Poinsettias and the Perfect Crime Read online

  “Have you even seen the crime scene? It’s obviously not the Murder Mystery Fans! The knife used was made for the job it did, and since when has anyone living in Merryfield known how to break into a safe? What’s more, why would they have wanted Bill Wrexton to die?” I said, unable to stand by and listen to this nonsense any more.

  “I have seen the scene of the crime and forensics are on their way now… not that it’s any of your business,” Walter Miller said, bristling immediately. “Before you open your mouth, little lady, maybe you should ask your friends why they wanted Bill Wrexton dead.”

  I looked at Deirdre who looked back with a surprisingly shame-filled expression.

  “I was going to tell you earlier when we chatted. We did have a bit of a disagreement. It was actually rather nasty, dear. I was going to tell you when we met before…”

  “How nasty?” I asked, scarcely able to believe I was hearing these surprising words coming out of the mouth of someone I’d looked up to for advice on flower-growing and had seen as a kind of grandma figure.

  “I’m sorry to say that it was pretty bad. You see, as well as reading murder mysteries we do like our fair share of true crime…” Oh no, this was not looking good, I silently thought, sensing Walter Miller preening next to me. “We stumbled upon a true crime story that related to the Wrexton family. Let me put this into your head, dear: Have you ever asked yourself how the Wrextons got to be so wealthy?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” I confessed, considering her words and wondering what this had to do with the murder. “I just assumed that their family had always been rich and the money and assets were passed down through generations. People can live off interest from their investments, I believe.”

  “I’m sure I imagined the same to be true, but that was before Lucinda found out about the family secret,” Deirdre continued.

  I felt my ears prick up at the mention of a family secret. Could it be related to what Fergus had been talking about?

  “What family secret?” Walter Miller barked, beating me to the punch.

  “That’s the question we wanted to ask Bill. Usually, I would take no for an answer, but there was something about the way he tried to avoid the question that piqued the club’s interest. You’ll never guess what he did next,” she said, chatting merrily, as if there wasn’t a police officer standing listening, practically champing at the bit to arrest her for a violent murder.

  “What did he do?” I asked, thinking I could probably guess. The answer was, after all, standing in front of me.

  “He didn’t invite any of us to this year’s ball! Can you believe it? All we wanted to do was ask about his family tree and see if we could find out any more about a historical mystery, but he excluded us. I’ve been coming to this ball since they started throwing it thirty years ago. I’m afraid to say that we didn’t take kindly to that…”

  “So you came here and murdered a man for not inviting you to his ball,” Detective Miller triumphantly finished.

  Deirdre blinked at him a few times. “No, dear, we decided to masquerade as waiters and see if we could do a little research and have a little fun. I don’t think I’ve ever done something as bad as that before in my entire life… but I don’t mind saying, it was rather thrilling.”

  I glanced down at Deirdre’s shoes. They had mud on them.

  Honestly, was there anyone at this ball who hadn’t been snooping around outside?

  “That sounds like a bundle of lies, but I’ll get to the truth,” Detective Miller said, reaching for his handcuffs.

  “You’re not seriously going to arrest any of the club, are you?” I said, scarcely able to believe that Walter Miller was really going to credit these little old ladies with murder.

  “Don’t underestimate them. They’re morbid! They’d probably find it amusing to murder someone and then watch the police try to solve their twisted mystery. It’s what their club has been building up to all along. Reading about murders in books just isn’t enough for them any more.” Walter Miller shot a disgusted look in the direction of Deirdre and the rest of the fake waiting staff.

  I was about to contradict him when I actually thought about what he was saying. For Walter Miller, it wasn’t too terrible a theory. There were plenty of incidents of people who wrote or read about murder turning bad - or perhaps merely letting the bad that had been inside of them all along get out into the open. Just the other week, I’d read about a writer who’d documented the murders he’d committed in the fictional novels he’d written.

  I bet someone had still given him a one-star review on Amazon.

  “I think you should approach this more objectively. There may be people present with a better motive to murder Bill Wrexton,” I said, finding it hard to believe that the club, strange as they could be, would actually commit such a terrible crime. What’s more, I couldn’t actually imagine them overpowering Bill Wrexton. He hadn’t been a small man and he was a good thirty years younger than most of the Merryfield Murder Mystery Fans.

  Walter Miller turned and looked at me, as if realising I was present at the party for the first time. I didn’t like that look. “Let’s take a walk. I think it’s time we question the family of the deceased… and I’m sure they’ll be interested to find out that you’re here.”

  I frowned. “I was invited!”

  Walter laughed. “Oh, that is a good one. Everyone who’s anyone knows about your feud with Cordelia Wrexton. You tried to scar her with acid. She’s a good citizen, but I still don’t think she would have forgiven you enough to invite you to this ball. Her family has always been far too understanding about the trauma you put her through.” Walter Miller’s moustache bristled. “I still think you were very fortunate indeed that they didn’t take the matter to the police. You’d have been locked up in a young offender’s correction facility faster than you could say ‘bad parenting’.”

  “That is not what happened…” I said, dragged back to my teenage years and the injustice I’d suffered at the hands of the principal and all of the other adults in charge of my education. I hadn’t stood for it then, and I wasn’t about to keep quiet now.

  “Save it. We’ll get to the truth of this matter,” Walter Miller said, firmly gripping my arm and frog-marching me to the staircase.

  “What are you doing with my sister?” Charlotte materialised in front of the detective, blocking his path with her arms folded over her chest.

  “She isn’t supposed to be here. Given the circumstances, I’d like to find out why.” Walter Miller reached out and grabbed a mince pie off a table we passed. He was never one to miss the opportunity of free food.

  “You weren’t invited either,” I observed.

  “Some of us have to work, even if there are fancy parties going on!”

  “But you’ve never been invited. That must mean the Wrextons don’t like you,” Charlotte mused, unaffected by Walter Miller’s blustering. “I bet it would be a real coup for you to come to the family’s rescue at their time of need. It would probably ensure that next year you received an invite to a party you’ve always been excluded from. Is that why you did it?”

  I looked at my sister in amazement, and then I looked back at Walter Miller.

  “Did what?” The detective had gone all slack-jawed.

  “Murdered Bill Wrexton, of course!”

  “I… I didn’t. I was working down at the station. I have an alibi!” Walter Miller said, recovering himself when he remembered that he wasn’t the killer. “How dare you accuse me? I am an officer of the law!”

  “But you’re not above the law, not when it comes to murder,” my brave sister continued.

  I discovered I was enjoying this conversation.

  “Wait a second… I know you! You’re her sister,” the detective said, shooting a murderous look my way. “I do not have to listen to you. You were probably both in on this whole thing. Did you think that you could trip me up with your tricky words? I know that your family had something to
do with this, and I’ll get to the bottom of it. Mark my words, or my name isn’t Detective Walter J Miller.”

  “But that’s not your name. Detective isn’t actually a part of your name, is it? Unless your parents were very confident about the job you were going to have when you grew up…” My sister was on form tonight.

  “I have a mind to arrest you both for obstructing a murder investigation! No more talking. And you,” he glared at my sister. “You’re coming with us, too. This is all a conspiracy. I can almost taste it…”

  “Charlotte, what’s going on?” Samuel appeared by my sister’s side as Walter Miller shepherded us both up the stairs towards the surviving Wrexton family members. “Should a member of the police be exerting force when he has no reason to suspect you are in any way implicated in this crime? You could get him struck off.”

  Walter Miller frowned at this new thorn in his side. “You’re another one of them, aren’t you?”

  “What might you be implying, Sir? Do you have the evidence to support your claims?”

  The detective muttered something unintelligible.

  “Diana! You didn’t do it. I know you didn’t do it.” George rushed down the stairs, where he’d presumably been talking to Cordelia again.

  I shut my eyes. This was just getting more and more out of hand. “I know that I didn’t do it.” But you might have done, I silently added.

  “Is this because you’re the one found the body? Cordelia told me that her mum told her it was you who found him. They have to know that it wasn’t your fault,” my ex babbled.

  “You found the body? You didn’t say anything about that when we were…” Samuel said, and then stopped talking.

  Charlotte shot him a suspicious look before giving me the same.

  I silently wished that I could tell both Samuel and George to put a sock in it.

  Walter Miller turned to me with a crazed kind of glee on his face. “Well, well… aren’t we in trouble?”

  “You can’t arrest someone just because they were unlucky enough to find the victim of a terrible crime,” I said when Walter Miller reached for his handcuffs for the second time that night. “I wasn’t even on my own! I was with Fergus. He can tell you that.”

  “Bill Wrexton was in his study when he was killed. What were you doing in the study with him?” Walter Miller asked, his eyes glinting with malice.

  He did have me there. “We were looking for some peace and quiet,” I suggested limply, resorting to the excuse that Fergus had used with Gillian Wrexton. I hadn’t considered that this was going to come back to bite me.

  “I’m sure you were! Some peace and quiet so that you could murder a man and steal from him. It’s a fine conspiracy you’ve concocted, but one I can see straight through…”

  We reached the top of the stairs and I exhaled with relief. “There isn’t any conspiracy going on. I assure you, there’s a reasonable explanation that doesn’t involve any ridiculous and unfounded…”

  “…and that’s why it’s all a big conspiracy,” Fergus finished saying to his listening audience just as we arrived within earshot.

  We were all in so much trouble.

  “I know you, don’t I?” Detective Miller narrowed his piggy eyes at Fergus.

  Fergus looked him up and down. “I doubt that. I don’t think we’d be on the same dating apps.”

  Walter Miller’s face turned red, like a bomb about to detonate.

  Fergus just turned away and carried on what he was saying. “The family diamond, which I know you don’t want to talk about, and I’m not pushing you on, is, I believe, subject to a very ancient curse. This curse is what I think influenced the terrible events that led to your husband’s tragic demise. Might it have been possible that your husband never told you about the existence of such a gem?”

  Gillian Wrexton looked deeply thoughtful - a look I’d never have expected anyone to have on their face after Fergus had just stopped talking. “I do think Bill might have had his secrets, but I really don’t think it’s likely.”

  “Everyone has secrets, but that doesn’t mean there was a cursed diamond in the safe,” I said, stepping in and glaring at Fergus.

  He looked politely back. I almost felt like dragging him aside and telling him to quit taking advantage of a woman who’d just undergone the very sudden shock of losing her husband. All things considered, she was taking it incredibly well, but I knew that it may not last.

  “What kind of curse is there supposed to be on this diamond?” George asked, looking ready to scoff at anything Fergus said.

  “I bet you’d like to know! If you’re the one who pocketed it, then you’re in for a nasty surprise.” Fergus cleared his throat. “Legend has it, that the diamond of Ptahkhansekh, a pharaoh of the first dynasty, was cursed by his Imhotep during the lead up to the pharaoh’s death. The Imhotep didn’t trust the pharaoh’s offspring. They had been fighting over the pharaoh’s greatest treasure, a very large diamond, and the priest suspected that they would not even wait for their father to be dead before they tried to get their hands on it. In order to assure that this did not happen, he put a curse on the stone. If anyone were to steal it then they would be served terrible misfortunes with a nasty side-dish of death.” Fergus looked around sheepishly for a moment. “That’s probably not the actual wording of the curse, but it’s what happened. Anyway, the firstborn son stole the diamond and each subsequent brother, or sister, who then stole it from their sibling perished. The curse was only broken when one day, crazed out of his mind due to the terrible things he’d experienced since stealing the stone from his sister, the last son of the pharaoh met a stranger in the desert. With his dying breath he gave the stone away to this stranger and thus rendered the curse dormant. You see, the pharaoh’s priest had cursed the diamond to make thieves suffer, but when the diamond was given, rather than taken, the curse no longer worked.”

  “What a fascinating lesson on morals,” George said, folding his arms and looking peeved - the way he had ever since I’d been forced to use my ‘peace and quiet’ excuse.

  “That’s not the end of the story. The stranger was pleased with his good fortune, but a day came when he needed to sell the gemstone. The curse awoke and that was the day he died, leaving the cursed stone to someone else, but with the warning that it could not be stolen and it could not be sold. Until that time, it had not been known that any gain gleaned from the diamond would result in a terrible fate. The Imhotep had never wanted any of the pharaoh’s ungrateful children to benefit from the gemstone. He’d known that, even if they didn’t steal it, as soon as it was passed on, they’d sell the jewel and fritter away the money they’d received for it. He designed the curse to hurt his enemies, but in the end, it didn’t go the way he’d planned. Thanks to the final act of the last son of the pharaoh, the gem all but disappeared from the pages of history leaving only whispers of the terrible curse it carried, and a sea of bodies in its wake, when people tried to defy the diamond’s rule.”

  “Is there a diamond in question at all here?” Harrison asked, gently patting a distraught looking Cordelia.

  “I have no idea,” Gillian Wrexton said. “If it’s as Fergus claims, I could see why my husband would have kept it quiet. It could have been stolen.”

  “But surely then we wouldn’t be looking for the killer? The diamond would have done the police’s job for them,” George said, sneering at the conspiracy theorist and looking at him with jealous eyes.

  “They could have worn rubber gloves - something not readily available to jewel thieves back in ancient Egypt,” Fergus said, as if this solved everything.

  Samuel frowned. “You think there’s something about the diamond itself that kills people? Something transferred by touch?” he asked, quite seriously.

  Fergus nodded. “I believe there could be some quality about the stone itself that is causing this kind of thing. I’d like to investigate it properly, although I think it may be too late.”

  “Is that why you’re he
re tonight, Mr…? To investigate the diamond?” Walter Miller enquired his fingers itching over his handcuffs again.

  “Mr Robinson. Not exactly. I was hoping to ask my good friend Gillian whether or not she was aware of such a stone in the family’s possession, but sadly, we never got the chance to discuss it before events transpired.”

  “So, you weren’t looking for the diamond when you discovered the body of Bill Wrexton?” Walter Miller looked like the cat who’d got the cream, he was so proud of the trap he’d set.

  “No, I was looking for a quiet place to have a talk with Diana.”

  “What were you two planning to discuss? Stealing jewellery?” Walter Miller wasn’t dropping this any time soon.

  “That is a private matter between Diana and myself,” Fergus said, making it perfectly clear what our ‘talk’ had theoretically been about. I wished we’d come up with a slightly less embarrassing excuse.

  “I don’t believe you,” Walter Miller said, eyeballing Fergus and me in turn. “I’ve already spoken to witnesses who have informed me that another man was at the ball with Diana tonight. So, unless her character is just as despicable as her mother’s…”

  “Hey!” Charlotte said, stepping forwards and looking as though she might be about to assault a police officer.

  Walter Miller jangled the handcuffs menacingly. “The story doesn’t add up.”

  “I’ll tell you what doesn’t add up… why did you come here in the first place?” I said, addressing George.

  “I came to tell you that I love you. It’s what you want, isn’t it? I thought that was what you wanted,” he said, looking at me earnestly.

  “When I told you I didn’t want a relationship with you, you thought that meant I wanted you to come here and make some huge gesture in front of everyone?” I shook my head in awe. How could someone with the brains to be a top chemical analyst be so brainless when it came to social interaction?

  “You know what it’s like. What women say they want and what they actually mean are two different things.” George looked around the ring of people and scored scathing looks from everyone apart from Walter Miller, who appeared to genuinely consider this new piece of advice.