Death of an English Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  Emerald, who now worked for me looking after the Legion and cooking, among other things, turned away from her task of polishing silver at the long table, and smiled. “You look exhausted and we haven’t even started,” she commented, blowing some of her brown bangs out of her eyes and giving a toss to her ponytail.

  I smiled back. From a hard-ass cocktail waitress Emerald had transformed into a neat and efficient jill-of-all-trades, adept at cooking, cleaning, and even the odd turn at fixing small appliances and installing safety bars in the upstairs washrooms. At first I hadn’t been sure of how she was going to fare at the castle, but she joined some kind of group, Consciousness Calling, and since then had become much more focused and diligent. I wasn’t quite sure what the group was all about, but she went there several times a week, studying acupressure or some such deal that she said would lead to a career helping people. I told her about meeting Lizzie and Alcina in the woods.

  “I hope Lizzie doesn’t lose track and gets back here in time to help,” she said, continuing her polishing. “I don’t know what to do with her sometimes. She gets in a funk and it’s hard to pry her out of it. I feel like I’ve let her down so many times.”

  Juniper Jones, my most recent acquisition as live-in employee, was in the kitchen, too, morosely scouring the sink, almost disappearing in the deep stainless well, the smell of cleanser drifting up and through the kitchen. I knew Juniper’s routine enough to know that once she had scrubbed completely and rinsed, she would bleach the crap out of it. Her fondness for chemical cleaners was a little alarming, but her hard work made it worth putting up with it.

  “Em, you had a lot on your plate,” I said, referring obliquely to her fight with her mother over where Lizzie was living, and her evening job at the bar in Ridley Ridge—both now things of the past—and the murder of Lizzie’s father, Tom Turner, whose body I discovered on my own property as he tore up the land looking for the mythical Wynter fortune. I had been wary of Emerald at first because she came off as a tough chickie, and I’ve never been quite sure how to deal with women like that. But her new life, Consciousness Calling, her friendship with the late Tom Turner’s half sister, Binny, and Tom’s dad, Rusty, and a better relationship with her daughter had softened her.

  “It’s getting better,” she said. “Having stuff to do is good for both of us. My CC team leader says, if worry comes calling, make sure it gets a busy signal!”

  I took a deep breath and blew the air out in a long sigh. Another aphorism courtesy of Consciousness Calling. But I wouldn’t complain! The group had set her on the right track, and I was grateful. Emerald kept asking me to join her at a meeting, but I hadn’t made it yet. “I’m going upstairs to change, and then I’ll get down to making stuff for tea this afternoon.”

  “Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” Emerald said, holding a fork, part of a complete set of family silver I had discovered, up to the light. It glinted and she smiled.

  “Cleta insulting Hannah at the last one was almost the final straw.” Hannah, a very special friend to me, has the biggest heart and most luminous soul of anyone I know. How Cleta could insult someone so special in every way is beyond me. “If it happens again, I’ll demand a public apology from Cleta. Or I’ll submit to a pillory in the town square. Stock up on rotten fruits and vegetables, folks.”

  Juniper snorted at my crack, but didn’t say anything else. I’ve suspected the girl of a dirty-tricks campaign on Miss Sanson over the weeks since the affair at the tea. Juniper does not get mad, she gets even, so Cleta’s salty tea and temporarily missing brassieres (Juniper did most of the laundry) were probably the result of that “getting even.”

  It’s not surprising that she would avenge Hannah, who is beloved by everyone. A petite young lady in a wheelchair, Hannah is the town’s only librarian and was the creator of the Autumn Vale Public Library. She had fashioned a welcoming space out of a dungeon-like cinder-block building on a side street in the heart of town. As fragile as a fairy, with fine wispy hair and huge gray eyes that are illumined with inner light, she is in her late twenties but appears ageless and almost otherworldly. She’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met in my life, but as smart as a whip and surprisingly practical from years of going through grant programs to get her library funded.

  At that last tea Hannah was at Cleta’s table; the woman asked a series of rude questions about Hannah’s congenital condition. She then made a remark about modern prenatal testing and how it was preventing “accidents” of birth. I wasn’t in the dining room at that moment and only heard about it from an infuriated Gogi afterward.

  It made me nauseous. Hannah didn’t pretend she wasn’t hurt, but she knew better than to let it get further than that. When I apologized for my guest’s despicable behavior, Hannah said she wondered what had happened to Cleta that made her so bitter. I thought she was giving the woman too much credit. There are some folks who make statements like that and pretend surprise that anyone was offended. They are just stating the facts, they claim, so why are folks upset? It’s bullying, and the “facts” are rarely that at all, but malice concealed by a pretense of frankness.

  I was going to evict Miss Sanson but Lush begged me to reconsider and said she’d have a talk with Cleta. No talk would suffice, I said, but Cleta did write a note of apology to my friend, and she made a substantial donation to the library. Hannah said she felt sure the apology was sincere and hoped it would be a learning experience for Miss Sanson. As much as I love Hannah, sometimes I think she has too much faith in humanity. I couldn’t even look at the woman for a week or more, but at Hannah’s urging I decided she could have a second chance.

  And this was it.

  Chapter Two

  IT WAS ALMOST time for the van from Golden Acres, Gogi’s senior retirement residence, to arrive, so I surveyed the dining room once more. We were having afternoon tea and music. Everything seemed to be in order. Through the window I saw a glint of sunlight on a vehicle. That must be the new van from Golden Acres, piloted by Gordy, Zeke’s best friend and roommate.

  The next while was chaos, albeit organized, because we had a woman like Gogi Grace in charge of her flock, and myself, a lesser tyrant but still bossy, in charge of mine. We finally had everyone inside and seated. When I made the fateful decision to host the Legion ladies and have luncheons and teas I took the long oak table out of the dining room in favor of smaller round tables, so I could seat compatible people together. What I failed to realize was that there are some folks with whom no one is compatible—in particular, Cleta Sanson.

  The dining room, on the same side of the castle as the parlor and library, is across the great hall from the ballroom. It overlooks the lane on an angle. Where the ballroom is lined with large French doors, the dining room—only half as long or less—has three Gothic arched windows that almost reach the floor. They are diamond paned with beveled glass and flood the room with light, a good thing because the dining room is paneled in dark wood. The room is anchored with a huge fireplace on one end.

  We had about twenty people at four tables, so five or so at each, with one rectangular table set between two of the arched windows as a servery for those of us making tea and coffee and another between the next set of windows for the trays of food. I used a tool I had seen event planners use: a chart that had little cutout chairs with attendee’s names on them to plan the seating. Many folks use a computer program for the same purpose now, but I prefer the actual physical layout and chair cutouts; that way I can set it on a table in the dining room, and see the space as I plan. For that purpose, I keep it in a drawer in the big Eastlake sideboard in the dining room.

  I consulted with Gogi about who to seat with Cleta and so put one of her residents, Doc English—he knew my uncle and had told me hilarious stories about their youth—on Cleta’s left. On her right we put Elwood Fitzhugh, who was not a resident of Golden Acres, but was a charming ladies’ man of uncertain years. She was getting the cream
of the crop as far as older gentlemen, so she had better not complain. Also at her table was Lush Lincoln, who I still blamed for bringing the plague down upon us, and rounding out the five my fiery friend Gogi, who I trusted to keep Cleta in her place in more ways than one.

  A word about Gogi Grace: she, at sixty-four, is everything I want to be someday—smart, compassionate, giving, and a great listener. I’ve “adopted” her, I joke when I cry on her shoulder a little too much. She is the mother I never really had because my own mother was too busy marching on Washington to do much mothering. I respected and loved my mom. She was passionate about women’s rights, reproductive and otherwise. She cared deeply about famines in other countries. The plight of those suffering from apartheid concerned her. But from me she was detached in so many ways.

  She was a good woman who worked hard to support us after my dad died when I was about five, and I know she loved me, but I had recently found out that her social principles had kept her from accepting my great-uncle Melvyn’s offer to move to Wynter Castle. She disliked his politics, from what I understand. I’m not really sad about it because I grew up with my maternal grandmother—we moved in with her in New York to save money—and she was wise and warm and wonderful. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But I missed completely knowing my father’s side of the family, the little there was of it. It would have been nice if she had let me come to my Uncle Melvyn’s on school holidays so he could have told me about my father and grandfather.

  They were all gone now, so I was making up for lost time by engaging my uncle’s best friend and wartime buddy Doc English as an informant. I was also becoming increasingly attached to Wynter Castle, more beautiful to me every day, and the weird citizens of Autumn Vale, an eccentric little town set in a valley in upstate New York. Hannah, Gogi, Binny Turner, Doc, Emerald, Zeke, Gordy . . . oh, and not to forget Gogi’s son Virgil, the strapping, dark-eyed, dark-browed, broodingly handsome sheriff.

  Sigh. Yes, he’s that handsome, to me anyway. I’m not above enjoying man candy, though Virgil is much more than that. I’m a widow of eight years and I still miss my Miguel, a fashion photographer who died in a car accident on his way to a shoot. Too many people have told me just to get over it, but every heart has its own timetable to recover from grief, and I won’t be criticized by anyone. There is just something about Virgil, though; but enough about that for now.

  Everyone was seated, so I stood by the fireplace and clapped my hands. “Hello, everyone!” I said, with my best cheery mistress-of-the-castle manner. “Today we are having tea and treats, then an afternoon of music. My dear friend Pish Lincoln will be serenading us on the piano!” I waved to the far side of the hearth at the Conover upright grand piano I had bought from Janice Grover, of Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles, for a song, so to speak. It was enormous but beautiful, and Pish paid to have a professional tuner come down from Buffalo. My friend was using it to practice The Magic Flute operatic pieces. He and Janice had formed the Autumn Vale Community Players and would be performing an abbreviated version of the opera in a few weeks.

  On my cue Shilo and Emerald, stationed by the table, picked up their trays and began circulating among the tables, offering treats, while Lizzie poured tea—I had found a use for some of my sturdier teapots, a collection I’ve gathered over many years—and took it around to the ladies and gents. The first time I met Lizzie that is exactly what she was doing as community service: serving tea and coffee to Gogi’s seniors at Golden Acres. I watched, surveying the group and monitoring the situation.

  I shifted from foot to foot. I was wearing a floral chiffon dress I had bought at the Lane Bryant store in Henrietta, a town just south of Rochester, and some new cerise peep-toe pumps. Gogi had taken Shilo and me shopping in the winter. As I had been suffering retail withdrawal after a few months in Autumn Vale, it was a memorable day. Of course, Shilo hadn’t been able to shop in Lane Bryant—she is sylphlike, while I am what she terms plush-size—but we found a couple of other shops and had a lovely day. But shoes . . . I should have stuck to old faithful, my favorite black pumps.

  It seemed to be going well. Elwood was chatting to Cleta, as I had hoped he would. He is inevitably charming, an attribute that aided him in his profession as zoning commissioner for Autumn Vale and the surrounding area. He had recently taken the job back, though he was past seventy, because the last fellow, Junior Bradley, had lied about his credentials and screwed things up so badly the situation needed expert detangling. Elwood and I were working together to clean up the zoning confusion for Wynter Castle. He is, to put it mildly, a peach.

  Since I have been talking about them so much in a roundabout way, I suppose I should describe the Legion of Horrible Ladies. Let’s move around the room, shall we?

  I’ll start with Cleta, also known as the thorn in my side, a perpetual grim reminder of how someone you find irritating can become, through constant exposure, the Reason You No Longer Enjoy Living. Cleta Sanson, eighty-something, is English. I don’t mean that as a strike against her; I’ve known many English folks and loved most of them. But she is English in the worst way: autocratic, snippy, condescending, and rude. She is superior and snobbish. Insulting but cloaking it in the costume of blunt honesty. I could forgive much of this if she were dumb, but she is fearfully intelligent and should know better.

  Physically she appears frail and stooped, but can straighten up and move quickly when the mood strikes her. Her thin white hair is pulled tightly back and coiled into a French roll, emphasizing her gaunt cheekbones, high and harsh. She wears thick glasses that often dangle on a jeweled string. Her clothing is expensive but very old with padded shoulders and gaudy floral patterns, as if Laura Ashley and Giorgio Armani had a love child, and it was a 1980s skirt suit. She wears pearls, which I suspect are real, old, and very valuable. Her expression is perpetually sour, like she just sucked a lemon, and behind the glasses her dark eyes dart, always looking for something—or someone—to pick on.

  Pish’s aunt Lush, real name Lucinda, is a little sweetie pie. I failed to realize that anyone as adorable as Lush would inevitably think all her friends were equally as adorable. She is the shortest of the bunch, probably five foot even. Everything about her is round: her white hair is like a nimbus around her round face, and her body is round, too, since she likes her sweets more than she probably should. Her voice is twittery, her gaze unfocused, and her reasoning abstruse and meandering. She can go from talking about something profound, like the creation of the cosmos (which she knows a surprising amount about) to the delights of caramel pudding, in two seconds flat. More than once I’ve wondered how the Big Bang theory and butterscotch got put together in a sentence.

  Shilo brought a tray of Binny’s mini-éclairs and napoleons to the table. Elwood Fitzhugh politely offered the ladies some of the treats while Doc English winked at me, the light catching in his smudgy glasses. Doc English is ninety, give or take, and full of spit and vinegar, as my grandmother used to say.

  “What’s in these?” Cleta asked, staring at the mille-feuille. Shilo, her hand shaking just a little, didn’t answer. “What’s wrong, girl?” the woman asked, glaring up at my friend. “Are you deaf as well as sloppy?”

  I was about to step in, but Gogi held up her hand, holding me off. “Miss Sanson, is there a problem?” she asked, her tone cold.

  “This girl looks after my room, but she never remembers to keep the towels lined up correctly,” the woman complained, her beady eyes glaring up at Shilo through thick glasses. “Sloppiness is something I cannot abide.”

  Tears welled in Shilo’s eyes, and that surprised me. My friend is not usually that sensitive. Emerald moved toward them and guided Shilo away to her table, taking over serving their table.

  Doc, his eyes glittering behind his thick glasses, said, “Ever think you should just straighten the damn towels yourself? Or mebbe move along to the Ritz?”

  Lush, a worried look in her eyes, glanced
between Doc and Cleta. “Now, everyone, don’t let’s spoil this lovely day with disagreements. I’ll take two of each, please, Emerald.”

  Gogi determinedly raised the topic of the opera Pish was putting on and asked if any of the folks at her table enjoyed the opera, which got Lush talking, since, accompanied by her friends Vanessa and Barbara, she used to take “darling little Pishie” to the opera in New York when he was a child. Doc snorted in laughter at “darling little Pishie,” but the crisis was averted. I caught Gogi’s eye and mouthed a thank-you, and then began to circulate among the other tables while I kept my eye on Shilo, who appeared to recover and even smiled as Pish touched her arm and talked to her in a low tone.

  The table near the piano held Pish, one of the Legion named Patsy Schwartz—she was a beer heiress who rarely talked about her family background—and that inveterate storyteller, Hubert Dread, he of the Elvis sightings, UFO misinformation, and wild tales of his youthful adventures. I had recently found out he was Gordy’s great-uncle, which explained a lot about my handyman’s weird obsession with the woo-woo stuff: conspiracy theories, the Illuminati, Masonic mastery, and the like. Though Hubert talked about it all with a wink and a nod, Gordy was too impressionable to sort out the truth from the over-the-top fiction. He lacked the skepticism bone, I finally decided when he started telling me that “chemtrails” were a deliberate conspiracy of the Illuminati to sedate the populace.

  Patsy was slight, a birdlike woman, with sagging breasts and a round little tummy, but she was much stronger than she looked. I had seen her lift her own luggage and tote it up the stairs, even as I tried to help. She was capable of being a good conversationalist at times, but there was a hint of worry in her eyes. I didn’t know her well enough to know what that was about, but I did know that she had married and had at least one daughter of whom she often spoke. She always dressed exquisitely and never left her room without full makeup. Her fingers were loaded with sparkly rings, and her dyed blonde hair was cut short and styled in a modern way for so elderly a woman.