We were just coming down the hall as Henderson was inviting the policeman, the same one who had questioned us the night before, inside.
The butler made some comment about the family still being in their rooms, and the officer nodded, and then tipped his hat to Lucy and me.
“Miss Wallace, Mrs. Stayton,” he said.
“Morning,” I replied.
Lucy mumbled something and clasped her hands. I felt so sorry for the poor dear.
“Come again?” he asked.
I spoke for her. “This is all such a strain on my poor friend. Might you do us the kindness of interviewing her first, and then she can get some rest.”
“No need to be under a strain; I have just a few questions for you,” the policeman said kindly. He looked about the entrance hall, and, seeing the bright light of the morning sun seeping past the open doors of the vacant dining room, he gestured with his hat for Lucy to enter. He closed the doors behind them, giving me an odd smile as he did so.
Henderson excused himself when he noticed that Nate was at the top of the staircase, whining. As he went to rescue the dog, a thought occurred to me.
I slipped back to the kitchen and then carefully pushed a pocket door to one side; this gave me entrance to the butler’s pantry between the dining room and the kitchen. Carefully, I rolled the door back into place.
After I settled myself, I could hear the policeman speaking, “Right, tell me Miss Wallace, how do you come by your income? Are you a paid companion to Mrs. Stayton?”
“I couldn’t rightly put it that way. We are the best of friends, but she doesn’t so much pay me…” She trailed off.
“So you have no income,” the policeman said incredulously.
“I don’t need an income; I have no expenses. Of course, Mr. Jack sneaks a bit of money in my purse every week or so.”
“Who is Mr. Jack?”
“The Cissy who manages the family’s money,” Lucy replied.
“A homosexual runs the accounts.”
She stuttered, “The Stayton family wouldn’t employee someone who dabbled in criminal behavior. I just mean to say that he’s effeminate, you know, the kind of man who holds his cigarette like a woman, never realizing he has ash on his shoulder.”
“I see,” replied the policeman. Then, after a long pause, he asked her, “Tell me, Miss Wallace, do you know how Mr. Xavier Stayton died?”
“No, we’ve never discussed his death,” Lucy responded.
“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
“No stranger than you asking me about poor Mr. Stayton now that he’s been in the family mausoleum for these past three years, at the same time there’s a dead cripple still waiting to be buried at the church graveyard just down yonder,” she retorted, no longer sounding so nervous.
Insulted, the policeman snapped at her, “How is it you found yourself Mrs. Stayton’s companion? How did you provide for yourself before?”
Lucy had no choice but to answer the man’s question. I had a choice not to listen to the answers, thus I crept out of the butler’s pantry.
No more than fifteen minutes passed before Lucy and the policeman stepped back into the wide formal hallway.
The fellow’s brow rose when he saw me sitting on a little upholstered bench that I had dragged there myself.
“Am I next?” I asked, squeezing Lucy’s hand as she stepped next to me.
“Why not? The rest of the family doesn’t seem as eager as you do.” He gestured toward the open door and started to walk back inside the dining room.
I leaned in to Lucy and quickly whispered, “First, call home and have the car sent up for us. Then, speak to the staff, find out all you can. I don’t care if you make fools of us, because we are leaving as soon as that man clears me of any wrongdoing.”
“Mrs. Stayton,” called the policeman, and I hurried in after giving Lucy a little hug of reassurance.
I sat down on a chair at the end of the table and said, “Now, Constable—”
“I'm an inspector, and you are an American,” he said with a funny smirk.
“Didn’t take many clues for you to deduce that, Inspector,” I quipped, just as the master sleuth should.
“What brings you here, Mrs. Stayton?” he asked, ignoring my attempt to be witty.
“I came to Pearce Manor to be inspired; you see, I am writing a novel.” I thought perhaps he’d be rather impressed with me.
“No, I mean, what brings you to England?”
I felt my brow wrinkle. “My husband’s family is English. He lived in London.” I became tongue-tied; those weren’t the words I had wanted to say. I corrected myself, “I live in London.”
“Your husband, he is…?” The man intentionally let his words trail off.
“With the Lord Almighty, charming the angels,” I told him.
“I’m so sorry.” His eyes squinted. I was fearful he’d ask the dreaded question, but instead, he inquired, “How did you two meet?”
“Xavier was an explorer, you know the sort. He wanted to see the world. He was in America, headed to California to see the 1923 World’s Fair. My mother and I were at the Union Station, collecting my Great Aunt Dotty, when Xavier’s train brought him to St. Louis.
“We made eyes with each other in the restaurant. He introduced himself to me—well, to my mother and me. We invited him to join us. We fell in love in that instant.”
I noticed the inspector’s jaw set, as if he found this hard to believe, and he said as much.
Defensively, he remarked, “You are an attractive young lady, but love at first sight? I don’t know that I believe in such a thing.”
“I may not be a typical temptress, but I’ve turned a head or two, Inspector,” I assured him.
He gave me his version of the polite chuckle and then responded, “Of that, I am sure.” He paused as if reexamining me before he asked, “So you met and fell in love?”
“Yes, he never left for Los Angeles. He took a room at a hotel. For the next month, he courted me and then asked my father’s permission to marry me.”
“What a romance,” the inspector remarked.
I smiled and nodded my chin.
After a long pause, the inspector reached inside his jacket and pulled out his cigarette case. He offered one to me, and I declined. Slowly, he lit his own and took a long drag from it before saying, “Right. Now, about the evening of the murder, a manuscript that you have written was being acted out. The lights went out and...?”
“On cue, Phyllis turned off the chandelier. We heard the thunk, then I reached for the candelabra, but it wasn’t there. Finally, I asked Phyllis to turn the light on. She didn’t respond. When her name was called out and she did not reply, Henderson turned on the chandelier. Phyllis was prone on the floor, and the candelabra was on the floor beside her.”
“Who called to Phyllis, besides yourself?”
“Ruth,” I replied.
“Who set out the candelabra on the table?”
“I did myself.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“It was always in the room,” I told him.
“When I arrived, it was back on the table,” he told me.
“Yes, by reflex, Henderson picked it up and replaced it.”
The inspector asked, “Was he wearing gloves?”
I thought about the question for a moment. “Yes, why?”
“There were a few fingerprints on the item, I suspect yours. Otherwise, it was quite clean.”
“Of course my fingerprints will be on the thing,” I retorted.
“What about matches?” he asked.
“Yes, Lucy had set out a little box of matches for me to use.”
“I saw no box of matches on the table last night.”
I thought about it for a moment; they were also missing from the table. “Yes, I don’t remember them being on the table as I reached about.”
Rhetorically, he asked, “Who has them now?” then he looked to me and asked, “Were they in a lar
ge box or a small box?”
Yes, this would be an excellent clue. “A small box; it was from the Hotel Cote d’ Azur. They had been in Lucy’s luggage since our trip to Monte Carlo.”
He smiled at me, pleased with my handy piece of information. “Had there been any tension in the house during your stay?”
“Nothing but. My husband’s family are not what I would call happy people,” I told him.
“And Miss Masterson?”
“She was a queer individual. I have to admit, she frightened me at first. Because of her gaunt figure and the way she held her injured arm, she seemed rather sinister. As I got to know her, though, my opinion changed.”
The inspector asked, “How did she interact with the Staytons?”
“Ruth was very devoted to her. Nicholas was...respectful, friendly. I think Randolph may have spoken to her, some. Joan ignored her for the most part, or rather, they ignored each other.”
“How did she get on with the servants?” he asked.
When Phyllis wanted a cigarette lit, she had relied on Ruth or Nicholas. She rarely spoke to Henderson or the maids, and she’d indicated she thought little of the chauffeur. “She treated them like nameless domestic help, neither politely nor rudely.”
He made a note in his book. “Right. You’ve had time to think about it now. Tell me, has it occurred to you why she had that letter inside her cigarette case at the ready to give to you?”
I answered too quickly. “No.”
He peered at me suspiciously and asked, “Did the two of you discuss the novel she quoted from?”
“At luncheon with the vicar’s wife, she saw the book and quoted from it.”
“The same quote?” he asked.
“No, though it was rather dark as well. In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew was right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. She had said that several of the passages of the book had spoken to her.”
The inspector wrote down what I told him. Once his pencil was done moving, I said, “I can assure you that I had no reason to murder poor Phyllis.”
The handsome man met my gaze and said, “Last night, I had the impression that your in-laws would like for me to think otherwise.”
Chapter Nine
After checking in with Lucy, I hid myself in the butler’s pantry once more.
I could hear Ruth speaking after I was settled with my ear against the door. “No, Randolph and Joan were away at the time. I heard her scream and went running to see what had happened.”
“And what had happened?” asked the inspector.
“She’d lost her footing and tumbled down the stairs. I can’t tell you how frightened I was,” Ruth replied.
“This was four years ago, you said; before that, how long had she been your secretary?”
Ruth must have been calculating, as it took her a moment to reply. “Four years.”
“How did she come to you?” he asked.
“She had worked for my husband’s company. When he sold off his percentage, we hired her,” she replied stiffly.
“So you’ve known her for longer than these past eight years?”
“No, I hadn’t met her. While my husband was away in the war, she was his secretary in London. He realized that she’d be sacked with his departure…”
“What type of company was he a part of?”
I did not hear Ruth’s reply; my heartbeat doubled as the door to the pantry from the kitchen edged open. To my relief, it was Lucy. She handed me a note and then crept away as quickly as she had appeared.
I read her hurriedly scribbled note. Thus far, Lucy had learned that Phyllis had once been very friendly with the domestic help, more one of them than part of the family. After the fall, this changed. She had become demanding of them while she convalesced and had made an enemy of the former butler, whom Henderson had replaced. This was all told by the gardener.
Putting my ear back to the door, I heard the inspector ask, “And how long did the doctor tell you she had left?”
Ruth’s voice was very soft when she replied, “He’d said six months, at the longest.”
“So she had maybe two, three months…”
“I doubt even that long. She had been resistant to go on morphine; she was dealing with the pain as best as she could. Still, she was getting weaker and weaker, and she hardly ate. Just the other day, I had the dress she is to be buried in sent for alterations.”
I understood now why the secretive errand had been done while Phyllis was occupied.
The inspector paused for a moment before changing the line of his questioning. “Your brother-in-law, how is it that he and his wife live with you?”
“Nicky and Randolph are most loyal to each other. Randolph found himself in hard times after the war. I suppose even beforehand. Their father left them debt, not money. As the older brother, Randolph did his best to pay his father’s notes; it left him in a bad way. The family home was sold for a song during the July Crisis—Randolph has always been one to say dark little things that he believes to be humorous. He called the selling of the estate his July Crisis.”
“You all get along?”
Ruth’s tone was questionable. “As well as two brothers and their wives might under one roof.”
“And how is that?” the inspector prodded.
“I think Randolph tires of living with his younger brother; it does raise an eyebrow or two among our social circle,” she said, as if the inspector needed to be reminded of the class distinction between him and her.
“You get on well with your sister-in-law.”
There was a long pause, too long. “We have found our way. During the war, she lived with her mother and step-father, dreadful people. At first, she seemed happy to be here, perhaps somewhat humbled. Then she started to resent us.” There was another pause, and I wished that I could have seen the expression on her face. “That all changed. When she and Randolph returned from their holiday, just shortly before Phyllis’s accident, she was different.”
“How so?”
“Pleasant, almost grateful, she was charming as she had been when she and Randolph first married,” Ruth replied in a faraway voice. After a pause, she said rather sharply, “I don’t see what this has to do with Phyllis’s death.”
Responding to her statement, the inspector asked, “You and the deceased were close friends, as I understand. Tell me, who would have reason to harm her?”
“No one!” Ruth blurted out. Calming herself, she went on, “At least, no sane person. Isn’t it obvious who did this?”
“No, who did this?” the inspector asked, slowly.
“That dammed American,” Ruth told the man.
“What of her friend, Miss Wallace?”
Ruth responded, “She’s a pretty little flower who sprang from a weed. I doubt she has the smarts to get out of the way from a moving car, let alone kill someone.”
I heard a match strike, and after a pause, the inspector asked, “Does it take a smart person to commit a murder?”
Ruth replied, “I suppose it doesn’t, just a smart person to get away with one.”
“Thank you for your help. That will be all for now.”
Ruth mumbled something as I heard the chairs moving. Then, the inspector made another statement. “You didn’t happen to see my matches that I left here last night?”
“Matches?” she replied, sounding annoyed by the question.
“Yes, in a box from the Hotel Cote d’ Azur.”
“No, but I would think an inspector should be able to find them,” she retorted in an ugly voice.
I heard movement in the kitchen. The little door didn’t slide open, so it meant that the cook was preparing lunch, and I was trapped.
Several minutes passed before I heard Nicholas’s voice. “You seem to have done a damn fine job of upsetting my wife, if that was your intent.”
They settled at the table, and the inspector replied, “My apologies,” in a way that sounded as i
f he’d been told that a great many times.
“Well, let’s get on with it. Phyllis worked for me during the war; I’m sure you already know that. She handled my correspondence, and kept me in the know, as they say.”
“Yes, your wife mentioned something like that,” replied the inspector.
“Right. Well, there was more to it than she knew. I’ll make no bones about it, when the war seemed to be a sure thing, I bought into a munitions company. I went off to the war, found myself in Africa, a miserable place.
“While I was there, Phyllis got wind of something, and she wrote me a letter. One of my partners was acting rather dubiously. With her help, I sidestepped what would have been rather an embarrassment.”
“So you were in her debt?” asked the inspector.
“That makes it sound like I owed her something. She had done me a favor; I didn’t want to see her sacked when I sold out of the company. Oh, we called her Ruth’s secretary, but she was more than that. Phyllis wrote my letters, kept files, rang up appointments, all sorts of things.”
“How does this play into Miss Masterson’s death?”
Nicholas responded boldly, “It doesn’t. I just figured you’d have questions. My brother made an ugly accusation once, that there was something between Phyllis and me, and well, there wasn’t. She looked out for my best interests when I couldn’t.”
The inspector made what was surely meant to be an infuriating reply. “Yes, I see.”
Sounding very hostile, Nicholas said, “That American is the culprit. The daffy thing is obsessed with murder; it's all she talks about. Ask her! You go ask her about her husband's death, there is a reason it's a bloody secret, I tell you.”
“I peg your pardon?”
Nicholas went on, “My cousin’s boy, he died mysteriously. They didn’t tell us what happened to him. At the funeral, all I heard was the term, an unfortunate accident. Would someone like to describe a bloody accident that isn’t a misfortune?”
“Right. You’re saying you haven’t a clue to what happened to him?”
In a voice unlike my picture of mild-mannered Nicholas, he snarled, “Not a clue.”
There was a bit of silence, and then the inspector asked, “Speaking of accidents, were you injured in the war?”
Murder Most Convenient: A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery Page 8