“An expert in the behavior of random serial killers, are you?”

  “Lily’s not,” Bernie said. “But I know a thing or two. In my previous job I worked mostly tracking down financial fraud and tax evasion, but on occasion a killer tries to cheat on his, or her, taxes, too.”

  “If you’re going to ask me to prove I didn’t set your blasted garden shed on fire,” Rachel said, “I can’t. But I’ll remind you I have an alibi for the time of Kimmy’s death. Now, I’m going to insist that you leave. Your accusations are getting insulting.”

  “I know you didn’t do it,” I said. “Either the fire or the murder.”

  “What are you getting at, then? You’re talking in riddles.”

  “In the manner of the best housekeepers,” Rose said, “yours is listening at keyholes. I think it’s time we invite Mrs. Chambers to join us, don’t you all agree?”

  Helen Chambers stepped into the living room. “I wouldn’t say listening at keyholes, but sound does travel in this house. Shall I call security, Rachel? If these ladies won’t leave willingly, they might need to be shown the door.”

  “I’m glad you’ve joined us, Helen,” I said. “What did Stephen promise you? Half his share?”

  She studied my face and said nothing.

  Rachel stood up. “Surely you’re not accusing—”

  “I am,” I said. “My grandmother figured it out.”

  “Not entirely.” Rose stood up, made some adjustments to her blouse, and crossed the room to take a chair closer to Helen. She patted her chest modestly. “But I did provide the spark.”

  “We paid a call here on Wednesday,” I said. “Stephen was shockingly rude to you, Helen. So much so that when I spoke to him later and he presented a different side of his personality to me, I wasn’t sure I correctly remembered what had happened. But I had, and Bernie remembered it that way, too.”

  “He always was a spoiled little brat,” Helen spat. She eyed me warily and did not take a seat.

  “What are you talking about?” Rachel said. “You always adored Stephen.”

  The look of fury Helen threw at Rachel confirmed all my suspicions. I hadn’t been sure of my reasoning, not at all. Vague impressions of people I didn’t know well. Random misgivings. Scraps of conversation. My grandmother’s memories of what relationships were like long ago between servants and employers.

  “Stephen would not have been raised to be permitted to speak to the staff like that,” I said. “More to the point, he wouldn’t have wanted to, would he? Rachel told me that when she left this house to move to New York, she abandoned Stephen to his father’s bullying, because she believed you, Helen, would step in to look after him. Not something she’d have done if you didn’t like the boy. When we visited you the first time, you convinced him to play an act in front of us, to make us believe you and he didn’t get on.”

  “Why would she do that?” Rachel asked.

  “For the same reason Helen told me she suspected you of killing not only Kimberly, but your mother.”

  Rachel laughed. “You have got to be kidding me. That’s ridiculous. Helen, do you have anything to say to that?”

  Helen simply stared at me.

  “You invited her to tea at my restaurant,” I said to Rachel. “I don’t normally come out of the back, but my waitress told me you’d arrived, and I thought I’d pop out and be friendly. I was surprised, to say the least, to see how well you two were getting on. Considering that, according to what Helen told me, she thought you were a cold-blooded killer.”

  “That makes no sense,” Rachel said.

  “It makes perfect sense, I believe, to Helen. She knows I have some sort of a rapport with the North Augusta police. She might even think my opinions carry weight with them.”

  “Which they don’t,” Bernie said. “More like the opposite. But never mind that now.”

  “I’m sorry to say this, Rachel, but Helen wouldn’t have been entirely unhappy to see you charged with the murder of Kimberly.”

  Rachel dropped into a chair with a groan.

  “Under the terms of the new will, and with you and Kimberly both out of the way, Stephen would inherit the bulk of the estate. Shortly before she died, Mrs. Smithfield decided to rewrite her will. She must have realized she’d acted in haste in disinheriting Rachel, and she regretted that. She intended to simply go back to the terms of the original will, which divided the estate between Kimberly and Rachel and left an allowance for Stephen. I believe Helen managed to convince your mother that Kimberly didn’t deserve it, and it was time Stephen was forgiven. Stephen, according to the deal I believe he worked out at Helen’s suggestion, agreed to give a substantial part of his inheritance to her if she helped him get back into the will. He went along with what she said, as I suspect he’d done for much of his life. Later, whether Stephen realized Helen had killed Kimberly, or suspected, or simply didn’t want to know, I can’t say, although I think he suspected. I wonder what he’s telling the police right now, Helen. Are you worried about that?”

  “Not in the least,” Helen said. “You have a highly active imagination, Lily. You should save it for decorating your cupcakes. I was too polite to say so at the time, but I found them too dry and the frosting excessively sweet.”

  “I’ll look into fixing that right away. I notice you haven’t denied anything I said.”

  “I prefer not to honor your fantasies with argument.”

  “Helen’s been the housekeeper for my family for many years,” Rachel said. “I have trouble believing what you’re saying, Lily.”

  “For many years, yes. What did Rosemary Smithfield give you in reward for those years of service, Helen? Twenty thousand dollars. The same as the gardener.”

  “I was not party to the contents of her will,” Helen said.

  “That’s my entire point. You were. You were in the room when Rosemary Smithfield wrote the third will. You told her what to say. You convinced her to fully include Stephen, and possibly to cut Kimberly out, although that might have been her own idea. People have said she was mercurial. You might have suggested she give you a bit more, or maybe not if you knew she wouldn’t agree.”

  I had a sudden realization. “You weren’t even mentioned in the second will, were you?”

  If looks could kill . . .

  I turned to Rachel. “You told me provisions were made for staff in the original and the second wills. I assumed, that word again, Helen was included. But she couldn’t have been, not if she witnessed the will. As for the third will, the handwritten one, Helen wasn’t a signing witness. She was mentioned in the will, although not given a substantial amount. For some reason Rosemary decided to remember Helen in the third will, although in a minor way. Perhaps your mother was angry with Helen at the time she wrote the second will, or when it came to the third, she simply decided to let bygones be bygones. Helen didn’t witness the final will, but she was in that room, persuading Rosemary to forgive Stephen. She might have tried to suggest she leave Rachel out, as well as Kimberly, but that didn’t work.”

  “It was an insult.” Helen bit off the words. “Twenty thousand dollars in thanks for a life’s work. I raised her children. I wiped Stephen’s tears after his father yelled at him to be a man. I took the brunt of Kimberly’s teenage temper tantrums. She always was a spoiled little miss, far too sure of her own importance in this life.”

  “My mother treated you well,” Rachel said. “Is this how you repaid her, exerting influence on her when she was dying?”

  Rose was perched on the end of her chair, turned toward Helen.

  “Your mother,” Helen spat, “was an interloper. What did she know about running a fine house? About being a good corporate wife? As soon as she married Mr. Julian she was quick enough to dump her own brat on me to raise.”

  Rachel recoiled as though she’d been struck. “I can’t believe that’s what you thought of us. All these years. I thought you . . . liked us. Loved us, even.”

  “Such is the servants’ lot, dear.” Rose adjusted her blouse once again and spoke in a loud clear voice, enunciating every word. I wondered if she thought Rachel was hard of hearing. “A proper servant must never express what they’re thinking or feeling. That’s the way it was in my day at any rate, and I’m happy to say things have changed since my mother and grandmother were in service. Helen could have simply quit after the first Mrs. Smithfield passed away, if she didn’t want to work for the second wife. I’m going to speculate that she didn’t do that because she’d become too attached to Mr. Smithfield. And him to her? That’s what he led her to believe in any event. Am I right, dear?” Rose watched Helen. “The loyal housekeeper eternally hoping he’d finally do right by her. But he didn’t. He remarried and made himself a new family.”

  Helen’s eyes flashed with remembered pain. He’d noticed her all right. He’d made promises he never intended to fulfill. What a poisoned household young Rachel and her mother had walked into.

  “Then, once he died, leaving you unmentioned in his will,” I said, “it was too late for you to move on. You were too old to look for a new job, and too set in your ways in this household. So you bided your time, and waited. And you spun your web.”

  “Unmentioned. That’s the word.” Helen’s face was tight with anger, her fists clenched. “Unremembered. All I did for him over the years. All he meant to me and all I thought I meant to him.” She paused, breathed. No one said a word. “When he married her”—a poisonous look at Rachel—“that Rosemary, he explained to me that he had to do it. He needed the money she’d bring to the marriage to save the company.”

  “That was a lie,” Rachel said. “My parents had no money. My father didn’t even have life insurance when he died. My mother was barely keeping her head above water until she married Julian.”

  “So I found out, eventually. ‘Never mind, Helen,’ he always said, ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll always take care of you.’ I nursed him when he was sick, I cared for him when he was dying. I . . . I was the one who loved him, when she was off at her fancy galas and parties.”

  “You mean when my mother sought escape from this house through her volunteer work,” Rachel said. “My mother’s marriage to Julian wasn’t a good one. It was a disaster, and she was so terribly sad all the time. No wonder, if he was carrying on with the housekeeper under her nose. I wonder if she knew. Probably, she wasn’t a fool.”

  She knew. I remembered Rachel telling me her mother pretended not to notice a lot of things that went on in their house.

  “I suspect Mom eventually didn’t much care what he got up to,” Rachel continued, “once she finally realized what sort of a man he was.”

  “Mr. Julian was a good man!” Helen protested. “She poisoned him against me in his final years.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, Helen. As for the here and now, you should just leave. Today. I’ll pay you whatever severance you think you’re owed, and then I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  Helen walking out the door wasn’t what I’d hoped to achieve by coming here. Rose spoke before I could. “You must have been shocked when he died, leaving you with nothing.”

  Helen turned on my grandmother. I braced myself to move if her anger turned physical. “He wanted to provide for me,” she said. “He told me he would, but she ordered him to cut me out of the will.”

  This time Rachel’s laugh was full of bitterness. “My mother never ordered him to do anything in all their years together. Better if she had.”

  Helen didn’t seem to hear her. “What was there in this house for me after he was gone? Nothing, nothing at all, but where could I go? No money, too old to start over again. I never married, I never had a family of my own. He . . . he was my life, his family was my family. So I stayed. I worked for her. Her and her brats. Then she got sick. She was dying. My time had come at last. I couldn’t have Mr. Julian, but I could finally have what I was entitled to as his wife in all but name. I told Stephen I’d see he was brought back into the will, and in exchange I wanted half. He was willing enough—he’s a nice boy, but he’s not terribly bright, and he never stood up for himself. He always did whatever I told him to. Yes, I managed to convince Rosemary to replace Kimberly’s name with Stephen’s, but she wouldn’t agree to cut you out, Rachel,”

  “Oh, Helen,” Rachel said.

  “You must have been devastated when the third will couldn’t be found,” I said. “All your plotting came to naught when Stephen sold the tea chest to an antique dealer. But then, lo and behold, it was located. Rachel, you called Helen and told her Kimberly had found it, didn’t you?”

  Rachel nodded.

  “What was that, dear?” Rose bellowed. “I didn’t hear.”

  “Lily’s right,” Rachel said. “I told Helen that Kimberly had located the will. I also told her Kimberly was staying at Victoria-on-Sea in North Augusta.”

  “In doing so you unwittingly signed your sister’s death warrant.” The sequence of events was falling into place for me now. “Helen went to Victoria-on-Sea to get the will before Kimberly could destroy it, but she left without it. What happened, Helen? What went wrong?”

  “I didn’t mean to kill her. I phoned her and told her I needed to talk to her. Some story about the house needing emergency funds for a new roof and I had papers for her to sign.” She snorted. “What does Kimberly know about maintaining a grand house? She told me what room she was in, but I suggested we go for a walk instead. I told her I wanted the will, and I knew she had it. She said no. She said her mother changed her mind and that’s why she hid the third will, because she didn’t intend anyone to find it. Kimberly always was a stubborn brat.”

  Rachel choked on a sob and rested her face in her hands. Bernie’s eyes were bright with interest, and Rose had edged so far forward on her chair I worried she’d fall off, although her hands still gripped her cane.

  “I told her I wanted it,” Helen continued. “She refused. I . . . don’t know what happened, but suddenly she was lying on the ground, not moving. I . . . I thought she was pretending. I left her there and went home.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. “But we’ll let the police sort the details out.”

  “The police?” Helen laughed. “You’re going to tell the police that ridiculous story? Don’t you know when someone’s playing with you?” She looked around the room. At Rachel, sobbing softly. At Bernie, standing by the bookshelf. At Rose, sitting in a blue and yellow damask-covered wingback chair, back straight, hands folded over her cane. At me, watching and listening. “You wanted to hear a confession, so I gave you one. It’s meaningless. Here’s the truth—I went to the B & B that night, but I didn’t speak to Kimberly. Instead, I saw you, Rachel, walking in the garden with Kimberly.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You think you have an alibi? You’ll soon find that won’t hold up. The man who gave it to you? He needs funds for much-needed repairs to his boat or he’s going to go out of business. That can be arranged. When your alibi collapses, and I’m questioned by the police, I’ll reluctantly break down and tell them what I witnessed shortly before my darling Kimmy died. Such a tragedy, sisters falling out. Not my place to say, of course, but I always knew you were insanely jealous of Kimberly, her being Mr. Julian’s daughter when you were nothing but a troubled outsider.”

  “You’re very clever,” Rose said.

  “I can’t have Stephen convicted of murdering Kimberly, so the next best is going have to be Rachel. Lily herself can be a witness; she saw us having such a lovely time at tea the other day. She can tell the police how fond Rachel and I always were of each other. So fond that nothing but my civic duty would force me to reveal what I saw that night.”

  “No one’s going to buy that,” Bernie said. “You’ll never be able to pull it off.”

  “No? Years of deception and betrayal have taught me to pretend better than any acting school would have. You want me to leave, Rachel? I’m leaving. I won’t be back. Until Stephen lets me move in, as I should have so many years ago.”

  I didn’t know what to do next. I’d come here with the intention of confronting Helen with what I’d figured out. Had I expected her to collapse in a puddle of tears and confess all?

  Yes, I can be naive sometimes.

  Helen had told us what happened, filling in the details I’d missed, but when questioned she’d deny it. Would she be able to convince the police that Rachel killed her sister? She well might. “Why the fire in my garden shed?” I asked, stalling for time until I could come up with an idea of what to do next.

  The edges of Helen’s mouth turned up. All the sorrow and pain she’d showed when we were talking about her relationship with Julian Smithfield had disappeared, leaving only malice in its place. “Was there a fire? How unfortunate. If I’d wanted to warn you away from interfering in things that are none of your business, I might have set it, just because I could and because you’ve been annoying me. You’re a stubborn little thing, aren’t you? I might have to warn you again, if you persist with this nonsense of trying to be some sort of Nancy Drew, girl detective.” She gave me a grin that had ice running down my spine. “You and your grandmother. Now, I’ll be on my way. It would appear my employment in this house has been terminated. Without cause, I might add. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers, Rachel. One way or another.”

  “Why don’t we wait for the police to arrive,” Rose said. Her voice was calm, her Yorkshire accent pronounced.

  “They can find me if they need to speak to me,” Helen said. “I wouldn’t willingly go to them to tell them to arrest poor confused Rachel, would I?” She gave us all a grin that put me in mind of the shark tank at the New York Aquarium, where my grandparents had taken Bernie and me many times, and headed for the door.