The Marsh Madness

“Of course he wouldn’t. And neither would I.”


“They certainly have a nerve. I shall have to ensure that he has legal representation.”

“Thank you, Vera. I appreciate that,” I breathed. “If we can find him.”

“The poor man must have been traumatized by the very suggestion of culpability.”

“Um, indeed.” I didn’t bother to say that Kev was in the wind before any accusations had been made. Vera wasn’t altogether informed about Kevin’s history. And that was a good thing. Trust me.

“This is a bad situation,” Vera muttered.

“That’s an understatement. They say they found all of our fingerprints at Summerlea. And our prints are all on file.”

“Well, of course, they found them. We were in the house.”

“Listen to me, Vera. They also say they found Kev’s prints on a statue that was used to kill Chadwick.”

Vera’s always pallid, but she paled more. “Nonsense.”

“It could be nonsense. They are allowed to lie to suspects.”

“I am not a suspect.”

“But they didn’t tell you. They told me.”

“Are you telling me that you are a suspect?”

“I think so. They may even think that you and I are shielding Kevin.”

“Preposterous.”

“Exactly, because we don’t know where he is.” I was pretty sure that Vera would shield Kev even if she did know where he was. For sure, I would have. “But Kev didn’t kill Chadwick and he didn’t go upstairs.”

“I see now why that question was important.”

“Exactly. But you weren’t paying attention, so you can’t swear that we never went upstairs.”

“I didn’t realize the implications.”

“Mmm. Were you paying attention, Vera?”

“Not in the least.”

“Well, there you have it. It’s only me, and as you know, Kevin is my uncle—” I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Vera did know this, as we’d been vague on that detail when Kev joined the household as gardener, handyman, troublemaker.

“Yes, yes. Old news, Miss Bingham.”

“So they have a very good reason to suspect that I would lie to protect him.”

“Oh dear.”

“And they may believe—and who could blame them—that I was also involved.”

“I would never employ someone who would do such a vile and uncivilized thing.”

Uncivilized? That was one way of describing cold-blooded murder.

“It gets worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

“I think they believe there was a conspiracy to kill Chadwick. And that we were part of the conspiracy.”

“What?”

“That’s what they think.”

“But this is dreadful.”

“Yes, it is. And that’s why we have to be careful that we don’t implicate each other. That’s what they’re counting on.”

“But why would we conspire to kill him? He wanted to sell some books. We wanted to buy them. Everyone was satisfied. What reason could there be?”

“I don’t know. But once the police come up with a theory, we’ve got real trouble.”


*

I WAS SURPRISED by a text from Tiff. I had known she was in port today, but still wasn’t expecting a text, because there must have been a million more interesting things to do in Aruba.

Wow, I was so happy to get to port today! They sure work us hard, but the crew are friendly, and all I’ve really had to deal with was a few sunburns and some seasickness. I’m off to enjoy a few hours of well-deserved R & R. Our next stop is Cartagena, in three days. Hope all is well in HF.

I sent Tiff a smiley face with sunglasses on in reply. It was all I could manage, and I wasn’t going to dump any of the current nastiness on her. There was nothing she could do from Aruba.