The meeting took place that afternoon in Kate Blackwell’s office. Nick Pappas guessed that Kate was somewhere in her eighties, but she carried her age remarkably well. She showed little of the strain the detective knew she must be feeling. She was a very private person, and she had been forced to watch the Blackwell name become a source of public speculation and scandal.
“My secretary said you wished to see me about a matter of some urgency, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, ma’am. There’s a coroner’s inquest tomorrow on the death of George Mellis. I have reason to think your granddaughter is involved in his murder.”
Kate went absolutely rigid. “I don’t believe it.”
“Please hear me out, Mrs. Blackwell. Every police investigation begins with the question of motive. George Mellis was a fortune hunter and a vicious sadist.” He saw the reaction on her face, but he pressed on. “He married your granddaughter and suddenly found himself with his hands on a large fortune. I figured he beat up Alexandra once too often and when she asked for a divorce, he refused. Her only way to get rid of him was to kill him.”
Kate was staring at him, her face pale.
“I began looking around for evidence to back up my theory. We knew George Mellis was at Cedar Hill House before he disappeared. There are only two ways to get to Dark Harbor from the mainland—plane or ferryboat. According to the local sheriffs office, George Mellis didn’t use either. I don’t believe in miracles, and I figured Mellis wasn’t the kind of man who could walk on water. The only possibility left was that he took a boat from somewhere else along the coast. I started checking out boat-rental places, and I struck pay dirt at Gilkey Harbor. At four P.M. on the afternoon of the day George Mellis was murdered, a woman rented a motor launch there and said a friend would be picking it up later. She paid cash, but she had to sign the rental slip. She used the name Solange Dunas. Does that ring a bell?”
“Yes. She—she was the governess who took care of the twins when they were children. She returned to France years ago.”
Pappas nodded, a look of satisfaction on his face. “A little farther up the coast, the same woman rented a second boat. She took it out and returned it three hours later. She signed her name Solange Dunas again. I showed both attendants a photograph of Alexandra. They were pretty sure it was her, but they couldn’t be positive, because the woman who rented the boats was a brunet.”
“Then what makes you think—?”
“She wore a wig.”
Kate said stiffly, “I don’t believe Alexandra killed her husband.”
“I don’t either, Mrs. Blackwell,” Lieutenant Pappas told her. “It was her sister, Eve.”
Kate Blackwell was as still as stone.
“Alexandra couldn’t have done it. I checked on her movements the day of the murder. She spent the early part of the day in New York with a friend, then she flew directly from New York up to the island. There’s no way she could have rented those two motorboats.” He leaned forward. “So I was left with Alexandra’s look-alike, who signed the name Solange Dunas. It had to be Eve. I started looking around for her motive. I showed a photograph of George Mellis to the tenants of the apartment house Eve lives in, and it turned out that Mellis was a frequent visitor there. The superintendent of the building told me that one night when Mellis was there, Eve was almost beaten to death. Did you know that?”
“No.” Kate’s voice was a whisper.
“Mellis did it. It fits his pattern. And that was Eve’s motive—vengeance. She lured him out to Dark Harbor and murdered him.” He looked at Kate, and felt a pang of guilt at taking advantage of this old woman. “Eve’s alibi is that she was in Washington, D.C., that day. She gave the cab driver who took her to the airport a hundred-dollar bill so he would be sure to remember her, and she made a big fuss about missing the Washington shuttle. But I don’t think she went to Washington. I believe she put on a dark wig and took a commercial plane to Maine, where she rented those boats. She killed Mellis, dumped his body overboard, then docked the yacht and towed the extra motorboat back to the rental dock, which was closed by then.”