Untimely Death (18 page)

“I’d love to. Simon’s asked me to do the prompts again. I’m starting to think of that chair as the best seat in the house.”

He looked out at the auditorium and then back to Charlotte in front of him.

“Well, come on,” Ray said. “Let’s wrap everything up here, and then I’d like to take you to dinner.”

“Oh, I would love that. It’s exactly what I need. And will there be wine with this dinner?”

*

Toward morning, as the first glimmer of muted light filtered through the blinds, turning Charlotte’s bedroom from black to a pale grey, Ray eased himself quietly out of bed. She stirred and looked up at him, her hair tousled and her eyes brimming with sleep.

“Sorry,” he said softly. “Didn’t want to wake you. I’m on early shift this morning so I can get away in time for the rehearsal this afternoon. I’ll call you later.” He bent over, kissed her, and then disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of running water was soon followed by a door being closed quietly. She sighed and got out of bed and then padded through the living room and kitchen to lock the door behind him.
I’m not a policeman’s girlfriend for nothing
, she thought.

She glanced at Rupert, curled up in his basket, and filled the kettle. While she waited for it to boil, she returned to her bedroom to get a warm dressing gown and slippers. She made herself a cup of coffee and then took it with her to the bedroom to get dressed.

As she pulled a sweater over her head, she thought about something Ray had said at dinner last night. Although they’d agreed not to discuss the case, of course they had, and something had slipped into the conversation that now troubled her. Brian and Lady Deborah could offer each other alibis, he’d said. But that wasn’t quite right.

Aaron had seen Lady Deborah at the time Lauren was killed, but he hadn’t thought anything of it because he saw her all the time, lifting bags in and out of her car, setting off for the train station, or coming home just before dark. People don’t pay attention to things that are familiar; they notice things that are not familiar.

Everybody, including the police, kept asking him if he saw anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there. As far as Aaron was concerned, it was only Lady What’s-her-name, doing what she always did.

A chill ran through Charlotte. She was convinced that Aaron hadn’t seen Lady Deborah getting ready to go into the city as usual; he’d seen her hiding the murder weapon in the trunk of her car. And if she wasn’t very much mistaken, the DNA evidence would be in a Saks or Barneys bag.

She called Ray to tell him what she suspected, and then much to Rupert’s delight at such an early outing, the two set off on their morning walk. Just as they reached the path that led to the parkland adjacent to the hotel, the door to the Prentice bungalow opened, and Lady Deborah, wearing her camel-colored coat, picked her way down the three steps, using two hands to carry a black suitcase. She set the case down beside the car while she opened the trunk and then lifted the case, rested it for a moment on the bumper, and then tipped it over the side. It disappeared into the trunk, and she slammed the lid shut.

She took a step back, turned, and found Charlotte, with Rupert on his leash, standing beside her.

“Oh! You startled me, creeping up on me like that! What are you doing here? I’m in a bit of a hurry. What do you want?”

“Hello, Deborah.” Charlotte tipped her head in the direction of the trunk. “Going somewhere nice?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Deborah’s eyes blazed as she took a step toward Charlotte. “Now I really must ask you to step out of my way. I need to get going.”

“Are you sure you’ve got everything?”

Deborah shot her a look of high haughtiness infused with a vague uncertainty. “Yes, I think so. What’s it to you?”

“Your Saks and Barneys bags? In the trunk, are they?”

Deborah hesitated, as if thinking over very carefully what she wanted to say. “You know, this is starting to get tiresome. I really can’t be bothered with this conversation anymore, or you either, for that matter. Now, for the last time, please get out of my way and let me get in my car, or I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Deborah? Kill me, like you killed Lauren because she got in your way? Because she’d discovered the ring that Brian gave her was fake and she worked out that you were getting copies made of your jewelry?

“I don’t think she quite understood the implications, but you couldn’t take that chance, could you? So you tried to kill her with an overdose of acetaminophen, which you had on hand because you get frequent headaches. In the U.K., it’s called Paracetamol. Here in the U.S., it’s Tylenol. But it’s the same thing. That’s what you were saying to Ray at the bungalow that morning when
Brian had been hurt. Paracetamol. And I just heard the tail end and thought you’d said, ‘seat ’em all!’”

Charlotte was desperate to check the time on her phone. How long had they been talking? Where was Ray? If Deborah got away now, they might never find her. She had to keep stalling. Keep the conversation, one-sided as it was, going.

“It wouldn’t have been hard for you to crush up Paracetamol tablets and slip them into Lauren’s energy drink,” she continued. “After all, she carried cans of it around with her the way most people carry coffee, and she set down opened cans all over the place. And a fairly small Tylenol overdose can do a lot of damage, especially to the liver.”

“Surely I can get copies made of my own jewelry if I want to,” Lady Deborah replied. “So your little theory is just that. A stupid little theory.”

“Ah, but it’s not your jewelry, though, is it?” said Charlotte. “It’s tied up with the laws of British primogeniture. The jewels belong to your father, just like the manor house, the title, and the artwork, and they’ll go to your brother when he inherits.

“Or they would have done, but I expect the pieces have been broken up by now for the individual gemstones. You’ve sold them, haven’t you? Sold the originals, and used the copies to cover it up.”

Lady Deborah sniffed, looking down her nose. “This is nonsense, all of it. Now get out of my way, before I—”

“The only one you couldn’t bear to part with was your mother’s engagement ring,” Charlotte said, “so that’s why you still have the original that you wore to the welcome party and the copy that Brian gave to Lauren.

“And that’s why you had to kill Lauren when she recovered from the Paracetamol overdose you gave her. She knew what you were doing with the jewels, and she would have worked out pretty quickly who had it in for her. Maybe she already had. So you took my scissors, went looking for her, and seized the opportunity to kill her.”

“They’re your scissors,” Deborah snarled. “Maybe you killed her. Now for the last time, get the hell out of my way. I’m not going to stand here and listen to any more of this rubbish.”

When Charlotte didn’t move, she took a step toward her.

“I mean it. Move.” The menace in her tone was unmistakable.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll kill him.” She pointed at Rupert, who looked up at her with a cheeky smile. “I swear to God, I will. I’ll run him over, and who’s to say it wasn’t an accident?”

Charlotte hesitated, and then sensing Deborah’s desperation and frightened by the hard look of hatred in her eyes, she stepped to one side, making sure Rupert was safely beside her. Lady Deborah got in the car and started it. She backed up a few feet, stopped, rolled down the window, and threw something out. She then put the
car in drive and sped off. Charlotte picked up the key on the Statue of Liberty keychain that she’d thrown out the window and slowly wrapped her fingers around it.

“Well, we did the best we could, Rupert,” she said. “There she goes.”

Lady Deborah’s car slowed as it approached the end of the driveway that led from the hotel property to the main road. At that moment, two police cars with flashing lights turned into the driveway, boxing her in.

Relieved that the police had arrived in time, Charlotte smiled as she imagined Deborah, all airs and graces, demanding to know the meaning of this. She laughed when she thought how this would go down with Ray, as he politely asked her to open the trunk.

Late Saturday afternoon, after the final dress rehearsal, Aaron, his uncle Harvey, and Simon joined Ray and Charlotte in the costume department for a glass of champagne to celebrate the opening of the new season. Dress rehearsals were wrapped, and previews started next week, with opening night next weekend. The hotel was filling up, and media tickets for opening night were being snapped up. Harvey had been right. The season promised to be the best one in a very long time, and this really could be the year that Jacobs Grand Hotel and the Catskills Shakespeare Theater Company turned the corner.

“There’s something I want to discuss with you,” Charlotte had said to Ray over dinner the night before. “It’s to do with me. Well, me and Simon.”

Ray’s stomach had clenched as his heart thudded against his rib cage.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and now seems like the right time,” she had begun. “Mattie Lane—the young actress who plays Juliet—was saying how difficult it was to get into theater school . . . there’s much more demand than places available. So I thought that, with Simon’s New York connections, we could start a theater school, here, at the hotel. I can teach costume and set design, and he can teach the acting and directing, that side of it. The hotel will provide the residence facility. We’ll do it on a regular semester system, September to April. And of course, the students become the actors for the summer season. Oh, there are millions of details to work out, but I think the idea in general is a good one.

“I haven’t said anything to Simon yet because I wanted to see what you think. It would bring lots of students into the area, the cafes and bars will do more business, and the hotel will be viable.”

He had looked at her across the table from him, her eyes shining, lips slightly parted, fresh and beautiful, and in that moment, realized he’d fallen in love with her. And compared to what he had thought she was going to tell him, a theater-school proposal was good news.

He had reached out, taken her hand, and given her a wide, open smile.

“I think it’s a terrific idea, and I know you’ll make a huge success of it.”

“Great! I’ll talk to Simon in the morning. It’ll be a tremendous challenge, but I think we can make it work.” She had laughed. “Make it work!”

She had tilted her head and smiled at him. “And you do know there’s nothing going on between Simon and me, I hope? It would simply be a business arrangement. We’re colleagues. Nothing more.”

His heart had calmed down, and he had taken a sip of wine. It had never tasted better.

Now, sitting in the costume department with her friends, Charlotte could sense a feeling of excitement built on an underlying layer of creative confidence she had not experienced in the previous ten seasons.

“I asked Brian to join us,” Simon told the little gathering. “He’s just getting changed and taking off his makeup, and he’ll be along soon. With his wife arrested this morning, asking him to join us seemed the least we could do. He knows there’ll be champagne, and he’s fine with that. He’s been going to AA, and so far, so good.”

A few minutes later, Brian stood uncertainly in the doorway.

Charlotte smiled at him. “Brian! Come in.”

“You did a terrific job on stage today, Brian,” Simon said, and the little group broke into applause. “You gave a wonderful performance under difficult circumstances. Well done. I was really proud of you.”

“Actually, it took my mind off things,” Brian said. “Isn’t that the purpose of theater? To provide an escape
from our ordinary lives for two or three hours? Well, it does that for the performers, too.”

Charlotte handed him a glass of mineral water with a slice of lemon, and he moved easily through the group, talking to everyone. Half an hour later, one by one, starting with Phil, they set down their glasses, thanked Charlotte, and departed, until only she, Brian, and Aaron remained.

“I’m meeting Mattie now for a coffee,” Aaron said, “but I’ll be back to help you tidy up.”

Left alone with Brian, she gestured to the chair beside her desk.

“I just wanted you to know,” he said, “that marrying her was the biggest mistake of my life. I barely even knew her, just met her at a party, and then she asked me to marry her.”

“She asked you?” Charlotte said.

“Yes, and I admit I was weak. I thought I was going places, and I fell for the title, the landed gentry family with the big house—all that. I thought marrying her would enhance my reputation. It just brought me a load of misery. I knew within weeks marrying her had been a big mistake.”

“Then why did you stay with her?” Charlotte asked. “You didn’t have to, in this day and age.”

“I’ve asked myself that a lot, lately,” Brian said. “Laziness, habit, certainly—but mostly money.”

“Money? You mean her money?”

He nodded. “Her family is old-school Catholic, you see. Her father never approved of our marriage and warned her he’d cut her off without a penny if we divorced. So we mostly lived separate lives on the understanding there could be no divorce. But her father’s got dementia now, and barely knows who we are. So we’d been discussing it. Honestly, I don’t think she cared one way or the other. And frankly, neither did I.”

He drained the last of his mineral water and stood up.

“Even if all this hadn’t happened, we couldn’t have gone on much longer. We just didn’t care.”

He looked around for a place to set the glass, and Charlotte held out her hand to take it.

“I know it’s too late for us,” he said. “You’ve got a new life here. But I hope we can be friends.”

“I don’t know about friends, but we can certainly be professional. Colleagues on friendly terms, perhaps.”

He hesitated for a moment, as if unsure if any kind of parting gesture, such as a hug, would be appropriate. Deciding against it, much to her relief, he gave her a brief smile and left.

She was still standing there holding the glass when Aaron returned. He picked up the empty champagne bottles and took them to the tiny kitchenette off the workroom. As they clattered into the recycling bin, she set Brian’s tumbler on the tray beside the champagne flutes for Aaron to return to the canteen.

“Did you know that champagne is the only beverage you should allow in an actor’s dressing room?” she asked him when he returned to the workroom, wiping his hands on a paper towel.

“No,” he said. “Why’s that?”

“Because if you spill a few drops, it’s the only drink that won’t stain your fabric.”

And this time, Aaron beat her to it. “Who taught you that?”

“Coco Chanel.”

“Finally! Someone I’ve heard of!”