Chapter 63
“Ma’am? It’s Shawn. You’ve a gentleman down here in the lobby asking to see you.”
“Me? I’m not expecting anyone. What’s his name?”
“He won’t give me his name. An older fellow. Driving a Rolls-Royce, he is. Just said to tell you it’s a family friend.”
“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” Maeve said. It was Monday morning.
She spotted her visitor as soon as she entered the lobby, which was mostly empty. He was, as Shawn Davis had said, an older man. Bald, with a neatly trimmed silver mustache. He was leaning on the back of an armchair, finishing a pint of beer from the lobby lounge.
“Hello,” she said as she approached. She held out her hand. “I’m Maeve Dunagin. And you are…”
He didn’t take her hand, instead keeping his own inserted in the pocket of his jacket.
“Geoffrey Rossington. I thought I should meet the so-called cousin who managed to worm her way into my sister’s affections—and her estate.”
Maeve was taken aback by his blunt approach.
Now that she was closer, she saw that he bore a startling resemblance to Esme.
He had that freakishly high Rossington forehead.
He had blue eyes and a chiseled chin. He’d been handsome once.
But now his nose and face had the broken veins of a hard drinker and his complexion was yellow-hued and a mass of wrinkles.
Rossington was dressed the part of an aristocrat gone to seed. His Harris Tweed sport coat was frayed at the cuffs and his dress shirt was wrinkled. He wore brown corduroy pants that sagged on his body and the cinched belt revealed that he’d lost weight.
“Look,” Maeve said, “Therese, my sister, and I had nothing to do with your sister’s decision to name us in her will. I was as surprised as you when Billy McCracken gave me the news.”
“I doubt that,” he said calmly. “You should know that I’ve hired a solicitor to fight this so-called will of hers. My sister did not have the mental capacity to make such a huge decision. Leaving an estate to a dog? It’s insane. She clearly had diminished faculties.”
“How would you know about Esme’s state of mind?” Maeve asked. “She told us she hadn’t seen you once in thirty-five years, until last week. Just a few days before she was murdered.”
“Not true,” Geoffrey said. “We talked on the phone regularly. Which proves my sister was not of sound mind—if she really did tell you that. Esme didn’t like strangers.
She was never a people person, so why would she suddenly embrace a couple of Americans who pushed their way into her home and claimed to be relatives? ”
Out of the corner of her eye Maeve saw the lobby door open. Lana, one of the inn’s desk clerks, had taken an instant liking to Sinead, and had volunteered to take her out for her afternoon constitutional.
The dog trotted happily ahead of Lana, head up, tail wagging.
“There’s my girl now,” Maeve called. “Sinead! Come!” The desk clerk dropped the leash and Sinead ran toward Maeve, but stopped when she spotted the stranger engaged in heated conversation with her new mistress.
The dog’s demeanor changed in an instant. She crouched on the floor, ears back, and emitted a low, menacing growl. The next moment, she lunged at Geoffrey Rossington, snarling, and clamped her jaws on his shin.
“Jesus!” Rossington exclaimed. He kicked at Sinead with his free foot, but the dog only dug in harder, jumping and snapping at him.
“Get her off of me,” Geoffrey yelled at Maeve, who stood watching, horrified.
“Sinead!” Maeve clapped her hands. “Come! Sinead, come here.”
But the dog’s teeth were firmly clamped around the ankle of Geoffrey’s pants, even though Rossington was violently trying to shake the dog free.
Finally, Maeve grabbed the spaniel and wrenched her free. The dog still had a square of corduroy clenched in her teeth. “Sinead! That was naughty!”
“That fucking dog is a menace,” Rossington said. “She needs to be put down.” He bent over to examine his leg, and his hands came away bloodied.
“Do you see this?” He held up his hand for Maeve to examine. “I could sue you. In fact, I most definitely will.”
Sinead continued wriggling, even though Maeve held her tightly, growling at Rossington.
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Maeve said. “I think you’d better leave now.”
“You’ll be hearing from my solicitor,” Geoffrey said. He turned and limped slowly across the lobby.
Maeve stroked the dog’s head and spoke to her in a low, soothing, singsong voice. “Good girl, Sinead. Good girl.”
When she got back to the owner’s suite, she called Officer Muldoon and left a message on his voice mail, asking him to call her about an urgent matter.
She paced around the room while she waited. As an hour passed and then another, her curiosity intensified.
“Screw it,” she said finally. She clipped the leash to Sinead’s collar.
“Come on, girl. Let’s go check out the new digs.”
Crime-scene tape had been tacked across the door of the toolshed, but it hung loose now, and she spotted the padlock lying on the ground nearby.
Maeve held her breath and pushed the door open. The rusty hinges creaked as it swung inward.
Sinead seemed to sense something was off. Instead of running into the shed she hung back, whimpering.
“I know, girl,” Maeve sympathized. “I hate this place too. But we gotta check it out, okay?”
She stepped inside and looked around and said a silent prayer.
This was most likely the place Esme Rossington had taken her last breath.
The cot was lying on its side, the legs busted, and the bedding she’d seen there Thursday night was missing.
The sole chair in the room was knocked over. A struggle had taken place here.
The shed had smelled rank before, but there was a new stink present. Maeve spotted it, a small pile of dog poop in the farthest corner of the room. She looked down at Sinead, who was still crouched in the doorway.
“You must have been locked in here for quite a while, huh?” she mused. The dog was housebroken and absolutely fastidious about not making messes indoors.
Maeve turned in a slow circle, taking in every inch of the small, malodorous space, trying to remember what it had looked like when Esme showed it to her. But it had been dark then, and she’d been both exhausted and horrified at the prospect of spending a night here.
She did another spin, and this time she saw something different, right beside one of the broken cot legs. She bent down to examine it. It was a button—a braided-leather-covered button. The kind that might have come off a custom-tailored Harris Tweed jacket.
“Sonofabitch,” she muttered as she snapped a photo of it with her cell phone. “No wonder you took a bite out of that bastard.” She took one of the dog’s biscuits from her pocket and tossed it to the cocker spaniel. “Good going, Sinead.”
Muldoon still hadn’t returned her call, so she decided to pay him an in-person visit.
The cop was sitting at his desk, slurping tea from a mug and watching something on his laptop. When Maeve entered the substation he closed the lid of the laptop in a hurry.
“I was just gettin’ round to call you,” he said. “Busy morning here. New developments in our investigation.”
“I’ve had a busy day too,” she said. “Geoffrey Rossington dropped by the inn earlier, to tell me he plans to sue us over his sister’s estate.”
“Did he now?”
“Sinead went berserk when she saw Geoffrey. She actually attacked him, bit him on the shin so badly he was bleeding, which made him even madder than he was at me.”
“Dare say,” Muldoon replied. “That dog of Esme’s is small but fierce.”
“Under normal circumstances, Sinead is gentle as a lamb. But here’s the thing.
When I went down to the lobby to speak to Geoffrey, he was having a pint from the lobby lounge.
Holding the glass in his left hand. And he kept his right hand stuck in the pocket of his jacket.
Wouldn’t even shake my hand when I stuck mine out. ”
“Antisocial type. Like his sister,” Muldoon said, shrugging. “Means nothin’.”
“It’s more than that. After Sinead attacked him, he touched the wound and his hand came away bloody. His right hand. The one he’d been hiding. And the back of it was all scratched up.”
“So now you think it’s Geoffrey who killed his sister, and not Reggie, who you insisted was the killer.”
“Did Reggie have any scratches on his hands? The kind he might have gotten from strangling an old woman who would have fought back? I don’t remember seeing any, but I was kind of busy not getting slashed to pieces.”
“The only injuries Reggie had were the blunt force trauma you inflicted on the back of his head with that candlestick,” Muldoon admitted. “At the hospital we took nail clippings, and there was nothing there—except an appalling amount of dirt.”
“Maybe you should take a look at Geoffrey Rossington’s hands and his fingernails,” Maeve said.
“Esme’s too, if you haven’t already. But there’s something else.
When you didn’t call me back earlier, I went over to the gardener’s cottage to have a look around the toolshed where you found Esme. And Sinead.”
“You’ve no right,” Muldoon said sternly. “That’s an active crime scene you were blundering about.”
“The crime scene seal on the door had been broken and the padlock was lying in the grass. I didn’t touch anything. I just looked. And documented what I found.”
She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through her photo roll. “Look at this,” she said, tapping the first photo.
Muldoon squinted and frowned. “Is that a pile of dog shite?”
“And this,” she said, tapping the next photo.
“A button,” he said. “Which proves what?”
“You found Esme and Sinead locked in that shed Friday morning. Sinead is housebroken. She’ll whine and scratch and bark when she needs to go out to take care of business. I think that poop proves they’d been in the toolshed for hours and hours. Maybe overnight.”
“Hmm. And the button?”
“Geoffrey Rossington was wearing a Harris Tweed jacket when he came to see me today. It was an old one, probably expensive when he bought it new. And I bet, if you look at that jacket, you’ll find a button missing, probably from the sleeve.”
Muldoon sat back in his chair. “I was over at the hospital questioning Reggie again when you called earlier. And the reason I went to speak to him is that the coroner called me first thing this morning to tell me that they found poison in Esme’s bloodstream and her stomach. Rat poison it was.”
Maeve’s eyes widened. “She was poisoned and strangled?”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Muldoon said.
“I sat down and had a nice chat with Reggie just now. Still insisting he never put his hands on Esme. He admits he was furious with her after their last falling-out. For years she’d been taking advantage of him, paying him nuthin’, insinuating he would inherit the cottage when she was gone.
And then you and your sister turn up and everything changes.
She kicks him out of his squat, and then he overhears Esme on the phone talking to McCracken, telling him she wants to make arrangements to change her will.
This time he knows things are different, and desperate times call for desperate actions. ”
“He poisoned her?”
“He claims he just wanted her to get sick enough that she’d call him to take care of her. Realize how invaluable he was to her. So he tips a little rat poison in her glass of gin. Maybe some more in her morning coffee. And at first she did feel poorly, but then she perked back up.”
“Rat poison,” Maeve repeated. “I’d think any amount of it would kill you.”
“Reggie’s not exactly a scientist, is he now? With Esme hanging on, he decided the better solution to his problem would be to scare off the Americans.”
“By slashing the tires on our rental car and trying to run us over.”
“The poor bugger could do nuthin’ right,” Muldoon said, chuckling. “It’s almost comic.”
“What was he doing at Esme’s house on Friday morning? When he attacked me?”
“Here’s where Reggie’s story goes off the rails,” the cop said.
“He says he went to the gardener’s cottage to pack up some belongings he’d left in the toolshed.
Perfectly innocent. But when he got there, the shed was locked.
He went to the house and there was no sign of Esme.
He had himself a sit in the kitchen, waiting on her. Maybe he had some drinks too. Maybe?”
Muldoon slapped himself in the head to demonstrate his disbelief.
“At the hospital his blood alcohol was high enough to put the whole village in a stupor. Now Reggie’s properly gassed.
So he decides maybe he’ll help himself to a few things.
Nuthin’ Esme would ever miss. He’s gathering up the goods and he hears you, in the front room.
His story is that you attacked him, and his only recourse was to strike back. ”
“Preposterous,” Maeve said. She rolled up her right sleeve to show the cop the scabbed-over place on her arm where Reggie’s knife had sliced her. “I didn’t do this to myself.”
“I know ya didn’t,” Muldoon said. “As well as being a stupid lunk and a drunk and a petty thief, the man is a terrible liar. A master criminal he is not.”
“What happens now?” Maeve asked.
“Do you happen to know where Rossington has been staying?” he asked.
“I only know he’s not at the inn,” Maeve said. “But I hear he’s driving a Rolls-Royce. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot in this part of the country, right?”
“He can’t have gone far,” Muldoon said. “If he’s talking about hiring a solicitor and taking you to court over Esme’s will he must be in the vicinity. We’ll find him.”