Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) (2 page)

Yet I detected little, if any, sympathy from my relatives, who
had
known Noreen. Alice, who'd already expressed her opinion of the woman, plopped herself into a large chair to await instructions from the person in charge of doing whatever they do in England when dead bodies are discovered and actually looked relieved.

I took several more deep breaths to calm myself, then sat on a window seat and answered a few polite questions about how I came to find the body. By turning my head from time to time, I could look out at the lawn, which shortly became overrun with men, some in uniform. However, no one else showed any curiosity about the goings-on out of doors. I knew about British reserve, but this seemed like underkill. Since I hadn't seen these people for almost thirty years, I felt more like a stranger than a grieving relative and kept silent.

After a short silence, Alice glanced around and announced, cheerfully I thought, "It won't be long now."

Uncle William sat erect in a straight chair, and since it was still morning, I thought him rather too formally dressed in his gray suit, white shirt, and striped tie. His wife perched on the side of the sofa nearest him.

Elizabeth sat on another of the three chintz-covered sofas. I decided she probably dyed her hair to that deep brown shade, L'Oreal being everywhere these days, but she'd pulled it back in an unattractive ponytail and wore little, if any, makeup.

"I say, how did Noreen come to be in the lily pond?" William asked. His vivid blue eyes focused on us one by one.

Beryl answered. "We don't know yet, my dear." She patted his hand then looked at Alice. "Could she have—er, thrown herself in? I mean—I understand that in India, for example, sometimes a widow—"

Alice interrupted her. "Not very likely, my dear. I know you tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but if she loved Edward at all, much less enough to kill herself over him, it's news to me."

"And me." Elizabeth's voice, low and at least as dominant as her mother's, carried easily in the large room. "We all know she married him for his money. She probably fell into the pond in a drunken stupor."

More silence followed her remark, and then Beryl said, "I shouldn't think she consumed
that
much."

"I should," William added. "I'm partial to a bit of brandy now and again myself, but once she came here, the bottles emptied with the speed of thunder after lightning."

"As I'm the one who puts bottles in the dustbin," Alice said, "I'm afraid Elizabeth is right."

"Elizabeth is right? What about?" The voice came from a young man standing in the doorway to the great hall.

Elizabeth's gaze darted to him with a look of dislike, if not disgust.

Alice didn't get up but waved the newcomer inside. "Olivia, this is William and Beryl's younger son, Chauncey. He wasn't yet born last you visited Mason Hall." She turned to the young man. "This is your cousin Olivia, Uncle Peter's daughter. I told you yesterday about her coming."

Also named for a grandparent, Chauncey looked to be in his early thirties, about five-ten, with a trim, wiry body covered in tight jeans and a short-sleeved black T-shirt that showed off muscular arms. He closed the door, came toward me, and took my hand. He looked me over in a manner suggesting he had none other than the Queen's authority to check out every female. He had thick, wavy hair, large blue eyes, and a perfect nose. Aware of his terminal coolness, he was handsome, and he knew it.

"Chaz. The name is Chaz."

I didn't blame him for not wanting to be called Chauncey and gave him a smile. He didn't return it and retreated to a far corner, where he managed to slouch in a straight wooden chair fronting a secretary desk, legs stretched out before him.

"We were talking about Noreen." Elizabeth's tone indicated she held little esteem for either the dead woman or Chaz. "We think she drank too much and stumbled into the pond and drowned."

"Drowned?" Chaz looked puzzled. "As in dead?"

Alice turned to him with a surprised look. "Don't you remember? I rapped on your door a few minutes ago and told you."

"I was asleep. I thought you said Noreen was grousing about something." He pulled a cigarette from the pack he'd tucked into his rolled-up sleeve, lit it, and blew smoke toward the ceiling. The only sign Noreen's sudden death meant something to him came in the form of a frown and tight jaw muscles.

Alice filled him in. "She'd gone missing, and then Olivia found her face down in the lily pond. I've called the local constable."

Chaz gave me a strange look. "Just happened to find her, did you?"

I did a double take. Did he really think I killed the woman and pretended I found her already dead? Why? Did he care more about her than the other family members did? They hadn't seemed unduly upset by Noreen's death.

He turned back to Alice. "I suppose that explains the rumpus out of doors."

"Yes. Inspector Kincaid wants us to wait for him here. We're not to leave until we've been questioned."

"First Edward," William said, "and now Noreen."

"Well, I don't accept suicide," Alice said. "Not Noreen's style at all."

Beryl spoke in a soft, breathy voice. "Then it must have been an accident of some sort."

Elizabeth rose and walked to the fireplace. "I still say she drank too much, got sloshed, and landed in the pond. And good riddance."

The room became silent again. Finally Alice pried herself out of her chair. "I'll go and see what's keeping them."

She'd barely uttered the words when the door opened and a tall man with a bushy mustache and hawk-like nose entered the room.

Presumably Inspector Kincaid, the man looked at Alice with a somber expression. "We shall need to question everyone." He turned his head, addressing us all. "It's merely routine."

Then he spoke to Aunt Alice again. "Mrs. Klein, would you kindly accompany me to the other room?" 

I hoped to discern something of Kincaid's opinion about Noreen's death but couldn't interpret anything from his look. Yet I had a strong hunch he didn't believe Noreen had either committed suicide or died accidentally.

After he and Aunt Alice left the room, I revisited Chaz's question to me about happening to find Noreen's body. I read mysteries—Grafton, Connolly, Blake—watched television cop shows, and my brother, Brad, is a San Francisco police officer. My brain hopscotched to the possibility of something sinister. Nor was mine the only one.

The almost complete silence, to say nothing of the derogatory comments about Noreen, pointed to one conclusion. Like me, they were all considering the possibility of murder.

Since I'd discovered Noreen's body, Detective Inspector Kincaid wanted to interview me next and ushered me into the dark wood-paneled dining room, which, as usual, was cold. I remembered how, in the summer when I last visited Mason Hall, I often gulped down my food and hurried to a warmer room. Even then, no one lit the dining room fireplace logs except at dinner.

Inside was a table large enough, I used to imagine, to seat the House of Lords, along with a dozen or more ornate chairs and a gigantic sideboard. In the light from three tall windows, with probably the same velvet draperies I once crouched behind during hide-and-seek, I saw two detectives. Kincaid motioned for me to sit at the head, or maybe the foot, of the table, with him at my right.

Sergeant Sallow, a young, sandy-haired man whose complexion matched his name, sat at my left, directly across from the inspector. Both men had notebooks on the table in front of them and jotted in them occasionally.

"I believe you are the person who found the body?" Inspector Kincaid's words came from behind his mustache, which I found disconcerting, like a voice coming from a cave surrounded by shrubbery.

"Yes." Even I could barely hear my answer. Finding Noreen's body, then being questioned by British police, had taken my sense of "traumatic" to a new level.

"What is your name, please?"

"Olivia Grant." I gave him the short version, not the long one, Olivia Jean Mason Featherstone Grant. Sallow and the detective scribbled more in their notebooks.

"Mrs. Klein tells me you are the niece of," he looked at his notes, "Noreen Vickers Mason."

He used her name, not "the deceased," which pleased me, as it sounded friendlier, and I elaborated for his benefit.

"She was the widow of my late uncle, Edward Mason."

Kincaid looked up from the notepad and smiled. At least I think he did. The mustache stretched horizontally. Since I couldn't see the man's mouth, I watched the mustache and wondered if it interfered with eating or drinking and whether he had to shampoo it after every meal.

Kincaid glanced at his notebook again. "So, you would be the daughter of—"

Since he seemed to be fishing for an answer, I supplied it. "Peter Mason, Edward's brother." He didn't comment, and, as I've never been accused of saying too little, I filled in the genealogy. "Edward is—was—the eldest of my grandparents' four children, and my father is the youngest."

The inspector seemed either uninterested or already in possession of the information. He looked as if he'd had a tiring day. "You live in the United States?"

"Yes."

"In what city would that be?"

"San Francisco." Actually I live in a suburb called San Ricardo, but he'd probably never heard of it, and this time I didn't give him additional information. His abrupt questioning manner made me defensive.

"May I ask when you arrived in the country?"

"This morning."

"At what time, precisely?"

I wasn't about to be precise, assuming I knew. Even the flight attendants on airplanes say the time is "approximately" something or other, not wanting to be held accountable for passengers' watch variations. "At about six o'clock."

"You have an airline ticket to substantiate your arrival?"

"In my handbag in the library." I remembered having placed my purse on the coffee table, and I rose, but he put out a restraining hand and sent Sergeant Sallow to fetch it. When the young man returned, I rummaged inside for the remains of the airline ticket, but it had somehow disappeared.

"I put it right here," I insisted, but the inspector stopped me before I could empty the contents of the bag onto the top of the dining room table. Wise decision. I travel heavily, with keys, billfold, passport, small calendar (the British call them "diaries"), pen, address book, cosmetics case, chewing gum, Life Savers, Kleenex, and a pocket calculator. Kinsey Milhone throws a toothbrush in her handbag and calls it packing. I could out-prepare a troop of Boy Scouts.

"Never mind. We shall verify that later. At what time did you arrive here at Mason Hall?"

I had to think a minute, then remembered a clock striking ten while I waited in the library. "Shortly before ten, I believe."

"You came straight from the airport by taxi."

It sounded like a statement, not a question, and I assumed Aunt Alice had told him how I arrived. "Yes."

"That's rather a long interval. Did you stop off anywhere?"

"No." Now I thought about it, my arrival seemed late, and the fare rather high. Had the taxi driver taken advantage of my slumber in the backseat to run up some extra miles and put more money in his pocket? Not wanting to accuse the driver and sound like an ugly American, I found a different excuse. "The line at Customs was rather long." In fact, it had seemed longer than the Great Wall of China, but not moving as fast.

"When you reached Mason Hall, did you come straight to the front entrance?"

"Of course." Thoughts whirled like tumbleweeds in my head. I had the distinct impression he believed I had stopped off at the lily pond to kill Noreen before showing up at the front door. Similar to what Chaz had hinted. It's true that the person who reports finding a dead body can often become a prime suspect, but I always thought it terribly unfair.

Kincaid flipped a page in his notebook. "I understand Edward Mason, the dead woman's husband, died less than a month ago. Is that correct?"

"Right." My voice sounded rather shaky then, as if I were guilty of
something
. I began to wish I'd never decided to take that little jaunt to the lily pond.

"It is my understanding Mr. Mason left his considerable estate to his wife."

"I believe so, yes."

He continued. "It has come to our attention the other family members worried she would sell the estate and leave them penniless. Do you share that opinion?"

Where had he learned all that? Had Aunt Alice been a chatterbox during her interrogation? Talking too much apparently ran in the family. And why, I asked myself, should the inspector be concerned about Mason Hall's fate, anyway?

I didn't know quite how to answer, so I didn't, and the inspector continued, as if he hadn't expected me to.

"Did you attend your uncle's funeral?"

"No, I was in San Francisco." I began to perspire.

"Your parents, Peter and Jean Mason, attended, however."

"Yes."

"Did they tell you about the inheritance situation?"

"They're retired and live in Arizona most of the year. They barely told me anything when they returned."

"Did you stand to inherit on Noreen Mason's death?"

"No, I didn't expect to inherit anything." That was not strictly true. But for Noreen, my father might have received something from his brother Edward. In due time, I suppose, some of it would have come to me, his eldest child.

Kincaid stared at me and frowned, but the picture suddenly became crystal clear. First, he tried to place me at the scene of the crime, and then he hinted at a motive.

My defenses rose. "Just a minute. I didn't kill Noreen. I never met the woman. Edward married her three years ago, and I haven't visited since I was nine years old, a few, er, several years ago."

Kincaid's mustache did that smiley thing again. "My dear Mrs. Grant, I'm not accusing you of anything."

"But you said—"

"I'm merely asking questions, gathering information. It's my responsibility to learn as much as possible about any unusual death."

Of course. My overactive imagination had made me leap to conclusions. "Oh."

"I hope I have not offended you."

"No. Sorry."

Sergeant Sallow took the ensuing pause to pour water for us both from a pitcher on the sideboard. After downing his, Kincaid then asked me, in a gentler manner, I thought, to describe how I happened to find the body.

Somewhat more relaxed by then, I gave him an account, which seemed quite short, even to me. Of course, I hadn't much to tell.

"You didn't touch the body?"

"No."

"Nor any of the rocks surrounding the lily pond?"

I became instantly alert again. "The rocks? Why would I touch the rocks? Are they significant?" Again, his questions made me think he suspected foul play. Did he think someone—I, perhaps—had struck Noreen with a rock and pushed her under to drown? "Was Noreen killed with a rock?"

He looked unhappy, as if I were once more cartwheeling ahead of his investigation. Clearly avoiding my question, he said, "I believe you indicated you went into the library."

"Yes."

"How long were you there?"

"About half an hour. I fell asleep. Jet lag."

"Did you see anyone then?"

"Not until Aunt Alice, Mrs. Klein that is, came in to ask if I'd seen Noreen."

"So no one saw you during that time?"

Prickles rose on the backs of my arms. He still considered me a suspect. Did he think I had flown in that morning and killed a woman I'd never met? That I'd found her outdoors, smashed her head with a rock, drowned her in the pond, and then come back to the library, pretending I'd been fast asleep and dreaming about Benedict Cumberbatch?

I came out of my visualization. "I don't know if anyone saw me on the sofa. I had my eyes closed. Are you saying she was killed this morning, during the time I slept in the library?"

"These are routine questions, Mrs. Grant. No one is under suspicion." He seemed to regret having put the thought of murder into my head.

"But you believe someone killed her?"

A frown creased his forehead, and his eyebrows lowered and came together above his eyes. "At the moment, we have formed no conclusions about how Mrs. Mason died. The medical examiner will inform us in due time. Meanwhile, however, we must consider every possibility and gather information accordingly."

I'd read somewhere, or my brother told me, the first forty-eight hours after a crime are critical, and I figured Kincaid needed to take statements before people had a chance to think about it too much and invent alibis.

He made a note on his pad and looked up at me again. "In the meanwhile, however, we would appreciate your steering clear of the pond."

I imagined the British police were searching the pond at the very moment, looking for clues. Can you get fingerprints off rocks? I also wondered if they would put yellow tape around the crime scene as the police did back home.

"How long will you be in London?" Kincaid asked.

"About two weeks. I came for a vacation and to visit my relatives."

"Will you be staying here at Mason Hall?"

I might not have been a suspect, but clearly he didn't want me leaving town. "Yes. At least I think so, although Aunt Alice hasn't assigned me a room as yet. As I said, I had barely arrived at the house when—"

"Thank you, Mrs. Grant. You may leave now."

"But you do think someone killed Noreen."

"I didn't say that. It will be determined in good time."

Did he even consider it might have been an accident? In case he still focused on me, I offered a possible alternative. "I've heard Mrs. Mason liked rather more than her share of alcohol. Could she have fallen into the lily pond while intoxicated?"

"The possibility hadn't escaped our notice, but thank you. You may leave." He got up and came toward my chair as if he'd physically eject me to be free of my questions.

I smiled to show I held no hard feelings, but I felt a little miffed at being dismissed so quickly. After all, my brother, a police officer in California, was planning to open his own private detective agency soon. The fact Kincaid didn't know that, and Brad almost never discussed police business with me anyway, didn't alter my pique. Nevertheless, I did as he asked.

When I returned to the drawing room, all eyes turned in my direction. William, Beryl, Elizabeth, and Chaz didn't appear to have left their seats in the interim, but Aunt Alice had apparently spent the time in the kitchen. She set down a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade on the nearest coffee table.

I took a seat close by. Lunchtime had come and gone, and since the inspector had taken over the dining room, we roughed it by picnicking in the parlor. The triangular-shaped crust-free sandwiches looked rather small, and my appetite always trying to sneak more weight on me than I need, I helped myself to two.

Beryl prepared plates for herself and William, and then Chaz ambled over, put four sandwiches on his plate and popped a fifth one into his mouth, where it disappeared as suddenly as a hiccup.

Inspector Kincaid came into the drawing room and spoke to Aunt Alice again. "Is everyone present?"

"All but Jason, who is employed in the city. I've left a message for him at his office. In any event, he returns home about six o'clock most evenings."

When Kincaid again left the room, I turned to Aunt Alice. "Jason lives here too?"

"Yes, always has."

I fell into a somewhat stunned silence. My cousin Jason, William and Beryl's older son, still lived in the family mansion. Until a mere three weeks ago, it seemed, everyone lived there— Edward and Noreen, William and Beryl, Jason and Chaz, Aunt Alice and Elizabeth. The large house could certainly accommodate everyone, and suddenly I felt envious of this large family group.