The Marsh Madness

She smiled and nodded.

“Why? Why would we do such a thing?”

“Theft is my guess.”

My jaw dropped. “Theft? We are not thieves.” Most of us weren’t, anyway. Oh, Kev, Kev, Kev.

This woman was good. I knew that none of us had killed Chadwick. Absolutely knew it. I knew that Miss Troy and Thomas the butler had been there and that Chadwick had been alive and smirking when we left. Why then was she able to make me so very nervous?

I reminded myself that the police can lie and mislead to get you to incriminate yourself. That had been drummed into me as a child.

I said, “We aren’t. And no matter what you say, nothing can change the fact that what I’ve told you is true.” Okay, that was a bit of a circular argument, but I did feel panicky. “It’s like you’re out to get us.”

“Or if the shoe fit and you ran away in it.”

“We didn’t run away. And you can’t have any proof that any of us was upstairs and hit Chadwick—for whatever reason—and then pushed him. We weren’t there. Vera didn’t take the elevator. Kevin didn’t go upstairs. I didn’t.”

“Did I say he was killed upstairs?”

Was she just trying to rattle me? “But I assumed since he fell down after the blow—”

“Maybe there was a dispute about the price of the books and then tempers flared. A statue was lifted and brought down hard and—”

“What statue?” I cast my mind back to remember a statue. Nothing came to mind.

“Oh, but there was.”

I slumped. “Didn’t you say that Chadwick had been thrown or pushed down the stairs?”

“Mmm. With some force.”

“But, how would we have gotten him up there? I could hardly lift a man. Vera even less so. And Kevin—”

“From what I hear, your Mr. Kelly is very fit and used to manual labor.”

“I don’t know if I’d call moving a body manual labor. Anyway, Kev would throw up.”

“I hardly think so.”

“I know so and I also know he didn’t do it. And he never went upstairs.”

“Evidence says otherwise.”

My patience was fraying. “It couldn’t. You’re trying to rattle me, and you’re wasting your time. We didn’t do it. You don’t have any proof that we did, because there’s no proof to be had. Simple as that.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Really.” I usually resist the Kelly temper that is half my heritage, but this time it was hard to.

“How then do you explain Mr. Kevin Kelly’s fingerprints on the statue found by the head of the stairs in Summerlea?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“But I can’t explain it. Wait, there was a statue—marble, I think—on the small table outside the powder rooms. A nude kneeling figure. Is that the one? It’s possible that Mr. Kelly picked it up to admire it. But it was still on the table when we returned to the sitting room, where Chadwick was very much alive. It wasn’t very big. I can’t imagine that could be a murder weapon.”

Even as the words came out, I knew how foolish they sounded. That thing was made of marble. Of course it could have cracked a skull.

Castellano opened her mouth to speak, and I burst out, “And we were not separated, after that, until we left, when, as I’ve mentioned, Chadwick was not only alive but said good-bye to us.”

“It was good-bye, all right. You’re going to have to tell the truth or you will find yourself charged as an accessory to murder. If not conspiracy to commit murder.”

Sammy Vincovic’s face flashed through my mind. He was shouting, No comment.

I swallowed. “I want to speak to an attorney.”

“Sounds like guilty talk to me.”

“You know that I am entitled to legal counsel.”

“Your choice, of course. It doesn’t look good, you know, if you’re stalling us. An innocent person would cooperate with the police.”

“You wouldn’t be denying me my right to an attorney, would you?”

“Why? You don’t need one if you haven’t done anything.”