped out. “Emma.”

“Oh, thank God above.” Still kneeling on the pier, Grace lifted her hands to her face and cried into her palms. Neily crouched beside her and reached for my hand.

“Emmaline . . . Are you all right? Can you sit up?” His words slurred slightly, and suddenly I remembered the thud I had heard right before the rope—or whatever it had been—tightened around my throat.

I freed my hand from his and pushed against the pier in an effort to sit up. Water poured off me in rivulets. “I believe so. . . .”

Neily gently grasped both my hands. In a moment I was upright. Boats, sky, and water tipped dizzily, then righted themselves. My hand went to my throat as I tried to swallow away the lingering pain. “What happened?”

“As near as I can tell, someone crept out of the hold and knocked me on the head from behind.” As he spoke Neily shrugged out of his suit coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. I shivered violently, though not so much from cold as from shock and fright.

“Neily was coming to as the watchman and I came running back down the pier,” Grace blurted. “Oh, Emma, I'm so sorry!”

I shook my head, as much to clear it of its remaining fog as to show my puzzlement. “Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because I walked away.” Her eyes glittered with tears. “I grew bored while you and Neily examined the
Vigilant.
I was looking at the other boats closer to the clubhouse. If not for that . . .”

“If not for that, you might not have brought the watchman . . . Mr. . . . ?”

“Dawson,” the man supplied.

“You wouldn't have brought Mr. Dawson as quickly as you did, Grace. And then I might be—”

“Don't say it.” She clenched her fists. “Do not!”

“Let's get Emmaline inside,” Neily suggested, and helped me to stand. My legs shook and threatened to give way. Neily held me about the waist while Grace moved to my other side and did likewise. With the two of them supporting me and Mr. Dawson taking up the rear, we made our way down the pier and into the clubhouse.

“Good heavens!” a man bellowed at our entrance. Other voices chimed in. There were gasps and soft cries from the women. “Did the lady fall in?”

Grace waved away the questions as she pulled out a chair for me at the nearest table. Neily carefully lowered me into it and sat beside me, scraping his chair closer as if to catch me should I begin to fall over. Grace sat at my other side, the two of them like flanking sentinels. Someone—I didn't see who—draped a blanket across my sodden shoulders.

“Did you see what happened?” Neily asked Grace. “Did you see who it was?”

“No.” Grace's face went taut. “I heard a strange sound and looked over to see you fall. Someone stood behind you, and he was holding . . . I don't know . . . a pipe or club or something. But it was dark and he had his collar turned up. Then he lunged for Emma and I . . . I just ran to find Mr. . . .”

“Dawson,” the man said again.

“It was horrible,” Grace went on, and part of me thought she had no idea just how horrible. “I heard the splash, but I had rounded the corner of the building by then. I didn't know which of you had fallen into the water until we came running back and I—I couldn't see you anywhere, Emma. Then I knew. Oh, how awful. You poor, poor dear—”

“Grace,” I interrupted with a rasp, then stopped to swallow and clear my throat again. “Did you see the person leave? Which way he went? How could he have gotten away without passing you on the pier?”

A woman brought a steaming cup of tea and placed it in front of me. I thanked her, but my hands trembled so hard I feared spilling the hot liquid down my front.

“Maybe he dove into the water and swam,” Mr. Dawson said.

“Or he leaped from boat to boat.” Neily winced, and Grace reached across the table to press a hand to his cheek. “Are you all right? Does your head hurt terribly?”

“Like the dickens,” he said, “but that doesn't matter at the moment. Mr. Dawson, please use the telephone to summon the police and the hospital. My cousin needs an ambulance—”

“No, I don't! No ambulance. Please just call the police station and specifically ask for Jesse Whyte. If he's not there, tell them it's imperative he be notified.” The watchman nodded and set off into the records office to use the telephone there. I turned back to my cousin. “Neily, what do you mean he could have leaped from boat to boat? Is that how he got to us?”

“It's possible, but I believe he was on the
Vigilant
when we arrived. He must have heard us coming and hid below. After he heard Grace shouting for Mr. Dawson, he tossed you overboard and leaped from deck to deck.” He stood up. Through the windows he surveyed the moored vessels. He pointed toward the dock that ran parallel to the seawall. “The boats are close enough to each other that, if he were athletic enough to jump the distance between each one, he might have made his way right to the seawall without needing to use the pier. While getting you out of the water kept us busy, he could have climbed the fence and kept going, with no one inside the clubhouse any the wiser.”

“Someone athletic, and with a keen knowledge of boats and this yacht club.” In my mind, the clues all led in one direction. “Wyatt Monroe. Oh, he's frightfully clever, isn't he?”

But perhaps not clever enough.

 

“I wish you'd stop looking at me that way,” I said to Jesse some thirty minutes later. Despite my objections, he'd brought me to Newport Hospital to be sure my attacker did no lasting damage. I had swallowed a bit of water, to be sure, but not enough to warrant admitting me for observations. I had gone into the water unconscious, but the shock of hitting the waves had revived me immediately. My swimming instincts, weak though they were, had kept me from submerging for long and the doctor declared my lungs clear.

“I regret ever involving you in this investigation.” Jesse showed me his fiercest policeman's scowl, but I refused to cringe.

Sitting on the examining table brought me on a level with his height, and I met his gaze steadily. “I became involved the moment someone dropped off an infant on my doorstep. It would have been ill-advised not to tell me of the carriage driver killed out by Brenton Point. If little Robbie or any member of my household is in danger, I need to know about it.”

“Well and good, but I asked you to investigate the mother, not the murderer.”

His voice rose in exasperation on that last word, and in the same moment Neily and Grace entered the examining room from the hallway. Grace stepped between Jesse and me like an avenging warrior.

“Inspector Whyte, do you not comprehend what our Miss Cross has been through tonight? You are not to harass her, or I'll have my father speak to your chief.”

Jesse colored, and I bit my lip to hide a grin.

“Miss Cross understands me, Miss Wilson,” he said after taking a moment to regain his composure. “I only want to see her safe and not running headlong into dangerous situations.” His gaze narrowed and shifted to me. “As she is so intent on doing.”

“Now see here, Whyte.” Neily placed a placating hand on Jesse's shoulder. “A stroll along the pier is nothing out of the ordinary, and we could hardly have guessed someone was lurking in the
Vigilant
's hold.”

“I understand that, Mr. Vanderbilt. But trouble seems to follow our friend here.”

“And so do results,” I said in my own defense. But I softened my voice and offered him a conciliatory smile. “Jesse, I'm fine. My neck is a bit sore, but it will heal. It's Neily we should be worried about. Did the doctor look at that lump?”

Neily touched the back of his head, and for a nightmarish moment I was transported back to last summer, when my brother had awakened from a knock on the head to learn he was the prime suspect in a murder investigation. And then there was Derrick, also struck on the head during yet another investigation that same summer.

My goodness, Jesse was right, though perhaps not in the way he thought. It was the people around me—those I cared about most—who seemed to encounter the greatest danger as a result of my activities. That was a notion deserving some serious thought.

I promised myself I would do so at the first opportunity.

“The doctor doesn't think I suffered a concussion,” Neily was saying. “But he's given me instructions for tonight just in case.” He touched his coat pocket, where I assumed he had a written list of the doctor's advice.

“I'm relieved to hear it.” Then, to Jesse I said, “Are you going to bring Wyatt Monroe in for questioning?”

Jesse raised his eyebrows. “None of you can identify the attacker. I have no evidence it was Mr. Monroe.”

“You can still question him,” I persisted, buttoning my damp carriage jacket back up over my equally soggy shirtwaist. Without a word Grace slipped to the other side of the examining table and reached to gather up my hair and twist it into something resembling a bun at my nape.

“True, but only if he's willing to cooperate,” Jesse replied.

“He had a motive and he has the expertise to have pulled off his brother's death. Except . . .” I paused as a thought occurred to me—my last memory before the attacker struck. “In the end, it was the storm that swept Virgil overboard. Yet from what I observed on the boat, and what I saw the day of the race, it should have been Wyatt knocked overboard by the boom. And they had switched crew positions at the last minute—did you know that?”

“No, I didn't.” Jesse frowned. “How did you discover that?”

Neily replied, “It's in the records book at the club. Emmaline discovered the original entries had been painted over to look like no change had been made.”

Jesse flashed me a gleam of admiration, albeit a reluctant one. “As if someone didn't want the change to be a clue for us to find.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And right before Neily was knocked out and the rope went around my neck, he said it almost seemed as if Wyatt had been the intended victim and Virgil the murderer . . .” I shook my head with a laugh. “Which is ridiculous, of course, since Virgil is the one who died.”