The Seaside Corpse, page 11
I wrote protecting his daughter in the Motive column. I shut my eyes for a fleeting moment, wishing I had Papa here to protect me. How suddenly such thoughts arrived, like a paper cut, and then stung for longer than expected.
I felt Grannie’s hand cover mine and blinked away the threat of tears.
“What about the other workers?” she said, gently distracting me. “The friend of James, Mr. Tobie? And the secretary?”
“Mr. Tobie is almost as nice as James,” I said. “Arthur says he’s smashing, and I agree. We call him Everett, because of what Hector said. Manners are looser on a dig.”
“Yes, we like him,” said Hector, “but—”
I sighed. “But his motive is even stronger than Nina’s.”
“Oh?” said Grannie.
“It may be that Nina is his motive,” said Hector.
“Ah,” said Grannie.
“Also, the professor argued with him an hour after hollering at Spud,” I said. “In the afternoon of the night he died. Mr. B-C told Everett he was to pack up and leave by the next morning.”
“And the reason?” said Grannie Jane.
“Everett was speaking up for Nina because she wanted a say in what happens to the ichthyosaur. Mr. B-C said, ‘She’s my wife, not yours,’ and then, as quick as a beesting, Everett said, ‘Will that be true forever?’ ”
“Goodness,” said Grannie. “What sort of murky, scum-covered pond have you landed in? Everyone behaves so badly! Did James not anticipate your exposure to low and extravagant displays?”
“I think he imagined that we’d be sitting on our little stools, peacefully examining bones and writing tidy labels.”
“Alas,” said Hector, “there is much discord.”
“And a murder!” I did not even try to hide my satisfaction. “No ‘alas’ about that!”
Grannie winced. Had I been a shade too bloodthirsty?
“Also, there are the two quarrymen,” said Hector, hurrying to repair my misstep. “They are peculiar and taciturn but not, I think, sinister. And the secretary.”
“Miss Spinns does not seem like a killer to me,” I said. “Not that we’ve become in any way acquainted. But she is more the variety of victim who gets knocked off for knowing somebody else’s secret.”
“Always she is ducking her head,” said Hector, “and slipping sideways into the tent, or huddling in a corner with her typewriter.”
The waiter appeared with three plates. We paused for a moment to taste and sigh with pleasure.
After a few bites of a dense and flavorful lemon cake, I said, “There is another big battle we haven’t even mentioned.”
“You’re making me dizzy,” said Grannie Jane.
“We haven’t told you about the Americans, Oscar Osteda and his father.”
“Or Cavalier Jones and his Cavalcade of Curiosities,” said Hector. “Mr. Jones and Mr. Osteda each wish to possess the ichthyosaur for his own purposes.”
“Everyone you’ve encountered is a person of suspicion?” said Grannie.
Hector and I nodded together. “Probably.”
We explained about our afternoon at the circus, and the tremendous strength of Cavalier Jones, Hector’s ride on the Spotted Pony, and the exhibit of Rare Sights. We told about the scheme suggested by Mr. Jones to carry the ichthyosaur from town to town in a caravan, and how B-C had said he’d die of mortification if the world of science heard that he’d allowed one of his fossils to join the circus.
“To die of mortification,” said Grannie Jane, “would not cause the bruising of a cliff fall.”
“Nina reminded him that it wasn’t his fossil,” I said. “She’d found it and she was arranging its recovery, and how could he say the circus was a worse place than a terrace overlooking the dusty hills of Texas?”
“Texas?” said Grannie. “Really, Agatha, this is sounding more far-fetched with every sentence. You now have villains arriving from Texas?”
At that moment, a grinning Oscar appeared beside our table, his father close behind.
“Gracious,” murmured Grannie Jane, after a glance at Mr. Osteda. She had good reason for alarm. The dark slash of his sealed eye surrounded by violet swelling looked particularly villainous in the flickering light of the restaurant. Introductions were conducted, and my grandmother made an admirable effort to pretend there was nothing unusual about the man’s face.
“May we join you?” said Mr. Osteda. “Oscar seems to like these kids.” He did not give Grannie the chance to invite or demur, but pulled up an extra chair and sat himself down. Oscar slid onto a seat next to Hector. “The boy doesn’t have too many friends,” said his father, “so it’s nice to see him with new pals.”
“Dad!” Oscar’s cheeks flamed.
Grannie could not resist. The man had insulted his own son. “And you, sir? You show signs of being a well-loved man.”
Mr. Osteda threw back his head and laughed. He touched his eyelid gingerly and signaled to the waiter.
“Will you join me in a glass of champagne, Mrs. Morton?”
“I think I will, Mr. Osteda. I’d like to hear the story of your injury. Did it occur on Wednesday evening, by any chance?”
Mr. Osteda smiled. “You are practically American in your frankness, Mrs. Morton. You want to know if I killed Mr. Blenningham-Crewe.”
“Ssh, Dad!” Oscar glanced around the restaurant, but as we had no close neighbors, we needn’t worry about eavesdroppers.
“What happened on Wednesday night was a damn shame,” said Mr. Osteda. “There is no question about that. When a man loses his life due to violence, the rest of us shiver a little. It can happen to a person at any time, isn’t that right, Mrs. Morton?”
“I am well aware of the fickle nature of life and death,” said Grannie Jane quietly. She had often said that no mother wishes to outlive her son, as she had with my Papa. I thought for a moment about Mr. B-C’s old mother, who would soon receive a letter containing the most terrible news of her life.
“I went for a drink at the pub along from the hotel,” said Mr. Osteda. “I’d gone the night before as well, and it’s a friendly place. Oscar stayed in our room, where I assumed he’d read his book and gone to bed. I was wrong about that. I was wrong about plenty that night.”
I looked at Oscar. He stared at the dregs of cocoa in his cup, not lifting his eyes or offering an explanation. Oscar had turned up at Camp Crewe as our bonfire was burning low and said that he was bored. Had there been other cause to venture out alone on a moonless night?
“I walked into The Crow’s Nest,” said Oscar’s father, “and the first person I saw was Mr. Blenningham-Crewe. We’d parted with heated words a few hours earlier and now here he was, sitting at a table in the middle of the pub. No way to avoid him—and he wasn’t keen to see me, despite having invited me there earlier. But, I thought to myself, we’re civilized men. I wanted that great stone beast, and here was one last chance to win my prize.”
He shifted his chair with a scraping noise and took a gulp of champagne. “This is what I know about the professor’s last night on earth…”
Chapter 16
A Firsthand Account
Grannie sipped from her glass. Bubbles sparkled, catching light. Mr. Osteda was telling the story to her, not to the children at the table. But we were listening with wide-open ears.
“I’d chatted the night before with Kenny, the barkeep, so I waved a hello. Three or four men sat on stools at the bar, but I didn’t see who they were until later. I asked Blenningham-Crewe if I might join him. He nodded, without pleasure. He kept looking over my shoulder as if he was expecting someone else.” Mr. Osteda again lightly touched his swollen eye and glanced at his son. Oscar was folding his napkin into the shape of a canoe.
“The barmaid at The Crow’s Nest is Kenny’s sister, the lovely Yvonne,” Mr. Osteda went on. “She brought me a pint and another whiskey for Mr. Blenningham-Crewe. Yvonne’s a chatty one, all smiles and nudges, even if she must be forty. The professor cheered up after a minute or two. Yvonne filled his flask and put up with his invitation for her to drink it with him. I was waiting for her to go away before he got much tipsier. I wanted to remind him that we’d had an agreement.” Mr. Osteda shook his head several times, with a defeated sigh.
“I’ve been lying on my bed for a day and a night, thinking over all the pieces of what happened on Wednesday. At the time, I was fixed on my own purpose, and didn’t notice that I was not the only man in the pub who was mad as hell at the professor.”
“I’d like to know more,” said my grandmother smoothly, “about who you encountered that evening.”
Thank you, Grannie Jane! It was useful to have a nosy grown-up on the team. People answered her questions as they never would with a twelve-year-old.
“Well, in struts Mr. Cavalier Jones,” said Mr. Osteda. “Everyone in the place gives a cheer, because they’ve all seen the show. Another fellow from the circus is with him, one of the musicians.”
One of the musicians? Could that be Helen’s beau, Ned?
“Did he have ginger hair, by any chance?” I said. Grannie and Hector, as if tugged by the same string, raised their eyebrows at me.
Mr. Osteda said, “That’s the one.” And then, “Hopping about like a court jester he was, with Cavalier Jones the visiting royalty.”
“Dad,” said Oscar. “You loved the circus as much as we did.”
“That was before Jones tried to steal the ichthyosaur out from under my nose,” said Mr. Osteda. “Mr. Jones turns out to be the man the professor is waiting for. In a puddle of a town like this one, Mr. Jones is a celebrity. He struts round the room, clapping men on the back, and then sits down at our table, all charm and good cheer, with the trumpet boy hovering behind him.” Mr. Osteda filled his own glass from the bottle and offered more to Grannie Jane.
“No, thank you,” she said. “Please go on with your story.”
“The lovely Yvonne brings Mr. Jones a pint,” said Mr. Osteda. “ ‘Courtesy of the house!’ she says, as if he’s Zeus down from Mount Olympus on his day off. I was ticked, I’ll tell you. He stands up, raises his glass and proposes a toast. ‘To the glorious future and the even more glorious past,’ he says. ‘To the oldest creature ever known joining Cavalier’s Cavalcade!’ ”
“Uh-oh,” said Oscar. His father grimaced and nodded a couple of times.
“That’s right,” he said. “I couldn’t just sit there, could I? I sailed all the way from America, only to be double-crossed by a circus showman and an oily professor who can’t make up his mind without his wife telling him what to do? Not a chance! I am Alonso Osteda!”
“So, you—” Oscar began.
“So, I jump to my feet and—” He stopped to regard his audience, an elderly woman and three children. Possibly the next part would offend our delicate sensibilities?
“You hit the professor?” said Oscar.
“No,” said his father, quieter now. “I tried to hit the professor, but Mr. Jones stepped between us. My fist connected with his face instead of the intended target. His musical sidekick squeaked like a mouse.”
This explained the small injury on the strongman’s lip! A gift from Alonso Osteda.
“I will have another splash of champagne, after all,” said Grannie Jane, offering her glass. Mr. Osteda replenished her drink.
“I’d like to know more,” I said, mimicking Grannie Jane’s interviewing style, “about your own grievous injury?”
“I was quickly escorted to the door,” he admitted. “Kenny called on the men sitting at the bar and I found myself surrounded. One of them was your cook from out there at the camp.”
“You mean Spud?” I said.
“That’s him. Not too friendly with the professor either, from what I heard later. He had a couple of surly-looking pals, one of them a foreigner with a furry beard.”
That sounded like the quarrymen, Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Volkov!
“The sort you wouldn’t want to meet in a back alley,” added Oscar’s father.
“I don’t suppose there is any sort of man I’d wish to meet in a back alley,” said Grannie Jane. She cast one of her Withering Looks in the direction of Mr. Osteda, but he failed to wither.
“Tell me,” Hector said. “An American in England, he also is a foreigner?”
Mr. Osteda laughed his hearty laugh. “Clever boy!” he said. “You caught me on that one!”
“Surely you don’t mean to leave the story dangling, Mr. Osteda?” said my grandmother. “You were being accompanied out of The Crow’s Nest?”
“That’s where my memory gets slippery,” he said. “Too much happened too quickly, if you know what I mean. The cook and his buddies were flanking me, nudging me out to the street. I realized they were hoping for a brawl. Your Spud was egging me on, saying, ‘Try it again!’ Blenningham-Crewe comes out and Mr. Jones is with him, along with the kid from the circus band.”
Helen’s Ned was another witness!
“I may have said something unpleasant,” said Mr. Osteda. “I may even have”—he made a motion with his right arm—“done something my boy would not be proud of.”
“Who got you in the eye, Dad? Sounds like you were surrounded.”
“Five men? Six? All against me. Even Yvonne was there for some of it. The cook and those other two switched from guarding me to keeping the professor upright. He was as drunk as a lord on Christmas Eve, kept asking Yvonne if she’d marry him, never mind that he had a wife already. That left Mr. Jones.”
Mr. Osteda opened and closed his fist, wiggling the fingers. “I took a swing but…” His fingers gently tapped the swollen purple eyelid. “I got this shiner from the Strongest Man in the World.”
“No wonder it looks so bad!” Oscar sounded impressed.
“What happens next?” said Hector.
“I fell down,” said Mr. Osteda. “That’s the sorry truth. I saw stars, I cried for my mother, I thought my head would burst.”
“But who went with the professor?” said Oscar. “Cavalier Jones and his circus pal? Or one of the other guys?”
“I missed a few beats, I admit,” said his father. “I’ve been trying to remember, but it’s a fuzzy, dark fog. One minute I was on the cobblestones with my face on fire. The next minute I was at the hotel desk with that young trumpet player holding me up, asking for the key to my room.”
How did Ned end up assisting Mr. Osteda? And what about Mr. B-C? Mr. B-C was dead. Mr. Osteda had been a pretty fair witness up until now. Was he about to falter? Or could he name the killer?
“Excuse me,” I said, “but do you have a guess as to what happened while your head was spinning?”
“I wish I could pin the blame on Cavalier Jones, but I confess that seems unlikely. My theory is that the cook and those friends of his lured the professor to the edge of the cliff and gave him a little nudge. Or maybe it was those two fierce-looking rogues on their own.”
“But why?” said Grannie Jane.
“Aha!” Mr. Osteda raised a wagging finger. “You have asked the eternal question. And I have the eternal answer…” We waited. He rubbed his fingers against his thumb. “Money!” he said. “They were paid to kill him!”
“Who would pay for such a service?” said Grannie Jane.
“The little lady herself,” said Mr. Osteda, leaning back in his chair with a smirk. “Missus. Blenningham. Crewe.”
My grandmother sipped her champagne and looked at Mr. Osteda.
“Is there a reason for your certainty, sir?” she asked. “Or is the accusation merely wishful thinking?”
“Mrs. Morton!” he cried. “You have exposed my prejudice!” Another throaty chuckle. “There is no evidence, if that’s what you’re looking for. My guess is based on the instincts of a mistrustful man who moves among dubious men.”
“Have you told the police of your suspicion, sir?”
“The police are not interested in what I have to say. These village Brits take one look at a brown face and assume they’ve got a criminal.”
Hector and my grandmother again lifted their eyebrows simultaneously, silently saying what we all were thinking. With such an eye as his, he did look like a criminal.
Not a jolly night for anyone! The only person who’d been pleasant during the evening was Yvonne, the barmaid. But six men—Alonso Osteda, Cavalier Jones, Helen’s beloved Ned, Spud the cook, and the two quarrymen, Jarvis and Volkov—had seen the professor leave The Crow’s Nest. He’d been drunk, and was disliked by all. Had one of them walked him to his death?
“Monsieur Osteda,” said Hector. “There is a matter I am not understanding.”
“And what’s that?”
“You report to Mr. Everett Tobie that you patch up the quarrel with Mr. Blenningham-Crewe on Wednesday night. You say that you make an arrangement to take the ichthyosaur and you decide on a price, yes?”
Mr. Osteda’s amiable demeanor darkened as if Hector had pulled a string. Oscar, beside me, went still.
“What of it?” said Mr. Osteda.
“When does this patching up occur?” said Hector. “Before or after you are receiving a punch in the eye?”
Mr. Osteda began to laugh. “Never,” he said. “There was no patching up! I told your Mr. Everett Tobie that on the off chance that he’d believe it and let me have the fossil. Any good businessman would do what I did. That’s how the world works!”
He had confessed, in front of his son, to being a barefaced liar! How much else of his story was also a lie? Did he, in fact, remember every moment in sharp detail? Was it he who had accompanied Mr. B-C to the edge of the cliff?
Chapter 17
A Lurid Photograph
The story Oscar’s father told us remained vivid on Saturday morning, when there came a knock on the hotel room door. Hector read Sherlock Holmes at the little table, though we had yet to order breakfast. I was tying my laces and Grannie Jane was in the bath. A quiet tap-tap at the door compelled me to peer over Hector’s shoulder into the corridor. Oscar held up a newspaper for us to see the front page. A photograph of the professor’s dead body was displayed above a commanding headline:
