The Oldest Flame by Elisabeth Grace Foley Page B

mean? Where there is
smoke, there must be fire. There was another fire burning in
Miss Parrish’s room , and it was from there that the smoke was
seeping into the hall.”
    “You mean she did start it herself?”
blurted Royal.
    Mrs. Meade shook her head. “You recall my
saying to you this afternoon,” she said, “that the solution to this
was something even worse than we had imagined. We have been
regarding Miss Parrish’s death as a tragic accident caused by
someone’s setting a fire for reasons of their own. But it was not.
It was murder.”
    “Murder!” said Grey and Royal together.
    “Yes. Do you know what I think? Miss
Parrish was dead before the fire had even started . The fire was
set expressly to hide the fact that she had been murdered—to
destroy that part of the house so no one would ever know she had
met her death in some other way. That also explains why her door
was locked, and why she did not answer any attempts to wake
her.
    “I had guessed so far—but I still could not
understand why . It all centered on Miss Parrish—Miss Parrish
was the root of the entire mystery. Why Miss Parrish? What had Miss
Parrish ever done that someone wished to murder her?
    “And do you know what the truth was? She had married Steven Emery in California four years ago .”
    Royal stared. So did Grey, for a moment, and
then he looked up at Lansbury. “Is that true?” he said.
    Lansbury nodded, and walked to the table,
where he picked up one of the papers lying there. “Mrs. Meade came
to us because she thought my wife might know the names of any
people or places with which Miss Parrish had been connected in
California. She had guessed at some connection between Emery and
Miss Parrish out there, and we were able, by sending some wires, to
confirm it. They were married, but he apparently left her
about a year afterwards.”
    “Miss Parrish was a very proud woman, I
think,” said Mrs. Meade gently. “She resumed her maiden name when
she came back to Colorado to avoid the humiliation of admitting to
her friends here that she had had a husband who left her. It was a
strange chance that brought them together here as guests in the
same house.
    “It explained, too, another thing that had
puzzled me before—why Miss Parrish seemed to so dislike your Rose.
I had put it down to mere resentment of another girl’s youth and
happiness, after the disappointment of the unhappy love affair Miss
Parrish was reputed to have had. But really it was simple
jealousy.
    “I think Steven Emery seriously meant to
marry Rose if she would accept him—but he was not free, and most
likely knew his wife would never release him to marry another
woman, out of her own resentment and jealousy. That was what made
me guess at the relationship between them—what other reason would
he have for wanting her out of the way? He went to her room that
night—whether to make an appeal to her, or whether he had already
plotted murder, I don’t know. And he killed her. But he needed to
hide the fact—not just the fact of his guilt, but the fact that a
murder had been committed at all. For of course no one else in the
house had any reason to murder Miss Parrish. He set a fire in her
room and locked the door, to ensure that that part of the house
would be completely destroyed. Then, to get everyone else out of
the house and give his first fire time to burn, he went down and
started the fires in the library and drawing-room. Then he roused
the household. That was what woke Chalmers. In the confusion Mr.
Emery even had an opportunity to make an apparent attempt to save
Miss Parrish himself, which no doubt would disarm suspicion, and
which he could make sure did not succeed. He had to go
upstairs, in fact, to get Mark away from the door somehow before he
succeeded in breaking into Miss Parrish’s room, but the smoke in
the hall had already done the work for him. So, with bitter irony,
he ended up a hero for saving Mark.”
    “Emery,” murmured Grey