The Best of Sisters in Crime (20 page)

Adele was among
those who turned at the agitated interruption. Noreen was standing just outside
the cord, next to a satinwood table on which sat a china bowl of potpourri. She
was quite pale, her eyes wide, her extended hand trembling. Hypoglycemia seemed
to be getting the better of her at last.

“Nor?
Hon!
Oh, damn, her blood—” Ralph Tucker had no
chance to finish. With an inarticulate cry, Noreen fell across the table,
splintering the bowl and scattering potpourri across the Persian carpet. Down
the length of the room, the satin cord ripped from the posts that held it in
place as Noreen Tucker crashed through it on her way to the floor.

Adele found
herself immobilized, although around her, everyone else seemed to move at once.
She felt caught up in a swell of madness as some people pressed forward toward
the fallen woman and others backed away. Someone screamed. Someone else called
upon the Lord. Three Germans dropped in shock onto the couches that were made available
to them now that the cord of demarcation was gone. There was a cry for water, a
shout for air.

Ralph Tucker
shrieked, “Noreen!” and dropped to his knees amid the potpourri and china. He
pulled at his wife’s shoulder. She had fallen on her face, her straw hat
rolling across the carpet. She did not move again.

Adele called
wildly, “Cleve.
Cleve,
” and then he was pushing through the crowd. He turned Noreen over,
took one look at her face, said, “Jesus Christ,” and began administering CPR. “Get
an ambulance!” he ordered.

Adele swung
around to do so. Their tour guide was rooted to her spot next to the fireplace,
her attention fixed upon the woman on the floor as if she herself had had a
part in putting her there.

“An ambulance!”
Adele cried.

Voices came from
everywhere.

“Is
she. . .”

“God, she
can’t
be . .
.”

“Noreen! Nor!
Hon!”

“Sie ist
gerade ohnmachtig geworden, nicht wahr. . .”

“Get an
ambulance, goddamn it!” Cleve Houghton raised his head. His face had begun to
perspire. “Move!” he yelled at the guide.

She flew through
the Gibb door and pounded up the stairs.

Cleve paused,
took Noreen’s pulse. He forced her mouth open and attempted to resuscitate her.

“Noreen!” Ralph
wailed.

“Kann er
nicht etwas unternehmen?”

“Doesn’t anyone .
. .”

“Schauen Sie
sich die Gesichtsfarbe an.”

“She’s gone.”

“It’s no use.”

“Diese dummen
Amerikaner!”

Over the swarm,
Adele saw the blond man from the Bentley remove his jacket and hand it to his
companion. He eased through the crowd, straddled Noreen, and took over CPR as
Cleve Houghton continued his efforts to get her to breathe.

“Noreen! Hon!”

“Get him out of
the way!”

Adele took Ralph’s
arm, attempting to ease him to his feet. “Ralph, if you’ll let them—”

“She needed to
eat!”

Victoria
Wilder-Scott joined them. “Please, Mr. Tucker. If you’ll give them a chance . .
.”

The tour guide
crashed back into the room.

“I’ve phoned . .
.” She faltered, then stopped altogether.

Adele looked
from the guide to Cleve. He had raised his head. His expression said it all.

Events
converged. People reacted. Curiosity, sympathy, panic, aversion. Leadership was
called for, and the blond man assumed it, wresting it from the guide with the
simple words, “I’m Thomas Lynley. Scotland Yard CID.” He showed her a piece of
identification she seemed only too happy to acknowledge.

Thomas Lynley
organized them quickly, in a manner that encouraged neither protest nor
question. They would continue with the tour, he informed them, in order to
clear the room for the arrival of the ambulance.

He remained
behind with his companion, Ralph Tucker, Cleve Houghton, and the dead woman.
Adele saw him bend, saw
him
open Noreen’s clenched hand, saw him examine the trail mix that
fell to the floor. Cleve said, “Heart failure. I’ve seen them go like this
before,” but although Lynley nodded, he looked not at Cleve but at the group,
his brown eyes speculating upon each one of them as they left the room. Ralph
Tucker sank onto a delicate chair. Thomas Lynley’s companion went to him,
murmured a few words, put her hand on his shoulder.

Then the door
closed behind them and the group was in the drawing room, being asked to
examine the pendant plasterwork of its remarkable ceiling. It was called the
King Edward Drawing Room, their much-subdued guide told them, its name taken
from the statue of Edward IV that stood over the mantelpiece. It was a
three-quarter-size statue, she explained, not life-size, for unlike most men of
his time, Edward IV was well over six feet tall. In fact, when he rode into
London on February 26, 1460 . . .

Adele did not
see how the young woman could go on.

There was
something indecent about being asked to admire chandeliers, flocked wallpaper,
eighteenth-century furniture, Chinese vases, and a French chimneypiece in the
face of Noreen Tucker’s death. Adele had certainly disliked Noreen, but death
was death and it seemed that, out of respect to her passing, they might well
have abandoned the rest of the tour and returned to Cambridge. She couldn’t
understand why Thomas Lynley had not instructed them to do so. Surely it would
have been far more humane than to expect them to traipse round the rest of the
house as if nothing had happened.

But even Ralph
had wanted them to continue. “You go on,” he had said to Victoria when she had
attempted to remain with him in the long gallery. “People are depending on you.”
He made it sound as if a tour of Abinger Manor were akin to a battle upon whose
outcome the fate of a nation depended. It was just the sort of comment that
would appeal to Victoria. So the tour continued.

Not that it
would have been allowed to disband. Something in Thomas Lynley’s face indicated
that.

Everyone was
restless. The air was close. Composure seemed brittle. Adele had no doubt that
she was not the only person longing to escape from Abinger Manor.

The guide was
asking for any questions about the room. Dolly cooperatively inquired if King
Edward’s statue was bronze. It was. She photographed it. The tour moved on.

There was a
murmur when Cleve Houghton rejoined them in the winter dining room.

“They’ve taken
her,” he said in a low voice to Adele.

“And that man?
The policeman?”

“Still in the
gallery when I left. He’s put out a call for the local police.”

“Why?” Adele
asked. “I saw him looking at . . . Cleve, you don’t . . . she seemed healthy,
didn’t she?”

Cleve’s eyes
narrowed. “I know a heart attack when I see one. Jesus, what are you thinking?”

Adele didn’t
know what she was thinking. She only knew that she had recognized something on
Lynley’s face when he had looked up from examining Noreen Tucker’s trail mix.
Consternation, suspicion, anger, outrage. Something had been there. If that
were the case, then it could only mean one thing. Adele felt her stomach churn.
She began to evaluate her fellow students in an entirely new way: as potential
killers.

Frances Clearey
seemed to have been shaken from her morning’s fury at her husband. She was
close at Sam’s side, pressed to his arm. Perhaps Noreen’s death had allowed her
to see how fleeting life was, how insignificant its quarrels and concerns were
once one came to terms with its finitude. Or perhaps she simply had nothing
further to worry about now that Noreen was eliminated.

She hadn’t been
at breakfast, Adele recalled, so she could have slipped into Noreen’s room and
put something into her trail mix. Especially if she knew that Sam had spent the
night with Noreen. Removing a rival to a man’s love seemed an adequate motive
for murder.

But Sam himself
had also not been at breakfast. So he, too, had access to Noreen’s supply of
food. If Noreen had known with whom he had spent the night—and surely that’s
what she had been hinting at this morning—perhaps Sam had seen the need to be
rid of her. Especially if she had been the woman herself.

It was hard to
believe. Yet at the same time, looking at Sam, Adele could see how Noreen’s
death had affected him. Beneath his tan, his face was worn, his mouth set. His
eyes seemed cloudy. In each room, they alighted first upon Dolly, as if her
beauty were an anodyne for him, but then they slid away.

Dolly herself
had come into breakfast late, so she also had access to Noreen’s supply of
nuts. But Noreen had not given Dolly an overt reason to harm her, and surely
Noreen’s gossip about the girl—even if Dolly had heard it, which was
doubtful—would only have amused her.

As it would have
amused Cleve Houghton. And pleased him. And swelled his ego substantially.
Indeed, Cleve had every reason to keep Noreen alive. She had been doing wonders
to build repute of his sexual prowess. On the other hand, Cleve had come into
breakfast late, so he, too, had access to the Tuckers’ room.

Howard Breen
seemed to be the only one who hadn’t had time to get to Noreen’s trail mix.
Except, Adele remembered, he had left breakfast early and she hadn’t been able
to find him.

Everyone, then,
had the opportunity to mix something in with the nuts, raisins, and dried
fruit. But what had that something been? And how on earth had someone managed
to get hold of it? Surely one didn’t walk into a Cambridge chemist’s shop and
ask for a quick-acting poison. So whoever tampered with the mix had to have
experience with poisons, had to know what to expect.

They were in the
library when Thomas Lynley and his lady rejoined them. He ran his eyes over
everyone in the room. His companion did the same. He said something to her
quietly, and the two of them separated, taking positions in different parts of
the crowd. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to anything other than
to the people. But they gave their full attention to them.

From the library
they went into the chapel, accompanied only by the sounds of their own
footsteps, the echoing voice of the guide, the snapping of cameras. Lynley moved
through the group, saying nothing to anyone save to his companion, with whom he
spoke a few words at the door. Again they separated.

From the chapel
they went into the armory. From there into the billiard room. From there to the
music room. From there down two flights of stairs and into the kitchen. The
buttery beyond it had been turned into a gift shop. The Germans made for this.
The Americans began to do likewise.

Adele could not
believe that Lynley intended to allow them to escape so easily. She was not
surprised when he spoke.

“If I might see
everyone, please,” he said as they began to scatter. “If you’ll just stay here
in the kitchen for a moment.”

Protests rose
from the German group. The Americans said nothing.

“We’ve a problem
to consider,” Lynley told them, “regarding Noreen Tucker’s death.”

“Problem?”
Behind Adele, Cleve Houghton spoke. Others chimed in.

“What do you
want with us anyway?”

“What’s going
on?”

“It was heart
failure,” Cleve asserted. “I’ve seen enough of that to tell you—”

“As have I,” a
heavily accented voice said. The speaker was a member of the German party, and
he looked none too pleased that their tour was once again being disrupted. “I
am a doctor. I, too, have seen heart failure. I know what I see.”

Lynley extended
his hand. In his palm lay a half dozen seeds. “It looked like heart failure.
That’s what an alkaloid does. It paralyzes the heart in a manner of minutes.
These are yew, by the way.”

“Yew?”

“What was yew—”

“But she wouldn’t—”

Adele kept her
eyes on Lynley’s palm. Seeds. Plants. The connection was horrible. She avoided
looking at the one person in the kitchen who would know beyond a doubt the
potential for harm contained in a bit of yew.

“Surely those
came from the potpourri,” Victoria Wilder-Scott said. “It spilled all over the
carpet when Mrs. Tucker fell.”

Lynley shook his
head. “They were mixed in with the nuts in her hand. And the bag her husband
carried was filled with them. She was murdered.”

The Germans
protested heartily at this. The doctor led them. “You have no business with us.
This woman was a stranger. I insist that we be allowed to leave.”

“Of course,”
Lynley answered. “As soon as we solve the problem of the silver.”

“What on earth
are you talking about?”

“It appears that
one of you took the opportunity of the chaos in the long gallery to remove two
pieces of rococo silver from the table by the fireplace. They’re salt cellars.
Very small. And definitely missing. This isn’t my jurisdiction, of course, but
until the local police arrive to start their inquiries into Mrs. Tucker’s
death, I’d like to take care of this small detail of the silver myself.”