Murder at Longbourn (2 page)

“That’s because you have no fashion sense.” She glanced disparagingly at my tan corduroy skirt and blue cable-knit sweater. “You really should let me give you a makeover.”

“I thank you for the favor, but no. The last time you gave me a makeover, some guy kept trying to shove dollar bills down my skirt.”

“That’s not true!” Bridget said, laughing.

“Okay, maybe so,” I admitted with a grin, “but you’re still not giving me a makeover.”

“Why not? Come to New York with me and Colin. We can update your look and start the New Year off right.”

Colin is Bridget’s boyfriend. For New Year’s, the two of them are going to New York for the weekend. Bridget has been trying to convince me to go with them, especially now that I am, as she delicately put it, “without plans.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun!” she continued excitedly. “You know nobody does New Year’s better than Times Square! We could go shopping! We could try new restaurants! And more important, we
can celebrate your freedom from a man who is, let’s face it, the soul-sucking spawn of Satan. And don’t even get me started about his obsession with argyle.”

I pushed aside the suitcase and flopped across her bed. The soul-sucking, argyle-wearing spawn of Satan is my ex-boyfriend Mark. To say that Bridget had never liked him was a gross understatement—over the past few months she’d developed a small facial tic at the sound of his name.

“Bridget, you know I love you and Colin, and you’re sweet to invite me, but for the thousandth time, no. I’d be a third wheel—and on New Year’s Eve of all nights!”

“You wouldn’t be a third wheel,” she countered. “You’d be with friends.”

“Friends who are a couple. Which would make me the third wheel. No offense, but I’d rather stick glass in my eyes.”

“Offense? Don’t be silly. Who could take offense at that? You simply prefer self-mutilation to a weekend with friends.”

“Only figuratively. The truth is, it’s been a long week and all I want to do is relax and catch up on some reading.” While that was true, I was also refusing for more altruistic reasons. I knew something she didn’t: Colin was planning to propose at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s.

“Reading?”

“Yes, reading,” I replied with a lofty wave of my hand. “I have decided to devote myself to the improvement of my mind by extensive reading.”

Bridget narrowed her eyes. “That’s from
Pride and Prejudice,
isn’t it? Damn it, Elizabeth, whenever you start quoting from
P&P
I know you’re in a mood. I swear, that book is your security blanket when you’re upset.”

Luckily the chime of the doorbell saved me from a response. “Oh, God!” cried Bridget. “It’s Colin. Can you let him in? Tell him I’ll just be a minute.”

I rolled off the bed and went downstairs to let Colin in. Colin is six two, with curly brown hair and large brown eyes. To me, he’s always resembled an enormous teddy bear come to life. That pretty much sums up his personality, too. He’s like the big brother every girl wishes she had. He was still stamping his wet feet on the doormat when Bridget poked her head out of her room and hollered down, “Colin, I’ll be ready in two seconds. Try to convince Elizabeth to come with us. She needs cheering up.”

Colin glanced quizzically at me. “Is that true?”

“No. She will most certainly
not
be ready in two seconds.”

“I meant about your needing cheering up.”

“I’m fine. She’s referring to Mark.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Colin, rearranging his face into a somber expression. “I was sorry to hear you two broke up.”

“Liar.”

He grinned and dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Okay, you’re right. The news made my day. The guy was a jackass.” Pulling me into a quick hug, he added, “You deserve nothing but the best, Elizabeth. Don’t forget that.”

See why I love Colin?

Eventually Bridget emerged from her room, dragging a bulging suitcase. Ignoring her pleas that I join them, I resolutely settled down on our couch with a copy of Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury,
finally convincing her that all I wanted to do was stay home and read. With Colin looking grateful and Bridget looking concerned, they left me to tackle the novel.

However, with their exit, the apartment seemed unnaturally
quiet, and I had trouble concentrating on the text. Our landlord didn’t allow animals, so I didn’t even have the warmth of a furry friend to comfort me. Our only pets, if you could even call them that, were two goldfish purchased during a rare fit of domesticity. Unfortunately, our local pet store didn’t stock a particularly hardy variety, resulting in bimonthly replacement visits. As a result, I’d named each new pair Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It didn’t change their fate, but it added a little drama when I had to announce it.

Forty-five minutes later, after having read the first twelve pages of Benjy’s narrative a total of eight times, I flung the book down, now feeling hungry, lonely,
and
stupid. Deciding that I could alleviate at least one of those problems, I grabbed the bag of Oreos just as the phone rang. Seeing the caller ID, my mood went from bad to worse.

It was my sister Kit. I knew what was coming. One of her goals in life is to see me married—and while I’m in no way opposed to the idea, it’s not my driving force in life. As I expected, no sooner did she hear my voice than she launched into rapid-fire speech. She had heard the news of my breakup from our mother and was clearly dumbfounded. How could I let a “catch” like Mark “slip away”? Didn’t I understand that with each passing year my chances of getting married diminished? (I’m all of twenty-six.) Didn’t I know that I had to “reel them in” while I was still young? (The way Kit tossed around the fishing jargon you’d think she was a seasoned angler. But the closest she ever got to fish was in her grocer’s freezer section.)

I didn’t want to tell her the real reason for the breakup—that Mark had been seeing at least two other women behind my back. So I did what any reasonable person in my position would do. I lied.

Unfortunately, it’s not a skill that I’m adept at and the reason I
gave her—that he smoked—sounded silly even to me. I know Kit found it funny, because she laughed for a good thirty seconds. Loudly. Then she launched into a lecture, the point of which was that unless I stopped being so picky, I was going to end up
alone
.

She said this last bit in the whispery kind of voice some people reserve for revealing a stint in prison or a terminal illness. As she continued to scoff at my “pickiness,” something inside me snapped. Candidly I volunteered, “He cheated on me, Kit, okay?”

Silence answered.

“Kit, are you there?”

Finally, all in one breath I got, “Oh, you poor, poor thing. What a
terrible
thing to have to go through. No
wonder
you didn’t want to tell me! How awful! Not that I have any
personal
experience, of course. Well, don’t worry about it, I won’t mention it again. Except to say that I always
thought
there was something untrustworthy about him. His eyes are too close together for one. And he really could be a pompous jackass at times. But there’s no point in going into all of that
now
. Are you alone? You shouldn’t be alone. Where’s Bridget? Oh, that’s right, Colin’s proposing this weekend, isn’t he? Well,
don’t
let that get you down. I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re thinking that you’re going to end up some lonely old woman who lives with cats, but that’s not
true
!”

“Actually, Kit, I wasn’t thinking that …”

“Good,
that’s
the spirit! Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll come down. No, that won’t work. Tom and I are having a huge party this weekend for some clients. It’s been unbelievably stressful. You’ll just have to come here.”

My brother-in-law sells hot tubs. It wasn’t hard to imagine where the night would end with a party composed of fellow enthusiasts in a house with the deluxe model.

She continued on. “You come here and we’ll forget all about Mark. We won’t even mention him. Do you know who he was seeing? Is she pretty? You poor, poor thing.”

The thing about my sister is that she does mean well. However, her idea of well and my idea of well are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I knew she wouldn’t stop about the party until I either agreed to come or produced a reasonable excuse. Panic set in as my brain frantically struggled to generate the latter. Happily, my eyes landed on Aunt Winnie’s Post-it. With a heroic effort to keep any trace of relief out of my voice, I told her that, sadly, I couldn’t possibly go to her party as I was already going to Aunt Winnie’s.

There was a brief pause as Kit absorbed this information. “Aunt Winnie’s having a party?” she asked, a note of hurt in her voice.

“Um, well, it’s more of a work weekend, really,” I fibbed. “I think she just needs my help getting the inn ready.”

“Oh, I see—
that
makes sense. Well, as long as she doesn’t let you cook, everything should be fine,” she said, breaking out into the overly hearty laugh she employed whenever she insulted me. It was meant to imply “we’re all just one big, happy, teasing family and if you don’t get that, then you’re
way
too sensitive.” All it did was set my teeth on edge.

Thanking her for the invitation and promising that I would call if I needed to talk, I hung up on another, “Oh, you poor, poor thing.”

I looked at the Oreos. After my third one, I realized I needed something stronger. I needed a large glass of chardonnay and a larger dose of Cary Grant. Pulling my woolly cardigan around me, I went to ransack Bridget’s DVD collection. Passing the hall table, I reread Aunt Winnie’s invitation. I realized that I really did want to go, and not just so that I wouldn’t end up in a hot tub with my
brother-in-law’s single clients. No, I thought with a smile, a visit with Aunt Winnie was just what I needed. Right after
North by Northwest
.

My goal to get an early start was thwarted. I am not an early riser and Kit called me six more times to try to convince me to come to her party instead. Just as I was leaving, call number seven came in. I let the answering machine deal with it. Pushing my black suitcase out the door, I heard her say that if I was worried about not having a nice dress, she had an old one I could borrow. I slammed the door with more force than was strictly necessary and headed for my car.

By late afternoon, I was on the Cape. Directions in hand, I drove along the narrow, winding roads past scruffy pine trees and low walls of smooth gray stone, occasionally catching sight of the icy blue waters of Nantucket Sound. Above me, gnarled tree branches intermingled with power lines, both having been there so long it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. My spirits rose at the sights, and some of my melancholy over Mark’s betrayal faded. After all, what are men to trees and rocks? Finally, I pulled into a curved tree-lined drive. At the end was a rambling two-story house. Hanging over the door was a freshly painted white sign. In large green letters it proclaimed: THE INN AT LONGBOURN. I smiled. Aunt Winnie was a dedicated, some might say an obsessed, fan of
Pride and Prejudice.

As picturesque as it was, I had to admit that I had thought Aunt Winnie was crazy when she bought it several months earlier. She had seen the property while on a tour of Cape Cod and had impulsively decided to buy it, renovate it, and turn it into a B and B—regardless of the fact that she had absolutely no experience in
anything of the sort. But Aunt Winnie seldom let logic interfere with her plans.

My aunt came bustling out the door just as I switched off the car’s engine. If your idea of a woman of seventy-odd years is of the genteel, blue-haired variety, then Aunt Winnie might be something of a shock. Her short, round figure was covered by a long coat that appeared to have been purloined from some off-off-Broadway production of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
. But bright as her coat was, it was nothing compared to her short, curly hair, currently colored an outrageous shade of red.

Aunt Winnie had never married, but that’s not to say that she hadn’t had offers. She used to joke that she thought marriage was a great institution, but that she didn’t want to be in an institution. I think her reluctance had more to do with her childhood than anything else. Her mother had died when she was young, and her father was a demanding hypochondriac who was convinced that his death was right around the corner. He withdrew to his room, where he fussed and moaned in glorious seclusion.

With his retreat, Aunt Winnie had been forced to run the family’s hardware store. Her two older brothers had left home years earlier and by then had their own careers to run. When her father finally did die six years later from pneumonia, no one was more surprised than he. But with his death, Aunt Winnie was free to live her own life. Taking her not insignificant inheritance to an investor, she ended up impressing that man with her business savvy and received a job offer instead. Over the next several years, Aunt Winnie worked and learned and continued to grow her inheritance until she was an extremely wealthy woman. The men who wanted to marry her always promised to “take her away from all of this,” a promise she found unappealing. She liked her work and she was
good at it. So she turned them all down, had affairs instead, traveled, and made even more money.

“Elizabeth! Oh, it’s so good to see you,” she said now, giving me a tight hug. I happily returned it, breathing in the familiar scent of Chanel No. 5 that clung to her. “Let me get a look at you!” She held me at arm’s length and took a quick inventory. “You’re too thin, of course, but I guess that’s the style nowadays. I’m glad that in my day women were expected to have some curves.” Here she stopped to pat her own ample supply. “But you still look lovely—I’ve always said you’ve got the map of Ireland stamped on your face.” I laughed. The first time Aunt Winnie said that to me I was six years old and I instantly ran to the mirror to see if my freckles actually did form some sort of geographical pattern. As she helped me bring in my bag, she said, “So, I hear that you and your latest beau have broken up. Do I offer condolences or congratulations?”