The chimney acted as the handle. A cautious pull and the whole edifice lifted off, revealing the unpleasant mess it had been designed to conceal. The cat and I both retreated a couple of paces from the revolting smell now fully released into the room. She gave me an accusing look.
‘How was I to know?’ I tried to defend myself. ‘I thought the cleaners took care of things like this.’ Actually, I hadn’t thought about it at all and the look she gave me told me she knew it.
‘Right.’ I avoided her gaze. ‘Let’s sort this out now.’ With the house removed, I found a sack of kitty litter and several folded bin bags had been hidden in the corner behind it, along with a supply of small plastic sheets which were obviously used to line the litter box itself.
I shook out a bin bag and, holding my breath, bundled liner, used litter and all into it. As I replaced the litter tray on the floor, I noticed that something that had been beneath the liner was still in it.
I gave the tray another shake, but couldn’t dislodge the
thing. At least it had been under the liner, I consoled myself, reaching for it.
It didn’t come away without a struggle and I saw that it had been roughly glued to the tray.
The cat gave an impatient yowl and I tossed the thing to one side as I relined and refilled the tray. First things first. The cat stepped into the tray, pawed at the litter, smoothing it out, then looked up at me huffily.
‘Oops, sorry.’ I got the message and covered both cat and tray with the concealing house. A lady had a right to her privacy.
I retrieved the object I had discovered in the litter tray and gave it my full attention. It seemed to be a little square plastic envelope — the sort collectors use for small objects of value: stamps, coins, medals, that sort of thing.
Had Nessa decided to become a collector? Of what? I turned the envelope over, looking for the opening. Whatever it was, it was concealed by a folded paper wrapped around it, perhaps for extra protection.
For what? A Penny Black stamp? No — there was something round and hard inside that paper. A rare coin? Perhaps a valuable medal from some historic battle?
Something worth having — and hiding. Small, valuable — and extremely portable. The sort of thing war refugees — and fugitives — invested their funds in when they knew they might have to flee a country suddenly.
Nessa — prepared to run away?
The opening was beneath the dollop of glue I scraped aside. The enclosing wrapper made it a tight fit inside the tiny container. I eased it out and tried not to tear the paper while I released its contents.
I had no doubt that this was what everyone had been searching for. But surely no one around here was so short of money that they had to resort to thievery Unless it was valuable beyond the dreams of avarice?
Yet I had the uneasy feeling that they had not known really what they were looking for — just hoping to recognize it when they saw it.
Except, perhaps, for Ivor. He had tried to open the smallest drawer in the desk.
What did he know?
I worked away at the tightly folded paper, my disquiet stirring as my fingertips told me there was something odder here than I had imagined.
Of course, there were ancient Chinese coins with a hole in the centre. Probably any number of ancient civilizations had once minted gold currency neatly hollowed so that it could be strung on a rope or chain for easy carrying …
The object burst free suddenly and fell to the floor. I stared down at it, unwilling to believe the information my eyes were relaying to my brain.
It was a ring. A plain gold ring. A wedding ring.
I stooped and retrieved it, vaguely aware that I was shaking my head in a denial I knew was useless.
Nessa? Nessa? Married? And never told me?
Worse — I’d had no inkling of it. How had there been such a failure of that sixth sense that had always operated between us?
Unless -?
I grasped wildly at the faint hope — explanation — that occurred to me: perhaps the ring wasn’t hers. She had found it somewhere and it … it …
I carried the ring over to the brightest table lamp and squinted at the smooth flat inside surface. There were initials engraved on it. My eyes blurred suddenly and I couldn’t read them.
I didn’t want to read them. Before the blurring, I had seen the
V
for
Vanessa
. Were the corresponding initials
B.A
. for
Brian Anderson?
Or even
Bud?
What the hell kind of name was Bud, anyway? Not a name, a nickname, that’s all. If I saw his real initials, I wouldn’t recognize them.
Just as long as there wasn’t an
I
for
Ivor! No. Nessa, you couldn’t have!
There was no way he —
The blurring cleared and I had to force myself to look at the inscription again. The letters danced, blurred, then settled into focus:
E.L.O.
Who?
The L threw me momentarily. Unwanted knowledge thumped at my consciousness, but I refused to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t believe it! I looked around wildly.
The paper that had been folded so tightly around the ring lay on the table beside the lamp where I had dropped it. There was printing on one side of the paper — and handwriting. I picked it up slowly and smoothed it out.
A marriage certificate.
Vanessa Elfrida Miller … and … Edward Llywellyn … Oversall …
Shadow?
Shadow was my brother-in-law? But … he hated Nessa. It was in every look he gave me, every fibre of his being when he had to be near me.
I looked at the date on the certificate … barely six months ago. It hadn’t taken long for the bloom to go off
that
rose.
Nessa
—
what happened? In so short a time?
And then I looked at the other dates. Looked … and again couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It wasn’t Shadow Nessa had married — it was the old man himself.
All the while I had been mentally auditioning prospective candidates, the position was already filled.
Everett Oversall, billionaire. My brother-in-law.
And
that
was why Shadow hated Nessa. I saw again the fury in his eyes, heard the hatred and contempt in his voice as he flung the word at me like an obscenity:
Mother!
A stepmother who was young enough to have been his own bride. Was that part of his problem? Or was the mere fact of it more than his pride could bear?
And had he done any more about it than seethe and brood? Had he been the one who had tried to murder Nessa? Who was now prowling the cloister in the monk’s robe, trying to entice me outside so that he could try again?
Mr Oversall doesn’t seem to have much luck with wives
. Nina’s words came back to me. She thought he’d stopped
trying. It appeared that he had gone for one last throw of the dice — and his luck was still rotten.
But not as bad as Nessa’s
. What had she walked into, in this nest of serpents?
A sudden pressure on my ankles startled me and I jumped, then looked down to find the Duchess twining around them. We were back on friendly terms again; in fact, we were getting positively intimate.
‘Feeling better?’ Chancing my luck, I stooped and picked her up. Far from protesting, she settled into my arms and began purring. I felt myself grow calmer as I stroked her. Some of the disquieting images faded from my mind and I was able to think more clearly.
I had to talk to Everett Oversall; he held the key to all this.
Key
. That inspired another thought. Still holding the cat, I went to the door and tried to open it. As I had suspected, it refused to yield.
My own private lock-in. Again.
Was Nina locked in, too? If she had gone back to her studio, that is. If she wasn’t wandering around the grounds, still caught up in her hopeless search for Kiki.
As though she understood that I had just been thwarted in an attempt to leave her, the cat’s purring increased and she twisted her head to get an extra-good rubbing behind first one ear and then the other. We were going to have a nice intimate evening all on our own.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘It’s just you and me tonight.’ And possibly just as well. It would give me time to digest what I had learned and decide just how I was going to deal with my newly discovered brother-in-law. Or husband, if I stayed in character.
Only … there was still something nagging at the back of my mind. I stood silent and motionless, waiting to see if it would come to me.
After a long moment, it did — and I received a sharp complaint as my fingers tightened abruptly around a furry neck.
Anderson!
Kiki was missing … Nina was hysterical. Dr Anderson had been sent for and was expected to arrive promptly to attend to her.
But he had never shown up.
Where the hell was he? Had he gone missing, too? What had happened to him? Had he been delayed, or —?
I woke in the morning with such an overwhelming feeling of well-being that it unnerved me. There was no reason for it. Things weren’t going
that
well.
They were progressing. I had found the ring and the marriage certificate. But now I had to decide what to do with them. Nothing to be so cheerful about there.
But I could feel my lips curving in a smile, there was a warmth in the region of my heart. Also … a certain heaviness.
I opened my eyes to find the cat curled on my chest. A receding memory told me that she had been there all night. She had accepted me at last.
She stirred, as though aware of being watched, opened her eyes to look into mine — and began purring.
There were worse ways to start the day. But, pleasant as this was, it still didn’t fully account for my ridiculously good mood.
Unless — I closed my eyes and waited … listened … questioned … holding my breath, scarcely daring to hope.
Somewhere deep inside of me there came a faint answering flicker, a tendril of another consciousness reaching out to me, trying to contact me …
Nessa was back! Conscious. Compos mentis
. And calling to me.
I concentrated all my energy, trying to answer her, to beam encouragement and strength to her.
I felt a momentary response, then it faded, perhaps
as she drifted off into what I sensed would now be a healing sleep.
Now, more than ever, I needed to talk to Dr Brian Anderson. He was supposed to keep me informed. Perhaps I had discouraged that when I jumped all over him for detaching Nessa from her life support system without consulting me, her next of kin.
Except that — in the strictly legal sense — I was no longer her next of kin. Everett Oversall was — a spouse took precedence. Had Anderson known about the marriage?
Madame knew. I had studied the marriage certificate until I had memorized it last night. I could understand and agree with Oversall that Everett was a more impressive name for professional use than Edward. In the theatre world, people who changed their names were more usual than those who didn’t.
The names of the witnesses were more interesting. At least, the one I was able to identify as Madame’s was. The other was male, Middle Eastern and unknown to me — probably some passing-through business associate of Oversall’s who had been co-opted to stand witness at the registrar’s office, sign the certificate, and be sent on his way without ever having full comprehension of the importance of the event he had witnessed. He might not even have spoken or understood English.
Madame, however, was a different story.
I finished dressing, a thorough job, with jeans and pullover beneath the kaftan, so that I could revert to my own form if I got the chance to slip away from this place and make it to the hospital to check on Nessa.
The cat watched disapprovingly as I refolded the marriage certificate into a less bulky size and slid it between the pages of one of the books, which I then replaced on the shelf.
Next I raided Nessa’s jewel box for a thin gold chain, threaded it through the wedding ring and fastened the chain around my neck, concealing the ring in my bodice in the time-honoured tradition.
As a final touch, I added eyeliner, mascara, blusher and several more gold chains, to be worn outside this time. Dress to kill — or be killed.
Now for Madame.
Bud intercepted me just before I reached Madame’s cottage. I wondered if he had followed me from the cloister.
‘You’re looking better every day,’ he greeted me. Had I put on too much make-up? Brutus, too, was regarding me with unusual interest.
‘I’m feeling better,’ I said, moving downwind of the dog’s twitching nose.
‘Taking a little stroll before you start the day’s work, are you?’
Keeping tabs on me, are you?
‘That’s right.’ I smiled demurely. ‘I thought I’d drop in on Madame and see how she is this morning.’ He could guess that for himself, no harm in confirming it. ‘That is, if Richie will let me see her. I don’t think he likes me. Or else he’s afraid I’ll tire Madame. I won’t, I promise.’
‘I believe you.’ He regarded me speculatively. ‘Would you like me to get him out of the way for you?’
‘Would you?’ The way he was looking at me made me wary about promising any sort of gratitude. I turned it into a challenge, instead. ‘Can you?’
‘Just watch me.’ He marched down the path, Brutus trotting at his heel.
I moved out of sight and waited.
When Bud emerged, Richie was with him. They moved off in the direction of the woods with some urgency. Behind Richie’s back, Bud signalled a thumbs-up to me.
The coast was clear.
‘Ah, Vanessa.’ In the front room, Madame was waiting. ‘I have been expecting you.’
Will you walk into my parlour?
‘I knew you would return.’
‘Did you?’ I took the chair she indicated. ‘I think you know more about me than I do.’
‘Would that be so hard?’ Those hooded eyes watched me expectantly. ‘Unless you have begun to remember?’
When you remember, I’ll be waiting
… Had that message come from Madame?