by Maia Chance
“… absolutely through with this!” Coral screamed. A door slammed.
“Coral, come back!” Rudy cried. “I love you, Coral!”
Silence.
Glenn said, “I’ve just remembered—I’ve got to make a telephone call to the studio. They gave me the most preposterous lines in the script for the next show, and I’ve got to absolutely put my foot down. No one wishes to hear sixteen jokes about vacuum cleaners in the span of an hour. It’s unendurable.” He swung his legs off the chair arm and strolled, hands in pockets, out of the drawing room.
A minute or two passed and then Coral sailed in. Titian curls peeked from the brim of her brown cloche. Her green eyes were baby doll–wide, upslanted, and crisped with mascara. Her lips were as glossy red as poisonous berries, and her chic gray hunting suit hung on her in that shop mannequin way.
“Oh, hello,” she said, not really looking at any of us on her way to the drinks cabinet. She set something down—a gold cigarette lighter—and poured out a tumbler of gin. When she put the stopper back on the decanter, it rattled; her hands were shaking. She tossed the gin back, patted the corners of her lips with a fingertip, and then sent a dazzling smile in our direction. “Rudy’s in a rage again.” Her voice was brave yet tremulous. “He’s gone mad. I’m a little frightened, honestly.”
“You did say you were through with him, young lady,” Isobel said in a scolding tone. She trundled toward the door. “If you will excuse me, I must go to the powder room.”
“You heard all that?” Coral turned back to the drinks cabinet and, seeing the gold lighter, slipped it into her jacket pocket. She poured herself another gin. “How embarrassing. I guess Rudy’s bedroom is more or less above us here in the drawing room. Who are you, anyway?”
“Friends of Lord Sudley’s,” I said. “He said Rudy would be expecting us.”
“Maybe. Who knows? Since I’m not his wife, I don’t really get filled in on all the details. I’m simply expected to show up and look cute.” Coral poured herself a third gin and draped herself on a giraffe-skin divan. “Men,” she said. “Beasts. Now, where did I put my cigarettes?”
Berta cleared her throat. “I understand there is to be a fancy dress party this evening, Miss—?”
“Moore,” Coral said. “Mm.” Her tone was bored, yet she bobbed one narrow boot.
“A hunt theme, I believe?” Berta pressed.
“Yes.”
“I think I shall go as a rhinoceros,” Berta said.
Coral shrieked with laughter. “You must be joking!”
“No.” Berta sounded hurt. “And I did happen to notice quite a lot of rhinoceros trophies in here. Do you think Mr. Montgomery would mind if I borrowed one for my costume?”
Brilliant. Berta was simply brilliant.
BANG!
We all jumped, and I sloshed my drink.
“Now, that was a gunshot,” Berta said, touching the locket at her throat.
“Rudy!” Coral screamed.
“Do I smell gunpowder?” I said.
“I do,” Berta said.
Coral dashed toward the door. I followed her, and so did Berta. Down the corridor, into the entry hall, up the ponderous staircase, along another corridor, and to a shut door. Coral grabbed the doorknob and twisted.
“It’s locked,” she cried. She rattled the doorknob, then pushed at the door with her shoulder. “Rudy?” she called. “Rudy! Open the door! This isn’t funny.”
No answer.
Berta and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. “I shall pop downstairs and telephone the police,” Berta whispered.
“Swell idea,” I whispered back.
I remained with Coral, who was getting increasingly frothed up as her cries and knocks were met with silence. Other people arrived—the grim housekeeper, Isobel and Glenn, and a handsome young man in eyeglasses and a sweater vest.
Sweater Vest: “What is the matter, Coral?”
Glenn: “Just another spat. Such a yawn.”
Sweater Vest (coldly, to Glenn): “I was not speaking to you.”
Coral (pounding the door open-handed): “Rudy! Rudy, I’m sorry! I’ll never leave you, my love!”
From the room: tomblike silence.
Cedric: nervous panting.
Isobel: “Isn’t there another door leading to this bedroom?”
Grim Housekeeper: “No.”
Coral: “He’s not responding! There was a gunshot!” (More door-pounding.) “Rudy! Oh, Rudy, I’m sorry. I adore you, you know that!”
Sirens yowled in the distance.
It turned out that Berta—she was always thorough—had telephoned the Carvington police station, the fire brigade, and the town doctor. Noisy vehicles swarmed into the drive, and about a dozen men in assorted uniforms besieged the house.
Those of us clustered around Rudy’s bedroom door stood back as a brawny fireman smashed the door. Coral gasped into Glenn’s shoulder.
The door splintered open. We all fell silent.
Rudy lay crumpled on the floor beside an open window, a shotgun beside him and lustrous blood leaking from his temple. The curtains wafted, and my eye fell on the too-innocent view of the side lawns and the distant line of trees.
“Rudy!” Coral screamed. She ran across the room and threw herself onto the corpse.
“Don’t touch the body, miss,” a policeman said. “What’s this here on the floor? A key?”
Coral ignored him, sobbing, face buried in the crook of Rudy’s neck.
This was not, unfortunately, my first experience with a corpse while a guest in someone else’s house. It’s a bit awkward. The urge to flee does battle with the requirement to stay—because who wishes to be the fink who trickles off right after a death? It’s downright heartless, not to mention frowned upon by Emily Post. And then there’s the milling mob wrestling with emotions ranging from heartbroken to guilty. For instance:
Eight tweedy hunters, Lord Sudley included, hogged the drawing room fireplace. They’d broken into a bottle of wine said to have once belonged to Napoléon Bonaparte. They spoke in somber tones, but their relish of the wine was obvious. (Guilty.)
The flapper mistresses of the tweedy hunters (I gathered that the wives had been left at home) whispered and giggled, got sloshed, and played Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds softly on the Victrola. (Guilty.)
Cedric somehow dragged away one of the resident Labradors’ large bones despite his teddy-bear size. The three Labradors, plump and wet and smelly, lazily observed from their places on the hearth. (Guilty, guilty, guilty, and guilty.)
Me, nursing an ill-advised highball. (I’d found a dusty bottle of ginger ale in the back of the drinks cabinet.) Noodling about Ralph. Trying not to noodle about Ralph. Wondering what you bally well do when your hopes and dreams are so out of step with those of the one you love. Do you adapt to his vision? Wait for him to adapt? Or move on alone? (Heartbroken. Obviously.)
Coral (also heartbroken), shut herself away in a bedroom. Despite the house’s weighty construction, some of her sobs were audible all the way downstairs.
I pulled Lord Sudley aside. “I’m awfully sorry about Rudy,” I said. “I know he was your dear friend.”
“He was.” Sadness washed over Lord Sudley’s suntanned features. “I’ll miss him dreadfully.”
I cleared my throat. “Isn’t it a little, well, unseemly the way everyone’s carrying on?”
“We’re hardly carrying on, my dear. And the truth is, Rudy always wanted a wake, a great, big, carousing wake to send him off to the Great Beyond in just the fashion he preferred to live. We are merely adhering to his wishes. In fact, we’re just getting started.”
“What do you mean?”
“That costume party I told you to pack for? It will proceed as planned. It’s what Rudy would have wished.”
“All right,” I said doubtfully. “If you say so. And … what about Coral?”
“Everyone’s been up to try to speak with her. She doesn’t wish to be disturbed.”
After that, Berta and I made an excursion up to Coral’s room, with the idea that, despite her having refused the others’ ministrations, we could offer some womanly comfort. Berta rapped softly on the door.
“Coral?” I said. “Coral, may we come in?”
“Go away!” came Coral’s muffled scream. “I’m sick to death of all of you knocking and whispering through the keyhole. What a bunch of nosy parkers!”
Okeydokey.
Anyway, a statuesque, ebony-skinned manservant was carrying trays of tea, soup, and cocktails up to her at regular intervals. The tea and soup came back down on the trays untouched, I noticed, but the cocktail glasses were empty.
“I can’t bear it any longer!” I exclaimed to Berta a bit later, as I was sipping a second highball. We were watching from the library windows as Rudy’s shrouded body was loaded into an ambulance to be taken to the morgue in the nearby town of Mystic. Night had fallen like a lid.
“It is a reminder that our time on this earth is short,” Berta said.
“Not that. We can’t investigate the rhinoceros trophies until those hunters clear out of the drawing room, and I’m famished! We’re expected to drink all this booze without any nibbles?”
“No one is forcing you to consume liquor, Mrs. Woodby.”
“You do realize you’re gripping a glass of sherry?”
“That is beside the point. At any rate, I would just as soon have a lie-down. I scouted out the bedrooms where the servants stowed our luggage. My room is quite delightful, overlooking the sea. Yours is … practical.”
“Let’s just take a quick peek in the kitchen. Maybe that frightening housekeeper will give us some grub.”
* * *
The kitchen was located on the ground floor, after the fashion of Continental country houses, accessed by the back stairs near the conservatory. As it happened, the kitchen was unoccupied. It appeared as though dinner preparations had been called off mid-execution. The cast-iron stove still radiated heat, but chopped potatoes sweated on a cutting board and bread dough ballooned out of its bowl.
“Aha—there’s the pantry,” I said, doubling my pace.
This was how it came to pass that I was forking up orange spice layer cake straight off its pedestal plate when Lord Sudley found us in the pantry. “Mrs. Woodby,” he said. “I’ve been searching high and low for you.”
“Mmfgh,” I said, rapidly chewing and swallowing cake.
Lord Sudley stepped into the pantry and shut the door behind him. “Caught you in your native habitat, eh? Ah, Mrs. Lundgren. I did not see you there.”
Berta stood at the counter ledge behind the door, holding a pickled cucumber. “Hello,” she said with queenly dignity, and took a crunching bite.
“Do you still wish us to retrieve the rhinoceros trophy?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. But … there is something else.” Lord Sudley unfolded the paper. “This is Rudy’s suicide note—that is to say, his presumed suicide note. It was on the desk in his bedroom.”
“What do you mean, ‘presumed’?” I asked.
Lord Sudley passed me the paper.
Harried, manly handwriting in lead pencil read,
I cannot bear this cruel world any longer. My heart aches for the love it will never know. Good-bye.
“The police said he shot himself,” Lord Sudley said, “but I don’t believe that for a second. Rudy would never write this sort of drivel, and furthermore, Rudy would never kill himself. I’m dead certain of it.”
“How?”
“He had the utmost contempt for suicides.” Lord Sudley raked a hand through his thick hair. “I recall quite vividly a particular conversation we had. We were on the Great Hungarian Plain—hunting red stags, you know—and in the village in which we were staying, a young man hanged himself—something about being rejected by the village beauty. Rudy had some rather harsh words to say about that, words I won’t repeat in front of ladies. In short, he thought any man who killed himself over a woman wasn’t a real man.”
“Did you mention this to the police?” I asked.
“I did, actually, and they all but laughed in my face. As they see it, the matter is open and shut. Straightforward case of suicide: weapon beside the body, suicide note, and everyone knows Rudy’s personality tended toward melancholy.”
“Any money troubles?”
“No. He was his parents’ sole heir when they died years ago, and I gather the Montgomerys have been well-to-do since colonial days. Still, he was one of those chronically lonely people who feel alone even when surrounded by friends. Oh, he was always jovial and a great sport, but he often drank to excess, and he always had trouble with women. Coral is merely the latest—the last—in a long line of tumultuous and, to be honest, unsuitable women whom he’d romanced.”
“Perhaps it really was suicide,” I said gently. “The policeman found a key on the floor of the bedroom. He said he must have knocked it out when breaking down the door. It appears that Rudy had locked the door—from the inside—before he…”
Lord Sudley rubbed his eyes with forefinger and thumb. “Oh, perhaps you’re correct. But I won’t rest easy unless I rule out murder.” He dropped his hand from his eyes. “So. What is the Discreet Retrieval Agency’s fee for solving a murder?”
Berta pepped up. “We require an upfront twenty-five percent advance, all our expenses are to be covered, and whether we pinpoint the murderer or conclude that the death was indeed suicide, the fee is four thousand dollars.”
“Deal.” As Lord Sudley shook my hand, he gazed deeply into my eyes. So deeply, in fact, that for a few seconds I very nearly forgot about both orange buttercream icing and Ralph. “Are you sure you are … quite all right? Mucking about with murder, I mean?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Do it all the time.”
“When I learned your agency was headed up by two ladies, I confess I pictured two hard-boiled dames of the sort whose mug shots you see in the newspapers. You know—all squashed hats and suspiciously heavy jaws. I do not feel entirely, well, gallant, embroiling two rather genteel ladies in such a grim business.”
“We are equal to the case,” Berta said, glaring at my hand, which was still held by Lord Sudley.
I drew my hand away. “More than equal,” I said. “If Rudy Montgomery was truly murdered, we’ll find his killer. You may count on it. Oh—would you like Mrs. Lundgren and me to admit that we are private detectives, or to stay undercover?”
“No need to be secretive, I suppose,” Lord Sudley said with a sigh. “Things are already complicated enough as it is, and I have every right to hire detectives, haven’t I?”
4
Lord Sudley excused himself from the pantry, saying he would be missed by the hunting gents and their flapper mistresses.
Berta and I went into the kitchen to make sandwiches. Before sketching out a plan of attack in the privacy of Berta’s room, we required more sustenance.
“Four thousand dollars, Berta!” I said, rummaging through the icebox. “Four thousand dollars will allow us to move into a new apartment.”
“One with a proper front room for an office.” Berta sliced bread. “One with two bedrooms. Seeing your bed jackets and slippers flung every which way on the sitting room carpet has grown tiresome.”
“You have the one bedroom, Berta. I’ve been sleeping on the sofa.”
“That has been impossible for me to forget. Oh, and I feel it is my duty to caution you that Lord Sudley appears to be unaccountably smitten with you—”
“Bologna!”
“Do not even attempt to deny it.”
“No, I mean I’ve found some bologna.” I pulled it from the icebox and passed it to Berta. “Maybe it’s pastrami. Either way, I’ll have my sandwich with mayonnaise, extra mustard, and a pickle.” I indulged in a glow of satisfaction. The likes of Ralph Oliver might not think I’m worthy of an engagement ring, but I could still win the admiration of a British lord. So there. “As for Lord Sudley, well, any lady with a bit
of sense knows that the best way to forget one fellow is to go and get herself another.”
“That is not sensible at all, Mrs. Woodby.”
“I think I’ll just nab another piece of that cake. Want some?”
“You will save yourself time and effort if you simply carry the entire cake upstairs.”
“If you’re going to twist my arm.”
Berta finished making the sandwiches. When we were ready to go upstairs, I carried the orange spice cake; Berta followed with the sandwiches.
But the kitchen stairs were blocked by the forbidding puffinlike shape of the housekeeper.
“Oh, hello,” I said breezily. “I don’t believe I know your name, Miss—?”
“Murden.” Her flinty gaze fell on the cake. “I see that you have located the dessert.”
“Just borrowing it.”
“Did you burrow into the side with a fork?”
“Um—”
“It looks like Norway rats have gotten to it.” Miss Murden turned to Berta. “I hope you did not use my fresh mayonnaise to make those sandwiches.”
Berta stiffened. “If that was your fresh mayonnaise, I pity you.”
Miss Murden went to the stove and slung a large copper saucepan from a hook overhead. It hit the stove with a clang. “Now I’ll have to make a pudding. Miss Moore ordered something sweet for the party—doesn’t care a whit about whether I’d like to mourn poor Mr. Montgomery, does she? Scandalous little miss with her flimsy silky clothes and all that lipstick. They’re all scandalous. Mr. Montgomery’s body has not even gone cold, and they’re carousing like it’s Sodom and Gomorrah all over again.”
Miss Murden had been in the house when Rudy died. Questioning her would be a tip-top place to begin our murder investigation. I placed the cake on the table. “Miss Murden,” I said, “did Mr. Montgomery’s death come as a great surprise to you?”
“No.” Her head was buried in the icebox.
“Why is that?”
She emerged from the icebox with a bottle of milk and returned to the stove. “Because he was an abrasive man. Remorseless. Inflexible. Not a loyal bone in his body.”
“Then there might have been, perhaps, a person or two who would not have minded murdering him?” Berta said.