Murder Goes Mumming

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “When did you see him?”

  “As I was coming down the stairs. I didn’t see Aunt Addie but you know how the staircase twists and turns, and the light isn’t much good in the hall. When I got close enough to see that he was alone, I said, ‘Where’s Aunt Addie? I thought you two were going up together,’ or something of the sort. I daresay I sounded as annoyed as I felt. I’d hoped we were rid of Cyril for the evening. I’m sorry, Squire, but …”

  “That’s quite all right, Babs,” said her father-in-law. “So had we all. What did Cyril tell you?”

  “At first he just leaned against the door and smiled that same silly grin he’d had plastered to his face all evening, so I asked him again. By then I was beginning to feel worried, though I didn’t quite know why. Because of Granny, I suppose. Anyway, I think I said, ‘Did she go upstairs?’ and he answered, ‘No, she went to see the Phantom Ship.’

  “Even then it didn’t register. I thought he meant she’d gone into the small parlor on the other side of the foyer to see if she could get a last glimpse of the ship from the bay window that faces west. I stuck my head in there and called, ‘Aunt Addie?’ But she wasn’t there. Then it dawned on me what he might have meant, and I ran back to the door. Cyril was still there with that same silly grin on his face. I said, ‘Cyril, she’s not outside?’ and he said again, ‘She went to see the Phantom Ship.’

  “That was when I panicked. I tried to open the door and he wouldn’t let me near it. I struggled with him and he started hitting me with Granny’s cane and I was screaming …”

  Babs began to tremble again. Donald put his arm around her.

  “Now, Babs, try to calm yourself. We all know you did everything you could. Rhys, if you’re through badgering my wife, I’d like to take her upstairs. It hasn’t escaped your investigative mind, I trust, that she’s sustained physical injury as well as severe psychological shock?”

  “It has not escaped me. I have finished with her and you may certainly take her upstairs as soon as I have finished with you.”

  “With me? What can I say? I was simply here with everyone else. Helping May arrange chairs around the fireplace, as I recall.”

  “Did you see your brother under the kissing ball?”

  “Of course I did. He was waving that damned cane and yelling to Janet to come and kiss him, or words to that effect.”

  “And did you see what Janet did?”

  “She turned her back on him in a rather prim and ladylike fashion and went over to the fireplace. My sister May had been trying to get us to sit down. No, wait, that was after Cyril left the room that we sat down. Anyway, Aunt Addie went over and spoke to Cyril after he’d called out to Janet and said something I didn’t catch. The pair of them left the room, much to my personal relief, and that was when May said something to the effect of let’s all sit down and be comfortable. Since Janet was already by the fireplace, I got a chair for her, which she took. We were all finding seats and getting settled when my wife began screaming from the front hall.”

  “Do you corroborate that, Janet?” asked Rhys.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she answered. “I didn’t want to make a scene by refusing point-blank, so I made believe I didn’t hear Cyril and was just going to warm myself. I probably did look prim. You’re always saying I do. Anyway, Donald did bring me a chair and I sat down and Ludovic brought me a liqueur. I didn’t see Aunt Addie and Cyril go out because I had to pretend I wasn’t noticing him, but when I did look at the doorway again they were both gone. Aunt Addie had said she was going up to Rosa so I assumed she had. People were milling around, as Donald says. I honestly couldn’t tell you who was in the room and who wasn’t, but I do remember his giving me the chair and then being the first one to run out when Babs started calling for help.”

  “Thank you, Janet,” said Donald. “Rhys, do I gather I now have an alibi for the crime my brother committed? If in fact it can be counted as a crime.”

  “I am only trying to establish the facts beyond any possibility of doubt,” Rhys repeated in his patient, gentle voice. “Did you hear your aunt talking to your brother?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It could make a difference if your aunt had said something of a nature so inflammatory as to arouse your brother’s anger against her.”

  “Oh, I see what you’re driving at. I do beg your pardon, Rhys. This is the first time I’ve ever been involved in anything of this sort, needless to say. I’m rattled and I’ve been rude. Aunt Addie did get at Cyril a bit about using Granny’s cane. She’d say anything that came into her head, especially when one of her oracular fits was upon her. I can’t recall anything particularly inflammatory. Of course I wasn’t close enough to hear what she said when they were over by the doorway. Perhaps someone else heard? Sorry, it’s your province to ask the questions, isn’t it.”

  “Yes, but I shall be glad if anyone has an answer.”

  Clara was prepared. “I heard her. She told Cyril he had to stop what he was doing or something dreadful would happen. She said Janet wasn’t for him and she’d told him that before. She said he’d got his fair share and he wouldn’t get any more. I don’t know what she meant by that, but it’s what she said. Then she told him he wouldn’t get anything in his Christmas stocking if he didn’t behave himself and go to bed. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what she said. And then he turned around and went out with her.”

  “Do you mean beside, behind, or in front of her?”

  “Behind, I think. I couldn’t say for sure. Aunt Addie had on that black gown and it was dark over by the doorway, as Babs said. Still is, for that matter, as you can see for yourself. You can barely see the kissing ball from here. I don’t see why your prissy little Janet had to make such a fuss about nothing. If anybody antagonized Cyril, she was the one. What’s such a big deal about giving someone a kiss under the mistletoe at Christmastime, will you kindly tell me that?”

  “Refusing a man a kiss does not as a rule constitute incitement to murder, especially when the man is so casual an acquaintance as your brother Cyril,” Rhys answered gravely. “We shall, however, let it stand in the record that Janet Wadman did in fact refrain from crossing a large room to kiss a drunken man who was brandishing a somewhat formidable weapon with which he is alleged to have subsequently belabored his own sister-in-law after having thrust his aged great-aunt out into a snow squall at twenty-eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Please make careful note of your recreant behavior, Janet.”

  “Sure, go ahead and cover up for her,” cried Val, “but what did Aunt Addie mean when she told Cyril he’d got his share and wasn’t going to get any more?”

  “It certainly didn’t mean he’d got his share of me, if that’s what you’re driving at,” Janet retorted. “I don’t go in for fun and games, as you have reason to know.”

  “Why does my daughter have reason to know a thing like that?” Donald asked with ice in his voice.

  Janet flushed as red as her costume. It wasn’t fair to get Val in trouble for trying to stand up for her own flesh and blood.

  “Because Val and I are sharing a room, of course. She’s been with me whenever I might otherwise have been doing what she knows darn well I wasn’t.”

  “Fair enough. Put that in the record, too, eh, Madoc?” said Herbert. “Say, is it against the rules for us to have a swig of that brandy we were supposed to be getting after dinner? And for God’s sake can’t we take poor old Aunt Addie out of here? It gives me the willies, seeing her stretched out like that.”

  “In just a moment.”

  Aunt Addie’s presence couldn’t be all that harrowing, since nothing was visible but a roll of blankets on the couch. Rhys went on taking statements, for what they were worth.

  The British lady with the facile pen would have her suspects herded into one room where a wily minion from the constabulary was covertly watching their behavior and then ushering them one by one into the inner sanctum where her hero would ask each separate su
spect the craftiest possible questions and get the fraughtest answers imaginable. The Mountie hadn’t a minion to his name unless he counted Janet, and he was not about to let her loose again among this lot.

  Everybody agreed that there’d been a certain amount of confusion what with the Phantom Ship’s arrival, Cyril’s theatrics, and May’s attempt to get them all comfortable again before Babs started screaming in the hall. They were all quite sure they could vouch for each other, but as nobody happened to have noticed Rhys himself hadn’t been among them, he had to take the group alibi for what it was worth.

  He went doggedly down the list, however, extracting whatever he could from each one in turn. At last he said, “And now one last question, after which you are all free to do as you please. Can anyone tell me what kind of amphetamines Cyril has been taking?”

  Chapter 14

  “AMPHETAMINES?”

  That stirred them up.

  “You mean speed?” said Winny, most injudiciously.

  “What the hell do you know about speed?” yelped Herbert. “You and Franny haven’t been monkeying around with that stuff, for Christ’s sake?”

  “They give us lectures about drugs at school,” Franny assured his father. “Shut up, Win. Don’t go trying to show off.”

  “Amphetamines can be found in certain prescribed medications, such as diet pills,” Rhys explained. “Cyril may have been taking them on a doctor’s orders.”

  Clara shook her head. “Cyril hasn’t gone near a doctor in years. He’s afraid he might get shipped off somewhere to dry out.”

  “Is anybody else among you taking any such medication?”

  “Of course not,” said May. “Why should we?”

  “We’re all healthy as horses,” Herbert added.

  “What about your employees?”

  “They wouldn’t spend the money. Anyway, they know damn well they’d get fired if they got up to anything funny around here,” the steward insisted. “Squire runs a tight ship.”

  “Well, however he got it, Cyril Condrycke showed every sign this evening of being under the influence of amphetamines,” Rhys insisted. “His aggressive actions and his bizarre, hyperactive antics during that march he led us earlier, which I gather you all found uncharacteristic of Cyril, were in sharp contrast to the manner he evinced last evening. Have you ever observed such marked swings in his behavior before? Clara, you see a fair amount of Cyril, don’t you? What is your opinion?”

  He asked Clara because he thought her the least apt to be overcharitable, and Clara did not let him down.

  “I’ve never in my life seen Cyril act like that before. Usually he comes down with a bad back if you so much as ask him to hand you a sofa cushion. I don’t say he’s not an awful tease, because he can drive you straight to distraction without half trying. He used to get Granny steamed up about something, for instance, then clear out and leave the rest of us to bear the brunt of her temper. He never does anything but talk, though. I’ve been wondering all day why he’s acted so strangely. Nobody was going to convince me he’s tearing himself to pieces over dear old Granny any more than the rest of us are. I assumed it must have had something to do with that meeting this morning, but Lawrence says Cyril didn’t hear anything then that he hadn’t known before.”

  “My wife is right, Inspector, if that’s what we ought to be calling you now,” Lawrence corroborated. “Cyril may not fully understand his position now and he obviously didn’t before, but that’s not because it has never been explained to him. Cyril always knew he was the titular heir to Graylings. His grandfather had delusions of grandeur, not to put too fine a point on it, and he thought it would be a grand idea to start a family entail like all the dukes and earls back home.”

  The lawyer sniffed to show what he thought of dukes and earls. “Luckily, the old man was very much under his wife’s thumb. Granny may not have had the world’s sweetest disposition, but she always did have a sound head on her shoulders and thank God she did. It was she who dictated the terms of her husband’s will. She conceded that Cyril was to inherit the property, but she also stipulated that she herself was to retain control of it for as long as she lived, with Squire as her managing agent, if you want to use that term.”

  “Squire was already functioning in that capacity?” Rhys asked.

  “Oh, yes. Had been for some time, and doing a damned good job of it, by and large. Squire’s position had in fact already been assured to him when he consented to take the Condrycke name at the time of his marriage to the Condryckes’ daughter, an only child. I’m telling you this because it’s a matter of public record and because we’ve nothing to hide. Squire has acted in strict accordance with his father-in-law’s will and with his own wife’s dying wish that all their children should be given equal opportunity to share in the benefits from the estate according to their needs and, within reason, their wishes, unless they proved totally undeserving. The Graylings property is a large one, and as all have contributed in one way or another toward keeping it going, all have duly benefited. Cyril has, in fact, been the only one who hasn’t pulled his weight; but as he’s the legal owner and as his demands on the estate are as a rule relatively small, he’s been left to do as he pleased and has no legitimate cause for complaint, in my professional opinion.”

  “And where did Aunt Adelaide come in?” Rhys asked.

  “Nowhere, really. She was my wife’s grandmother’s sister. Since she had never married, she came here to be a sort of companion to Granny after their parents died and the home was broken up. She had a reasonable income of her own and could have supported herself somewhere else, but to the best of my knowledge nobody ever objected to her living here. There’s plenty of room, obviously, and Addie was an easy person to get along with. I always thought Cyril seemed fond of his aunt, which shows the folly of judging by appearances.”

  “Oh, Lawrence, don’t be so damned legal,” snapped his wife. “Of course Cyril liked Aunt Addie. We all did. She was fun, with her presentiments and the way she’d grab at your sleeve and say ‘Hark!’ And she used to tell us stories and put stuff on our knees when we skinned them,” Clara began to sniffle. “I don’t know what possessed Cyril to act like that. He must have been out of his mind.”

  “Now, Clara.”

  Her husband began patting his wife’s shoulder in the futile way men use when women cry.

  “Clara’s right,” said May, not trying to be funny for once. “We all liked Aunt Addie much better than we did Granny. She was the one who’d write to us at school and sew on buttons and get cook to send us boxes of goodies, and she was never grouchy. Aunt Addie never had a cross word for anybody.” She, too, began to sniffle.

  “Inspector,” evidently Squire had decided Rhys wasn’t an honored guest any more, “you say my son evinced symptoms of having dosed himself with amphetamines. May one ask what those symptoms are?”

  “Certainly. To begin with, there was his manic behavior during the mumming. He was constantly in motion, performing gyrations and acrobatics that were not only strange but downright dangerous for a man his age who doesn’t look to be in top physical condition. He talked, sang, or shouted without stopping and without making much sense. He was contentious and insulting to yourself, whereas I had observed that your family are all accustomed to behaving toward you with respect and filial affection. According to what Lawrence has just said, the grievance he aired so loudly was no grievance at all. All these would be characteristic behavior patterns for an amphetamine user but not, I gather for Cyril. Do you agree?”

  “I do.”

  “There were obvious physical symptoms as well. His pupils were contracted to pinpoints, whereas in the dim light everyone else’s pupils had expanded as normal eyes always do. At dinner he ate nothing—amphetamines are appetite depressants, which explains their use in so-called diet pills—but drank a great deal, not only of wine but of whatever was available. Amphetamines make one extremely thirsty.”

  “God, yes,” said Herbert. “He
even asked for water. I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

  “But I thought speed really made you freak out,” said Val. “I mean, Uncle Cyril was acting crazy, but not so wild as—as some people I’ve heard about.”

  “I think that might be explained by your uncle’s also having consumed a large amount of alcohol, which is a depressant. One could counteract the effects of the other to some extent. I should note that the scene culminating in your aunt’s death occurred after he’d drunk a cup of hot coffee. Hot liquids give an extra kick to the effects of amphetamines. Cyril had been relatively quiescent at dinner because he was drinking so much wine.”

  “My God,” said May. “I made him drink the coffee thinking it would sober him up. Instead it sent him into high gear again. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That is what I’m theorizing, at any rate.”

  “But where would he get it?”

  “It’s around. Is Cyril in the habit of taking trips to Saint John, say, or Fredericton?”

  “Cyril never goes anywhere if he can help it. He hasn’t been off the place in ages.”

  “What does he do with his time?”

  “He’s supposed to be writing a book.”

  “What about?”

  “Early lumbering in New Brunswick. That’s how the Condryckes got started.”

  “Selling Crown lumber,”* somebody in the darkness muttered. Squire frowned and an awful silence descended.

  “Go on,” Rhys prodded. “Where does he get his reference material?”

  “From local people, mostly. He’s been collecting it for years.”

  “Gave him an excuse to hang around the rumshops and chin with the old souses,” Herbert grunted.

  “But he no longer does that?”

  “Hell, no. He’s one of the old souses himself.”

  “Judge not, Herb, lest you also be judged,” Clara snapped. “Cyril’s still our brother, I’ll thank you to remember. Just because one of the staff slipped something into his drink …”