The Importance of Being Ernestine (31 page)

“No.” Watkins was losing it fast. He backed away from her as if persued by the devil. “You're not my Ernestine.”

“What are you afraid of?” Her voice spiraled into rage. “That I'll reject you as my mother did? Well, let me tell you I've done more than that. I've helped these women—these two private detectives—because someone had to be made to pay for my life as the child of those appalling Merryweathers. And you made it so easy for me to settle on you.”

“Liar. You're nothing to me! My Ernestine is sweet and gentle!” Watkins had collided with Mr. Featherstone who clamped hold of his arms from behind. Lady Krumley sat as if turned to stone, while the rest of the group was reduced to a blurred photograph.

“I led these dear women step by step to Constable Thatcher's boy, Ronald.” Laureen waved a hand at Mrs. Malloy and me and continued remorselessly. “In picking up bits and pieces from Mrs. Hasty I knew he had seen something that had aroused his suspicions about Vincent Krumley's death. And when this one,” she said, poking at Mrs. Malloy's shoulder, “got him to open up, he told her he had seen you dragging Pipsie into the shrubbery and beating on it when it yelped. Ronald is very fond of animals. He's been begging his parents for a dog of his own, and he was charging to the rescue when he and his friend both pitched into a ditch. By the time they managed to scramble out you were nowhere to be seen, Father, and neither was Pipsie. They thought you had killed him, instead of locking him inside the cottage, so that when you offered to help Vincent look for him in the grounds he would start barking and you would follow the sound and suggest looking down the well. That's why Ronald and the other boy threw those flower pots at your car.” Laureen whirled around to throw herself at Lady Krumley's feet and clutch at the skirt of her black dress. “They thought Watkins—Father—would be driving. He was the one who most often did so. They never meant to hurt you. And neither did I. Yes, I knew what he was up to, and I played along, giving him enough rope to hang himself. Let him play his little tricks with the brooch! And then I'd expose him. I never thought of murder.”

“Oh, come off it!” Cynthia was back in form. “You were in it up to your neck, hoping to get your hands on a fortune.”

“It does look that way.” Niles appeared to be reviving now that the focus had shifted. “What do you think Aunt Maude?”

“My dear, how are you holding up under this emotional strain?” Mr. Featherstone spoke with deep feeling. But Lady Krumley's response was cut off by Watkins releasing a roar that knocked a couple of moose heads sideways. Staggering out of the vicar's clutches he swung around to pummel his fists in the air.

“You,” he said, glaring at Laureen's kneeling back, “you're not worthy to speak my Ernestine's name let alone pretend to be her. She's a good woman. None of her mother's ways about her. It broke my heart the moment I first laid eyes on her after she'd been kept from me all those long years. I made up my mind I'd make it up to her. And it was like a sign when I saw in the paper a few months later that there was a job going here. It didn't bother me none when I had trouble finding the brooch. I knew inside here,” Watkins thumped his chest, “that I'd find it when the time was right. And so I did. But I never told my Ernestine nothing. Not even that I was her father. To her I'm still just another of the men who've found their way to the organization she set up to help people with problems. It's called The Waysiders. I went there when I realized I needed help with my drinking, and it's there I met Vincent Krumley. He didn't remember me from the days when I was gardener here, but I had to go and tell him, didn't I, before I got sober enough to think straight.” He was now clawing at his bald head. “In all this time I've been back at Moultty Towers the old geezer never once showed his face, until that other night when I made up my mind I'd be damned before I let him ruin things for me.”

The drawing room door swung inward and a man in police uniform stood in the opening. This had to be Ronald's father, Constable Thatcher. Beside him was a woman in her late thirties to early forties—quite a pretty woman, despite a severe hairstyle and nunlike attire. It seemed to me that there was an aura about her, but that might have been because the atmosphere was so highly charged with emotion.

“Father,” she said in a softly compelling voice, “it has all been explained to me, and I have come to help you.” She held out her arms, and Watkins stumbled into them, sobbing like a brokenhearted child. As she stroked his bowed head she looked over her shoulder as if drawn by a magnet to meet Alfonse's bemused gaze across the crowded room. I'd heard of such things happening . . . and didn't get the chance to glory in witnessing it because Laureen had risen slowly to her feet. For a moment I mistook the look on her face for exhaustion from playing the role Mrs. Malloy and I had assigned to her. Then when I saw her lift Lady Krumley's hand my heart sank. That nerve pill she had taken, what had it been really? And why, oh why hadn't Mrs. Malloy and I suspected that Watkins had chosen this moment to commit the murder he had been working toward all these years?

Twenty-three

“What completed Watkins's disintegration,” I explained to Freddy the following morning while I did the breakfast washing up and he watched, “was when the little dog Pipsie burst into the room like the angel of vengeance and made snarling leaps at his ankles, the throat being for a dog of his size the equivalent of a mountain peak.”

“So the police got their confession?”

“Signed, sealed and official.”

“Well done, coz!” Freddy ambled over to plant a congratulatory kiss on my cheek and help himself to a remaining rasher of bacon in the frying pan. “Any thoughts of you and Mrs. Malloy staying in the detective business?”

“Oh, I don't know.” I rinsed off another plate. “Milk Jugg will return to reclaim his office and her heart into the bargain. So who knows how much I will see of her. Besides it's harrowing work. You can't imagine what I felt like when I thought Lady Krumley had so speedily joined Victor in the hereafter. I blamed myself for not thinking that Watkins might have tampered with those pills.”

“But he hadn't.”

“Luckily not. The prescription was for a very strong tranquilizer. Just one was enough to put her way under. I wasn't alone in thinking she was dead. It took about five minutes to convince Laureen she wasn't to blame for having put on such a powerful performance she had killed Lady Krumley in the process.”

“She sounds quite a woman. I hope the vicar's nephew appreciates her.”

“So do I and that neither of them will regret giving up acting. She's certainly very good, but then Watkins was no mean performer. In fact he was so perfect in his butler's role that it got me to wondering if he was real. Or if he was copying someone he had seen on TV or on the stage.”

“I wonder why Flossie named the baby for him.”

“Remorse over having deceived him? Or her way of twisting the knife, letting him know that he'd lost out by not bringing her the brooch. What surprised me was that Ernestine didn't appear to me to bear any strong resemblance to Ernest. Perhaps what he really recognized in her was a likeness to Flossie, but that being unacceptible he decided otherwise. He wanted her to be his daughter, that much is certain.”

“And such proved the case.” Freddy ambled over to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice from the carton.

“It would seem so from what Mr. Featherstone had to say about Sir Horace's condition.”

“You think the vicar may have said that to give Lady Krumley ease of mind.”

“No, he's not a man to lie, whatever the motivation.” I leaned against the sink while drying my hands on a tea towel. “But we've all heard of men fathering children after being told it would be impossible. I'm sure Ernestine could find out, have some tests done, if she was so inclined. Just to be sure. But somehow I don't think she will. In all these years she's never made a push to find her father, or so she told Mr. Featherstone. And it wouldn't have been hard given all the facts at her disposal, just as it wasn't difficult for Watkins to substantiate that the Ernestine he had met at The Waysiders was Flossie's baby. A word here and a word there! And look what quick results Mrs. Malloy and I got.”

“You sound a bit glum, coz.” Freddy poured more juice.

“Well, it would have been nice to talk things over with her this morning. But there was no answer when I phoned. Not any of the six times. And to make matters worse Ben decided right after breakfast to give me a break by taking the children to school before driving over to Moultty Towers to surprise Mrs. Beetle with a visit from the author along with a signed copy of his latest book. It was awfully good of him, of course, but here I am with nothing to do except . . .”

“Say ‘Here's looking at you Freddy'?”

“I'll drink to that!” I said, reaching for what was left of his orange juice. But before I had taken more than a couple of swallows the garden door banged open and Mrs. Malloy marched into the kitchen to pound her bag, the one she used to carry her cleaning supplies, down on the table. Freddy and I exchanged meaningful glances but did not risk speaking while she peeled off her gloves a slow, methodical finger at a time, before unbuttoning her fake leopard coat.

“So this is what I'm reduced to.” She tossed her hat onto a growing pile on the table. “Returning to work for you Mrs. H. and being subjected to the leers of that upended floor mop you call your cousin.”

“I stand entranced by your blonde hair.” Freddy circled her on tiptoe, his hands clasped to his chest.

“Well take one last look, sonny boy, because I'm about to dye it back to black. Me days as an aspiring Girl Friday is over.”

“Did you say perspiring?”

“None of your cheek, or I'll give you a thick ear.” Mrs. M. glowered at my incorrigible relative. “I'm in the mood to give anyone hell as comes within a mile of me. And that's the softer side speaking.”

“You've spoken to Mr. Jugg on the phone, and he's not pleased we took over the Krumley case?” I eased her down onto a chair and told Freddy to get the kettle going for tea, a task he set about meekly while his ears flapped a mile a minute.

“He's back. Walked into the office while I was tending to his bloody plants.”

“The plastic ones?”

“They take just as much care as the real ones. You still have to talk to them if you want them to grow.”

“Of course.” I produced a cup and saucer.

“You're right about him not being grateful for all our efforts to bring peace and harmony back to Moultty Towers. Worked himself into a real state, he did, saying his Auntie would never forgive him for not handling the case himself. A man of his age having an Auntie. It put me right off it did. Me ardor cooled faster than that kettle's doing now Mr. Freddy's gone and took it off the cooker.”

“I won't be able to hear you if it starts to whistle.”

“That's the idea,” Mrs. Malloy informed him with her nose in the air. “You're all the same, you men. Sweetness and light while it suits you and then . . .”

“It's off home to Mother.” Freddy finished for her and a moment later he had pranced out the garden door without a backward glance.

“What's up with him?” Mrs. M. bestirred herself to a mild curiosity.

“Just what he said. He's gone home to his mother. You reminded him he'd left her down at the cottage where she could be having a relapse at this minute and if he doesn't gallop down the lawn she'll have emptied at least three rooms waiting for the vans to pull up outside. But back to Mr. Jugg. He's turned out to be another nasty nephew, has he?”

“And not just the ordinary sort. He's got the worst kind of aunt.”

“What kind is that?”

“The Mrs. Snow kind.”

“As in the snake-in-the-grass housekeeper Mrs. Snow?”

“The very same. It was her that advised Lady Krumley to go to him with her problem. Only now you and me are the ones with the problem Mrs. H. because he says he wouldn't dream of taking a fee from his aunt's former employer, not five pounds let alone five thousand. And he'll sue us for horrible damages if we go over his head. Well, let me tell you, I let him have it. I told him it wasn't the sort of case he'd have been any good at, seeing as it was one where the butler done it and nothing at all to do with the mean streets. Not that I'm now beginning to think he's ever been down one. Oh, was I ever taken in. But never again. I'm back here where I belong with Mrs. H. ruling the roost at Merlin's Court.”

“That's just the way I like it,” I told her.

“And I wouldn't be surprised if Ernestine's life has turned up trumps. I was talking to the Merryweathers on the phone before Milk, such a stupid name, walked into the office. And it seems they had a telephone call from her bright and early this morning. Quite over the moon about it, they were.”

“Isn't that nice.”

“Could be they didn't have it quite right, but they said Ernestine was leaving for France as soon as she knows what's going to happen with her father. It seems Sir Alfonse knows of some sort of mission he thinks he can interest her in. Another way of inviting her to look at his etchings if you asks me. And it was clear the Merryweathers are thinking along them same lines and are hoping like mad she'll turn over a new leaf and renounce all her good ways. I wonder if Lady Krumley will still leave her that money like she talked about?”

“I hope so. But I don't suppose it matters. She and Sir Alfonse did seem instantly besotted. Perhaps they'll bring French cuisine back to The Waysiders. That might make it more appealing to Aunt Lulu if she could be persuaded to go for another stay. She's a woman who will put up with a great deal for escargot.”