My heart slowed to a dull painful thud. “What are you telling me?”
“Are you sure you’re up to hearing this?”
I could only gaze at him mutely.
“Sweetheart, don’t take it too hard.” His voice had deepened to a throb. “These things happen sometimes to people who once loved each other very much, and I’m close to certain that Ralph Brown does still love his wife. It’s her need to check up on him every fifteen minutes to make sure that he hasn’t stepped outside without his coat or forgotten to eat his packed lunch that he has begun to find intolerable.”
“Ralph Brown?” If there had been a rolling pin handy, I would have clobbered the husband now gazing soulfully into my eyes. I showed my remorse by making a pot of tea and sitting down to a roast beef sandwich with plenty of horseradish. “The upstairs tenant at Abigail’s. The man in Edwardian dress with the art shop.”
“It could be that his wife has to do something to keep from being frightened to death by his pictures of nasty- looking owls. You know the old saying: never trust a bird with eyes that are too close together.”
I stood for a moment mulling things over before saying, “I hope Mr. Brown appreciates all the trouble you’ve taken on his behalf. I suppose those books I saw you hauling out of the library when I drove past this morning were for him.”
“No, Ellie, they were for me.”
There was nothing in this reply to unsettle me. And I would have asked Ben why he had that guilty look on his face if Freddy hadn’t chosen that moment to walk into the kitchen with the children in tow.
Eleven
After dropping Abbey and Tam off at school and Rose at her play group, I picked up Mrs. Malloy at one minute past the time arranged and then headed toward Biddlington-By-Water, which Mrs. Malloy proceeded to remind me was a proper dead-in-a-live-hole.
“But you were only there once to play bingo,” I pointed out.
“So?” She sat looking the picture of some Hollywood costume designer’s idea of an interior decorator in a black velvet toque trimmed with faux leopard to match her coat and a pair of doorknob-sized earrings. “As I’ve been known to say time out of mind, the people you sees at bingo is a micro-cousin of what the rest of the place is like.”
“You did get in touch with Lady Krumley? And explain our plan?”
“Course I did. And she said she didn’t mind what sort of cover we used if it helped us pick up some clues about how to find Ernestine. Poor duck! Can’t be easy lying on that hospital bed, hoping and praying that she’ll live to see the day she can put things right with her hubby’s love child after all these years.” Mrs. Malloy heaved a sentimental sigh before telling me I was driving in circles.
“I’m on the roundabout.”
“You’ve been round it three bloody times.”
This was true, but I was having trouble figuring out which exit would get me to Biddlington-By-Water. Pressed into making a decision by Mrs. Malloy’s nudge in my ribs, I took the sign to Swayford, because it sounded vaguely familiar, and relaxed into my seat. It wasn’t as though we were in a rush to arrive at an appointed time, but I did hope that her ladyship had warned her nephew Niles or his wife to expect us sometime during the morning.
“She said she’d phone the moment she hung up after we’d done talking.” Mrs. Malloy opened her handbag and popped a lemon drop into her mouth. “Now let’s get ourselves clear, Mrs. H., about what we’re really up to in going to Moultty Towers. Is it just about Ernestine? Or are we going to have a nose round and see what we can’t sniff out about all them deaths in the family, including the fellow that just got murdered down that well? Now what was his name?”
“Vincent Krumley. And for all we know it was an accident, plain and simple.”
“And I’m the Queen Mother!”
“All right!” I said. “We have our suspicions. But we’re not the police. We’re not even proper private detectives. And I’m not all that keen on being tossed over the cliffs for sticking my nose in where it isn’t wanted.”
“There aren’t any cliffs at Biddlington-By-Water.” Mrs. M. could nitpick with the best when she chose. “It’s not a seaside place. Got nothing going for it, as I told you.”
I had to agree when we reached High Street that Biddlington-By-Water did not abound with charm. The buildings mostly looked as though they had been erected in the 1950s. There were a couple of banks, a cinema and what appeared to be a local department store. Even the cakes in the bakery window might have been there for half a century, with the cherries on top being replaced periodically as the proprietor saw fit. The Pizza Hut and McDonald’s on opposite corners looked as though they had been put up in the night when nobody was looking.
“There!” Mrs. Malloy pointed at a block of concrete with a door stuck in the middle. “That’s the hall where I played bingo. And if I remember Lady Krumley’s directions rightly, we need to turn left at the next traffic light, go down to the post office and take a right. That should bring us onto a road that narrows into a lane about half a mile down. Right after we come to a field with a sign saying ‘Free Range Eggs,’ we’ll round a corner and see Moultty Towers on our left, or it could be right.” She continued to vacillate on this point for the next two-and-a-half miles, at which point we could see the house, for surely there could not be two of such size in close proximity.
“Looks the right sort of place for a murder!” Mrs. Malloy had her nose pressed to the windscreen.
“What a monstrosity!” I was truly appalled. “All those towers stuck up on the roof like a bunch of cannons, and the whole thing looking like a boys’ reformatory school in some black and white film from the 1920s. Probably at some point in its history it was a perfectly charming house-until some fiend decided to modernize it and then not being happy with the results glued the towers back on and hammered big iron nails in the front door.”
“Okay! Okay!” Mrs. Malloy climbed out of the car to stand beside me. “I can see for meself it needs to be knocked down and put out of its misery. Now tell me again,” she was looking uncharacteristically nervous, “what sort of things I’m to say to show I knows what I’m talking about.”
“You could suggest that the fireplace needs merchandising.”
“Meaning they should sell it?”
“That,” I said, hoisting the bag containing furniture catalogues and fabric samples onto the curve of my arm, “it should make a decorating statement. Look, follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”
“That’s right, let you queen it while I walk three places behind like poor Prince Phillip!” She was still grumbling as we mounted the broad sweep of steps to the front door, and would undoubtedly have gone on indefinitely if it had not been opened almost immediately by a man in a dark jacket and sober tie. He was short and almost completely bald. His age appeared to be in the sixties. His expression intimated nothing more than a mild inquiry.
“Good morning.” One of his eyebrows shifted a hair or two.
“Haskell and Malloy, interior designers.” I tapped the bag and beamed at him. “Lady Krumley did say to expect us?”
“I know nothing of the matter, madam.” He stepped aside for us to enter and closed the door behind us. “If you will wait here”-indicating the large and intensely gloomy hall-“I will apprise Mr. and Mrs. Edmonds of your arrival.” His was the sort of face that one sees on dozens of buses, neither good looking nor ugly and impossible to describe five minutes later. But Mrs. Malloy was eyeing him coyly.
“Have you and me met somewhere?”
“Not that I recall, madam?”
She giggled. “Then it’s on to the next line, isn’t it? Do you come here often?”
“Frequently. I’m Watkins, Lady Krumley’s butler.” He turned and entered a door to our left, leaving Mrs. Malloy with a sigh on her lips and a dreamy look in her eyes. “I’d have sworn, but I suppose it could be as how he reminds me of Cary Grant.”
“Have you had your eyesight checked recently?”
“It’s the voice.” She now stood admiring herself in a mirror, carved with bunches of gigantic fruit, hung above a table topped with a bilious shade of green marble. “All lovely and posh, but with a hint of earthiness underneath. Give me a man of mystery any day. So long as he’s not the sort to look down his nose at bingo.”
“Slip him a note before you leave. Just don’t suggest meeting him at moonlight by ye old wishing well.
