“She won’t blame you, even if she has,”Tillie soothed. “If she hadn’t let that awful butler make eyes ather an’ kiss her, none of this would’ve happened, would it?”
“So Austin Bragg never left your room afterten o’clock last night?” Marc said to Hetty, though the answer tothat question had already been made clear.
Hetty nodded, and dropped her eyes to herlap.
“But why would Austin and Prissy both lieabout what they were doing?”
Neither of the sisters answered, but in theirfaces Marc could discern the reason well enough: Bragg hadregretted his haste, did not want the world — or Prissy — to knowwhat he had “stooped” to, and had convinced Prissy that he neededan alibi because he had been “sleeping alone” in his own room.
“Thank you for being truthful,” Marc saidlamely, and slowly backed out of the kitchen. As he turned on thestairs, he heard Hetty say in a plaintive voice, “But it was sonice, Til, so nice.”
By the time he reached the rotunda a fewmoments later, it struck Marc that, unless Cobb had discoveredsomething of significance in Toronto, these new revelations had inall likelihood eliminated their prime suspect.
TEN
“Jesus Christ on a donkey!” Cobb cried when Marcbroke the news to him at quarter to five in the library. “Ya meanto tell me we ain’t got the bugger by the short hairs no more?”
“Or any other hairs,” Marc said. “If thecrime was set up sometime between ten o’clock and midnight, aswe’ve surmised, then Austin Bragg is in the clear. But there’sstill Harkness, remember. Bragg could be part of a conspiracy.Though it’s not likely, the Amontillado could have been doctoredwith some other laudanum and given to Chilton long before lastnight.”
Cobb sighed, and let his dripping helmet dropto the carpet. “My news ain’t so good either.”
“Let’s hear it anyway. The only thing thatcounts, alas, is the truth.”
Cobb proceeded to give a detailed account ofhis visit with Mrs. Sturdy, leaving out only her allusion to thevomit on his boots.
“Burford?” Marc said when Cobb had finished.“It would take a day and a half to get there, check out Harkness’sstory, and get back here.”
“That’s the way I figure it too. But whatgood would it do? If I find the bugger there, then he’s more orless off the hook — bein’ absent from the scene, so to speak, feralmost two weeks. And if he ain’t there, then that means he’s foundanother hidey-hole in Toronto, an’ it could take us a month ofSundays to flush him out.”
“Quite right on both counts. But we may haveto go after him regardless if we can’t solve the case by Monday atnoon. What interests me right now is that threat he made againstMacaulay or Elmgrove in general. What better way to get even thanby murdering the man he viewed as his usurper and causing hismaster embarrassment or worse?”
“But when could Bragg an’ Harkness have gottogether to dream up this plot? You said Struthers was sure Braggwas kept too busy to be gallivantin’ off to the city.”
“There was a short period last Sunday whenBragg left his group after church and disappeared. I was countingon Harkness having been nearby to meet up with him. But all thesigns now indicate he was already in Burford. Damn! If we couldhave been given just a few more days — ”
“Could you purr-sway Doc Withers intodelayin’ the inquest?”
“Probably. But I’m certain our French guestswill have reached the end of their tolerance by then, and decide togo back to Quebec. We can hardly hold them here indefinitely — thatis, unless we accuse one of them of the crime.”
“Tremblay, fer instance?”
“He has not been struck off my list, butuntil we come up with a better motive than his unhappiness with our‘economical’ negotiations, as you so quaintly called them, I amloathe to even question him vigorously as a suspect.”
“The French gents’ll close ranks, yamean?”
“Something like that.”
Cobb picked up his helmet, shook the last ofthe melted snow off it (he had dropped it in a drift after aninelegant descent from Macaulay’s cutter) and set it on the table.“Well, where does all this leave us, then? Our prize fish haswriggled off the hook, we lost our bait, an’ the hook itself islookin’ a trifle bent.”
“We’ve still got the laudanum, Cobb. Thedisappearance of that bottle from the bathroom shelf afternine-thirty or so and the timely appearance of laudanum in a bottleof Amontillado three hours later can’t be mere coincidence, can it?And Macaulay says it was a fist-sized bottle with a long neck. Thewindows in Elmgrove have long been frozen shut. One of the servantscould easily have disposed of it, but if our killer is not Bragg,and is to be found among our guests, then that bottle is still inthis house.”
“So we oughta roust everybody outta the fancywing an’ go rummagin’ through it inch by inch?”
“If we have no luck by Sunday afternoon, Iintend to scour the place. Meantime, I’ll ask Macaulay to keep theguests indoors or, if they go walking, to accompany them. I’ll alsoask Prissy Finch to keep a sharp eye out when she’s tidying uptheir rooms. But for now, caution and discretion are still thewatchwords in that quarter.”
“Whatever you say, Major. But what about themmissin’ pages ripped outta the lead-ger? I been wonderin’all along why Bragg would have cause to cart them off if he was thekiller.”
“I haven’t given that a lot of thought, butit’s a valid question all right. Remember, we did speculate thatChilton seemed overzealous and was keeping a critical eye on hisunderlings. Those pages could have contained damaging reports ontheir perceived peccadilloes.”
“But why put yer list of theirpeck-a-dillies in yer big fat accounts book?”
“It’s the one absolutely safe place for them.The upstairs servants move freely through all the rooms up here,including Chilton’s own quarters. Macaulay told me yesterday thatChilton was working late to bring the estate’s accounts up to datebecause they’d been neglected since Alfred’s death. Macaulaynormally checked the book every month or so, and in this case hewould have waited until Chilton had it ready for him. No-one, then,would have occasion or reason to consult it. Also, I noticed inyour notes that you unlocked the drawer in his office desk with thekey you found on his person and — ”
“An’ there was nothin’ in it.”
“Because he kept only the ledger inthere, eh — locked away.”
Cobb’s face lit up. “Say, you don’t supposeall the servants are in on this, do you? Harkness givesBragg a bottle of Amontillado — somewhere, somehow — an’ Bragg getsPrissy to snitch the loud-an’-numb, he spikes it, giveshimself an alibi with poor Hetty, an’ then Prissy or Tillie sidlesup to Chilton’s office when the house settles down, say abouteleven o’clock, an’ bats her lashes a bit an’ says ever so sugary,‘We chipped in to buy ya little present’ an’ so on. The otherservants know what’s up, but turn a blind eye an’ help with eachother’s alibi.”
Marc smiled, genuinely amused despite thedesperateness of their situation. “A reasonable enough theory, oldfriend, but I was downstairs, as you were, and we were present tojudge for ourselves the strength and truth of the emotions wewitnessed there. Still, Prissy herself remains a possibility. Herevasiveness and her tears may well have much to do with guilt andregret.”
“Then we need to get to her soon.”
“Yes. We’ve got an hour before I’m to meetwith Robert and LaFontaine.”
“An’ we ain’t talked to Mrs. Blodgett yet,have we?”
Marc, who had started to get up, sat backdown. “No, and we should do so before we beard Prissy. There is nochance that Mrs. Blodgett is part of a conspiracy that would in anyway harm Macaulay. She’s been here for two decades, and she andGarnet appear to be very close. And cooks always know what’s goingon in their domain. We need to ask her if she’s noticed anythingout of the ordinary down there. She’ll also know if Bragg wasabsent for any length of time over the past two or three weeks.She’ll be our honest broker.”