Queen of Hearts (Royal Spyness Mysteries) (23 page)

I looked around them, one by one.

“Do you want me to go up to your room, miss, and get your nightclothes ready?” Queenie asked.

“I don’t think you can do that,” I said. “We’re not staying in the house. We’re all in bungalows dotted around the grounds.”

“Well, I expect I can find the right one if you show me where it is,” Queenie said. “Someone will have a torch, won’t they?”

“Queenie, we’re a long way from the house and the grounds are full of wild animals,” I said.

“Go on.” She nudged me. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m certainly not,” I said. “Mr. Goldman imported exotic animals for his park—giraffes, zebras, and God knows what else.”

“Cor blimey,” she said. “And to think I was trying to get in through that gate. I might have come face-to-face with an elephant. So what do you want me to do? It don’t feel right for me to sit here among your lot.”

“I suppose you’d better join the other servants in the kitchen,” I said.

“And how do I find where the kitchen is in this ’ouse of ’orrors?” she demanded. “I’ll be bound to get lost and meet a boa constrictor or something.”

I looked up and saw one of the groundsmen still lingering near the front door. I beckoned him over. “Could you possibly drive my maid over to the cottage where I’m staying?” I asked. “She’s afraid to walk on her own in the dark.”

“Of course,” he said. “Follow me, miss.”

Queenie gave me a pleased grin. He was rather good-looking in a Latin way. I watched her go then saw my mother and Belinda watching me.

“You really are too soft,” Mummy said. “You should have refused to take her back.”

“Mummy, I could hardly leave her to fend for herself in California, could I? I brought her out here, and hopefully she’s learned her lesson.”

Mummy sighed and got up. “I think I need another drink, Charlie darling.”

“Of course you do. We all need a little something right now to cheer us up, don’t we?”

“I know what might cheer me up.” She walked slowly over to him and I watched him watching her. I had a feeling that she wouldn’t be spending the rest of the night in our bungalow, if we were ever released to go to bed. And again I marveled that I could be her daughter. Perhaps I had been switched at birth with Belinda.

I realized that I could do with a drink too, but Mummy and Charlie were now being horribly chummy at the drinks table and I dared not interrupt. So I was glad when we heard the sound of heavy footsteps outside and then rapping on the front door.

Ronnie went to answer it and several men entered the hallway. They looked to me like a gang of desperadoes who might have come to raid the bank in any Wild Western film. “Where’s the sheriff?” one of them asked. “We got word of a body being found here?” He was unshaven, wearing a sweaty shirt and a cowboy hat he hadn’t bothered to remove.

“The sheriff is in the library where the body is also located,” Ronnie said. “Are you one of the deputies?”

“No, I’m the doctor,” the scruffy individual said. “The deputies came to get me when I’d just returned from a horseback ride. So take me to him. I’m dog tired and want to get home.”

After prim and fastidious English doctors, I didn’t put much faith in this one. It was interesting to observe that under the thin veneer of glamour in Beverly Hills this was still the untamed West. The deputies moved into the front hall, looking around with awe as if they’d suddenly found themselves on a strange planet. We turned at the sound of tapping feet and Stella came across the hall, followed by the sheriff. She made a beeline for the cocktails.

“Odious man,” she muttered. “One minute he’s asking me personal questions about my relationship with Cy and the next he’s asking for my autograph for his wife.”

“So you finally got here,” the sheriff said as he joined his men. “What news on the fire?”

“Won’t be contained for a few days at least,” one said. “They’ve got fire crews come in from all over the place but it’s moving so damned fast they can’t stop it.”

“Right. Nothing more we can do there anyway. In the hands of the fire marshal now,” he grunted in his deep, gravelly voice. “Doc’s with the body now. I need you boys to do a thorough search of this house. And did one of you bring a fingerprinting kit?”

“Out in the truck, Sheriff.”

“Then go get it. We’ve got us one fine bloody print that should make it easy to identify our killer.”

One of them slouched out again, walking with that strange rolling gait that comes from a life in the saddle.

“So what are we supposed to be looking for?” another of them asked.

“Clues, boys, clues. Any more fingerprints—oh, and a golden candlestick covered with precious stones. Not too easy to hide, I’d have thought.”

“Surely nobody would be stupid enough to hide the candlestick in the house,” Belinda whispered to me. “But then I can’t think that anyone would be stupid enough to steal the candlestick in the first place. Certainly not one of us. And if I were trying to steal it and Mr. Goldman caught me at it, I’d bluff my way out, saying I wanted to take a closer look in good light. I wouldn’t bash him over the head.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I think it has to be an outsider. One of us would have a good excuse for being in the library and wouldn’t have panicked if we’d been caught with the candlestick.”

“I wish we could go to bed,” Belinda muttered. “I am incredibly tired. Of course I could have livened up no end if there had been a good reason to stay awake. But alas, I seem to have lost my sex appeal.”

I had just decided to spill the beans to her when we heard running footsteps on the gallery up above and then someone yelled, “Sheriff. Up here.”

The big man took the stairs with surprising grace. Then we heard him say, “Well, I’ll be . . .”

He returned to the head of the stairs. “Okay, who is currently sleeping in this room to the left at the top of the stairs?”

“That’s my room, Sheriff,” Stella said coldly.

“Then perhaps you’d like to come up here, Miss Brightwell,” he said. His eyes had a triumphant gleam to them.

“Oh really,” she said. “What have they found now? My frilly underpants from Paris?”

“Oh, no. Much more interesting than that,” he said.

Stella stalked across the foyer and up the stairs. “Mrs. Goldman was right when she said we should try to bring in detectives from Los Angeles,” she said. “Your incompetent louts are keeping us awake for nothing.”

“Incompetent louts?” the sheriff demanded. “You counted on us being really stupid, did you? Or you’d have found a better hiding place for this.”

There was a scream. Darcy was up the stairs in an instant. So were Craig and Ronnie, followed closely by me. We clustered at the doorway of a bedroom that would have been right at home in Castle Rannoch—huge four-poster bed, tapestries on the walls, old chests, candlesticks . . . and one candlestick, more beautiful than the rest, lying in the middle of Stella’s bed.

Stella was standing there, her mouth open, pointing at it. “How did it get there?” she demanded.

“That’s what we’d like to know, Miss Brightwell,” the sheriff said.

“Someone must have put it there,” Stella said, sounding angry now. “Someone is trying to frame me.”

“Oh yeah?” The sheriff was still gloating. “Or maybe you killed your lover and decided to take one of the candlesticks as a little souvenir. Only the body was found quicker than you’d hoped and you had nowhere to hide it properly. So your bed seemed a fairly safe place—unless you decided to invite someone else to join you tonight.”

“How dare you!” Stella said. “In case you’ve forgotten, I am a famous actress. I could afford to buy my own candlestick if I wanted one. If I’d asked Cy for it, he’d have probably given it to me as a present. He adored me. I adored him. And if that old cow had given him the divorce he wanted, we’d have been married by now.”

“But she didn’t, did she?” the sheriff said. “Perhaps you just found out he never planned to divorce his wife. Perhaps he was about to ditch you and move on to someone new and you didn’t like that.”

“So I hit him over the head with his own candlestick?” she snapped. “Don’t be ridiculous. I abhor violence, Sheriff.”

“We’ll find out soon enough, Miss Brightwell,” he said. “When my man has had a good look at that fingerprint. If I were you I’d pack some clothes. You may be on your way to jail before the night is over.”

“I bet she was the one who did this,” Stella said, her voice now cracking with emotion. “That cow, his wife. She always hated me, even though she didn’t want Cy for herself. What’s the betting she bashed his head in and then planted the candlestick on me. Killing two birds with one stone. How very neat. You want to question her more fully, Sheriff. Find out if she’s taken out a large life insurance policy on her husband recently.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Brightwell. We’ll be doing that. Trust me. But when I was a young lawman my boss said to me, ‘Always go for what you know. Go for the obvious first then work outward.’ And what I know right now is that you could have a good reason for killing a former lover and the evidence was found in your bed.”

“Hardly a former lover,” she said. “We had a quickie after we arrived this afternoon, before the dreadful wife got here.” And she smirked. “And as to having the opportunity to kill him—ask the others. We came into the rotunda together after dinner and we didn’t leave until Cy was found dead. Isn’t that right?”

I hesitated, wrestling between telling the truth and betraying someone. Then I decided I had no reason to be loyal to Stella. Darcy had followed her across the country, suspecting her of being a notorious jewel thief. I had to tell what I knew.

“You did leave the room once, Stella,” I said, then blushed when all eyes turned on me. “You went to ask for more coffee when Darcy and Ronnie joined us.”

“Oh yes. So I did.” Stella gave a little laugh. “But two seconds going down to the kitchen and back hardly constitutes enough time to sneak into the library, kill Cy and rush upstairs with a candlestick, does it? Everyone would have seen me going upstairs, for one thing. And Maria can vouch for my presence in the kitchen. I’m not Peter Pan. I can’t fly around the house in seconds.”

This, of course, was true. Even if she’d been out of our line of vision we’d have heard her feet going upstairs.

“I’m not going to caution you officially yet, but I want you locked up with a guard on you until we know more. Which of these rooms can be locked from the outside?”

“The library,” Stella said, “but I take it even you wouldn’t be insensitive enough to lock me up with Cy’s body.”

“No. Of course not. And we’ll want to conduct a further search on this room.” He looked around, unsure what to do next. “What other rooms?”

“The poolside cabanas can all be locked from the outside,” Ronnie said, “but they are currently occupied. As are some of the cottages. In fact Stella is the only person sleeping in the house, apart from Mrs. Goldman.”

“And Barbara Kindell,” Stella said. “Mrs. Goldman wanted her friend close to her, remember?”

Instinctively we turned around but Barbara had not joined us at the top of the stairs. Neither had Mrs. Goldman, nor Algie. The sheriff looked around at those of us clustered in the doorway. “So who would have known that this was Miss Brightwell’s room?”

“Nobody apart from Mrs. Goldman and possibly Miss Kindell,” Stella said. “Most of them were visiting for the first time and Cy never liked his guests to sleep in the main house. He liked his privacy. That’s why he had the cottages built. So they’d have had no way of knowing where I was sleeping.”

“Interesting.” The sheriff sucked through his teeth. “Well, we’ve got to put you somewhere, Miss Brightwell. I can lock you in my truck for the night, but that’s a little chilly right now. Or I can lock you in a bathroom. . . .”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. This is absurd.” Stella had remained remarkably composed until now but I could tell she was coming to the end of her tether. “I believe some of the bedroom doors have old-fashioned locks and the keys must be somewhere. Ask Maria. She must know where they are kept. We’ve never thought of locking bedroom doors here.”

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” the sheriff replied with a smirk. “We’ve all heard what goes on in places like this.”

“Oh, really, this is pathetic,” she said. “Lock me up and put a guard on me if you like, but I actually want to go to sleep. I don’t know about you but I’m dead tired. And if you think I can fly away through the window then go and look out. On this side of the house there are rocks at the bottom of a large drop.”

“Very well,” the sheriff said. “One of you men go and get the keys from the housekeeper, and you can find an unused room for Miss Brightwell—one that’s already been searched, with no dangerous objects in it.”

“Come now, Sheriff,” Stella snapped. “Do you expect me to go on another rampage with a candlestick?”

The sheriff ignored her. “And Hansen, you remain outside the door.”

“It’s not as if I can escape, Sheriff,” Stella said. “There is only one way out of this property and that’s through the gate that can only be operated from inside the gatehouse. And anyone walking alone in these grounds at night must be mad. I’ve no idea exactly what animals Cy keeps here but they are certainly not all friendly.”

“I’m not taking any chances, Miss Brightwell,” the sheriff said. “Now if you’d like to go with my men . . .”

Stella turned back to look at us as she was led away. “This is bloody stupid,” she said—showing how upset she really was. A lady never swears in public. But then she wasn’t a lady, was she? She might be playing Princess Elizabeth in the movie but she had come from the lowliest of circumstances.

As we trooped down the stairs again we were greeted by the doctor. “Ah, there you are, Sheriff,” he said. “I hope one of your men can run me home. I’ve concluded my preliminary investigation,” he said. “My initial observation is that Mr. Goldman died of trauma to the head, struck with a blunt instrument which one had to conclude was the candlestick, now lying beside him on the floor.”

“That was obvious to even the most stupid among us,” the sheriff said.

“Hold on a minute,” the doctor said. “I have yet to autopsy the victim. We don’t know, for example, whether he might have been knocked out in some other way first—poison perhaps, and then finished off with the blow to the head.”

“Hardly likely,” Darcy said. “We were all talking and laughing with him fifteen minutes before he died.”

“And this was clearly a spontaneous act when the thief was interrupted in the middle of a robbery,” the sheriff added. “One of the candlesticks was taken. Presumably the thief meant to take both of them but then couldn’t bring himself or herself to take the candlestick matted with hair and blood.”

“That would prove he didn’t die of poisoning or some other means first, wouldn’t it?” I blurted out, finding this whole thing rather silly. “I mean, there was an awful lot of blood all over the floor and if he was already dead, he would have stopped bleeding.”

They stared at me as if I were a newly arrived Martian.

“And how would you know that, little lady?” the doctor asked.

“I’ve been involved in a couple of murders in my life,” I said.

“She’s helped to solve them,” Darcy added, moving closer to my side. “She’s quite a whiz, if you want to know.”

“Holy cow,” the doctor said.

“So let’s hear it, then.” The sheriff turned to me with a sarcastic smile on his thick lips. “Who did it? We’re all dying to know and then we can go home.”

“Of course I have no idea who did it yet,” I said. “But I really have to suspect that someone was trying to frame Miss Brightwell. I mean why hide the candlestick where it would so easily be found? She knows her way around this house. If she was planning to hide something, there must be hundreds of out-of-the-way corners and cupboards where nobody would ever look. She could even stash it inside a suit of armor—”

I broke off as I said this as a picture flashed into my head—Algie standing in the hallway with the suit of armor scattered around him. Right before we found the body of Cy Goldman. Was it possible that hiding the candlestick was exactly what Algie was trying to do, only he knocked over the armor and had to play the fool instead when we all came running? I couldn’t wait to draw Darcy aside and tell him this. I looked around for Algie and he wasn’t with us at the top of the stairs. I wondered if anyone was guarding the front door.

Before we could go downstairs another of the deputies came running up toward us. “That fingerprint, Sheriff,” he said. “I just tested it.”

“And?”

The silence was palpable.

“No go, I’m afraid. The person was wearing a glove. A leather glove.”