Fallen Angels (5 page)

“Huh,” said Ernie. “I suppose there were
thousands of those.”

I scowled at him and didn’t rise to his
bait. “And I came here because you said you’d
be
here! And I don’t know what time it is. When
I left the office, it was early afternoon. Why don’t you look at a
clock if you want to know what time it is? Or your own pocket
watch?” I turned, intending to leave my irritating employer to his
own devices.

Then I remembered the body at the foot of the
stairs and stopped in my tracks. I did not, however, turn around to
face Ernie. What I was attempting to do as I stood there was think
of another way out of that stupid house.

“Listen, Mercy, I’m sorry I yelled at
you.”

“So am I.” I still didn’t turn around. Maybe
there was a back staircase. Servants were supposed to use back
staircases. At our family home in Boston, Chloe and I used to think
it was fun to ride up and down the dumbwaiter, but I was littler
then. These days I probably wouldn’t fit in the dumbwaiter, even if
I could find it in this mansion. No. There simply had to be another
set of stairs somewhere.

“Mercy, please. Don’t you have any idea what
time it is? I don’t remember anything since this morning. God, is
it really afternoon already?”

Very well, since he sounded repentant, I
turned. Still glaring, I said, “Really? You truly don’t remember
anything since morning? I left the office to look for you at about
two-thirty.”

I think he’d have rolled his eyes if
he’d felt better. “Good God.
Two-thirty
? Really? I don’t remember a thing. Is
it honestly two-thirty in the afternoon?” He shook his head, but I
could tell he instantly regretted the gesture. “But it can’t be
that late. I was supposed to meet Phil at nine.”

“I know. He came by the office. When I called
him this afternoon, he said he hadn’t heard from you, and he wasn’t
very happy about it, either.”

Ernie shook his head again, then grasped it
between both of his hands and let out a moan of pain. I began to
suspect he’d either overindulged in spirituous liquor, been bashed
over the head himself, or had been drugged somehow or other. The
latter, while bizarre, seemed a trifle more logical than the first
two choices, since Ernie hadn’t, to my knowledge, a taste for
alcohol. He did take the occasional sip from a flask every now and
then, which had shocked me until I found out he carried apple cider
in the silly thing. I also hadn’t noticed any kind of wound or bump
on his head.

Because I’m a compassionate person when not
being hollered at for no good reason, I returned to the bed. “Do
you have a headache?”

“Yes. My head hurts like hell, my mouth is as
dry as the Sahara Desert, and I feel like I’ve been run over by a
trolley car. Damn, I need a powder and some water.”

“You were drugged,” I said.

He squinted at me unpleasantly. “Now who in
the name of God would drug me?”

“Probably the same person who killed Mrs.
Chalmers,” I said before thinking the matter through.

Ernie stared at me as if it were I and not he
who’d been drugged. “What did you say?”

Realizing that what I’d just said had
probably shocked Ernie a good deal, I sighed and explained. “I
found Mrs. Chalmers dead at the foot of that staircase out there. I
think she was hit on the head and then pushed down the stairs.
Unless she fell and knocked her head on something along her way
downstairs, although it didn’t look like that to me, since the back
of her head looked . . . well, as if it had been bashed. Not,” I
admitted reluctantly, “that I’m an expert at things like that.”

“She’s dead?” Again Ernie shook his head.
Again he clutched it as if it hurt when he did that.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

I pressed my lips together,
exasperated. “Yes, I’m sure! Why do you think I roamed through this
huge, blasted,
empty
house
looking for you? I found the front door unlocked, nobody else in
the entire house, her dead at the foot of the stairs, and you
nowhere. So I climbed the stairs—worrying the entire time, mind
you, that some revolting criminal would leap out at me—and I found
you tied up in here.” I looked around the room and added drily,
“Mrs. Chalmers’ bedchamber, I presume.”

He looked around the room, too. “I don’t know
what the hell room this is. It looks like something out of the
Reign of Terror with all that damned red.”

“Ernest Templeton, if you don’t stop swearing
at me—”

“I’m not swearing at you, for God’s sake. I
feel like I’ve been kicked in the head by a mule, and you can’t
think of anything better to do than criticize my language. Have
some mercy, Mercy.”

“Your language is deplorable,” I said because
I felt I should.

“I know it. It always has been. You should be
used to it by this time.” He groaned and struggled to stand. “Oh,
God, my head hurts!”

I pinched my lips together into a tight line,
but sympathy got the better of me. “Here. Lean on me if it’ll
help.”

“Thanks, Mercy.”

“You’re welcome. I suppose there’s a
telephone in this house somewhere. I imagine we should call
the—”

A piercing scream interrupted my suggestion,
and I feared it was too late for us to be the bearers of the news
of Mrs. Chalmers’ death to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Cringing—from pain, I presume—Ernie said,
“Shit.”

Ever efficient, I said, “I’d better go see
who’s here and explain what happened. Not that I know what
happened.” I looked up at my wobbly boss. “Can you walk on your
own?”

Through gritted teeth, Ernie said, “Yes.”

“Hold on to the door frame until you get your
feet balanced sufficiently under you.”

Ernie grunted.

Leaving him to his own devices, I ran out of
the room, down the hall, and stopped at the head of the staircase.
There below me huddled the reason the house had been empty when I
arrived. Two women, clutching each other and with faces streaming
with tears, stared down at the dead body of Mrs. Persephone
Chalmers. The housekeeper and maid, I presumed. Unless one of them
was the cook. Or the crook.

But that was silly. Neither of those two
women looked threatening to me, although I’d been fooled before,
much to my chagrin.

Anyhow, the situation, as you can fully
imagine, was terribly awkward. The poor things appeared to be
already distressed, and I was sure that finding two strangers in
the house where their employer lay dead wasn’t going to make them
feel much better. However, I’d been bred to handle difficult
situations among servants with aplomb, so I cleared my throat.

Both women gasped and looked up the staircase
to where I stood. They, not having been bred under the same
circumstances as I, screeched again.

Chapter Three

I descended the staircase as quickly and with
as much dignity as I could muster, hoping Ernie would take his time
joining us downstairs until I’d conveyed my story to the two women
and they calmed down some. They backed away from me, still clinging
to each other, as if I were a demon incarnate.

“Please,” I said to the older of the two, “my
name is Miss Mercedes Allcutt, and I found Mrs. Chalmers this way
when I came to visit her. The front door was unlocked, and I was
worried, so I entered the house.” I didn’t mention that I’d been
looking for my fugitive employer at the time.

They continued to stare at me. I sighed.

“Will you please tell me where the telephone
is? We need to telephone the police department. I believe Mrs.
Chalmers was done to death by a criminal.”

The older woman bellowed,
“
What
? You think she
was
murdered
?”

The younger woman let out another cry of
alarm, although it wasn’t quite so loud as her last couple had
been. “She told us this would happen,” she said to the other woman,
much to my interest. “Didn’t she tell us, Mrs. Hanratty? She told
us, didn’t she?”

“She did, Susan. She did.”

Now I was confused. “You mean Mrs. Chalmers
feared for her life?”

“Yes!” wailed Susan.

Oh, dear. This was
such
a pickle. And here I’d been told Ernie was
only interested in finding some stolen jewelry. Why hadn’t he told
me this part of the story? Probably because he didn’t want me doing
what he calls
snooping
into
the matter. Idiotic man. He’d left me out of things, and just look
what had happened to him. Not to mention Mrs. Chalmers. One of
these days, I told myself, I’d teach him what an asset I was. Until
then . . .

“Please tell me where the telephone is, Mrs.
Hanratty, and I’ll ’phone a police detective I know. In the
meantime, I believe you should go to the kitchen and prepare a nice
pot of tea. That might calm the two of you somewhat.”

Mrs. Hanratty, rather than taking my sensible
suggestion and acting upon it, looked around the hallway. “Is the
mister here?”

It was my turn to stare. “There’s a mister? A
Mr. Chalmers?”

Mrs. Hanratty nodded. Then she seemed to
gather control of herself, straightened, set Susan aside, and said,
“Susan, I don’t know why this young woman is in the house, but I
think you’d best telephone the mister at his place of business.” To
me she said, “I think it’s mighty fishy to find a stranger in the
house along with the body of the missus, young woman.”

I didn’t blame her for feeling as she did.
However, I also wasn’t guilty of doing anything more grievous than
entering a house uninvited.

It was then when Susan chose to scream again.
I knew what had caused this latest outpouring of terror without
even turning around to see Ernie, but I did anyway, mainly because
I wasn’t sure he was steady enough on his pins to negotiate the
staircase.

“Do you need my help?” I asked politely. I
had to ask the question rather loudly because Susan was in full
rant by that time. I heard a sharp smack, and she shut up, from
which I deduced that Mrs. Hanratty had slapped Susan’s cheek to
quell her hysterics.

“And just who in blazes are
you
?” Mrs. Hanratty demanded of
Ernie. I got the feeling she’d been shepherding the members of this
household for quite a few years, because she had a tone of command
that almost rivaled that of my mother.

Ernie, pale, pasty, and looking sick, reached
into his jacket pocket and produced a card, which he handed to Mrs.
Hanratty, who stared at it as if she expected it to bite her. Then
she took the card and read it. “You’re the fellow who’s been
looking into the theft?” she asked, as if she didn’t believe it.
She stared at Ernie as she said the words, and I have to admit that
her doubtful tone was justified. Ernie looked perfectly awful.

“Yes, I am. I’m also the fellow to whom Mrs.
Chalmers came when she suspected someone was trying to kill her.”
Then he knelt beside the body.

I heard Mrs. Hanratty gulp.

“Has anyone called Phil?”

“Not yet. I was trying to calm down the
servants.”

“Well, for God’s sake, go call him! What the
devil are you waiting for?”

“I’m waiting for someone to tell me where the
telephone is, Ernest Templeton!” By that time in this circus of
events, I’d become downright cranky.

Chapter Four

Mrs. Hanratty and I finally got Susan to shut
up and sit down—she continued to weep, but less noisily than
before—and Mrs. Hanratty led me at last to the telephone room, a
small nook under the staircase.

“I really think I should telephone the mister
first,” she told me.

“You may call Mr. Chalmers as soon as I
telephone the police,” I said sternly, following Ernie’s
instructions.
He
knew what he
was doing. Usually.

“Well . . .”

“Mr. Templeton was employed by Mrs. Chalmers
because he’s a professional, and he knows in which order these
things need to be undertaken.”

I was proud of that sentence, mainly because
it seemed to do the trick with Mrs. Hanratty, who heaved a huge
sigh and said, “Well, I’ll go make a pot of tea. Susan isn’t going
to be worth spit for the rest of the day.”

Interesting description. Wrinkling my nose in
some distaste, I dialed the number for the Los Angeles Police
Department and asked to speak with Detective Bigelow. To my
unutterable relief, Phil was there at his desk. I had feared he
might be out chasing criminals. In a very few words, I told him
what had happened.

“She’s dead?” he said, a note of incredulity
in his voice.

“You did say she was trouble,” I reminded
him.

“Yeah. I know I did, but I didn’t think the
trouble would happen to her. I thought she was it and it would
happen to Ernie.”

“Oh. Well . . . well, so did I, actually. But
she’s really and truly dead—murdered, if I’m not mistaken—and I
found Ernie bound and gagged in an upstairs room.” I didn’t mention
that I suspected the room to be Mrs. Chalmers’ bedchamber.

“You found Ernie? Bound and gagged?” Phil
sounded even more incredulous than he had before.

“Yes. And I believe he was drugged into the
bargain.”

A significant silence on the other end of the
wire let me know Phil was attempting to digest the information I’d
just imparted. At last he said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can be.
Don’t move anything. I wish you’d left Ernie the way you found
him.”

“Phil!” I cried, agog at his callousness. But
he’d already replaced his receiver on the cradle, so I couldn’t ask
him for an explanation of what I considered to be a particularly
cruel wish on his part.

By the time the police arrived at the
Chalmers’ residence, Mr. Chalmers had been notified of the trouble
at his house, and he’d arrived, too. A tall, stout man with
striking silver hair, he wore a handsomely tailored business suit
in light gray wool. His collar was clean and starched, and he
looked much too respectable to have been married to the wafty
Persephone Chalmers. Or to any other woman who’d been murdered, for
that matter. He looked kind of like my father, who wouldn’t hear of
anyone being murdered in
his
family. I soon learned, however, after talking to him, that
he was a much more gentle gentleman than any of the men in my
family.