Murder at the Brightwell: A Mystery (32 page)

With unabashed curiosity, I began sifting through them. I would notify Inspector Jones, of course, but it couldn’t hurt for me to give them a cursory inspection.

There were more than a few bills. They came from his tailor, his haberdasher, a jeweler, and there was an impressive debt at a London cigar shop. None of them seem to have been paid, and my initial impression that he was interested in Emmeline for more than her sweet disposition seemed to have been confirmed.

I saw two envelopes addressed to Rupert in what I recognized as Gil’s handwriting. No doubt these were the strongly worded letters Gil had mentioned. I passed them over. Whatever Gil had written to Rupert, I believed it had been done with pure motives.

Near the bottom of the stack, I came across something that was not a bill. It was a terse note scribbled in dark ink that read:

Pay what you owe or you will be sorry. —A friend.

I found the note to be something of a relief. The letter wasn’t at all in Milo’s style. He would have issued a much more elegant threat on vastly superior stationery.

At the very bottom of the pile, there was a small yellow envelope. Opening it, I pulled out a letter written in small, neat handwriting.

My darling,

I know you warned me not to write, but I couldn’t help myself. I am not sure how much longer I can carry on. He suspects something. I’m sure of it. Even if he didn’t know, pretending that we mean nothing to one another is agony. We must act as we have planned. I have waited long enough. I want to be with you, and nothing must stand in our way. I live in anticipation of when our lives will be linked.

All my love,
L.

Before I could begin to make the connection, the voice behind me spoke in the darkness, startling me. “So you’ve found out.”

So intent had I been on the contents of the letter, I had not detected the click of the lock as the door behind me opened. Who else had a key to Rupert’s room? Rupert’s lover, no doubt. The same person that had written the letter I now held in my hand. The person whose name began with an
L
. The realization hit me so suddenly, I felt almost dizzy with it. The note had come from the woman who stood in the doorway watching me: Larissa Hamilton.

27

I ROSE SLOWLY,
the letter still in my hand. “Mrs. Hamilton.”

“That’s my letter, isn’t it?” she asked, nodding toward the envelope. “The one I wrote to Rupert.”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s not signed.”

She smiled, and I thought with a sudden chill how the customary vague politeness had been replaced with a thinly veiled hostility. “I think you know that I wrote it, Mrs. Ames. You’re very clever. Perhaps too clever.”

My mind was working quickly. It was just possible that I had uncovered an illicit liaison and nothing more. I held the note toward her. “It was, perhaps, ill mannered of me to read it. I was hoping I could uncover something. If you’d like it back, I’ll just be going back downstairs.”

Her quiet smile didn’t falter in the slightest as she pulled a gun from her pocket and pointed it at me. “I don’t think that will be possible.”

I felt a strangely numb feeling steal over me as I looked into the muzzle of her gun. I had not suspected Mrs. Hamilton, had not even had an inkling that she might have been involved. And yet it seemed foolish now to have overlooked her.

“You and Rupert were having an affair,” I said. In the novels, it always seemed best to keep the suspect talking. Inevitably, help would arrive. I really held out no hope for such an opportune occurrence, but it seemed the best course of action would be to distract her until I could determine what to do.

“It wasn’t as tawdry as that,” she said, and her voice was wistful. “Rupert and I knew each other years ago. He was a bit younger than me, but we always got on. He knew Geoffrey, and when he was drowned, Rupert befriended me. He helped me through a very difficult time. We formed an attachment, but we were too poor to wed comfortably, and eventually we went our separate ways. It was about a year ago that I saw him again, in London.”

“But you were already married.”

“Yes, unfortunately. I married Hamilton six years ago, and I have been miserable ever since.”

“Did you ever love your husband?” I didn’t know why I had asked her that. I suppose I was just curious if there had ever been a part of Mr. Hamilton that was worth loving.

She laughed, a pretty, tinkling sound, and I realized that I had never heard her express true amusement before this. “Do you think it would be possible to love someone like Nelson? He delighted in belittling me, in making himself feel superior. No, I never loved him. He was rich, and he was the only chance I had at a better life, so I took it.”

“But then Rupert came back into your life.”

“Yes. We met unexpectedly at a party in London, began seeing each other. We agreed to meet here at the Brightwell. It wasn’t hard to convince Nelson. One only had to make him think it was his idea, and that wasn’t difficult. He knew how much I hated the sea, so it pleased him to come here.” She seemed caught up in the story now, and my mind was searching for some means of extricating myself from the situation. I considered hurling my torch at her, but I was not at all confident in my aim.

“I was terribly in love with Rupert,” she said softly, and I could see the anguish in her eyes as she spoke. “He was very good at making people believe what he wanted them to believe. He had Emmeline wrapped around his finger. He did the same to me.”

I said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“He made me believe that he still cared for me. He said he wanted us to be together forever, but I think he was really just interested in Nelson’s money. In addition to Emmeline’s fortune, he would have more money than he could ever possibly need.”

“But how would that have worked, with both of you married to other people? Divorces are difficult to obtain, and surely much of the money would be lost in the proceedings.”

She looked at me strangely, as though she had only just remembered that I was there. Her eyes met mine, and I was chilled at how cold they were. “No, I wasn’t talking about a divorce.”

I frowned, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“You see, we had planned to kill them all along,” she said suddenly. “Nelson and Emmeline. With both of them dead, we could be together, have all the money we ever needed.

Horror coursed through me at her words. I never, in my wildest imaginings, could have concocted something like this.

She smiled, a bit sadly. “I know what you’re thinking, Mrs. Ames. And you’re right. It’s a terrible thing. But Nelson was a terrible man.”

“But what of Emmeline?”

“Emmeline is a sweet girl … but I’ve been waiting a long time for happiness.”

I realized then that Mrs. Hamilton was not quite sane. She couldn’t possibly be. I desperately racked my brains for some way to distract her, for something I could do to escape.

“So what happened … with Rupert?” I asked at last. I was genuinely curious. If I were to be murdered tonight by a deranged killer, I should hate to do it with questions still lingering in my mind.

“I’d be interested to see what you think,” she replied. It was a strange request, but I took my time considering an answer.

“Your husband found out about your affair, confronted Rupert, and struck him. When you found out what he’d done, you killed your husband.”

She smiled again, shaking her head. “Perhaps you’re not as clever as I fancied you, Mrs. Ames. No, Nelson didn’t do it. He didn’t have the nerve. I killed Rupert.”

This I had not anticipated. I rather expect my mouth gaped a bit.

“Gil and Rupert were on the terrace that afternoon, arguing about Emmeline, as usual.”

So Milo had told the truth. Gil had been on the terrace. Their argument explained why Gil hadn’t wanted to admit it; no doubt it had been a continuation of their conversation the night before.

“When Gil had gone, I went to speak to Rupert,” she went on. “He said that Gil was willing to pay him to leave Emmeline alone. He had offered quite a substantial sum, and I told Rupert to take it. We could have spared Emmeline then, you see.”

She looked at me as though she expected I would be impressed by her benevolence.

“But Rupert didn’t want to take it.” I guessed, hoping to prod her forward.

A sudden flash of anger crossed her face, harshening the normally sweet lines of her expression. “No, he didn’t want to take it. Do you know what he told me?”

Even in the dim light, I could see that her grip on the gun was tightening in anger. I could guess very well what Rupert had told her, but I wasn’t about to be the one to say it aloud.

“No. What?” I asked.

“He said he didn’t want the money Gil had offered him, that he had suddenly discovered that he truly cared for Emmeline.”

Of all the shocking truths I had learned on this dreadful little holiday, it was this salient fact that surprised me the most. “He loved Emmeline?”

“He thought he did,” she replied, and though she had calmed herself, there was still some strange combination of anger and sorrow lurking in her stormy blue eyes. “He said he thought we should call it off. He said he would marry her, and perhaps we could still see each other from time to time.” Her voice was growing slightly shrill, and I could imagine the hysteria that must have overcome her on the terrace as the only man she had ever loved, the man she had been prepared to kill for, told her that perhaps he didn’t care so very much for her after all.

“I tried to reason with him, tried to tell him how much he meant to me, but he only smiled in that way of his and asked for a cigarette.”

I knew then what she was about to say. I could see it in my head as clearly as if I had been standing with them on the terrace that day.

“I gave him a cigarette, and he lit it with his gold lighter … the lighter I gave him, not Emmeline. I told him one more time what he meant to me, tried to remind him what we had meant to each other … and then he said…” She paused, as though hearing the words again in her mind. “He said, ‘It’s run its course, Rissa. Let’s be honest, you couldn’t have gone through with killing your husband. You’re much too weak … perhaps that’s why our relationship can’t last.’”

Suddenly she seemed to slump ever so slightly, as though all the emotion had drained out of her, and she was once again the Larissa Hamilton to whom I had grown accustomed, the pale, shrinking wife of a total boor who had married her for her looks and then quickly tired of everything but his cruelty toward her.

“And so you hit him,” I supplied.

“Yes. I struck at him and hit him with my cigarette case, as hard as I could manage. Before I even really knew what was happening, he fell over the edge.” Her face was ashen, and her voice trembled a little as she looked past me, no doubt reliving the scene in her mind.

“You told me that it was a stupid way to kill someone,” I said, remembering our conversation on the terrace shortly after the murder.

“It was, wasn’t it? With a cigarette case. So very stupid.” She said vaguely, “There was so much blood on the case. It took me a very long time to clean it off.”

“Then it was an accident,” I said. “The police couldn’t blame you for that, not really.”

“Perhaps not,” she answered softly. “But then, of course, I killed Nelson, too.”

I had suspected this, but it was still shocking to hear it flow so calmly from her lips. My mind was reeling at the storm of revelations that were swirling around me. I felt very much as though I might welcome a good faint, but I was quite sure Mrs. Hamilton would do something ghastly to me while I was unconscious.

“In a way, I was sorry that Rupert was dead, but knowing how he felt, I mourned him very little. I was hoping the inquest would find that it had been an accident. Then I might have gone on as usual. I still planned on killing Nelson, of course. But I would have done it much later had he not begun to suspect.”

“He found the lighter.”

“Yes, the lighter fell with Rupert. I went down to his body, to try and take it with me, but it wasn’t there. And I couldn’t bring myself to go down to the shore to look for it. I couldn’t bear to be so near the sea. As an afterthought, I put up the ‘closed for repair’ sign, hoping to buy myself a little extra time.”

“You just had to hope that no one found it.”

“Yes, but then Nelson dug it up on the beach somewhere. I don’t know how the police overlooked it, but perhaps they only gave the beach a cursory inspection. Nelson noticed that night when we were playing bridge that my cigarette case matched Rupert’s lighter, which he had used one night at dinner. He noticed stupid things like that. When he remembered the lighter, I suppose he acted on a whim and was rewarded for it. He didn’t know for certain, of course, that I had killed Rupert, only that I had given him the lighter, but he was taunting me with what he had learned and said he would go to the police. He enjoyed making me afraid. And yet … I don’t think he trusted me. He always made sure to lock the door to his room. I was surprised that day to find it open. I had expected to have to force the door from the hall.”

I had left the door unlocked that day. I felt sorry for that now, though I had no doubt she could have easily entered the other way had she set her mind to it. She was, I was learning, quite a tenacious little thing.

“I took Anne Rodgers’s sleeping tablets one evening when we sat in her room looking at magazines. When Nelson and I had gone down to lunch, I put the powder in his drink. He always bathed in the afternoon, and I intended to kill him then. He had this gun, always carried it with him for some absurd reason, but I had taken it before breakfast, just in case there should be any trouble. But the gun proved unnecessary. I had only to slip into his room. He was too disoriented to struggle much.”

“You drowned him,” I said, “despite what happened to your brother.”

Her eyes met mine, and I could detect no trace of remorse in them. “Nelson knew, of course, why I didn’t want to come to the Brightwell, knew how I’d lost Geoffrey, but he said I’d had plenty of time to recover from a childhood incident.” A dazed sort of smile flittered across her face. “Strange, isn’t it? I’ve always been so very afraid of the water, but it was very useful to me this once.”