Malice in Miniature

by Jeanne M. Dams

  The attic stairs were behind a closed, but fortunately not locked, door. They were uncarpeted, noisy under my feet even though thickly furred with dust The dust appeared to be undisturbed, a fact that worried me a little, but not a great deal. Doubtless, in a house this size, there were other attic stairs.

  In fact, there were probably many attics, as I realized when I attained the top of the stairs. It might even be that they were not all connected, though I hoped they were. All I could see from my vantage point at the head of the stairs was a vast collection of beams and chimneys, stretching into shadowy corners and even darker distances, and full of dust and stuff.

  Lots of stuff. Boxes, trunks, old furniture, stacks of magazines and newspapers. The typical attic collection, grown monstrous with time, and with the oddity (and wealth) of the people who had collected it. It was, I thought, exactly the kind of attic where discoveries are made. The forgotten Gainsborough. The lost Jane Austen manuscript. The skeleton.

  I sneezed, from the dust or my burgeoning cold, and then shuddered as my eyes met a real skeleton, a pathetic little heap of bones that had once been a bird. I hoped it had died of something peaceful like cold, and not in the jaws of a rat. Thinking about rats was definitely stupid. I attempted to banish them from my mind and looked about in despair. Where even to begin a search?

  With the trunks; trunks suggest clothing. I moved to the nearest one, treading carefully lest I go right through the uneven flooring into the room below, blew off the dust, and opened it.

  It was three trunks later (curtains, nasty old furs, and a remarkable collection of Victorian-era corsets) that I realized I was approaching my search in a thoroughly dim-witted fashion. Every trunk I had opened had been white with dust. If what I was looking for was up here, it would have been put here quite recently. Hence, the dust would at least be moved around. I needed to look for signs of activity within the last few days.

  The light in the attic was none too good; there were plenty of windows, but they hadn’t been washed in years, and the day was a dark one. It had been stupid not to bring a flashlight, but it was all of a piece with my other actions. My brain was not at its best; it felt stuffy and distinctly giddy. I was getting a fever.

  And my stupidity was prolonging this business far too much. What I needed was to find another stairway, with footprints in the dust leading to and from it, find what I was looking for, and then get myself home, away from any possible hazards.

  I looked out a dusty, cobwebbed window and saw, at the edge of one of the gardens, a small curl of smoke rising from a pile of brush and leaves, and then a tongue of flame. Richard was keeping his promise.

  After what seemed like hours, but was probably five or ten minutes, I found the other attic stairs, and sure enough, disturbances in the dust. I couldn’t exactly call them footprints, I decided, but definitely marks. I stepped to one side of them, teetering on the narrow boards of the subfloor so as not to disturb evidence.

  The marks led me to a nest of luggage, generations newer than the trunks I had first explored. There were small canvas carry-on bags, larger suitcases, one very large upright black bag with wheels and an attached handle that I coveted. How nice that would be for long vacations! It was quite dusty, however, which made it an unlikely hiding place for what I was seeking. I checked everything else—empty— and then stopped and looked around, deflated. Plainly this was Sir Mordred’s own collection of luggage, and the footprints could be explained by his recent trip to London. I hadn’t found my cache, after all.

  I glanced out the window. The fire was going nicely. Richard was standing nearby, watching from behind a shed, and he was alone. Sir Mordred hadn’t yet—ah, yes, here he came, nearly running, looking like a particularly frenzied beetle from my foreshortening point of view, and apparently shouting as he ran. As I watched, Richard melted into the bushes and was gone. Well, looking for him would keep the master of the house occupied for a while, anyway.

  I fished for a tissue, blew my nose, and looked around, but there were no other footprints, and I had run out of attic. My hunch had been wrong. I’d have to look elsewhere, or abandon my search. I took one last longing look at the big suitcase, and experimentally tilted it back on its wheels.

  Oh, dear, maybe I wouldn’t try to find one like this, after all. It was extremely heavy, though well-balanced on its wheels. But if it weighed that much empty—

  It wasn’t empty. I spied a corner of fabric caught at the end of one of the zippers. Cautiously I laid the case flat on the floor. It wasn’t all that dusty on the front, either, only on the top. I unzipped the cover and folded it back.

  The clothes were packed in so tightly that they sprang out at me. Suits, dresses, blouses, conservative in cut and fabric, well made. They were of that ageless style that takes forever to go out of fashion because it is never in fashion, but they were of recent manufacture. I cautiously turned back corners of the layers. Most of a summer wardrobe was packed away in here, even—I unzipped another compartment—panties, bras, stockings, scarves. They were not in petite sizes, but none of them could have begun to cover Mrs. Lathrop or the cook, Mrs. Hawes.

  With difficulty I crammed the clothes back in and managed to close all the zippers, carefully leaving the corner of fabric sticking out as I had found it. Then I stood the suitcase back where it had been and looked at it in utter incomprehension.

  I had expected to find one woman’s outfit, the disguise worn by the murderer as he had crept into Brocklesby Hall to kill Mrs. Lathrop. I was confronted instead by an embarrassment of riches. Why was there an entire woman’s wardrobe in Sir Mordred’s attic?

  I WAS VERY careful as I came down the long flights of stairs. Sir Mordred would be on the rampage, looking for Richard, and might turn up around almost any corner. I had come down the second set of stairs, the nearest ones, and I didn’t know where I might find myself when I finally hit bottom, though I suspected I would be somewhere near the kitchen. Backstairs usually lead to the servants’ wing. If so, I would need to watch myself; lunchtime was not far off, and Mrs. Hawes would be busy preparing a meal for Sir Mordred and the house staff.

  I was right, for once. The backstairs turned a sharp corner near the bottom and debouched in the hallway next to not only the kitchen stairs, but to a backdoor leading outside. I turned away from the stairs, beyond which I could hear the sounds of meal preparation, and hastened through the backdoor into the kitchen garden.

  It was a walled garden, and for a moment I thought I was trapped, but there was a door at the far end, so I trod as quietly as I could past the late cabbages and brussels sprouts, past the parsley and the mint and the great waving heads of dill and let myself out.

  I was unfamiliar with this part of the grounds, and could see little, with the garden wall at my back and masses of brush facing me. There was a path going off to the right from the garden door, along the wall. It was rutted with the tracks of a wheelbarrow and was presumably Richard’s service path, which meant it would lead to a place where he might be found. That was unfortunate, for Sir Mordred would be looking for Richard, too, and I didn’t want to encounter Sir Mordred just now.

  However, the path was really the only way I could go, every other direction being barred by high, thick hedges. At least the packed earth was quiet underfoot. I stole along, feeling for all the world like James Bond, alert to any sound, any glimpse of human activity.

  The path made a right turn, still following the garden wall. I eased round the corner cautiously and found myself facing a gate, a high, businesslike affair of steel framing and wire mesh. Beyond it both wall and hedges ceased, and I could, for the first time, see where I was. Not far beyond lay the flower gardens, and beyond them the barn and workshop. I could see, to my left, the shed and the dying remains of the brush fire. And up on the hill I could just see Richard’s cottage, to which, I hoped, he had safely absconded with Sir Mordred’s tools.

  I saw all these things, and wished that I could get to them. For the gate wa
s securely locked.

  I couldn’t climb it. I might have tried, regardless of my unsuitable shoes and my unsuitable figure, but there was a very nasty-looking strand of barbed wire at the top. I did try shaking the gate, to no avail. The padlock was shiny and new and obviously sound. I realized now that part of my mind had questioned why both the backdoor and the garden door were unlocked. Here was the answer. There was no need to lock them, with the outermost defense secured.

  I leaned against the wall, blew my nose, and wondered what to do now. If I couldn’t go on, I’d have to go back, but—

  Someone was coming!

  There was no place to hide, but I scrunched down beside the hedge and tried to make myself small. There was no need to try to be quiet; the person, whoever it was, was making a great deal of noise, shouting and singing and—

  Singing?

  It was unmelodious, but determined, and it was a voice I recognized. I peered cautiously out the gate and there, sure enough, was Bob Finch, stumbling toward me with a bottle in his hand and a patriotic roar on his lips. Somehow he looked more like a gnome than ever. Maybe it was the red face.

  “‘. . . Britannia, ’tannia rule the waves! For Britons nev’r, ’ev’r, ’ev’r shall be slaves!’” The song ended in a strangled hiccup; he saw me, then. “’Ow d’ye do?” he said, very carefully. He saluted me with the bottle, spilling quite a lot of its contents on his head, and looked at me owlishly.

  “Bob, thank goodness! I need to get out of here. Do you have the key?”

  He looked at me blankly, his eyes trying hard to focus. I tried again.

  “The gate’s locked, Bob. Do you have a key to the padlock, or can you find one?”

  “I found it,” he said with immense satisfaction. “Thought they could ’ide the ’All, all those roads, all those corners, but I found it. Can’t ’ide from Bob Finch, I said. I told ’em—”

  “The key, Bob!” I said despairingly. “Can you get the key?”

  “Right.” He saluted again, and turned on his heel, or tried to, but he kept on spinning and landed on hands and knees in the dirt. He smiled winningly. “’Ave a li’l lie down first.” And he rolled onto his side, his head pillowed on his hands, and began snoring there on the ruts of the path as sweetly and angelically as a child.

  I could have cried. Rescue within sight, and as useless as the heap of old clothes he resembled. I shouted and pleaded, but Bob wasn’t going to wake up for quite a while.

  In the end there was nothing for it but to turn around and go back, with all the skulking to do over again. I had stopped feeling like James Bond. Things like this never happened to him. I just felt frustrated and tired and, I realized as I let myself back into the kitchen garden, definitely unwell. It wasn’t going to be long before I reached the why-can’t-I-die-in-a-hurry stage of my cold. I hid behind an apple tree, fumbled in my purse, and found a couple of rather elderly antihistamine tablets that I swallowed, with some difficulty. They would make me feel a little better in about fifteen minutes, though they would also make me very sleepy.

  I sneaked to the kitchen door, mindful of the windows that overlooked the garden. But it seemed, thank goodness, that no one was interested in my activities as I crept back into the house. I would have hated to try to come up with a convincing explanation for my presence.

  I paused for a moment in a shadowy corner, my hat becoming entangled with a coat hook on the wall, and considered my options. The quickest and easiest way out was the most direct: down the hall, a right turn into the main corridor of the north wing, and thence to the great hall and the front door. I would stand the greatest chance of running into people that way, but it wouldn’t really matter, not in parts of the house that were more or less public, and where I had been before as an invited guest. What was important was to get away from here, where I had no conceivable excuse to be. I was about to skitter past the stair head to the freedom of the hallway when I heard rapid footsteps climbing the stairs from the kitchen and shrank away, up a step or two of the backstairs, out of sight.

  It was Sir Mordred, with an expostulating cook right behind him. Both of them were in a temper. He stood in the vestibule by the backdoor and argued with Mrs. Hawes. “But the wretched man must be somewhere! He’s not in any of the gardens, nor in the house. By God, I’ll have his skin for this! He knows I don’t allow burning of any kind. And unattended, at that. We could all have gone up in smoke, all my work, my house, everything! He deliberately flouted my orders, and I intend to wait, right here, if it takes all day. He’s bound to come in for his meal sooner or later, and I mean to . . .”

  I didn’t hear the rest. Resignedly, and very quietly, I climbed the backstairs.

  20

  Once I had gained the upper story, I thought I could simply make my way to the grand staircase and down to the great hall. It wasn’t as easy as that. The maids were working—or talking and giggling, at least—very near the backstairs. I might have dreamed up a story to tell them if I hadn’t felt so tired, or if my head had not begun to ache. I was probably hungry; I couldn’t remember if I’d had any breakfast Food, however, held no appeal, though a bed sounded wonderful. And unattainable. I could sit on a step, though, just rest for a while and wait. They’d leave soon, and—

  Ah, yes, they’d leave. Down the backstairs to the kitchen, and their lunch. Wearily, I went up the next flight. I could go on up to the third floor, cross the house, go down, and leave. Not for home, though. Oh, no, first I had to inspect what Richard had procured for me with such trouble. That meant I had to get out of the house unobserved, drive or walk to his cottage . . .

  I sank down on a step and blotted my streaming nose with a tissue. I didn’t dare even blow it, with the giggling maids just below. Well, the tablets I’d taken would shut off the spigot soon—I hoped. Meanwhile, I’d rest here where I was for a few minutes until my head stopped pounding, and then go on up . . .

  “AND MAY I ask, madam, precisely what you are doing on my backstairs?”

  I woke only with difficulty. I wanted very much to stay asleep, and indeed when I came to full consciousness I wished I hadn’t. My throat felt as though someone had been rubbing it with sandpaper. My neck, and indeed every part of me, was stiff and sore. My head was as big as a balloon and pounding with fever.

  “I don’t know,” I croaked, and cleared my throat. “I must have fallen asleep. I only meant to rest for a minute, but I felt so awful—and I’d taken those pills—”

  “Indeed.” Sir Mordred’s voice rose on the last syllable, and positively quivered with outrage. “Am I to have an explanation of your presence here at all?”

  “Oh.” I began, through waves of dizziness that nauseated me, to have some return of memory, and with it dire apprehension. “I’m not sure,” I said with a feeble attempt at dissimulation. “I really am not feeling at all well.” I peered at my watch. “Heavens, it’s after two! I think I must have taken a wrong turn, and—”

  “And climbed a great many steps without realizing you were doing so,” said Sir Mordred nastily. “Surely you can do better than that, with your talents for prevarication.

  “I saw you, you know. I was in the hallway when you came through the garden. You’ve no idea how ridiculous you looked, peering about you like some sort of spy and never seeing me, behind the curtain at the window.”

  “I wanted to take a look at your kitchen garden,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I’m interested in herbs.”

  “Perhaps in monkshood, particularly? I’ve nothing to fear from you, madam. The police already know it grows in my gardens. And why not? It’s quite ornamental, you know. And of course it was my gardener who put it there. I had no knowledge of it, myself, until it was pointed out to me.”

  “I’m sure—” I began.

  “No, I have no interest in what you might have found in my garden. What I should like to know, as a matter of academic interest, is why you have been trespassing in my attics.”

  “What a ridic
ulous—”

  “There is nothing ridiculous about it, and I should be grateful if you would not waste my time.” He was pouting. “I have already spent considerable time waiting for you to come downstairs, and waiting for that wretched gardener to put in his appearance. Do you not realize that my time is valuable? I have a great deal of work to do, can you not understand that?”

  He seemed to expect no answer.

  “Really, my dear lady, if you insist on sleuthing, you ought to learn a few rudimentary rules. It is better to do things well, even foolish things. No good detective strews signs of her presence about the scene.” He produced from his pocket a folded tissue. “You left this near my luggage, along with the marks of your shoes all over the floor. I found them when I was looking for my gardener, though why I should have expected to find him in the attic, I cannot imagine. I ask again, why were you there?”

  My brain was not working. I couldn’t think of any reply except the truth. And did it matter, anyway? Maybe if I told him what he wanted to know, he’d let me go somewhere and sleep and sleep and sleep.

  “I was looking for the clothes. The woman’s clothes you wore the night you came back to doctor Mrs. Lathrop’s tea.”

  “And did you find them?”

  “No. I found lots of summer clothes for a woman, and I didn’t understand.”

  “It is a relief to know that there is something you don’t understand. How did you work out the rest?”

  There was a note in his voice I didn’t quite like. When I felt better I’d try to figure out why it bothered me.

  “Mrs. Lathrop had too much money. I finally realized she was blackmailing you, though I don’t know about what.”

  He smiled unpleasantly.

  “Anyway, I thought you sneaked back from London early Thursday morning, disguised in women’s clothes. You’d left a bicycle at the station, and came out to the Hall to put the monkshood in the tea. You left it awfully late; she almost caught you.”