Resort to Murder (10 page)

“Nothing we do will change the fact of George's death, Diana. You and Neal go now. Look for beauty.” It was another way of saying a prayer.

“Are you sure you're okay, Grandma?” Neal was astride the moped, his blunt face creased with concern.

I managed a smile. “I'm fine.” I waved my hand at them. “Scoot.”

I stayed on the drive until I no longer heard the putt-putt of the mopeds. They were going to Devil's Hole, a clear natural pool famous for its sharks and moray eels and brilliantly hued fighting fish. For a fee, a visitor could fish with baited but hookless lines.

I was going fishing, too. I wasn't sure about my bait—a hint of dangerous knowledge?—but I hoped my line had a sharp hook.

 

Tower Ridge House drowsed in the afternoon sun. The presence of the police was unobtrusive. The door to the manager's office was closed. So far as I knew, no one in our party was in the hotel. Lloyd and Connor and Steve, along with Marlow and Jasmine and Aaron, were gone when I climbed up the slope from the beach, and I assumed they'd departed on their excursion to Spittal Pond and on to Hamilton for a late lunch at the Hog Penny on Burnaby Hill. The restaurant, decorated like an old English pub with dark-paneled walls, was well known for its fish and chips and steak-and-kidney pie. My last visit there was on a long-ago July day with Richard. I'd chosen a curried dish. Beneath the inconsequential thought of food, I tried to decide what I should do. I hesitated in the center of the hallway between the lounge and the bar.

Huge poinsettias in cobalt-blue pots sat on either side of the folded-back doors to the bar, where wall
sconces burned dimly against the coppery planks of cedar. Behind the bar, the bartender, round-faced with thinning blond hair, polished glasses. Not surprisingly on a sunny afternoon, he had no customers.

I walked in with a smile, slid atop a red leatherette seat. “I'll have a glass of sherry, please.”

“Sweet or dry, ma'am?” His voice was young. He was balding but probably not even thirty yet. Long bristly sideburns framed plump cheeks.

“Bristol Cream, if you have it.” I like sherry for the same reason I enjoy chocolate truffles.

“Yes, ma'am.” He swung about, reached for a dark green bottle.

When he brought the glass, I took a sip. “That's very good.”

“It's Harvey's, Mrs. Collins.” He picked up a glass, wiped it carefully.

“Oh, yes. Thank you, James.” I recognized him as one of the other waiters at lunch. “It is James, isn't it?” I held him with my gaze.

He remained opposite me. Most bartenders quickly pick up on a customer's need to talk. “Yes, ma'am.”

I sighed. “I'm sorry about George.”

The professional veneer almost held, but not quite. His blue eyes looked shocked. He crumpled the dish towel in pudgy hands. “I saw him this morning. Just about eight, it was.” His voice held disbelief. “He was heading down to the lower terrace and I wondered about that. He should have been in the dining room, getting everything ready for breakfast. But I talked to Brian a little while ago and he told me he took over for George this morning. That George had something to do.”

That placed the time of George's death between eight and eight forty-five.

“Do you suppose George was going down to the beach when you saw him?” I kept my tone casual.

James swept his cloth in little circles on the mahogany of the bar. “I guess so. But what he said didn't make any sense.”

“Really.” The sherry was as sweet and rich as dollops of cream.

James looked at me, his round face earnest. “I keep trying to get it straight in my mind. The policeman's asking everybody when they last saw George, what he said. But see, he told Brian he had someplace to go and when I saw George, he grinned at me and gave me a thumbs-up and said he was going to get his ticket home. He was walking cocky like he'd won the lottery.”

“Ticket home?” Yes, I'd known that George wanted money.

“He was saving money to go home. Toronto. I know he was a long way from having enough.” He shook his head. “But that's what he said.

A thumbs-up and a cocky walk. On his way to die.

“It doesn't make any sense.” James's tone was querulous. “Who'd have money down at the beach?”

I felt empty. If George hadn't hoped I would bring a promise of five thousand, he wouldn't have been standing on the point, above the deadly rocks. “No, I wouldn't think there would be money down at the beach.”

James made a sour face. “Well, I can tell you it didn't have anything to do with drugs. Not at this hotel. And not on our beach. Sure, there are drugs on the island. But George wasn't into drugs. He didn't even drink. He was a scuba diver and a Rugby player. He told me he'd quit his job before he'd work in here.” James waved his hand. “The bar is the only place any
body can smoke in the hotel except in their own rooms. I told the police George didn't have any use for drugs. He didn't go down there for a drug deal.”

“I'm sure he didn't,” I agreed.

James's combative look eased.

“I suppose George got too near the edge of the point and slipped.” I shook my head. “And I'd had the most interesting visit with George yesterday afternoon. He told me all about the ghost at the tower.” I simulated a shiver. “I suppose you've heard about last night?”

“Yes, ma'am.” His eyes slid past me, stared through the doorway into the hall.

“Have you ever seen the ghost, James?”

His reaction surprised me. He didn't look uneasy, as if afraid of otherworldly apparitions. Instead, he darted another cautious look at the doorway and bent toward me. I heard his quick whisper, “Look in the Sports cupboard down by the pool. Don't say I told you.” The clatter of heels on the wooden floor almost drowned out the final words.

“Mrs. Collins.” The voice was shaken, breathless.

I turned to face Mrs. Worrell. Behind me, James set a glass down sharply on the bar.

The transformation in the manager was shocking. The genteel, reserved innkeeper with gingery hair, faded blue eyes and worn, shapeless clothing stared at me, her eyes dazed, her face drained of color. She clung to the doorframe for support.

“Please.” The words were so faint they could scarcely be heard. “I must speak with you.”

T
HE sleek black cat on the purple silk cushion lifted his head, stared at me with unblinking yellow eyes and aloof disdain. I've always suspected that cats see beyond our pretenses and affectations, cataloging human behavior with humorless precision, unswayed in their final estimate by charm, affection, or choice cuts of meat.

Mrs. Worrell closed her office door behind us, leaned against it as if she had lost strength. Although she was a big-boned woman, she seemed small, propped against the wooden panels like a discarded rag doll. “I'm sorry,” she began, “I've no right to trouble you, but I must know. I simply must.” She pushed away from the door, reached out a hand toward me, though the trembling fingers didn't touch me. “I have to find out, and you must be the one…” She stopped, shook her head. “Please, did you tell the police officer that George said Roddy”—she drew in short, quick drafts of air as if her lungs were strained to the bursting—“was murdered?” The last word could scarcely be heard, a faint whisper.

I'd not thought what effect my statement to Chief Inspector Foster might have on others. My intent was
to raise a doubt in Foster's mind that George Smith's fall from the point was an accident, to link George's death to Roddy Worrell's death, a link that seemed quite likely to me. Moreover, my statement to Foster was accurate. It was not I who questioned Roddy Worrell's death. It was George who had called Roddy's death murder.

Mrs. Worrell mistook my silence. “Oh, I thought it must have been you who told the inspector. You're the only person he's talked to. You and he were in the cardroom, and I assumed…but you must forgive me. He said he'd been informed that George insisted Roddy was pushed from the tower. But the inspector wouldn't tell me who told him. I have to know. I have to know what George said.”

A grandfather clock in one corner ticked, the sound slow and somber in the heavy quiet, a sonorous counterpoint to the manager's shallow breaths. The wedge-shaped office was lit by a small pottery lamp on the corner of the pine desk. The single window of blue and white art glass, a wave endlessly breaking, afforded no natural light. The office ceiling sloped, giving the room a tucked-away, secretive air, as if the worn desk had been discarded there by accident. The ubiquitous computer on a metal stand looked like an afterthought, its coil of gray wires dangling to the floor like a tangle of dead snakes. A faint smell of potpourri mingled with the dry must of old books.

For a moment, I felt captured with the stricken woman in a dim circle of pain because I understood her distress. Oh, how well I understood. I would never forget the searing instant when I looked down at an anonymous letter informing me that my husband, Richard, had not died in an accident, as I had believed.
That letter took me on a determined journey thousands of miles from my home, where I used guile and cold determination to gain access to a remote mountaintop mansion stalked by death.

My well-intentioned report to the chief inspector was bringing the same kind of torment to Mrs. Worrell, the swift uprush of anger that life had been deliberately wrested away, the anguish in knowing that days and hours and minutes that belonged to her and her husband had been stolen and, no matter what happened, even if the murderer was found, that the time which should have been theirs was gone forever.

“Mrs. Worrell, I'm sorry.” Some of my own anguish must have been clear on my face. “Of course I will tell you what George said. You have every right to know.”

Her sandy eyelashes fluttered. She lifted a hand to her throat as if to still the pulse that throbbed there. “So it was you.” She moved unsteadily, pulled two shabby green wooden chairs close together, sank into the far one. She waited, her hands twining together in unceasing movement, her unwavering gaze almost a physical pressure against my face. She didn't speak, but her eyes begged.

I sat on the second chair, so near I felt her tension as clearly as summer lightning crackling in the sky, and recounted what George had said about Roddy's death. I did not, of course, mention Connor or the broken miniature tower in her room or George's suggestion that Roddy's ghost was seeking revenge. Yes, I was still trying to protect Connor. I had not forgotten Mrs. Worrell's icy glare yesterday morning when Connor and Lloyd stepped out of the main door.

When I finished, she gave a tiny moan. “Oh my God. I should have known. I should have known.” She
rocked in the chair, her hands now clasped so tightly the fingers blanched. “That night”—her tone was feverish—“when Roddy slammed out of the bar, I didn't go after him.” Her head jerked up. The eyes that stared at me were terrible with accusation. “Because she did. She went after him. She couldn't bear it that he was angry with her. And it wasn't as if he didn't have a right! She'd flounced around him, teased him, led him on. That's what she did. Another woman's husband, but she couldn't stay away from him. When he came after her because he was a man and he thought she wanted him, she ran to Mr. Jennings, complained as if it were all Roddy's fault. Roddy had put up with enough. He told me how she'd treated him, that she was no better than a slut.” She pulled one hand free, brushed back her gingery hair. “He told me he was sorry. But that night she smiled at him, asked him to dance, one of those slow dances. And then Mr. Drake came in the bar and she went after him.”

Mrs. Worrell was talking about Connor, of course. I'd not mentioned Connor's name, but I'd obviously not needed to do so. Mrs. Worrell's memories of her husband's last night of life were corroded by her unremitting anger with Connor.

Mrs. Worrell pushed up from her chair. She wavered on her feet.

I rose, too, reached out to catch her arm. I was startled at the thinness of her forearm and the rigidity of her muscles.

She seemed unaware of my grip. “Now I know what George meant. I didn't understand until now. George knew she killed him, he knew it and tried to tell me. The day after Roddy fell”—she shuddered—“was pushed, George came in here.” She pulled her arm free,
pointed at her desk. “He stood right there and said that he'd seen Roddy at the tower and that the American woman was with him. I shushed George. I told him I didn't want to hear about it, that he was not to talk about it to anyone. I told him to get out. He hesitated and”—she gave a little moan—“I screamed at him to leave. When the door shut, I threw myself into my chair and I grabbed up Roddy's picture and I cried.”

I looked at the desk. There were a half dozen photos in frames, mostly family shots of Mrs. Worrell with a little boy, then a slender teenager and later young man. Her son? A nephew? I didn't see any pictures of a man. Jasmine had described Roddy Worrell as smiling and with a big laugh.

“But now”—and she wasn't speaking to me, she was throwing out words as if they were knives flung toward a target—“I understand. George saw something that night. He knew what happened to Roddy. He tried to tell me but I wouldn't listen. Oh, I always knew Roddy died because of her. But I never suspected her of killing him. Now I know. I must tell the police. They'll arrest her. That's what they'll do.” She whirled away from me, flung open the door.

I didn't try to follow. There was no way to deflect her. She was sure of her facts, certain she now knew the truth about her husband's death. Connor Bailey's troubles were just starting.

I closed the office door behind me, walked down the short hall to an exit to the upper terrace. I was tired, so tired. I felt as if I'd fought my way through turbulent water, pummeled by currents. I realized that I'd had no lunch. But I had one more task to accomplish.

I paused at the top of the rock stairs, then took a deep breath and trudged down the steps. It seemed a
long time since my early breakfast with Marlow and her request that I talk with Lloyd about Connor's penchant for attracting men and the problems that could ensue. But everything was changed now. What was I going to do about Mrs. Worrell and her accusations to the police? Certainly Connor needed to know.

What would happen if I told Connor? Was she capable of handling this information? Damnit, she was a grown woman. Certainly I should tell her. Yet, I felt unsure. I needed to think it through. Perhaps I should talk to either Lloyd or Marlow first. My instinct rebelled. The thought of treating Connor as a helpless woman who had to be protected by her menfolk or her daughter was repellent. But was that judgment true, no matter how condescending it might be?

That was the decision I had to make and make soon. Although Chief Inspector Foster might not be in any hurry to reclassify Roddy Worrell's death as murder, he would not ignore Mrs. Worrell's accusations, especially not since my report of George's statements lent a frightening credence to her claims.

No one can be accused of murder on hearsay evidence, but Foster might reopen the investigation into Roddy Worrell's death, especially if the autopsy on George suggested any possibility of murder. Connor had to be told that this might happen because, if the investigation into Worrell's death began again, Connor would be high on the chief inspector's list of persons to interview.

As I passed the pool, I nodded a pleasant good afternoon to the two Canadian ladies, determinedly sunbathing despite a brisk wind and a temperature in the mid-sixties. The clear blue water rippled in the wind and the umbrellas over the tables were closed. No one
was on duty behind the snack bar. It wasn't yet time for tea.

I passed the snack counter. Dressing rooms for men and women were next. The final door, painted a bright orange, bore the legend
SPORTS
in capital letters. I assumed this was what James had meant when he responded to my question about the ghost: “
Look in the Sports cupboard…Don't say I told you
.”

I'd visited this storeroom several times, ducking inside to pick up a light aluminum folding chair to carry down to the beach. There were folded beach umbrellas, a stack of foam surfboards, a folded volleyball net, a bin filled with soccer balls, plastic life rings for the pool, a croquet set. Obviously, James believed there was something here that would tell me more about the ghost. I was quite certain he would deny ever having said so.

I flicked on the light, a single low-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling and only faintly illuminated the narrow closet. The brightly striped umbrellas were bunched in the near corner. Sand gritted underfoot on the gray cement floor. I took my time, looking behind the umbrellas, peering around the bin of soccer balls, opening several wicker picnic hampers to find them all clean and empty, tugging the stack of surfboards to one side. Finally I stood at the far end of the closet and gingerly poked a mound of discards: some old croquet mallets, a hand air pump with a broken handle, a folded-up tarp, a deflated air mattress, a coil of hawser-thick rope.

I leaned against the rough stone wall and felt a wave of irritation mixed with disappointment. I'd not realized how much I'd counted on finding a link here to the tower ghost. But if there was anything secreted among
the beach and water paraphernalia, I was not clever enough to find it.

I sighed and turned to retrace my steps. My head ached and my bones felt like water. Perhaps I'd better retire to my room, order a late lunch. If I was lucky, I'd get both sustenance and information. I flicked off the light. As I turned to step out of the closet, my gaze swept the darkened cupboard. For an instant, I froze into stillness. There was a faint glow at the very end of the closet, floating like a cloud of silver in the darkness.

I turned on the light, blinked. The glow was gone. A high shelf ran the length of the storage area and it was at about that level where I'd seen that silvery splotch. I walked to the end of the closet, looked up on the shelf. A ball of cord, dark paper stretched over plywood strips…

It took me a moment, then I understood. Oh, yes, of course. Clever. Damn clever. I reached up, then yanked back my hand. I should not touch the box kite. I didn't need to pull it down. I understood now how a luminous cloud floated near the tower. Not magic, not otherworldly, not a spirit, simply a kite liberally coated with phosphorescent paint. Clever and cruel, a child's toy used to trick and terrify.

 

I suppose I should have tried to find Chief Inspector Foster first, but fatigue weighted me down like seaweed dragging at a wave-tossed swimmer. Instead, I walked slowly back to my room, called room service and ordered lunch, a grilled chicken sandwich with chutney, chips, and coffee. Especially coffee. Then I dialed the desk.

A cheerful voice answered immediately. “How may I help you, Mrs. Collins?”

There are few secrets that can be kept in today's
computerized world, and certainly there is no anonymity in a hotel. “Rosalind?” I thought I recognized the voice of the buxom blonde who was on duty during the daytime.

“Yes, Mrs. Collins?”

“Do you know where the police inspector is?” I was stretched out on the chaise longue, a notepad balanced on my knee. I drew a box kite. A gloved hand held the line. I blinked at my drawing. I hoped fervently that George—I was almost sure the kite expert was George—had not worn gloves. I wanted to establish the identity of the creator of Roddy Worrell's ghost. That would be the first step in discovering why Roddy Worrell's ghost had appeared.

The pause on the other end of the line lengthened.

“Rosalind?” I tapped on my pad.

Her voice dropped. “We're not supposed to talk about the police. The”—a brief pause—“accident on the beach is most unfortunate, but it has no connection to the hotel.”

Interesting, Mrs. Worrell had wasted no time setting out in search of Chief Inspector Foster with her accusation against Connor Bailey, but she apparently saw no connection between George's death and her husband's. Or was she simply trying to maintain a semblance of life as usual within the hotel? Whichever, I wasn't going to be put off. “I need to speak with the chief inspector. Do you know where he is?”