Dead in the Water (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 1) (4 page)

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I awoke to find the room had grown darker, and outside the sky glowed with streaks of red from the setting sun. I got up, closed the drapes, and found the light switch. In case everyone still dressed for dinner and observed a period of mourning, I put on my go-everywhere, non-crushable black dress and medium-heel black shoes. Sitting at the vanity table, I raked a comb through my hair. Although it's still brown, it's also naturally curly, what I call "wash and wear" hair. I love not having to fuss with it, but I must admit that sometimes it resembles the nest of a deeply disturbed robin. I reapplied my makeup, opened the bedroom door, switched off the light, and entered the hallway.

I found it empty as before but not silent. Faint sounds came from a door on the other side of the lavatory. As I walked toward it, the sound grew louder, but it wasn't human speech. Someone, or something, was scratching on the inside.

I frequently go where angels fear to tread, so I turned the knob and pushed the door open. A small, fuzzy white dog stood inside the room—floppy ears, large brown eyes, and shiny black nose in an adorable puppy face. I assumed that must be Noreen's dog, Mr. Tarkington, his name almost larger than he was.

He sat looking up at me as if I'd rescued him from the local dogcatcher, and I could swear he smiled. His stubby tail thumped on the floor, and I stooped down, reached my hand out slowly and patted him on the head. He rolled over onto his side, so I scratched him behind the ears and rubbed his tummy.

I was in love. "Oh, Tark," I said, "you're beautiful."

He pushed his nose against my hand, and I scratched his head some more. I hadn't felt like this about the dog Brad, Samantha, and I were joint owners of when we were children. That was a large brown Collie, not a little bundle of curly white hair like this, but I couldn't tell a Maltese from a Lhasa Apso, or whatever breed he might be, if my life depended on it. Even better, Tark liked me too. Did I have a special way with dogs, or was he reacting to the Chanel No. 5? If Noreen used that cologne, perhaps he only loved my smell.

Frankly, my dear, I didn't give a hoot. I picked him up and hugged him, discovering from his feather lightness, that he was mostly fur. He licked my chin, making me giggle. Since he was Noreen's dog, I assumed this had been her room, and, inasmuch as she now resided in a morgue somewhere and wouldn't catch me at it, I pushed the door open farther and peered inside.

About the same size as mine, the room's difference became obvious without turning on a light. It held a canopied bed liberally swathed in white tulle intertwined with fake pink flowers and green vines, furniture of white and gold, mauve carpet and walls covered in padded pink silk. Either Noreen had a romantic streak or some decorator made a fancy love nest for her. Plus the fact she not only played bridge but had also chosen Tark for a pet made my feelings for the woman take a slight turn. Anyone who owned this adorable little dog couldn't be all bad.

The sudden rumbling in my stomach reminded me of the approaching dinner hour, but I decided not to leave Mr. Tarkington where I'd found him. He'd obviously scratched at the door to get out and might be hungry. I carried him downstairs and into a kitchen, which, since I last saw it many years before, had been thoroughly modernized.

An older woman, gray-haired but not as wide as Alice, stood at the stove, stirring something in a large pot. She looked up at me when I entered the room. "Evenin', madam. Annie's the name, cookin's the game."

"I'm Olivia Grant, Mrs. Klein's niece."

"She told me you wuz comin', luv."

"I brought Mr. Tarkington down for his dinner. I assumed he'd have a dish for his food in here."

"That he has, in the corner." She pointed with an elbow, and I followed her gaze to a spot near the back door where a small blue rug holding two stainless steel bowls sat on the red brick floor. The bowls were empty.

"Is there some food I could give him?"

This time Annie stopped stirring, produced some dog food and opened the can with a whir of an electric can opener. She handed it to me, along with a spoon.

I put Tark on the floor and spooned the chunky brown stuff into one bowl, then carried the other bowl to the sink and filled it with water. I stood over the dog for a while, watching him.

Annie checked on the pot again, then moved to the counter and sliced a long loaf of bread. "Bonnie little thing, isn't he?"

"Yes. Do you know what breed he is?"

"Some'at 'tween a cocker spaniel and a poodle. She called him a Cockapoo. 'Tis a daft name, if you ask me."

I hadn't guessed the poodle genes and was glad Tark wasn't trimmed the ridiculous poodle way. I often wondered if other dogs think poodles belong to some weird religious cult.

The swinging door opened, and Aunt Alice scurried into the kitchen. "Ah, Olivia. I went upstairs to collect you, and here you are."

"I brought Mr. Tarkington down for his dinner."

She glanced to where the dog stood eating. "He's a little love, isn't he?"

And here I'd been thinking it was just me. "Do you know how old he is?"

"About a year."

"He's not a puppy then?"

"No, he's full grown, won't get any bigger."

"Has Noreen, that is,
did
Noreen have him very long?"

"Only a week or two." She pushed open the door and held it for me to pass through and kept on talking while we headed for the dining room.

"Surprised us all, let me tell you. I didn't take her for a pet lover. Too selfish, she was. Taking care of a dog requires a bit of a sacrifice now and then, feeding, walking, the odd visit to the vet." Eyebrows raised, her forehead wrinkled.

"I expected the walking alone would do her in. Noreen would ask to be driven to the
loo
if it was thirty meters off. I thought she'd tire of the dog in a week, and I'd get the chores to do soon enough, but so far she hadn't."

"So she might have been walking the dog last night or early this morning, when she, er, died."

"We don't know that for a fact, but it would explain her being out of doors at that time of day, wouldn't it? Her being a person who thought the night air caused skin rash."

A thought came to me, and I stopped short. If Noreen had been walking Mr. Tarkington and just stumbled into the lily pond and drowned, how did the dog get back into the house?

I hadn't time to think more about Mr. Tarkington, because we reached the dining room, and I found everyone else already seated. Except for Chaz, who still wore a T-shirt and jeans, they had dressed for dinner, the women in skirts, the men in coats and ties. On the table's right sat William, Beryl, and Chaz. On the left, Elizabeth and a man I assumed must be my other cousin. Alice, taking a seat next to him, introduced us.

"Olivia, this is Jason. I dare say you wouldn't recognize each other since you were mere children last you met."

"We were about nine years old," I said, "but of course we've both changed a lot since then."

He came to a half-rising position and took my extended hand briefly, and during our exchange of pleasantries, I gave his appearance a once-over. We were close to the same age, he being only a few years older, a fact he liked to insist, even as a child, gave him authority in choosing games to play. I remembered him as a short but strong child with a sullen temper.

As he was Beryl's son from a previous marriage, William had adopted him. Their own son, Chaz, came along after my visit. I also remembered how Jason insisted on being called Jason Cornell, not Jason Mason, not that I blamed him for that.

He'd grown slightly taller than I and wore his straight, light blond hair combed back from a high forehead. He had his mother's small nose and mouth and was good looking in a sort of Leonardo DiCaprio way. Not my favorite movie star, however.

Alice pointed me to a chair on the right next to Chaz, and I realized no one sat at the head of the table. Instead, both the chair at the far end and the one next to it on the left were empty. Perhaps Edward and Noreen had used them, and no one else as yet wanted to claim them.

At this point, Annie came in pushing a wheeled cart laden with a large soup tureen and bowls and served us. While she did so, I looked at the array of forks and spoons spread out on either side of my plate. In my opinion, making a project out of choosing the right utensil was what people did to work out their aggressions in the 19th century before they had video games.

The conversation turned to the weather, which I thought odd under the circumstances but soon enough drifted back to the shocking event that occurred that day.

The cook returned to the kitchen, and Chaz spoke up. "So what's goin' on with the cops? They asked a fair lot of questions but were not so keen on answering any. Are we under house arrest or what?"

"Not a bit of it," Jason said. "I believe I spoke with Inspector Kincaid after everyone else had done so, and he assured me they'd inform us of their findings as soon as possible, perhaps tomorrow."

Chaz let his irritation show in his harsh tone. "But we're to stay in the bloomin' village and not go anywhere, right?"

I'd already noticed that, although Chaz had obviously gone to the right schools, he sometimes affected a lower-class way of speaking, perhaps because of his band.

"Well—" his mother began.

"Never mind I've got things to do, I suppose?"

Beryl tried to soothe her son with a hand on his arm and a soft tone. "I do believe you told me your band doesn't have an engagement tonight."

"But we've got to practice, don't we?"

"You can practice in your studio." She returned her gaze to her soup.

Chaz said no more, but he shifted restlessly in his chair, and I moved my leg out of the way of his.

Alice spoke to me. "Whilst you had your nap this afternoon, the police looked about inside the house. Did they disturb you?"

"No, I didn't hear them, and no one knocked at my door. I'm a rather sound sleeper."

"Inspector Kincaid told me they would be looking into Noreen's and Edward's rooms, as well as into their office downstairs."

It occurred to me the police might have closed Noreen's door when they finished their search, and that probably explained how Mr. Tarkington came to be shut inside, but I wanted to know more about the local police procedure. "Do they need search warrants?" I asked.

Jason answered. "Not if they get permission. Otherwise, yes. The exception, of course, would be rooms belonging to the deceased. I believe they're free to search those."

Chaz, finished with his soup, thunked his spoon down. "If you don't give 'em permission to search your room, you look guilty, right?"

Alice sounded reassuring. "No one said anyone is guilty. I'm certain they'll arrive at the conclusion it was an accident."

"Oh, like no one here wanted to do away with her?" Chaz said.

In the silence following that remark, everyone but Chaz went back to eating or taking long drinks from their water glasses.

Alice turned to Jason again. "As the inspector interviewed you last, is there anything more you can tell us about his investigation?"

"I don't believe so." He paused, then seemed to feel obliged to describe his experience. "He asked my age, relation to, er, Noreen, my occupation, even my hobbies. A bit much, wouldn't you say? Of course, as I'm sure he did with all of you, he also asked where I was at the time, er, she—"

Apparently anticipating the end of his sentence, Elizabeth said, "I thought they hadn't determined a time of death."

Jason cleared his throat loudly. "I believe it's evident the death occurred last night or quite early this morning."

"It must have done," Alice said. "No one saw her between dinner last night and when Olivia found her in the lily pond this morning."

At that moment, Annie returned to replace soup bowls with gold-rimmed dinner plates containing slices of lamb, a mound of mint jelly, roasted potatoes, and Brussels sprouts. In spite of being half English, I've never liked Brussels sprouts.

I felt Chaz's leg brush mine again and moved farther to the left. "Did anyone see her take her dog for a walk last night or this morning?"

Blank stares met me, so I assumed no one had.

"Mother and I watched a program on the telly in the small sitting room until ten o'clock," Elizabeth said. "Then we went to bed. I didn't see Noreen this morning either."

Beryl turned to her husband. "We watched a program in our room, didn't we, William?"

"Eh? What's that?" William looked up from the task of cutting his lamb into neat little cubes, and I noticed he hadn't touched
his
Brussels sprouts either. "What did you say, my dear?"

Beryl raised her voice and repeated what she'd said, adding, "And then we had an early breakfast, before anyone else."

"Right-o."

"Did you see Noreen?" Alice asked Chaz.

"No. I stayed late in my studio last night and never had any breakfast at all."

"As everyone knows," Jason said, "I went into the city to see a play and spent the night at my club."

"
I
didn't know you spent the night in town." Beryl pouted, as if even a grown man had to explain his whereabouts to his mother.

"I didn't intend to at first, but during the interval, I decided to stay in London rather than drive home, and I telephoned."

"Yes," Alice said, "I took the call, but I forgot to tell you, Beryl. Sorry."

After a long pause, Jason laughed and turned to me. "Under the circumstances, it would appear that I, and Olivia, who hadn't arrived in this country, have substantial alibis."

"I'm afraid my so-called alibi didn't impress the inspector. He hinted I'd spent too much time between leaving Heathrow and arriving here. Ample time, if her death occurred early this morning, for me to drown her on the way."

Chaz laughed. "You might have done it at that."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I told him, allowing a bit of sarcasm in my tone.

"This isn't about alibis," Elizabeth said, somewhat testily. "Noreen drowned by accident. I thought we asked if anyone saw her walking her dog."

Jason flashed her a stern glance. "That's what I meant."

To my utter surprise, I felt a hand on my knee, a hand that ought to have been in Chaz's lap, not mine. So the leg-brushing business hadn't been accidental after all. I pushed his hand off and gave him a "what do you think you're doing?" look, which, since he didn't turn to me, he didn't see. Nevertheless, his lips turned up in a grin, and when he took a sip of water, some of it escaped from the side of his mouth, and he had to wipe it away with his napkin.

Alice passed around a tray of sliced white bread, which required my attention, but I remained silent, wondering what ran through Chaz's head. Perhaps he'd been teasing me with his hints I might have killed Noreen. So, why the touching? He must have known I was a few years older than he. Yet Noreen had been in her forties, or even fifties, and, if the gossip could be believed, they'd had a thing going.

Maybe he preferred older women. Or, perhaps I wasn't as over the hill as I'd thought. Learning my ex-husband had found someone else's charms more engaging than mine had done considerable damage to my ego, but I doubted a somewhat-brash young man who played with a band made up for that. He was a cousin besides. I had to fight to keep a grin from sneaking onto my face.

After dinner Alice said, "I'll help Annie with the washing-up," and everyone else rose and left the dining room.

Once in the great hall, Elizabeth suggested she and I go into the drawing room, "to catch up on old times." Jason acted as if he'd been invited and followed us.

As Elizabeth and I settled into chairs near the fireplace, Jason fussed with the kindling under the logs, all the while frowning as if someone had got it wrong, and only he knew precisely how it should be done. He finally lit the fire, settled the screen on the hearth with great precision, and then remained standing for a while, arm resting on the mantle like a millionaire posing for a photo spread in
Architectural Digest.

Being the newcomer, I felt impelled to say something about the situation we found ourselves in. "I expected to have a pleasant reunion," I started, "not discover Noreen's body. Of course, I didn't know her, so I'm not as upset as you must be."

Elizabeth took a chocolate from a silver candy dish on the coffee table. "I'm more upset by this ruining your visit. I'd made plans, sightseeing and such." She passed the dish to me.

"As for Noreen, let's be honest, Olivia. No one is upset by her death. No one liked her." She nibbled on the chocolate and then added, "Not that any of us killed her, of course. At least,
I
didn't."

I watched her for a few minutes. She wore black tights under a mid-calf-length dress and still hadn't put on any makeup or loosened her hair, and I wondered why she seemed going out of her way to look unattractive. She could be quite good-looking if she tried. Deciding her looks were her own affair, I helped myself to what appeared to be two mint patties in one brown paper cup and held out the candy dish to Jason.

He came forward, took it, stared awhile at every piece before selecting one, and set the dish back on the table. Seating himself in a high-back wing chair, he spoke with a note of finality. "I'm certain Noreen drowned accidentally." He cleared his throat, announcing his change of subject. "Ever since I heard you were coming, Olivia, I've remembered the jolly times we had that summer when you visited."

"All of us cousins came that year," Elizabeth said. "Mother brought Hildegard, Hans, and me as well."

"I remembered that this morning," I told her, "when I walked outdoors toward the lily pond. We waded in it sometimes, something your mother included in her list of no-no's.'"

"I fear we were naughty children," Jason added, "getting into all sorts of mischief."

My recollection told me Jason usually instigated the mischief. Even though Elizabeth was not much younger than he, Jason, as a permanent resident of Mason Hall, felt entitled to boss us around. Hans was six that year and Hildegard four, so they followed Jason's lead without complaining, except when they skinned their knees or bruised their elbows trying to keep up with some of his wilder exploits.

Elizabeth nodded. "Our toys are still in the old playroom."

"But we didn't spend much time up there," I said. "I remember playing in the great hall. We loved to yell out loud and listen to our voices echo."

"And climb on the chairs to reach the swords and shields hanging on the walls," she added. "We're probably fortunate we didn't maim ourselves with one of those old things."

Jason rose and poked at the fire, in spite of its not needing it. "And now we're grown. Do you have a career, Olivia?"

"After my husband Stephen died, I worked in an office for a few years, but I wouldn't call it a career. I do some charity work and teach bridge, mostly as a hobby." My mentioning bridge reminded me of my earlier conversation with Aunt Alice about Noreen and her gal-pals, and I wondered if anyone else in the family played.

I turned to Elizabeth. "Do you play bridge?"

She frowned. "Mother tried to teach me once so I could be a fourth with her and Uncle William and Aunt Beryl, but I never really caught on."

Again remembering Alice's description of the women who played with Noreen, who, according to her description, were dumb, dumber, and brain-dead, I found it hard to believe Elizabeth couldn't manage to learn. More likely, she didn't want to.