The Importance of Being Ernestine (29 page)

“Are we finally all here?” Cynthia Edmonds stirred irritably in her chair. “This whole business strikes me as a joke. First these two women,” she said and jabbed a manicured finger in Mrs. Malloy's and my direction, “are interior designers and now we're told they're private detectives, and we're expected to listen in raptures to them telling us that someone in this room is a murderer.”

“Not necessarily!” I said. “The gathering is not yet complete.”

“Some people don't care for egg custard,” said Daisy Meeks more for her own edification than anyone else's.

“Where's the little dog?” demanded her ladyship. “Animals are very sensitive to the dark forces.” My heart sank. It would seem Mr. Featherstone had not been successful in bringing her round to the concept of a living-breathing villain. But I felt better when her hooded eyes searched out Mrs. Malloy's face and mine. “I'm talking about the evil that inhabits the hearts and minds of those blighted souls who will do whatever they must to achieve their own ends.”

I thought Mrs. Malloy was about to clap, but she restrained herself. The door had again opened and this time it was Laureen Phillips, followed by Mrs. Beetle and Watkins who carried a silver tray loaded with glasses. The gathering was indeed now complete. Far from looking relieved, Cynthia Edmonds glowered in disgust.

“Why are the servants to be present?”

“Mrs. Malloy and Mrs. Haskell made the request and I approved it,” Lady Krumley addressed the room at large. “Once Watkins has provided everyone, including himself and the two other members of the staff, a glass of wine, I would appreciate having the proceedings begin. Damn!” Her voice had deepened into a growl. “What I wouldn't give for a cigarette even if it killed me.”

Twenty-two

Somewhere beyond the drawing room a floorboard creaked. Here was a moment ripe with disaster should anyone other than Mr. Featherstone open the door to find Constable Thatcher with his ear to the keyhole.

“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!”

“What?”

“Got something on your mind, haven't you vicar?”

“I do indeed.” He clasped his hands and flexed his shoulders as if seeking to ease a burden. “One dislikes to betray a confidence, especially one made by a now-deceased man to his cleric, but I believe I must under the circumstances speak out, as I urged Horace to do on the advent of his marriage to you, my dear Maude.” His voice betrayed his consternation as he looked down at her ladyship.

“What is it?” She sat ramrod straight as she returned his gaze.

“Horace told me he was unable to father children, the cause being a severe case of the mumps when he was a boy. I believed I had persuaded him of his obligation to tell you so before the wedding, but it appears he did not do so.”

“Never a word.” Lady Krumley's eyes shone blacker and glassier than those stuck in the furry faces on the wall. “I imagine he was afraid I would decide against marrying him, and there would go my fortune. I always thought our failure to have children was due to my age being against me. We talked about it, and he allowed me to think . . . and not even to relieve my suspicions regarding little Ernestine was he prepared to tell me truth. One must assume he knew me well enough to believe that whilst I might forgive his infidelity I would never be able to get past such a monumental deceit.”

A hush fell heavily upon the room. We might have been participating in two minutes of silence in response to some national tragedy. Mr. Featherstone looked distraught, Cynthia bored, Sir Alfonse suavely pained and the rest, especially the staff with Watkins at the forefront, intensely uncomfortable.

“I'm very fond of that Tupperware bowl.” Daisy Meeks's flat voice brought the room back to life. “I've used it for making salad for sixteen years.”

“A family heirloom, I'm sure.” Mrs. Malloy essayed deep sentimentality. “You'll likely want to leave it to someone near and dear, even though the lid's missing. Wills are highly interesting in our line of work, isn't that so, Mrs. H.?” She responded to my nod with a bright magenta smile. “So it got our attention in a big way when her ladyship here told us as how she wanted to leave the bulk of her fortune to Ernestine. That being the case it wouldn't have been surprising if some interested party had sought Ernestine out for the purpose of making sure she was put out of the picture. But that didn't explain Mr. Vincent Krumley, did it now? So me and Mrs. H. looked at things from the other way round.”

“Meaning?” Niles croaked out the question.

“That a certain person,” I responded, “was determined to make sure that no one, including Mr. Krumley, would put a spanner in the works of Ernestine receiving what was due her, in the light of past wrongs.”

“Such as?” Cynthia elevated a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Considering she wasn't Sir Horace's child.”

“If I may be pardoned for speaking out.” Watkins cleared his throat in a deferential manner. “There is still the matter of the brooch, isn't there?”

“And a terrible thing that was.” Mrs. Beetle had clearly decided there was no point in her continuing to just stand there like a lamp. “I don't know that I'd ever get over it if I was falsely accused of stealing from my employers. The very idea of me working for such people,” she said, fixing a stare at Lady Krumley, “would send my husband up the wall. “

Laureen remained silent, every glossy chestnut hair in place.

“Let's assume Flossie wasn't falsely accused,” I said. “That she did steal the brooch, but didn't take it with her when she was ordered off the premises, had no chance to retrieve it from where she had hidden it and knew that both her person and her possessions would be searched. Then comes the question, who would she ask to bring it to her?” I took my time looking from one face to the next. “Not Sir Horace. And not her friend Mrs. Hasty, who seems a decent and honest woman.”