“I’m sure there won’t be any action necessary, Morton, but it is comforting to know an officer of the law is with us.”
Wilfred went through the process of opening and closing the gate and headed for the manor. Instead of veering to his left, however-which would have placed us at the front door-he turned right and followed a narrow gravel road to the back of the house and to the garage, which had been added to the main structure. He clicked an electronic door opener that was clipped to the sun visor, and the garage door slid open. Inside was one other vehicle, a blue Ford Escort belonging to Jane Portelaine. Wilfred guided the Morgan into the garage, turned, and clicked the electronic device again. This time it closed the doors. He turned off the Morgan’s lights, leaving us in virtual darkness, except for a small, low-wattage lamp at the far end, beyond the Escort.
“Careful as you walk,” Wilfred said as we got out of the Morgan and quietly pressed the two back doors shut. Wilfred closed his door with normal force, and we fell in line behind him until reaching the door leading into the house.
“What’s beyond this door?” I asked.
“The pantry, ma’am, which leads directly into the kitchen.”
“Is Mrs. Horton still away?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Seth and Mort. “Ready?”
They nodded.
Wilfred used a key to open the door and led us into the house. The pantry was very large, and its shelves were stocked with enough provisions to ride out a replay of World War II. Our path was illuminated by light from the kitchen. A large butcher block took up the middle of the room; copper pots and pans hung from a circular rack above it. The four of us stood around the block and listened. The sound of voices could be heard coming from the adjoining dining room. There was laughter, it sounded like a party.
I turned to Wilfred and whispered, “I think you have gone far enough with us. What I would like you to do now is to go upstairs and let us take over from here.”
He was about to protest, then simply nodded and left through another door connecting the kitchen with a narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper floors.
I went to the dining room and pressed my ear against it. Now I could hear the voices with more clarity. A man said, “It actually worked, it bloody well worked.” He laughed raucously.
“I propose a toast,” another male voice said, “to literary excellence and to the world of books.” Everyone laughed now. As I heard glasses clink together, I opened the door and stepped into the room. It took those at the table a few seconds to realize that someone had joined their dinner party. Jane Portelaine was the first to see me. She half rose, and her face reflected her shock. The others realized something had happened and turned. I took a few more steps into the room, and Seth and Mort joined me.
“What in hell…?”
“Good evening, Mr. Harris,” I said. “I see you’re sitting in Marjorie Ainsworth’s chair at the head of the table. How appropriate.”
“Who are these people?” the publisher Walter Cole asked.
“These people are my friends. Officer Metzger is a law enforcement officer. I see you and Mr. Simpson have joined this celebratory party.”
Harris, who’d displayed some initial bravado, turned and looked at Jane Portelaine with eyes that sought help.
She stood, came around the table, and faced me. She looked the way she had at the reading of her aunt’s will-rose-colored lipstick outlined the contours of her mouth, and her hair was in that loose, becoming style. And, of course, there was the heavy scent of Victorian posy. “How dare you enter my home without my permission,” she said.
“I didn’t think you’d mind, Jane. After all, you’d instructed Marshall to accommodate me at my convenience.” I looked at Marshall, who’d abandoned his butler’s uniform for a more appropriate jacket and open shirt. He looked panicked.
Harris stood. “What in bloody hell is she talking about?” he snarled at Jane. “Invite her?”
I said, “Mr. Harris, Jane did not invite me this evening. She invited me yesterday while she was soaking up sun on the Costa del Sol.”
“It was a good time to let her do her snooping around,” Jane angrily answered Jason, “when no one was here.” She turned to me and said, “Please leave this house immediately. You are not welcome here.”
“I don’t think your aunt would feel that way, Jane.”
“My aunt is dead!”
“Yes, we all know that. The question is whether it was necessary to brutally do away with her in order for Mr. Harris to gain some measure of financial success that his own literary talents aren’t capable of generating.”
Harris sat down again and assumed a posture of nonchalance. He smiled at me, which offended me deeply, and said, “I don’t see why you should be upset, Mrs. Fletcher.” He lighted a cigarette and drew casually on it. “After all, I think you’ve had enough evidence presented to you to make the point that I did, in fact, write Gin and Daggers. You’ve had a chance to go over the manuscript.”
“I assume it was you who gave it to your stepbrother, Mr. Simpson here.”
“Yes… well, not exactly, but what does it matter?”
“It doesn’t. I had an opportunity yesterday to see Marjorie’s original manuscript. It contained none of the names and events you marked on the copy given to Mr. Simpson. Obviously, you, with Jane’s help, inserted those things after Marjorie had finished dictating it to embellish your claim of authorship. Unfortunately for you, there was one name you should have changed.”
“What’s that?” Harris asked, trying to sound incurious but failing.
“The name of your mentor’s friend and lover.”
“She had no such person,” Jane said.
“Oh yes she did, Jane.”
David Simpson displayed no emotion at all. He sat and stared at a large silver candelabrum in the center of the table.
“You are not his stepbrother, Mr. Simpson. That relationship was created so that you could identify the body dragged from the Thames as Jason. How big a slice of the pie were you to receive for that criminal act?”
He said nothing, but continued to stare at the ornate centerpiece.
I looked around the room before asking, “Where is Ms. Giacona?”
If Jane Portelaine had appeared to be angry before, her face now flooded with rage. “How dare you mention her in my house.”
“You didn’t have to hit her so hard, Jane. She didn’t deserve that.”
“She’s nothing but a slut.”
I looked at Jason. “But a useful one, obviously. She is a very good actress, Jason. She had me thoroughly convinced at first that she was deeply in love with you and was anxious to right the wrong of having your work attributed to someone else.”
Harris got up once again, came around the table, and stood next to Jane. “Why don’t you get out of here, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“To do what, make my announcement that you wrote Gin and Daggers? You didn’t really think I intended to do that tomorrow, did you?”
The first words out of Walter Cole’s mouth were “I thought you were going to. You damn well announced you were going to. That’s why we’re celebrating tonight.”
“A wasted celebration, I’m afraid. I think the only announcement to be made will be that Jason Harris murdered Marjorie Ainsworth.”
I said it directly to Harris, and my words had their intended effect. His mask of defiance cracked a little, and he took a step toward me, as though to strike. Seth and Morton took their own instinctive steps forward, which caused Harris to think better of it.
“You can’t prove anything,” Harris said, leaning back against the edge of the table.
“I don’t think it will be difficult for the police to establish the fact that the body found in the Thames, and falsely identified as being you by your bogus stepbrother, was part of an elaborate, ill-conceived scheme.”
Harris started to say something but stopped himself.