“What?”
“Got something on your mind, haven’t you vicar?”
“I do indeed.” He clasped his hands and flexed his shoulders as if seeking to ease a burden. “One dislikes to betray a confidence, especially one made by a now-deceased man to his cleric, but I believe I must under the circumstances speak out, as I urged Horace to do on the advent of his marriage to you, my dear Maude.” His voice betrayed his consternation as he looked down at her ladyship.
“What is it?” She sat ramrod straight as she returned his gaze.
“Horace told me he was unable to father children, the cause being a severe case of the mumps when he was a boy. I believed I had persuaded him of his obligation to tell you so before the wedding, but it appears he did not do so.”
“Never a word.” Lady Krumley’s eyes shone blacker and glassier than those stuck in the furry faces on the wall. “I imagine he was afraid I would decide against marrying him, and there would go my fortune. I always thought our failure to have children was due to my age being against me. We talked about it, and he allowed me to think… and not even to relieve my suspicions regarding little Ernestine was he prepared to tell me truth. One must assume he knew me well enough to believe that whilst I might forgive his infidelity I would never be able to get past such a monumental deceit.”
A hush fell heavily upon the room. We might have been participating in two minutes of silence in response to some national tragedy. Mr. Featherstone looked distraught, Cynthia bored, Sir Alfonse suavely pained and the rest, especially the staff with Watkins at the forefront, intensely uncomfortable.
“I’m very fond of that Tupperware bowl.” Daisy Meeks’s flat voice brought the room back to life. “I’ve used it for making salad for sixteen years.”
“A family heirloom, I’m sure.” Mrs. Malloy essayed deep sentimentality. “You’ll likely want to leave it to someone near and dear, even though the lid’s missing. Wills are highly interesting in our line of work, isn’t that so, Mrs. H.?” She responded to my nod with a bright magenta smile. “So it got our attention in a big way when her ladyship here told us as how she wanted to leave the bulk of her fortune to Ernestine. That being the case it wouldn’t have been surprising if some interested party had sought Ernestine out for the purpose of making sure she was put out of the picture. But that didn’t explain Mr. Vincent Krumley, did it now? So me and Mrs. H. looked at things from the other way round.”
“Meaning?” Niles croaked out the question.
“That a certain person,” I responded, “was determined to make sure that no one, including Mr. Krumley, would put a spanner in the works of Ernestine receiving what was due her, in the light of past wrongs.”
“Such as?” Cynthia elevated a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Considering she wasn’t Sir Horace’s child.”
“If I may be pardoned for speaking out.” Watkins cleared his throat in a deferential manner. “There is still the matter of the brooch, isn’t there?”
“And a terrible thing that was.” Mrs. Beetle had clearly decided there was no point in her continuing to just stand there like a lamp. “I don’t know that I’d ever get over it if I was falsely accused of stealing from my employers. The very idea of me working for such people,” she said, fixing a stare at Lady Krumley, “would send my husband up the wall. “
Laureen remained silent, every glossy chestnut hair in place.
“Let’s assume Flossie wasn’t falsely accused,” I said. “That she did steal the brooch, but didn’t take it with her when she was ordered off the premises, had no chance to retrieve it from where she had hidden it and knew that both her person and her possessions would be searched. Then comes the question, who would she ask to bring it to her?” I took my time looking from one face to the next. “Not Sir Horace. And not her friend Mrs. Hasty, who seems a decent and honest woman.”
“No one’s saying otherwise,” said Mrs. Beetle, “but what I’d like to know is why she hasn’t been dragged in here along with the rest of us.”
“She’s old as well as being the one to suffer the shock of finding Mr. Vincent Krumley’s body,” retorted Laureen. “What you didn’t give Mrs. Haskell time to explain is why it’s clear Mrs. Hasty didn’t help Flossie out by getting the brooch to her. Had she done so the girl wouldn’t have been living in a bed-sitter without a bean to her name. She would have sold the brooch and been living off the proceeds.”
“That may be.” Mrs. Beetle’s face was again ballooning up. “And it’s true she’s not staff anymore, but she lives on the grounds and was around when all this stuff was going on, which is more than you can say of me and Watkins, or yourself for that matter.”
“Now, I’ve got to say,” Mrs. Malloy flashed one of her infuriating smirks, “you do seem to be taking a bit too much for granted, Mrs. Beetle. It’s true enough that you and Laureen wouldn’t have been here, unless it was as toddlers, but the same can’t be said for Watkins, now can it?”
The butler looked severely puzzled. “Did her ladyship not advise you that I have only been in her employ for the past five years?”
“Most certainly I did.” Lady Krumley was sipping her glass of water.
“As Watkins, yes,” I said, “but as Ernest… that would be an entirely different matter.”
“Look, it’s like this.” Mrs. M. took the bit between her teeth. “I got the feeling I’d seen you somewhere before when you let us into the house that first morning. It took a while coming back to me, but then I realized I’d talked to you at bingo one night a few years back in Biddlington-By-Water, and you told me you had a daughter that wouldn’t approve if she knew you was gambling. That’s the effect I have on men,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes, “always tell me more than they mean to, poor saps.”
“A daughter?” Niles poked his head out from his chair. “You mean Ernestine?”
“Well, it did seem to fit when me and Mrs. H. here talked to the couple that adopted her. Grew up in to a bit of a prude, she did, a backlash against what she’d heard about her mother perhaps. But who’s to know really?”
“I do not have a daughter.” Watkins retained his calm.
“Only when you slip up and mention her to a stranger,” Mrs. Malloy chortled. “And you don’t have much hair left, do you? Came in handy when you decided to return to Moultty Towers and didn’t want to be recognized. Mrs. Hasty said Ernest had a lovely head of auburn hair-‘his most striking feature’ I think was the way she put it. Funny, the little things that can give you away. You was standing under a light in the hall when Mrs. H. noticed you’d got an orange tinge to your eyebrows. Made her wonder if you’d once been a redhead. And then when you was taking us upstairs to the attics you mentioned a couple of items-a library table and a secretary desk-as we might find up there.”
“And why was that relevant, madam?”
“Because when we was sitting with Mrs. Hasty in her cottage we made out we was looking for just them pieces. Perhaps to be overheard by whoever was creeping about outside the sitting room. It could’ve been Laureen who was there helping the old lady by straightening up and fixing a meal, but then again it could just as easy have been you, Mr. Watkins.”
“I don’t think it’s Christian picking on him like this.” Mrs. Beetle’s face grew fierce. “Why, even if he is this Ernest chap, why would he murder a doddering old man like Mr. Vincent Krumley?”
“Your turn.” Mrs. M. nudged with her elbow.
“Because Vincent recognized him as Ernest.”
“The only one to do so after all this time!” Cynthia sneered.
“They may have met more recently.” I was not prepared to elaborate at this point. “And it seems to Mrs. Malloy and myself that it was Mr. Watkins,” I added, eyeing his impassive face, “who led Lady Krumley to believe that Vincent was no longer in full possession of his faculties by asserting that he had mistaken him for Hopkins the former butler. The names are not that dissimilar, making this plausible to anyone who had witnessessed or overheard the exchange between the two men upon Vincent Krumley’s arrival. But the more my partner and I assessed Vincent’s other apparently foolish comments, the stronger became our suspicion that despite a lifetime of heavy drinking and his advanced age he remained surprisingly… dangerously sharp.”