“We met him,” I said, looking toward Mrs. Malloy, “just now outside in the corridor. He thought we were social workers and agreed to let us come in and see you first. He said he would go back to meet up with his wife who had parked the car. You didn’t mention yesterday, your ladyship, that they live with you at Moultty Towers.”
The black eyes darted my way. “I was distracted after being so late for my appointment, distressed over those flower pots being thrown at the car, uncertain as to the advisability of dealing with Mr. Jugg’s associates. My head was in something of a muddle.”
“Understandably you were agitated. It is why you smoked those cigarettes.” There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t stopped her even after she mentioned those heart attacks. And what if, despite her protests, she had suffered another? How much of the fault lay at my door? The question was enough to make me vow silently that I would take on her case, however madcap it seemed, and see it through to what I hoped would not be the bitter end. There was Ernestine to be located and perhaps a villain to unmask. I still had serious doubts of the latter’s existence. The advent of Have Gun might mean nothing. He could have been a mad prankster, out for a night’s fun at her ladyship’s expense. But how could it hurt me to spend a few days helping an ill and troubled old woman?
Lady Krumley shifted a leg, and I’m sure that only by exerting her formidable will did she restrain herself from getting out of bed and marching up and down the room. There were no tubes to restrain her, no crisply starched nurse rustling forward to instruct her to be a good girl.
“Did Niles Edmonds inherit the title?” I got up and poured her a glass of water.
“I could do with a brandy.” The black eyes flashed.
“Well, it just so happens…” Mrs. Malloy reached into her bag but susbsided on meeting my scowl. “I was only going to offer her a lemon drop,” she muttered.
“No, Niles is the son of Horace’s youngest brother. The title went to another nephew, Alfonse Krumley, whose father was next in line to my husband.” Lady Krumley straightened her leg and sipped at the glass of water. “Niles came to live at Moultty Towers when he was ten-years-old and Sir Horace and I were newly married. He has been all but a son to me.”
Mrs. Malloy and I made appropriate noises.
“His parents had died in a freak accident. Sadly, his electric train set blew up and completely gutted the nursery one night when they went in to hear him say his prayers.”
“And the poor little lamb wasn’t hurt?” Mrs. Malloy gave a knowing smirk that I itched to wipe off her face.
“He had suffered an asthma attack and gone down to the kitchen to be cosseted by the cook. Understandably, the incident affected poor Niles deeply. He was afraid to sleep alone for years after he came to Moultty Towers. Sometimes I think he married Cynthia to have someone in his bed.”
“Well, that is odd,” Mrs. Malloy said in an effort to straighten her face.
“Always so afraid of the bogeyman coming to get him.” There was a suggestive glisten of tears in Lady Krumley’s eyes. “And Cynthia, whatever else might be said against her, isn’t afraid of anything or anyone. My husband wasn’t particularly sympathetic to Niles even when it came to his asthma. Sir Horace insisted that Niles used his attacks to get me to spoil him. And it must be said that at age fifty he is still very much a small boy in long trousers. He began to wheeze yesterday when I said I was going out in the car and would not be back for several hours. I did not feel comfortable leaving him until Cynthia came in from her riding lesson, especially as Daisy Meeks who would agitate anyone, was present. A foolish, nattering woman. Another family connection of my husband, living in the village. She has the most irritating yap, like that dog of Vincent’s.
“Was it found?” I asked.
“Pipsie or Wipsie or whatever it was called? Niles didn’t say, nor did I think to ask. All that can be assumed is that Vincent must have gone looking for it in the cottage garden and got it into his panicky head that the animal had fallen in the well, and in peering down to take a look, himself fell in.”
“And who found Vincent?”
“Again Niles didn’t say.”
“And all because the dog got out,” Mrs. Malloy said. “A door left open by mistake. Easy enough done.” Mrs. Malloy didn’t fool me. She had already worked it out in her mind that the dog had been removed from the house so that Vincent would go looking for it and end up being dropped down that well.
“Lady Krumley,” I said, “matters have taken a most regrettable turn since last night. I understand your wish to bring Mrs. Malloy and myself current with the situation, but is there any other reason why you wished to see us so urgently today? Is there perhaps something you consider to be of significance that you forgot to mention? For instance,” I rattled on as she stared silently back at me, “I have been wondering if you know what became of Ernestine’s father.”
“Her father?”
“Ernest the under gardener. Was he around when she was born, or had he deserted Flossie by that time? From the way you described her living arrangements during her illness it doesn’t sound as though she was receiving any significant financial support.” Receiving no reply I kept going: “Of course the young man may not have been making much money.”
Lady Krumley stared down her eagle nose at the bed covers.
“Or was he given the sack for getting her pregnant? This all happened nearly forty years ago, and I do realize that times were different then.” I sat still, thinking that thank goodness society was less condemning now, at least to the point of not routinely referring to children born out of wedlock as illegitimate. Mrs. Malloy started to say something at the moment when Lady Krumley spoke, her voice coming out so deep-throated that I shot sideways in my chair to collide with Mrs. Malloy.
“What I told you yesterday was true. The rumor went around the house that Flossie was pregnant by this young man Ernest. Mrs. Snow, the housekeeper, apprised me of the fact that he was making quite a nuisance of himself coming indoors under any pretext in hope of seeing the girl and also waylaying her in the garden. And when her condition was revealed he offered to marry her. One may assume that he loved her. But he wasn’t the father.”
“Then who was?” I asked, surmising the answer.
“My husband. Sir Horace.”
“Rotten bugger!” Mrs. M. proffered a lemon drop, which seemed somewhat inadequate under the circumstances. “Don’t tell me he wanted to up and marry the flighty piece.”
“He wouldn’t have done that, even had Flossie been of his social standing.” Her ladyship’s mouth curved in a bitter smile. “He was fond of me. I never doubted that even then. But it was a quiet affection, of shared interests and common background. There was never any passion on his part. No fire in his loins where I was concerned. How could it have been expected? I was ever a plain woman. Without feminine wiles. What I did have-being an only child-was a fortune inherited from my family. Sir Horace was badly in need of money when he married me. Without what I brought with me he would have been unable to hold onto Moultty Towers. And the place was everything to him.”
“Until Miss Flossie showed up on the scene.” Mrs. Malloy who’d had her own trouble with errant husbands glowered in sympathy.
“As I told you she was a pretty girl, and clever with it in a pert cockney sort of way, as Mrs. Snow told me.”
“That woman seems to have been a fount of information,” I said.
“She was a loyal employee, doing her duty as she saw it. But even without her input I would have had my suspicions. I twice observed him kissing her in the conservatory.”
“Did you say anything to Sir Horace?”
“It was difficult but I was determined to take the pragmatic approach-turn a blind eye and hope that when the hunting season began the silliness would end. He was after all a man in his late fifties, wanting to think of himself as still in his prime. I told myself that any giddy young girl’s coy ways and flattering adulation would have done to boost his male ego. So I focused my attention on Niles. A mistake. I see that now. It only added a source of irritation to our marriage. When I heard that Flossie was pregnant I clung to the hope she would marry the gardener boy and that they would make a life for themselves elsewhere. On the day that the emerald and diamond brooch disappeared matters came to a head. When Mrs. Snow informed me that she had seen Flossie coming out of my bedroom that morning, I knew the truth. She had been with Sir Horace in his connecting dressing room while I was away from the house at a luncheon. Being confronted by Mrs. Snow’s knowing look was the utmost in humiliation. And when I discovered the brooch to be missing, I lost all control, storming at my husband and threatening to leave him. He retaliated at first by accusing me of pretending to lose his grandmother’s brooch. But I could see in his eyes that he did not believe it. He knew that I was not a liar.” Lady Krumley’s face closed in to even greater hauteur. “You may doubt that, with justification, since I withheld part of the story from you yesterday. But whatever my state of mind I would not stoop to a downright untruth. Sir Horace then insisted that I had misplaced the brooch and in my spite was intent on fixing its loss upon Flossie. He went to battle for her, asserting that she would never attempt to turn his world upside down, especially with the baby on the way. It was then,” her ladyship continued, slumping back on the pillow, “that I knew two things: that he was in love with her-in the sadly desperate way of an older man for a young girl.”