by Alisa Craig
“Herbert, you might have had sense enough to keep your foot out of your mouth,” snarled Clara. “Squire just got the rest of us off the hook and now you’ve stuck us right back on again. I’ve always said May was a fool to marry you.”
“That so? Then I’ve been a damn sight kinder to you than you have to me, Clara. Want me to go into particulars in front of Lawrence?”
“Shut up, you two,” May barked. “If there was ever a time when a family should stick together, this is it. I don’t know what we’re standing around here spouting this nonsense for in the first place. All we have to do is wait till Cyril wakes up and ask him where he got whatever it was he took.”
“Huh!” snorted her younger sister. “Do you think he’ll tell you?”
“He’d better. He knows what will happen to him if he doesn’t.”
“What will happen?” Rhys asked.
“Oh, May has her own little ways of putting a man through hell if he doesn’t toe the line,” the loquacious Herbert replied. “His socks don’t match, his bed gets lumps in it, he always winds up with the piece of meat that’s all fat, he can’t sit down without a draft on the back of his neck. Yes, sirree Bob, when it comes to driving a man nuts, my little Maysie’s got ‘em all beat hands down.”
Little Maysie replied that ol’ Herb was no slouch at it, either. “Anyway, Madoc, you just wait. I promise you faithfully I’ll get it out of him first thing in the morning, one way or another. And I’ll bet you five dollars it’ll turn out some floozy in a bar somewhere sold him the dope as a virility pill and he’s been hanging onto it in case some cute little trick like Janet happened along.”
Janet took that remark none too kindly. “I can’t imagine why he’d bother. He has no cause to suppose I’d be interested.”
“Hell,” said Herbert, “that wouldn’t stop him. If Cyril could think straight, he’d lay off the hooch once m a while. Then maybe he wouldn’t need to be taking stuff in the first place.”
“Does Cyril in fact take aphrodisiacs?” Rhys insisted.
“Not to my knowledge. We were kidding about it the other day, that’s all. He said he hadn’t been able to—I shouldn’t be saying these things in front of the kids.”
“They could no doubt tell you a few things,” snorted his wife with a glance at Val. “Madoc, for heaven’s sake, it’s Christmas Eve. Do we have to go on and on about this awful thing? Why don’t we just get poor old Aunt Addie upstairs, then sing a few carols—religious ones, you know, like ‘Silent Night’—and maybe have a little nightcap and go to bed?”
“I can’t say I feel much like singing Christmas carols,” Babs replied in an exhausted voice, “but I should most awfully like to have a good, hot soak in a bathtub and then go straight to bed. I’m sure Cyril didn’t realize how hard he was hitting me with that cane.”
“Good Lord, Babs, do you think he broke something?” cried her distraught husband. “Where does it hurt?”
“Right now I simply ache all over. Please, Inspector, I couldn’t we leave the rest of it till morning as May suggests? I assure you we’re none of us going anywhere in this storm.”
“Have to be crazy to try,” Lawrence grunted. “What do you say, Rhys?”
“Yes, why not? I think we have accomplished all we can with this discussion. Roy and Herbert, perhaps you might carry Miss Adelaide’s body upstairs and put her in the same room with her sister. I shall remain downstairs in case anybody might like a word with me in private. Janet will also stay, in her capacity as note-taker. If you don’t mind, Jenny,” the Mountie added with his most wistfully pleading smile.
“I don’t want to leave you, Madoc. Maybe Franny and Winny would like to have first crack at a private talk with you. I can tell they’re itching to get into a huddle with a real, live detective.”
That was a lie pure and simple. Franny and Winny were no doubt wetting their pants at the prospect, but they wouldn’t dare say so. Janet had all the instincts of a policeman’s wife, bless her resourceful little heart.
“All right, you two,” said Herbert, “but make it short and cut along to bed right afterward. This isn’t the sort of treat your mother and I had in mind for you, but you might as well enjoy it if you can. We’ll find a way to make things up to you somehow.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. We’re okay. You’d better get some sleep yourself.”
Franny was by far the more self-possessed of the two. Winny was trying hard to emulate his brother’s coolness, but making a poor fist of it. As Roy and Herbert were preparing to move the blanket-wrapped body from the chesterfield, Ludovic, who had remained discreetly absent until now, manifested himself.
“Will there be anything else tonight, sir?”
“I think not,” said Squire. “I doubt if anybody wants to sing carols, May, and I for one have no interest in a nightcap, except to cover my old bald head. The family will be going to bed, Ludovic. Inspector Rhys will stay down here for a while.”
Squire took it for granted the butler would require no explanation. Ludovic didn’t even nod.
“I have opened the damper in the library stove, sir. Perhaps Inspector Rhys would prefer to sit in there.”
“Thank you, Ludovic. That would be more comfortable.” At last he was going to have a chance to do what the real detectives did, though probably little would come of it. “Shall we go to the library, boys?”
Rhys didn’t have to ask Janet her preference. The Great Hall was arctic now that the wind had picked up again, the fire was down, and the thermometer must be hovering well below minus thirty. That thermal underwear with its tinsel trimming couldn’t be doing his affianced bride much good. He put his arm around her and squeezed her as tight as was consistent with locomotion as they walked together away from the departing Condryckes.
CHAPTER 16
“Ludovic, would there be a cup of hot tea going? I think Miss Wadman could use one. So could I, for that matter. How about you lads? By tea I mean, of course, tea,” Rhys added and Winny looked around as if for a chance to escape.
“We never touch the stuff,” Franny said with a swagger that might have deceived himself but not anyone else.
Ludovic went out of the library, still impeccably deadpan, and Rhys got down to work.
“Now would you two care to tell me what it was you fed your Uncle Cyril this afternoon?”
“Us? We never gave him anything. What makes you think we’re into speed?” Franny protested.
“Well, you do toss around expressions like speed as if they weren’t totally unfamiliar to you. And there is the fact that you’ve been high on pot ever since Miss Wadman and I arrived at Graylings. Where do you get it?”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Winny tried to insist.
“Come off it, young man. You’re not talking to your doting and innocent parents now. I do have a nose, fairly sharp eyes, and far too much experience with silly young chaps like you. You’ve been smoking in the billiard room. You had one last night and you shared a joint right after lunch today.”
“Get him!” cried Franny. “The big detective. How the hell would you know we had one right after lunch?”
“Elementary, my dear jughead. Lunch was very late today on account of the conference among your elders. You were in reasonable shape then. At approximately three o’clock pip emma, when Miss Wadman and I were forced in from a walk by a snow squall, we wound up in the hallway that leads past the billiard room. We smelled pot and heard you talking. You were totally spaced-out and talking a bunch of sickening rot that no doubt struck you at the time as brilliant. Your eyes were still red when you appeared in your lobster suits later, but your brains were somewhat less addled. You haven’t been at it long, have you? Otherwise you’d have known enough to open the windows and do something about your eyes. Not a remarkably good show, all in all. To rephrase my earlier question, where did you get it?”
“At school,” Franny mumbled.
“From whom?”
“A kid.”
“What kid?”
“John Smith.”
“Come off it.”
Franny shrugged. “That’s what he calls himself.”
“Is he a student at the school?”
“No.”
“If you’d talk a little faster, we could get this over sooner. Who is he, then?”
“I don’t know. He’s just a guy who comes around and the kids buy off him.”
“What do they buy?”
“Pot, mostly. I guess.”
“And what did you buy?”
“A nickel bag.”
“By which I assume you mean five dollars’ worth, right?”
“Yeah. Five was all we had. Winny and I’d been buying presents for the family, see?”
“How noble of you. How often do you make your buys from this alleged John Smith?”
“This was our first time. We just thought it would be something to do up here.”
“To take your minds off the joyous merrymakings?”
“It’s such a drag.”
Franny made the pronouncement in the tone of a world-weary roué. “The same damn stuff every year, and we’re supposed to make believe we’re having a ball so Squire won’t go into one of his fits. How much can you take, eh?”
“What sorts of fits does Squire go into?”
“Oh, you know. Huffs around and sulks and says he’s going to cut off our allowances because we’re a pack of ingrates.”
“Squire pays your allowances?”
“How could he cut them if he didn’t?” Winny asked logically enough.
“Doesn’t your father get a salary for his work as steward?”
“Well, that’s an allowance, sort of, isn’t it? I mean, Squire doesn’t have to keep Dad on here if he doesn’t want to. At least he’s said so often enough. Granny used to shut him up and say she was the boss here, not Squire, but I don’t know if she meant it or was just being nasty. Anyway, she’s gone now so you’d have thought Squire was boss, but now Uncle Cyril says he is. Only Uncle Cyril’s going to jail, isn’t he? What’s going to happen?”
“Time will tell,” said Rhys.
“You’re not going to rat on us?”
“About smoking pot? How much do you have left?”
“None,” mumbled Franny. “That was our last joint we smoked this afternoon.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess. I don’t remember very well.”
“Rather a stupid way to blow five dollars, then, wasn’t it? You’d have done better to buy comic books, since you appear inclined toward infantile pastimes.”
“What do you mean, infantile?”
“Sticking something in your mouth and sucking on it. Reducing yourself to the state of a baby who can’t even talk straight so that you can swank around in front of a bunch of other nitwits who don’t know what’s going on, either. This John Smith is either another sucker like yourselves with a habit to support or else he’s trying to make suckers out of you. When you get back to school, someone from the local police will be in touch with you about John Smith. You will keep your mouths shut and cooperate. Is that fully understood? If you’d prefer, I can haul you in and let you think about it.”
“You don’t give us much choice, do you?”
“I’m giving you a chance to save your necks and you’ll be smart to take it. What did you buy your Uncle Cyril for Christmas?”
“A book,” Franny replied. “We always get him a book. That way we can put it on his charge account and he never knows the difference.”
“The true Yuletide spirit. Where is the book now?”
“Under the tree with the rest of the presents, I guess. We got Val to wrap it for us.”
“Nice of her. What did you get Val?”
“Sort of a—a joke thing.”
“Such as what?”
“Well, they had these bikini things with sayings on them. We just sort of thought it would be something Val would get a bang out of.”
“Yeah, Val always gets a bang out of her bikinis,” Winny giggled.
Janet primmed her mouth. “Madoc, how much of this am I supposed to be taking down?”
“Just that reminder about getting the police on to John Smith. Unless there’s something else these jolly boys would like to tell me, such as what Smith sells besides pot.”
“We wouldn’t know,” Franny insisted. “Honest, Inspector, we never made but that one buy, and we had to get one of the other guys who’s a regular customer to do it for us. We couldn’t even tell you what John Smith looks like. We’ve only seen him from a distance.”
“Don’t push it, Franny. I expect your memory will improve once you get back to school and have your little session with your friendly neighborhood fuzz. Run along to bed now, children. Ah, Ludovic, good timing.”
“I regret the delay, sir. The kitchen staff had retired and it was necessary to boil up a fresh kettle.”
“No matter, you’re just in time. Sit down and chat a bit. Jenny darling, you won’t mind if Ludovic and I happen to lapse into our native tongue on occasion?”
“Not at all. It will give me a chance to get used to the sound. Set that tray in front of me, Ludovic, and park yourself in the easy chair over there. You might just poke another stick into the stove on your way past, if you feel you’ve got to earn your keep. I don’t dare ask Madoc for fear he’ll put me behind bars.”
In a moment the three of them were toasting themselves most agreeably around the roaring stove, sipping the tea Janet poured out. This was the way to treat a Welshman no matter what his position, because there has never been a Welshman alive who has not known himself to be the equal of anybody and maybe a little more equal than some and be damned to them all though it would not be sound politics to say so. Ludovic the perfect butler, Ludovic the probable crook, became simply Ludovic, chatting with a knight’s son and receiving hospitality from the hand of the son’s lovely bride-to-be.
Perhaps the man was feeling a gentle melancholy that Janet’s loveliness could never be his to possess, but that would be part of the pleasure. Yearning for that which could never be attained was what made the Welsh bards such great poets. Being a cop and not a bard, Madoc spent a moment in silent rejoicing that his own satisfaction was within the price of a license, then got down to business.
“This has not been a typical Christmas Eve at Graylings would you say, Ludovic?”
“It has not, sir. I fear you and Miss Wadman will carry away no favorable impression to your distinguished parents. Squire will take that hard. He has been dreaming of having Sir Emlyn and perchance even Sir Caradoc under his roof one day.”
“Janet and I were not invited for our wit and charm alone?”
“Not you, sir.”
Janet gave the butler a look over the rim of her teacup. “Ludovic, how do the Condryckes feel about Val’s romance with Roy Robbins?”
“They hope it will be of short duration, miss.”
“Would Donald by any chance have got wind of the fact that Roy was chasing me around the typewriters not too long ago?”
“Mr. Donald takes a paternal interest in the company’s employees.”
“So the idea was that I should tumble back into Roy’s ever-loving arms as soon as he made another pass at me, which Donald knew he would because that’s the way Roy is. Val would then be able to get in her licks with Madoc, since she’d fluffed it with the elder brother, right?”
“They felt it was worth a shot, miss.”
Madoc cleared his throat. “As a matter of passing interest, so to speak, has Roy in fact made another pass at you?”
“Ask Ludovic,” Janet replied demurely.
“Mr. Robbins is exhibiting toward Miss Wadman the manner of a young man who has had his ears pinned back good and proper, sir.”
Rhys laughed. “We seem to have been a complete bust all around. Any more tea in the pot, love?”
“Pass your cup.”
Ludovic made no effort to assi
st in this small task, perhaps because he considered himself off-duty, perhaps because he divined that Madoc would use the excuse to sneak in a mildly surreptitious caress, which in fact was the case.
“How does the kitchen feel about the Donalds and Val?” Rhys asked when he’d got himself untangled and his cup refilled.
“As Squire explained earlier, there is little exchange between the staff and the nonresident members of the family. By and large, Mr. and Mrs. Donald are thought to be harmless enough. Miss Val is the subject of some discussion. The maid who does her room considers her lazy and untidy. Her relationships with the young men she brings up here have given rise to considerable ribaldry during the past few years. There is the feeling among some of the male employees that Miss Val could, as the saying is, be had but would not be worth the effort.”
Rhys’s wistful brown eyes turned involuntarily to his own ladylove. Ludovic noticed and smiled.
“Miss Wadman is in great favor with the staff. Her demeanor in the kitchen and her idiomatic command of the French tongue made a favorable impression on Fifine, the cook, who is a woman of power. Admiration was warmly expressed among the males, but the consensus is that a man would have to be folle à la tête to trifle with the affianced bride of Detective Inspector Madoc Rhys.”
“They know who I am?” said Rhys sharply.
“The information did not come from me, sir. After your capture of Mad Carew the Murdering Maniac of the Mirimachi, you are something of a legend in these parts. Is it true, sir, that you tracked that man of fiendish cunning and titanic strength one hundred twenty-seven miles through unbroken wilderness, armed only with a slingshot against a throwing knife, a double-bitted axe, and a high-powered hunting rifle?”
“The slingshot is apocryphal,” Rhys answered, greatly embarrassed by this adulation of a task that had been considered merely a routine assignment back at headquarters. “We are not supposed to rely on force of arms but on force of character. I just tagged along till Carew had got a blister on his heel and a fuzzy caterpillar down his back, then slipped the cuffs on him while he was resting his foot and trying to dislodge the bug. The hardest part was trying to read him his rights. I had to get the caterpillar out before he’d listen to me. You will please inform those lecherous hounds out there, however, that I am indeed a man to be reckoned with where my Janet is concerned. What’s the scuttlebutt on Clara and Lawrence?”