“This is highly nervewracking,” Lady Krumley said. “Has to be for all of you. But as I’m at the center of this sorry state of affairs, you’ll have to allow me to feel the need for a courage booster. Laureen,” she said to her maid, “fetch me one of those nerve pills the doctor sent home with me. The bottle is on the table behind you, or did I put it on the bookcase?”
All was well for the moment. Mr. Featherstone opened the door and peered out into the hall and, as arranged, left it an inch or two ajar when returning to stand by Lady Krumley’s chair. Laureen located the pills on the secretary desk and handed one to her ladyship along with a glass of water.
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Mrs. Malloy said, edging in front of me. “Seems like everyone’s finished fussing around and we can get down to business. Me and Mrs. H. here are private detectives sent to investigate the recent carryings on in this house undercover of being interior decorators.” A defensive muttering from Mrs. Beetle the cook interrupted her. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, ducks,” Mrs. Malloy smiled kindly upon her. “No one’s accusing you of pinching the teaspoons or using margarine instead of butter in the cakes.”
“Then why am I here? That’s what I’d like to know. I didn’t understand it when Watkins talked to me this afternoon.”
“You’re not being picked upon, Tina. He’s here and so am I,” Laureen pointed out, only to be ignored by Mrs. Beetle.
“All he’d say was something had cropped up and I was wanted to stay over past my usual time.”
“Those were her ladyship’s instructions, and it was not my place to embellish.” Watkins admonished her.
“My husband’s not going to be pleased. He’s a man that likes dinner at 6:00 on the dot, and it was to be his favorite tonight. A beef ragout. Just like the one that I served the night Mr. Vincent Krumley arrived. From the cookery book,” she said, sending a fuming glance my way, “that one said her husband wrote.”
“Can’t solve a murder without telling a few lies here and there, Tina,” murmured Laureen consolingly.
Mrs. Beetle’s red face, having ballooned with annoyance, slowly deflated. “Oh, is that what this is about? Something to do with the way Mr. Vincent Krumley died?”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head, Mrs. Beetle,” I said.
“He was murdered out there in the garden, while I was bustling about with the pots and pans?” She groped her way over to a chair and sank into it without so much as a glance at Lady Krumley. “And you want to find out who knows what? Well, I’m sorry, but you’re barking up an empty tree in my case. There’s nothing I can say that could be the least bit helpful.”
“You mustn’t think that.” Mrs. Malloy reached out a hand to pat her shoulder. “You’ve already helped enormously.”
“When? How?”
“We’ll get to that soon,” I told her.
“Charmingly, I’m sure!” bespoke Sir Alfonse.
“I’m sure we all hope this doesn’t go on much longer.” Cynthia Edmonds tapped away a yawn with an elegantly manicured hand. “Or am I the only one being bored out of my mind.”
“My dear,” her husband said, withdrawing deeper into his chair, “Aunt Maude is understandably upset and if having these two women make their presentation helps ease her mind we must endeavor to be supportive.”
A small spiteful laugh. “Really Niles, you can occasionally be quite amusing. You make it sound as if they are here selling Tupperware.”
“Are they?” Daisy Meeks clasped her hands together, and her dull drown gaze brightened. “I’ve lost the lid to my salad bowl.”
“All hearts are breaking.” Sir Alfonse stood twirling his wineglass.
“Or maybe it’s called a lettuce shaker? Anyway, is it possible for me to get a replacement?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mrs. Malloy replied stonily.
“Proceed.” Lady Krumley waved a hand in our direction.
“Oh, but surely Aunt Maude,” Cynthia Edmonds said, now looking quite vicious, “we should ask the vicar to say grace… or something of the sort first.”
“I have already prayed to our God of truth, justice and mercy.” Mr. Featherstone inclined his silvery head obscuring his expression, but I could read his annoyance in the stiffness of his posture. He wanted this to be over for her ladyship’s sake, and I sensed, for the guilty person in our midst. The vicar was not a man who would gain any satisfaction from twanging away at anyone’s nerves. I didn’t like it either. But I hadn’t stemmed the series of interruptions, my hope being that a rising panic on a certain person’s part would make a blurted out confession more likely. Mrs. Malloy and I had discussed our strategy beforehand, but there came the point where we had to get down to business.
“Lady Krumley met with me and my partner here on the day Mr. Vincent Krumley kicked the bucket.” Mrs. Malloy stood tapping her fingers on a folded arm. “She wanted to hire us to find Ernestine, as Flossie Jones’s baby was called before it was given up for adoption. What had brought her to this decision was all the deaths there had recently been in the family. They was all elderly, but it’s got to be said some of them did pop off in odd sort of ways-getting mauled by kangaroos, dying in bungee jumping accidents and the like. Not the sorts of ways you’d expect from folk tottering around on sticks and putting their dentures in to soak at night. That’s what got her ladyship to thinking about how Flossie Jones had put a deathbed curse on the family.”
“And you are so stupid as to believe in such things?” Cynthia Edmonds uncoiled like a snake in her chair.
“What we believed,” I said before Mrs. Malloy could open her mouth, “was that someone had taken pains to frighten her ladyship into suspending disbelief by making sure that the brooch that Flossie had been accused of stealing would be found after nearly forty years. Lady Krumley assumed, as was intended, that it had been there all the time behind the skirting board in her bedroom. Her reaction could not have been better. She was consumed with remorse, convinced that she had leaped at the opportunity to believe Flossie guilty because of her relationship with Sir Horace, a relationship that her ladyship sorrowfully accepted had resulted in the birth of Ernestine, a child soon bereft of a mother and denied the financial and emotional support of its father.”
“It is true.” Lady Krumley sipped at her glass of water as though it was poisoned. “I forbade my husband to see Flossie or the child, threatening to divorce him and take my money with me if there was any contact, leaving him without the means to keep Moultty Towers going.”
Her Ladyship bleakly surveyed the assembled group. Sir Alfonse continued to exude his man-of-the-world appeal. Niles Edmonds fidgeted in his chair. His wife, Cynthia, leaned back against the spreading waves of her blonde hair. Mr. Featherstone appeared deep in thought. The staff-Watkins, Laureen and Mrs. Beetle-shifted into a cluster. The animal heads on the wall monitored every stir of motion. And Daisy Meeks observed that it was a green Tupperware bowl, but she believed the missing lid had been clear.
“A nasty business for all concerned”-I prevented Mrs. M. from again edging in front of me-“one made all the worse by the venomous housekeeper Mrs. Snow. Before she got her tongue lashed around the situation it was thought Ernest the under gardener was the one that got Flossie pregnant. And we do have to ask ourselves why she named the little girl for him?”
“To tick off Horace for not coming through for her.” Cynthia shot me a look that let me know just how dim a bulb she thought me. “It’s what I would have done.”
“I’m sure you would, ducky,” said Mrs. Malloy in quite a nice voice. “But there could be another explanation, couldn’t there now? Like this Ernest really being the Dad, and Flossie wanting to let him know it after her play for Sir Horace and a life on easy street didn’t pan out. A tricky piece that girl, if you asks me. To my way of thinking she’ll have had her reasons, none of them good, for trying to patch things up with Ernest.” Mrs. Malloy now swiveled on her high heels toward Mr. Featherstone. “Spit it out, ducks!”