A Fatal Winter (45 page)

Randolph rounded on her, his look warning her to silence.

“It was his idea?” said Max. “Really? Well, I don’t suppose it matters.”

He noticed calmly that Randolph was in the grip of strong emotion. Years of concealing his feelings briefly won out, but his face was red, flooded with the effort of suppressing the anger and self-pity. Max could have sworn his eyes were moist—not with tears for his mother or Oscar, of course, but for himself.

Randolph’s voice rose to an unattractive bleat.

“It was easy,” Randolph said, “because the old man was asleep. He didn’t suffer. Neither of them suffered. They
never
suffered. They only made everyone around them suffer.”

Ignoring the warning looks from Cilla, he began his tale, and a self-absorbed little tale it was, of his neglect as a child by his mother and Oscar. Max listened closely: He knew the ego of men like Randolph, their weak spot, could never be underestimated. Once given the impression that someone was hanging on their every word, their defenses came down. Listening cost nothing, and it worked—almost without fail, it worked in any tense, high-stakes situation, Max knew. Lester began to stir and Max gave him a look that telegraphed,
Be quiet.
He then leaned in to be sure Randolph knew he had his complete attention.

“His contempt for me was the grain of sand in the oyster shell—it irritated, but it created in me a pearl of excellence, and of resistance to tyranny,” Randolph was saying.

Whoa
. Max, listening to the grandiosity of the words, wondered if it weren’t the signs of a megalomania kept well hidden.

“We quarreled. Oscar and I quarreled. We always seemed to quarrel. And then Oscar ‘suggested’ I leave as soon as the holidays were over. The nerve. Giving me the bum’s rush. As if I weren’t as entitled to be here—more entitled—than the rest of them.”

In a low, moving voice, the voice of persuasion and encouragement he was often called on to use, Max said: “And then Leticia died.”

“Yes. We might not have done it. Gone through with it. But when she died…”

“It pushed you over the edge, didn’t it?” asked Max. “You could have turned back at any time, even after the attempted poisoning. But when she died, you knew she had died with almost no money of her own. She had to inherit Oscar’s money or you would end up with very little.”

“If my father hadn’t lost it all, been such a loser…”

“Let me be sure I’m hearing you correctly,” said Max, deciding to pile the flattery on, layer upon layer. “Because I think it was brilliant, the way you thought on your feet here. Your mother died a natural death during the early morning hours. She would often go out to her hothouse, regardless of weather—that was her routine. But her death moved up the planned timeline, so Oscar had to be murdered. And Cilla had to don the disguise you were planning to use as an alibi if needed. That planning for any eventuality really paid off, didn’t it?”

Randolph seemed to glory in the attention, the acknowledgement of how clever he’d been.

But Cilla had pulled away from him. It was an imperceptible shift in body language but Max thought that when questioned separately she would let Randolph fend for himself. She seemed to be drawing on her great reserves of will to survive.

“I think, too, Randolph, that you realized dying people are a soft touch. Perhaps over the years you worked on Oscar, persuading him to leave more money to Leticia. The strategy didn’t entirely work—he left millions to charity and you couldn’t talk him out of that.”

“All that money left to good causes,” said Randolph bitterly. “Donkeys, for god’s sake. I think he had less a fondness for the poor and for animals than a willingness to shaft his family.”

“Perhaps there was an element of that,” said Max mildly. “I don’t think he was the happiest of men, despite his wealth and success.

“But there is another element here, since you’ve shown yourself to be, shall we say, quick to react, Randolph. I personally wonder how long Lester and his wife had to live if by chance Lester left any of his inheritance to you in his own will. Perhaps Lester could have been persuaded in time to do so.”

At this, Lester and Felberta exchanged startled glances, then their heads turned, as if tethered to the same string, to look at Randolph.

“Wait a minute,” said Felberta. “You’re saying…”

“I’m saying if Leticia died first, as it happens she did, she had little money of her own to leave anyone. The bulk of Oscar’s money on his later demise would go to charity, with some smaller amounts to his children—Jocasta and the twins.” He added to himself but did not say aloud:
And
by extension to Lamorna—Jocasta’s natural issue. It was Jocasta’s secret and Lamorna’s. He was leaving it to Cotton whether any of that information had to come out as part of the case.

“Yes, your mother died first,” Max said to Randolph and Lester, “leaving behind for you and her grandchild mere coins in comparison with Oscar’s wealth. The situation for you, Randolph, was unbearable. You’d done what you could to persuade Oscar to your way of thinking. I would bet you hated him for refusing to bend entirely to your will. So killing him became almost a pleasure, didn’t it?”

Randolph’s eyes darted about, glancing off the onlookers, who viewed him with varying degrees of astonishment, distaste, and dislike. Then his eyes turned to Cilla, seeking assurance from his partner. But there was no consolation to be had from that quarter, either, noted Max.

“I wondered a bit why there was an insistence on Alec as a prankster, a bad kid,” said Max. “You both, Randolph and Cilla, spoke of him like this. It was very subtly done, but it was there. Were you trying to set him up as a suspect? I think so. He, after all, was the one to gain a title and money from his father’s death.”

Jocasta suddenly turned on Randolph in a fury: The penny had dropped. “You were trying to cheat me,” she said. Taking in the enormity of this, she put down her glass, as if to bring a sober mind to bear on the situation. “To cheat all of us.”

Randolph gave his cousin a cool, insolent, yet quizzical stare. How, he seemed to say, did this person come to be here? He merely said, “The older generation owes it to the younger to get out of the way.”

Max found that comment especially provocative. It was his own uncle that the man had dispatched without a moment’s hesitation. Max drew upon every vestige of self-control that he had stored in his considerable armory, saying merely, “Your uncle was a vigorous and healthy man who may have had ten or even twenty good years left to him. You robbed him of those years.

“Money means different things to different people,” Max went on, looking at each of them in turn. “Love, given or withheld. Security. The freedom to pursue the goals one holds most dear. There’s nothing wrong with having or wanting money but wanting it too much for the wrong reasons can be a sign of sickness, as it is here.

“But there was this, too: Randolph has a clear sentimental attachment to the castle, and knows a lot of its history. I believe this was part of the motivation. The castle was as much his as Alec’s, he reasoned, and it is an irreplaceable bit of history. He wanted to be sure he had the wherewithal to help make decisions as to how it was run in the future. Perhaps to try to influence Alec when and where he could. That wouldn’t be possible if he had to grub around making a living from his photography.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like,” said Randolph.

“So, tell me.”

After a long silence, Randolph said: “They look down their noses at you, the people of our class, if you’ve only a title and no money.” Randolph, staring at Max, who was “robbing” him of all he’d worked so hard to achieve, uttered this almost inaudibly, a guttural rumble of frustration. Cilla maintained her composure. Only the concentrated stillness of her posture revealed her anxiety. Max imagined this was the usual distribution of emotion between the pair.

When Randolph again began to speak, it was with a complete switch in mood. Max wondered for the first time if perhaps he used drugs, and was high or low on something now.

“I was actually with Leticia when she died,” he said. His voice was a dull monotone. And then he added with a sort of wooden smile, “She was in the middle of trying to show me some stupid plant or other she was so fond of.” Again the note of self-pity crept in. “Fonder than she was of me.”

“So,” said Max, “your first thought when your mother actually died was of concealing the death—of the inconvenience to you that she had predeceased your uncle.”

Even Randolph seemed to realize this was not his finest moment. “If you want to put it like that,” he snapped. “This is nothing but trickery and grandstanding. You won’t get away with it.”

Max thought that was rich, coming from a man with all the personal integrity of a banana republic dictator. He said, with a spurt of anger, “Clearly this eventuality had occurred to you long before, judging by the rapidity with which you swung into action. There was always a chance, with two elderly people so nearly identical in age, that it would be impossible to call which one might go before the other. And that eventuality haunted you, meaning, as it might do, so many millions slipping through your hands. You had thought through this quite often, I’m sure. And when it did actually happen, and you happened to be with her, you didn’t hesitate to act. You put in place your plan B. I would imagine you’d dwelled on and brooded over this for many years. Since the twins came along, in fact.”

Randolph said, “That creepy old man and his child bride. Oscar’s marriage, obscene cliché that it was, changed everything for the rest of us. The arrival of twins changed everything.”

“I can see that it would,” Max said. There was the odd note of what almost sounded like compassion in his voice, but then he added, with all the force of his personality, “What was it you just said about the old having to make way for the young? By the way, tell me: When did you plan to ditch Cilla? Don’t tell me you planned to split this fortune with her.”

From Cilla’s expression, she was already aware that her partner in murder might prove to be an unreliable partner in life.

“It raises the stakes, murder,” said Max to Cilla. “But Randolph was already showing signs that a fortune shared by two was … half a fortune. He’d gotten you to do what he wanted, to carry the lion’s share of the risk, it could be said. And now perhaps he was reneging? It would be small wonder if you, Cilla, simply lost it, as they say. If you were pushed past all reason. If you told the police everything you knew to save yourself.”

Cilla seemed to warm to this sympathetic view of her motives. But she maintained her silence. Draped sullenly over her chair, and with her thin figure in its black dress and ultra-high heels, Cilla was suddenly looking like a spider caught in its own web. She looked tired and drawn beneath the masklike makeup, like a woman waiting on a kidney transplant.

“I would say you had Cilla dead to rights, especially with those fingerprints,” said her fine-weather lover. Randolph stood. “But I have to say her impersonation of my mother was perfect, even to the old-fashioned phrases she used, and to the way she held her head, nose high in the air.” He said this apparently unaware he tended to hold his own head in the same way.

And suddenly, Randolph made a lunging grab at Amanda, pulling her to him. Planting one hand under her chin, the other atop her head, he said, “Anyone comes near me, I’ll twist her head off her neck.” He began dragging the terrified, struggling girl toward the open doorway. Her mother Gwynyth screamed but remained frozen in place. Alec made as if to follow and Randolph made a violent, wrenching gesture to show he intended to carry through on his threat. Max grabbed the boy and held him back.

Amanda began to make a gasping sound as she clawed at Randolph’s hands, a sound harsh and loud against the stunned silence of the room. It was the sound of someone choking and it seemed to have nothing to do with Randolph’s chokehold on her neck. Her eyes frantically sought out those of her twin, desperate to communicate.

Alec said, quite loudly and clearly, “She has severe asthma, cousin Randolph.
Please
let her go. She’s no use to you.
Let her go.
She’ll die in minutes without her inhaler.” He made a gasping sound himself and repeated, “She’s no use to you. She’ll only hold you up.”

It stopped Randolph, who clearly had no idea what to do—Amanda was indeed useless to him now. She began to kick and thrash about, her mouth wide as she fought for air. The girl’s rasping cries were harsh in their ears as Alec made a frantic leap to save his twin, propelling himself across the room at the same moment Max, Cotton, and Essex made a dive for Randolph’s knees. His inarticulate grunts of frustration suddenly turned into a howl of anger.

Randolph threw the girl from him. She spun across the room from the force, arms windmilling to catch her balance. Sergeant Essex, catching her, put an arm around her shoulders, noticing that her hysterical, grating breathing had abruptly ceased. Had the girl been faking? Amanda looked up at her with gratitude. Apparently so.

Randolph, meanwhile, had bolted for the door, Max and Cotton in pursuit. Randolph disappeared up the stairs, headed toward the courtyard. Both men saw him as he disappeared under the archway into the garden.

“He must be headed for the cliff path,” Max shouted. “There’s no other exit from the garden.” He turned back to Cotton. “Go the other way. Head him off.” And he indicated with one arm a U-turn around the castle, where a steep set of stairs led down to the cliff. It was gated but an agile man could just climb over it.

Max saw the gate from the garden standing open, confirming his hunch. He shot through and caught up with Randolph on the cliff’s ledge. He was peering over the edge, gathering his nerve to jump. Randolph looked up at Max’s approach; Max tried to outstare him but Randolph looked away, his intent plain. Grabbing him by the collar and pulling him round, Max pulled back a fist and delivered an uppercut to the chin. He thought he’d knocked him out but Randolph struggled to his feet groggily, looked straight at Max, and took a swing. Instinctively Max ducked into a crouch. Randolph lost his balance, and like a tumbler took a dive over Max’s back. As Max stood, Randolph lost his footing at the edge and slipped on the loosened dirt and rock, screaming as he barely grasped the ledge with one hand, the other hand flailing uselessly in the air. Suddenly, faced with the certainty of death, Randolph wanted to live.