Lady Alkmene Collection: Four fabulous 1920s murder mysteries you won’t want to miss!. Vivian Conroy

to die that way.’

      ‘He had made other people very unhappy. He was living a lie, smiling like he was a happy man.’

      Jake said, ‘So? Did he deserve to die for that reason?’

      The young man shifted his weight. ‘We are not talking about his death here, but about what he was guilty of.’

      Jake was unperturbed. ‘Isn’t the one tied in to the other?’

      The young man pursed his lips. ‘Maybe. But I asked you a question. How badly do you want your story? Will you take money to drop it?’

      Jake laughed. ‘You are not the first to offer me money to drop it. If I play this well, it could make me a rich man.’

      The young man stepped forward. ‘You toad! Using other people’s hurt for gain.’

      Jake lifted a hand. ‘I didn’t say that I am actually accepting money. I only observed I could take it and be rich. But I am not. You do have a temper. Were you in Silas Norwhich’s house the night he died? Did you argue with him and push him? Or did he just back away from your grabbing hands and fall on the hearth rim by mistake? Was it really an accident?’

      The young man laughed shortly. ‘Oh, he backed away from me all right. But when I left him, he was still alive. I do not know how he died. I am not one bit sorry for it, but I do not know how, and I was certainly not responsible for it.’

      Jake smiled. ‘I am glad to hear it. Now I want to know what information you do have for me. Or was your threat against me all I am going to get in exchange for my long walk out here?’

      ‘You sniff out people’s private affairs. You deserve some hardship for it.’ The young man raked back his hair. ‘I can only tell you it is better to forget about it.’

      Alkmene said, ‘Others have said that too. But nobody has given us any good reason so far.’ She hesitated a moment, then she said, ‘Silas Norwhich was a deluded man. He made mistakes, not just in the past when he came here to convince his brother’s wife to set him free, but also when he took on Evelyn Steinbeck as his heiress. He did not know she was a fake.’

      Jake stared at her as if he could not believe she was just telling this to somebody. But Alkmene continued, ‘I assume I am telling you nothing new in revealing she was a fake. That you already knew. But it might be new to you that Silas Norwhich earnestly believed her to be his heiress. The one he had sought for years, to set things right.’

      ‘Not even that is new to me,’ the man said with a smile. ‘I heard it from his own lips, but I did not believe him. I believed he had taken her on as an extra insult to my mother.’

      Jake shifted his weight. ‘Mary Sullivan?’

      The young man nodded. ‘When I read in the papers about Mr Silas Norwhich appearing everywhere with the daughter of his late brother, the heir to it all… I…I know my mother would not have liked me to confront him. She raised me to forget him, to despise the sort of man he was, the class he stood for. Vain privileged people who do anything to preserve their titles and their wealth.’

      Alkmene cringed under his assessment, not daring to look at Jake.

      The young man said, ‘But I went anyway. I wanted to see him and see for myself how he responded when I told him who I was. I chose a public spot so it would be painful if he tried to assault me. I was not afraid of him, but I wanted the encounter to hurt him, not me. He deserved every embarrassment he could get. It turned out differently. He was indignant, as if I was doing him wrong. Apparently he didn’t believe me. So I came to his house to prove it.’

      ‘With a birth certificate,’ Alkmene said.

      He nodded. ‘He wanted to keep a copy to have his lawyers verify it. I told him he could not trust his lawyers as they had lied to him all along, producing this fake heiress for him. This Steinbeck woman who was supposedly my mother’s daughter born after she had left for America.’

      He laughed softly. ‘Oh, they had done a clever job, choosing a girl whose mother had come from England and who was dead. A girl who even looked a little like my mother in her youth. So clever. I told him, warned him. But he did not believe me. He had such confidence in those lawyers.’

      ‘And then?’ Jake prompted.

      ‘I left him sitting at his desk, with the copy he had wanted. I left him believing in his stupid lies. And the next day he was dead. I read it in the paper.’

      Alkmene waited a moment. ‘Your mother? Is she still alive?’

      He nodded. ‘After his death I could do no less than inform her of what I had done. How I had sought a confrontation, which she had been so anxious to avoid, for all of those years. She was angry with me of course, but foremost worried that I would be charged with murder if it ever got out who I was. I tried to reassure her that nobody would make the connection. But then you began to appear everywhere. Even here. In Cunningham, which was supposed to be a place nobody knew about, except for the lawyers engaged by the dead man himself.’

      He took a deep breath. ‘There is no point in pursuing this. My father, if I can call him that, is dead. So is his brother who drove my mother into despair. I can only be accused of murder if you push this any further. Is that what you wish? Are you protecting this fake heiress by hounding me?’

      Jake shook his head. ‘Far from it. We are after the killer and we now know it was not you. You left him alive. It makes sense. You wanted something of him.’

      The young man flushed painfully. ‘Is it not just,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘that he would pay something for the hurt done to my mother and me? We have lived in poverty for all of our lives. I have done all kinds of lowly jobs. She laundered for people, cleaned house, but she is getting too old for that. All I wanted was a good old age for her.’

      Jake nodded. ‘You might still get it.’

      The young man looked puzzled. ‘How come?’

      ‘Evelyn Steinbeck confessed the truth to us. She will be going back to America, without any form of inheritance. Mr Pemboldt, the lawyer, knows that she was a fake and he will not push for her to stay. You can come forward as the real heir and inherit everything that Mr Silas Norwhich ever owned.’

      The young man scoffed. He raised a hand and rubbed his neck. ‘I am not even sure I want that. I have stood face to face with him and he denied my existence to me. He was exactly that vain, presumptuous man I had always believed him to be.’

      ‘You can think about it,’ Jake said. ‘There is no need to decide upon the spot. But I think you should go and show yourself to Mr Pemboldt. He wasn’t involved in the disastrous turn the deception took. He honestly wanted to help out, relieve Silas Norwhich’s guilt about the past. If you can prove you are indeed Mary Sullivan’s son, he will fight for you in court to let you have every penny of the estate that is rightfully yours.’

      The young man gasped for air. ‘I had not thought that possible.’ He raked a hand through his hair again. ‘Mother might hate me for this. She has raised me to forget about my father and never want a penny of his fortune.’

      Alkmene smiled at him. ‘Or she might be grateful when you explain to her what drove you to it. Your love for her, the wish she would be cared for as she gets older. Silas Norwhich wanted to set things straight. He was sorry for the harm he had caused and he spent many years trying to do penance for it. He even died because of it. I think that does mean something.’

      The young man hung his head. ‘When I first met him, I was livid with rage. I did not see him clearly and only hated him for denying it all. But when I saw him at his house that night, it was different. He was different. A broken man. He knew he had been lied to, but he still kept saying it could not be true. He was desperate, and it was pitiful to see. I could for the first time in my life believe he might have been sincere in his attempts to set it straight.’

      ‘See.’ Jake nodded. His tone was calm and compassionate. ‘So think about contacting Mr Pemboldt.