Murder at Marble House(20)

“Not to mention the brains?” I couldn’t resist adding.

He nodded. “Yes, the brains, too. Absolutely.”

The pavilion came into view through the hedges and my steps began to drag. Jesse stopped a few feet ahead of me and looked back. He studied me a moment before saying, “I’m sorry, Emma. What was I thinking? You shouldn’t be out here.”

“No . . . no, it’s all right.” I drew a deep breath and strode to where he waited for me. “I want to help. I have to, Jesse.”

He smiled grimly. “Aunt Sadie?”

“In a way. She taught me to care about them. About everyone who has no voice. Girls like Clara. Like Katie, who used to work for my uncle Cornelius and lives with me now.”

“You really think Clara’s innocent?” We’d resumed walking again, side by side. Jesse offered me his arm, and I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow. We continued in companionable silence until we reached the pavilion steps.

At the top, I answered his question. “I don’t know for sure. It’s just a feeling I have. When I look at her, with that delicate frame and those huge eyes of hers, I just don’t see a murderer. Do you?”

“Oh, Emma, murderers look like all kinds of people. If recent events have taught you anything, it should be that.”

He referred to the case I’d helped solve, the murder my own brother had been accused of committing. In the end, the guilty party had been someone I’d never have suspected if I’d lived a thousand years. And yet, looking back, there had been signs....

I turned away from him to glance around the pavilion. The card table still occupied the space at the center of the floor, and the crystal ball caught the rays of sunlight slanting beneath the roof and sent them dancing on the ceiling, floor, and columns. The coins had been scooped up, the cards removed. A light scent of incense, though long extinguished, still permeated the air. Better that than the scent of death, I thought morbidly.

I walked farther in, then stopped and turned. “So, what are we looking for that we haven’t already noted?”

Jesse strode past me, circled the card table, and went to the far railing. He turned and stared at the pavilion entrance, then shifted his gaze closer, to the table. “Madame Devereaux sat there, waiting for Mrs. Vanderbilt and her guests. Tell me exactly what you saw, and what you think might have happened, Emma.”

“Well . . .” I studied the table for a moment, picturing the scene as it had been earlier. “Actually, Madame Devereaux might not have been sitting and waiting. It makes more sense that she was busy preparing. Lighting the candles, the incense, placing everything just so. The scene was set when we arrived.”

Jesse nodded. “Go on.”

“If she sat, my guess is it was because someone had come asking about their future.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of the cards and the coins. It looked as if she’d been in the middle of reading a fortune. And because . . .” I fell silent, trying to put my finger on why Madame Devereaux hadn’t been surprised by her killer. Finally, it hit me. “The tablecloth. It wasn’t askew or rumpled. It was just as it is now, except that Madame Devereaux had fallen over facedown on it. As if someone had placed her gently down.”

“Someone who’d been standing behind her, perhaps?”

“Exactly.”

“As you found Clara.” This was not a question, but a statement of fact.

My shoulders slumped. “Yes, but . . .”

“Let’s think this through.” Jesse moved to stand behind the chair, just where Clara had. “Now, supposing you’ve just strangled the woman, and you hear someone coming. What would you do?”

His expression held knowledge of the answer, yet he waited for my hypothesis. I studied the artfully winding path leading from the gardens to the pavilion. I realized with a start that although the shadowy interior of the pavilion wouldn’t be visible from the upper gardens because of the foliage, it was possible from this raised vantage point to catch flashes of anyone on their way down the path. If Clara had come from the house, her white pinafore and cap would have stood out against the greenery, visible to the killer in a succession of glimpses at each break in the hedges.

“He saw her coming,” I murmured. Then, louder, I said, “He—or she—saw Clara coming down the path and made his escape.”

Jesse was nodding. “My guess is our culprit went over the railing directly behind Madame Devereaux’s chair, and then ran between the azalea hedges and through those trees.” He pointed to a stand of dogwoods and graceful willows. He beckoned me beside him. “My colleagues have already noted the broken branches in the hedge. See?”