“Wouldn’t the driver, seeing her age, overlook her not having it with her?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there are always those officious types who insist on going by the book.” Val waved as she walked back to the Dower House, where I could see the outline of a car parked outside. In the short time we had spent talking, the mist had thickened.
“Let’s go back inside.” Ariel gave an elaborate shiver.
“Okay.” I turned with her toward Cragstone’s soaring roofline and imposing gloom. “Now tell me, why did you giggle just now when I was talking to Val?”
“You sounded so preachy!”
“Grown-ups do that. It’s to mask our horrible sense of inferiority in the presence of children. We know we are doomed to disappointment where most of them are concerned, and it inevitably takes its toll.”
“You are ridiculous!” She skipped along beside me.
“You need to talk to my brood of three sometime; they’ll be in complete agreement. They don’t find Ben quite so trying. It’s a scientifically proven fact of nature that fathers in seventy-two point three percent of cases get off easier than mothers.”
“Men being the weaker sex? Poor things!” Ariel raised her face to the now sharply blowing wind.
“I hope Val catches up with her aunt,” I said, as we walked up the drive.
“She doesn’t approve of us.”
“Val?”
“No, silly, Nanny Pierce. For one thing, she’s made it clear that she’s not keen on Roman Catholics. That’s why she’s upset that Val’s brother went to live in Ireland, where the place is full of them.”
“But aren’t they Irish?”
“Only way way back, Miss Pierce told me, and she added, ‘Thank God.’ I’m sorry she’s old, but she’s not a nice person. She disapproves of everyone except her dear Mr. Nigel. Would you believe that the other reason she disapproves of us is that she thinks Dad and Betty have a wild lifestyle?”
“Whatever gave her that idea?” We were approaching the steps leading to the front door.
“She said she’s seen car lights coming down the drive several times in the middle of the night. She said so the morning after Mrs. Cake fell down the stairs. She told me the glare through her bedroom window had woken her up at three A.M. I didn’t want to repeat that to Betty and get her going on her murder mystery merry-go-round.” Ariel turned to me and clutched my hand. “But it did worry me, just on the off chance that Nanny Pierce wasn’t hallucinating.” She looked away from me, and I wondered sharply if her reason for wanting Mrs. Malloy and me to come to Cragstone had less to do with proving Betty wrong than with setting her own fears at rest.
I put an arm around her as we entered the hall. The lights were on, but I found myself overwhelmed by the same feeling of oppression that had filled me on my arrival at Cragstone. It was a feeling that lingered all afternoon and culminated in the news that Nanny Pierce had stumbled off the high street pavement into the path of the four-thirty bus.
12
If it had to happen,” Tom repeated, for at least the fourth time the next morning, “it’s for the best that she died instantly.”
“There is no looking on the bright side,” said Betty. “The woman was murdered, and we know who did it.”
“Are you saying Val was responsible?” His face whitened. The three of us were in the drawing room, which was incongruously flooded with sunlight, the rain having finally stopped yesterday shortly after Val had blundered weeping into the house to break the news.
“Don’t make this harder than necessary, Tom.” Betty stood with arms akimbo, tapping a foot. “You know I’m talking about Lady Fiona. She planned it when she invited Nanny Pierce out for the afternoon. She must have been worried that the old girl had realized that she’d done away with Nigel. Perhaps she’d even found proof-at least of the motive-and decided a shove under a bus was the answer. She got lucky with the weather. Mist and rain made a good screen against the other people at the stop seeing what she did. She has to be stopped, but it won’t be by the police. Val said they didn’t question its being an accident.”
“You didn’t voice your suspicions to her?” Tom’s protuberant blue eyes spoke volumes. They both seemed to have forgotten I was in the room.
“Yes, I did.” Betty spoke with an assurance she had not possessed before the séance. Her belief that Nigel Gallagher needed her had done wonders for her morale. “If you’re prepared to listen, Tom, I don’t think Val was surprised. In fact, I think the idea of murder had already crossed her mind. She kept repeating that there was something odd about the way her aunt pitched forward as she did. She said she’d been looking for her and Lady Fiona up and down the high street a good part of the afternoon. Having no luck, she finally went and had a meal herself before going to the stop, knowing they would be there to catch the four-thirty bus. The accident”-Betty’s voice was laden with sarcasm-“happened just as Val was about to tap her aunt on the shoulder and tell her she had her senior citizen pass.”
“Do you think Val will be up to attending the garden party this afternoon?” Tom sank into a chair.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Of course she won’t! I feel bad about going on with it, but I have no choice. Ben has all the catering done and it would be wretched to disappoint the schoolchildren. Their parents and families I don’t care about.” Betty gripped her hands. “This was never about them. But they’ll come in droves, no doubt to see if we’ve polluted the grounds of Cragstone.”
This wasn’t Pride and Prejudice, but I wished it had been. I would have given anything to crawl between the covers of a book.
“Where’s Ariel?” Tom asked sharply.
“In the little parlor with Mrs. Cake,” I told him.
“Thank heaven for some normalcy,” said Betty.
“Ariel isn’t feeling normal,” Tom retorted, “she’s all to pieces. She was sobbing and crying when I saw her after breakfast. She’s got it in her head that Miss Pierce’s death is her fault because she’s been thinking nasty thoughts about the woman. I did my best to settle her down, but I don’t think I was successful.”
“Then why don’t you… we… go to her and start acting like parents?” Betty said.
It was another of those times when I found myself sliding out the door. I would have given anything to go into the kitchen and seek the safe harbor of Ben’s arms, but he didn’t need me chewing up his time. The garden party was due to begin at one o’clock and would continue until four. I wandered out into the grounds to survey the umbrella tables and the two marquees that had sprung up earlier as if because of the heavy rainfall. The clouds were white and fluffy, the sky a guiless blue, the breeze a gentle caress. What a festive scene, what a place for merriment and childish laughter while their elders sipped tea or lemonade and sampled the delicacies that would be provided!
I was about to go back into the house when Mrs. Malloy came out to stand beside me. It was my hope that she wouldn’t pick up where she had left off, about how the real Madam LaGrange’s vision of a woman going under a bus had tragically come to pass. It had made me feel intensely creepy when she brought it up the first time… and the second. Fortunately, she brought up the subject of her sister, Melody, instead.
“She’s disappointed like you’d expect that she can’t be here this afternoon. I told you how good she always was at the egg-and-spoon race, and it would have been nice to see her win another ribbon to add to her collection. But with Mr. Scrimshank planning to attend as always, she’s decided this is her best opportunity, while the cat’s away, so to speak, to have Mavis’s husband come to the office and try to open that safe. If all goes well, she’s going to copy what’s in the Gallaghers’ file, put the originals back, and take her set home with her to go through this evening, to see if she can discover how Mr. Scrimshank managed to diddle them.”