Gin and Panic

by Maia Chance

  “WHAT?”

  “—how would one go about getting the diamonds back?”

  Ralph pulled away. “Someone slipped you a Mickey Finn?”

  “And Berta, too. On a train to Boston.” I filled him in on the rest of the sorry tale.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Now I am.”

  “Drop it.”

  “I can’t. Theo wants his diamonds back, and he hinted at having Berta and me arrested for theft. In fact, starting tomorrow we’re banned from Montgomery Hall. Berta had to wheel out her feminine wiles just so we’d have a roof over our heads tonight.”

  “How do you two get yourselves in these messes? Listen. I’ll go to see Fitzpatrick. I know where to catch up with him.”

  “Where?”

  “I hear he’s been at the Moody Elephant a lot lately. You know, that speakeasy below Caffè Agostini on Macdougal Street—oh no. I shouldn’t have told you that. Don’t go there alone.”

  “I’ll go with Berta.”

  “Go with me.”

  I couldn’t be a baby and rely on Ralph for muscle. I ran my own detective agency, for crying out loud. Besides, Ralph had callously told me I could look after myself.

  “I’ll think about it,” I lied.

  “Don’t do anything rash. Now, where were we?” Ralph’s big warm hand slid down the back of my dressing gown.

  I shivered with pleasure. Summoning up my very last drop of self-control, I wriggled away. “Hold it. We can’t—we’ve got a few things to square away, Ralph.”

  “Things?”

  “You know, the same-page problem?”

  “Seems to me we’re on the same page right now. Exact same sentence, seems like.”

  “I mean it, Ralph.”

  He sighed. “What’s the matter with just enjoying the present?”

  “That’s childish.”

  “It’s sane.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m not sane?”

  “Kid. Please.” Ralph got up, went to the bed, sat on its edge. He ran a hand through his hair and it tufted up like a guinea pig’s. “Here’s the thing. I can’t … No, let me rephrase that; I don’t know how to, you know, settle down.”

  “Maybe because you’ve never tried it.” Oh, golly. This would be when he’d tell me he had a former wife or two on the books and no interest in repeating the experiment.

  But he said, “I told you a little about how it was for my brother and me growing up, right? How our mother took off to live with another man when we were little, how our dad was pretty rough on the two of us? I don’t know what a nice home looks like. I don’t know what a good marriage looks like—and frankly, in my line of work, all I see are bad marriages, every day. So I’ve gotta break it to you, kid, no matter how much I love you, there isn’t a chance in hell that I’d subject me or you to that. All I can offer you is more of how it’s been all along—separate places, no wedding bells, but, I promise you, I’ll be there for you.” He tried a lopsided smile. “And we’ll keep having fun.”

  “Oh.” My heart wrung itself. Here I was, hitting that brick wall again. If he truly loved me, he’d want to marry me. “I see.” I picked up Cedric, stood, and polished off my highball, keeping my eyes on the floor so Ralph wouldn’t see how wet they’d become. “Then we really are through.” I went to the door.

  “Suit yourself, kid.”

  I didn’t stick around to hear more.

  13

  I brushed my teeth again, because of the highball, and to get rid of the tragic taste in my mouth. Turns out that peppermint Colgate is no match for heartbreak.

  The vague, sunlit hopes I’d had for a future with Ralph, well, those were all just gorgeous dreams. It was time to wake up and smell the coffee. There was a reason that these hopes had been vague. It was because part of me knew all along that Ralph standing at the altar, Ralph making me scrambled eggs in the morning, or—yes, I know I’m an idiot—Ralph burping a baby, were impossibilities. Whether the impossibility of it all was entirely his fault, I was in no mood to ponder.

  And love? Somehow, contrary to the punch line of every fairy tale I’d ever read, love didn’t even factor in.

  Despite the scent of Ralph on my skin, the doom of the stolen diamonds, zero progress on our murder investigation, and a hollow feeling where my heart went, I fell heavily to sleep.

  Not for long. I woke with a start to Cedric’s warbling little growls. There is nothing quite so chilling as being woken by your dog growling in the night. You know they mean business.

  I strained my ears over the sound of my own thudding pulse and the rattle of the windowpanes. Cedric’s ears were pricked in the direction of the door, and all I could think of was that voice that had not been Berta calling my name two nights ago.…

  Then I saw a faint light flashing through the gauzy curtains.

  Something outside the house, I could manage. A ghost in the corridor, I could not.

  I got out of bed and went to the window.

  Rain flogged down and bare tree branches thrashed, but I made out a yellow light at the edge of the woods. I squinted. It was a lantern, yes, a lantern held by someone moving amid the trees with—could it be?—a shovel in hand.

  Theo, perhaps? But why would he be out digging on a night like this? Why would anyone, for that matter?

  My visibility was compromised by the darkness and lashing rain. I was almost sure that the person wore a fisherman’s raincoat and hat when the lantern suddenly extinguished and I lost track of the figure.

  I was crawling back into bed when, from out in the corridor came the dreaded “Lolaaaaaaaaaaa. Lolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

  I waited, gripping the blanket under my chin. Maybe it would simply stop.

  Cedric growled again.

  “Lolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

  I forced myself to go to the door. I cracked it.

  “Lolaaaa. LOLAAAAAAA.”

  The voice was a flimsy alto with an impatient edge.

  “Come on, peanut,” I whispered to Cedric. The corridor was as black as pitch, so I felt my way by patting along the wall.

  “Lolaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  I kept going with leaden feet, skittering heart, and Cedric’s fluff brushing against my ankles.

  I gauged that I’d reached the top of the stairs, although it was so dark, I may as well have been blindfolded. I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the bannister finial—

  I heard soft breathing close at hand, I felt a hand at my back, and … someone pushed me. Hard.

  I cried out and grabbed the finial. My feet bicycled for traction on the steps. Cedric yapped ferociously, footsteps padded—

  The lights flicked on.

  “Good heavens, Lola, are you all right?” This was Eustace, swooping to my aid and helping me off the stairs.

  I blinked in the electric light. “Someone pushed me.”

  Ralph appeared, hair tousled, face strained, with Cedric boinging around his ankles.

  The sight of him made my belly wad up like old chewing gum.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “She fell on the stairs,” Eustace said to Ralph.

  “I was pushed,” I said.

  “Are you certain?” Eustace said. “You must be very tired.”

  Ralph lifted an eyebrow, taking in for the first time, it seemed, that I was in a filmy nightgown, marabou slippers, and pressed against Eustace’s chest like a baby koala to its mother. “Evening,” he said to Eustace. “Ralph Oliver.”

  “Lord Sudley. You must be Theo’s detective.”

  “That’s right.”

  Eustace gazed down at me, his brown eyes soft with concern. “Go back to bed, Lola. I’ll fetch you some warm milk, and then you must tell me precisely what occurred.”

  “If I hadn’t managed to grab the finial, I could have broken my neck—”

  “Poor little duck,” Eustace murmured. “Now, run along. I’ll be back up in a tick.”

  “Careful, I think your nur
semaid’s apron is showing,” Ralph said to Eustace.

  Eustace stiffened. “Precisely what are you implying, old chap?”

  “Lola is a grown woman. You don’t need to coddle her. Quite frankly, she ought to find it insulting.”

  “I’ll find it however I please,” I said.

  “You’ve already met Lola, then?” Eustace asked Ralph. Both men’s chests seemed to inflate as they sized each other up.

  “Course. We’re colleagues. Besides that, she’s my mark.” Ralph winked at me; I narrowed my eyes.

  “I see,” Eustace said. “Well, then, perhaps you ought to take a stab at being a gentleman and move aside so that she may return to her room.”

  The two men looked each other square in the eyes without blinking. Eustace glanced away first, and started down the stairs, muttering, “Deuced upstart.”

  Ralph watched him go and then said softly to me, “I wouldn’t recommend drinking any milk that goofus brings you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe he pushed you.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Of him? He talks like he swallowed a tureen of turtle soup.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Oliver. If you don’t want me—”

  “I want you.”

  “—then you simply must let me go. I’m off to bed.” I scooped up Cedric and sailed away, though my shaky legs listed leeward.

  Eustace did bring me a mug of warm milk, which I accepted at my bedroom door and firmly said good night, although not before he’d warned me to “steer well clear of that Mr. Oliver, because he has an uppity look in his eye. Irishman, I take it.”

  I locked and relocked my door, and braced a chair under the doorknob as I’d read about in Spectral Stories.

  I didn’t drink the milk. Not because I thought Eustace would poison me, of course. I simply don’t enjoy warm milk.

  * * *

  I woke to rapping on my door. I cracked my eyes. Pale morning light leaked through the curtains, and a drizzle smeared the windowpanes. Bed won, hands down. I rolled over and closed my eyes again.

  More knocking. “Mrs. Woodby?” came Berta’s muffled voice.

  Sigh.

  “Come in,” I called, and struggled upright in bed. Beside me, Cedric yawned, curling his pink tongue.

  “It is locked.”

  I got up, moved the chair, unlocked the door, and stumped back to bed.

  Berta, scrubbed and tidy in a mauve wool dress, said, “Oh dear me. Difficult night? I did see Mr. Oliver—”

  “Urgh. I don’t wish to hear his name spoken ever ever ever again.”

  “I notice that Mr. Oliver always contrives to get hired on cases in close proximity to ours.”

  “I said I don’t wish to talk about that blister!”

  “It is almost as though he cannot stay away from you, as though you exert the gravitational pull of a large, round, pale moon—”

  “Go ’way. I’m not done sleeping.”

  “Miss Murden woke me an hour ago to inform me that Theo wishes us to vacate his house—he has quite taken to the role of lord of the manor—at once. Do get up. I do not wish to fan his anger, and what is more, we have much sleuthing to accomplish today. We must ask the townspeople of Carvington if anyone sighted Isobel Bradford’s presumed impostor after she fled Montgomery Hall, attempt to discover if Theo knew in advance that he stood to inherit the estate—oh—and we must find some way to contact Lem Fitzpatrick about the stolen diamonds.”

  I floundered upright. “I have a lead on Fitzpatrick. But I need coffee.”

  “There is a little leftover coffee in my room.”

  “Miss Murden brought you coffee?”

  Pink blotched Berta’s neck. “Mr. Eccles, the lawyer, kindly brought it to me—”

  “Berta!”

  “—along with some toast, because he correctly guessed that, otherwise, I would go without breakfast.”

  “Stop.” I massaged my eye sockets as everything came oozing back. The man with the fisherman’s hat and the lantern in the trees. The impatient ghost voice. The push. I told it all to Berta in a rush.

  “And … Lord Sudley was the first on the scene after the push?” she asked.

  “You need not lift your eyebrows so high. You’ll give yourself a headache. Whoever pushed me must’ve been the same person who made the fake ghost moans—I suspect she lured me out there for the express purpose of pushing me. And that was a woman. An alto.”

  “The only other women in the house are Miss Murden and Coral.”

  “Miss Murden has the voice of an executioner, and Coral’s voice is so chirpy—”

  “But still, the person you saw moments after the push was Lord Sudley.”

  “Oh, I give up. Let’s get out of this horrible house.”

  “Before we leave the estate, we really should go to the trees and look for clues about what the person in the fisherman’s hat was doing.”

  “All right, but we can’t let Theo see us. He’ll telephone the cops. We can’t let Ralph see us, either. I’ll be darned if I allow him to rain on our parade. We’ll give him the slip—where is he now?”

  “Mr. Eccles told me that Mr. Oliver was dining heartily in the breakfast room.”

  I threw off the covers and swung my legs out of bed. “Then we’ll simply evaporate before he finishes his second round of sausages.”

  Berta went away and came back with a half pot of cold coffee and some cold buttered toast on a tray. There was a rosebud in a little vase, too. “Wowie. You certainly made an impression on Mr. Eccles,” I said.

  “Mrs. Woodby, I do wish you would not jump to conclusions.”

  “Can’t help it. I’m a detective.”

  “I will leave you to get dressed and pack, and then we really must be on our way.”

  “Fine. I suppose we’ll have to wait to tell Eustace what we’re up to, because I don’t want Theo to catch us wandering the house. Wait. If we’re going to poke around in the trees before we scuttle off, what are we going to do with our suitcases? We rode a taxi from the train station last night.”

  “I have taken care of it, Mrs. Woodby.” Berta’s voice was calming, but she did not meet my eye. “After you pack your suitcase, leave it in your room.”

  “I suppose Mr. Eccles is going to transport our luggage to Manhattan on a golden chariot? I don’t know how you do it.”

  Berta waved an impatient hand. “Hurry up and drink your coffee, and do dress warmly. Flat shoes if you have them—”

  “I’ve sworn off the things.”

  “—and at least two layers of wool.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Berta and I tiptoed downstairs in coats, wool dresses and sweaters, hats, handbags, and armed with umbrellas against the spitting rain. Cedric looked handsome in a Fair Isle sweater. He didn’t normally consent to wearing doggie attire, but he was making an exception because of the sodden weather.

  “Someone’s in the front driveway,” I whispered, stopping on the stairs. “I see a motorcar.” I prayed it wasn’t Ralph. I couldn’t bear to face him, nor could I bear to be outfoxed by him. “It’s Theo. He’s getting out of dear old Dad’s Rolls-Royce.”

  We hurried back up the stairs and wandered around until we found the back stairs. We headed down again. The stairs took us to the hallway near Rudy’s study, the billiards room, and the conservatory.

  Why was an alarm bell jingling in my head?

  “We could exit the house by way of the conservatory,” Berta whispered. “I recall there is a door that leads to the garden.”

  “When were you in the conservatory, Berta?”

  “During the costume party. That cheeky old gent with the muttonchops claimed he wished to show me some figs. I do not know why I gave him the time of day—”

  Berta and I stopped short, having come face-to-face with Mwinyi. He had come from Rudy’s study, holding an empty tray. He didn’t appear surprised to see us, and inclined his head as he passed.
>
  “Wait,” I said. “Mwinyi. May I ask you a few questions?”

  “Yes, madam.” He stopped, and tucked the tray under his arm.

  From inside the study came Coral’s voice. I couldn’t make out her words, but it sounded as though she was speaking on the telephone.

  I asked Mwinyi, “How long had you been working for Mr. Montgomery when he, um—”

  “Died?” Mwinyi gave a fleeting smile. “I would have thought detectives would be more comfortable speaking of death.” A rich African accent burnished his perfect English. Why had Theo suggested Mwinyi did not speak English? Was it because Mwinyi took care to keep silent while working? Or had Theo been attempting to discourage Berta and me from speaking to Mwinyi?

  “Well,” I said, “our agency doesn’t specialize in murder—we usually find lost items and—ow.” Berta had stepped on my toe.

  “Then you are amateurs,” Mwinyi said. “Just as Miss Coral suggested.”

  Berta scowled. “Would you please answer the question?”

  “Of course. Mr. Montgomery hired me as his valet last spring.”

  “I understood Mr. Montgomery was in Europe last spring,” I said. “Coral mentioned something about having met him in Antibes.”

  “That is correct,” Mwinyi said. “I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Montgomery in Monte Carlo just after I was abruptly dismissed by my previous employer, who had ruined himself in the casino and who was thus no longer able to pay my wages. Mr. Montgomery, who frequently traveled to the country of my birth, Kenya, was happy to engage a manservant who could also work as a translator.”

  That added up neatly.

  “Who was your previous employer?” Berta asked.

  “The Baron Von Lynden of the Netherlands. He, like Mr. Montgomery, enjoyed big game hunting in Kenya, which is where I first made his acquaintance many years ago.”

  There was the clang of the telephone being hung up in the study, and then Coral’s voice carried out the open door. “Well, well, if it isn’t Punch and Judy, grilling the servants.”

  Mwinyi took the opportunity to slip away.

  Berta and I went to the study door.

  “I thought Theo banished you forever.” Coral sat at the desk in a silky floral robe. “He told me I’d be banished unless I confined my smoking to the study.”