“So here we are, all of us,” Mrs. Tudbury said, “with your surprise tea! And while we’re here, we want to take a final look at everything, from attic to cellar—”
“There isn’t any attic,” Estelle Otis said.
“Well, we won’t quibble about that, will we?” Mrs. Tudbury’s smile was on the acid side. “We want to take a last look at every inch, every teeny-weeny inch, of your haven. Come, girls!”
CHAPTER 5
NO PIBROCH, Leonidas thought, could compare with the martial inspiration of Mrs. Tudbury’s rousing ‘‘Come, girls!”
Babbling with renewed vigor, the girls, as Mrs. Tudbury fancifully termed them, charged.
Cassie Price fought her way back to Leonidas’s side.
“Bill, this must stop! Bill, what are you laughing at?”
“For ever after in my mind,” Leonidas told her weakly, “I shall refer to the girls of the Tuesday Club as ‘Tudbury’s Horse.’ ”
Cassie leaned against him and laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Oh, Rutherford’ll howl! That’s better than his crack. He said if you yelled ‘Hi-yo Silver,’ half of ‘em would whinny. Oh, Bill, quick! Save Cuff!”
Without quite resorting to actual violence, Cuff was managing to fend off with his good arm the horde who were bent on viewing the boiler room and the lower floor.
“Leonidas,” Estelle Otis said irritably, “this fellow won’t let us by!”
She never looked more like a sergeant-major of Light Horse, Leonidas thought, than she did in that hat with the upright plume.
“He says,” a woman wearing a hat like a tea caddy pointed an indignant finger at Cuff, “he says you said we can’t go past him! Why not? I’m dying to see the maid’s room. It wasn’t done last week. Hattie, he does look like Shakespeare, doesn’t he?”
Judge Round said he certainly did, and added that she, too, yearned to see if Cassie had got yellow or pink downstairs.
“Dear lady,” Leonidas smiled his best smile and assumed his blandest manner, “dear lady, I wish it were possible for you all to examine the—er—nether regions. I wish from the bottom of my heart that it were possible for you to do so. Unfortunately, it is not.”
“Why?” Estelle demanded.
“Please, Mr. Shakespeare!” Judge Round said brightly. “Please, Mr. Shakespeare!”
Leonidas put on his pince-nez and cleared his throat impressively.
“ ‘O’er this portion of my castle’s vast expanse,’ ” he recited blandly, “ ‘A dusky hood like yonder falcon’s lies.’ “
“The Bard!” Judge Round said.
Leonidas bowed to hide his smile. He had held generations of boys at Meredith’s in check by quoting just such hastily invented lines at them. There was something about a quotation from Shakespeare, even spur-of-the-minute Shakespeare, that seemed to stop people in their tracks. Tudbury’s Horse were not routed, by any means, but they were no longer charging at Cuff like recruits at bayonet practice.
“Who’s he?” Estelle indicated Cuff. “Do I know him?”
Cassie, overhearing the question, thanked God for Cuff’s florid taste in clothes. With a bright yellow polo coat over his green-and-white striped suit, Cuff bore little resemblance to the blue-uniformed arm of the law who had given Estelle a ticket several months before. It was a perfectly justifiable ticket, but Estelle had gone straight to Rutherford about it.
“I’m sure I know him,” Estelle said. “Now, who is he? Where have I seen him?”
“Darling, I think you’re mistaken,” Cassie said swiftly. If Estelle remembered, and started asking why policemen barred the doors of Leonidas’s house, that would be tragic. “I’m sure you don’t know him, darling. He’s a rubber from the Turkish Baths. For Men Only.”
It wasn’t as good as Leonidas’s falcon, Cassie thought, but it held Estelle.
It also gave Leonidas further inspiration.
“Because of the fever to which I succumbed on my recent trip,” he said, looking Estelle straight in the eye, “my old friend Dr. Livingston advised a manservant with some knowledge of—er—massage. Mrs. Price was good enough to employ this young man.”
“Oh,” Estelle said. “So you’re going to have a houseman.”
“Yes,” Cassie said, “isn’t it lucky I chose blue for that room. A man would feel silly in pink. Wouldn’t you feel silly in pink?”
“Who, me?” Cuff looked puzzled. “Oh, I’m in the pink except the wrist, Mrs. Price, and that’ll be okay day after tomorrow.”
“He’s been unpacking, you see,” Cassie said, “and things are a mess, with all his paraphernalia. You know.”
Somehow, with a lift of her eyebrow, Cassie managed to convey the impression that the entire lower floor was stuffed with objects that were neither fitting nor proper for the girls to see.
They looked disappointed, but they began to trickle away from the door. With the deftness of a sheep dog, Cassie started to herd them into the hall.
Leonidas lingered behind with Cuff.
“Listen, Cuff. In the garage downstairs is a body. There’s been a murder here.”
Cuff gave no indications of excitement or surprise. It was his habit to take things as they came, and sudden death was just one of those things.
“That so?” he said. “Gee, I see. That’s why you didn’t want ‘em to go down, huh?”
“Not a soul,” Leonidas said, “is to get past you. Not an inch.”
“Oh, boy, ten!” Cuff said. “Ten.”
“What?”
“Ten places. You’re going to find out who done it, ain’t you? Well, I make ten places on the list if I help solve a murder. Gee, nobody won’t get by me with a tommy gun, Bill!”
“Cling,” Leonidas said, “to that thought.”
He turned from Cuff and glanced around the kitchen. There were a couple of women pulling out drawers and poking into cupboards, and someone was boiling water in one of the copper kettles. No doubt for the tea, Leonidas decided.
“We’re going to have tea in the living room,” the woman at the stove said. “Don’t you think that’s best? We brought paper cups, too, so you needn’t worry about dishes..And you must go in, Mr. Witherall. The rest are simply dying to meet you! You don’t really mind our dropping in like this, do you?”
“Dear lady,” Leonidas said, “it
