Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

munit, are you sayin’ that Mr. Gordon Sr. mardard his own father and his own son? An’, if so, why is Mr. Armstrong in cuffs?”

I shook my head. “No. Mr. Gordon killed his father and inherited the estate on the terms of the will, as you have described them, holding it on trust for the Armstrongs. But Mr. Armstrong did not know the terms of the will, and Mr. Gordon was not about to tell him.

“Now, Mr. Armstrong was the gardener. He was familiar with the tool shed and he had no doubt about how his employer had pulled off the murder. The thing was, he would never be able to prove it, and so he he had no choice but to accept almost forty years of humiliation—and Charles Sr. did enjoy inflicting a bit of humiliation on those around him—working as a gardener in the house that he knew the old man had intended to be his.

“Then, almost forty years later, he hooks up with a young lady who works as a secretary at the very law firm where Gordon’s will is safely stashed away. Now, if Old Man Gordon was obsessed with his heritage, so was Robert Armstrong, but in a very different way. It is not long before he tells his girlfriend, Lizzie, all about it, and she says to him, ‘Why don’t I sneak a look at the will and see if there is anything in it that we can use to claim your inheritance?’ But what she finds is a bombshell. What she finds is that as soon as Charles Sr. dies, the estate passes to the Armstrongs.”

I looked at Armstrong and Lizzie. “They found exactly what Gordon had found all those years before, that the only thing standing between them and a fortune was another man’s life. And Armstrong already knew how Charles Sr. had done it. All he had to do was repeat the exercise.

“But, there was a hitch, that safety clause that the old man had put into the will—if Old Man Gordon were to die before marrying Mrs. Armstrong, and upon his death his son were still alive and in residence at the castle, then the estate would go to his son.” I paused and nodded, looking at Pam. “But, of course, it was rumored all over the island, and nobody knew for sure whether it was true or not—that both Charles Sr. and Charles Jr. were Old Man Gordon’s sons. It was even odds that they were not father and son, but half-brothers. So they both had to be eliminated. Did you ever have his paternity checked, Pam?”

She shook her head. “They were both as bad as each other. Charles was my son, not theirs. He was good and kind and gentle, nothing like either of them.” She stared at me a moment. “If he did it, why did he always maintain it was murder?”

I shrugged. “What better cover?”

She sighed, then looked at Mackenzie. “So what happens to me now? Do I lose everything?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Old Man Gordon was very concerned not to be taken advantage of. He was as canny as a Scotsman, even if he was an American. He had it written into the will that if he or his son were murdered, the trust would fail and the entire estate would go to his immediate next of kin. That would be you, Mrs. Gordon.”

Armstrong leaned forward on the sofa, his face crimson and the veins in his head swollen and pulsing. He screamed, “Ut’s mine, you filthy, whooring bitch! Ut’s mine! D’ya hear! Mine!”

She didn’t flinch. She watched him coolly and when he’d finished, she softly shook her head. “No, Bobby Armstrong. It’s mine.”

EPILOGUE

“It’s the Gulf Stream,” I said. “It comes all the way from Mexico, bringing warm currents and warm air.”

The full moon was sitting about four inches above the horizon, laying a deceptive path of liquid light across an inky ocean to a soft, sandy shore, where small waves spilled onto the beach and then sighed as they withdrew back into the deep.

Dehan pulled the bottle of white wine from the ice bucket we had stuck in the sand between us and refilled my glass and hers.

“I don’t care,” she said. “England is supposed to be foggy and rainy, with cute red phone boxes and big green hedgerows. It is not supposed to have palm trees and white sandy beaches.”

I shrugged. “This is Cornwall. Cornwall is different.”

She sipped. “This is a weird island.”

“It’s a weird archipelago.”

“Good weird, but weird.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “So Pam is paying for this?”

“She insisted. She wanted to honor her husband’s commitment.”

“So you thought you’d go for a two-week tour of five-star hotels in a self-drive classic car at two thousand bucks a week.”

“It’s an Aston-Martin DB6, like the one James Bond drove. I thought it was fair. I ruined my tuxedo to save her castle, it was the least she could do.”

She rested her head on my shoulder and we both sipped. “You’re about as weird as this archipelago, you know that.”

“It’s why you like me. You’re as weird as I am.”

“You never did tell me what your connection is with this place.”

“Nope, but I will.”

She sighed. “So where to tomorrow?”

“I thought we’d stay at the Old Parsonage in Oxford and then move on to the Ritz in London. There we can go to the opera at Covent Garden before flying back on Friday.”

She was quiet for a while, then said, “Back to the Bronx and the 43rd Precinct.”

I nodded. A cool breeze blew in off the sea and touched our skin. I kissed the top of her head.

“It’s the same moon, you know, here and there.”

BOOK 12

THE BUTCHER OF WHITECHAPEL