Murder at Wakehurst Page 5

  The dogs came loping out of a room along the corridor and followed along, oblivious now to anything being amiss. Mr. Van Alen brought us across the house to his private den in the north wing, where I discovered more dark-wood paneling. Paintings hung in abundance, while a sextet of swords arced above the fireplace. Sweet-smelling tobacco permeated the air. The furnishings were leather, large and inviting. I could resist no longer and virtually dropped into a saddle-brown armchair, probably Mr. Van Alen’s favorite. I didn’t care. The dogs found their way into a corner and stretched out on the Aubusson rug.

  Meanwhile, Grace perched on the arm of my chair, while Neily took a seat on the sofa opposite. I could hear Jerome Harrington hovering behind me, but I didn’t turn. If he wished to linger, so be it. I had questions for him, anyway.

  Mr. Van Alen turned up the gas jets on the sconces, brightening the room. Wakehurst had not been electrified like The Breakers or Ochre Court. The electric lighting outside had been installed specifically for the joust. Otherwise, Mr. Van Alen preferred gas and candlelight, more in keeping with a Tudor manor house. Taking a seat beside Neily, he leaned a little forward and clasped his hands. “Now, then, Miss Cross, you have something to tell me?”

  Once again, he used straightforward language. I drew a breath. “There is no good way to say this. There has been a death. One of your guests.”

  Even as Grace gasped and Neily swore under his breath, there came a sudden shuffling from behind me. “My God, who?”

  This time, I did turn around to gaze at Jerome Harrington. “Your father-in-law-to-be, Mr. Harrington.”

  “Cl-Clayton Schuyler?” Mr. Van Alen stammered. I turned back around to see his color rise, his eyes fill with horror. “How? Where?”

  “In the garden behind the house. He’s been shot through the chest with an arrow.”

  * * *

  After my terrible news, Mr. Van Alen jumped to his feet. “The authorities must be sent for.”

  He asked us to wait where we were and strode from the room. I assumed he had agreed to install a telephone somewhere in the house, probably in his butler’s pantry. The dogs, apparently, decided the order didn’t apply to them, for they sprang to their feet and padded after their master.

  When he didn’t return in several minutes, Jerome Harrington circled my chair and slumped onto the sofa beside Neily. “Why the devil has he been gone so long?”

  Neily patted Mr. Harrington’s shoulder. “I would imagine he went to find Imogene and her mother. And perhaps to post a pair of footmen near the body.”

  Mr. Harrington shook his head in a gesture of disbelief. “Good God.”

  Still perched beside me, Grace placed a hand on my shoulder as well. “Can I have one of the footmen bring you something? Tea? Something stronger?”

  “Forget the footmen.” Neily sprang to his feet and went to the liquor cabinet in the corner. “Van Alen keeps his finest brandy in here. Emma?” He didn’t ask Mr. Harrington. He had already chosen two crystal snifters from the half dozen ranged in a circle around the decanter.

  Grace cleared her throat. “Neily, haven’t you had enough tonight?”

  “No, my dear, I don’t think I have. Not as of several minutes ago.” He swore quietly, a mild oath, but with the force of a full exhalation behind it.

  Grace said nothing more. Neily took a healthy swig of his brandy before crossing the room to hand the other one to Mr. Harrington. Then he studied me a moment before returning to the cart to pour a third. He pressed the snifter into my hand. “Drink it. Don’t argue.”

  I hadn’t been about to. The cut crystal bowl stabbed against my palm. I distributed the weight into both hands and raised the snifter to my lips. The brandy stung my nose, and when I sipped, it burned all the way down. Some of the numbness left me, allowing a few coherent thoughts to circle round the chaos.

  I regarded Jerome Harrington across the expanse of carpet. With a sconce behind him, his youthful features remained mostly in shadow. He’d drunk half his brandy already, and now the glass hung suspended from his two hands as if forgotten. A detail came back to me, not only about the argument I’d overheard between him and Imogene Schuyler, but something else significant as well.

  But first things first. “Mr. Harrington.” I paused, waiting until he raised his gaze to me. His eyes were heavy-lidded, not quite focused. One might have thought he had found the body, he seemed so dazed. “Mr. Harrington, I want to thank you for what you did out there.”

  “ ‘Out there’?” The words appeared to startle him.

  “Yes, at the jousting course. I might have been killed. I wasn’t thinking straight, or I would never have wandered so carelessly into the path of those horses.”

  “Oh yes. That. You’re quite welcome, Miss Cross.” I wondered what else he thought I meant. The argument, or something more?

  “Such a fortuitous thing that you were coming from the direction of the house just then,” I added, “and that you weren’t already seated in the stands.”

  “Come to think if it, Harrington,” Neily said, unwittingly taking over for me, “where had you been?”

  Where, indeed?

  But we were not yet to be enlightened. Mr. Van Alen’s dogs streamed through the open doorway, and a moment later, he ushered in Imogene Schuyler and her mother, Delphine. Neily and Jerome Harrington came to their feet, and Mr. Van Alen gestured for the two women to be seated. Then, ever so gently, he told them what he had learned from me.

  When he finished, a thick silence fell, but only briefly. Imogene alarmed us all by leaping to her feet, cradling her face with her hands, and letting out a scream. Sobbing wildly, she sank to her knees. For a long moment, the rest of us simply watched her, uncertain what to do. Even her mother sat frozen, staring down at her, unblinking. It was Grace who finally slid from her perch on the arm of my chair and crouched beside the inconsolable Imogene. So violently did her shoulders heave, tresses of her blond hair spilled from her meticulous coif. In the face of her distress, my throat tightened almost to closing and my chest ached with grief for her.

  And yet . . . when Grace managed to lower Imogene’s perfectly manicured hands from her face and began to raise her to her feet . . .

  Could I be mistaken? Had she wiped the tears away on her palms? I detected no traces of moisture on her hands or her cheeks. I glanced up in confusion at her mother. Delphine Schuyler’s eyes were stone-cold dry as well.

  Chapter 4

  For the next quarter of an hour while we waited in near silence for the police to arrive, I went over every detail of the scene I had stumbled upon behind the house. Evidently, Judge Schuyler had left the main garden to smoke a cigar, not an uncommon occurrence, since ladies often objected to the odor. He might also have been ruminating over his daughter, who had refused to join him when he called to her. I remembered the footmen had removed the archery equipment to the veranda. I hadn’t seen exactly where they had stowed it, but one could safely assume they had tucked it out of sight somewhere, to be put away after the fete. Had the killer stolen a rare opportunity to arm himself or herself with bow and arrow, lean over the rail, and take aim? With the distraction of the joust about to begin, no one in the main garden would have noticed.

  My gaze kept drifting to Imogene Schuyler and her mother. Despite Imogene continually raising a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes, neither she nor her mother shed a single tear, or my name wasn’t Emma Cross. Jerome Harrington made no move to comfort his fiancée, nor did she seek him out. Rather, they sat practically at opposite ends of the room, Mr. Harrington having moved to an upholstered bench in front of one of the windows.

  Sitting across from me on the settee, Mrs. Schuyler sat very still, very upright, her hand entwined with Imogene’s, until finally, her gaze shifted to me. “You found him,” she said in a light Southern cadence, her voice deep and husky, like the lower notes on a clarinet.

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing there, beyond the main garden, all alone in the dark?
”

  Mrs. Schuyler’s question startled me, and also drew Imogene from her dark musings. Her eyes narrowed as they focused on me, and her head tilted in speculation. “Yes, why were you there?”

  From their tones, it seemed they were accusing me. I repeated a detail they had already been told. “I heard the dogs barking, carrying on.”

  “There were plenty of reasons for the dogs to be barking.” Delphine Schuyler tipped up her head to view me down her narrow nose. Her gaze held steely calculation and a cold, almost cruel, light. “The joust, the activity of so many guests. Why should you have taken any notice? And why weren’t you finding a seat in the stands?”

  At that moment, Imogene blinked rapidly and turned her face away from me. Had her mother’s question about taking a seat in the stands triggered the response? It made me wonder if Imogene had already reached the stands, or, if like Jerome Harrington, she had been elsewhere on the grounds at the time.

  Grace, meanwhile, had returned to sit on the arm of my chair, her hand on my shoulder. That hand tightened possessively. “Miss Cross didn’t wish to witness the joust.”

  “I didn’t care for such a spectacle,” I explained. “I didn’t wish to see anyone hurt. Especially the horses.”

  “Such care you take for horses and dogs, Miss Cross.” Miss Schuyler gave a soft sniff.

  “See here.” Neily came to his feet. “What are you insinuating? That my cousin had something to do with—”

  “Neily.” Grace held up a hand, a gesture for him to silence himself before he said too much. “Miss Cross has a tender heart when it comes to animals. There is nothing wrong or unusual about that.”

  “My own dog,” I said, “has upon occasion warned me of danger with barking very like what I heard from those two tonight.” I gestured toward Mr. Van Alen’s mastiffs, which continued dozing in the corner. “I know the difference between casual or excited barking and barks of distress. That’s what drew me into that part of the property. By the sound of it, I sensed something was terribly wrong.”

  The Schuyler women’s expressions were fraught with suspicion and contempt. The mother raised an imperious eyebrow at me. “Do you wish to know what I think?”

  I said nothing, just held her gaze. She apparently took that as approbation.

  “I think you followed my husband into that area of the garden for a tryst. I think—”

  Whatever else Mrs. Schuyler might have accused me of, Grace’s protests cut her off. “Miss Cross would never! I assure you, Delphine, you are quite wrong. Why, I’ve never known anyone more honorable than Miss Cross.”

  Mrs. Schuyler’s only reaction was to purse her lips.

  “He’d gone out to smoke,” I said, picturing the half-smoked cigar still burning in the grass near the judge’s body. I told them what I had seen.

  Both Schuyler women shook their heads in disbelief. With an arch look, the mother said, “He carried no cigars with him. His doctor warned him off smoking months ago. It aggravates his dyspepsia.”

  She had effectively called me a liar, something I would not allow. “Then somebody gave him one. The police will easily be able to tell if the cigar had been his or not.” Indeed, I thought, there would be traces on his fingers, his lips, the odor of tobacco on his clothing and in his mouth. Mrs. Schuyler continued to glare her accusations at me, obviously unconvinced.

  “I believe Mrs. Schuyler and Miss Imogene could do with something fortifying while we wait for the police. I know I could. Anyone else?” Mr. Van Alen came to his feet and went to the liquor cabinet. Neily and I said we’d gladly accept refills. Grace abstained, as she had earlier.

  “I’ll help. I need something to do.” Jerome Harrington followed him and returned with a snifter in each hand. Imogene accepted a glass of sherry from him without a word, without so much as an upward flick of her gaze. Mrs. Schuyler merely nodded as she took hers.

  Grace attempted to make conversation. “I suppose the guests have all been sent home, Jimmy?”

  Mr. Van Alen, concentrating on filling a crystal cordial glass, nodded. “I had my butler inform everyone there’d been an accident and pass on my regrets for an abrupt end to the evening.”

  “Good thinking.” Grace drew a breath to say something more, but I spoke first.

  “Do you have a detailed guest list, Mr. Van Alen?”

  “Of course.” He handed the decanter to Jerome Harrington, who carried it across the room to me and refilled my snifter before moving on to Neily. “But what difference . . . ? Oh yes. The police will want to know who was here tonight. What villain could have done this?” He let out a pensive sigh. “‘Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death . . .’ ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’”

  Shakespeare. An admonishment formed on my tongue; this was no time for the fanciful quoting of long-dead playwrights. But perhaps he found comfort in it. I glanced at the clock on the mantel. Jesse Whyte, my friend on the police force, should arrive any moment. What a relief it would be to have him here to take charge with his levelheaded efficiency. If Mrs. and Miss Schuyler were to raise their intimations again, Jesse would not give them a serious thought.

  Yet, their implied accusations had rattled me, leaving me with a defensive and vulnerable sensation I didn’t particularly relish. A sense of relief washed over me when the sounds of activity drifted down the corridor. Moments later the butler announced a new arrival.

  “Sir, Detective Gifford Myers to see you.”

  “Thank you, Henslow, send him in.”

  What? A frown immediately tightened my features, and quite without realizing it, I pushed to my feet. “Where is Jesse? Detective Whyte, I mean.”

  Of course, neither Mr. Van Alen nor his butler had an answer for me. A man about Jesse’s age, somewhere in his thirties, strode into the room. He wore a dark suit of clothes of middling quality beneath an open overcoat, which showed slight fraying at the hem and cuffs. Coming to a halt, he took stock of each of us. A forefinger rose to smooth one curling end of his mustache, though it needed no smoothing. “Which one of you ladies is Miss Emmaline Cross?”

  I resisted the urge to raise my hand, schoolroom style. “I am.” my

  He came around to the front of my chair. “I’d like to start with you, then.”

  I couldn’t help shaking my head, not in protest, but in puzzlement. “But where is Detective Whyte?”

  “He’s not assigned to this case. I am.”

  “I’ve never seen you before.” I couldn’t accept this startling change in police department procedure without satisfying my curiosity first. Jesse Whyte had been Newport’s main homicide investigator for years now. What could have happened to alter that? A sudden fear closed around me. Had something happened to him?

  “I’m new. Transferred from Tiverton only yesterday.” His perfect triangle of a beard bobbed up and down as he spoke, the point appearing to threaten the knot of his cravat with each word. Yes, a fanciful impression on my part, but his unexpected appearance—and the lack of Jesse—had thrown me into a state of befuddlement.

  He dug into a coat pocket and withdrew a tablet and pencil. His next question, however, was addressed to Mr. Van Alen. “Is there a room I can use for my interrogations?”

  The word interrogations planted a tiny seed of dread. And not only in me. The others winced, too.

  Van Alen coughed and cleared his throat. “Why don’t you stay here. Everyone else, please come with me. We’ll retire to the dining room and I’ll have my servants bring in some food.” To the detective, he added, “I’ll post a footman outside the door. You may let him know whom you’d like to . . . interview . . . next.”

  As the others stood to leave, Grace held her place beside me. “Detective, I’d like to remain with Miss Cross, if that’s all right.”

  He looked her up and down once. “And you are?”

  She gave him her most imperious tone. “Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. Cornelius the third,” she added, as i
f clarifying were of great importance.

  He jotted her name on a page in his tablet. “And you saw . . . what?”

  Neily answered for her. “My wife and I didn’t see anything. We had taken our seats to watch the joust when my cousin came to alert Mr. Van Alen about . . . about Judge Schuyler’s death.”

  “I see.” Detective Myers made another notation. “If neither of you saw anything, your presence here is unnecessary. You may both go home.”

  “We’re not going anywhere.” Grace sounded affronted. “And as I said, I’d like to stay with Emma while you question her. As her friend. For moral support.”

  The man’s brow knitted into a scowl. “Is there some reason Miss Cross especially needs moral support?”

  Neily and Grace replied at the same time, each blurting out an angry protest.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but—”

  “Of course she needs moral support.” Grace huffed in indignation before continuing to say, “She discovered a man murdered in these gardens not an hour ago.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry. But I must question the witness alone.”

  At least he didn’t say suspect. I turned to Grace and gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s all right. I’ll answer the detective’s questions and see you in a few minutes.” I looked up at Neily. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  * * *

  Detective Myers studied his notes in silence for several moments, until I once more became aware of the ticking of the mantel clock. He frowned. “Let’s go over this again, Miss Cross.”

  I suppressed a groan, but just barely. I had lost count of the number of times I’d recounted how I came to find Judge Schuyler’s body. I had explained about the dogs, the lights from the house, the cigar, even going so far as to suggest that perhaps someone had given Judge Schuyler that cigar to entice him into the seclusion behind the house. “Nothing is going to change.”