Any Given Sundae (Australian Amateur Sleuth Book 5)

by Morgana Best

  Mr. Buttons jumped so hard that the envelope nearly fell into the fire. “Since when has Max spoken in such long sentences?” he asked me.

  “He seems to be getting more fond of lengthy insults,” I said with a sigh. “I suppose it’s better than his usual string of profanities.” Right on cue, Max uttered a string of said profanities.

  I put the bird outside, trying not to listen to his foul language, no pun intended. Mr. Buttons, resplendent in bright yellow gloves, had left the fire and was already boiling the electric kettle.

  I hurried over to him. “Are you sure this is a good idea? You’re tampering with evidence in a homicide investigation. Besides, it’s freezing away from the fire.”

  By way of answer, Mr. Buttons held the envelope over the steam from the electric kettle. “Have you checked the flue to make sure it’s shut? That fire should warm your whole cottage.”

  “Yes, the flue’s fine, but I think Cressida has changed her wood supplier. This wood doesn’t warm the cottage as well as usual. You probably can’t tell up at the boarding house because there are so many fires in it. I think it’s stringy bark, whereas it used to be red gum. And it’s green at that.”

  Mr. Buttons didn’t look up. Either he was bored by talk of firewood or he was too engrossed by tampering with evidence.

  “You do realize I’m an accessory to this, don’t you?”

  I might as well have been speaking to a brick wall. Mr. Buttons didn’t respond, remaining intently focused on holding the envelope over the steam. After what seemed an age, he removed the envelope from the steam and carried it over to the counter. I hurried to place paper towels under the envelope. Mr. Buttons carefully removed the contents, and laid them on a paper towel. I gasped.

  There, written in individually pasted letters, were the words:

  I know what you did. Go public with it at once, or die!

  “It’s a death threat!” I said, somewhat unnecessarily.

  Mr. Buttons picked up the envelope and peered at it. “The person who did this is not very tidy. See how these letters are scattered at angles? And some letters are red, while some are black. The whole effect is that of untidiness.”

  “Like Dorothy would do?” I asked for a joke, and then instantly regretted it.

  “Of course!” Mr. Buttons exclaimed. “This is surely Dorothy’s handiwork. She’s a terribly messy woman.” That was the worst insult Mr. Buttons could muster. Before I could think of something to say, he pressed on. “The post mark is from a week ago.”

  “So it was posted before Roland died.”

  Mr. Buttons nodded. “Yes, that seems to be the case.”

  “Just as well we didn’t put our fingerprints on it,” I said, “because we need to take this to the police.”

  “Yes, with great haste,” Mr. Buttons said. He gently put the letter back in the envelope, and then pushed it down hard so that it would stick. “Did you see how keen Dorothy was to get this envelope?” he asked me. “That just proves that she’s the murderer.”

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “You always think that Dorothy’s the murderer.”

  Mr. Buttons looked somewhat embarrassed. “I know I was wrong before, but I’m absolutely convinced that she’s the murderer this time.” His tone was stubborn.

  I shrugged. There was no use arguing with him. Nothing I could say would convince him that Dorothy was not the culprit. “Why don’t we go to the Little Tatterford Post Office? They might remember who posted this.”

  Mr. Buttons shook his head. “Whoever posted this wasn’t likely to go into the Post Office and let people see the pasted-on letters. They would have posted it outside when no one was around.”

  I slapped myself on my forehead. “Of course! How silly of me.”

  “But we should still go to the Little Tatterford Post Office,” Mr. Buttons said. “They can at least tell us why a letter posted in the same town took a week to reach the boarding house. Maybe someone does know something, after all, something that will implicate Dorothy as the murderer.”

  I rolled my eyes. Just then, I heard something outside. “Is that a car?”

  Chapter 7

  Mr. Buttons grabbed the envelope and put it behind his back. “No, I think it’s thunder.”

  A knock on the front door proved him wrong. “Quick, hide the envelope!” I hissed. I hurried to the front door and flung it open.

  It was Blake, but I hardly had a chance to see him before he pulled me to him and kissed me thoroughly. I clung to his warmth, and it took me a few moments to realize that Mr. Buttons was still inside, not that I cared too much at that time.

  “Get a room, you two!” Max squawked, and then he uttered a string of profanities that made Blake blush.

  I spun around. “Mr. Buttons, did you let Max inside?” As soon as I said the words, I realized that he did that as a diversion to the envelope, although why simply hiding the envelope wouldn’t have worked was beyond me.

  Mr. Buttons appeared and gave me an almost imperceptible nod. “I’ll put Max outside.”

  When he returned, I asked him, “All taken care of?”

  I felt bad deceiving Blake like that, but I had no choice. I could hardly admit that I had been tampering with evidence in a homicide investigation.

  “We were just intending to call you,” Mr. Buttons said to Blake. He leaned over the fire, and rubbed his hands together.

  “You were? What about?” Blake likewise held his hands over the fire, and then turned to me. “Sibyl, is something wrong with your fire? It’s not as warm as usual in here.”

  “It’s the firewood,” I said sadly. “Cressida’s changed her firewood supplier.” I wasn’t taking any notice of Mr. Buttons, the taste of Blake’s kiss still lingering on my lips, when Mr. Buttons thrust the envelope at Blake.

  Blake jumped in surprise. “What’s this?”

  I hurried to explain. “The postman just brought this.”

  “We were just about to call you and tell you about it when you arrived here,” Mr. Buttons said. “Dorothy tried to stop the postman giving it to us. Why, she almost wrestled us to the ground to get the envelope from us. I find that very suspicious. I think you’ll discover that Dorothy is the murderer.”

  Blake shot me a significant look. Clearly, he was just as tired of all the accusations against Dorothy as I was. I mean, the woman was highly unpleasant, but there was no need to think she was the perpetrator of every crime that had happened in Little Tatterford since her arrival.

  Blake turned the envelope over. “Why did you bring this here instead of calling me at the boarding house?” he asked in a suspicious tone.

  I desperately tried to think up something that sounded reasonable, but Mr. Buttons beat me to it. “Because that mad woman, Dorothy, was doing her best to get the envelope from us, so I suggested to Sibyl that we go down to her cottage. Since Dorothy is the murderer, I didn’t want the evidence to be near her. We were about to call you when we heard the knock. We only just arrived here and Sibyl got the fire going. Blake, the letter was postmarked over a week ago, but it was sent from Little Tatterford.”

  Blake raised his eyebrows. “It took over a week to get here and it was posted in the same town?”

  Mr. Buttons and I both nodded. Blake stared at me for a moment, and it was all I could do to hold his gaze and plaster what I hoped was an innocent look on my face. I was worried he’d come straight out and ask me if we had read the letter, but luckily he didn’t. “So tell me exactly what happened, from the beginning.”

  “Sibyl and I were looking at the roses in the front garden of the boarding house, when the postman came. Dorothy took off like an Olympic sprinter and tried to snatch the envelope from Sibyl. When she couldn’t get her grubby mitts on it, she demanded that we hand it over to her.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said. “I have to admit, Dorothy seemed keen to get the envelope.”

  Mr. Buttons opened his mouth to speak, but Blake wisely got in first. “I’ll take th
is down to the station and hand it over to the detectives,” he said.

  “Hopefully whatever’s in it will help with the murder investigation,” Mr. Buttons said.

  The look Blake shot us made me think that he knew that we’d already steamed open the envelope. Still, he didn’t give voice to his obvious suspicions, but merely left in a hurry, promising to be in touch soon.

  “Why did you give it to him?” I asked Mr. Buttons.

  “Do you mind that I did?”

  I shook my head. “No, we were going to give it to him, of course, but I wanted to show it to the post office lady first.”

  Mr. Buttons pulled his iPhone from his pocket and smugly showed me photos of the letter.

  “Well done, Mr. Buttons,” I said. “For a minute you had me worried. I wondered why you’d given the letter to Blake.”

  “I’m not as silly as I look,” Mr. Buttons said seriously.

  I had no idea how to respond, so simply nodded. “Will we go to the post office now?”

  Mr. Buttons peered through the window and shuddered. “Might as well. I don’t suppose there’s any point waiting until it warms up.”

  I agreed. “We’d be here for months if we did that.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Buttons and I were standing outside the Little Tatterford Post Office, deciding what to do. Well, we had already decided, but had changed our minds several times. Finally, I agreed to let Mr. Buttons do the talking.

  There were no other customers inside the small post office when we walked in. Carol, the post office manager, was at the counter. Mr. Buttons took out his phone and showed her the photo of the envelope. “Carol, did you see anyone post this?”

  She took his phone from him and turned it over, staring at the screen. “No, I don’t remember anyone posting this. I sure would have remembered it, though.”

  “It was postmarked over a week ago, but it only arrived this morning,” Mr. Buttons told her. “Why would a letter posted in Little Tatterford take a week to arrive in Little Tatterford?”

  “That’s because Little Tatterford isn’t a real post office,” Carol said.

  Mr. Buttons and I exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” I asked her. It looked like a proper post office to me, and I had been sending letters from here ever since I had arrived in town. I had no idea what she meant. “Pharmadale is a real post office,” she continued.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying,” Mr. Buttons said.

  Carol shrugged. “It’s like this. Little Tatterford is too small to have a proper post office like the one in Pharmadale, so everything posted here has to go to Pharmadale.”

  I was beginning to catch on. “So do you mean when something gets posted here, as it isn’t considered to be a real post office, it has to go to a real post office first.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Carol said. “That’s the way post offices work in country New South Wales. If the letter is posted in Little Tatterford and addressed to somewhere else in Little Tatterford, the letter goes to Pharmadale, and then it goes to Sydney, and then it goes back to Pharmadale, and then back to Little Tatterford. That’s the way Australia Post works.”

  “Why, that’s quite insane!” I said.

  Carol was quick to agree with me. “Yes it is, but that’s Australia Post for you.”

  Mr. Buttons leaned over the counter to pick a piece of lint from Carol’s coat. “So if a letter is posted in Little Tatterford to someone else to Little Tatterford, it could easily take a week to get there?”

  Carol nodded. “Yes, that’s right. A letter from England will get here faster.”

  My head spun with the craziness of it all.

  Carol was still speaking. “And Australia Post has recently streamlined the service here.” She made air quotes as she said the word ‘streamlined.’ “Now they only deliver mail every second day.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said.

  Carol shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Sad but true.”

  Before I could think of a suitable response, the two detectives burst through the door. I saw that Detective Roberts was clutching the envelope. “Mr. Buttons!” I hissed urgently.

  Mr. Buttons put his phone in his pocket. “Five stamps, please. And don’t mention what we just asked you, if you would be so kind,” he added in a tone so low that I wasn’t sure if Carol had heard him.

  Mr. Buttons handed over the cash for his stamps, at the same time bitterly complaining over the recently risen cost of stamps, and then both of us walked away to pretend to look at the merchandise. The detectives eyed us suspiciously, but continued on to the counter. Mr. Buttons and I pretended not to be interested as the detectives questioned Carol about the envelope. She told them what she had told us, that the envelope was no doubt posted outside. She said she would ask the other two staff members if anyone had posted it over the counter, but the detectives agreed that they thought it unlikely.

  Just as Mr. Buttons and I had finished exclaiming over the tough bags and post packs, not to mention the very overdue Mother’s Day cards that were still on display, I took Mr. Buttons by the arm and indicated that we should leave.

  Once outside the post office, we made a dash for my van. The sleet was coming down heavily now, little pieces of ice that stung as they pelted us viciously. It was a strange sort of cold here in this region of Australia, cold that permeated the bones, a cold that started inside, and that no amount of clothing would help.

  I started the car and turned the heater to maximum, and waited for my teeth to stop chattering.

  “That was a waste of time,” Mr. Buttons said sadly. “Dorothy wasn’t silly enough to post it in person.”

  “Come on, Mr. Buttons,” I said. “We don’t know that it was Dorothy. Besides, Roland had only just arrived at the boarding house. The murderer must have expected him to arrive earlier, given the letter.”

  “Didn’t you know?” Mr. Buttons asked. “Roland and Sally were supposed to arrive last month. They were delayed, and Dorothy knew that they were coming.”

  “How did she know?” I asked in disbelief.

  “The bookings are in the book at the front desk,” he said smugly.

  I shrugged. “It could just as easily have been his wife, trying to throw suspicion on someone else. You know, we really do have to consider the possibility that it was someone else. You always think the murderer is Dorothy, and it never has been.”

  Mr. Buttons looked at me and frowned. “I know it’s Dorothy,” he said, “but we do have a more pressing problem.”

  “What’s that?” I asked in alarm.

  Mr. Buttons frowned so hard that I expected his eyebrows to shoot from his forehead. “Cressida’s art showing in Little Tatterford tonight.”

  Chapter 8

  “Oh, boy,” I said, trying my best to smile. “It sure is something.”

  Cressida smiled warmly. “Thanks, Sibyl! A lot of people have liked it so much that their jaws literally dropped,” she said excitedly.

  I wasn’t at all surprised, as it had taken an enormous amount of willpower to stop myself from running away and screaming. I thought I’d eventually get used to Cressida’s art, but it seemed as though she managed to make each piece more terrifying than the last.

  This particular painting was, apparently, a detailed illustration of the sacking of Troy. Cressida had told me as much before I’d seen it, so naturally I’d assumed the painting would focus on a giant wooden horse. Instead, she had decided to focus on how the Trojans were massacred, in excruciating detail. To her credit, the detail was astounding, but it made the piece awfully hard to look at for any extended period of time.

  “There’s no wooden horse,” I pointed out when she stopped to draw breath.

  Cressida frowned. “Of course not, Sibyl. Only Virgil’s Aeneid mentioned the wooden horse. You’ll find no mention of any wooden horse in Homer’s Iliad, and Homer’s account of the Trojan War is centuries earlier than Virgil’s. I’ve based this painting on the Iliad, and
I quote, ‘Telemon’s son leaped forward and struck him on his bronze helmet. The plumed headpiece shattered at the point of the weapon, struck at once by the spear and by Ajax’s strong hand so that his blood-covered brain came oozing out through the crest…’”

  “Okay!” I said a little too loudly as I clutched at my stomach. I finished my almost-full glass of wine as quickly as I could, hoping it would take the edge off being surrounded by visions and sounds of existential dread. It did. I figured more couldn’t hurt. As I selected another glass of wine, Cressida excitedly told me about all the compliments she had received.

  “Some people are telling me that they’ve never seen work quite like this before,” she explained.

  I believed it. “I’m glad you’re doing so well, Cressida. Where’s Mortimer?” I asked, looking around for Cressida’s art dealer. He had been responsible for setting up this exhibition, though of course Cressida had also put in a considerable amount of time and effort making sure it ran smoothly. To their credit, they had done an admirable job, and while the art itself made the entire event feel like some kind of horror show, the venue was large, open, clean, and fancy. There were various kinds of wines and champagnes served along with light snacks, including more varieties of cheese than I realized even existed.

  “Oh, he’s around somewhere,” Cressida said absent-mindedly. “He’d be very busy talking to people, I suppose. I should be as well, but I’m just too excited!”

  I could see that she was telling the truth by the quiver in her voice and by the way her hands shook as she spoke. I was glad that she was having such a good time with the whole event. “Have you sold anything yet?” I asked her. I hoped she had, or the question might be a bit hurtful. I wouldn’t have asked at all, except after meeting Mortimer, I discovered that people were entirely happy to buy Cressida’s art, despite the horror of it all. I had just assumed that they were using her art to scare away unwanted guests.

  Cressida beamed. “Oh, yes, actually. Quite a few, though, to be honest, it’s a bit of a worry, as we hadn’t planned to sell so many. Replacing them might be a bit of an issue for the gallery, so I have a lot of work ahead of me,” she said, clearly not at all worried despite having said she was just a second ago.