Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) (15 page)

I found Mr. Ingersoll's address in the directory and made an appointment for that very day. While Tim O'Brien whisked me to his office in the car, I thought back over my recent activities. I'd expected to spend my time getting reacquainted with relatives, being taken on sightseeing excursions, and perhaps going to the theater in the evenings to see some plays and musicals for which the British are famous. I had wanted to see Agatha Christie's
The Mousetrap
, but instead, I found myself engaged in trying to solve a mystery of my own. I'd always been a mystery novel reader, and my brother picked up the habit from me. Now, he was a police officer planning to open a detective agency, and I had a mystery on my hands right here.

Although the British police hadn't found anything mysterious about Noreen's death—and why should I second-guess them?—the longer I stayed at Mason Hall, the more convinced I became that someone
ought
to have murdered her. The facts cried out for a vengeful someone to put an end to Noreen's lying, cheating, drinking, and generally gauche behavior. Preferably the mysterious Mister X whom I still tried hard to convince myself had an assignation with Noreen by the lily pond and then, for some reason, drowned her.

What reason? So far, I'd found zero evidence he even existed. Still, I maintained hope Mr. Ingersoll might provide some answers.

Tim dropped me off in front of a nondescript two-story brick building, telling me he'd be back in half an hour, and I found Mr. Ingersoll's office at number seven on the first floor. The receptionist, a young woman with orange hair, blue eye shadow, and inch-long fingernails, greeted me and waved me into the door to her right.

Inside, I discovered Mr. Ingersoll was a mousy man with no outstanding features. He didn't even wear glasses. A perfect private eye. No one would notice him, and he could spy on suspects without being observed. Unlike his receptionist, who, when she stood, boasted three miles of fishnet-clad legs.

Ingersoll rose when I entered and indicated one of two upholstered chairs in front of his desk. "Do have a seat, Mrs. Grant."

"Thank you." I sat and glanced around at his sparsely-decorated office: tan walls, brown furniture, one window looking out on the street. His desk held a telephone, calendar, and a pad of ruled paper.

"What service may I perform for you?" He had a BBC-announcer accent, with a tone both soft and confidential.

"I've come about an invoice for two hundred pounds for services you rendered recently."

"Did you feel the charge to be excessive?"

"No, not at all." Not that I would know, but someone
had
paid the invoice, or it wouldn't have been in the file.

"Something else has brought you here." A statement more than a question. Clearly an insightful private eye.

"If you recall, you sent the invoice to Mrs. Mason."

"But you are Mrs. Grant, not Mrs. Mason, are you not?"

"That's correct."

"Now I understand. My services being satisfactory, she has referred me so that I may be of assistance to you."

"No." I took a deep breath and plunged on. "I would like to know what services you performed for her."

His eyebrows shot up and, after a long sigh, he leaned back in his chair. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Grant, but that information is confidential."

"I have an important reason for needing to know." Not that I would tell Ingersoll the truth, but, of course, I wanted to learn the identity of Mister X.

"I'm sure you believe so, but if I were to divulge it, I would be breaching investigator-client confidentiality. I shouldn't remain in business very long if I were to do that, should I?" He managed a tiny smile in my direction.

"I understand. However, inasmuch as Mrs. Mason has died, I don't think you need to fear she will complain."

"Died?"

"Yes, last week." I put my head down as if hiding sudden tears, and I uttered my next words in a tragic tone. "She drowned accidentally."

"Mrs. Mason?"

"Noreen, that is, Mrs. Edward Mason."

His eyes seemed to flash recognition, but he said, "Nevertheless…"

Mr. Poirot's little grey cells never worked any harder than mine when I'd concocted my story, and I now launched into the rest of my act, pulled a handkerchief from my purse, and held it to my face. "You see, Mr. Ingersoll, Noreen was my sister, and we've been separated for several years because I live in the United States." No need to try to hide that fact.

He looked sympathetic, and I continued. "I've come over here at great expense, because she told me she had hired you to find our missing younger brother."

Ingersoll's mouth dropped open, and the words tumbled out. "Younger brother? But Roy Capelli is seventy-eight years old."

Aha!

Having inadvertently given away the very name I sought, Mr. Ingersoll slumped into his chair, looking embarrassed.

I pretended not to notice and thought over what he'd said. Of course, Uncle Edward had been seventy-nine when Noreen married him, so her romantic escapade with young Chaz notwithstanding, she liked older men.

Furthermore, from what I'd been able to gather so far, Noreen's interest in someone else didn't actually begin until after Edward's death. Perhaps she'd lined up another old geezer whom she could marry for his money. Her career path of choice.

Why not, pray tell? Men had been doing the same thing for eons. Of course, most often men died earlier than women, but if the wife died first, the widower didn't waste much time finding a replacement. I'd even heard a name for it: "nurse with a purse." They wanted someone, preferably with plenty of her own money, to care for them in their old age.

By now, Ingersoll had recovered his wits. "Do I understand you wish to hire me to locate Mr. Capelli?"

"I believe you've already done that for my sister."

He went on the attack. "On the other hand, I believe you have told me an untruth. I suspect Mrs. Mason is not your sister, and she didn't tell you she hired me to find your missing younger brother."

Okay, I'm not a good actor. Nevertheless, I continued, this time trying to look repentant and not above stooping to flattery. "You're very clever, Mr. Ingersoll. It's true I'm not looking for a missing brother, but I am related to Mrs. Mason, and I don't need a great deal of information, just what she asked you to find out about Mr. Capelli." His net worth, I presumed.

"I am not convinced I should give this to you. How do I know Mrs. Mason is really deceased?"

"It's easy enough to check. The newspaper reported her funeral."

He pouted. "My time is very valuable."

I gave in. "Suppose I were to hire you? What would you charge?"

He smiled. "Although you're not family, I'll give you a family discount: one hundred pounds."

"You might have had to search all over London, if not the entire country, when you first tried to find Mr. Capelli. Now you just need to search your office. It hardly seems fair."

"Fifty pounds."

"Twenty-five."

"You Yanks are more careful with your money than I've been led to believe."

"You've been watching the wrong films. It's only an ugly rumor that our national pastime is conspicuous consumption."

"Very well." He rose from his chair and went over to a filing cabinet against the wall, one of those low, wide ones where the drawers roll out sideways. The frame was black and the doors mustard-colored. French's, not Grey Poupon. However, several minutes of rummaging through files left him empty-handed. He turned back to me.

"Apparently the folder has not yet been filed. My receptionist is somewhat, er, behind in her work."

Well, duh. With fingernails like hers, the woman could barely pick up a folder, much less file it.

"I'll put the information in the post," he said.

"I'll be going back home soon. I can't wait."

He shrugged and sat down again. "I'm sorry. Tomorrow perhaps." He picked up a pen and pulled his ruled pad into position. "Give me your address."

I did, but I hated to leave without knowing more. "You remembered Mr. Capelli's name. Can't you tell me what Mrs. Mason wanted to know about him?"

Ingersoll frowned and pulled at his chin. "As I recall, she asked about a woman." Long pause. "Can't remember the name. It's in the file. I'll find it."

"Can you remember Mr. Capelli's address so I can talk to him? He may not have heard about Mrs. Mason's death, and I need to tell him."

"Oh, yes, I remember that." He paused and looked at me for several minutes without speaking, and I realized he expected me to cross his palm with silver. I gave him a five-pound note and offered a credit card for the balance.

"He lives at Youngacres House. Not too far away. Anyone can direct you."

I thanked him and left, wondering if I'd given him twenty-five pounds for a mere address, or if Ingersoll would keep his word and send me more information when he found the file. I decided that whether I liked it or not, he had the upper hand.

As it was by then late afternoon, I returned to Mason Hall rather than attempt to visit Mr. Capelli immediately. Besides, I needed to think about what I'd learned. Under the circumstances, the man's advanced age didn't surprise me, nor did it mean he couldn't have quarreled with Noreen and drowned her in the lily pond. I next decided the woman Noreen asked Ingersoll about must be a friend, someone who told her about Capelli. I felt I had made some progress after all.

I left my coat in the closet under the stairs and went into my room to freshen up for dinner. Since I still had at least three-quarters of an hour before I needed to make my appearance in the dining room, I had sufficient time to do more sleuthing. Where would I do that? Why, Noreen's room, of course. Why hadn't I done more snooping in there before this? Surely, if she already had another prospective husband in mind, she'd have left a clue or two lying about.

I opened my bedroom door and peered into the hallway. Saw no one. I tiptoed past the bath and stopped in front of Noreen's room. Looked around again. Tested the door. The knob turned easily, and I darted inside and closed the door behind me. The room looked the same as when I'd seen it before, except her dressing table bench held a large cardboard box I didn't recall seeing there the night I found Tark. The box lid being open, I looked into it. I saw two letters, a pocket calendar, and quite a few loose papers. I reasoned that the police must have taken those things away during their investigation, along with all the papers in the office downstairs, and subsequently returned them.

Good of them to save me the trouble. I placed the box on the floor, seated myself on the bench and removed items one at a time, examined them, and put them on the dressing table. Most were advertisements cut from newspapers and magazines, items Noreen might have wished to purchase. Like a coat made of unborn lambskins (ugh) and a Jaguar (the car, not the animal). Plus travel folders describing cruises to exotic places and two programs from a racetrack. I opened one of the programs and found Noreen had circled the numbers of horses and indicated their finish position. If she'd wagered on them, she'd lost money on seven out of eight. As in the case of her bridge playing, there went some more of Edward's cash.

One letter came from an interior-decorating firm thanking her for her business, and the other from a dog psychiatrist soliciting it. In my opinion, if you even consider hiring a dog psychiatrist, God is telling you that you have way too much money. Except for his recent fear of the lily pond, which Noreen wouldn't even have known about, Mr. Tarkington seemed perfectly normal to me. He aimed to please, similar to the collie my brother and sister owned and, when they were young teens, I often thought was more obedient than they were. Given a command, the dog obeyed instantly, whereas my siblings, when asked by our parents to do something, might say, "Maybe," "Later," or "Why?"

Except for hairdresser's appointments and one day in February in which she apparently made her initial visit to Ingersoll's office, Noreen's calendar pages held no information. The name and address section contained less than a dozen entries, and each had initials and a telephone number. I saw a "D.I.," which I presumed stood for David Ingersoll, but without complete names to go by or sufficient time to think up plausible excuses, I balked at the idea of calling any of those other people. At least for now.

I sighed. Besides having no relatives, Noreen obviously behaved rather secretively and discarded everything that might reveal her life before meeting Chaz. If Roy Capelli meant anything to her, she didn't reveal it with incriminating evidence.

After replacing everything in the box, I searched the room, hoping the police had missed something. Still, the drawers contained nothing but clothes: pastel-colored silk pajamas and lacy teddies. I scrunched down and looked under her bed, delved into coat and jacket pockets in her wardrobe and even behind pictures on the walls. Still nothing.

Finally, I went through the connecting door into Edward's room. As masculine as Noreen's was feminine, it featured drab wallpaper, brown draperies, and heavy, carved furniture. The four-poster, king-sized bed, however, seemed newer than the rest, and I assumed Noreen had a hand in that. I felt like a voyeur, imagining them coupling under the sheets, and decided to leave before someone caught me at it.