Fixing To Die

CHAPTER 24

An’gel heard the sounds of indrawn breaths from several people in the room. Her gaze was still locked with that of the policeman. She let it go a beat longer before she said, “Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate your candor.”

“Ma’am.” Steinberg nodded. “I’ll be ready to start questioning in a few minutes. One of my officers will let you know.” He strode out of the room.

An’gel resumed her seat. The tension seemed to lessen with Steinberg’s departure from the room, but not greatly, An’gel felt. She glanced from face to face, trying to discern whether one of them appeared more worried than the others. After her survey she concluded that, whoever was responsible for the death of Nathan Gamble, he or she wasn’t giving anything away at the moment.

They sat in silence for several minutes. An’gel saw that the officer in the room with them was the same tall young man from earlier in the day. He stood near the front of the room between the windows. He would have a good view of the assembled suspects, An’gel thought. He wouldn’t be able to hear whispered conversations, however.

An officer appeared in the doorway and summoned Henry Howard to the library. Henry Howard gave his wife a quick kiss, squeezed her hand, and then accompanied the officer from the room. A different officer came in to make an announcement.

“Lieutenant Steinberg requires fingerprints from everyone,” he said. “We are set up in the dining room, and I will ask you to come one at a time. We’ll start with you, ma’am.” He nodded toward Marcelline.

The housekeeper started to protest, then evidently thought better of it, and left her chair to head to the dining room. After that, the officer slowly worked his way through the group, escorting them back and forth to the dining room. Henry Howard returned about midway through, and Mary Turner was asked to join the lieutenant.

By the time the fingerprinting was done, Mary Turner was back with them, and Serenity Foster left for the library. An’gel badly wanted to talk to Mary Turner and Henry Howard. One thing she wanted to know was whether the French room door had been locked when Henry Howard went up to check on Nathan Gamble.

When Serenity returned and the officer called for Truss Wilbanks, An’gel seized the chance. She got up and stood for a moment, then casually moved over to join her hosts on the other sofa. Primrose Pace chose that moment to move from her spot near the mantel to another part of the room. She chose a chair by one of the front windows, An’gel noted.

Now that the police were treating Nathan Gamble’s death as suspicious, An’gel wondered briefly about Mrs. Pace’s claims about the man’s peaceful passing. She intended to ask the medium about that as soon as she had the opportunity.

Now, however, she focused on Henry Howard, who occupied the place between her and Mary Turner. She leaned slightly toward him and said in a low tone, “I have a question for you. When you went up to check on Nathan this morning, was his door locked?”

Henry Howard nodded. “Yes, it was. The lieutenant asked me the same thing. I used my passkey to open it.”

“Thank you,” An’gel said. She leaned back and glanced toward the front of the room at the attendant policeman. She realized he had moved a couple of steps closer to the group. He seemed intent on her. No doubt he was curious about her conversation with Henry Howard. She had more questions for her young host but decided she would wait until they were no longer under police scrutiny to pose them.

She focused her gaze on the wall across from her, over her sister’s head. She began to consider the importance of the locked bedroom door. How significant was it?

The lieutenant was treating this as a suspicious death. To An’gel, that meant murder. So, did the murderer need to be in the room to kill Nathan Gamble? If, for example, Gamble had been poisoned, the killer could have been anywhere else in the house, depending on the action of the poison and the method of administration. She wondered if Gamble took any medications. Perhaps it had been done that way. The point was, with poison, the locked door was likely less significant.

If Gamble had been murdered by some other method, the killer would have needed access to the room while the door was locked. The killer might have a passkey. The locks on the bedrooms weren’t sophisticated ones, An’gel knew. They had been updated at some point in the recent past but were definitely not state-of-the-art. Could they be easily manipulated? Another question for Henry Howard.

The killer could have come in through one of the windows from the gallery. An’gel glanced casually toward the young policeman. At the moment his attention seemed focused on Serenity Foster. An’gel leaned toward Henry Howard again. “Were the windows in the French room locked, do you know?”

“They usually are,” Henry Howard whispered. “But I didn’t check them this morning. I’m sure the police did, but they didn’t say.”

An’gel wanted to groan with frustration. Too many variables, too many questions for which she had no answers. She had no hope of being able to get those answers from Lieutenant Steinberg. An’gel was pretty sure he wouldn’t welcome any assistance from her quarter. If only Kanesha Berry was investigating this. Kanesha, the chief deputy in the sheriff’s department in Athena County, knew and respected An’gel. Though Kanesha didn’t precisely welcome An’gel’s and Dickce’s assistance, she didn’t disdain it either.

An’gel refocused her thoughts on the question of access to Nathan Gamble. If the door and the windows were locked and the killer needed to be able to get into the room, was there another way in? An’gel hadn’t quite given up on her notion of a secret passage or a hidden door.

If such a passage or a door existed, where was it? An’gel reluctantly had to rule out the secret passage after a few moments’ thought. The architecture simply didn’t support that idea. There was no unaccounted-for space between the French room and the bathroom next to it that she had been able to discern.

If there was a secret door into the French room, then it had to be through the bathroom, the only contiguous space other than the hallway and the gallery outside. An’gel decided that the moment the police released them from the parlor, she would head upstairs and examine the wall between the two rooms as minutely as possible. Benjy could help her. His young eyes might spot something more easily and quickly, and his young knees could stand crawling along the floorboards far more easily than her elderly ones. He would enjoy the experience, she knew. By now the police would have sealed off the bedroom, of course. She would have to rely on her memory for now for the way the room was arranged. What was along the mutual wall?

Truss Wilbanks lumbered into her line of vision, and his reentry distracted her from her speculations. The man looked dreadful, she thought as she moved from his former place back to her spot next to Benjy on the other sofa. His time with the lieutenant had not eased his mind. That much was obvious. His hands and arms trembled, his legs looked shaky, and he was still perspiring. The man actually looked ill. She wondered if he suffered from any particular medical condition that could account for any of this. If he needed help, though, surely he would ask for it.

Was guilt the reason for his obvious terror? If not guilt, then perhaps it had something to do with the nature of his relationship with the deceased. Was Wilbanks worried that the police would focus all their efforts on him because of that relationship?

An’gel leaned forward and caught the man’s eye. “Mr. Wilbanks, you don’t look well at all. Are you ill? Should we call a doctor for you?”

Wilbanks shook his head. “No, I’m just upset, and I have a bad headache. Thank you, though. This is all a bit overwhelming.”

“If you change your mind, I’ll see that you get medical attention,” An’gel said.

The man had to be dehydrated by now because he had perspired so heavily, An’gel realized. The least she could do was to see that he had water to drink. She called out to the young policeman. “Officer, I’m sure that everyone here is as thirsty as I am by now. Couldn’t one of us go to the kitchen and get water for everyone?”

“I’ll see to that, ma’am,” the young man said. “Just a moment.” He walked to the door and conferred with someone in the hall, then turned back into the room. “One of the officers will bring water in a minute.”

Marcelline stood and advanced toward the policeman. “No one is going to be rooting around in my kitchen except me. I won’t have someone making a mess that I have to clean up later, young man. Let me go, and I’ll take care of it.”

The officer nodded. “All right, ma’am. If you’ll go with the officer there.” He indicated the female officer An’gel had noticed before. Marcelline moved briskly to the door and disappeared into the hallway.

“Thank you, Miss An’gel,” Mary Turner said. “I’m about parched myself.” She cast a sideways glance at Truss Wilbanks. “I’m sure we could all use some water.”

Wilbanks nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.”

An’gel smiled in return. Then she looked at Serenity Foster. The young woman didn’t appear upset or grieving, An’gel thought. If anything, she looked bored. Was that because she was too stupid to understand the gravity of the situation? An’gel didn’t give the woman high marks for intelligence. Or maybe she was innocent and thus not worried about the police investigation? Either was possible to An’gel’s way of thinking.

Now that Wilbanks was back in the room, An’gel wondered, had the lieutenant finished with his questioning? She was getting hungry. According to her watch, it was nearly one thirty, well past her usual lunchtime. She glanced around and realized that Primrose Pace was no longer in the room. She must have been called in to speak with Steinberg again, An’gel decided.

Either that, or she had slipped out the front window near her chair while everyone’s attention was directed elsewhere.

Like when you asked the policeman for water.

That would have been the perfect time for Primrose Pace to act. An’gel looked where Mrs. Pace had been sitting.

The window was open. Mrs. Pace was gone.