The Case of the Hidden Flame Read online

  The first to stand was Carlos Alves, his cigar forgotten on the table, his face fixed with amazement. “Perhaps why,” Graham pressed on, sensing the growing tumult among the others, “you stayed with her throughout the painful, excruciating symptoms of Wolfsbane poisoning?” Now the Colonel was up and staring at Alice. “Why you kept her from calling for help? Took her phone? Told her that everything would be fine in a moment. Even offered her more to drink, though that too was laced with the poison which was even then causing her heart to flutter and gurgle in distress?”

  “My God…” breathed Anne Pilkington.

  “Did she know what was happening in those final moments?” Graham asked Alice, the group seeming to enclose around her as though preparing to tear her apart for her sins. “Did she realize you were responsible?”

  “Her?” Marjorie Taylor exclaimed. “But why?”

  “This is the only thing I don’t understand,” Graham confessed. “Why, Alice?”

  Fists clenching, jaw firmly set, Alice Swift finally spoke. “She was a temptress.” Alice’s voice was a furious hiss. “A Jezebel. A consumer of men, heedless of others and their emotions.”

  Alves said it for them all. “What in God’s name is she talking about?”

  The murderous woman addressed him now. “She seduced my George.”

  “Your George?” Harding said, almost unwittingly. “The Colonel, and you…?”

  “She beguiled him. Teased him. Dangled in front of him a life so comforting and saccharine and dull,” she spat, “and he was going to propose…”

  “Oh, God,” Colonel Graves finally managed. “Oh, Alice, what have you done?”

  “I had to!” she shrieked. “There was nothing else…”

  Colonel Graves spoke to Graham now, looking gaunt and ashen. “I’m sorry… I should have mentioned something about our dealings earlier… I just never, ever, in a thousand years would have thought…”

  Without another word, Graham nodded to Sergeant Harding, who approached Alice from behind with handcuffs ready. “Alice Swift, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Dr. Sylvia Norquist.” As the cuffs were clicked into place, Alice seemed to struggle with inner demons known to no one else, the boiling anger and resentment that had led her to commit calculated, cold-blooded murder causing her to twitch and shudder. Harding finished reading Alice her rights and led the furious woman back from the tables toward the door where Constable Barnwell was waiting to escort the prisoner to the police car. As Harding guided her through the doorway, Alice turned viciously and yelled at them.

  “I did it for you, George!” Her voice was a cold rasp. “I killed her for you!”

  Graves had his head in his hands, inconsolable now, as Alice was led away. “Oh, Sylvia,” he said, again and again. Graham sat with the Colonel, his posture slightly slumped, relieved that his ambitious gamble had paid off and that he had successfully identified the murderer.

  “It’s alright, George. It’s all over,” he told the grieving Colonel.

  “But how…?” The Colonel was plaintive.

  “We now know that Miss Swift invited Dr. Norquist out for dinner the night before her body was found.” DI Graham explained. “They went to the Bangkok Palace. I saw a business card for the restaurant among her weaving supplies.”

  “When I questioned the restaurant staff about their dinner, I learned that Alice was overheard telling Dr. Norquist about your financial woes, possibly in order to discredit you in Sylvia’s eyes so that she would be persuaded not to marry you,” Graham explained.

  “According to staff there, the two women argued. I believe that Alice, realizing Sylvia would not renounce you, laced her drink with poison.

  The Colonel shook his head and sighed deeply. He looked up at the Detective Inspector, imploring him to go on.

  “Instead of taking her back to the White House Inn when she became ill,” Graham continued, increasingly feeling he was intruding on the elder man’s grief but also respecting his need to understand what had happened to his love, “she drove to the steps above the beach, where she plied Sylvia with more of the poisoned wine, staying with her until she was dead. I think she planned to have the tide wash Sylvia’s body out to sea, but having dragged her down the steps to the beach, Alice was too exhausted to carry her further and buried her in the sand instead.

  “Returning to the Inn, Swift gave herself an alibi by making sure she was seen around the hotel the following morning. She then let herself into Dr. Norquist’s room, ordering her food and pretending to talk on the telephone when lunch was delivered.

  “Her plan was that when the body was found, we would believe Sylvia had been alive at a time when she had, in fact, been dead for several hours. With the time of death being so vague and using a barely detectable means of killing, it would have been extremely difficult to pin the murder on Alice.

  “It was a canny plan. And it nearly worked. Alice is without doubt a cold-blooded killer. You’ve had a lucky escape, Colonel.” Graham finished quietly, knowing his words were cold comfort to the bereaved man.

  The Colonel looked at the detective ruefully. “I’ve lost the woman I loved, my life savings, my future. I wouldn’t call that much of an escape.”

  Graham looked down at the sad, broken man with great sympathy. He hesitated, weighing up the propriety of his action, then placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

  As Detective Inspector Graham completed his exposition, the tension drained from the room, its occupants left to quietly contemplate the impact of his words. The room was silent and still. DI Graham delicately withdrew and as he did so, another person in the room stirred.

  Stepping away from the others, and hoping not to appear indelicate, Carlos Alves quietly lit his cigar and looked out once more onto the water, a slight smile on his face for the first time in months. As he drew deeply on his cigar, he closed his eyes momentarily, and reflected on the events of the last few days. He exhaled with a small sigh, the cigar smoke dissipating into the clear Jersey air. He had all but given up. But he’d been wrong. There was an ounce of justice in the world, after all.

  EPILOGUE

  Gorey, Three Weeks Later

  SERGEANT JANICE HARDING shook her head with firm conviction. “No way, Barnwell. You’ve finally lost it.”

  “No, I’m serious,” he said. “I know she’s not exactly the right age, but there’s such a thing as ‘artistic license’…”

  Graham emerged from his office, stretched, and regarded the squabbling pair. “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  Barnwell explained. “We were trying to figure out,” he said, not in the least embarrassed, “who should play all of us when the Norquist case gets made into a big Hollywood movie.”

  “Oh, great,” Graham told them. “I’m glad it’s hard-nosed police work that’s keeping you all so occupied.”

  “I thought,” Barnwell continued regardless, “that Ben Affleck would make an excellent DI Graham.”

  “Did you, now?” Graham asked, distractedly flicking lint from his suit trousers.

  “And Jodie Foster could play the fiercely devoted Sergeant Harding,” Barnwell said next. The real Sergeant Harding couldn’t have been less impressed and made a grotesque face at the grinning Constable.

  “And who’s playing you, Barnwell?” Graham asked with a smirk.

  “Cruise.” He looked at them both. “I mean, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” parroted Harding, and followed Graham back into his office.

  Graham smiled at her. “Good to see him applying that investigative acumen,” he quipped.

  “I’d rather that than him showing up half-drunk,” she said. “Don’t think he’s touched a drop since the case.”

  “Good,” Graham nodded. “About time for lunch, isn’t it, Sergeant?”

  Harding checked the big wall clock. “I’d say so, sir.”

  “Well, I think it’s my turn to buy. Bangkok Palace?” he reco
mmended.

  Harding grinned. “Sure. Sounds good.”

  Graham followed Harding out into the lobby, where Roach was now fully involved in the Hollywood discussion. “Cruise, he says,” Roach was laughing. “Can you imagine?”

  “Not even a little bit,” Harding said, pushing open the door. “Hold the fort, you two,” she instructed.

  “Will do, Sarge,” they chorused.

  “You know,” Janice said, as she got in Graham’s car, “those two are in grave danger of becoming actual police officers one of these days.” She chuckled, but not dismissively. Her own respect for Roach and Barnwell was on the rise. Ever since their new boss had arrived on Jersey, they had been punctual and diligent, keen to help the public and willing to leave no stone unturned. I barely recognize them, she mused to herself. “Well, DI Graham, a great detective needs a great support team.”

  Graham rolled his eyes. “Steady on, Sergeant.” He put the car into gear with a self-contented smile, and they headed off into Jersey’s bright, afternoon sunshine.

  To get your free copy of The Case of the Screaming Beauty, the prequel to the Inspector David Graham mystery series, plus two more books, updates about new releases, exclusive promotions, and other insider information, sign up for the Cozy Mysteries Insider mailing list at:

  http://cozymysteries.com/graham

  INSPECTOR DAVID GRAHAM WILL RETURN…

  WOULD YOU LIKE to find out how life on Jersey continues to suit Inspector Graham as he settles in? Find out in the next book in the Inspector Graham cozy mystery series, The Case of the Fallen Hero. You’ll find an excerpt on the following pages.

  THE CASE OF THE FALLEN HERO

  PROLOGUE

  Saturday, 3:30pm

  THE FOUR FRIENDS tumbled out of the minivan, thanked their driver, and stared agog at the imposing medieval castle that now towered over them.

  “Bloody hell,” Harry managed, wiping his glasses clean and staring at the huge walls. “It’s big, isn’t it?”

  Emily retrieved her priceless violin from the van’s back seat and joined him, looking up at the impenetrable, solid battlements that spoke of the castle’s impressively deep history. “Going for your Masters in architecture, then, Harry?” she joked. “It’s an eight hundred-year-old fortress. I don’t think big does it justice.”

  Harry made sure his battered cello case had suffered no further indignities on the ferry ride over from Weymouth and hoisted its weight onto his shoulder with well-practiced ease. “Well, I wouldn’t dream of upstaging our resident expert, you see.”

  Leo Turner-Price, accomplished historian and violinist, stared at the castle as though achieving a lifelong dream. “Emily is right about the structure being eight hundred years old. But there are records of substantial fortifications on this site that go back to the Bronze Age.”

  “Really?” Harry remarked. “Wow.”

  “All to keep out the beastly French,” Marina observed. The youngest of the four members of the Spire String Quartet, Marina was a shy but – as Harry once described her in an unguarded moment – “insanely attractive” viola player who taught young children at two of London’s most expensive schools. “Must have cost a fortune.”

  “Well, if that was their aim,” Harry opined, keeping up his role as the “bluff Brit abroad,” “it was money well spent.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. Fifteen years into her friendship with the wonderfully gruff, plentifully bearded Harry Tringham, she found that he was still learning how to filter the thoughts that entered his overactive brain, far too many of which were given unwisely free passage direct to his equally active mouth. She spotted the visitors’ entrance up some steps in front of them. “Shall we?”

  Emily was, in fact, the only member of the quartet to have visited Orgueil Castle before, or even to have performed on the island of Jersey. It was through her contact with the castle’s highly professional events manager, Stephen Jeffries, that they had been booked for the evening’s wedding festivities. Always in need of a dependable ensemble who could provide light background music one moment and a strident processional the next, Jeffries kept Emily’s name at the top of his hiring list. He had been heartily impressed when, during a wedding two years before, Emily had led a young string trio through various weather-related disasters, a collapsed marquee, and a bridal arrival so delayed that the groom was harboring the gravest of doubts, all before dashing off a beautifully polished Prince of Denmark’s March as the sodden bride entered, still dripping, into the Great Hall.

  “Emily, my darling!” Jeffries exclaimed as he walked out to greet them. “So lovely to see you! How’s your teaching going? Didn’t you just start at that exclusive little prep school?” he asked.

  “Fine, fine,” Emily told him. “It’s going well. Some of the little blighters even manage to practice before their lessons.” The whole quartet was nodding. Finding students who were prepared to work hard was like finding gemstones in the desert. “It’s nice to get a break, though, and a change of scenery.”

  “Better weather for this one, too, eh?” Jeffries said, hand aloft toward the bluest possible sky.

  “Much better,” Emily agreed. “And I want to thank you for this, Stephen. Gives us all a nice break from an unseasonably warm London. This is Marina Linton,” she said as the tall blonde extended a graceful hand, “Harry Tringham, our cellist and resident physicist,” she added, “and the historian Leo Turner-Price.”

  “Simply delighted to be here,” Leo enthused. “Remarkable building, really.”

  Jeffries led them into an open quadrangle that was home to a beautifully kept maze and then down some steps into the castle’s administrative area. Here they would relax and tune up until the wedding guests began to arrive at five o’clock. He moved paperwork and wedding paraphernalia off his biggest table to give them a safe, flat surface for their priceless instruments.

  “Okay, did everyone’s folders survive the journey?” Emily wanted to confirm and received a trio of nods in reply. “Excellent,” she said, quickly tying her curly, black hair into an unsophisticated ponytail. “So, we’ll start with the little Baroque set…”

  “Couperin,” Harry said, finding the sheet music in his folder.

  “And then the Purcell theater music?” Marina asked.

  “That’s right. Then Eine Kleine. Everyone loves that,” Emily continued.

  “All four movements?” Leo asked.

  Emily thought for a second. “Let’s play it by ear. Depends on timings and such, but we can axe the repeats if we need to hurry things along.”

  “Righto,” Leo said, slotting the pages in the correct order. “Which Processional did they choose in the end?”

  Marina clasped both hands together, as if in prayer. “Please tell me it isn’t Wagner again. I promised I’d quit weddings if I ever had to…”

  “Nope,” Emily reassured her. “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.”

  All four sighed slightly. “It’s a terrific piece,” Leo allowed, “but too much of a gallop for a processional, surely?”

  Emily found the music and finished organizing her own folder. “She’s the bride, Leo. And it’s her…”

  “Special day!” the quartet chorused and then laughed together.

  Jeffries watched this polished routine with unconcealed envy. “Honestly,” he said as the four musicians finalized their folders, “I would simply die to make every aspect of these weddings as smooth as working with you guys.”

  “Aw, Stephen. You’re an angel,” Emily replied, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  “I’ve already had a run-in with the mother of the bride,” he admitted, his face relating just how ugly the encounter had been. “Terrifying woman. A foot wider than I am,” he confessed, “and with a decidedly mean streak. These people get it into their heads that just because they’ve spent a fortune on getting their offspring hitched, they can treat people however they like!”

  Jeffries was a stylish and experienced man, unused to brusque t
reatment. He allowed that the bridal party was under considerable pressure to ensure their lovely daughter’s wedding day was as close to perfect as possible, but still, their discourtesy toward him seemed so unnecessary, especially when he was doing his level best to meet their every need.

  “I’ll leave you to it. Yell if you need anything,” Stephen said with a companionable hand on Emily’s forearm, and then, with a dramatic flourish, he left to supervise the preparation of the reception.

  Emily’s preference was to begin playing even before the guests arrived, ostensibly to create the “right atmosphere,” but more practically to check acoustics and intonation. The quartet seated themselves in the corner of the quadrangle where the marquee – the same one that had suffered the spectacular structural failure during Emily’s last performance at the castle – was set up. Guests would shortly be wandering on the lawn of the quad, ducking inside to grab a drink or a canapé, and generally rubbing shoulders before the arrival of the bridal party.

  The group went through the plan, talking quietly in the short gaps between movements of the tasteful Couperin suite Harry had arranged for them years before. Once it was confirmed that the bride was ready to go through with the ceremony (and in Emily’s twenty-year experience of weddings, this was by no means an absolute certainty), the quartet would have only a few moments to quickly relocate to the Great Hall and prepare for the Processional.

  Later, after the bride reached the altar, the musicians’ time would be their own. Jeffries would hand them a generous check each, and they’d enjoy the rest of the evening at the castle before retreating to a local hostel for the night. The castle, for its part, would then play host to an extended party before the guests collapsed into bed; there was plentiful accommodation within the giant edifice so that, as Jeffries always thought of it, they wouldn’t have to stagger far.