“The storm was the perfect cover for the killer,” Dickce said. “Especially if everyone else was hunkered down somewhere in the house until it passed.”
“We really don’t know where anyone was, besides ourselves, Tippy, and Sondra,” Benjy pointed out. “What would happen if we asked everybody?”
“It would arouse suspicion pretty quickly,” An’gel said. “We can’t do it directly. We’ll have to get them all to tell us some other way.”
“The killer will lie,” Benjy said.
“True.” An’gel nodded. “But he might give himself away somehow. We just have to be cleverer than he is.”
“Do you think the killer is a man?” Dickce asked.
“I do,” Benjy said. “It had to be somebody pretty strong to lift Sondra up and throw her over the railing into the yard.”
“Exactly,” An’gel said. “Estelle is wiry, but Sondra was bigger than she is. And Jacqueline was in town at the hospital with her mother.”
“So that leaves us with Horace, Trey, Richmond Thurston, and Jackson,” Dickce said.
“Jackson?” An’gel said. “That’s utterly ridiculous. The poor man can hardly get himself around, much less pick up a woman and throw her over a railing. I say we rule him out.”
Dickce’s mouth set in a stern line, and An’gel recognized this sign of her sister’s stubbornness. “No, think about it. Jackson adored Mireille, and he knew what Sondra had done. If he was truly furious at Sondra, the adrenaline might have been enough to make it possible for him to do it.”
“She’s got a point,” Benjy said. “Although I’d hate to think it of him. He’s such a sweet old man.”
An’gel sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But by the same token, we can’t rule out Estelle either. She was devoted to Mireille, and I know she loathed Sondra.” She told them about her conversation a little earlier with the housekeeper.
“I vote for her, then,” Benjy said. “She creeps me out anyway. Reminds me of that old lady on The Addams Family. You know, the grandmother, although the lady on the show wears her hair down, and Estelle doesn’t.”
An’gel dimly remembered the character to whom Benjy referred, and she had to admit a certain resemblance between the fictional grandma and Estelle.
Dickce giggled. “I see what you mean, Benjy. I hadn’t thought about it before, but Estelle could be a character right out of that show.”
“Be serious.” An’gel frowned. She herself had a rather dark sense of humor on occasion, but this was not one of them.
“What about the man Tippy heard yelling at her mother?” Benjy said. “What about Lance Perigord? Wasn’t he in the house last night, too?”
“Why do I keep forgetting that young man?” An’gel shook her head. “Yes, he was here, too. Although I really can’t see him harming Sondra. She was his ticket out of St. Ignatiusville.”
“He’s not exactly a deep thinker,” Dickce said in a wry tone. “If Sondra made him angry, he might not stop to think about lashing out at her.”
“She falls and hits her head on a sharp corner or something in her room.” Benjy nodded. “Then he panics, the storm hits, and he drags her out to the gallery and tosses her over the railing.”
An’gel could envision the scene all too easily. She wondered if that was what really happened. Whether it was Lance who was responsible or someone else remained to be determined, but it seemed like a plausible scenario.
The quiet was shattered a moment later by the sound of Peanut barking frantically across the hall.
CHAPTER 25
Benjy shot up from his chair, out the door, and into the hall before either An’gel or Dickce rose from their respective perches. Peanut kept up the barking until the sisters reached the hall. Then the dog fell silent.
The door to Tippy’s room stood wide open, and An’gel and Dickce hurried inside. They found Benjy rubbing the dog’s head and talking to a small mound under the bed covers.
“It’s okay, Tippy, it’s gone. Peanut didn’t mean to scare you.”
The mound moved, and a small face peeked out from beneath the cover. “You pwomise?” Tippy said solemnly.
“I promise,” Benjy said. “That old spider won’t scare you or Peanut anymore.”
Tippy remained still a moment longer, then evidently decided to take Benjy at his word. She crawled out completely from under the covers and slid to the floor beside her bed.
An’gel felt weak in the knees. Her heart was still racing, and she was annoyed with Peanut. A spider, of all things! A moment later she saw the humorous side of it as she pictured the dog and a spider confronting each other, and neither of them being happy about it. She started laughing.
“Why are you waffing?” Tippy demanded.
Dickce poked An’gel in the side to stop her laughing and answered for her. “My sister laughs when she’s afraid of something, like spiders. When she laughs, she isn’t afraid anymore.”
Tippy considered that a moment and then giggled. “I don’t wike spiduhs, but I’m not as scared of them as Peanut. He’s a siwwy doggie.”
“Yes, he can be silly,” Benjy said.
“Where is Endora?” An’gel asked. She didn’t see the cat anywhere. Then she spotted another small lump under the bedclothes when it started to move. A moment later the Abyssinian wiggled out. She yawned and stretched.
“Endowa was napping,” Tippy explained. “She’s not siwwy like Peanut. That siwwy ole spiduh didn’t bodder her.”
“No, I’m sure it didn’t,” Dickce said. “Endora is a brave cat.”
An’gel was mightily relieved that everything was calm again. When she first heard Peanut barking, she feared that someone had come into the room to harm Tippy. The child was all too vulnerable if left on her own for even a brief period. An’gel was thankful that Peanut had been with Tippy.
“My heart is finally back to its normal pace,” she muttered to Dickce. “I don’t know about you, but I was terrified there for a moment.”
“I was, too,” Dickce admitted. “We have to protect this child.”
Tippy, evidently unaware of their muted conversation, was rooting around under her bed. She emerged shortly with her teddy bear. “Wance musta hid unda de bed. Siwwy bear.”
“Yes, he is silly,” Benjy said. “I bet he hid under there when Peanut started barking at the spider.” He winked at the sisters over Tippy’s head.
An’gel figured the bear must have been knocked off the bed by one of the animals.
“I’m hungwy,” Tippy announced. “So is Wance.”
“I’m hungry myself,” Dickce said. “We’ll go down and get something to eat in a minute. First, though, why don’t we brush your hair and make you look all pretty.”
“Okay,” Tippy said. “Mommy wikes it when I wook pwetty wike she does.”
An’gel and Benjy exchanged stricken looks while Dickce found Tippy’s hairbrush and began to work gently on the tangled light brown strands. “Why don’t y’all go on down,” she said, a slightly noticeable catch in her voice. “We’ll be down in a minute.”
“Peanut, come,” Benjy said. In an aside to An’gel, he explained that the dog probably needed to go outside.
“What about Endora?” An’gel asked when they were in the hallway with the dog.
“Here she is,” Benjy said. “Watch this.”
An’gel watched while Endora leapt onto the dog’s back and then quickly launched herself onto Benjy’s shoulder. “You’re so clever,” Benjy told Endora. The cat thanked him by rubbing her head against his ear.
“She is clever,” An’gel said. “Not to mention agile. I didn’t realize cats could jump like that.”
Endora rode on Benjy’s shoulder all the way down to the first floor. “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes or so,” Benjy told An’gel. “I’m going to let Peanut burn off some energy after that nap he had. Then I’ll put them in my cottage until I eat. They’ll be fine there for a little while.”