Jill Churchill - A Groom With a View

“But he gave Joe full credit for taking good care of his father as long as he could. Not with much good grace, however."

“Did you mention the treasure rumor?" Jane asked.

“I did, and to my surprise, he didn't fall down laughing at a city slicker suggesting it."

“So he thinks there was one?"

“He didn't go that far. Only allowed as how it was barely possible." Mel went on to explain about the renovations done at the end of O. W.'s life and his secrecy about just what was being done to the house and why.

“So he could have slipped in a secret passage or hidden something in a wall?" Jane asked.

Mel looked highly skeptical. "You've been reading old gothic novels again, haven't you?"

“I'm serious, Mel. Why would anybody have new walls put in and hire an out-of-area firm to do it unless there was a secret room he didn't want the locals to know about?"

“Maybe there weren't local carpenters he thought were any good," Mel said. "And maybe he was just getting a bit paranoid. He was elderly and might have already been having little strokes that didn't make a physical difference, but altered his mental attitude.”

Shelley said, "I don't see how any of this could possibly have to do with Mrs. Crossthwait's death. Unless she discovered something in the lodge that Uncle Joe didn't want her to talk about.”

Jane shook her head. "Mrs. Crossthwait didn't strike me as a very observant person. And I can't see her roaming around looking the place over. How would she have even suspected there was a treasure?"

“Narcissus knew," Mel said.

“You mean Larkspur," Jane said. "That's true. And he had no connection with this place until the wedding was planned."

“Could that be why she was so slow with the dresses?" Shelley speculated. "So she would be invited out here? I don't think the dressmaker is normally invited to the wedding.”

Jane's eyes widened. "You could be onto something there. Livvy picked her because she heard Mrs. Crossthwait had an excellent reputation, but that couldn't have been true unless she got the dresses for other people done in a timely manner.

If Larkspur had heard the rumor of something valuable hidden here, Mrs. Crossthwait could have just as well heard it, too."

“But I don't think, even if this is all true, that Uncle Joe is the only suspect," Shelley said. "Suppose… suppose the treasure, if it exists, is something big and obvious?"

“Like what?" Jane asked.

“I don't know. But just as an example, maybe one of these big pieces of furniture is incredibly valuable. Made by someone terribly famous, or with a long exotic history of being in the room where the tsar and his family were assassinated. Don't roll your eyes that way, Jane. I'm just making up examples."

“Go on," Jane said, stifling a smile.

“Okay, so if it's something that would be obvious if it went missing, anybody in the family might know, but couldn't just tuck it under their arm and trot off with it. They'd want to wait until Uncle Joe was out of here and the place was about to be torn down, then they'd run up here with a pickup truck and two strong moving men and snaffle the thing.”

Since neither Jane nor Mel was openly laughing at her yet, Shelley went on. "So we know very little about Mrs. Crossthwait's background, but people sometimes have weird little pockets of knowledge. Like you, Jane, and that particular skill of yours." Shelley made a gesture of wiggling a seam ripper in a lock.

“What's that?" Mel asked.

“Shelley's just kidding, Mel," Jane said a bit too forcefully.

“So Mrs. Crossthwait says to someone in the family, 'My goodness, that wagon in the yard outside looks just like the tumbril that took Marie Antoinette to the guillotine.' And if that person has been waiting quietly for years to make off with the wagon, knowing the same thing, Mrs. Crossthwait is suddenly, and stupidly, a big threat to them."

“That surely eliminates the aunts, doesn't it?" Jane asked. "It seems that they're still trying to find out what and where the treasure is.”

Shelley nodded. "But only if we're right that they were the ones roaming around last night stealing pictures and taking them apart."

“The most likely person to know, next to Uncle Joe, is Jack Thatcher," Jane said. "He's spent the most time here."

“Or Livvy herself," Shelley said. "She's probably had an excellent education. Even if all she wanted to study was business, I'm sure Jack expected her to have all the social graces. Know about history and art and such.”

Mel had been listening to this conversation without contributing. Now he did. "Ladies, this is all nuts. You're letting your imaginations run away with you. And it's not your problem or even mine. Just as long as you're careful to keep yourselves safe for another few hours, it's up to John Smith to figure it all out. And it might not have even been murder, come to that."

“But what about the 'push' marks on Mrs. Crossthwait?" Jane said.

Mel shrugged. "Good point, but maybe when she tumbled down the stairs, she fell on something that made that sort of marks."

“Mel, your imagination is as vivid as ours are," Jane said. "What else could have made them? Falling against the outstretched hand of a marble statue? There aren't any of those around.”

Mel looked embarrassed. "Okay, okay. But maybe someone else was roaming around in the dark, ran into her, and just out of fright and alarm, gave her a shove? Not even knowing who she was."

“It won't play, Mel," Jane said. "First of all, she wouldn't have been anywhere near the stairs in the dark without having been deliberately lured out of her room. She was already afraid of going up and down those stairs in full daylight."

“I learned a couple things from John Smith, too," Mel said. "Apparently she made Marguerite Rowe's wedding dress sometime back in the Dark Ages."

“She claimed that, and Marguerite brushed her off," Jane said.

“She also has an accountant in common with Eden's father."

“What could that mean?" Jane asked.

“Almost certainly nothing," Mel said. "And she once had a sewing class that a Mrs. Hessling attended."· "You're just a wealth of information," Jane said. "But how does any of it help?"

“I'm not claiming it helps. Just reporting.”

“What about Dwayne? Did they find out anything about him?" Jane asked.

Mel decided the teenaged shoplifting charge wasn't something he should discuss. "Not much. His boss was pretty closed-mouth about him. Whether he was concealing something the company didn't want talked about or he simply doesn't like the kid very well wasn't clear. He said Dwayne was going to work for Livvy's father and didn't express any regret at losing him.”

Shelley suddenly gasped.

“What's wrong?" Jane asked.

“The seam binding! We forgot to tell Mel about the seam binding!”

Jane nearly slapped her own forehead. "How could we forget!" She explained to him about the fresh, non-dusty seam binding they'd found in the attic while he was out to dinner and their theory that it had been tied across the stairway to make quite certain Mrs. Crossthwait would take a serious tumble.

“Where is it now?" he asked in a low voice. "I think we left it in the attic," Shelley said. "You haven't mentioned this to anyone else, have you?" Mel asked.

“Of course not," Jane said.

“Then don't. Stay here. I'm going to call Smith and have him take a look.”

He got up and strolled away with seeming casualness.

“He's taking us seriously for once," Jane said with surprise.

“What are you two plotting?" Eden Matthews said from behind Jane. Neither she nor Shelley had seen her approach and Jane wondered if she'd overheard any of their conversation.

“Nothing much," Jane said. "Just chatting about the plans for tomorrow.”