by Mary Daheim
But Dora shook her head. “No, not like Janet. Not in the least. Miss Aimee eloped. She was fifteen. Miss Petulia didn’t approve of the match. Miss Aimee and her young man left the country. They became Bohemians.”
“What?” Renie made a face. “Legally? Or do you mean spiritually?”
Dora seemed confused. “I mean, they went to Paris. They lived in an attic or something like that. They were poor. Isn’t that what Bohemians do?”
Slowly, Judith nodded. “They did that mostly in the nineteenth century. But in the mid-twentieth, they were called Beatniks. At least they were in the States. What happened to Aimee and her husband?”
Dora dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I don’t know. I heard they died. Strong wine, I suppose. Isn’t that how Bohemians meet their untimely end?”
“Drugs,” Renie stated. “This isn’t Puccini, it’s Kerouac.” Noting Dora’s blank expression, she waved a hand in dismissal. “Never mind. I don’t suppose this has anything to do with Aunt Pet being murdered. How long ago did Aimee and Mr. Pot-Zen croak?”
“Potson?” Dora had gone beyond bewilderment. “There never was a Potson in Little Pauncefoot. He was a Somerset lad, but I didn’t know his name. It wasn’t my place to ask.”
Feeling somewhat at sea, Judith also felt obligated to sort out the family tree. “But you must know when Aimee and her husband passed away.”
Dora’s vague expression sharpened a jot. “It was ten years ago. No, more than that—fifteen or twenty, even. Time goes by ever so quick. Miss Petulia got a letter from Paris. She said it served them right. Miss Aimee had stolen from the family. Jewels, to finance her Bohemian life abroad.”
Judith recalled the robbery which had been claimed by Genevieve Ravenscroft. Aunt Pet had argued otherwise. Perhaps she had known that Aimee had stolen from her own mother. The truth might have been too cruel for even Aunt Pet to admit.
“Interesting,” she remarked, finally closing the drawer to the nightstand. “So this is also where the box of chocolates was found?”
Dora grew chagrined. “They were underneath the other things,” she asserted. “I wouldn’t have seen them. All those magazines were on top. You can’t accuse me of snooping.”
Judith patted Dora’s small hand. “We wouldn’t think of it,” she said, suppressing a yawn. The fright at the stables and the session in Aunt Pet’s bedroom had not only frustrated Judith, but made her tired. “We’ll leave you in peace now. It’s getting late, and we’ve all been up since before dawn.”
Dora didn’t argue, though she seemed eager to quit her mistress’s bedroom. A few moments later, the cousins were back downstairs, seeking their guest quarters.
“I hope Dora’s not too upset,” Renie said in a worried tone. “I don’t like the idea of her starting a fire in the middle of the night. Aunt Pet’s not around to raise the alarm.”
Judith acknowledged the fact with an apprehensive look. “Something was burned in that wastebasket. Recently, too.” She held up a smudged index finger. “I wonder what it was?”
Renie raised both eyebrows. “Chummy’s box?”
But Judith shook her head. “Dora may be a pyromaniac, but she’s not a liar. Or an amnesiac. She was sure the police took the box away, and I believe her.” Judith yawned. “I’m beat. It’s only ten o’clock, but we didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m turning in.”
Renie nodded. “Me, too. We should get up for the inquest tomorrow, I suppose.”
Judith sighed. “Right. It won’t help much, though.”
“No,” Renie agreed. “But it’ll be a new tourist experience.” She tried to give Judith a bright smile.
Judith couldn’t quite manage to reciprocate. Twenty minutes later, she was in bed. Twenty seconds later, she was asleep. It was shortly after 2 A.M. when Harwood banged on her door, wheezing his way through an announcement of an overseas call for Mrs. Flynn.
Mentally fogged in, Judith struggled to put on her robe and stagger down the hall to the library. Despite her semiconscious state, a sense of disaster crept up her spine. Grabbing the receiver, she expected the worst of news.
She was almost right. The voice at the other end of the line belonged to Gertrude.
“Say,” Judith’s mother began, sounding far too sprightly for the middle of the night, “if you’re going to Sweden, how about picking up some of those Christmas chimes. You know, the little angels that fly around the candles and look like they’re setting their nighties on fire.”
Judith knew she must be dreaming. Her mother couldn’t possibly have called her at 2 A.M. from nine thousand miles away to ask her to buy Swedish Christmas chimes.
“Since this isn’t real,” Judith said in a wispy voice, “let’s pretend I already bought them. They’re in your refrigerator, next to the blue ham and the rusty lettuce.”
“Listen, fathead,” Gertrude rasped, “I didn’t make this phone call to joke around. I’m eating ham right now, for my supper. Want to hear me snap my dentures?”
Sinking down behind the mahogany desk, Judith blinked against the light from the green-shaded lamp. “This is truly you and not my worst nightmare?” Or, she asked herself, is it both?
“Who else would it be, dummy? I got the number from Deb. Renie gave it to her. Deb said the rates are down all day Sunday, so I’m saving money. What are you having for supper? I’ll bet you a quarter it’s not as tasty as this ham.”
Briefly, Judith considered enlightening her mother. It wasn’t suppertime in England. It was no longer Sunday. But Gertrude refused to accept the eight-hour time change.
“Mother, we’re not going to Sweden,” Judith said at last. “I can get those chimes for you at home. How are you…otherwise?”
The pause that followed was almost imperceptible. “Well—now that you ask, I guess I’d better tell you.” Gertrude sounded unusually solemn. “My butt fell off.”
“What?” Judith jiggled the phone as if she could correct what she’d just heard.
“I don’t mean it fell off of me,” Gertrude explained. “It fell off of the couch. Unfortunately, I was still attached to it. I cracked my tailbone. I’m in the hospital. They brought my ham supper twenty minutes ago. Breakfast and lunch were pretty good, too.”
Now shocked into full consciousness, Judith was upset. “Mother, are you okay? Exactly what happened?”
Gertrude’s chuckle was faintly subdued. “It was about ten-thirty last night, and I was watching John Wayne in that movie where the Japs get so nasty and then he wipes ’em all out at the end and we win the war. You remember that?”
“I remember the war. Barely. I was two at the time.” Judith wondered if Charles kept any scotch in the library.
“You’d turned four by V-J Day, dopey,” Gertrude reminded her daughter. “Anyway, they got to the part where the Duke—I forget the name of the guy John Wayne was playing—is in the bushes and these Japs are sneaking up behind him and they’re about to riddle him with their machine guns, and I yelled, ‘Look out, Duke!’ and I sort of jumped up and the next thing I knew, I fell off the couch.”
“Off the couch,” Judith echoed. The short fall shouldn’t have done more than shake up Gertrude. But of course she was old and her bones were brittle. “So how did you get up?”
“I didn’t,” Gertrude replied. “My butt hurt too much. Besides, I had to make sure that the Duke would shoot all those Japs. Then I tried to call Arlene Rankers, but I couldn’t find the phone.”
Judith was puzzled. “You couldn’t…? How come?” Over her mother’s protests, Judith had recently bought her a cordless phone which she could carry along with her cigarettes in a small bag on her walker. When Gertrude watched TV, she always kept the phone next to her on the couch.
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Gertrude answered indignantly. “Your dumb cat’s never figured out how to use the phone, so who else would’ve taken it? It isn’t like I’ve got a steady stream of people coming through my so-called apartment to howdy-do me. How many c
ould I fit into a hatbox anyway? I’ll tell you one thing, kiddo, when my time comes, you won’t have to buy a coffin. Just nail up the door to this place, tip it over, and slide me down Heraldsgate Hill. ’Course you better make sure you’ve dug a hole at the bottom first. I don’t want to end up out in the bay.”
“Mother…” While too familiar with Gertrude’s self-pitying diversions, Judith could practically hear the phone bill mounting. “How did you reach Arlene? Did you yell?”
“You bet. And bless her heart, she heard me because she was just coming home from a wedding reception at church. Well, you know how she fusses over me—she insisted I see a doctor, just in case I’d busted something. So she and Carl got me into their car and we went to the emergency room. They took some X rays, and along about midnight, they told me I’d broken my tailbone. Then, seeing as how I’m old and infirm and my only living daughter is off gallivanting around Finland, the doctor thought I should stay here for a couple of days. Unless you and Lunkhead want to fly home and nurse me, of course. Do you?”
The question caught Judith off-guard. “Ah…well…we can’t…even if we wanted…I mean, our tickets were prepurchased for certain dates. And besides, Renie and I are sort of…stuck.” There was no scotch in any of the desk drawers. Judith decided to skip telling her mother about Aunt Pet’s murder.
“Aha!” Gertrude cried. “I knew it, you won’t come back to take care of me! Off to the pest house! I can just lie here and rot, right? Did I say this ham was good? I lied. It stinks. I think it’s made of wrapping paper. You know, the plain unmarked brown kind your Aunt Ellen uses for her Christmas presents.”
“Mother—if you’re really in a bad way, maybe I could fly home tomorrow or the day after. I mean it, I won’t let you suffer alone.” Judith paused as she noticed a handwritten sheet of paper in the last drawer she’d opened. The spidery text in deep blue ink looked very old-fashioned. Judith slipped the single sheet under the desk lamp. “Let me talk to the nurse. Are you in pain?”
“Am I a pain? Very funny, Judith Anne. And no, you can’t talk to the nurse. She’s busy.” Gertrude’s voice suddenly became muffled, as if she’d put her hand over the receiver.
“When will they send you home? Can you take care of yourself? What kind of medication are you on?” Judith’s voice grew more frantic as she tried to divide her attention between Gertrude and what was obviously the original copy of Aunt Pet’s handwritten will.
“They’re giving me something—something with codeine. I forget, it’s a long, goofy name.” Gertrude was again coming through loud and clear. “Listen, rumdum, I’ve got to go. The nurse needs me.”
Judith gave a start. “The nurse needs you? What for?”
Gertrude chuckled, a faintly evil sound. “It’s my turn to shuffle the cards. We’re playing crib. I’m winning.”
Judith held her head. “Mother! What about the phone? Did you ever find it? You can page it, you know, by going to the base and pushing the button that says—”
“Of course I found the phone,” Gertrude snapped. “That’s how I cracked my tailbone. I sat on it when I fell off the couch.”
“Oh.” Judith’s voice had grown faint. “I see. I guess. Okay, Mother, I’ll check back with you later today. I’m glad you told me about your accident, but you shouldn’t have spent the money to call.”
“What money?” Gertrude replied in a testy voice. “It’s not my money. I called collect. So long, sucker. Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, and a pair is—” The phone clicked in Judith’s ear.
Judith leaned on the desk. It wouldn’t be right to wake Renie up at two-twenty in the morning. It wouldn’t be smart, either. Disturbing her for the second night in a row might provoke Renie’s violent tendencies. The news about Gertrude could wait. So, Judith realized, could Gertrude. Obviously, she was not seriously harmed. For all Judith knew, her mother might have fallen off the couch on purpose. The Rankerses would supervise Gertrude’s well-being. And that of Sweetums. Or so Judith hoped. Given the circumstances, she couldn’t do much else. Carl and Arlene had earned a lavish present. Vaguely, Judith wondered how they’d like a bone china meat platter. But after thirty-seven years of marriage and five kids, they probably had at least three of them. Judith would shop for something else in Edinburgh. If she ever got there.
Trying to put aside the image of Gertrude suffering in a lonely hospital bed, or worse yet, Gertrude haranguing the benighted staff into submission, Judith read through Aunt Pet’s Last Will and Testament. Or at least her intended final will.
For apparently this was the document that the police had found in Petulia Ravenscroft’s bedroom. Judith assumed they had made copies and left the original with the family. It was indeed Aunt Pet’s desire to leave Ravenscroft House to Claire Ravenscroft Marchmont and her spouse, Charles Marchmont. There followed the other bequests, to Natasha and Alexei Karamazin, to the Marchmont twins, to George and Emily Ravenscroft, to the faithful servants, Hobbs, Tichborne, and Harwood. And, at the bottom of the page in an even shakier hand, Aunt Pet had written the fateful words:
“That in gratitude for their friendship and their family’s service to God and country, I do hereby devise and bequeath to Judith Grover Flynn and Serena Grover Jones the gatehouse that stands on the same property as…”
Judith sighed. The gesture was appreciated, but in fairness, the gatehouse should have gone to Walter Paget. The steward was definitely omitted from the will. It was impossible not to wonder why. Certainly Walter had served the family faithfully for over ten years, maybe more. Judith glanced at the date below Aunt Pet’s florid signature: 24 April. Saturday had been the twenty-fourth of the month. Obviously, this was Aunt Pet’s most recent wish for the division of her estate. Judith smoothed the paper with her right hand before replacing it in the drawer.
It was then that she realized there was something not quite right about the paper itself. It was from an ordinary writing tablet, probably the one Judith and Renie had seen in the escritoire. But somehow it looked odd. Judith stared at the sheet, but couldn’t figure out why. Maybe she was imagining things. That would be easy to do at two-thirty in the morning. With a shake of her head, Judith put the will back in the drawer, turned off the desk lamp, and carefully made her way out of the library.
Surprisingly, she went back to sleep. It was almost eight o’clock when she woke up. At the bathroom door, she heard Renie cussing.
“What’s wrong, coz?” Judith called.
“Shut the hell up,” Renie shouted back. “I’m flossing. It makes my gums bleed. I’m offering it up to St. Apollonia. She’s in charge of teeth.”
Judith leaned against the door. She was always startled by Renie’s devotion to various saints and her urge to offer up whatever physical affliction she was suffering at the moment.
“Which saint’s in charge of butts?” Judith inquired after a long silence. “Mother fell off the couch and dented hers. I think she’s okay, but she’s in the hospital.”
“What?” Renie yelled back, then yanked open the door. “Your mother’s in the hospital? What happened?”
Judith explained. Renie shuddered. “Oh, great! Now my mother will try to top her. What will she do? Roll her wheelchair down the stairs of her apartment and crush Mrs. Parker and her repulsive poodle, Ignatz?”
“Probably,” Judith replied, scooting past Renie. “I’m going to shower. By the way, I saw the will.”
Renie made a dive for Judith, but missed. Judith closed the bathroom door almost but not quite shut. “No surprises,” Judith said, peering at Renie through the crack. “It’s lucid, signed and dated. Ergo, it may hold up in court.” The door clicked into place.
At precisely nine o’clock, Judith and Renie arrived in the dining room for breakfast. Except for Alex, the rest of the family was already seated.
“Millie didn’t show up,” Charles announced in a grumble. “She handed in her notice. Mrs. Tichborne is serving under duress.”
“Good,” Renie retorted, piling lamb ki
dneys and kippers and tomato slices onto her plate. Noting the startled looks on her hosts’ faces, she smiled apologetically. “I mean, Mrs. Tichborne knows how to cook. That is, she makes delicious meals. Not that Millie wasn’t just fine and dandy, but…” With a helpless shrug, Renie sat down next to Nats, who was openly sulking.
“I wonder,” Judith said to cover the awkwardness caused by Renie’s implied criticism of the Marchmonts’ daily help, “if the police have talked to Millie.”
Claire jumped in her chair. “Millie? But why?”
Charles, however, understood the question. “They may have. But Millie hadn’t been with us long.” He glanced inquiringly at his wife. “A month? Two, perhaps. She wasn’t here during the winter. Prunes did for us at holiday time, eh?”
“Yes, that’s so.” Claire dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “Prunella Raikes. Then there was Myra Stodgely. Or was she between Prunes and Millie? I can never keep track—Aunt Pet had a stream of dailies. So difficult to get good help. Auntie was hard to please. Rest her soul.”
Judith, who had dished up eggs, bacon, and toast from the sideboard, mentally scratched Millie from her list of suspects. Not, she knew from unfortunate experience, that you could ever completely dismiss anyone. But from what she knew of Millie, the woman lacked not only motive, but cunning.
“What’s going to happen at the inquest?” Judith asked, looking beyond Nats’s sullen face.
Charles slathered raspberry jam on his toast. “Couldn’t say, really. I suppose Dr. Ramsey will give his statement, as will the police. I doubt that any of us will be called. Except Dora, perhaps.”
Somewhat stiltedly, Claire passed the jampot to Nats, who snatched it away and gave her cousin a venomous look. “Dora shouldn’t have to testify,” Claire asserted. “It’s too much to ask of her. And whatever could she tell them?”
“How should I know?” Charles snapped. “I don’t know what they’ll ask.”
Alex breezed into the room, looking only somewhat the worse for wear. “Sorry I’m late. Any kippers left?” He lifted the silver lids in turn. “I say! Kidneys! Tichborne does them to a turn!”