Free Black Moonlight by Amy Patricia Meade Page A

passed Creighton a slip of paper.
    “What’s this?” he asked of his wife.
    “The scone recipe. If we’re sending some home with Jackson tonight, you’d better get baking.”

“A note.” Jackson mused after Marjorie had recounted the previous night’s dinner and the subsequent meeting with her father-in-law.
    “And all it said was ‘The day of reckoning is nigh?’” Nettles confirmed.
    “Yes. Typed in all capital letters,” Marjorie described. “In fact, if you want to see it, it’s probably in Mr. Ashcroft’s jacket pocket. That’s where he put it after he showed it to me.”
    Jackson nodded to Nettles. “Go check for the note, eh?”
    The inspector obediently left the room.
    “And because of this note, Mr. Ashcroft believed his life was in danger,” Jackson summarized. “So instead of calling the police, he changed his will, and consulted you.”
    “That’s right,” Marjorie corroborated. “In hindsight, I wish he had called the police, but Mr. Ashcroft wasn’t the type to ask for help. Indeed, I think he wanted to use the situation to his own advantage.”
    “So, because of this meeting, you were the last person to see Mr. Ashcroft alive,” Jackson asserted.
    “No, the last person to see Mr. Ashcroft alive was his killer,” Marjorie corrected. “I was simply the last person to leave the dining room following that fiasco of a dinner.”
    “What time was that?”
    “When I left the dining room? Oh, about eight-thirty.”
    Jackson took notes in a small black book. “Where did you go from there?”
    “I went outside to look for my husband.”
    “You didn’t know where he was?”
    Marjorie silently debated whether or not she should mention Creighton’s argument with his father. She had already told Jackson that her father-in-law had had words with every member of the household, but she had failed to impart the sheer magnitude of Creighton’s anger.
    After a few moments’ hesitation, she concluded that it was better that Jackson hear the story directly from her than from the likes of Griselda or, heaven forbid, Cassandra. “Creighton and my father-in-law got into a bit of a row last night.”
    “Bad?” Jackson asked.
    Marjorie nodded.
    “Did it come to blows?”
    “No, but it might have. Selina—”
    “The housekeeper,” Jackson verified.
    “Yes, the housekeeper. Selina stepped in and told Creighton to go outside and cool off. Clear his head. I was about to follow when my father-in-law called me back.”
    “Why was your husband so angry? Because he had been cut from the will?”
    The question sent Marjorie into a tailspin. If she told Jackson that Creighton was now the sole inheritor of his father’s estate, it would cast suspicion in his direction. No, she decided. They’ll find the new will and discover the truth soon enough. Until then, it’s best to let Jackson think I know nothing about it.
    “Mr. Ashcroft never revealed the identity of his solitary heir; therefore, it was premature for anyone to be upset about having been ‘cut.’ No, Creighton was infuriated by his father’s machinations. It was apparent the old man was taking perverse pleasure in deriding his dinner guests. He enjoyed making them miserable.”
    “Sounds like the life of the party,” Jackson commented. “So when you left the dining room to look for your husband, where did you go?”
    “I went outside through the back door. It’s the exit closest to the dining room, so it seemed logical that Creighton may have gone that way. But he wasn’t there. I even checked all the outbuildings and the grounds: no one.”
    “No one as in no Creighton, or—?”
    “No one as in nobody. So I came back inside and gave a quick peek in the kitchen and dining room. Again, there was no one,” Marjorie stated.
    “Your father-in-law was no longer in the dining room?”
    “I didn’t see him, no …”
    “Go on,” Jackson prodded.
    “After the dining room and kitchen I decided to go upstairs. Edward, my