As they turned away from the table, Pamela’s attention was drawn to a small commotion near the door. A woman on her way in—quite a ravishing woman—had nearly collided with a man on his way out. He apologized profusely and made his exit.
Either the apology hadn’t been deemed sufficient or the near-collision had only added to a preexisting dissatisfaction. A vertical line between her perfect brows was all she allowed herself in the way of a frown, but the rigid line of her jaw and the sharp click of her stiletto heels as she strode farther into the room completed the message. She was dressed in black, but the little black dress that followed the elegant lines of her body was more cocktail party than funeral. She glanced toward Pierre, who was bending to receive a hug from a white-haired woman, then she lifted a graceful hand to consult a dainty watch and continued on until she reached the bar.
Wilfred and Penny strolled over as Pamela and Bettina nibbled on their food. Wilfred tapped his watch and Bettina nodded, her mouth full of meatball. “Yes,” she said, after she swallowed. “It looks like things are winding down.” And a server was hovering nearby with a tray ready to receive empty plates.
But before Pamela and Bettina could hand their plates over, their group was suddenly joined by Pierre, who had apparently been on his way to the bar but had suddenly veered in their direction.
“Thank you so much for coming,” he said with a graceful tilt of his head. He seized Bettina’s hands. “Millicent valued your friendship so much.” As he uttered the words, his eyes roamed toward Penny. She looked all the younger and tinier surrounded by the four adults, each of whom was imposing by reason of height or bulk or—in the case of Wilfred—both. “And mademoiselle will go back to her college then?”
“After Christmas.” Penny nodded shyly.
“Such a pity.” The look he gave her daughter seemed so invasive that Pamela was delighted when Bettina spoke up.
“We met Coot,” she said.
Pierre gave a start and focused his gaze on Bettina. “She has no claim,” he said. “No claim at all.” He tapped the side of his head and rolled his eyes comically. “Fou, as we say in French. Complètement fou.”
The server appeared at Pamela’s elbow. Pamela slipped her plate onto the tray, then reached for Bettina’s and added it as well. Wilfred shook Pierre’s hand. Pierre reached for Penny’s hand and for a horrified moment Pamela thought he was going to kiss it. But instead he whispered “Adieu” and relinquished it. More nods and murmurs all around and then they started for the door.
But they didn’t get far before he was at their side again. “The house,” he said. “It will be sold, of course, as Millicent planned. All the more reason now. So you must come to my grand estate sale. Millicent had already hired a company to manage it, and they are very much in demand, so I must go ahead now even though it is so soon. The carriage house and its attic are full of old, old things. The sale starts tomorrow.” Another meaningful look at Penny. “You must all come. I’ll tell them to let you take whatever you want for free. Voilà!” He kissed his fingertips. “Bien sûr, it is all mine now, isn’t it?”
Pierre left the Musket Room when they did, explaining that he needed to pop into the catering office. They all headed down the hall together, but Pierre veered off before they reached the coatroom. In the coatroom, their coats were hanging right where they left them, among sedate wool, fashionable puffers, and a few furs, and in a few minutes they were bundled up and ready to brave the chilly outdoors. But as Pamela watched Penny adjust the violet mohair scarf, she realized that her own neck was bare. She turned back to the long rack of coats and located the hanger from which she had claimed hers. No scarf had lingered behind on the hanger. She studied the floor, then stooped to peer into the shadowy recesses under the crowded racks.
Bettina and Penny had already stepped out into the hall, but Wilfred had lingered. “Did you lose something?” he asked, looking concerned.
“I can’t find my scarf.” Pamela shrugged and held up her empty hands.
Bettina leaned back into the doorway. “You left it on,” she said. “Remember?”
“Oh, yes!” Pamela touched her bare neck. “It’s probably in that chair by the fireplace. I’ll just run back and grab it.” She slipped past Bettina and started down the hall.
“We’ll bring the car around,” Bettina said.
“See you in a minute,” Wilfred added.
But it was more than a minute. Because as eager as Pamela was to reclaim her scarf, she couldn’t resist dallying as she passed the Forge Room, one of the other rooms the Carroll Inn made available to people hosting private events. The door was partly ajar, thus allowing the sound of gleeful laughter to reach the hall.
It was a woman’s laughter, and as Pamela halted and peered through the four-inch gap between the door and the doorframe, she soon realized exactly which woman it was. First a slender leg came into view, made more shapely by the ultra-high stiletto heel that encased its foot. Then Pamela recognized the little black dress that was more cocktail party than funeral. The woman’s face was turned away, giving Pamela a good view of her lustrous blond hair. But judging by the laughter still issuing from the woman’s mouth, Pamela guessed that her mood had lightened considerably since she strode angrily into the reception.
She was not alone. Deeper laughter echoed the woman’s, then a male voice observed, “So you are not angry anymore, chérie?”
“I was missing you, Poody,” the woman said in a cooing tone that Pamela sometimes used with her cats. “Couldn’t you get rid of all those people sooner so your little chérie didn’t have to spend the whole afternoon alone? It’s almost four o’clock.”
“We have the whole evening.” This was the male voice—which of course was Pierre’s voice.
Now no one was visible through the gap between the door and the doorframe. Pamela could see only a large painting of a blacksmith shoeing a horse. A series of sighs and moans suggested that verbal communication had been deemed inadequately expressive. But before Pamela turned away to resume her quest for her errant scarf, Pierre spoke again. “We’ll have the whole rest of our lives together,” he assured the woman in the little black dress.
Nadine was still snoring quietly when Pamela retrieved her scarf. The servers were clearing off the buffet table and only a few guests lingered, moving slowly toward the door as they continued to chat. No sounds at all came from the Forge Room as Pamela retraced her steps down the hall, though the door was still ajar.
She entered the lobby, passed the splendid tree, and stepped out onto the Carroll Inn’s porch. Wilfred’s Mercedes waited on the circular drive below, and in a moment Bettina had pushed one of the car’s back doors open and was beckoning to Pamela.
Pamela had been debating whether to reveal her fascinating discovery to the whole group on the way home or wait until she and Bettina were alone. But, after all, the mystery was as much Penny’s business as anyone else’s—and Wilfred had been a useful adviser in Bettina’s and Pamela’s earlier crime-solving exploits.
So as Wilfred steered the Mercedes through Timberley’s charming commercial district, Pamela described the encounter between Pierre Lapointe and the glamorous stiletto-heeled woman she had heard—and partially seen.
“Oh, my goodness!” Bettina said, latching onto Pamela’s forearm in her excitement. “Motive! That’s for sure!”
“We’ll have the whole rest of our lives together,” Pamela murmured.
“With all the money we need,” Wilfred chimed in from the front seat.
Penny turned around, her face troubled. “But . . . Mom, he was so . . .” She twisted her pretty mouth into a little knot. “That woman must know how he is. Could she really think . . . ?”
“Love can be quite blind,” Bettina said. “I hope you’ll always keep your eyes wide-open.”
“He’s on Christmas break,” Pamela said. “So he could have been at home on Monday morning. Suppose Millicent stopped off at home on her way to do her errands. And that
was his chance, and he took it.”
Bettina was nodding enthusiastically, the scarlet tendrils of her hair vibrating and her earrings swinging wildly. But suddenly she stopped. “Clayborn interviewed him,” she said. “Of course, right away. The spouse is often the first person the police suspect. He has an alibi.”
“Ohhh!” Pamela, Penny, and Wilfred all groaned simultaneously.
Bettina went on. “He went to the campus about ten-thirty Monday to turn his grades in. Then he went to his office and did some paperwork, and he had an early lunch with a colleague.”
“Clayborn had checked on all of that by the time you talked to him Tuesday morning?” Pamela asked. They were cruising south on County Road now and soon the nature preserve would come into sight.
“No,” Bettina said, “but that’s what Pierre told him, and I’m sure Clayborn has verified the story by now. I’m sure the police searched Pierre’s car too. Pierre is still running around free, so I guess his colleague vouched for him and there weren’t any bloodstains in his trunk.”
They all fell silent as Wilfred drove past the nature preserve, already shadowy in the early winter dusk. He made the turn onto Orchard Street and soon they had climbed out of the car and were standing on Bettina’s driveway.
“So,” Penny said after they had exchanged good-byes, “what time shall we leave for the estate sale tomorrow?”
Pamela was sure the look on her own face mirrored Bettina’s expression—eyes wide and lips parted in amazement. Both women stared at Penny.
Pamela spoke first. “You can’t be serious! I mean, the way Millicent died—and you found her body. And then today Pierre was so . . . forward. Grabbing your hand like that! Who knows what he’d try to do if there weren’t people around?”
“Oh, Mo—om!” Penny laughed. “He was totally creepy, but if we all go together—”
“Well, I for one am not going,” Bettina cut in. “I would feel like a ghoul, pawing through my friend’s things.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“I’ll go by myself then.” Penny laughed again. “I wish Laine and Sybil weren’t in California. I’ll bet there are some great vintage clothes.”
“You absolutely will not go alone,” Pamela said. She reached an arm around Penny’s waist and tugged her close.
“I’m nineteen years old, Mom.” Penny tilted her head to meet her mother’s eyes. “I’ll go on the bus if you won’t let me use your car.”
Wilfred meanwhile was standing at a diplomatic remove from the conversation.
Pamela sighed. “You won’t go on the bus,” she said. “I’ll take you.” She certainly didn’t want Penny to venture into the clutches of Pierre Lapointe on her own—and she had to admit that she herself was curious about the treasures the Farthingales and several generations of Wentworths had accumulated.
“But—” Bettina’s brightly lipsticked mouth stretched wide with alarm. She grabbed Pamela’s right arm and Penny’s left. “If you’re both going, I’m going too. And we’ll all stick close together.”
Chapter Eight
Many emails, work-related and other, lurked in Pamela’s inbox. But before she opened them, she brought up the Google page and keyed Wendelstaff College into the search box. A few seconds later the Wendelstaff home page appeared on her computer screen. The home page showed a group of students chatting happily on the college’s attractive quadrangle, with an ivy-covered building in the background.
But Pamela already knew the Wendelstaff campus was pretty. What she was curious about was the college’s faculty—specifically, which faculty members Pierre Lapointe might count among his own particular colleagues. She clicked on the tab for “Departments” and from the list that came up selected “Foreign Languages.” Three people taught French, two of them full-time professors and one of them Pierre Lapointe. One of the full-time professors was a woman named Ida Wilma Merten. Would someone named Ida Wilma Merten wear close-fitting sheath dresses and stiletto heels? Pamela asked herself that question as she waited for Professor Merten’s profile to come up.
She might or might not, Pamela decided as she studied the photograph that accompanied the impressive list of Professor Merten’s accomplishments. Professor Merten was young and attractive, but her hair was jet black and cut in a gamine style that made her resemble Audrey Hepburn in an old movie.
In addition to French, Wendelstaff College offered other foreign languages. Pamela browsed among them, bringing up the profile of every faculty member with a woman’s name. Professor Svetlana Romanoff was blond, but not young, and Professor Angelica Castro was young but not blond. But after a few more disappointing tries, Pamela found herself whispering Yes! as she stared at the photograph of Jeannette Thornton, Lecturer in German.
The photo showed Jeannette Thornton only from the shoulders up. But Pamela recognized the perfect brows, minus the frown that had marred them at the reception, and the curve of jawline now relaxed into a smile. And of course the carefully careless sweep of blond hair.
Jeannette Thornton was the woman in the stiletto heels now looking forward to spending the rest of her life with Pierre Lapointe. Pamela couldn’t be sure, but she strongly suspected that she was also the colleague who had given Pierre his alibi for the morning Millicent was killed. This discovery would have to be reported to Bettina.
But there were emails from her boss at Fiber Craft to be read and digested. In fact, a new one popped up the moment Pamela closed the Wendelstaff website. The stylized paperclip that accompanied it signaled the presence of attachments, and attachments meant work.
* * *
Pamela had labored until seven p.m., finally pushing her chair back from the computer and raising her arms in a welcome stretch when Penny tapped at her office door to ask plaintively whether there would be dinner. Had Penny not been home, Pamela would have been summoned much earlier by hungry cats, but Penny had taken over many feeding duties during her visit.
“I’ll warm up the oxtail stew,” Pamela said, “and we can have salad and there’s plenty of whole-grain bread.”
* * *
Later, they settled at opposite ends of the sofa, a British mystery unfolding on the screen before them. Pamela had finished all the pieces of the glamorous ruby-red tunic and was beginning to assemble it. The back and the front formed a cozy lap rug as she methodically stitched the long seam that would join one side from hem to armhole. Catrina had tunneled under the swath of knitting that draped onto the sofa and was snuggled against Pamela’s thigh.
For her part, Penny was browsing through the latest issue of Pamela’s favorite knitting magazine. One of her Christmas gifts from her mother was to be a sweater knit to a pattern of Penny’s choosing from yarn that Penny would select from the fancy yarn shop in Timberley. Of course the sweater wouldn’t be ready by Christmas morning, but the trip to the yarn shop would be scheduled for Christmas week.
Penny had a cat of her own to keep her company—or a kitten rather. Ginger had taken up residence in her lap and was signaling her contentment with a soothing purr.
* * *
“Snow today, for sure,” Bettina said from the porch as Pamela opened her front door the next morning. Indeed, the no-color clouds hung low, as if weighed down by snow crystals soon to be released. Bettina’s pumpkin-colored coat was a welcome spot of color against the bleak landscape. She held out a slender newspaper wrapped in plastic. “It was under your car,” she said.
“I wondered where the Advocate was.” Pamela reached for the paper. “Not that I need to read it to know the latest on the Farthingale case.”
“Well”—Bettina feigned insult with a comical pout—“when a paper only comes out once a week . . .”
“I’ve made a connection Detective Clayborn hasn’t made.” Pamela smiled mysteriously and raised her brows.
“What?” The pout turned into an excited smile. Bettina’s lipstick was exactly the same shade as her coat. The effect was stunning with her scarlet hair. She sniffed the air. “Is there co
ffee? I think we can spare a few minutes before we drive over to Timberley.”
“Penny’s still getting dressed,” Pamela said. “Come on back to the kitchen.”
Ginger watched curiously as Bettina slipped off her coat and took a seat, and then the kitten crept forward to sample what exotic scents might have come in on the toe of Bettina’s chic boot. Meanwhile Pamela poured a cup of coffee for Bettina, fetched the heavy cream from the refrigerator, and set sugar and cream before her friend.
She took a seat across from Bettina and waited as Bettina sugared her coffee and stirred in cream till the coffee reached the exact shade of pale mocha that she preferred. Then she began to speak.
“Detective Clayborn probably tracked down the colleague who gave Pierre his alibi,” Pamela said.
“Probably.” Bettina nodded. “He’s very thorough. He’d have verified the alibi.”
“So he knows that colleague is Jeannette Thornton, lecturer in German at Wendelstaff.”
“How do you know who she is?” Bettina paused with her coffee cup raised to her lips and frowned at Pamela over the rim.
“Wendelstaff website,” Pamela said with a triumphant grin.
“But there must be lots of people in the foreign language department at Wendelstaff,” Bettina protested, coffee still untasted. “Any one of them could be described as his colleague.”
“But only one of them is the same person who showed up at the reception in a black cocktail dress and stiletto heels and was later overheard—by me—in a compromising tête-à-tête with Pierre.” Pamela continued to grin.
“Oh, my!” Bettina set her coffee down without drinking.
“You know what that means,” Pamela said.
Bettina nodded, her eyes gleaming with delight. But before she could speak, an unexpected voice chimed in. “His alibi isn’t really an alibi!”
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