The Marsh Madness

“Okay, now tell me what she asked you.”


I did my best to repeat all the questions. “She’s saying that Kevin’s fingerprints are on a statue and that the statue is the murder weapon.” I reached out and touched his beefy arm. “There’s no way that’s possible. Kevin wasn’t upstairs. None of us were. We could see the staircase clearly from the foyer and the sitting room and we had no way to know there was an elevator. So even if we were capable of murder—which we aren’t—I couldn’t have killed him. Vera and Kev couldn’t have either. Anyway, even if one of us had been upstairs—which we weren’t—Chadwick was alive and smirking when we left.”

Sammy gazed at me, waiting.

“You do know that the police don’t have to be truthful with you during interviews, don’t you?”

Oh. Well. Of course I knew that. “I don’t think she was lying, but I knew she was wrong. Kev might have touched that little marble statue. But it was still there when we went back to the sitting room. The lieutenant seems like a decent person. Tough, but decent.”

Sammy let out a booming belly laugh. “That’s cute, kid. You can’t go by what she looks like. She’s a detective investigating a murder. Her job is to break down your resistance and get the answers she needs to solve the case. This guy was a big shot, and the murder is in the news. She’ll be under pressure. But that’s not our problem.”

“No. But we do have a problem. The whole situation is a problem. I’ve been thinking about it. I told you Castellano said that Lisa Troy and the butler don’t even exist—well, they do exist. But obviously they’re not who they said they were.”

“Yep. Got that.”

“It’s all so theatrical. I felt like I was in one of the Ngaio Marsh books that Vera bought.”

“Theatrical?”

“Yes, everything about it felt staged. But who would stage it?”

Sammy leaned forward and his black eyes bored into mine.

I returned his gaze. “So there’s only one thing it could be.”

He nodded. “A setup.”





CHAPTER SIX





I SUPPOSE IF you were a defense attorney, you’d prefer something a bit more concrete to keep your client out of jail. Yelling, “Setup!” only gets you so far.

Sammy sat thinking. At least he wasn’t one to scowl.

I said, “Thank you for coming. I felt I was being ground down and fast. How do people survive hours and hours of questioning without accidentally implicating themselves?”

“Usually they don’t. That’s why you don’t allow yourself to be interviewed without representation. They trip you up. They get you rattled. The next stage they’d be saying that Vera Van Alst or Kevin didn’t back up your story and pointed the finger at you.”

“I wouldn’t fall for that,” I said.

“Says the kid who didn’t think the cops would lie to her. These people have training. You’d be surprised what they can get people to admit to, whether they’re guilty or not.”

“I don’t see how she can have any proof. It was impossible for any of us to kill him. I kept telling her that, but she didn’t believe me.”

“Remember this: She’s not paid to believe you.”

“Speaking of paying, who called you? I am grateful that you’re here, but was it Uncle Kev?” Of course, that was ridiculous because Kev never had enough money for a bus ticket.

He shook his head. “Not Kevin. And as I’m representing you, he’ll need his own counsel.”

“I guess they’ll have to find him first.”

Sammy said, “That’s bad.”

“How bad?”

“It’s a murder investigation and he’s disappeared. So pretty bad.”

“Well, technically, he’s out on an errand. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“You sure about that?”

“Of course I am. Uncle Kev always does errands when the police come knocking. It’s like an instinct for him. But he didn’t hurt Chadwick. You have my word on that.”