«Yeah, yeah, shame on us,» Maggie said, putting down her teacup, as she'd realized about three sips ago that Sir Rudy had laced the tea with brandy. Which was why she'd finished all of it, the warmth of the brandy doing wonders for her. «Now spill your guts. You and Joanne and Sam. Maybe Nikki here, too, maybe not. How did it start? How did you all get together? Come on, Robin. First one to roll over catches the break, but the offer goes on the table only once. Let's hear it, Robin—one, two, three, cop that plea.»
«And you say I watch too much television,» Alex said, shaking his head.
And then Byrd Stockwell surprised her. He crossed one long leg over the other, folded his hands in his lap, and became one hundred and fifty percent stiff-upperlip British. «Oh, very well. Only an idiot would not try to salvage something out of this ungodly mess. But I want to make this clear. I killed nobody .»
«Don't try to blame me, Byrd Stockwell! You just shut up!» Nikki yelled, throwing back the blankets and jumping to her feet… only to fall forward, flat on her face, as she must have forgotten the rope around her ankle. It was beautiful to see, Maggie decided, grinning. Almost poetical.
«No, Nikki, you shut up,» Bryd declared flatly. «Always walking around the room naked, hunting for your nail polish while prattling on in that annoyingly high-pitched voice of yours about how I should admire your biceps, of all things. That's how you found the jewelry, isn't it? My jewelry. I shouldn't have listened to Joanne.»
«Listened to Joanne about what?» Maggie asked. «You talked to her about Nikki?»
Byrd rolled his eyes. «Joanne felt that we should behave as if we weren't already acquainted, although she didn't much care for the method I chose to allay suspicions on that head.»
Maggie pointed at him. ''''You're the one I heard arguing in the study yesterday. You and Joanne.»
Byrd shrugged. «Possibly. Probably. She was becoming a bit intense. Even unnerving.»
«Being the object of Miss Pertuccelli's affections could very well be terrifying, I'd imagine,» Alex suggested sympathetically.
«Funny, Alex,» Maggie said, then looked at Byrd. «She loved you? She expected marriage?»
«You Americans. You need everything wrapped up in a fantasy, don't you? This was business , Miss Kelly.»
Maggie believed she was getting closer now. «Except American Joanne didn't think so. She got jealous. She thought you were going to drop her for Nikki. So you killed her.»
«Incorrect on all counts,» Byrd said, pushing back his blond hair, almost preening. «If you'd allow me to explain from the beginning?»
«Who's stopping you?» Maggie asked, then winced. «All right, point taken. At least it's only Alex and me talking this time. Go ahead.»
And he did. He explained that he'd happened to meet Joanne in London. She was impressed («naturally»), and he was intrigued by her tale of woe about an upcoming movie she'd been all but blackmailed into working on. Re-creating England on a California soundstage—ridiculous.
But the budget was limited, there was no choice, nothing she'd found in England could be had for a reasonable amount of money.
«She was all about money,» Byrd said. «Probably why I was attracted, as I am also very concerned with money. I won't bore you with the details, but we came to conclude that I could help her and she could help me, and we both could get very rich. It seemed that she paid alimony to quite a few people.»
«You set up that meeting between Joanne and Sir Rudy?»
Byrd brushed some invisible lint from his slacks. «Right down to the red dress, Miss Kelly. My jumped-up uncle so admires red. By the end of the evening, he believed it was his idea to offer Medwine Manor to the production company, gratis. He's a simple man, my uncle. Joanne, unfortunately, turned out to be much more complicated.»
«So that's how the movie got switched from Hollywood to England at the last minute. Sorry, go on,» Maggie said, even as she could hear Marylou saying, «There, there, sweetie, we had fun, remember? It's not all bad,» to an obviously upset Sir Rudy.
And Byrd went on, Nikki being very quiet, to explain that he had somehow become persona non grata in his uncle's house, unfortunately just as he'd discovered an old set of plans for the house in the back of one of the silver cupboards. Someone, he told them, had actually used them to wrap up some godawful bits of blackened silver. Byrd took the plans, not knowing at that moment what they were, to wrap up «a few things.»
«You stole my candlesticks,» Sir Rudy said, speaking for the first time. «I barred you from my house, you ungrateful puppy. Told you I'd set the dogs on you if you showed your face here again—if I had dogs.»
Byrd spread his hands, palms up, and looked at Maggie. «You can see my dilemma. I'd heard all the stories about the jewelry. About Uncle Willis. At some point, probably while bored, I unbent the plans, looked at them, and realized that there was a secret passage located directly inside Uncle Willis's attic prison. It led down to my usual room, as well. I'd been sleeping not ten feet away from that lovely jewelry! After all, where else would the man have hidden it, if not there? I had to get back in that room.»
«Sir Rudy wasn't happy to see you the other day,» Maggie said, taking up the story. «But you'd convinced Joanne to get the movie filmed here, because when you showed up, and the house was full of people, your uncle wouldn't make a scene, and you knew it. That's why you cut Joanne in on anything in the first place.»
«A stupid mistake, I agree,» Byrd said, nodding. «I think I enjoyed the intrigue of the thing. Besides, she told me she could, as you Americans say, get me into show business if I helped with her own cash flow. It was all very quid pro quo.»
«You wanted to go to Hollywood and be a movie star? Another model-turned-actor? Oh, good grief, of course,» Maggie said, shaking her head. «I should have figured that one out the minute you walked in the door.»
Alex paced as Byrd kept talking, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression thoughtful.
«I won't be insulted by you, Miss Kelly,» Byrd stated firmly. «And I won't be held responsible for any murders. It was Joanne's idea to bring that ridiculous brown hack into the mix without consulting me. And it was she who strangled him after knocking him unconscious as the fool leaned over the jewelry, telling us both how he would use his share to produce his own screenplay. I was completely shocked. But he had been very helpful in finding the latch for us.»
Maggie looked at Alex. «Was there a bump on the back of Sam's head?»
«I didn't notice one,» Alex said. «Perhaps I wasn't all that thorough, once I'd seen the pair of marks on his throat. Although I most sincerely doubt that, don't you?» He turned to Byrd. «You did help her hang him up, didn't you, Robin? You'll at least admit to that?»
«Stop calling me Robin.»
«Forgive me, but I do so enjoy it. Back to the late Mr. Undercuffler. You were, according to you, and with no one else alive to gainsay you, shocked, dismayed at the murder of the man you hadn't wanted involved in the first place— splitting the profits three ways rather than two—and are completely innocent of anything other than robbery. However, you did assist Miss Pertuccelli in, shall we say, disposing of the body?»
At last, Byrd looked disconcerted. «I didn't know what else to do. We'd left him up in the attic, but that wasn't good enough, and Joanne was going crazy, totally off her head. I remembered Uncle Willis, and we decided to make it look like a suicide.»
He looked at Dennis and Tabby. «But now they were in the room. I had to find a way to get them out so they wouldn't hear us up above their heads, dragging Undercuffler about. The man was, if you'll pardon me, a dead weight. Besides, Joanne had thrown her stopwatch some-where, as if suddenly, somehow, it had turned into a snake she couldn't bear to touch, and we might have to move furniture to find the thing. We never did find it, but that really wasn't a problem for me, was it? I had the jewelry.»