“What did you do there?”
In answer Nottingham waved his hand at all the photos. “I was a photographer. One of the best, if I do say so myself. I flew with Valentino on his personal jet. Giorgio had me on his speed dial. Hubert de Givenchy was a dear friend. Audrey Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor. Jackie O. I photographed them all. The greatest moments of my life.” The man was absolutely beaming even though he had closed his eyes. When he reopened them and gazed around at the small confines of his room, the happy look faded.
He said, “But that’s not why you’re here, obviously.”
Decker drew up the only other chair in the room and said, “Bradley Costa?”
Nottingham screwed up his features. “Oh, Brad, yes, yes, of course.” He next looked perplexed. “Is he in some sort of trouble with the FBI?”
“No. Just following up some leads on a case. He was your neighbor back in New York?”
“That’s right. He bought an apartment in my building in SoHo. I’d lived there for decades. I sort of took him under my wing. He was a delightful person. Very handsome. He could have been a model, if you ask me. And smart. He was very successful. Worked on Wall Street.”
“And then he moved?”
“Yes, yes he did. That was very sudden. I was a little hurt, to tell the truth. He never even said goodbye. Here today, gone tomorrow.”
“You have an ancestor, Nigel Nottingham?”
The old man smiled. “Yes. The butler. He was my great-grandfather. Worked in a horrible place called, um, well, I can’t remember right now, but he labored away for an absolute miser there.”
“John Baron. The place is called Baronville.”
Nottingham snapped his fingers. “Yes, that’s right. In, what was it, Ohio?”
“Pennsylvania.”
Nottingham looked sadly at Decker. “In the last year my memory, which used to be razor sharp, seems to be leaving me. That’s one reason I came here. I…forget things. And I didn’t want to burn my building down by mistake.”
“No reason to be sorry. You’re doing fine. Was Costa interested in the Barons?”
Nottingham scrunched up his features once more. “Well, come to think, it was at a dinner party I threw a number of years ago. I remember because I had just been given an award by the fashion industry. It was one of those things you get for being around as long as I had,” he added with an embarrassed smile.
“What happened at the dinner party?”
“Well, it was after we ate and we were having port in my little room of photos. Brad picked up a picture from off a table and asked me about it. Well, it was Nigel. I told him all about him, or at least what my father and grandfather had told me. Nigel was born in England, Surrey, long, long ago and then immigrated to the United States. I’m not clear on how he made it to Baronville. But he became Baron’s butler. His son, Samuel, my grandfather, left Baronville as a young man and moved to upstate New York, where my father was born. My parents moved to Brooklyn after they were married, and that’s where I was born.”
“So no one in your family wanted to stick around Baronville?”
“Oh, God no. From what I remember being told, it was this dreary piece of dirt where they had coal mines and filthy factories and people were worked to death. My grandfather actually told me that he left because he hated the place. Wanted to get away as soon as he could. And he did. Thank God for that. I doubt I would have had the same career if I had been born and raised there.”
“What about Nigel?”
Nottingham thought for a few moments, tapping the chair arm with his long fingers. “That’s right. I remember now. He stayed on with the Barons until he died.” He paused. “In fact, I remember my grandfather telling me that he went back for Nigel’s funeral. It was actually funny.”
“What was funny? Not his father dying, surely?”
“Oh, no. It was funny because his father had died on the very same day that Baron did. The one who started the whole town and named it after himself.”
“They died on the same day? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. Apparently they were the same age. Master and servant till the day they both died. Then who cares about titles and who has more money, right?”
“Would it surprise you to learn, then, that Brad Costa moved to Baronville?”
Nottingham slumped down in his chair. “Oh my God, you must be joking.”
“No, I’m not. In fact, he was murdered there.”
As soon as he said this Decker realized it had been a mistake.
Nottingham started having trouble breathing. He was gasping, grabbing his chest and pointing at something. Finally, Decker realized what it was.
The oxygen.
He quickly rolled the tank over and helped Nottingham get the nasal cannula inserted correctly. The elderly man drew several deep breaths and slowly calmed down.
Decker sat back, relieved. “I’m sorry, Mr. Nottingham, I shouldn’t have just dumped that on you.”
Nottingham took another series of deep breaths while he waved off this apology. He said slowly, “I have COPD. Damn cigarettes. Then the anxiety kicks in.”
“I take it from your reaction that you had no idea Costa moved to Baronville? Or that he was dead?”
Nottingham shook his head. “None. How did he die? You said murdered? How horrible!”
“The details aren’t that important, and I don’t want to upset you again. But he was murdered and I’m trying to find out why.”
“My God, poor Brad.”
“Do you have any idea why he would exchange a place in SoHo and a job on Wall Street for Baronville?”
Nottingham slowly took the cannula out of his nose and set it aside.
“About a week after I told Brad about Nigel and the Barons, he came back and asked me some more questions.”
“Like what?”
“You first have to understand a bit of family lore that was handed down from one generation to the next.”
“What sort of family lore? About the Nottinghams or the Barons?”
“Both, really. My grandfather told me about it when I was just a kid. You see, the original Baron, the one who started the town and everything, as I told you was a miserable old cuss. My grandfather lived in the servants’ quarters there growing up. He hated the place. And while he only had a few encounters with the elder Baron, he thought him an awful person.”
“If he was that bad, why did Nigel hang around?” asked Decker.
“Good question. However, I got a sense from what I was told that Baron didn’t actually treat Nigel badly. On the contrary, he seemed to treat him more as an equal.”
“That seems strange, treating a butler as an equal.”
“He was Baron’s age and Nigel started working for him before he built the big place on the hill. I’ve only seen pictures of it. What a monstrosity.”
“I’ve been there. It hasn’t aged well. But you were talking about family lore?”
“When Baron died, I’m not sure anyone else in his family was interested in actually working for a living.”
“They just wanted to sponge off the old man?”
“Yes. And that leads me directly into the family lore. Baron was cheap but he loved money, and was loath to let a penny of it go, if he could help it. He paid his workers next to nothing and never gave a dime to charity. He was rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and yet apparently it still wasn’t enough.”
“Sounds like a real peach,” commented Decker.
“Well, anyway, he also didn’t have a high opinion of his sons, who would be next in line to run the businesses. As I said, they weren’t all that interested. From what I was told, they loved spending money far more than making it.”
“That’s why the family eventually became poor,” said Decker.
“Did they? Well, well. And now comes the interesting part. The family lore part is that before he died, Baron hid a fortune somewhere at his home. And I mean an absolute fortune.”
“In what?”
“I don’t know. Jewels, rare coins. Cash. Negotiable instruments. Stocks. Bonds. But it would have represented a very large part of his fortune. It seems that he didn’t want his family to have it.”