Trouble at High Tide (21 page)

“You have to have a lot of contacts,” Dan corrected. “He’s
shrewd—I’ll give him that. But shrewd isn’t the same as smart. He’s a politician, knows the president. If he’d never been appointed to the bench, he’d probably be running Ward E campaigns in Jersey City or some other place.”

“I think you may be underestimating him,” I said. “Tom wrote a book about judicial reform, which I understand was very well received.”

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? Of all people.”

“Dan, that’s enough,” Lil said.

“She should know who she’s dealing with, Lil. Tom is not the Honest Abe judge he makes himself out to be.”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“I just know,” Dan said, struggling to get to his feet again and moaning in the process. “I’m too old to sit on the beach,” he groused, dusting sand off his pants.

“We’ll bring down a chair next time,” Lil said.

“You were talking about Tom,” I said, not wanting him to leave without explaining his comments.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t have to present anything in court, make a legal case out of it, but I know who I’m dealing with. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. Please excuse me, ladies,” he said as he limped off in the direction of their stairs.

“Sorry for Dan’s outburst, Jessica. He’s not a fan of Judge Thomas Betterton.”

“That’s easy to see,” I said. “I’m just curious what Tom did to make Dan so angry with him.”

“My son from my first marriage is a lawyer. There was a disagreement about something between him and the judge. I don’t know the details.”

“Lawyers and judges often have disagreements,” I said. “That goes hand in hand with the judicial process.”

“I told Dan he should stay out of it; it’s between Barry and the judge. Barry is a grown man now and has to fight his own battles.” She shook her head and sighed. “Unfortunately Dan doesn’t forgive easily.”

“Did you and Dan know Alicia well?” I asked.

“I don’t think anyone knew her well,” she replied. “After all the stories I’d heard from Claudia, I avoided her as much as I could, and she didn’t go out of her way to make a friend out of me. Claudia said that was typical. As far as Claudia was concerned, Alicia was your standard spoiled brat, and she felt that Tom enabled her through his generosity. I think she spent half their marriage trying to convince him to let her grow up, go out on her own, fight her own battles like we all have to.”

I had no idea whether Lillian was right. After all, she was only repeating what Claudia had told her, and from what I’d gathered, the relationship between Claudia and Alicia was a poisonous one.

Lil said that she had to get back to the house, but before leaving, she showed me the beach glass they had collected, the little shards of blue, white, and brown glass that had been softened into pebbles by the action of the ocean. “Come over anytime,” she said before walking away. “We’re not leaving for another week.”

When she was gone, I gathered up my towel and unread book. The breeze had dropped off and the sun was getting too high to remain on the beach. I looked over to the cottage where the Reynoldses were staying. Funny how they’d been
unable to find a hotel room on an island filled with hotels. Or perhaps, I speculated, Godfrey had never made a sincere effort and had only been placating his wife with his supposed search for an alternate place to stay.

As I debated whether or not to knock on their door, Godfrey came outside with a beach chair and unfolded it on his porch. I waved at him and called out “Hello.” He returned my greeting and I took the opportunity to approach him.

Tom’s publisher had been unable to account for his whereabouts when the police arrived following my emergency call, and the constables had insisted that he and Daisy remain in Bermuda until further notice. While he’d obviously been reticent in speaking with the authorities, I hoped I could coax him into answering
my
questions. He was too smart a man to have gotten lost on the property. Besides, it hadn’t been that dark; there had been a moon out that night. Even if he was simply stretching his legs, as his wife said he told the police, he must have seen something. I wanted to know what that was.

“Still here, I see,” I said, climbing onto his porch.

“Yes,” he said as he got to his feet. “No rooms at the inns, so to speak.”

“Not even one?” I asked archly. “Not
anywhere
on the island?”

“Well, those that were available were outrageously priced, but don’t let my wife know. I told her they were all full up, and innocent that she is, she believed me. Why should we abandon a perfectly lovely room with a view, and one that is gratis to boot?”

“Speaking of your wife, is she here?”

“I’m afraid she isn’t. Daisy went shopping with Madeline, some sale or other.”

“How nice for her,” I said. “May I talk to you for a moment?”

“Would you like me to get you a chair?”

“This is fine for me,” I said, sitting on the swing that was a match to the one on my porch.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

He held up the thick volume. “Tom’s book.”

“Is it as good as I’ve been told?”

“I’ll tell you after I’ve read it.”

I laughed. “I would have thought that you’d read it by now,” I said.

“I have people for that,” he said, smiling. “Seriously, I can’t read everything I publish, now, can I? I’d never get out of the office. One of the smart young fellows in my acquisitions department recommended that we publish it. It was already out in the U.S.”

“Did Tom actually write it?” I asked. It was a question I’d never put to Tom.

He chuckled. “Spoken like a woman in the book business. I understand that he paid a ghostwriter to help him. Very wise decision. Just because people are experts in one area doesn’t mean they can put words together mellifluously, although I understand your American judges have to write opinions and such.”

“Often they have people for that,” I said, echoing him.

“So they do,” he said.

“Just the same, writing a judicial opinion is like running
a short race,” I said. “Writing a book is more like a marathon. They take different skills.”

“Well put,” he said. He cocked his head at me. “Why do I get the feeling that you didn’t climb on my porch to chat about writing or to discuss the publishing business?”

“Because I didn’t.”

“Thought so.”

“Godfrey, you weren’t in the cottage when the police came the night of Alicia’s murder,” I said.

“And where did you learn this little tidbit of information?”

“From your wife.”

He frowned and shook his head. “How indiscreet.”

“Please don’t scold her,” I said. “I asked her why the police insisted you stay on the island and she confided in me. It’s not something I’ve discussed with anyone else.”

“Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome. But I would like to know what you saw when you were supposedly ‘stretching your legs.’ I never saw you reading on your porch while I walked down to the beach and back. Had you been here, you surely would have seen me, likely heard me running up the gravel path. But you never mentioned that to the constables because, unlike what Daisy told me, you weren’t reading on your porch. Where did you go? And why?”

He took a deep breath and let it out, obviously weighing what was safe to tell me.

“I’m only asking so I can understand what happened that night. I think you must have seen something but you didn’t tell the police about it. I can’t help but wonder why.”

“I didn’t tell the constables because I cannot afford to be stuck on Bermuda indefinitely,” he said with irritation, “or get called back here as a witness at a trial. That could tie me up for months and I simply cannot leave my business for that length of time.”

“What did you
see
, Godfrey?” I pressed.

He sat back and looked out over the water as though pondering how much to tell me. Finally he came forward and said, “I didn’t see anything at first, but then I heard that tidy package, Alicia, talking with someone. She’d swished her bottom in my direction all night, actually fell into my arms at one point, and I thought I’d go see who she was enticing now.”

“And did you see who it was?”

“No. When I went inside to get my torch, Daisy told me to mind my own affairs. We’d had a row about Tom’s niece. Daisy thought I’d been flirting with her and I probably had, but so what? I knew the young woman wasn’t about to take me up on any offer I might make. I told Daisy as much. She was furious. She told me to get out, and stubborn as I am, I stayed inside just to spite her.”

He paused, annoyed with himself, or maybe with Daisy.

“How long a time was it between when you heard Alicia’s voice and when you went outside again?”

He shrugged. “An hour, maybe a little less.” He looked out to the ocean again and I had a feeling that he was retracing his steps that night.

“Go on,” I said. “What did you see when you went outside?”

“Actually, I saw you, Jessica. You went around the rocks. I crept forward and saw what you found. I have to admit I got a little sick to my stomach and retreated behind one of the boulders. When you ran back up the beach, I stayed hidden until you got to the gravel path.”

“Then what did you do?”

He raised a hand. “It’s not what I did—it’s what I saw.”

“Which was?”

“Tom’s manservant.”

“His manservant? You mean Adam? Where did you see him?”

“I spied him running up the stairs over there.” He gestured with his hand.

“And did you follow him up the stairs?”

He hung his head. “I did. To be truthful, I wanted to avoid you in the event you decided to return to the beach. I didn’t want you to see me there.”

“So you followed Adam up the stairs to the Jamisons’ property, and both of you crossed their backyard to the Betterton house.”

“I didn’t see him doing anything other than running away, mind you. I’m not accusing him of killing that poor girl. I figured that he was probably in the same position that I was, seeing you find the body and not wanting to get involved. If the police asked him, his story could be identical to mine.”

“Is that what he told you?” I asked. I was guessing, of course, assuming that Adam would have looked around to see if he was being followed.

Godfrey looked startled. “Yes. But how did you know that? I can’t imagine that he told you about it.”

“There was a bright moon that night,” I said, “and I doubt very much whether you could have followed him that far without his having caught sight of you.”

He smiled ruefully. “A woman’s intuition,” he said.

“Just putting two and two together,” I said.

A
dam had left the folded newspaper on my swing, secured with a rubber band so that the wind wouldn’t blow the pages away. I slipped off my sandy shoes at the door and tossed the paper on the bed, my mind preoccupied with all that Godfrey had told me.

He was right. He and Adam could have told the same story to the police, each one pointing to the other and accusing him of having killed Alicia, or at least of having been at the scene of the crime.

What a busy night it had been on the beach! And I had been completely unaware of all the company I was keeping other than the deceased. I wondered what George would make of it. Or if Freddie would say that one of these men surely must have killed Alicia. But, I reminded myself, Scotland Yard was no longer interested in her murder. Their center of focus was on the Jack the Ripper killer and she apparently was not considered one of his victims.

I took a bottle of water from the tiny fridge, sipping a
little before I changed out of my bathing suit, showered, and put on clothes more suitable for a trip into town. I was hoping to see George again; perhaps he would even have time to share another lunch where I could fill him in on what I’d discovered. I checked my cell phone. The message icon indicated voice mails, probably one from him.

I took my phone, the newspaper, and the bottle of water and went outside to sit in the swing. I pulled the rubber band off the paper and let it flop open on my lap as I dialed in for my message.

“Oh, no,” I gasped, hanging up on my voice mail. The headline in huge letters went across the entire front page: “Business or Pleasure?” Underneath, the subhead asked: “What is Scotland Yard’s chief inspector doing here?” And below it was a large photograph of George and me sitting on the step, George with his arm around my shoulder. The caption read: “Cuddling at the scene of the crime.”

I groaned.

The article that accompanied the photograph was filled with innuendo, suggesting that the Scotland Yard team was merely enjoying an extended vacation at the expense of the Bermudian government, given their usual inability to actually solve any crimes. Not surprisingly, there were no details about what they had already uncovered since that information had been withheld from the press. Instead, the reporter took George to task for using the occasion to meet his “sweetheart” when he should have been exhorting his team to accomplish something, anything.

I could feel my face flooding with a combination of fury and mortification. I’d had a hunch there was something odd
about that boat that kept traversing the same area of the ocean in front of us. George had kidded that the people aboard were spying on us, but that was precisely what they had done. We were victims of the paparazzi.

Clearly the Bettertons had read this article and perhaps even hesitated about letting me see it. But it would have been hard to keep it from me for long.

I looked at my cell phone and dialed voice mail again to get my messages. There were three. The first one was from a reporter who wanted a comment. I don’t know how he got my number, but I quickly erased his request.

The second call was from Seth Hazlitt back home: “Hate to tell you this, but a picture of you and Sutherland was in the Bangor paper this morning. The article was none too flattering. Sorry about that. Send my regards to the inspector. Hope you’re planning to come home soon.”

The third call was from George. I listened with trepidation. “You were right about that boat, lass. I have an appointment with the commissioner at noon to ‘explain myself’—his words. I knew I was taking a chance coming here, but I never believed it would involve you in this nasty business. Terribly, terribly sorry.”