Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) (17 page)

Yet, if I was right and someone did murder Noreen, maybe he or she would strike again. Maybe, in fact, I had put myself in danger. I shivered again.

In olden times, I believe, English residences received mail several times a day. Sherlock Holmes could send a letter in the morning and get a reply that afternoon. In the nineteenth century, the US had the Pony Express, but after that, things went downhill. An old joke in the States suggested the Postal Service increased the price of stamps every year or so in order to build warehouses to store undelivered mail.

On the other hand, the British system is still quite efficient. I crossed the great hall, heading for lunch in the dining room, when Alice came up to me.

"The post has come." She handed me a fat envelope.

I had seen the private investigator, David Ingersoll, just the day before, but now I'd received mail from him.

In the drawing room, I found a letter opener in the top desk drawer and settled into a comfortable chair to read the contents. The first page was a cover letter, announcing the enclosure of copies of the pertinent papers from the file he kept on Noreen Mason. The second sheet consisted of notes he'd made about the case. The third was a copy of a marriage license. The fourth and fifth were documents from court proceedings. On the latter pages, I recognized the name, Roy Capelli, and they appeared to indicate when and where he'd been sent to prison. His name also appeared on the marriage license, along with that of the woman he married a few years before, one Beryl Simpson.

I dropped the paper and picked up Ingersoll's notes. Sure enough, he'd written that Noreen had asked him to investigate Beryl Simpson, but he hadn't located her. I didn't know how common the name was in England, but I knew just one Beryl: my aunt, William's mousy wife, a woman I had thought totally lacking any colorful past. She was also Jason and Chaz's mother, and she sat in the dining room that very moment, having lunch. The papers fell from my shaking hands, and I left them on the rug for several minutes.

According to those papers, Beryl had married Roy Capelli, a man who now occupied a wheelchair in Youngacres House, a prisoner waiting to die in order to fulfill the sentence for his crimes. I reached down and retrieved the papers. If this was the Beryl I knew, when had she divorced him? Where was the license for her marriage to Jason's father, Raymond Cornell? Aunt Beryl had been a widow when she married William. Where was Cornell's death certificate?

I told myself not to speculate. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Beryls existed. My aunt wasn't necessarily the one who married Capelli. Yet Noreen had obviously asked Ingersoll to investigate a woman named Beryl. How many Beryls did she know? Most of all, why, having married this particular Beryl's brother-in-law, did she ask Ingersoll to do such a thing?

I came to the conclusion that my aunt had been Beryl Simpson, and I had never heard that because of living in the US most of my life. Many, if not all, other family members might have known that, but judging by her usual temperament, Beryl didn't want her past dredged up and gossiped about. I returned the papers to their envelope and took a deep breath. I'd have to ask Aunt Beryl herself, and I had to do it right away.

I left the drawing room and walked across to the dining room. She and Uncle William still sat there. I greeted them and poured a cup of tea. My hand shook, making the cup rattle against the saucer, so I put it on the table and sat down.

William eyed the newspaper lying near his now-empty plate, as if he wanted to read it while he finished his tea, but courtesy prevented him doing so in my presence. I feared he might wait me out, so I jumped in with a sudden plan to get him out of the room.

"Are you going to play golf today?" I asked.

"Afraid we're having rain."

"It isn't raining now. Didn't I hear on the radio they don't expect more rain today?" I hadn't heard anything of the sort, but I figured if I turned it into a question, it didn't count as lying. Besides, I'd once heard—and was often tempted to practice it—that people accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them some authority like George Washington or the BBC said it first.

He folded the newspaper and got up from the table. "I say, I'll go and see about it, shall I? In any event, I shan't be gone long." He paused at the doorway. "Hate to miss a day of golf, so few of them left this time of year."

"Yes, do," Beryl said to him.

Now that I had her alone, my throat choked up, and I couldn't find the right words to say. How could I begin such a delicate subject? Yes, I was a naturally pushy person, especially when it came to mysterious things. However, I didn't know her well. How would she react? I laid Ingersoll's envelope on the table and twisted it several times while I thought.

"Aunt Beryl," I said at last, "forgive me, but would you mind awfully if I asked you a somewhat personal question?"

She looked wary for a minute then apparently decided my question would be harmless. "Of course not, my dear."

"It's about how you happened to meet Uncle William and marry him and how he adopted Jason."

"Oh my, such ancient history. Surely you know all about that. We never kept it a secret."

"I know the facts, of course, but I wondered about the details."

A tiny frown appeared between her eyebrows. "Details?"

"How you met, how Jason's father died, things like that."

She tackled the easy question first. "Your uncle and I met one spring at the theater. I was an actress appearing in something by Shaw, I believe. William and I saw each other quite often, fell in love, and married the following year. Jason was seven at the time, and William soon adopted him." She smiled and took another sip of tea, as if she had no more to say on the subject.

I rephrased my question about Jason. "Sometimes children don't adjust well to a stepfather. Did Jason remember his real father?"

"Oh my, no. He was a baby when his father died, doesn't remember him at all."

I decided this might be true. Although Jason had adopted Cornell as a middle name, he seemed a person who would have talked more about his "real" father if he felt any connection to him.

"So Raymond Cornell was your first husband."

"Yes, that's right."

"You didn't marry a man named Roy Capelli?"

The frown came back, deeper than before. Her face turned pink, and she glanced toward the window. "Definitely not. Whyever would you ask such a question?"

I opened the envelope and pulled out the papers but didn't unfold them. "I'm asking because I've been told a Beryl Simpson married Roy Capelli. You're the only Beryl I know. Was your maiden name Simpson?"

She whipped her head around and faced me, her cheeks blossoming quite red, her eyes shiny. She put her hands in her lap where she squeezed her napkin into a tight ball. "Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."

I spoke softly. "I don't mean to upset you, and I promise whatever you tell me will go no further."

Suddenly her shoulders slumped, and she put her head down. Her breathing became labored. Her voice quavered. "How do you know these things?"

"Do you remember my asking you a few days ago if Noreen might have had a lover, someone besides Chaz?"

"What has that to do with me?"

"I've been trying to locate such a person because I thought he might have murdered Noreen."

"But the inspector said she drowned accidentally."

"I think he's mistaken." I took a deep breath. "I won't go into that now, but as a result of trying to locate someone Noreen might have known, I found an invoice from a detective agency." I hurried my explanation, telling her Noreen had hired the detective to investigate a Beryl Simpson.

She didn't comment and collapsed further into her chair, her face paler than ever.

"These documents, which he sent to me today, show Beryl Simpson married Roy Capelli, a man currently serving a life sentence in prison."

Her shoulders shook. I was afraid she might faint.

Nevertheless, I continued. "I saw him."

Gasping for breath, Beryl managed to push her chair back and stand. I did the same, grabbing her arm to steady her and keep her from falling.

"We must go somewhere else," she said in a raspy voice. "I'll tell you what you want to know but not here."

"The drawing room," I suggested.

"No, not there, the library."

The notorious library, where William had overheard another confession, the one from Elizabeth. I helped Beryl out of the dining room and across the hall, and this time I checked out every corner and every chair in the library to be certain we were alone. I even locked the door after realizing it had a key.

Beryl chose the wing chair on the far side of the room, and I pulled up a footstool in front of her so I could be as close as possible, and she could speak softly. She wore a long-sleeved dress, and, using a handkerchief she took from her sleeve at the wrist, she wiped her upper lip.

"You must promise me not to repeat what I'm going to say. I would be…"

"I promise." I even raised my hand as if I were giving a courtroom oath, although I felt uncomfortable making such a rash promise. After all, I'd delved into a serious matter. One person had already died.

"I
am
Beryl Simpson. That is, I used to be. And I did marry Roy Capelli." She paused then turned pleading eyes in my direction. "You have to understand what my life was like during those days. I was young and my parents… They tried to discipline me, but I was a headstrong girl, and I wanted to be a movie star like Betty Grable and Alice Faye. I bleached my hair, and I used to practice acting in front of the looking glass."

The term "looking glass" for "mirror" caught my attention, and I missed her next few words.

"Dancing and singing. I lied about my age and got a job in a nightclub. Not a fancy place but one that catered to the lower classes. It also had more than its share of young men. They loved my performance, used to shout, 'sing it again.'"

"You sang and danced?" I found it difficult to believe that this plump, gray-haired woman, the quintessential English, upper-class dowager, had once graced a stage. Yet, when I visited Mason Hall for the first time at the age of nine, she'd been quite pretty. If I pictured her like that, I could more easily imagine she turned men's heads with her talent and youthful good looks. I tried to remember her face without its lines and sagging skin.

"I performed quite well actually, if I say it myself." Her eyes brightened briefly, as if thinking of those days, but then she frowned again. "That's where I met Roy, and I thought he loved me, so I married him. We lived in London. He got a job as a laborer, restoring buildings, and I worked nights waiting tables."

"How long did it last?"

"Five years. You have to understand—we didn't see much of each other, so I didn't really know him very well. He often spent half his wages in the pubs, and I'd have to pay the rent with my tips." She paused again. "Then Jason came along. Roy didn't like having a child, especially when I had to give up working. We quarreled all the time, and when he came home after drinking, he'd often strike me."

I told Beryl Roy Capelli had admitted to me he'd gone to jail for beating his wife.

"He didn't strike me in the beginning, and maybe I gave him a bit of his own, but after the baby came his abuse became worse. Finally, I called the police. The second time I had to call them, they put him in jail for two months, and that's when I left him."

"Where did you go? What did you do?"

Beryl looked down as if the scene she called up was somehow reflected in the handkerchief in her lap. "Oh, I found it very difficult at first. Jason and I moved into a flat in the east end. Terrible place. Cockroaches and fleas. And I had to hire a wretched old woman to watch the boy so I could work."

"As a waitress?"

"Yes. Being somewhat pretty, I got good tips. However, I didn't want to do that all my life. I still wanted a career on the stage. Nights I earned a bit more with little acting jobs in a nearby theater company. I let my hair grow out to its natural color and discovered I could imitate accents. I played the parts of upper-class ladies or even French characters. I studied hard not just to imitate their speech but how to do things the proper way. Like Eliza Doolittle, you know." She faced me at last and almost smiled. "But I didn't have a professor helping me. I did it all myself." She straightened up in the chair.

She deserved to take pride in her accomplishment, and I felt a sudden sadness that she couldn't tell anyone about her rise from rags to riches.

"And then you met William," I prompted.

"I had the starring role in a play about a princess hiding her royal birth, and he came to see it often. One night, after the performance, he asked to take me to supper. Oh, I'd moved to a better flat by then. I think he persuaded himself I was like the character I played, a princess in hiding."

"What did you tell him about your husband, that he died in the war?"

"Oh, I couldn't say that, because then I might have had a pension, you see. And I couldn't bear to admit what kind of person I'd married, so I called him Raymond Cornell and said he died in a lorry accident." She shook her head. "Offstage, I'm not very good at lying, so then I had to remain with the story I'd invented."