Murder Goes Mumming (6 page)

An hour or so later, when he judged the household was settled down for the night, he woke himself up, slid out of bed, and put on heavy sheepskin-lined slippers and a most wonderful bathrobe warmly handwoven of wool grown on that vast family estate in Wales he would never, God willing, fall heir to. As he was brushing his hair and tying the sash, for he was a tidy man by nature, Rhys heard a small commotion in the next room. Val was still up, blast her, and from the sound of things she was waking his Jenny. He couldn’t make out what they were saying for the door was heavily built and weather-stripped against drafts, but it became clear when Janet, in blue knitted bedsocks and a fleecy blue robe, opened the door and came into his room.

“Val’s expecting company,” she muttered. “I’m sorry, Madoc. I didn’t know what else to do. She seems to think we’d …”

He put his arms around her. “And you don’t, do you?”

“Not like this.”

She had her head on his chest and the situation would have been most agreeable under different circumstances. “Madoc, you know I wouldn’t have said I’d marry you if I didn’t want to be a wife to you. I want it so much I …” she shivered and pressed herself closer. “But not in some stranger’s house while my old boyfriend’s having fun and games with the girl next door. That’s not how I want to remember the most precious night of my life. But where shall I go?”

“You shall hop into that bed, which I’ve got nicely warmed for you, and I shall take my gentlemanly departure, which I was about to do in any case. Don’t fret yourself about what may be happening in the next room. Your old boyfriend’s tight as a drum. If I may say so without offending your sense of propriety, I think Miss Val is due for a sad disappointment.”

“Serves her right. Where are you going?”

“For a walk. Now hush yourself and go to sleep. I’ll probably wind up on that comfortable chesterfield in the library.”

“But you’ll freeze to death.”

“Not I, Jenny love. I shall put more wood in the stove, open the damper, and wrap myself in a nice, thick afghan I saw down there. If I’m still cold, I’ll add the bearskin rug. I’ve slept in worse places.”

He tucked her up, still wearing her fleecy robe, kissed her goodnight in a chaste and fatherly manner, and eased himself out of the room. There was a small flashlight in his bathrobe pocket but he didn’t use it. Sure enough, a moment later a large young man stepped out of one of the bathrooms and made his somewhat unsteady way across the hall. Rhys waited until he’d made damn sure Roy had got into the room where Val was expecting him, then slid along the dark walls toward the two-room suite that was now occupied by one stiffening corpse.

N
OBODY ELSE WAS VISITING
Granny. The lamp Babs had extinguished in a probably unconscious gesture of finality when they’d left the dead woman to herself was still off. Rhys would have liked to turn it on again but there was no telling who might be having to use the nearby bathroom and whether the gleam would be noticed under the door. He made do with the little pocket flash that he could shield with his robe as he examined the body.

Rhys was no doctor. Still, he’d seen a good many corpses in his relatively short but somewhat crowded career. He’d also seen odd coincidences that turned out to be nothing of the sort. The combination of the missing teeth and the abrupt demise of their owner in the space of a few hours was not the sort of thing someone of his profession could dismiss without question. It was a terrible breach of hospitality, no doubt, to be wondering which member of his host family had bumped off Granny, but he’d eat his badge if she’d died without help.

The old lady didn’t appear to have been diabetic, especially since she’d been quaffing Squire’s wassail. There were no needle marks or any other marks except those normally associated with age and decay. There was no wound of any kind, no odor of bitter almonds hovering about the lips. There were other odors not usually mentioned in detective stories but familiar to law enforcement officers who have to deal with the suddenly dead. They’d have to burn the mattress, probably.

He might collect a specimen of fecal matter for analysis, but he doubted whether that would reveal anything. According to Donald, Granny had eaten her last meal about half past five. Judging from the evidence she’d had nothing since then but the wassail. If she’d rung for a snack later on, whoever brought it would no doubt have poured that last drain of wassail into the cup for her to drink before she went to sleep, if that was what she’d had in mind, and taken away the empty pitcher. He could take a sample of the wassail, too, but the odds were it wouldn’t show anything, either. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been left.

Granny had been a big woman in her day, but age had shrunk her to some extent. She must have been not less than eighty and more likely a good way beyond. Maybe those yarns the Condryckes told about Granny’s being wont to lay about her with her cane were true, but the chances that she’d had strength enough in those wizened arms to do any real damage were slim.

Here lay no sturdy peasant woman who’d been used to hard work all her life, but a pampered lady used to luxury and ease, as her surroundings attested. If that was her picture on the dresser, she must indeed have been a beauty, and therefore, being of the generation who went in for lily-white complexions and slender, tapered hands, no active sportswoman. She’d probably never developed any real muscle; certainly there was no sign of it now. She wouldn’t have been much good at defending herself in a struggle. In the unlikely event that he himself had felt any urge to kill a weak old woman like her, he’d simply have covered her face with one of these soft down pillows she had about her in such abundance and held it there until she stopped breathing.

Or perhaps not a pillow! Suppose, for instance, Granny had slopped some of the wassail over her chin. She very well might have if that pitcher had been anywhere near full when Ludovic took it up to her. The receptacle was no dainty toy. It must hold a good three cupfuls. There wasn’t more than half an inch or so left in the bottom now, and that potation had been potent beyond belief. Say she’d been lying there sloshed to the eyeballs with a sticky mess on her chin. One of her playful descendants, or the spouse of one, had come up to use the bathroom as they’d all done at one time or another during the evening. What could be more natural than for that person to drop in on poor Granny, exiled from the festivities by the absence of her false teeth, and offer to tidy her up?

She’d have accepted the attention willingly enough, no doubt, or at least not have been able to resist it. A wet face towel folded into a smallish pad would make a most useful tool to smother somebody with. Being damp, it would cling more tightly to the nose and mouth and be less apt to shed fluff into her lungs when she struggled for breath. After the deed was done, it need only be rinsed in case it bore any telltale traces of saliva or vomit and then dropped down the laundry chute with scads of other wet towels.

Rhys felt the face and hair. Sure enough, the skin was clean but some of the straggling wisps around the mouth felt stiff and ropy, as if they might well have been dampened by the spiced, sweetened wassail and not washed off afterward. He found a pair of nail scissors and a tissue on the dressing table, cut off a snippet where it wasn’t apt to be noticed, and wrapped it in the tissue for safekeeping.

Then he checked the pillows. Yes, there was a stain on one of the pillowcases and yes, it smelled like the stuff in the pitcher. That didn’t mean Granny had been killed lying on this pillow, but neither did it mean she hadn’t. She couldn’t have died in the position where she’d been found. That would have been a most unhandy way to smother anybody to begin with, and would have meant she’d struggled against her killer. Rhys didn’t think Granny had put up any sort of fight. There were no bruises, no signs of blood or flesh under the fingernails she’d kept buffed to a high shine and filed to neat crescents. None of them was broken, and old nails were brittle. It was dollars to doughnuts she’d been smothered lying flat on her back, then flopped over to look as though she’d been reaching for that last swig of wassail when she’d taken a seizure of some kind and died. Maybe this was some Condrycke’s notion of the ultimate practical joke.

Rhys felt a strong disinclination to stay in this room any longer. He snapped off his handy little torch and backed silently out the door, locking it again after him with the key he’d brought from his own room on the perfectly correct assumption that all these old bedroom locks worked the same.

Caution was well advised. He’d rounded two bends of the hexagon when Valerie’s bedroom door opened and Roy came out, looking not at all the conquering hero. From his vantage point in the shadows, Rhys could see Val sitting up in the tumbled bed, wearing only a petulant expression. He found the spectacle unimpressive.

Not bothering to get up and close the door, Val reached for a robe that was hanging over the footboard and put it on. Then she cocked a speculative eye at the connecting door behind which Janet was presumably rapt in well-deserved slumber. She slid her feet to the floor, groped for a pair of slippers, then padded over to close the door into the hall. Rhys then moved toward the door that should have been his own and edged it open a crack, just in time to hear Val’s cry.

“Surprise!”

She had a flashlight in one hand and a fistful of blankets in the other. There on the stripped bed lay Janet in her blue fleece cocoon, complete with flannel nightgown, thermal underwear, bedsocks, pearls, and diamond engagement ring, rubbing her knuckles into her eyes like a waking baby.

“Where’s Madoc?” said Val stupidly.

“On the couch in the library catching pneumonia.” Janet sounded much put out, as she had reason to.

“Why? Did you have a fight or something?”

“Of course not!”

“Then what is this, one of those marriage of convenience things? He’s homosexual, right?”

“Wrong. We simply didn’t want to abuse your family’s hospitality by doing something we shouldn’t have cared to get caught at, which turned out to be a good thing for us, didn’t it? And I can’t say I care for being waked up at odd hours and shoved from pillar to post, so would you kindly make up your mind where I’m to sleep and let me get on with it?”

“Some party this is turning out to be! You’d better come back in with me, I suppose. Ludovic comes around with tea at the crack of dawn and Squire will have fits if we’re not where we’re supposed to be.”

“Then give me that flashlight and go on back to bed. I’ll try to find Madoc.”

“What if you meet Squire?”

“I’ll tell him I’m walking in my sleep.”

Janet took the blankets from Val and put Madoc’s bed to rights with a few deft flaps and tucks, then reached out her hand for the torch. “Go ahead. I’ll light you through.”

Val looked Janet up and down as she surrendered the light. “You know, you look as if you wouldn’t say boo to a mouse.”

“I don’t suppose I would. What would be the sense? Do get a move on.”

Madoc waited in the dark until Valerie Condrycke had shut the door between the two bedrooms, then stepped inside with his finger across his lips. Janet, bless her staunch little heart, goggled for an instant, then ran over to him.

“I might have known you were here all the time,” she breathed into his neck.

“Actually I wasn’t. I just happened to be passing by as the party was breaking up next door. Give Val a few minutes to get nicely asleep, then you can go wake her up and tell her you found me.”

The few minutes passed pleasantly. It was with considerable reluctance that Madoc said at last, “Jenny love, you’d better go now or I shall be overcoming my scruples. You don’t really intend to make me wait for the relatives to lay on a fancy wedding?”

“I couldn’t turn you down twice in one night, could I? Anyway, Aunt Adelaide told me this evening we’d marry earlier than we planned. It wouldn’t be polite to make a liar out of her, would it?”

“Rudest thing in the world.”

Rhys tested his scruples a moment longer, then pushed Janet gently toward the door. “Sleep well, my darling.”

“Where will you be?”

“Right here, dreaming about you.”

“Good.” Janet kissed him once more and went.

Val must be either sleeping or sulking. Rhys listened for possible sounds of altercation, but there were none. Janet had got back into the trundle bed and, he hoped, to peaceful slumber without a sound. He himself lay thinking the thoughts of a young man in love about whether his Jenny would wear her blue knitted bedsocks on their wedding night, and the thoughts of a detective inspector about who had killed Squire Condrycke’s mother-in-law, and why. At length he reminded himself there was nothing more he could do about either murder or matrimony at this hour of the morning and went to sleep himself.

I
T WAS DULL GRAY
when Rhys woke up. However, the wristwatch he was still wearing said nine o’clock and Ludovic was standing over him with the cup of hot tea as advertised. On impulse, he addressed the man in Welsh.

“Thank you and a good morning. Or is it?”

Ludovic actually smiled, and replied in the same language. “Ah, sir, it is long since I have heard that tongue spoken. And never before in this house. A good morning to you, sir, although in fact it is not. The fire ship was again a portent of storm.”

“Storm within or storm without?”

“It is strange that you ask. Are you one of those who know?”

“No, I am one of those who are supposed to find out. What is happening?”

“It is snowing heavily and there has been a death in the family. The old lady whom you heard referred to as Granny and was in fact the relict of the present Condrycke family’s late grandfather has passed away peacefully in her sleep.”

“That, as a matter of fact, I did know. My fiancée and I happened to be with Mrs. Clara and Mrs. Donald when they found her dead in bed last night.”

Rhys sipped at his tea, its steam noticeable in the cold room. “They had gone in to return the teeth Miss Wadman found, as you have perhaps been told. Mrs. Clara decided not to tell the rest until morning, so we of course respected her wish. Has Squire now been told?”