The young man of the house looked sullen at being put in the spotlight. “That’s right.”
“Because eight bottles of three-thousand-pound Bordeaux weren’t enough.” This was his mother, already on her second glass of whiskey.
“Genevieve, please,” Hugo said. I got the feeling these two argued frequently about their son. “I told him they could have as much as they wanted. It was a special night. It was bad enough the boys had to come here for the evening. I wanted them to have a good time.” Of course, the reason the boys had had to come to his house for the evening was that every respectable place in Oxford was closed to them. However, nobody called him on it.
“What time did you ask Pamela to fetch more wine from the cellar?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I wasn’t watching the clock.”
“I was watching the clock,” William said. “Lucy came in and told me, and it was about twenty minutes past nine.”
Rafe continued, “Pamela came upstairs and asked you for the key,” he said to Hugo, who, now that this procedure was underway, seemed resigned.
He nodded. “I went down, opened the cellar up for her. I showed her where the bottles were, and then I left her.”
“And no one saw Pamela alive after that.”
“That’s not true,” Winnie suddenly piped up. “She texted you, Alex.”
Everyone turned to look at Alex, who was squirming under the scrutiny. He looked both angry and ill. If I was nervous, I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling, as suspect number one in a murder case. “I didn’t see her.” He said it angrily, as though he’d said these words many times before and was tired of being disbelieved.
“But you did leave the table when you received that text.”
He nodded sullenly. “She said she wanted to meet me. I’ve told the police all this. I went to meet her in the stables, the old stables, but she wasn’t there.”
“So you say,” Jeremy Pantages said icily.
Alex half rose and glared at him, but before he could say anything, Rafe said, “And what time did you get that text?”
He heaved a huge sigh as though this was an enormous inconvenience, but he pulled out his phone. He pulled up the text and showed Rafe. Rafe read it aloud to all of us. “‘Babes. Meet me at the usual spot.’ That was received at nine thirty-seven p.m.”
Alex reddened. He took his phone back. “I’ve told you, she never showed up.”
Rafe said, “So, if you never saw her, and you’re telling the truth—”
“I am.”
“Then Pamela was never seen alive again after she left the room to fetch the wine.”
There was general puzzlement. Charles said, “But she wasn’t killed until later. Somebody must have seen her. She didn’t turn up in the billiard room until closer to eleven, when we found her…like that.”
“That’s right. And that’s what the murderer has been wanting us to think all along. But she wasn’t killed in the billiards room. She was already dead when she was put there. I have a theory.” He didn’t have the theory. I had the theory, but it was nice to hear my theory offered with such confidence and so forcefully when I was feeling a lot less confident.
“My theory is that the murderer sent that text.”
It would be wrong to say there was a collective gasp around the table, but there was definitely an electric buzz that went silently through the room. DI Chisholm hadn’t told the Percival Browns or anyone else, as far as I knew, outside of the police about the new evidence.
“What?” This was Charles.
DI Chisolm now spoke up. “He’s right. Pamela wasn’t killed in the billiards room. Her body was moved postmortem.”
Alex turned to Miles and Charles. “I sent you fellows down to check on her. And it was ages before you came back.”
Charles said, “I didn’t have anything to do with this. Don’t try to pin it on me. She was seen talking to Jeremy outside, and Vickie heard you two arguing.”
Prince Vikram didn’t look thrilled to be dragged into the middle of this fight, but he nodded.
Alex said to Jeremy, “It was you, wasn’t it? I came back when I couldn’t find Pam, and you weren’t in the dining room, either.”
“I was in the toilet.”
“I don’t believe you. You were furious that she dumped you for me. You were jealous. You couldn’t have her to yourself, so you killed her.”
Jeremy then retaliated, “And you were furious that she still fancied me. I think you did meet her. You killed her in the stables. Then moved the body to the billiards room.”
Wow. This was taking an interesting turn.
Alex got out of his chair so fast, the ornately carved chair fell over. He had an ugly look on his face and began to round the table with murder in his eyes as he headed toward Jeremy. Lochlan Balfour was so quick, he’d grabbed Alex before he’d gone three feet. He held him with one hand, picked up the chair with the other, and pushed him bodily into it. And he stood beside Alex with his arms crossed, like a jailor.
“I am getting a headache,” Mrs. Percival Brown said in an angry tone.
Chapter 20
The atmosphere was thick with distrust, dislike and an undercurrent of fear. By this point, we all realized that a murderer was in this room.
And the murderer knew the truth was closing in. I could feel it.
And then Miles began to cry. At first he dropped his head into his hands. I could see the manly attempt he made to prevent himself from making a fool of himself in front of his friends. My heart went out to him. Then a sound, half groan, half sob, escaped him.
Gabriel asked, “Miles? Are you okay? Do you need some water?”
He shook his head and then scrubbed his face with his hands. Mortified at his womanly tears. “She was my friend.”
He glanced
