“And what does he argue about?”
“I’ve only ever heard him argue about Madge and how stingy she is with her money. A real Scrooge he says. He says he should take something of hers to make up for it. But I don’t think he’s quite right in the head.”
“I see, and what’s his name?”
“Silas Pound.”
“Tell me, Lula dear, can you think of anyone who might want to hurt your grandmother?”
Lula looked around at the faces all staring at her, except for Colin. He was sketching something and looking at Lady Marmalade intermittently.
“Anyone here, really. Like Penelope says, Madge isn’t the kindest and she doesn’t know how to treat people well, but she’s trying. It’s just that sometimes people don’t know that deep down she’s got a decent heart...”
Lula looked at Matilda and Colin quickly before looking at her hands knotted together in her lap.
“Colin and Matilda spoke of bumping her off not long ago...”
“I ought to wrap your knuckles myself, for everything I’ve done for you!” said Matilda.
“I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t quite hear you,” said Frances.
“Colin and Matilda were talking about bumping my grandmother off. I heard them, they were laughing about it.”
Colin glanced up, hearing his name and shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not what it sounds like,” said Matilda.
Frances looked at her.
“Then what was it like, exactly?”
“Look,” said Colin, “Madge gets into these moods. She curses up and down the house, screeching like a banshee and putting everyone in a foul mood. I was just trying to let off some steam so I turned to Matilda one time and said we should bump her off and be done with all the drama, the wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
“Still, that’s quite a serious thing to admit to, especially under these circumstances,” said Frances.
“I don’t care,” said Colin shrugging and looking back down at his notebook. “I’d welcome her death if I can speak plainly.”
Both Penelope and Lula gasped.
“Colin!” said Matilda.
He looked up at her and tilted his head to the side.
“Listen, all I’m saying is that she’s a horrid woman, I wouldn’t miss her if she were bumped off, now I didn’t say I’d do it.”
“But that’s just the problem,” said Frances, “you admitted to saying the very thing just now.”
“That’s not what I mean, that was only in jest to try and alleviate the mood. Ask Matilda here.”
Frances looked at Matilda.
“It’s true, I didn’t take it seriously and it did help ease the tensions. I don’t think he’d do something like that. He’s an artist, he’s very sensitive beneath his angry exterior.”
“I see,” said Frances, looking over at Lula again. “What about the milkman or the postman?”
“They’re very nice. I spend some time speaking with them when I have the chance. Grandmother gets me to pay Tom, he’s the milkman, Tom McMeritt. He’s an older man, very sweet. He takes good care of his horses too. You can always tell a man by the way he treats his beasts. That’s what grandmother always says.”
“And the postman?”
“He’s a busy man, busier than the milkman for he won’t stay as long and talk with me. But he’s nice when he does have the time. He’s old too, maybe even grandmother’s age, and fat. I don’t know how he can be so fat when he’s walking around all day, but I’ve never asked him that. His name is Raymond Thompson, with the ‘p’ as he says.”
“Can you see either one of them harboring any ill will towards your grandmother?”
“No, they’ve hardly ever met her. Certainly not more than a handful of times that I know about.”
“What about Jeremiah or Mollie?”
Lula looked up at Frances with wide eyes.
“Good heavens, no, I can’t imagine them hurting her. They’ve been with us over ten years each and they certainly could’ve left if they wanted to. No, I don’t think they’d hurt her at all.”
“But we just heard that Madge doesn’t pay them very well, that might be incentive enough?”
“I don’t get paid anything to look after my grandmother and I do it happily, I’d never think of hurting her.”
“Does your grandmother have any other family you know of?”
Lula shook her head wearily.
“Not that I know of... wait, I did hear her talking about someone once in her sleep. Michael, Michael she kept calling out. I went to comfort her and asked her about it, but she wouldn’t say anything. One day I found a picture of her in one of her drawers, holding a small baby. The back of it was written ‘Michael 1 month, Christmas 1893’. Other than that, I never could find anything else out about Michael. I asked her once more but she got very angry and told me to never speak of it again.”
“And there’s nobody else who might know anything about that?” asked Frances.
“No. Her parents both died when she was seventeen I believe and her grandmother has been dead for quite some time. She’s never spoken about any siblings that I know of.”
“It’s all very strange,” said Frances, looking around at everyone and then at Alfred. “The most likely suspects are all in this room, and that would make them very foolish to harm Madge now that they know I’ve taken an interest in it.”
“Indeed, my Lady,” said Alfred.
“Or they’ll do it so carefully that you’ll never be able to pin it on them,” offered Colin.
“There has never been a case that I have not been able to solve, given enough time.”
“There’s always a first time for everything then, isn’t there?”
“You’re an insolent and annoying young man,” said Alfred getting a little hot under the collar.
“No need to get upset, Alfred, underneath all that gruff exterior is a sensitive artist, don’t you know.”
Frances smiled sweetly at both Colin and Matilda. Matilda attempted what might have been a smile but ended up being a face she might make while sucking on lemons. Colin was unperturbed and went back to his sketching.
SIX
Chapter 6
IT was getting late. The clock had struck ten and the boarders were getting restless, but Lady Marmalade needed to finish her questioning while she had them all under one roof. She turned to Matilda.
“How long have you been a boarder here?”
“Penelope and I arrived about the same time. I started in June of last year and Penelope came the following month. I was the first I believe...”
Lula was shaking her head. Matilda and Frances looked at her.
“Is that incorrect?” asked Frances.
“Yes, my grandmother has had boarders as long as she’s had me, practically.”
“Well, in any event, there was nobody here when I answered the advertisement in the paper.”
Frances looked back at Lula who nodded her head.
“Just a minute please Matilda, if you don’t mind,” said Frances putting up her hand to stop Matilda and looking at Lula. “How long do the boarders stay, on average, would you guess?”
Lula shrugged her shoulders and clenched at her dress. She looked furtively up at Frances.
“I can’t say for certain, but I can’t remember anyone lasting longer than a year.”
She turned to look at Matilda.
“I’ll be here longer than a year, I can promise you that. She’s not going to scare me off.”
That made Lula smile and she went back to looking at her hands in her lap. Frances put her hand back up to stop Matilda.
“Why hasn’t anyone lasted longer than a year, do you suppose?”
Lula shrugged again and bit her lip. It was hard to tease out the information that Frances needed from her. Perhaps she felt self-conscious speaking about her grandmother in front of others, perhaps if Frances got her alone it might be easier.
“If you we
re to really think hard, Lula, why do you think nobody want’s to stay after their lease is up?”
Lula looked up with flittering eyes that darted around the room like scared birds.
“I guess because most people don’t understand Granny like I do...”
For some reason, Lula was reluctant to use this informal name for her grandmother, though it rolled off her tongue easily, perhaps the more formal ‘grandmother’ was mostly for everyone else’s benefit, thought Lady Marmalade.
“I mean, my grandmother,” Lula continued. “Nobody knows her like I do. I’ve been with her the longest. She’s told me as much. Nobody else in her life has been with her longer than I have, not even her parents or her grandmother. Like everybody else says, she has a bit of a temper and she can be unkind, even though she doesn’t mean it. I guess she has a way of pushing people away even though she doesn’t mean it...”
“Oh, I think she means it very sincerely,” said Matilda.
“Thank you, Lula, for your honesty.”
Frances would have to speak with Madge about her treatment of Lula. It had been a long time since she’d heard anybody make such resolute excuses for such bad behavior on another’s part. Though the hour was getting late, it would have to wait until Lady Marmalade’s next visit. Frances looked back at Matilda.
“Sorry to interrupt you. You were saying that you arrived almost a year ago in June and Penelope in July.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Matilda, eager to return to her point of view. “Then Colin arrived in January of this year, didn’t you Colin?”
She looked over at him and glanced down at his sketch which was almost complete. Colin nodded.
“And as I said, I’m not leaving anytime soon. So long as the three of us remain friends.”
She looked at Penelope who smiled and nodded her head and then at Colin who was lost in his sketchbook and didn’t say or do anything, and then she looked over at Lula.
“So you don’t have to worry about that,” she said, still looking at Lula.
“You feel quite protective of her don’t you?”
Matilda leaned back into the couch and looked at Lady Marmalade.
“I do, she’s almost like a younger sister to me. I try to watch out for her and if Madge’s not careful she’s going to have to deal with me if she continues hurting Lula like she does.”
“And yet, not long ago you threatened to wrap her knuckles yourself.”
Matilda looked down and folded her arms across her chest. Then she looked over at Lula.
“Yes, well, I just get frustrated sometimes. Lula knows that I would never lay a finger on her though, don’t you?”
Lula nodded, smiling broadly.
“Really, Lady Marmalade, Matilda’s got a big bark but she’s toothless, really. She’s been so terribly good to me this past year. You must believe me.”
“I do.” Turning to Matilda. “And now back to the matter at hand. Penelope mentioned that she wouldn’t be surprised if Madge wrote these letters herself. What do you think about that as a possibility?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Madge is like a child in some ways. If she’s not the center of attention she creates ‘incidents’ to put herself in the center of attention. Like the time she threw her food at Jeremiah as Penelope recounted, she did that, not because the food was bad, it was quite good really, but because she wanted attention. And so she’ll get herself worked up into these tantrums. It’s quite hilarious if it wasn’t so awful.”
“So you think that her feelings of persecution are exaggerated?”
“Well, I can’t think of who’d want to hurt her other than the three of us. And we’d be extremely foolish to do anything of the sort. The easy solution is for any of us just to leave if we’re really fed up with her, but I don’t get that sense that any of us are there yet. So to answer your question, I suppose that, yes, I probably do feel that these threats are grossly exaggerated.”
“Let’s play a game of what if. What if, these threats are serious and sincere? Who might you think capable of pulling them off?”
Matilda unfolded her arms and smiled cheekily at Frances before turning to look at Colin for a moment.
“I suppose that would be Colin and I.”
Colin looked up at her and grinned like the cat that just caught the mouse.
“Please, Matilda, let’s be serious. I happen to think these threats are sincere and I hope you’ll take them seriously too, for all our sakes. Because if someone means to do harm to Madge in her house, I fear that none of you might be safe.”
That lowered the temperature in the room quite quickly. Matilda’s grin fell off her face silently and she looked down in thought at something on the floor.
“It’s just unnerving, that’s all. I’d hate for something to happen to her after what Colin and I joked about a few weeks ago. The last thing I need is for the police to be interested in me and having work find out. I need my job.”
She looked up at Frances with pleading eyes, sorrowful as a Basset Hound’s.
“I understand under the circumstances you and Colin were making light of the matter. But now, we need to look at things more soberly, so if you could help me with the answer to my question, that would be a good start.”
“Well, other than Lula, I’d say that Jeremiah gets the worst treatment from Madge and he’s always so damn cheerful. It seems quite insincere and forced. I don’t know what it is about him, but there’s something under his facade of docile servitude that just sends shivers down my spine.”
“Have you ever seen him angry at anyone?”
“Not to anyone, but I have seen him lose control.”
“Tell me about that.”
“A few months back, I was coming downstairs to start my day and I heard all this yelling and screaming coming from the kitchen. So I went in to investigate and what I saw horrified me...”
Matilda steadied herself, she swallowed and blinked her eyes and knotted her fingers.
“He had taken a broom and he was thrashing it about on the floor. When I got closer to look, he was bashing a rat and her babies to smithereens. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m terribly afraid of rats and their big buck teeth, but there was a maliciousness and perverse enjoyment that was shown all over Jeremiah’s face that horrified me the most.”
“And did he see you?”
“He did, and just like that, as if you would flick a switch, he regained his composure and became his sickly sweet cordial self as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But the way he took after the rat and her little babies was excessive, but it was more than that. He showed a macabre pleasure and delight in finishing them off. It was horrifying really. I’ve never forgotten it; it haunts me to this day, too.”
“But it was only a rat,” said Colin.
“Yes, you might say it was only a rat, but to get such perverse pleasure from violence like that, it made me tremble, and I dare not think about what else a man like that is capable of.”
Matilda had her arms folded and she was visibly upset by the ordeal. She stared at a spot on the tables in front of all of them.
“I agree, Matilda,” said Frances, “that is indeed quite upsetting, and worrying.”
Matilda looked up at Frances and then glanced away. Perhaps she was trying to determine the sincerity of Lady Marmalade’s statement. But what she didn’t know, was that Lady Marmalade was nothing if she wasn’t sincere.
“What about Mollie? The two of them, Jeremiah and Mollie both seemed quite similar. I find them both a little... odd.”
“Yes, I find that too. I’ve often wondered if they’re siblings, but Lula assures me otherwise. Mollie has that same unctuous tone as he does, though I have never seen her angry or upset. Unlike Jeremiah, I sometimes wonder if Mollie just isn’t a little slow.”
“Grandmother thinks she is, too, but says she works well, even if she is less than competent,” offered Lula.
“I suppose you get what you pay for,” s
aid Penelope.
“What about the milkman or the postman. Have you had a chance to meet either?” asked Frances.
Matilda shook her head.
“No, though as Lula says, she’s pretty friendly with both of them. They seem all right, but I’ve never really paid attention to either of them.”
“And what about Silas, the gardener?”
“I wouldn’t trust him with very much at all. I’ve never seen him in the house, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d swipe things if he had the chance. Maybe he’s snuck in and stolen some of the items that Madge claims have gone missing.”
“But nobody’s seen him in the house, have they?”
Frances looked around to grim nodding faces. Nobody had seen Silas in the house.
“He sure is odd, in a sinister way. He talks to himself like Lula says, but he’s scary with it.”
“How so?”
“On one occasion, I was in the garden minding my own business. Trying to enjoy the weather and reading a book in peace and quiet. He was out there pruning the bushes and pulling weeds. He had worked his way up close by to where I was sitting and I heard him talking to himself. I asked him what he was saying, as I thought he was talking to me. He said ‘you’re a pretty little thing, you are. You’d make a fine payment for my troubles.’ Very upsetting; I asked him what he meant, and he said ‘for all the trouble there’s been you’d make the proper sacrifice.’ I got up and left then and he called out after me, ‘she’ll pay she will, mark my words.’”
“That is quite upsetting, my dear,” said Frances, “what do you think he meant by that?”
“I don’t know and frankly I don’t care to know. I thought he was just soft in the head, but he’s scary too. I don’t go near him, now, whenever he’s around.”
“That’s what you get when you pay people so poorly,” said Colin, looking up from his sketchbook.
“What have you been sketching, Colin?” asked Frances.
Colin picked up his sketchbook and showed the drawing to Lady Marmalade. It was exceptionally well done and Lady Marmalade immediately knew what it was of. It showed her standing up looking at Madge who appeared dead in a bathtub. Frances was holding a magnifying glass as she peered at Madge’s drowned body.
Lady Marmalade Cozy Murder Mysteries: Box Set (Books 1 - 3) Page 28