And One to Die On(42)
“You mean you think it would be a waste of time,” Kelly Pratt said.
“Not necessarily,” Gregor Demarkian said cautiously. “Sometimes, in old cases like these, there is someone—a son or daughter, a surviving spouse or a particularly close friend—who feels that advertising the truth of the case will clear the name of someone who was falsely accused or maliciously misrepresented. Sometimes corrections of that kind are absolutely necessary for the sake of justice.”
“And in this case?”
Gregor Demarkian shrugged. “The death of Lilith Brayne was pronounced an accident, not a suicide. As far as I can tell, it was also Lilith Brayne whose reputation came out best after all the publicity. If you leave things just the way they are, Lilith Brayne looks good—and if you have something against Cavender Marsh, you don’t have to go on with it either, because half the people who do read the story will be perfectly willing to believe that he killed his wife and got away with it without your producing any new evidence at all. The only reason I could see why anybody would want to fiddle with new evidence in this case—except for some disinterested third party who’s decided to write a book about it and could use the publicity—well, the only reason to go on with it would be to try to clear Cavender Marsh once and for all, wouldn’t it? And I can’t think of a person on earth who would want to do that.”
“No,” Kelly said. “I couldn’t either. That Hannah Graham wouldn’t want to.”
“Hardly.”
Kelly Pratt fidgeted. “Well,” he said, “what about just curiosity? Or being uncomfortable. What about knowing something that just makes you nervous?”
“Do you know something like that?” Gregor Demarkian asked.
Kelly Pratt nodded, reluctantly. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“And you want to tell it to me.”
Gregor Demarkian was not feeling too keen about this. Kelly Pratt could tell. Everything about the man’s body language said the intellectual and emotional fortifications were going up. Maybe Kelly had been wrong. Maybe Demarkian hadn’t come up here to investigate the murder of Lilith Brayne after all.
Actually, it didn’t really matter. Kelly Pratt had been bursting ever since he came across this information, and telling Bram Kahn about it had done nothing to relieve his distress. Gregor Demarkian was a professional. Gregor Demarkian might actually know what it was all this was supposed to mean.
“Look,” Kelly Pratt burst out. “Back in 1938, one hundred thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money.”
CHAPTER 6
1
THERE WERE NO TELEPHONES in the bedrooms at Tasheba Kent’s house. There were no telephones anywhere in Tasheba Kent’s house that Gregor could see, although he knew that there had to be at least one somewhere or, even better, a shortwave radio. You didn’t run a house like this, way out in the middle of the ocean on a rock, with two very old people in it, without having some way of communicating with the standard emergency services. The only emergency service Gregor wanted to contact was his best friend, Father Tibor Kasparian, back on Cavanaugh Street in Philadelphia. Tibor was where Gregor went when the world got to be too much for him. Gregor had a feeling that Tasheba Kent’s house was too much for him. The house and its inhabitants were a deliberate assault on reason. Even its guests were only half-sane. There was Lydia Acken, but there was also Kelly Pratt.
When Gregor finished listening to Kelly Pratt’s chaotic and convoluted story, he went back into the living room and found it empty. Even Hannah Graham had disappeared, although she had left a wineglass full of ice and mineral water on the bare wood of the coffee table, where it was leaving a stain. Gregor put the glass back on the bar and went out into the foyer. It was empty, too. For the moment, the whole house seemed to be empty, and quiet and not quite dark. He looked up the great main staircase to the landing that led to the guest rooms on the left and the family rooms on the right. There was nobody up there, either, but the electrified chandelier was lit. It sent a cascade of light and shadow bouncing down the steps, looking atmospheric and not quite real.
It’s this house, Gregor told himself in disgust. It looks like a movie set. And it’s Geraldine Dart, too, and all that nonsense she was talking at dinner. I’ve started to spook myself. The next thing I know, I’ll be seeing that idiotic ghost.
Gregor climbed the staircase with determination. At the landing, he stopped and looked into both of the bedroom wings. The hallways were empty and lit only by the dim wall fixtures placed between the third and fourth doors on each side of each corridor. No lights came from beneath the doors, but Gregor knew that didn’t mean anything. This was an old house built by a rich man. The doors might fit so closely against their jambs, no light could escape.