Miracle and Other Christmas Stories Part 21

Well, of course I could hear him or I wouldn't be answering him. "Yes," I said, looking all round the room and finally spying the baby monitor, half hidden behind a clock on one of the bookshelves. I reached to pick it up. "Don't pick it up," he said. "You will ruin the forensic evidence you consider so important."

"Do you want me to come up to the nursery?"

"That will not be necessary. I have found out what I wished to know. Go into the parlor and make sure that Lady Charlotte has a.s.sembled everyone."

She had, though not in the parlor. "We don't have a parlor," she said, meeting me in the corridor as I came out of the library. "I've put everyone in the solarium, where we were last night. I hope that's all right."

"I'm sure it will be fine," I said.

"And I didn't have any sherry." She stopped at the door. "I had Heidi make Singapore slings."

"Probably a very good idea," I said, and opened the door.

Leda was perched on a canvas-covered ha.s.sock, with Rutgers behind her. The nurse sat in one of the canvas chairs, and the police sergeant perched next to her on the coffee table. James leaned against one of the bookshelves with a drink in his hand. D'Artagnan stood over by the windows.

As I came in, they all, except James and Heidi, who was offering him a tray of drinks, looked up expectantly and then relaxed.

"Is it true?" Leda asked eagerly. "Has Monsieur Touffet solved the crime? Does he know who murdered Lord Alastair?"

"We all know who murdered my father," James said, pointing at D'Artagnan. "That animal flew into a rage and strangled him! Isn't that right, Inspector Touffet?" he said to Touffet, who had just come in the door. "My father was killed by that animal!"

"So I at first thought," Touffet said, polishing his monocle. "A gorilla goes out of control, kills Lord Alastair in a violent rage, and destroys the nursery as he might his cage, throwing the furniture and the dishes against the wall. The baby monitor, also, was thrown against the wall and broken, which was why the nurse did not hear the murder being committed."

"You see!" James said to his sister. "Even your Great Detective says D'Artagnan did it."

"I said that so it seemed at first," Touffet said, looking irritated at the remark about the Great Detective, "but then I began to notice things-the fact that there were no signs of forcible entry, that the baby monitor had been switched off before it was thrown against the wall, that though it looked like a scene of great violence, none of us had heard anything-things that made me think, perhaps this is not a violent crime at all, but a carefully planned murder."

"Carefully planned!" James shouted. "The gorilla choked the life out of him in a fit of animal rage." He turned to Sergeant Eu-stis. "Why aren't you upstairs, gathering forensic evidence to prove that was what happened?"

"I do not need the forensic evidence," Touffet said. He took out a meerschaum pipe and filled it. "To solve this murder, I need only the motive."

"The motive?" James shouted. "You don't ask a bear what his motive is for biting off someone's head, do you? It's a wild animal!"

Touffet lit his pipe and took several long puffs on it. "So I begin by asking myself," he went on implacably, "who had a motive for killing Lord Alastair? Your father's will left everything to you, Lord James, did it not?"

"Yes," James said. "You're not suggesting I put that gorilla up to-"

"I do not suggest anything. I say only that you had a motive." He picked up his monocle and surveyed the crowd. "As does Miss Fox."

"What?" Leda said, twitching her dress down over her thighs. "I never even met Lord Alastair."

"What you say is the truth," Touffet said, "though it is the only true thing you have said since your arrival, that is. You have even lied about your name, is that not so? You are not Leda Fox, the reporter. You are Genevieve Wrigley."Lady Charlotte gasped.

"Who's Genevieve Wrigley?" I asked.

"The head of the ARA," Touffet said, looking steadily at her. "The Animal Rescue Army."

Lady Charlotte had jumped up. "You're here to steal D'Artagnan and Heidi from me!" She turned beseechingly to Touffet. "You mustn't let her. The ARA are terrorists."

I looked wonderingly at Leda, or rather Genevieve. Lady Charlotte was right about the ARA, it was a terrorist organization, a sort of IRA for animals. I'd seen them on television, blowing up cosmetics companies and holding zookeepers hostage, but Leda- Genevieve didn't look like them at all.

Touffet said sternly, "You came here in disguise with the intention of liberating Lady Charlotte's animals, no matter what violent means were necessary."

"That's right," Leda, or rather, Genevieve, said, rearing back dangerously, and I was grateful there wasn't room anywhere for a bomb in that dress. "But I wouldn't have killed animals. I love animals!"

"Releasing pets into a wilderness they can't survive in?" Lady Charlotte said bitterly. "Sending primates back into the jungle to be killed by poachers? You don't love animals. You don't love anyone but yourselves.

Well, now you've gone too far. You've murdered my father, and I'll see you convicted."

"Why would I murder your father?" Genevieve sneered. "You're the one I wanted to murder!"

At her words, D'Artagnan and Heidi both moved protectively toward Lady Charlotte.

"Dressing primates up like servants, holding them captive here. You're slaves!" she said to D'Artagnan.

"She tells you she loves you, but she just wants to enslave you!"

D'Artagnan took a threatening step toward her, his huge white-gloved fist raised. "It's all right, D'Artagnan," Lady Charlotte said. "Inspector Touffet won't let her hurt me."

Genevieve slumped back in her chair and glared at Touffet. "I can't believe you found me out," she said. "I even ate a piece of that disgusting meat at dinner."

"We were discussing your motive," Touffet said. "Terrorists do not murder secretly. Their crimes are of no use unless they take credit for them. And by killing Lord Alastair, you might have given the Inst.i.tute bad publicity, but you would not necessarily have succeeded in closing the Inst.i.tute. Sympathetic donations might have poured in. How much better to blow up the Inst.i.tute's buildings. It is true, you might have killed primates, but your organization has been known to kill animals before, in the name of saving them."

"You can't prove that!" she said sullenly.

"There are wire and detonating caps in your luggage." He turned to Sergeant Eustis. "Ms. Wrigley was out at the compound this afternoon. When we have concluded our business here, I would suggest searching it for plastic explosives."

Sergeant Eustis nodded and came over to stand behind Genevieve's chair. She rolled her eyes in disgust and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Ms. Wrigley had a motive for murder, but she is not the only one." He took several puffs on his pipe.

"Everyone in this room has a motive. Yes, even you, Captain Bridlings."

"I?" I said.

"You long to spend Christmas at your sister's house, do you not? If Lord Alastair is murdered, the Christmas celebration at Marwaite Manor will be cancelled, and you will be free to attend your sister's celebration instead."

"If I'm not detained for questioning," I said. "And I hardly think wanting to spend Christmas with my sister is an adequate motive for murdering a harmless, helpless old man."

Touffet held up an objecting finger. "Helpless, perhaps, but not harmless. But I quite agree with you, Bridlings, your motive is not adequate. People, though, have often murdered for inadequate motives. But you, Bridlings, are incapable of murder, and that is why I do not suspect you of the crime."

"Thank you," I said dryly.

"But. It is a motive," Touffet said. "As for Lady Charlotte, she has told all of us her motive this very evening at dinner. She has no money for her Inst.i.tute. She is in danger of losing D'Artagnan and Heidi and all her other primates unless she obtains a large sum of money. And she loves them even more than she loves her father."

"But her father's will left all his money to her brother," I blurted out."Exactly," Touffet said, "so her brother must be eliminated as well, and what better method than to have him convicted of murder?"

"But Charlotte would never-" Rutgers said, rising involuntarily to his feet.

She looked at him in surprise.

"That is the conclusion to which I came also. Do not excite yourself, Mr. Rutgers," he said, giving the word "Rutgers" a peculiar emphasis. "I do not believe Lady Charlotte committed the murder, even though as the one who invited me here to Mar-waite Manor, she was the first person I suspected."

He stopped and lit his pipe again for at least five minutes. "I said, I do not believe Lady Charlotte committed the murder, but not because I do not believe her capable of murder. I believe her desire to protect her primates could easily have driven her to murder. Rut that same desire would never have allowed her to let her primates be suspected of murder, even with a great detective on hand to uncover the true murderer. She would never have endangered them, even for a few hours." He turned and looked at Mick Rutgers. "You do not need to worry about Lady Charlotte, Mr. Davidson."

Now Lady Charlotte was the one who had risen involuntarily to her feet. "Phillip?" she said. "Is it really you?"

"Yes, it is Phillip Davidson," Touffet said smugly. "Who was ruined by Lord Alastair, who was kept from marrying Lady Charlotte and forced to emigrate to Australia." He paused dramatically. "Who came here determined to murder Lord Alastair for revenge."

"To murder . . ." Lady Charlotte put her hand to her bosom. "Is that true, Phillip?"

"Yes, it's true," Rutgers, or rather Davidson, said. Good Lord, just when I'd learned everyone's names.

Now I was going to have to memorize them all over again.

"How did you know?" Rutg-Davidson asked.

"You called Lord Alastair 'Al,' though no one else had called him by that name," Touffet said. "It was also obvious from the way you looked at Lady Charlotte that you were still in love with her."

"It's true. I am," he said, looking at Lady Charlotte.

She was staring at him in horror. "You killed my father?"

"No," he said. "It's true, I came here to. I even brought a pistol with me. Rut when I saw him, I realized ...

He was a terrible man, but brilliant. To be reduced to that. . . that. . . was a worse revenge than any I could have devised." He looked at Touffet. "You have to believe me. I didn't kill him."

"I know you did not," Touffet said. "This murder required a knowledge of the house and of the people in it which you did not possess. And a revenge killer does not sedate his victim."

"Sedate?" Nurse Parchtry said.

"Yes," Touffet said. "When Sergeant Eustis completes his a.n.a.lysis of the cocoa, he will find the presence of sleeping medication."

I remembered the snoring on the baby monitor, subsiding into heavy, even breathing. Drugged breathing.

"Someone who murders for revenge," Touffet continued, "wishes his victim to know why he is being murdered. And you had worked with primates, Mr. Davidson, it was your interest in their intelligence that had sparked Lady Charlotte's. You would not have attempted to frame them for murder."

"Well, who would have?" Sergeant Eustis blurted.

"An excellent question," Touffet said. "And one which I will address shortly. Rut first we shall deal with your motive for murder, Sergeant."

"Mine?" Sergeant Eustis said, astonished. "What possible motive could I have had for murdering anyone?"

"Exactly," Touffet said, and everyone looked bewildered. "You had no motive for murdering Lord Alastair in particular, but you did have a motive for murdering someone."

"Aren't you forgetting he's a police officer?" James said nastily. "Or are you saying you have a motive for murdering my father, too?"

"No," Touffet said calmly. "For I am a great detective, with many solved cases to my credit, and none that I have failed to solve through my own incompetence. That is not, however, true of Sergeant Eustis, is it?"

Leda-Genevieve gasped. " 'Useless' Eustis. I thought you looked familiar."

"Indeed," Touffet said. "Captain Eustis, who had charge of the Tiffany Levinger case."Tiffany Levinger. Now I remembered. It had been all over the television and the on-line tabloids. The pretty little girl who had been murdered in her own house, obviously by her own parents, but they had been acquitted because Captain Eustis had bungled the investigation so badly that it was impossible to attain a conviction. Nicknamed Useless Eustis and pilloried in the press, he had been forced to resign. And had apparently ended up here, in this remote area, demoted and disgraced.

"Another murder, the celebrated murder of a billionaire in a country manor, a sensational murder that you solved, could have redeemed your reputation, could it not?" Touffet said. "Especially with the press on the premises to record it all."

"It certainly could have," Sergeant Eustis said. "But even someone as stupid as the press claimed I was wouldn't be stupid enough to commit a murder with Inspector Touffet on the premises, now would he?"

"Exactly the conclusion I came to, Sergeant," Touffet said. "Which leaves Nurse Parchtry and James Valladay."

"Oh," Nurse Parchtry said, distressed, "you don't think I did it, do you? What motive could I have?"

"A cruel and abusive patient."

"But in that case why would I not simply have resigned?"

"That is what I asked myself," Touffet said. "You were obviously subjected to daily indignities, yet Lady Charlotte said you had been here over a year. Why? I asked myself."

"Because if she left she would forfeit the bonus I had promised her," Lady Charlotte said. She wrung her hands. "Oh, don't tell me I'm responsible for her. ... I was so desperate. We'd been through seven nurses in less than a month. I thought if I offered her an incentive to stay . . ."

"What was the incentive?" Touffet asked Nurse Parchtry.

"Ten thousand pounds, if I stayed a full year," the nurse said dully. "I didn't think it would be so bad. I'd had difficult patients before, and it was the only way I could ever get out of debt. I didn't think it would be so bad.

But I was wrong." She glared at Charlotte. "A million dollars wouldn't have been enough for taking care of that brute. I'm glad he's dead," she burst out. "I wish I'd killed him myself!"

"But you did not," Touffet said. "You are a nurse. You had at your disposal dozens of undetectable drugs, dozens of opportunities. You could have deprived him of his oxygen, given him a lethal dose of lidocaine or insulin, and it would have been a.s.sumed that he had died of natural causes. There would not even have been an autopsy. And you liked Heidi. You and she shared a pa.s.sion for my cases. You would not have committed a murder that implicated her."

"No, I wouldn't have," Nurse Parchtry said tearfully. "She's a dear little thing."

"There is in fact only one person here who had a motive not only to murder Lord Alastair but also to see D'Artagnan charged with it, and that is Lord James Valladay."

"What?" James said, spilling his drink in his surprise.

"You were in considerable debt. Your father's death would mean that you would inherit a fortune.

And you hated your sister's primates. You had every reason to murder your father and frame D'Artagnan."

"B-but. . ." he spluttered. "This is ridiculous."

"You put sleeping tablets in your father's cocoa when you were in the nursery, using an attack by D'Artagnan as a distraction. During the game of Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral, you went out into the corridor, having convinced everyone that they must take considerable time in choosing your object, and you took the lift up to the nursery, putting on the gloves you had stolen from D'Artagnan earlier, and strangled your sleeping father. Then you switched off the baby monitor and overturned the bed and placed objects around the room to look as if someone had flung them violently. Then you hid the key and the gloves, and came back downstairs, where you cold-bloodedly continued playing the game."

"Oh, James, you didn't-" Lady Charlotte cried.

"Of course I didn't. You haven't any proof of any of this, Touffet. You said yourself there weren't any fingerprints."

"Ah," Touffet said, pulling a bottle of sleeping tablets out of his pocket. "This was found in your medicine cabinet, and these"- he produced a key and a pair of white gloves-"under your mattress, where you hid them, intending later to put them in the pantry to implicate D'Artagnan." He handed them to Sergeant Eustis. "I think you will find that the sleeping tablets match the residue in the cocoa cup.""Under my mattress?" James said, doing a very good job of looking bewildered. "I don't understand- How would I have got into the nursery? I don't have a key."

"Ah," Touffet said. "D'Artagnan, come here." The gorilla lumbered forward from where he and Heidi had been watching all this and thinking G.o.d knows what. "D'Artagnan, what happened after Lady Charlotte gave you the keys?"