“How right you are!” Mrs. Malloy shot me a meaningful look.
“Not that Lady Krumley’s all that difficult. Likes her meals to time, but that suits me fine, and she gives me a free hand with the menus. Why not sit yourselves down while I finish up this steak and kidney pudding and get it into the steamer?” The woman had picked up a rolling pin and was rolling out another circle of pastry. “Then I’ll brew us up a pot of tea.”
“That sounds lovely.” I set down my bag, perched on a stool and watched Mrs. Malloy do likewise. “Have you worked here long?”
“A little over four years. I came about a twelve-month after Watkins, which worked out well. Never lorded it over me, he hasn’t. In fact, I’ve had to set him straight about a few things: laying the table for special dinners, that sort of thing. Mrs. Edmonds can be nasty if all the wineglasses aren’t lined up just right. Comes from not being used to much before she married His Wheezyness. Read all she knows about etiquette in books; you know the type. I’m Mrs. Beetle, by the way, and in goes the pudding.” She cleared away the pastry scraps and wiped off the table before bustling over to the sink to fill the kettle and get down cups and saucers from an overhead cupboard.
“My partner here is married to a chef.” Mrs. Malloy proffered this piece of information with her nose stuck up so high it hit the brim of her hat. “You may have heard of him, seeing as how he writes cookery books.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Mrs. Beetle did not look ready to swoon with excitement. “What’s his name?”
“Ben Haskell,” I told her.
“Not… not Bentley T. Haskell?” Now she did clutch a hand to her bosom and, at my nod, her eyes widened to the size of the saucers she was setting down on the table. “Why I’ve got all his books! Wouldn’t be without them! Every one of my favorite recipes come from… oh, I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels. Who would have thought it? To be standing here talking to his wife. Just wait till I tell my husband.”
Mrs. Malloy was beginning to look somewhat miffed under the fancy hat. “I may not be married to him, Mrs. H. here having met him first you understand, but there’s not much I couldn’t tell you about the way he whips his egg whites and tosses his pancakes. And it could be, if you hurry up with that tea and come up with a slice of fruitcake, that I’ll get his autograph for you.”
“You think he might? Oh, I would be thrilled!” Mrs. Beetle put both feet forward, producing not only the cake but also a plate of potato scones. The tea was hot and strong. A blue and white striped sugar bowl and milk jug appeared in the middle of the table, and I sat contentedly listening to her sing my husband’s culinary praises.
“What a way that man has with ingredients! And his measurements! Exact to the quarter teaspoonful. When he says the recipe makes four dozen biscuits that’s what you get. No going round pinching off bits of dough to eke out two or three more. The other night when that Mr. Vincent Krumley showed up I’d made the ragout on page 336 of The Edwardian Lady’s Cookery Book.” Mrs. Beetle’s face glowed a deep shiny red. “Two and a half hours in a moderate oven and the Queen herself couldn’t have asked for better. It comforts me to think,” she said, again passing me the scones, “that the poor man had a thumping good dinner his last night on earth. You’ll have heard what happened to him, I suppose?”
Mrs. Malloy and I nodded in unison.
“Went out looking for his little doggie the next afternoon, soon after Lady Krumley went off in the car.”
“To keep an appointment with my partner and me,” I said.
“About the decorating.” A certain person, with the initials R. M., was eyeing my scone, presumably to see if it was bigger than the one on her plate.
“Poor Mr. Krumley! Not Vincent the Invincible, was he?” Mrs. Beetle crossed herself. “And no one to give him the last rites. Well, they couldn’t do, could they? Not with him stuck down that well, and no one knowing. Mrs. Hasty from the cottage being away for the afternoon like she always is on a Tuesday. But then maybe he wasn’t Roman Catholic like me. And the other churches don’t give much of a send-off, do they?” Mrs. Beetle went on to explain that she had been happy to convert to her husband’s religion, seeing that her parents hadn’t brought her up in a faith and she had always felt there was something missing in her life, to which Mrs. Malloy responded that she was deeply religious herself, never missing Wednesday night bingo at the church hall.
“When did you get news of the accident, Mrs. Beetle?” I asked.
“It was in the evening around 8 or 9:00, give or take. There hadn’t been any big excitement about him being missing. Mrs. Edmonds isn’t the type to worry about other people, and I imagine Mr. Edmonds was busy pining for his Auntie. Terrible dependent on her he is. Daisy Meeks, some sort of cousin, was here for dinner.”
“We just met her upstairs,” supplied Mrs. Malloy. But Mrs. Beetle was still thinking about that dinner. “A lovely lamb roast if I do say so myself-another of your husband’s recipes, Mrs. Haskell. Miss Meeks is always in some dreamworld of her own. Probably quite clever, but looks and sounds daft, if you understand me. I was just sitting down after finishing the washing up when the doorbell went and Watkins went to answer it. It was Constable Thatcher on the doorstep, but whatever he’d come for couldn’t have had anything to do with the accident because just then the phone rang. And he was as surprised as anyone. Watkins said you could see it in his face, when it turned out to be a call from the police station. Seems Mrs. Hasty had reported seeing a foot sticking out of the well when she got home and would Constable Thatcher go down and investigate.”
“Horrible to be a policeman.” Mrs. M. reached for a slice of cake. “Or to do any sort of crime work-like them private detectives, for instance.” She pensively sighed. “But then it takes all kinds, don’t it?”
“Constable Thatcher’s a decent sort. A bit strict with his nine-year-old son, Ronald, but that’s better than being too lenient, some would say, and then having the lad grow up to be a disappointment.” Mrs. Beetle wiped her floury hands on her apron. “Which from what I’ve heard is the case with Mr. Featherstone, the vicar’s nephew. Seems he refused point blank to go up to university because he’d set his mind on being an actor and when nothing came of that had to settle for any job he could get.” She got up to refill the teapot.
“When did the little dog turn up?” I asked, wondering if anyone had much cared.
“Showed up that evening or the next morning. Poor little orphan!” Mrs. Beetle looked misty eyed, but that could have been the steam coming out of the kettle. “Now where’s he got to? It crept in here about fifteen minutes ago, and I didn’t see it go back into the hall. I wonder if it could have got shut up in the cellar when Watkins went down with the bottles of wine we didn’t use for last night’s dinner.” She looked toward a door to the left of the fireplace and had crossed the room to place her hand on the knob when Watkins came in from the hall. “Oh, good, you’re here!” She nodded at him. “We need to check and see if the dog’s locked in the cellar.”
“I think that doubtful, Mrs. Beetle. I am sure I would have seen if he had slipped in behind me when I went down just now, but if it will ease your mind I will make the necessary search.” Producing a key from his jacket pocket, Watkins unlocked the door and could be heard descending the stairs.