were keeping their distance.
Jane and Shelley took over a pair of chairs just outside the room, in case Jane were to be needed. 'What loads of fun they seem to be having,' Shelley said sarcastically.
“Poor things,' Jane said.
“Which ones?'
“All of them. There's nothing worse than an obligatory festivity.'
“I don't know — I think you're forgetting childbirth, tax audits, frozen pipes, flat tires downtown during rush hour, college tuition…' Jane put up her hand. 'Okay, okay.”
Several of the women were also sitting around in the main room, but keeping their distance from Jane and Shelley. Whether by design or accident was questionable. The aunts were fiddling with the tuner on the old upright radio in the far corner. Possibly, Jane thought, to get a weather report. There were faint rumbles of thunder in the distance and Jane devoutly hoped there wouldn't be a repeat of the previous night's storms. There was still the possibility of having to hold the wedding in the dark.
Eden had commandeered the best lamp and had a vast array of fingernail cosmetics on a table. There were half a dozen files and buffers, a kaleidoscope of bottles of colored polishes, and a selection of bottles of mysterious liquids. Kitty and Layla were finishing up yet another jigsaw puzzle on a big, hoof-footed coffee table by the fireplace.
Mrs. Hessling wasn't among them. She'd come back with everybody else on the minibus, but had pleaded weariness and Errol had taken her back to the motel. Nor was Livvy anywhere in sight. Jane had no idea where the bride might have gone, but kept reminding herself that she was the wedding planner, not the girl's mother, and it was none of her business where Livvy spent the evening before her Big Day.
A few minutes after Jane and Shelley settled in, Mel reappeared, rested but a bit bleary. 'What's going on?' he asked.
“Not much,' Jane said. 'A floundering bachelor party. So tell us what you learned this evening.”
Mel briefly reviewed his dinner with John Smith and Gus Ambler, hitting all the high points. The monks, the drunken hunting parties, the ascent (or descent, depending on how you looked at it) into domesticity, and Uncle Joe's arrival and Gus's perception of him as a wild boy who went off to war and came back vaguely damaged. He repeated what Gus had said about O. W. being so tightfisted all his life and pretty dotty at the end.
“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.'
