And One to Die On(90)

“Only on the first list?” Kelly Pratt asked.

“That’s right,” Gregor told him. “That was what got Carlton so excited. He got hold of those lists. After that first one, the black feather boa disappeared. It did appear on the neck of the woman calling herself Tasheba Kent, though. That woman wore a black feather boa prominently for weeks afterward. I can only assume that Cavender Marsh found some way of getting it away from the villa and to his play-acting wife.”

“I told the police the boa had belonged to Tash,” Cavender Marsh said. “I told them Lilith had stolen it one day when we visited Tash in Paris, because Lilith was obsessed with my relationship with her sister. They said they understood.”

“I’m sure they did,” Gregor said drily. “Especially after you spread around the French franc equivalent of twenty-five thousand dollars to increase their capacity for empathy. That was your second mistake, by the way. Not that you bribed the French police. That was not only necessary, but customary at the time in cases of the sort this was supposed to be. The mistake was in where you got the money, in four twenty-five-thousand-dollar chunks.”

Cavender said nothing. His eyes were on Gregor Demarkian, as if he were a snake charmer.

“Where did they get it?” Lydia Acken asked.

“They got it from Lilith Brayne’s bank account,” Kelly Pratt put in excitedly. “That’s where they got it. But how did they get it?”

“Mr. Pratt found the discrepancy in the bank account,” Gregor Demarkian explained to them. “Four very large withdrawals to the tune of the French franc equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars, all made after the supposed death of Lilith Brayne.”

“But how could they do that?” Mathilda Frazier asked. “She couldn’t just show up at the bank looking like Lilith Brayne, could she? The story must have been in all the papers. She would have caused a sensation.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Gregor told her. “If Lilith Brayne had shown up at a French bank looking like Lilith Brayne and trying to withdraw twenty-five thousand dollars—even once, never mind four times—she would most certainly have caused a sensation. But the explanation is very simple. The money was not in fact withdrawn from Lilith Brayne’s bank account. It was withdrawn from Lillian Kent Day’s bank account.”

“Who’s Lillian Kent Day?” Lydia Acken asked.

“Lillian Kent was the name with which Lilith Brayne was born,” Gregor explained. “Lillian Kent Day was the name by which she was legally known in France in 1938, because she was the wife of one John Day, otherwise known as Cavender Marsh. Like a lot of famous people, Lilith Brayne preferred not to be famous every minute of every day. My guess is that the people at the bank didn’t even know she was Lilith Brayne. She was just a respectable bourgeois woman called Madame Day.”

“I found the discrepancies in the money,” Kelly Pratt said proudly. “While I was looking over the background to come up for the weekend. We all wanted to make sure the auction would go off without any lawsuits. So I was working it all up, you see.”

Cavender Marsh couldn’t tell if they saw or not. None of them was paying attention to Kelly Pratt. They were all looking at Gregor Demarkian, stunned. Cavender Marsh smiled a little to himself.

“You know,” he said, “all of this is very interesting, and of course it’s also true, but it doesn’t explain very much, does it? About what’s been happening here this weekend. That’s what they all really want to know about. That’s what the police are going to want to know about, too.”

“I think it explains a great deal,” Gregor Demarkian said. “In fact, I think it’s the only way we can explain anything of what happened here. You came to this island to live with Lilith Brayne because you had to, not because you wanted to, and you’ve been wishing her dead for all the sixty years since.”

“That still doesn’t explain how I killed her,” Cavender Marsh said. “It doesn’t explain how I could have swung around what must have been a very heavy object, at my age. My condition is good, but nobody’s condition is that good at eighty.”

“That’s true,” Gregor Demarkian agreed. “This time you had help. This time you didn’t actually kill anybody.”

“I didn’t actually go hauling bodies all over the house, either,” Cavender said. “I couldn’t have lifted them.”

“That’s true, too.”

“So you see,” Cavender said, “it’s not so simple after all.”