Seven Days Dead (37 page)

As the woman is barely known to her, Sandra doesn’t react, other than to look over at Maddy to see how she takes the news. The younger women seems thoroughly perplexed. “I don’t understand. Why? How? Did she kill my father, too?”

“It’s a long story, Maddy. Let’s settle in. The whiskey, then, is a good idea.” He takes another sip, which prompts the others to do the same. The women then ceremoniously put their glasses down as though to encourage his long story. Émile cradles his own glass in both hands, wishing that he could stay silent awhile and just drink.

“Prepare yourself, Maddy. The turns to this tale may stun you. Since I don’t know that for sure, it may be that I’ll only be confirming certain aspects for you. I mean to say that you might want to steel yourself for a shock or two.”

“My God,” she says very quietly. Already seated back in her chair, somehow she sinks deeper into its hold. “That’s some preamble.”

Another sip, another deeper breath, and he begins. “First, to let you know, your father was suffocated to death by the Reverend Simon Lescavage.”

He waits for the violence of the news to subside. Knowing that he’s going to continue, Maddy, stunned, says nothing.

“He was a gentle man,” Émile continues. “Not a stakeholder in anything that would precipitate such a crime. He was one of the few friends your father had. So why would it be him? The answer lies in your father’s nature, which is not news to you. He did have a few select male friends, but he permitted others into his life only if they let him lord it over them. Captain Sticky McCarran, for instance, was a friend, but he also owed your father, and Sticky relied on him for extra income. Not always legitimate income, but that’s another tale. Your father was friends with Simon Lescavage in part because he was able to lord it over him intellectually. I don’t think your father appreciated the minister’s loss of faith. He preferred berating him and ridiculing him for his religion. Then, when the preacher agreed with him on all that, Alfred Orrock had no way to humiliate him further. A problem. By then, they were friends, so he could still be mean to him whenever he liked. He found ways.”

“Some friendship,” Sandra comments.

“That’s how they were,” Maddy recalls. “But why…”

“Why did he kill him? Your father chose to die under his own terms. He was not one to surrender to anyone’s will, not even to the will of death. He’d had enough with being weak and sickly. But suicide? Even an assisted suicide? He couldn’t bear people celebrating that he’d done himself in. Instead, he coerced the reverend to do it. An assisted suicide, but done in secret, in a way meant never to be revealed.”

“How was he coerced?”

“Your father made up two wills, Maddy. The one in your possession—”

“That will gives fifty thousand dollars to Simon. He killed my father for money?”

“As you’ll hear in a moment, he offered to give the money away. I think the cash was meant to intimidate him, to make him look bad and to help keep him quiet. He could never confess because people would think as you did now, that he wanted the fifty grand and wasn’t willing to wait for Orrock’s natural death. No, you see, he did it so that the
other will,
the second will, would never greet the light of day. The will to be accepted as valid is the one that your father signed and that you will carry to his solicitor, who happens to have both in her possession. The one the lawyer puts into action will be the one that is signed and is handed to her. Alfred Orrock threatened Lescavage with signing one and not the other, and the pastor was under pressure because he knew that you were on your way home, Maddy. The second will, the one the minister took away with him, was worded quite differently. In it, the minister would receive nothing, that’s true, but the entire proceeds of Orrock’s estate would be divided equally among any and all offspring whose DNA demonstrates that they are his biological children.”

Maddy takes that in, shakes her head, and looks up again. “He slept around. If he has bastard kids, I can live with that. But since that will was never signed, the estate is still entirely mine.”

“That’s correct.”

“I don’t understand. You said the minister didn’t do it for the money. Then why?”

“DNA would be the requirement in the new will.”

“Okay.”

“Your friend Simon knew what that meant.”

“And I don’t, obviously,” Maddy infers.

“It leaves you out.”

Beyond her head lies the sea. Cinq-Mars sees her face framed by a windowpane behind her, and surrounding that pane is glass that reveals the reddening bay.

“How,” she asks quietly, “does DNA leave me out?”

“Your father sired other children. He did not sire you. His second will exposed that fact, and your father believed that it would crush you, after his death. If it came to light. He deeply resented that you didn’t love him. That you hardly ever came to visit. That you chose to live your life elsewhere. He swore a vow to look after you throughout his lifetime.”

“What vow?”

Cinq-Mars chooses to ignore her question for the moment. “A solemn vow that he lived up to. He did not believe, however, that it extended beyond his life. He was willing to trade away your future if Lescavage did not do exactly as he demanded. Put another way, you were his hole card. He was willing to maintain your inheritance, and your ignorance, but only if Lescavage obeyed him. He asked the pastor to kill him. To maintain your inheritance, to spare you devastating news, the reverend did what he was forced to do. He could not allow you to be crushed.”

The report feels like a tectonic shift beneath her feet. Émile can see in her eyes that she’s searching inwardly through her past and memories, through time and experience, evaluating confrontations and even the days that were pleasant or joyful, to glean some indication, some validation, for this new universe that she now inhabits. Émile glances at Sandra and sees a query in her expression.

“What?” he asks.

“How do you know what happened that night? No one was here to see.”

He concedes the validity of her question. Maddy also perks up, as if hoping that the world will be put back onto its proper axis, and spin in a familiar direction, if his hypothesis can be nullified. Although she doesn’t know how to receive his news, if it can be dismissed, her next steps will at least follow a recognizable path.

“I’ve spent all afternoon and then some,” Cinq-Mars explains, “talking with Grace Matheson. She was the last person to be with the reverend before he died, before she killed him. Fact is, so much of what I’m telling you comes through her, from him. So it’s not direct, but secondhand.”

“And she’s a reliable witness?” Sandra inquires.

“Everything she says fits with what I know and what we’ve discovered.”

Slumping down in the chair, putting her head back against the high rest and crossing her arms, Maddy Orrock looks puzzled but still demands whatever comes next. “Go on,” she insists. “I know there’s more.”

“Yes. More. The minister intended to stay here that night, or so Mrs. Matheson says. But he was racked by guilt. He was still a religious man in his bones, no matter the contrary opinion that his doubts inflicted on him. He was never able to leave his church, for instance. Having committed a murder, having been coerced into doing so, despite a belief that he had no choice, despite doing it for your sake, Maddy, he was finding it hard to live with himself. He was in torment, that’s my impression. He killed a man and that knowledge overwhelmed him. He felt forsaken, more so as time ticked by. He couldn’t stay here and wait for you. He couldn’t face you. So he went home.”

This time when he takes another sip, the women join him. Adequate fortification in this circumstance is viewed as necessary.

“I’m still following Mrs. Matheson’s account, which dovetails with my own investigation. He walked home wearing his rain gear. Once home, he took it off, of course. But then he called Mrs. Matheson. She came to pick him up. He ran out to her car, and because it was such a short sprint, he didn’t bother with the rain pants. We checked the phone records. He called her on his landline at that late hour.”

Sandra asks why he called Mrs. Matheson, of all people, if he wanted to confess. “Why not his friend, the Reverend Unger, let’s say?”

“The fifty grand left to him in the will? In the other version, it goes to Grace Matheson. He wanted to let her know that he was going to give her every penny of what was left to him. The best he could do to ease his conscience. Beyond that, he believed that once Mrs. Matheson took the money, she would not be able to mention where it came from. In his heart, he was making recompense for his deed by rejecting Orrock’s blood money. For him, the perfect person to confess to, the only person really, was Mrs. Matheson.”

“Every penny,” Maddy repeats.

“So she says.”

“Then why kill him? Alive, he’s worth fifty thousand dollars to her!”

“I’m sure her lawyer will bring that up at trial, if he can talk her into pleading not guilty. Fortunately, we have her detailed confession written out in full.”

“The question stands, Émile,” Sandra says, taking up Maddy’s point. “Why would she kill him? Because he confessed to killing Mr. Orrock?”

“I don’t think he went that far, to confess to her, not at that point.”

“Then why?” Maddy presses. “She was angry about the will? Upset? Really? How would she get him up to Ashburton Head in a storm? It makes no sense what you’re saying.”

As tired as he is, lingering remnants of adrenaline still pump through him, and Émile discovers that he needs to stand. While up, he refreshes his drink, starts in again with his explanation, and while doing that tops up the women’s glasses. “You, Sandra, helped me out on that part.”

“Me?” She’s unaware of any contribution.

“Big-time. When we arrested Mrs. Matheson she was ready to fight. I mean put up her dukes and box. Comical, if it wasn’t such a serious moment. I leaned down and whispered in her ear, and what I said took the fight right out of her. I only had something to whisper because of you. Your numerology, in a sense, solved this case. Certainly it carried the day with my interrogation.”

“Get off it.” She’s both tickled and flabbergasted.

Émile stands by the fireplace at one end of the room’s sitting area. “Not kidding in the slightest. You wrote down people’s names and birth dates. I noticed that you, Maddy, were born not so far apart from Mr. Roadcap. I noticed that his full name is Aaron Oscar Roadcap. At first, I thought they were odd names. I haven’t met other Aarons or Oscars on this island, only a lot of Peters and Hanks and Mikes. So I looked at them more closely. That’s when I saw that his initials, A.O.R., are a reconfigured version of your father’s, A.R.O., for Alfred Royce Orrock Coincidence? Possibly. In my work, I look upon coincidence as smoke. You know the rest. Where there’s smoke, something’s burning.”

Maddy decides to sit up now. Her left hand covers her right in a way that suggests she’s attempting to quell a tremor. “Are you saying that that bloody Roadcap is one of my father’s bastard children?”

He doesn’t bother to answer. She knows he’s saying exactly that.

“Okay,” Maddy says. “Go on. If there’s more.”

“As I said, brace yourself. There’s more.”

“Jesus.”

“I whispered to Mrs. Matheson while she was in a combative mood that I knew who fathered her child, and the fight went right out of her. The jig, essentially, was up.”

“But her name,” Sandra says, “is Ora Cynthia Matheson. O.C.M. Not a match.”

“It’s her first name.” Maddy has already figured this out, and seems glum now. “Ora. O-R-A. My dad’s initials in reverse. That was your identifier?”

Cinq-Mars nods. “You see, Lescavage knew only about Aaron Roadcap. He assumed the entire estate was going to him, leaving poor Maddy out and thoroughly humiliated. What he did not know was that it was going to be divided between Roadcap and Ora, and perhaps others. Grace Matheson knew about it, though, and the promise of fifty grand wasn’t enough to extinguish her greed for her daughter’s share of millions, and also business interests, this house, the world that’s on their doorstep. Grace always expected that when the old man died, she’d live out her days right here, where we are, with this view, in this house. And she could still have it. All she had to do was get your father’s other will back from Lescavage, which she did, and get the minister out of the way, which she did by killing him. Then forge Orrock’s signature. He had such a shaky hand at the end of his life, how could that be difficult? Who would notice? Her attempt would be as good as his own. Then she’d switch the wills. She took the dead man’s keys, because she knew his key ring included a key to the Orrock mansion—her daughter had told her so, in case the old man ever called, and in need, and Ora wasn’t available. If she made the switch, then you, Maddy, would be an unwary innocent, a lamb to the slaughter, as you would take the
wrong one
to the solicitor, thinking you’d be getting at least a large cut of the proceeds, only to find out that your DNA eliminated you. At that point, it would be game, set, and match. You’d be out of luck. Crushed, even. Roadcap and Ora, and really her mother, would control half the proceeds each and fight over ownership of this house. At that point, of course, Ora’s mom could buy out Roadcap’s share—she’d have the cash on hand through her daughter—then live out her days in her mansion while the cash from Orrock’s enterprises flowed in.”

“Then why didn’t she switch the wills?” Maddy asks.

“You’d come home. You were in the house. She might still have bluffed her way in, except that she was cut up and bleeding. The reverend put up enough of a fight to wreck her plans. Of course, I’m still sure she was hoping to pull a switch on you.”

Maddy stands and paces. Émile returns to his wife’s side on the sofa, taking her hand in his. They can’t imagine what might be going through the young woman’s head, and give her time and space. When she does speak, they know that she’s still confused.

“Roadcap’s my brother?”

“He’s not. You’re no more related than ever. Your father is his father. But your father is not yours. I don’t know if that’s good news or bad. Or what’s worse. Learning that your father has other heirs, or that he’s not your father at all, even though he’s left you everything.”