“You poor lamb.” Mrs. Malloy dabbed at her eyes, leaving mascara smudges on her cheeks. “Loved your Mum and Dad to bits, did you?”
Niles returned his glasses to his nose. “Sometimes. Mummy had been awfully cross with me that day when I brought home a note from school saying I had cheated on the spelling test and Daddy took her side that I shouldn’t be allowed any ice cream for a week. Then,” his voice dropped to a whispering wheeze, “my electric train set blew up with fatal consequences.”
“And I suppose you went to pieces.” Mrs. Malloy winced in sympathy.
“No, Mummy and Daddy did.”
“Tragic,” I said.
“But then I came to live here, which would have been perfect but for the fact that Uncle Horace never liked me. The only person who ever really did like me was Aunt Maude. And even she… just recently seems to have been focusing her attention on someone else. Someone named Ernestine.”
A silence added its somber weight to the room, but only for a moment. The door was flung open and a tall, slim woman stormed into the room. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and was dressed in black leather trousers and a cashmere sweater with a flutter of feathers around the neck.
“My wife, Cynthia,” Niles said, struggling to his feet, “back from an appointment with her hairdresser.”
“Who are these people?” His better half flung a look at Mrs. Malloy and me that should by rights have sent us flat on our backs. “Don’t tell me you’re from the undertakers? Is this the coffin brochure?” she asked, snatching the paint chart out of my hand as I stood up. “Please tell me, Niles, that you haven’t gone nuts and picked the most expensive one? Didn’t we agree to economize this month, what with the charges for stabling Charlie going up to almost double.”
“Charlie is my wife’s horse,” he explained.
“We are the interior decorators hired by Lady Krumley.” I returned Cynthia Edmonds’s scowl with a crisp smile.
“See any colors you like in them paint charts?” Mrs. Malloy chirruped.
“I certainly do!” The blue-eyed vixen shot out her arm full length while moving toward the window for a better inspection. “This one: platinum mink! It’s exactly the shade I told that wretched man I wanted my hair tinted. But what he’s given me is,” she said, flinging the chart across the room, “champagne pearl.”
“And what’s your hairdresser’s name?” Mrs. Malloy appeared to forget that we were pretending not to be private detectives. “Just for the record like.” Cynthia Edmonds was so incensed she didn’t balk at answering.
“Jorge!” She spelled it out. “And to think I’ve given that man sixteen of the best years of my life. But I’ll get even! I’ll cut my own damn hair! And you,” she said, pointing a scarlet-nailed finger at me, “can redecorate to your heart’s content. It won’t matter to me if you bury Vincent under the floorboards, because I don’t plan to be here much longer. Not if my little business venture bears fruit!”
Twelve
“Well, I must say,” Mrs. Malloy confided into my ear when we were out into the hall, “you’re coming along a treat. I think Milk will be pleased when I put in my report, but don’t expect him to gush all over you, Mrs. H., because he’s not that sort of man. Keeps his emotions to himself, he does, on account of being let down hard by that blonde he had to send up the river.”
“You don’t suppose she could have been Cynthia and that some senseless clod of a prison warden set her loose on society again?” I had not taken to Mrs. Edmonds in a big way and had cut short the chitchat by telling a little white lie.
“That was a good one,” Mrs. Malloy continued to whisper, “telling them two lovebirds in there as how Lady Krumley had asked you to look for some old pieces of furniture that might still be stored in the house. Gives us a good excuse for poking around from cellar to attic.”
“And for talking to that Mrs. Hasty who lives in the cottage with the well in the garden and was here at the same time as Ernestine. Of course it’s hoping for a lot that she’ll be able to tell us anything very useful. But we won’t start with her. I think we should first take a look at that skirting board in Lady Krumley’s bedroom where the brooch was so conveniently rediscovered.”
“Right you are, Mrs. H.,” Mrs. Malloy replied with a meekness that demanded a suspicious glance. The staircase loomed to our left, a stuffed bird under a glass dome eyed us speculatively and Watkins the butler stood in an open doorway with a silver candlestick in one hand and a polishing cloth in the other.
“May I be of help?” The hall echoed with his oncoming footsteps. He was looking at my bag as if suspecting that I had somehow managed to stuff the rest of the family silver in it.
“Aren’t you a handy one to have around.” Mrs. Malloy moistened her lips and twitched a hip. “We didn’t even have to tinkle.”
“Even so you may wish to know the powder room is to your left.”
Mrs. Malloy’s response was a Shirley Temple giggle that set my teeth on edge, but produced no change of expression on Watkins’s face. “I was talking about one of them little brass bells. But I expect they do things on a bigger scale here and use a bell rope. Quite the country estate, this place with cottages at the bottom of the garden and all. I’ll bet you’re on the go from morn till night, never giving your poor tootsies a rest.”
“I was seated, madam, when I heard you talking with this other lady out in the hall.” He eyed me with a wariness made understandable given that Mrs. Malloy, and I were standing shoulder to shoulder. “I wondered if you might require directions to one or more of the rooms.”
“Exactly right,” I replied. “We would like to take a look at her ladyship’s bedroom. During our consultation with her the other day, my partner and I suggested it might be the place to begin the redecorating.”
“Her own personal space, setting the tone for all the rest, if you see what we’re getting at Mr. Watkins.” Mrs. Malloy still sounded unbearably girlish. “And after what happened to that poor gentleman, the one what came and left so abruptly, well, it does seem likely Lady Krumley would tend to find the room she used a bit gloomy were it to stay the same. So we’ll take a look at that one too, and see if we can’t cheer it up with some bright curtains and new hot water bottle cover.”
“Mr. Vincent Krumley slept in the room that is the second to the left at the top of the stairs. Her ladyship’s is two doors to the right. Would you wish me to escort you?” Watkins creaked another few steps toward us.
“Please don’t trouble yourself,” I said.
“You just go and enjoy yourself polishing that candlestick.” Mrs. Malloy beamed at him.
“I just finished polishing it, madam.”
“The light,” I murmured. “It’s not good. We’ll make a note,” I said, taking Mrs. Malloy by the arm, “about a new hall chandelier.” Upon Watkins’s retreat into the room from whence he had come I led the way upstairs for about half a mile before pausing to pant on a small landing. It was provided with a bench, where one could sit and adjust to the altitude or admire the view below.
“So I put me foot in it.” Mrs. Malloy wheezed while bending over and clutching at a wooden arm. “But how was I to know what with all that tarnish he’d left.”
“Her ladyship did say he wasn’t up to the standard of her former butler.”
“It slipped me mind.”
“It might not have done, if you hadn’t been so busy dimpling at the man.” I staggered upward, shifting the bag from one arm to the other, “But I have to give you points for finding out where Vincent slept. It’s a stretch, but you might find something in his suitcase or a drawer that could provide us with a hint as to why someone decided he needed to be got out of the way.” We had reached the top and were leaning against the banister railing. All was dark brown varnish, dimness and shadow, the only window being the stained glass one behind us at the final bend in the stairs.
“So you want me to check out Vincent’s final resting place so to speak, while you do Lady Krumley’s bedroom?” Mrs. Malloy sounded as if she wasn’t sure whether or not to take umbrage.
“You’re far more experienced, having had more than one husband, at going through men’s pockets and knowing where they hide things when they want to be sneaky, than I am.”
“Every little piece of expertise helps in this line of work.” She was clearly appeased. “Well, off we go! Me left
