Fatal Masquerade Page 17

  ‘I doubt that.’ Jake straightened up. ‘The steak knife was not on the scene. The killer brought it with him. Why would Megan have brought a steak knife?’

  ‘She knew Cobb was assigned as one of the gondoliers. She feared he would try to assault her when they were alone. She took the knife to scare him off.’

  Alkmene leaned back on her heels. This reasoning would go down well with a jury. They wouldn’t be eager to protect a maid at the cost of an important family’s name and reputation.

  Jake said, ‘Mrs Hargrove, I believe you are a sensible woman. You understand the situation perfectly. Yes, at the moment it might seem like the answer that Megan has been arrested and will go to trial. But you know as well as I do that she’ll be convicted. She will be hanged. She will die for something she didn’t do. How will you feel then? When you wake up and realize a girl is dead, robbed of her life, her future, because of you...’

  Mrs Hargrove’s lips started to tremble. ‘I did nothing to incriminate her. Mrs Carruthers said Megan had been hounded by Cobb. Others confirmed it. I said nothing to...’

  Mrs Hargrove’s voice broke.

  ‘You said nothing to acquit her either.’ Jake’s voice lowered in anger. ‘You kept silent to protect yourself.’

  ‘You have no idea how complicated this is.’ Mrs Hargrove rose from her stool, her eyes wide, her cheeks suddenly painted with fiery circles. ‘My choice is not one of keeping my mouth shut to save my privileged life. My name, my reputation. I stand to lose much more.’

  She put her hands on her stomach. ‘My baby.’

  Alkmene took a deep breath. ‘If you killed Cobb, you will not hang as long as you’re pregnant. The baby will not die because of what you did.’

  Mrs Hargrove laughed softly. ‘Is that supposed to comfort me? That my baby will live, grow up without a family?’

  Alkmene held her gaze. ‘Did you kill Cobb?’

  Mrs Hargrove shook her head.

  Alkmene frowned. ‘Then why are you so afraid? If you had nothing to do with it.’

  Mrs Hargrove sank back on the stool. She buried her face in her hands. ‘Leave me be.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘Megan isn’t going to be hanged for a crime she didn’t commit. I will not allow it. I’m now giving you a chance to tell us what you know so we can figure out a way to solve the case without too much damage to you and your family. But if you refuse to cooperate, you leave me no choice. We’ll have to give the charm to the police.’

  Mrs Hargrove looked up. ‘You do that. You’ll get nowhere. I’ll claim it fell when I checked the boathouse before the ball began. You cannot prove otherwise.’

  Alkmene glanced at Jake. Mrs Hargrove had a point. With a maid arrested, who had been on the scene of the murder, assigned to work at the very boathouse where the murder had taken place, a maid who had also had a grudge against the murdered man, every reason to want him dead, the chief of police would see no need to look into the possibility that the culprit was in fact the hostess. A woman with a name, money to hire the best lawyers. He wouldn’t risk his own career by going after someone who wouldn’t be easy to convict.

  It was despicable, but it was the truth.

  Jake lifted both his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Fine. You have it your way. But I will inform the police. I will also tell them about Matthew.’

  He turned to the door.

  Mrs Hargrove jumped up from her stool. ‘What?’

  Jake stood in place, not looking at her. ‘I will tell the police about Matthew. You know, my dear lady, that Cobb wasn’t just a servant, not even just an ordinary thief who would have loved to pinch your gold charm. He was a much more dangerous kind of criminal. He dealt in sensitive information. He had a lot, but he had the most on you.’

  Alkmene cringed as this was hardly true. They didn’t know much about what Cobb had intended to use against Mrs Hargrove. Just that it involved a man called Matthew.

  Jake was still not looking at Mrs Hargrove. ‘Cobb might be dead,’ he said slowly, ‘but that doesn’t end it all. His information is very much alive and about. You didn’t know me before I came here. But I’m a reporter. I hunt down stories. And here I’ve hit upon the story of my life.’

  ‘What kind of man are you?’ Mrs Hargrove whispered. ‘Willing to rip a family apart for a story?’

  The loathing in her voice was like the crack of a whip.

  Jake turned round now, in a flash. ‘What kind of woman are you,’ he retorted, ‘to be willing to let a young girl die? Can you imagine how afraid she is now? Or how afraid she will be when the noose is put around her neck?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Ms Hargrove raised her hands to her ears as if she wanted to cover them and lock out Jake’s accusing words. ‘I’m not letting her die. I never wanted her to be implicated.’

  ‘But she is. And you can save her life, but you refuse to do so.’

  Mrs Hargrove inhaled hard. ‘I can do nothing for her. My story will not acquit her. It will only ruin everything I have here. My marriage, the future of my unborn child. It will solve nothing, you must believe me.’

  Alkmene walked over to her. ‘Denise seems to know something. And because she’s desperate, she is willing to rip your marriage apart. She’ll get her father to listen, sooner or later. He does love his daughter, even if Denise thinks he doesn’t. Your marriage and your unborn baby are at risk, even with Megan in gaol for the murder. You must understand that your silence can salvage nothing. You can only make it worse. How can you live with yourself if you don’t act now?’

  Mrs Hargrove stared ahead. ‘Cobb wasn’t the only one. He is dead, but...’

  ‘He had accomplices in the blackmail scheme. We know that. And we want to find them, too.’

  ‘To write up a nice story about it.’ Mrs Hargrove’s eyes were full of desperate tears. ‘To have the readers of your paper gloat over all the sordid details. You do not value me much, Mr Dubois, but to my mind you are the lowest person alive. You feed on other people’s misery.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Jake said. ‘I want to end the blackmail scheme and nobody need ever know who was being blackmailed and why. But you’re not helping me. You’re a victim and still you refuse to give away who your torturers are, what they were holding against you, how they obtained that information. You believe you’re protecting yourself, but you’re really protecting them. By your silence, you’re ensuring that it can go on.’

  Mrs Hargrove chewed on her lower lip. Alkmene believed that the conflict inside her was real, not an act to gain sympathy.

  Then Mrs Hargrove looked up with a jerk as if she had come to a decision. ‘I think… that the man whom Denise is in love with is the leader of this whole blackmail scheme.’

  ‘What?’ Alkmene exclaimed. ‘Beak-mask? The Comte Margres? I know he is accused of having killed both of his wives, but those rumours could be lies, could...’

  ‘Whether those rumours are lies or not, I know he moves in the highest circles. He has access to scandals. And he was here at the ball, supposedly to see Denise. But I wondered… What if he was here to get information?’

  ‘From Cobb.’ Jake nodded. ‘That could very well be.’

  He looked at Alkmene. ‘If he is the killer, it will be near impossible to prove.’

  Alkmene considered. ‘Did you see him leave the ballroom?’

  Mrs Hargrove shook her head. ‘But there were so many guests and I was busy talking, dancing, seeing to a situation where someone had spilled champagne on her dress. I wasn’t able to watch him constantly.’

  Jake surveyed her. ‘Are you telling us this merely to distract us from you? You’re offering us a very big catch, but one that will be hard to secure.’

  Mrs Hargrove scoffed. ‘You believed you could just walk in and take down the blackmail ring, Mr Dubois? You’d better be careful or you might end up dead yourself.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ Jake asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Think of Cobb. I bet he believed he was indispensabl
e. Still, they killed him. Because he had become too great a risk. He was asking for too much money perhaps or… making other demands. I have no idea. But he went too far and they killed him. I knew the instant I heard about the murder.’

  She laughed softly. ‘I was relieved for one silly moment, thinking the danger was gone. But then I realized it had only retracted for a moment. Cobb was dead, so they couldn’t reach me as easily. But reach me they would. That...’

  She pointed at the charm. ‘That was only the beginning.’

  Alkmene looked down at the charm. ‘Wait a minute. You gave this charm as payment? To the blackmailers?’

  Mrs Hargrove chewed her lip again. ‘In a way.’

  Alkmene glanced at Jake. This was getting more mysterious by the moment. ‘You paid Cobb?’

  ‘No.’ Mrs Hargrove raised both hands to her face and rubbed her forehead. She took a few deep breaths. ‘I’m not sure how much I should tell you. If it could really help Megan, I would want her to go free. I honestly do. But the things I can tell you won’t lead you to Cobb’s killer. The Comte Margres is like an eel, slipping through the nets of the law. If he did kill his wives, he got away with it. And he will get away here.’

  Alkmene fetched a chair and sat on it, close to Mrs Hargrove. ‘You have to tell us everything you know. I assure you we will not share it with anybody else unless it is vital to clear Megan of the murder charge. But in that case we’ll make sure we have enough evidence to get the real killer.’

  Mrs Hargrove smiled at her. ‘You speak like a lawyer or detective. But you are neither.’

  Jake said, ‘At the dinner that was spoiled to your mind by talk about the Steeplechase murder trial, your husband said Lady Alkmene had a mind for the criminal. He didn’t say that lightly. I had informed him, during a conversation we had about an intimate matter, that Lady Alkmene assisted me in several cases, bringing killers to justice.’

  Alkmene balked a little at the ‘assisted me’ because it had rather been the other way around, Jake assisting her. But at least he had mentioned her part in it.

  ‘What you see here,’ Jake continued, ‘is just another rich, bored lady who is titillated by murder. But you are mistaken. Lady Alkmene is perceptive, has a mind that can deduce. She understands the workings of the higher circles. She is uniquely suited to solve this murder here on your estate. But you must trust her. She cannot help you if you don’t tell her everything you know.’

  Mrs Hargrove looked into Alkmene’s eyes. ‘You’ve caught killers before?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alkmene said. ‘And I can tell you that, in all cases, it was hard. There were people involved who I cared for and wanted to protect, but at points in the investigation it looked bleak for them. I met people who were charming and turned out to be manipulative liars to protect their own dark secrets. I met people who seemed callous or even unstable and who turned out to have nothing to do with it. Each investigation is a new maze where I go into a corridor hoping there will be a way through beyond the corner. If not, I have to backtrack. But I keep going. I have to. I can’t let innocent people be accused and tried.’

  Mrs Hargrove had listened, poised on the edge of her seat. She now clapped her hands together. ‘If I had known all of this… Why does my husband never share a thing with me? If I had known that you do this kind of thing, I would have turned to you. I would have known you could help me far better because you know what it is really like to live this life. He could never have helped me.’

  ‘He?’ Alkmene queried and then supplied, ‘You wrote the letter to Keegan! You wanted his legal advice.’

  Mrs Hargrove hung her head. ‘I was in a terrible state after the discussion about anonymous letters at dinner. I wrote the note and slipped it into Keegan’s pocket when we did an early dance. I fully intended to go to the boathouse then, but later, during the evening, having seen the comte and feeling his power, I didn’t dare. I stayed where I was, cursing myself for having written the note in the first place. But as I hadn’t signed it, I trusted Keegan would never know for sure who sent it. He wouldn’t suspect it was me as he believed I had no trouble in my life.’

  ‘And what did you want to consult him about?’ Alkmene asked.

  Mrs Hargrove exhaled. ‘Matthew.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alkmene held her gaze. ‘Who is Matthew?’

  Her heart beat fast, thinking Mrs Hargrove was about to reveal she did indeed have a lover and feared the baby was his, and that she wanted to divorce her husband.

  Maybe she had wanted to know from Keegan if it could be done without too much of a public display?

  Or where it would leave her financially?

  Alkmene had no idea from what kind of background Mrs Hargrove came. If she had no money of her own, a divorce could leave her in financial trouble.

  Unless her lover would care for her.

  But if he was engaged or married…

  ‘Matthew,’ Mrs Hargrove said, ‘is my brother.’

  Alkmene’s jaw dropped. ‘Your brother? But… why would that be a problem? You could receive your brother here, couldn’t you? No one would have a problem with that…’

  She suppressed a ‘we thought you were having an affair’. No need to say that.

  ‘That’s just it,’ Mrs Hargrove said. ‘I can’t receive my brother here. I can’t even acknowledge him. My husband knows nothing about him. He believes I am an only child. He knows my parents are dead, which is true. But Matthew’s existence I’ve always kept from him.’

  ‘But why?’ Alkmene asked.

  ‘At the time of our marriage I had every reason to believe Matthew would never come back into my life. He was...’

  She licked her lips. ‘He was convicted ten years ago of the armed robbery of a bank. He was never going to be free again. Moreover, I had received word from the prison that he had been stabbed in a fight between inmates and killed. I believed this to be true. Until a few months ago, when he wrote to me asking for money. To make his escape to the mainland. He claimed he had not died in the fight, but bribed a guard to let him go free in the night. The man buried under his name was another.’

  Alkmene surveyed her. ‘Did you believe the letter came from your brother? Perhaps someone had found out about his existence and decided to act like he was him.’

  Mrs Hargrove nodded. ‘I didn’t believe it at first. I burned the letter and told my husband nothing about it. But more letters arrived. Some gave details of events in our childhood that… nobody but Matthew could have known about. I became convinced he was still alive. He was alive, he was out of prison and he wanted money from me.’

  She leaned back against the dressing table. ‘You have to understand I was wild with fear. My husband knew nothing about this stain on my family. He believed he had married a respectable woman. And how was I to get my hands on the money Matthew was demanding I send him? Then Cobb came to me one morning as I was walking in the garden. He told me he knew about Matthew and wanted money to keep his mouth shut. Now I had two problems. Can you imagine what it did to me to hear you discuss letters and accusations and blackmail at dinner? I would have done anything to end it quickly, even walk away without dessert. Imagine my feelings when I opened the door and looked right into Cobb’s smug face. He was bringing the dessert bowls, but I was certain he had listened at the door and overheard something. In this frantic state of mind I decided Keegan had to advise me what to do. I wanted him to contact Matthew and pay him, one sum, and tell him that if he ever contacted me again, he would be turned in to the police to go back to prison for good. I thought that a go-between, a man with legal clout, and the threat of new imprisonment, might end it with just this one payment. I would also ask Keegan what I could do about Cobb. But as I told you, during the night I despaired of the plan succeeding. Cobb wasn’t working alone. I started to believe the comte had closed in on Denise because he knew our family was vulnerable. Maybe I was just paranoid, but I was sure I couldn’t stop what was going on. In the end, I didn’
t dare meet Keegan and tell him, afraid he would also see it wouldn’t work, and that he would simply blackmail me as well, or tell my husband everything. I… I felt so cornered.’

  Jake glanced at Alkmene. She knew full well what he was thinking. A cornered woman might do a stupid thing.

  But if Mrs Hargrove had already realized Cobb wasn’t the only danger, murder wouldn’t have been the answer. The biggest risk hadn’t been Cobb, but the existence of her brother, Matthew, and Matthew was safely out of her reach. But he’d be back with additional demands and…

  Alkmene leaned over. ‘So, you weren’t in the boathouse on the night of the murder. How did your charm get there?’

  Mrs Hargrove looked down. ‘That’s really silly.’

  ‘Nothing pertaining to a murder case can ever be silly. You must tell us everything.’

  ‘All right.’ Mrs Hargrove looked up again. ‘I gave the charm to Mrs Zeilovsky as payment for her services.’

  ‘Services?’ Alkmene echoed.

  ‘Mrs Zeilovsky claimed she had ways to make people forget things they knew or believed. That she could… cleanse their mind of certain perceptions and convictions. They would wake up and not remember how they felt before. I … asked her to try this technique on Denise. I wanted her to forget about the comte. About her supposed infatuation with him. Not just because I’m afraid of him. But also because of my husband. If Denise eloped, it would break his heart. I...’ She put her hands on her stomach. ‘I wanted us to be happy now.’

  Alkmene frowned. So, what she had caught Mrs Zeilovsky doing with Denise was actually a treatment approved by her stepmother to make her forget the comte. Indeed, Denise had been raving about loving Emile when Alkmene had come upon the scene.

  Still, Mrs Zeilovsky had done something other than erase Denise’s infatuation with the comte. She had planted ideas in her head about her stepmother being unfaithful to her father. That could very well have led to the major argument that had taken place this morning.

  Mrs Zeilovsky had been paid to do one thing and was doing another. Why? Merely to test her power over people?