As she thumped the microphone, expectancy flickered among the crowd like summer lightning. She gave one last glance at her notes.
“On behalf of the Chastain Historical Preservation Society, I’m delighted to welcome all of you here tonight. It has been my pleasure to create a Mystery Night program for your enjoyment. Before we begin to delve, I want to ask: Did you enjoy your tours of the Benton, Prichard, and McIlwain houses and gardens?”
There was an enthusiastic chorus of affirmatives.
“Did you enjoy your Low Country dinner?”
“Yeees!”
“Are you ready to put together your mystery team and begin the investigation of the English Manor Mystery, a k a ‘Alas, A Sticky Wicket’?”
Cheers rose.
“Excellent. We are ready, too. There are a few official procedures to be followed. Participants are requested to form teams of not more than ten members and to elect a Team Captain Detective, who will officially represent the team in the investigation and pose questions to the suspects. The investigation begins after I describe the background to our mystery and introduce your suspects.”
Looking out at the sea of eager faces, Annie described the functions of the three tents and the availability of materials in the Police Headquarters tent. “Each team, at the conclusion of the investigation, is to turn in a sealed envelope which contains: 1. The name of the murderer and 2. the reasons why the team accuses this suspect. Now,” she leaned forward, slipping in Chief Wells’s first order, “it is imperative that you list on the outside of the envelope the name of every member of your team, complete with address and phone number. Failure to include this information will disqualify your entry.” Listeners nodded, and some scrawled in open notebooks. “Your entry will be received by 10 P.M. On Friday evening, you are invited to return here for the Denouement Ball, which begins at eight. You may dress as your favorite mystery sleuth or character. Prizes will be awarded for the five best costumes. At midnight, we will announce the winner, that is, the team which correctly identifies the murderer at the earliest time. Finally, one last warning.” The low hum of excited voices ceased. These people were serious mystery fans, and they avidly waited to hear Chief Well’s second instruction. She spoke distinctly. “The area open to Mystery Night detectives is limited to the tents”—she pointed to each tent in turn—“and to the area around the tennis court, which is just east of the Prichard House. If a member of any team is discovered anywhere else, that entire team will be disqualified.” She smiled. “I know I can count on your cooperation. And now, Mystery Night sleuths, here is your crime.”
Heads bent, hands flew, as Annie related the sequence of events at Gemtree Court, the manor house home of Lady Alicia and Lord Algernon: the disappearance of The Red Maiden, and the discovery of Matilda Snooperton’s crumpled body beneath a rose arbor by the tennis court, not far from where only a few hours earlier the happy group had enjoyed croquet. “Detectives are encouraged to study the area near Miss Snooperton’s body closely. From police reports, it will be learned that a tool shed near the murder scene has been broken into. There are no fingerprints on the broken lock to the shed.
“You will find in the Police Headquarters tent copies of the statements made by each suspect, the autopsy report, and a table containing replicas of the clues. Each team may make application for one—repeat, one—search warrant, which will be granted only if you can convince the magistrate—me—” she paused for the laughter which greeted her pronouncement, “that you have sufficient reason. You may sign up at the clue table for your turn as a team to visit The Scene of the Crime.”
She tried to ignore a sudden vivid image of the pond and Corinne Webster’s crushed skull. In the pause before she forced herself to continue, she heard a contestant mutter happily, “I just love stately home murders. Have you read Blue Blood Will Out by Tim Heald?” Her companion nodded enthusiastically. “Loved it. Another good one is Lord Mullion’s Secret by Michael Innes.”
Annie noted that both women, right on the front row, were plump and wore sensible tweeds and sturdy walking shoes. Mrs. Brawley faced sharp competition.
“Now, I’d like to present your suspects.”
Suspects. Who would be the suspects in Corinne’s murder? Other than herself, the stranger in their midst. Discomfort moved in her stomach, and it wasn’t hunger. Would Wells remember to cherchez la femme? Or would that be lèse majesté to Mr. Mayor? But the police always looked first at the husband, didn’t they? Maybe not this time. Worry gnawed a little deeper.
Jessica started up the steps. Despite her somber face, she was lovely in an ankle-length, leg-of-mutton-sleeved dress of pale yellow organdy.
Suspects. How about the distraught painter and libidinous Sybil? Or the perhaps more than merely eccentric Miss Dora? Or Gail and her unsuitable suitor? And Edith sure as hell—Annie’s wandering thoughts quivered, then crystallized. That letter she’d received with the Mrs. Moneypot’s mystery plot; it had been full of innuendos about people who hated Corinne!
“Annie.”
Jessica’s urgent whisper jerked her back to the platform.
“May I present Lady Alicia.”
Jessica, her sleek black hair upswept in a chignon, addressed the crowd languidly. “After tea, I rested in my room. I’d quite a headache from our afternoon in the sun, playing croquet.” She shaded her dark eyes. “I saw no one. When I was dressing for dinner, I opened my jewel case and found that my famous ruby necklace had disappeared, so I immediately raised the alarm. As for Miss Snooperton, I hadn’t seen her since teatime. She was a dear girl.”
Brava. An unexpectedly talented amateur actress.
“Lord Algernon,” Annie announced.
Max shot her a brief, warning glance as he strode on stage. As always, he carried himself with élan, even in a borrowed tuxedo. He looked every inch a young English lord, tall, blond, and crisply handsome.
“Took a stroll down to the river after tea, but I didn’t see anyone.” Then he paused, timing it just perfectly to raise doubts among his listeners. “But there might have been somebody over by the arbor. Dashed hard to see in the mist. Damn shame about Matilda. Must’ve been the work of a tramp.”
Leighton asserted that a robber must have murdered Corinne. Nature imitating art? Or had that fragment simply stuck in his mind from his suspect sheet?
Max stepped back beside Jessica, and Roscoe soberly moved forward. As always, he looked reliable, imposing, and excruciatingly boring. He waited stolidly for Annie’s introduction.
“Mr. Nigel Davies, the betrothed of our victim, Matilda Snooperton.”
Roscoe clipped his speech neatly, reading from his sheet and ignoring the enthralled crowd. “Appalled. Absolutely appalled. Not the sort of thing that happens in our set. Hadn’t seen much of dear Matilda since we motored down. Tennis, then croquet. After tea, took a stroll toward the village. Didn’t see a soul.”
John Sanford stepped forward, quite natty in a light blue cotton suit and a boater hat.
“Mr. Reginald Hoxton, a friend of Lady Alicia’s from London.”
Unexpectedly, he threw himself into the part, speaking in an ingratiating, oily manner. “Only too glad to help in the investigation. Miss Snooperton a charming gal. First met her this weekend. Left my room after tea. Ran down to my car to get my shoe kit from the boot. Didn’t meet up with anybody.” He closed with a toothy smile.
Edith was up to any challenge to protect her beloved Society. Though her deep-set green eyes were clouded, she threw herself with utmost seriousness into her role as the love-struck girl, Susannah Greatheart. Her abundant hair covered by a gay pink scarf, she stood with her eyes downcast, nervously twisting a white cambric handkerchief. “Such a shock. I did see Miss Snooperton after tea. I happened to walk down to the arbor, but she was quite all right, oh quite all right, when I left her.” She paused, gnawing her lip. “Actually, she was laughing.” She held the handkerchief to her face and stepped away.
Edith’s rendition
of counterfeit distress was outstanding. But the distress emanating from the final player was only too real, though ironically, it was critical to the success of her role. “Agnes, Lady Alicia’s devoted maid,” Annie announced.
Lucy had changed clothes, but obviously made no attempt this time to dress for a formal dinner at an English manor house. She wore a navy blue skirt and gray silk blouse, and her face scarcely resembled that of the cheerful woman who had been so friendly to Annie. Her eyes looked haunted, and her cheeks sagged. Annie knew her thoughts were far from this platform and felt immediate sympathy. Lucy clutched her suspect sheet in a white-gloved hand that trembled and read in a monotone.
“Happened to overhear Mr. Nigel having words with Miss Snooperton. That I did, early this morning. And later, after tea, I saw Mr. Hoxton with a tire tool, and he looked very disagreeable. And Miss Susannah was crying when she crept up the stairs this afternoon. And there’s more that could be said about some of these fine ladies and gentlemen.”
And wasn’t that the truth, Annie thought grimly. She lifted the microphone and forced a lilt into her voice. “It’s all yours, detectives. The suspects will repair to the Interrogation Tent, and I will be in charge in the police tent as Detective-Inspector Searchclue of New Scotland Yard. And—one last point, which I’m certain you will all appreciate—Mrs. Gordon at Swamp Fox Inn has volunteered her restrooms for use by the participants and staff of the Mystery Night. Also, the Inn coffee bar will be open until midnight.”
The throng of eager detectives swept toward the tents. It wasn’t quite a mad enough rush to imperil life and limb, but it bordered on the frantic. It matched the festival exuberance in Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s Figure Away, but at least it lacked loon calls and shotgun blasts. The comparison was disturbing, though, when she recalled the fate of the person in charge of that celebration. She started down the steps and saw the dour face of the policeman who’d refused her entry to Ephraim Street that morning. Was he assigned to watch her?
13
In the last-minute crush around the clue table, Annie tried to answer a half-dozen sharp questions at once, keep an eye on Mrs. Brawley who was edging ever nearer the search-warrant stack, and accept entry envelopes thrust at her with demands for instantaneous time notations. It made the closing minutes on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange seem pastoral in contrast.
Team Captain #3, in his saner moments a courteous druggist on Broward’s Rock, waggled his envelope a millimeter from her nose. “We’re next!” He thrust an elbow militantly into the ribs of Team Captain #9. “By God, we’re next.”
Team Captain #9 bared her teeth. “I beg your pardon. Some people will do anything to win,” and slapped her envelope on his.
Grabbing the envelopes, she scribbled 9:48:03 on both, stuffed them in the shoe box cradled beneath her arm, and reached out just in time to pin Mrs. Brawley’s hand to the table. “One search warrant, Mrs. Brawley. One.”
“We thought you meant one for each suspect.”
Annie reflected honor on her upbringing by overcoming the impulse to snort, “In a pig’s eye.” Instead, she gritted, “One search warrant to each team, Mrs. Brawley. Your team already received a search warrant for the tool shed.”
That search yielded Mrs. Brawley’s team a card with this information: “The broken lock on the hasp of the tool shed has been wiped clean of fingerprints. The tool shed contains tools and gardening and hobby equipment, including shovels, trowels, hose, putty, paint, the balls and mallets from the croquet game, drills, bits, flower pots, and sacks of fertilizers. Nothing appears out of place. Atop the workbench is a pile of sawdust. On the floor of the shed are found several pieces of gold filigree.”
Mrs. Brawley shrieked over the hubbub. “Can we trade cards?”
A piercing whistle brought a merciful instant of silence, then Team Captain #4 demanded shrilly, “Is it true Lord Algernon bought that train ticket to Venice?”
Annie ignored him, too, and mustered the strength to shout, “Time, ladies and gentlemen, time!”
Annie stood guard by the trunk of the Volvo, still parked beside the Winnebago in the deep shadows of the Society parking lot. A faint glow from a single light on the back wall of the old building provided the only illumination. She scanned the shadows warily. Nothing would have surprised her at this point. Faked entries. A raiding party on camelback. An offer of a weekend in Rio in exchange for the name of the murderer. She had stationed Edith beside the Death on Demand display on the Prichard lawn while she and Max carried the boxes to the car for overnight safekeeping. There was no point in trying to maneuver the Volvo down Ephraim Street. The booths were closed, but the street still teemed with departing Mystery Night participants, and the odds of finding a parking spot in the Inn lot were nil. Max was making the last trip. She didn’t envy him his struggle through the ambling holidayers.
Bright white light exploded beside her. She jumped a foot.
A hearty laugh boomed. “Scared you that time. Just another couple of shots now. Hey, Ms. Laurance, give us the low-down on the murders—Miss Snooperton’s and the real one.” In the recurring flashes, she saw a walrus mustache quivering with good humor. “I told Mother,” her tormentor jerked his head at a dumpling-shaped face nodding in agreement, “this was just the best vacation idea we ever had. We’d planned to go to Europe this summer, wanted to be there for the Wedding, but Mother and I decided there was no time like now to stay home.” Mother nodded sagely. “All those bombs. Why, a man would be taking his life in his hands. So Mother read about the house-and-garden tours, and then we saw the bit about the murder, and we just had to come. I’m a sucker for Perry Mason. And can you believe we’ve got your murder and a real one to boot!” He resheathed his camera, and leaned forward. Annie caught a strong whiff of fresh Juicy Fruit gum. “Tell us now, was that Miss Snooperton a blackmailer?”
Annie caught a flicker of movement at the foot of the Winnebago.
“Come right on out here where I can see you, Mrs. Brawley.”
Without a trace of embarrassment, Mrs. Brawley sidled closer to the open trunk. “I had a little thought. If I could just see our entry, Annie, just for a teeny second.”
“No.” She snapped it with a satisfying sharpness, like the hiss of a plunging guillotine.
“Oh.” Mrs. Brawley gave a nervous titter. “I guess Chastain’s going all out for the Mystery Nights to assign a policeman to guard the entries,” and she looked past Annie.
Annie knew before she turned and saw the sallow face of her favorite traffic cop. “How about that,” she managed to say coolly. But her temper never let her quit when she was ahead. “I’m in Room 312.”
“Yeah. I know.”
She was still staring belligerently at him when Max arrived with the last container. He looked curiously at the newcomers. Annie was in no mood for introductions. She snatched the box from him, dumped it in the trunk, slammed down the lid, and grabbed his arm.
As they rounded the corner onto Ephraim Street and fought their way against the lemming-like stream of exiting gala-goers en route to whatever Bacchanalian delights Chastain afforded after ten o’clock, Max implored, “Hey, where’s the fire?”
“Me. I’m mad. Dammit, I’m more than mad. I’m scared. Look behind us. Is that cop coming?”
He twisted his head and gave a low whistle. “Yeah.”
“Oh, hell.”
Annie stalked up the main walk to Swamp Fox Inn, but Max took her elbow to detour her around to the side. “We’d better go in the back way.”
“What’s wrong with the lobby?”
“Honey, Refrigerator Perry couldn’t heave through that crowd.”
“Oh, double hell. Max, I’m so tired—and I’m starving.”
“Not to worry. I spotted a back patio that isn’t in use. Leave it to Papa.”
She almost retorted sharply that she wasn’t Mama (shades of the walrus mustache’s Mother), but she had run out of steam.
But she had to admire Max’s ar
tistry as he charmed their landlady. Annie leaned against the spotted wallpaper in a back passageway and watched plump, exhilarated Idell Gordon succumb to his charm.
Fluffing her frizzy orange hair, she twittered, “Of course, I know how you feel. Ms. Laurance needs a restful dinner. And the coffee bar is packed!” She simpered at Max, thoroughly smitten. “I know what we can do.” The “we” was so happily familiar that Annie beguiled herself with a vision of Max and Mrs. Gordon dancing a minuet. “I’ll turn on the whirlpool in the patio, and we’ll just put on a tiny little light, then no one will even know you’re there.”
As a general rule, Annie considered public whirlpools about as attractive as a lunch date with Typhoid Mary, but tonight her whole body ached with weariness. Manning that clue table had taken the perseverance of a hockey player and the manual dexterity of a card shark, and all the while she had worried about Wells and his stony attitude toward her. “Whirlpool?”
Mrs. Gordon nodded proudly, then heaved a sigh, her protuberant brown eyes mournful. “I had to do it. The Pink Cottage has one, and so does Harbor Lights. And you have to have free wine in the rooms. All the inns do it.”
When she checked in that morning, Annie had noticed the bottle of wine sitting on the high nightstand next to the modern-day version of a four poster rice bed. Italian. But there was no handy antifreeze gauge.
“You young people run on up to your rooms and change. I’ll bring your sandwiches out to the patio.”
As they walked up the hall toward the main stairway, the din from the jammed coffee bar buffeted them.
Annie felt a marrow-deep longing for her lovely, isolated tree house on Broward’s Rock.
“It’s going to be a long week.” The worn treads of the staircase slanted to the right. As she started up, the banister wobbled under her hand. “God, a fire trap.” And when she opened the door to 312, stale, hot air washed over her.
She turned on the window air conditioner. A faint eddy of slightly cooler air fanned her.
Carolyn G. Hart Page 34
