«Stop that! You're fiction. There's nothing magical or… or kinky about a writer's imagination. It's not my fault you're here.»
«No, but was it your wish that got me here. After all, we'd all but lived with each other for five years before I made my existence known to you.»
«Since you poofed into my living room. Right. I remember. How can I forget? It's been months, and you're still here.» She opened her mouth to say something else, then shut it again.
«But how long will I be here. Yes, I know.»
«No. That's just it. You don't know. You don't know, I don't know. We've been in woo-woo territory from the moment you and Sterling showed up, and nobody knows how long you'll be here. I… I can't take that chance. I won't let myself be—oh, forget it!»
This time when Maggie tried to free herself, Saint Just let her go. Time, it would seem, was his enemy. He'd not spent enough of it here, with her, for her to believe he would always be here. Then again, time was also on his side. Every day that he spent with her, she would feel safer with him, until the day she felt secure enough to really be with him. Be his. As he was hers, as he had been hers, even before he'd admitted as much to himself.
They were two halves of the same whole.
Sterling, bless him, was in the way of a bonus. Sweet, gullible, all-that-is-wonderful Sterling. The best of both him and Maggie, with no shadows. Childlike, in many ways.
Saint Just smiled at the thought, but prudently decided not to share that conclusion with Maggie, who was once again prowling the room, all her pent-up energy looking for a release.
He could have told her where she'd find it, but that would only get his face slapped. Pity.
«And another thing,» Maggie said, just as if there had been no break in their conversation, which there hadn't been, Saint Just understood, at least in her mind. «This mess we're in. I mean, really. No heat, no hot food, no electricity. Cut off from civilization. Trapped here with a bunch of Hollywood hoo-hoos. Undercuffler and his asinine script. Joanne and her stopwatch and her penny-pinching—don't say it! I am not that bad. Tabby's shacking up with the valet—sort of—and I'll never be able to look her miserable husband in the face again, not that I can look at him now without wanting to smack him one. Bernie's sick, poor thing, and about an inch away from hunting for a bottle. My book stinks, and I have to start it over from scratch when we get back to New York. I'm fat , and I have to go see my mother again in less than a month, for Christmas. I mean, my life just keeps getting better and better.»
«That is quite a thick budget of woes, I agree. Have you considered, as I've heard you say on occasion, going out into the garden and eating worms?»
«Very funny. Besides, all I could do around here is go out in the garden and drown .» She stomped over to the nearest window, pulled back one side of the drapes even as she turned to him. «Look! Look at it out there. Did you ever see such a mess?»
«Um, Maggie?» Saint Just said, his smile thin, his tone, he hoped, merely conversational. «I have a splendid idea. What do you say you and I toddle off downstairs and find Sterling? He's been ghost hunting, you know, and he has the most amusing story to tell you. Really.» He held out his hand to her. «Come along. You've been sulking up here long enough.»
Maggie glared at him, then took a single step backward.
«What? What's wrong? You're talking to me, but you're looking past me. You're looking at the window. What's—» She turned around before he could stop her.
«Well,» he said a moment later as she fainted and he caught her, «God knows I wanted the woman in my arms again.» Then he tipped his head to one side and considered Sam Undercuffler, who was hanging by his neck from the scaffold on the other side of the window, his body swaying slowly in the wind and rain.
Chapter nine
Maggie sat propped up by pillows on one of the sofas in the candlelit main saloon and watched out of one slightly open eye as a rather low-keyed mayhem unfolded around her. She'd been back among the living for some twenty minutes or so, but had been «floating,» not really awake, not really paying attention.
She could get away with that only for so long, however, because reality kept coming back to hit her in the face.
That reality was that Sam Undercuffler was dead. In an old English manor house. With its inhabitants cut off from civilization. In the dark. While a storm raged outside. It was all so cliche.
Ten Little Indians . Sort of. Maybe the Three Stooges version…
Arnaud Peppin appeared not to want to participate in directing that mayhem, having taken to a corner of the room, where he sat with both hands on his blue beret, which he was audibly sucking between his teeth.
Nikki Campion was weeping into the hem of her Regency gown, when she wasn't checking to make sure everyone noticed her weeping into the hem of her Regency gown.
Evan Pottinger, also still in Regency costume, hovered at the mantelpiece, clipping his nails, flipping the clippings into the fire. Yeech .
Dennis Lloyd, out of his Clarence the valet costume, but unfortunately having misbuttoned his shirt in his haste to get to the main saloon, a nervously grinning Tabby in tow, was busily explaining to anyone who would listen that he and Tabby were very sorry for Sam, but they'd heard nothing, seen nothing out of the ordinary about the man. After all, they'd been together the entire time, mostly in his bedchamber. All day in his bedchamber, as a matter of fact.
«And what would be the entire time, sir?» Alex asked the man, sticking his quizzing glass to his right eye. «After all, we have no idea how long poor Mr. Undercuffler has been hanging outside Maggie's window, now do we?»
«Well… um… it doesn't matter. Tabby and I have been together since last night, first in her room, then in mine, because nobody would bother us there. Haven't we, Tabby?»
«Shhh, Dennis,» Tabby said, her cheeks going red. «No one was supposed to know that.»
«Oh, yeah, right,» Bernie said from her seat on the facing couch before blowing her nose quite noisily into her handkerchief. «None of us knows the two of you have been banging each other senseless, Tabby. Not us. Jeez. Nope. Totally clueless.»
Maggie believed she should step in before her friends came to blows, but when Tabby put a hand to her mouth and ran out of the room, scarves flying, Dennis chasing after her, Maggie decided the two would sort themselves out in time. They always did.
Sterling—both Sterlings—leaned over the back of the couch, which for a moment had Maggie believing her faint had left her seeing double. «Maggie?» Sterling asked her.
«Are you all right now? When Saint Just came down the stairs like that, carrying you, I had quite a fright. Didn't I, Sterling?»
«Oh, he did, he did,» Sterling redux said, nodding furiously. «But you're all right now, right? Right?»
«Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Both of you.»
But they didn't take her word for it and go away. They just leaned over the couch some more, still staring at her. As if she might go pop at any moment.
«Um… so, have you guys found Uncle Willis yet?»
Both Sterlings frowned, shook their heads. «We thought we heard him earlier on, while we were poking about in the attics, but we didn't see anything.»
Ah-ha! As Alex would say: a clue . Perhaps even the beginning of the reason Sam killed himself. Please let him have killed himself . Maggie pushed for more information. «You heard something? What did you hear? When? Which wing of the attics? The wing where Sam was hanging?»
«Is something amiss, Maggie?» Alex asked, for he was a man who missed nothing.
She looked up at him in mild disgust, and with a fleeting nervousness as she remembered their earlier interlude. Oh, bad word, interlude . Much too romantic a word. «What do you have, anyway? Built in radar? And not amiss, Alex, no. But the Sterlings—I mean, Sterling and Perry—said they heard some noise in the attics. Earlier.» She turned to the Regency Twins. «When earlier, Sterling?»
The two exchanged looks.
«After the
suit of armor?»
«Definitely after the suit of armor.»
«But before the bat?»
«Most definitely before the bat.»
«Gentlemen? Can we be a tad more precise, if you please.»
«Let them alone, Alex. They're trying,» Maggie said, then finished the rest of the water someone had brought her and sat up straighten «What bat?»
«The one in the attics, of course,» Sterling said. «We heard the squeaking, the wings flap-flapping. One bat. Maybe more. In any case, we concluded that we didn't wish to stand about and wait for the thing to get tangled in our hair.»
Maggie looked at the nearly identical, both partially bald men. Best casting of the whole movie. «No. You wouldn't have wanted that to happen, would you? So, you heard the bat, but you didn't see the bat. Or bats. But when?»
They looked at each other, then said in unison: «Before dinner.»
«Just before,» Sterling added. «Sorry we can't be more precise, Saint Just. I know how you like things precise, and all of that.»
«Not to worry, Sterling. So, shall we say at approximately five o'clock? Once it was already dark? Very well. Thank you, gentlemen,» Saint Just said, and the two retired to a corner of the room where Marylou had set up a small dessert table consisting of the pies and cakes she'd so industriously prepared in the, thankfully, gas-powered ovens.
Sir Rudy, still in his waders, entered the room, wiping his forehead with a large red handkerchief. «So sorry to report this, but the telephones won't work. Checked them all, I did, and it surprised me how many I've got. Upstairs, downstairs. Don't know why I have so many. But they're all those portable types, you understand, and we need power for them to operate. We'll have to find a way to get to the constable in the morning, if the water dissipates. Not that it makes much difference, for the constable couldn't get to us tonight in any case, and the poor boy is still dead. Oh, peach pie. Smashing! Excuse me!»
«Nice to see him so concerned,» Maggie said, getting to her feet. «Poor Sam commits suicide, and our host cares more about peach pie.»
«If it was suicide,» Alex said quietly. «Which I very much doubt.»
Maggie closed her eyes, took a deep breath. «Why did you say that? Why did I know you were going to say that? Why do I know that Sam's ego was way too big for him to kill himself? Do the others know? Damn it. Alex, we could be stuck here with a murderer. Do something.»
«I am doing something, my dear. I'm observing. Have no fears, we'll have this settled before dawn.»
«You wish.»
«I promise,» he corrected, chucking her under the chin, so that she swiped his hand away, which was less revealing than throwing herself into his arms and screaming, «Protect me!»
«The police can't get here? Nobody can come take away the body?» Troy Barlow, still in his Regency costume, spoke from the drinks table, where he'd been dedicatedly depleting an entire carafe of wine, one glass after the other. «So Sam stays here all night? Oh, no. We can't have him here all night. He could start to smell .»
«No more than you do, you imbecile,» Evan Pottinger said on his way out of the room. «I'm going to go get changed. Suddenly, this costume feels silly. Troy? Did you hear me? You look silly. You, too, Nikki.»
Nikki interrupted her grief for Sam to stare down at her gown in sudden horror. «Oh!»
Maggie looked at Alex as Nikki ran past them, then picked up two of the many flashlights on the table and pointed toward the hallway. Even with Evan and Nikki gone, there were still too many ears in the main saloon. Not to mention too many imbeciles.
Once the two of them were sitting side-by-side on the stairs leading down to the ground floor, Maggie asked, «Sam's in the house? When did that happen?»
«While you were still playing the die-away heroine who'd had a tremendous shock to her sensibilities, I imagine, my dear,» Alex told her, carefully wiping his hands together as if to rid himself of any lingering feeling of having touched the dead screenwriter as he hauled him in through the open window.
«You pulled him in? You touched him? Boy, that took guts. I couldn't do that.»
«We could hardly leave him where he was, with his nose pressed against your windowpane as if begging entry.»
«Oh, please. It was graphic enough the first time. Don't re-run it for me.»
«My apologies. Arnaud assisted me in the retrieval, which may explain why he's on his third Scotch at the moment. We placed Sam in the morning room, on the table there. He—Undercuffler, that is, was already in rigor. Stiff as the proverbial board. We discovered the body at six this evening, but I'd say he'd already been deceased for several hours as a body goes into rigor in about three hours. No one can remember seeing him since shortly after the two of you had your argument this morning.»
«Then the Sterlings did hear a bat in the attics, not Sam, at five o'clock. Okay. It's probably good to establish some sort of time line. So you cut Sam down, then laid him out in the morning room? Boy, there goes breakfast,» Maggie said, closing her eyes. «I didn't know you knew about rigor.»
«The Learning Channel,» Alex explained with a slight bow of his head. «Which is where, coincidentally, I also gained my incomplete but at least serviceable knowledge concerning lividity.»
«Well, bully for you. What's lividity? Oh, wait, I know that one. I saw that on CSI . Someone dies, and the blood pools inside the body at the lowest points of gravity, right? So Sam's blood,» she hesitated, swallowed down hard, «was probably in his face, because of the rope, and maybe in his feet and legs?»
«One would assume so, wouldn't one?»
Maggie turned the beam of her flashlight on him. «You're smiling. One of those Saint Just supercilious smiles. I hate when you do that because it means you know something I don't. Still, I'll bite, as it's the only way I'm going to learn anything. One wouldn't assume so?»
«Not once one had stripped the poor fellow of his soggy clothing and looked, no. Sam Undercuffler's lividity was, excuse the crudity, almost entirely behind him.»
«His back? But… but that would mean he was killed, left to lie somewhere, and then later… hung up?»
«To be discovered with only a slight, secondary lividity in the areas you mentioned. Ah, the blessings of forensic science as imparted by commercial television programs. We're all experts now save, I think we can safely deduce, our murderer. Yes, Maggie. The hanging was for effect and after the fact. Hours after the fact, I believe. Entirely unnecessary and definitely overdone.»
«And that bothers you, doesn't it?» Maggie thought about this for a moment. «Not at all your sort of thing, right? Not an English, understated sort of thing? Which makes it an overdone American sort of thing?»
«I would say so, yes. Possibly. But not definitely. It's equally possible the murderer had simply wanted Under-cuffler out of the way—assuming he was murdered in the attic—and that's why he hung Sam out the window.»
«Because the Sterlings have been poking around in the attics and might have stumbled over the body?»
«Precisely. In that case, the murderer slipped back upstairs to the attic and hung Undercuffler out the window. Without—once again proving we are not dealing with a genius here—checking to make sure Sam wouldn't be visible from the floor below.»
«So we weren't meant to find him?»
«No, I don't think so. At least not until several hours after we'd noticed he'd gone missing. Would you, for instance, have asked about his whereabouts?»
«Are you kidding? I was trying to avoid him all day.»
«But he would have been missed at some point, so all the murderer stood to gain was time. I wonder why.»
Maggie thought about this. «Time for the rain to stop and the water to go down? Time for a getaway?»
«Hmmm, possibly. We'll consider that later, if we might? For now, I would like to concentrate on the how, not necessarily the why. And most definitely the who . Lifting a stiff, dead weight, having the strength to tie that dead weight to a length of heavy, brai
ded drapery cord knotted to the scaffold, then pushing that same dead body out an attic window? I believe we can rule out the ladies, don't you?»
«Nikki lifts weights,» Maggie said, then shook her head. «No. That's pushing it. Unless there's two people involved.»
«Yes, I've considered that possibility as well. Irregardless, the lividity certainly squashes Troy Barlow's theory, although I allowed him to run with that notion for a while, if only to keep him occupied. Unfortunately, you see, he heard me when I took Sterling aside outside the morning room to inform him that we might be dealing with a murder.»
«Oh, good going, Alex.»
«It was an unfortunate lapse, yes, with my only excuse being the dim light in that hallway, even with all the candles lit in their sconces. But I did impress him with the fact that Undercuffler's death could also be a suicide. That nobody has ruled out that possibility, even as we consider alternate possibilities. Which,» Saint Just ended with a small smile, «set him off quite nicely with a theory of his own.»
«Troy? He has a theory? Okay, this should be good.
What's his theory? Murder or suicide? You said suicide, right?»
«Suicide, of course, as Troy's first choice was that Under-cuffler did indeed do away with himself. Provoked by your cruel rebuffs, by the way, your constant harping on the very reasonable improvements he made to your book. And then you crushed him—totally destroyed his spirit—by refusing to read his own script.»
«I was going to read the damn thing,» Maggie protested. «Eventually.»
«Yes, I'm sure you would have, thanks to your lamentable inability to say no and mean it when others encroach on your good-heartedness. But to continue? Undercuffler, opined our Troy, hanged himself from the scaffold, making sure you would be the one who eventually discovered his body. In other words, Sam Undercuffler killed himself to upset you. Rather like slicing off one's own nose to spite one's face, but it has been done before. Shame on you, you cold, heartless woman. Or, to quote our trumped-up Viscount Saint Just, you 'bawdy, artless harpy.'»
High Heels and Homicide mkm-4 Page 12
