The Ellie Hardwick Mysteries by Barbara Cleverly Read Free Book Online

by an overzealous Victorian insertion of iron cramps and I had been called in to advise on the restoration. Intrigued to see the original appearance of the tomb I spread out on the library table a set of black and white photographs we kept as a record in the file.
    I looked and looked again at the pictures of the original Aliénore, intrigued and mystified. I compared them with the startling scene I had just witnessed and, unbelieving, I began to arrive at a shocking conclusion. And then there was the Latin inscription running round the tomb. This reinforced my disturbing theory. The words were an easily translatable, common enough formula until I got to the last word.
    What I saw written there was a motive for murder. And it had been there, unnoticed, for nearly six hundred years.
    * * *
    I decided it would be a good idea to scramble out of my unglamorous overalls though the jeans and yellow T shirt this manoeuvre revealed were hardly more appropriate to the leather bindings, the gilded titles and the polished oak of these gracious surroundings. Even so, I was more suitably dressed than the young man who now staggered in through the doorway. Rupert Hartest looked every inch the bereaved fiancé. Stunned, inarticulate, dressed in a white bathrobe, his black hair flopping unbrushed and still damp from his shower, he stood and stared at me.
    He was very good looking in a brooding dark way and very young. I guessed that he was probably in his mid twenties and a year or two younger than me. He joined me at the table and listened in silent horror to the story I had to tell him, dabbing his eyes with the trailing end of his bathrobe. When I fell silent he sniffed, and whispered gruffly, ‘Oh, Taro! Consistent to the last! You silly little trollop!’ He paused for a moment, smiled a crooked smile and added, ‘But what an exit!’
    Deeply puzzled, I pretended not to have heard and said, ‘Your father thinks he knows who’s responsible . . .’
    â€˜Theo Tindall,’ he said bitterly, ‘that’s who he’s got in his sights. The photographer. Taro’s manager, friend, ex-partner and purveyor of strange substances to Taro and others—including myself.’ He shook his head as though he could shake out memories. ‘Hateful man! He was staying with us too, just for the week—at Taro’s invitation of course. Perhaps I don’t need to say that he’s disappeared. Room’s empty though his things are still lying around all over the floor. Mrs. Rose, our housekeeper, says he and Taro went out together in his car early this morning at about seven o’clock.’
    I told him about the bloody finger print on the tomb.
    His relief was obvious. ‘Well, they’ll nail him then, no problem.’ He paused for a moment, thoughtful, and then added, ‘Funny though . . . what possible motive could there have been? He had every reason to keep Taro in good health. He made a lot of money out of her. He discovered her and flogged her talents to the media. Took a large cut of the proceeds. He didn’t seem to resent her getting engaged to me—he introduced us in fact and with all the publicity she could whip up over the society wedding he, they, stood to make even more. Odd, that . . .’
    The scene in the church was beginning to make sense in the context Rupert was setting out. The whole thing had been staged for a photographer’s shoot. No wonder my own finger had twitched on the shutter! The display had been devised for exactly that reaction.
    I decided to confide in him. ‘Look, Rupert, would it be too distressing if I were to show you a photograph I took at the scene? The shot that this Theo had so carefully staged? Your father doesn’t know I took it, by the way. He expressly told me not to.’
    â€˜I can imagine why! But, yes, Ellie, it would be distressing . . . though I think I ought to see it if you have it handy.’
    I took the