Gift of Fire

villa?”
    Verity nodded. “She was very upset about Doug’s decision to sell. Maggie considered this place her home, and she thought she had a right to stay here. She followed Elyssa out to the cliffs yesterday to see if she could persuade Elyssa to talk Doug out of the deal, but Elyssa was not in a conversational mood, apparently. They got into an argument, and Maggie lost her temper and struck Elyssa. Elyssa lost her balance and went over the edge. Maggie panicked and ran back to the house.”
    “Did Maggie ever realize the significance of the green crystal necklace she wore all the time?” Jonas asked.
    “She knew it had been important to Hazelhurst, so from a sentimental point of view it was important to her. But she never knew it was the key to the treasure. She didn’t really believe there was a treasure,” Crump said. “She was tolerant of Hazelhurst’s search because she loved him. She considered the treasure hunt his hobby, that’s all.”
    “Hazelhurst probably thought the necklace would be safe with her. No one would think anything of an old necklace worn by his housekeeper,” Verity mused.
    Jonas nodded, then winced when his head began to throb. “Spencer was the grad student who weaseled his way into Hazelhurst’s life a couple of years ago. When Hazelhurst decided that Slade was nothing but a tacky treasure hunter, not a genuine scholar, he kicked him out on his ass. But Spencer was hooked on finding the treasure. He sneaked back several times. One night he discovered Hazelhurst going into the tunnel and he followed him to the treasure room. There was a fight, and Spencer must have chased Hazelhurst down the hall to the bedroom exit. He killed him with the stiletto that had been left behind in the chamber. Then he gathered up all that remained of the treasure, which consisted of a ruby ring, and fled. On the way out the door, he remembered the diary, I guess. He tore out the last few pages, the ones he figured might mention him or the hidden passageway.”
    “But he’d left a body behind in that hidden passage,” Crump said. “I talked to him a while ago. He was never mentally stable, but after Hazelhurst’s murder he really started to come apart. He’s been quietly going crazy during the past two years, sinking deeper into drugs and paranoia. He was terrified his crime would eventually be discovered. It was all he could think about—it obsessed him.”
    Verity spoke up. “Slade kept tabs on what was happening to the villa. He even got involved in Preston Yarwood’s psychic-development seminars so he could watch Elyssa. When he found out the Warwick’s were going to hire someone to look the place over, he decided he had to come along and make certain no one found out about poor Digby. He was the prowler I surprised that night in Sequence Springs. He was trying to find out information about you.”
    “He’s been a mental wreck for nearly two years,” Crump volunteered. “He was scared to death you’d figure out who he was. He even followed you and Verity to the other island two nights ago to see what you were up to. He was watching your room at the inn when Verity happened to go down the hall to the bathroom.”
    “That bastard,” Jonas muttered. “What was he going to do with her?”
    “I’m not sure he had a plan,” Crump said slowly. “He just seized what he saw as an opportunity to frighten her. He thought that if he scared her badly enough, the two of you might decide to give up the treasure hunt and leave.”
    “And that, incidentally, is what Maggie Frampton had in mind the first night here when she closed the corridor door on us,” Verity put in cheerfully. “She hoped to scare us off. She planned to reopen it the next day. That’s why she was so surprised to see us bright and early in the kitchen the following morning. She hadn’t yet reopened the door.”
    Jonas stared at her. “Maggie closed that door on us? She knew about the hidden passageway?”
    “Oh, yes, she knew about it, but she had never gone into it. She was frightened of it.”
    “So she never found Digby’s bones,” Jonas concluded.
    “The only entrance to the tunnel that Slade knew about, on the other hand, was the one in the torture chamber,” Verity continued. “He didn’t realize the night he killed Hazelhurst that Digby had been trying to escape through a second entrance. That’s why, when he broke the lock on the torture-chamber entrance door, he thought he’d sealed Maggie