Murder at Teatime (27 page)

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” said Stan. “What you mean is that the books were still a part of the MacMillan collection at the time of MacMillan’s death, that he had never sold them to Frank.”

“Exactly,” responded Charlotte.

“Thornhill backdated the phony bill of sale to six months prior to MacMillan’s death,” explained Tom, who was sitting with his arm around Daria. “We don’t know why he didn’t destroy the notes. He probably didn’t anticipate that anyone would ever be looking through his papers.”

“But Charlotte dear, how does all this relate to the murder of poor Frank?” asked Kitty.

“I’m getting to that.” She stopped pacing, and resumed her seat.

The sky overhead had cleared, but the light of the sun, which was setting behind the low-lying clouds, had turned it a sickly shade of yellow. The little group was cast into shadow by the hillside.

“We discovered that Dr. Thornhill had stolen the books quite by accident,” Charlotte continued. “What if someone else had made the same discovery? The person who knew that Dr. Thornhill had stolen the books would hold his reputation in the palm of his—or her—hand.”

“Blackmail,” said Stan, one step ahead of the narrative.

“Exactly,” she said. “What would drive someone to blackmail Dr. Thornhill? To our surprise, we discovered that practically everyone at Ledge House on the afternoon of the murder wanted something from Dr. Thornhill, something that he might be forced to yield in exchange for keeping his secret.”

Charlotte gazed out at her audience. She could feel their nervous anticipation, a mixture of curiosity, fear, and suspense.

“We’ll start with Fran,” said Charlotte, turning to Thorn-hill’s niece, who was sitting to Charlotte’s left.

Fran looked up, startled. She had been fiddling with the delicate skeleton of a sea urchin that she had picked up off the rocks. It cracked under the sudden pressure of her fingers, and she dropped it to the ground.

“Fran’s motive was jealousy. Dr. Thornhill had announced his plans to remarry. Fran thought his new wife would make her life so unpleasant that she would be forced to leave. The knowledge that her uncle had stolen the books could have come in very handy in persuading him to change his mind.”

Fran made no comment.

The band concert had ended with “It’s a Grand Old Flag.” It was followed by the priest’s declamation of the Declaration of Independence. The words floated across the channel in the still evening air: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights …”

Next Charlotte turned to Wes and Chuck, who sat next to Fran, large cups of beer in their hands.

“Wes and Chuck were the most obvious suspects,” she continued. “Their motive was monetary gain, and they both needed the money, badly. With Wes, it was a chronic condition, but with Chuck, it was something new: he needed the money to keep up with the horse-racing crowd he’d become involved with.”

Chuck shot Marion, who was sitting on the other side of the fire, a dirty look, but she didn’t notice. She stared blankly at Charlotte, as if girding herself for a shock.

“Since Marion was the heir to Dr. Thornhill’s property, they stood to benefit not only from blackmailing Dr. Thornhill but also from his death. Adding to their motive was the fact that Dr. Thornhill had recently threatened to change his will, leaving his property to the State instead of to Marion.”

“I didn’t do nothin’. It was Chuck who was goin’ to inherit the property, not me,” Wes said angrily, pointing at the ground for emphasis.

“Oh yes, you did do something,” replied Charlotte. “For years you’ve harbored a grudge against Dr. Thornhill. He cheated you out of some land, or so you thought. Now he was thwarting your get-rich-quick scheme. The development controversy provided the perfect opportunity for you to take your revenge. It was you who let the air out of the jeep’s tires, who put a bullet through the library window, who wrote the poison-pen letters.”

“Now you wait just a jeezly friggin’ minute,” Wes said threateningly, jumping up. “You can’t prove I done them things.”

“Yes I can. Stan saw you at the Ledge House barn the night the air was let out of the jeep’s tires.”

Wes looked over at Stan, who nodded. Then, sitting back down on his log, he took a long, insolent swig from his cup of beer.

“I also saw your son holding a drawing in red crayon on a brown paper bag,” she continued. “The same red crayon and brown paper bag that were used for the poison-pen letters. I think you’re subject to arrest on charges of vandalism at the very least. What do you think, Chief?”

“I’d say so,” Tracey concurred.

Wes drained his cup, and crumpled it. Giving his wife a sheepish smile, he said: “I mighta done somethin’ like that when I was a little oiled up, but I ain’t never killed nobody.”

Charlotte turned next to John, who was sitting by himself some distance away on a log near the landing. He was looking stylishly casual in white duck pants and a navy boat-neck sweater.

“John’s motive was also gain,” she continued. “He was uncertain about being granted tenure at his university. But with one of the world’s most prominent economic botanists on his side, his future would be assured.”

John looked up skeptically. He had been tracing figure eights on the ground with a piece of driftwood.

“Even Daria had something to gain from Dr. Thornhill,” Charlotte went on, continuing around the circle. “With a little pressure, Thornhill might have been induced to give her all his bookbinding business, to say nothing of that of his book-collecting cronies.”

As Charlotte spoke Tom gave Daria a reassuring hug.

She turned next to Grace. “For Grace, as for Fran, the motive was jealousy. She didn’t want to see Dr. Thornhill get married either. She had the illusion—I think we may safely call it that—that he was in love with her, and that he would some day marry her.”

The audience looked over at Grace—some, like Stan, with amused smiles—but Grace was too busy flirting with Felix to notice.

“Finally,” Charlotte continued, “there was Felix, who had known for years that Dr. Thornhill had stolen the books.”

Felix looked up in alarm; it was the first time Charlotte had seen him lose his composure.

“What could he do with such knowledge? Well, first he could use it for his private amusement: needling Dr. Thornhill with references to the stolen books was one of his favorite pastimes. But no matter how pointed his barbs, they failed to draw blood. Because Dr. Thornhill had long ago convinced himself he was the legitimate owner of the books. He was a perfect example of the book thief Felix described, the book thief who believes he has a
right
to a stolen book.” She paused. “But there was also another way Felix could put this knowledge to use. Dr. Thornhill had promised Felix that he would be the one to handle the sale of his collection after his death—if he died first, that is. What better way of guaranteeing Thornhill’s promise than by threatening to expose him? For a man who scours the obituary columns of two continents for sources of consignment material, this was merely shrewd business practice.”

The last light of day was withdrawing over the hills of Bridge Harbor, turning them a dusky purple. On Main Street, the storefront lights had been turned on, backlighting the audience that had assembled in the park. In the harbor, the boats were turning on their green and red running lights.

Charlotte rested a long leg on a rock. “Seven people. All present at the time of the murder. All with a motive for blackmail. The next question was, why would a blackmailer kill Dr. Thornhill? The answer was obvious, in retrospect. Not only did the blackmail scheme fail, it backfired.”

From across the channel came the whoosh of a rocket being launched, followed by the staccato boom-boom-boom of a triple bomb that left spots dancing in front of their eyes. The explosions punctuated Charlotte’s speech as neatly as if they had been written into the script.

Charlotte looked over at Tracey and his two assistants. They were on the alert; the final act was coming.

“What do you mean, backfired?” asked Stan.

Charlotte continued, pacing back and forth: “The blackmailer had threatened Dr. Thornhill with ruin, but what he hadn’t foreseen was that Dr. Thornhill could ruin him.”

“Thornhill refused to be blackmailed,” explained Tom. “He thought his reputation was unimpeachable. But he wasn’t taking any chances.”

Charlotte suddenly spun around. “No books published, no grant money, no tenure. Isn’t that true, John? Once Dr. Thornhill was finished with you, your career would be over.”

The group stared at John. He sat quietly with his head down, scratching a rock with his stick.

“You thought you had Dr. Thornhill over a barrel: he sees to it that you’re granted tenure in exchange for your keeping his little secret. But what you didn’t count on was the bill of sale. It was forged, yes, but who would take your word against the word of one of the most distinguished men in his field? Dr. Thornhill wasn’t about to take any chances, however. He set out to discredit you, to ensure that no one would ever pay attention to your story. It wasn’t easy: you were capable, respected. He had to exert the full force of his professional reputation. He sat on the editorial boards of the academic journals, he sat on the grant review committees, he sat on the tenure review committees. He had enormous power, and he was determined to use it. At first, you didn’t think he would carry through,” she continued, as she resumed pacing. In that, he had miscalculated badly, she thought, remembering Felix’s account of how Thornhill had outbid MacMillan for the nurseryman’s catalogue. She continued: “But then you started getting indications that he was in earnest. A book that had been accepted for publication was inexplicably rejected; a grant application that you fully expected to be accepted was suddenly turned down; and your tenure appointment, which had been in question before, was now definitely out. Tom, you see, did a little research on your career.”

John gave Tom a seething look.

“You began to realize that it was just a matter of time before your career was in ruins. Once you had slipped, there was no place for you to go but down; too many others were coming along to take your place. Instead of a faculty appointment at a prestigious university, you would have nothing to look forward to but an adjunct professorship at a community college,
if
you were lucky.”

In the end, she thought, he had turned out to be a petty little villain, like the villains he so admired in the movies. He had killed simply to keep his job: she might almost have thought more of him had he killed out of some twisted political idealism. She turned to pace in the other direction. Night had fallen, and the faces of the audience shined in the light of the fire.

“The idea of using monkshood came from Dr. Thornhill’s book, which must have appealed to your sense of irony. It was the ideal means: not only was the risk of detection small, it was even more so in Dr. Thornhill’s case because the symptoms would be mistaken for heart disease. Fran made it easy for you by digging up the roots; it was just a matter of picking them up off the ground.”

“I was going to divide the roots so the plants would flower better,” Fran explained defensively.

“Yes, but you knew you’d been irresponsible in leaving the poisonous roots exposed. Which led to your second mistake—withholding information from the authorities. Fortunately we didn’t come to any false conclusions.”

Charlotte turned back to John. “The problem was that the books were vague about dosages. How much crushed root would be required to kill an adult man within a short period of time? Being a scientist, you decided to conduct a little experiment—your subject was Jesse.”

The audience stared at him, open-mouthed, except for Wes, who jumped up and looked for a minute as if he might take a swing at him.

“The experiment was a success. You forced Jesse to ingest the poison, probably with a syringe, and Jesse died shortly afterward.” She continued: “To find the right dose for Dr. Thornhill, you simply extrapolated according to body weight. From that point on, it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment. Knowing that Dr. Thornhill was in the habit of taking his tea at four, you made a practice of hanging around Ledge House at that time. The right moment was provided by Grace. When you heard her coming upstairs after the doorbell rang, you figured that she might have left the tea steeping.” She remembered how he’d glanced at his watch. “The front door presented a bit of a problem: you weren’t sure if anyone was waiting there or not, but if someone had been there, you would simply have tried again another time. Another possible glitch arose when Chuck came bursting out of the library, but he was already out the front door when you reached the landing. By the time you reached the foot of the stairs, you knew your moment had arrived. The tea was sitting on the sideboard, steeping. No one was around. The poisoning itself took only a second—pop off the cap of the 35mm film container in which you kept the crushed root at the ready, and empty it into the teapot.”

John had stopped playing with the stick and was sitting motionless, his head hanging. Throughout Charlotte’s narrative, his eyes had shifted from side to side like those of an outnumbered fighter who’s sizing up his adversaries. At one point, he had looked up at the Ledges, as if planning an escape route.

“No one around, that is, except Wes,” she continued. “He didn’t see you adding the poison to the teapot, but he did see you coming
through
the parlor. Why would you have been in the parlor at all if you had gone directly down the stairs and out the front door as you claimed, unless it was to poison the tea?”

She paused to stare at John, but he didn’t look up.

“That was it, you thought. The teapot would be washed up, and the evidence along with it. How fitting that the deed had been carried out on Dr. Thornhill’s sixtieth birthday, the same day the ancient Greeks administered a poisoned cup to those who had outlived their usefulness. The notion fit in nicely with your ideological convictions: not only was Dr. Thornhill a social burden, a parasite on the energy and creativity of the young, a dinosaur who had quit writing, quit thinking, quit innovating—to use your own words—he was also, in your opinion, a wealthy political conservative whose collecting had deprived the academic world of valuable works on early botany.”