“And a woman’s place is in the home. I’ve been hearing that since I was old enough to wear an apron. Ridiculous, isn’t it?” Emma picked up a stick and knocked the head off of a stray dandelion. “Your father should meet my mother. The world seems to be full of disappointed parents.”
“A good many disappointed children, as well, I’ll wager.” Derek’s smile softened.
“Please,” Emma said, “go on with the story. I’ll try not to interrupt.”
“Interrupt all you like,” said Derek, with a sidelong glance. “I don’t mind.” His curls tossed in the breeze and the sunshine made his blue eyes sparkle. Emma fumbled with the stick, then tossed it hastily away.
“Lex decided to surprise Grayson ...” she prompted.
Derek gazed at her a moment longer, then ducked his head and continued. “Surprise was on Lex, as it turned out, because Grayson wasn’t at home. Papers made a lot of fuss about this particular point, until it came out that Grayson had been in France, negotiating the repurchase of paintings his father had sold some years before. Grayson was understandably reluctant to advertise his father’s penury.”
“But if Grayson wasn’t home ...”
“His staff is awfully fond of him, don’t you think? Terribly eager to please?”
“I suppose, but ...” But it makes sense, Emma thought. It could have been a plot, with Grayson as the mastermind and the staff as co-conspirators. She thought back to her first evening at Penford Hall, to Grayson’s soothing, seductive words at the dinner table. She’d joined his cause without a second thought. If he inspired such devotion in a total stranger, what kind of fierce loyalty might he inspire in his staff? “Go on,” she said.
“Lex arrived, with his band in tow, and no Grayson to surprise. Fools got into his brandy, then decided to hoof it down to the Bright Lady.”
“That’s the pub in Penford Harbor?”
“Where we’re heading now. The band downed a few pints, jumped aboard Grayson’s yacht, and took it out into one of the worst gales Cornwall’s seen in fifty years. None of them were sailors, and the yacht was in poor repair. Miracle they got the ruddy thing going at all. But no one tangles with the Nether Shoals and lives to tell about it.”
“The ship was wrecked?” Emma asked.
“Smashed to matchsticks. The band ...” Derek’s lips tightened. “They searched, of course. Grayson came tearing back from his trip to mount his own search, as well. But the currents around the Nether Shoals are notoriously unpredictable, even in fair weather. In that storm ...” Derek shook his head. “Could be as far away as Spain by now.”
Emma drew her sweater more closely around her. “And the press gave Grayson a pretty hard time?”
“Had a field day,” Derek said. “Cro-Magnon musician perishes on aristocrat’s leaky yacht—it was tabloid fodder. Yet another scandal at Buck House took the pressure off, but not before some enterprising journalist discovered that Lex had been virtually penniless. There was no estate left, after all the bills had been paid.”
Emma wasn’t surprised. The scenario was a familiar one—too many rock musicians lived life at high speed, spending their money faster than they earned it. Emma frowned suddenly and came to an abrupt halt.
“Penniless?” she repeated. She batted at a fly that buzzed in her face. “Then what are we worrying about? If Lex was broke, why would Grayson ...” She hesitated, then finished lamely, “... do what you think he might have done?”
“This is the tricky bit.” Derek peered cautiously into the woods on either side of the path, before saying, very quietly, “Lex’s books—his financial records—were a bit of a mess. That’s what gave rise to speculation in the first place. No one was quite sure what had become of his money, you understand?”
Emma nodded.
“The tabloids lost interest, and so did I. But Susannah didn’t.” Derek glanced around again, then leaned closer to Emma. His voice sank to a whisper. “Apparently, she befriended a chap, a banker. Happens I know him. Very precise sort of fellow. Collects butterflies. Susannah asked him to look into things, and he came away saying that there was something odd about the way Lex’s accounts were set up. Nothing he could point a finger at. Just gave him a queer feeling that things weren’t quite pukka.”
“But how could Grayson—”
“Fiddle the books? No idea. Curious, though.”
Emma agreed. As they resumed walking, she murmured, “It’s a lucky thing Susannah’s friend never talked to the press.”
“Winslow?” Derek snorted. “Safe as houses. We were at school together. Hasn’t changed a bit. If it hasn’t got wings and antennae, he can’t be bothered with it.”
“I suppose that’s why she approached him. If Susannah had blackmail on her mind, she wouldn’t want to broadcast what she’d learned,” Emma mused. Question after question cartwheeled through her mind. Had Grayson lured Lex down to Penford Hall? Had the shipwreck been planned? Had the staff been involved? Emma knew enough about computer security at banks to know that no electronic records were completely safe from prying eyes. It wouldn’t be easy to break into private financial files, but it could be done. All you’d need was a fairly sophisticated ... “Hallard,” she breathed.
“Where?” Derek asked in alarm.
Emma shook her head. “No, Derek, I didn’t mean that. I just thought of a way for Grayson to syphon off Lex’s funds. What do you suppose Hallard’s doing with that laptop computer?”
“Hallard?” Derek said doubtfully. “Seems a bit dotty to me.”
“Hackers frequently are,” Emma replied dryly.
“Hackers?”
“Creative computer programmers,” Emma explained. “Sometimes called computer nerds. They’ve been known to break into systems just for the fun of it.”
“Fascinating.”
Emma nodded, but her mind was already on other things. “Were there any witnesses to the shipwreck?”
“Only a few,” Derek replied. “That’s another thing that has me puzzled. Five years ago, the village of Penford Harbor was virtually abandoned.”
The abandoned village is thriving, Emma thought, looking around the pub.
The Bright Lady was a low, whitewashed stone building on the harborfront, tucked between a half-timbered inn and the narrow, two-story harbormaster’s house, which now served as Dr. Singh’s infirmary. The pub was warm and cozy, dimly lit by the sunlight falling through the bull’s-eye windows in the front. Pewter tankards and lengths of fishing net hung from the raftered ceiling, a back comer was devoted to a well-used dartboard, and a time-worn but lovingly polished bar jutted out into the center of the room, dividing it in two. On one side of the bar, an aged spaniel slept before a crackling fire, and the red-haired chief constable, Tom Trevoy, sat at a bare wooden table, writing doggedly on a pad of yellow paper and nursing a pint of the local ale.
Emma was sitting on the other side of the bar, at one of a half-dozen tables draped with linen and set with silver. Her table was in the front, near the windows, and she had a clear view of the harbor. Derek was speaking with three elderly women at a table in the back, answering the question Emma had heard many times as she and Derek had strolled down from the car park to the harbor.
Would Susannah’s “mishap” delay the Fete? Everyone they’d met—from Mrs. Shuttleworth, quietly tending the marigolds in front of her husband’s church, to the irascible Jonah Pengully, at whose ramshackle general store Emma had purchased work gloves; a sunhat, and a pair of wellington boots—had asked Derek the same thing. Faces had fallen when he’d declined to give a definite answer, but the villagers remained hopeful that word would come down from Penford Hall before nightfall.