“And would that matter? If she did stop you from selling any of Lilith Brayne’s things at auction.”
“It would matter a great deal, Mr. Demarkian. It’s like I told you. Auction buyers like mysteries and legends. This is one of the great Hollywood mysteries of all time, a scandal. Two beautiful older sisters after the same younger man. Passion and intrigue and law courts and newspaper headlines and a romantic ending in Hitchcockian seclusion. We’d do pretty well auctioning off just the things that belonged to Tasheba Kent and Cavender Marsh, but throw in the things belonging to Lilith Brayne and we’ll do spectacularly.”
Gregor Demarkian walked over to the table with Lilith Brayne’s things on it and looked down at it. Then he walked back to the table with Tasheba Kent’s things on it and looked down on that. There was a frown on his face and two deep lines of concentration across his forehead. Mathilda was fascinated. Was this the way a great detective worked? What was he thinking about? Had there been women great detectives, too? Mathilda made a note to herself to check it out.
Gregor pushed some things around on the table with Tasheba Kent’s things on it and then slapped the palm of his hand against the wood.
“A black feather boa,” he said. “There was a black feather boa in all the pictures of Tasheba Kent during the inquest.”
“We’re selling the black feather boa,” Mathilda said quickly. “It’s one of my favorite items.”
“It’s not here.”
Mathilda went over to the table with Tasheba Kent’s things on it and looked it over. Gregor Demarkian was right. The black feather boa wasn’t there.
“I’m going to have Richard Fenster’s head in a handbasket,” Mathilda said furiously. “He’s not going to get off this island until I’ve had every inch of his room, his luggage, and his person searched.”
“Why are you so sure it was Fenster who took it?”
“Because he’s the only one here who would have wanted it.” Mathilda was pawing through all the things on the table. She didn’t see anything else missing, but that didn’t mean very much. She hadn’t memorized every item. “I’m going to have to get my articles list and go over every piece. Do you notice anything else gone?”
“No,” Gregor Demarkian said, “but I never had a very good idea of what was here. The shoes with the rhinestone buckles have been moved around on Lilith Brayne’s table, if that means anything.”
“It doesn’t matter if things have been moved around,” Mathilda said distractedly. “People are allowed to look.”
Mathilda Frazier’s mind was on one thing and one thing only: on Richard Fenster and what he had done to her, taking that feather boa and hiding it away.
Gregor Demarkian had gone back to the table with Lilith Brayne’s things on it and picked up the shoes with the rhinestone buckles on them. He was staring at them with a very curious expression on his face.
But Mathilda Frazier was already, mentally, someplace else.
3
Upstairs in the family wing, Cavender Marsh was awake and had been awake for nearly an hour. He was, however, pretending to be still asleep. Earlier, satisfied that they were all downstairs and likely to stay there for a while, he had sneaked out to the bathroom to have a good washing up. Then he had climbed back into bed, smoothed out his sheets and his blankets, and made himself lie still. He had noticed the gaps in the bookshelf full of scrapbooks and deducted that Mr. Gregor Demarkian had been here. He wondered if Mr. Gregor Demarkian had come in on his own or if he had gotten the permission of Geraldine Dart. Cavender Marsh didn’t think it mattered. The only thing that did matter was that nobody should know that Tasheba Kent was already dead.
Already dead, Cavender thought, and nearly burst out laughing.
Geraldine Dart was on the other side of the room now, tidying things up, moving things around. She was taking away all the bits and pieces of Tasheba Kent’s birthday, as if the sight of a Hallmark card in a red envelope or a two-inch-square jeweler’s box wrapped in red foil paper would give him a stroke. She was even taking the spools of unused gift ribbon off the top of the desk and putting them away in the long center drawer.
“What if he wakes up?” she kept saying to herself, in a guttural mumble that would have been enough to wake him if he had been asleep. “What if he wakes up?”
When Cavender Marsh woke up—officially this time—he had every intention of having the next best thing to a stroke, complete with screaming and crying and passing out. He had every intention of creating the biggest scene on record in the history of just about any. He was an excellent actor, one of the most talented and best trained of his generation. He knew how to give a convincing performance. He’d been giving one to his dear companion now for at least sixty years. She had never caught on for a moment.