Malice in Miniature

by Jeanne M. Dams

  Their acknowledging smiles were a trifle stiff, and very much alike.

  “Now. Where would I be likely to find Sir Mordred?”

  “I thought you wanted to talk to Mrs. Butler.” Meg still sounded annoyed.

  “I do, but later. Just now I’d like to make sure Sir Mordred is well.”

  “He’s probably in his workshop, making furniture.” Meg sighed with the old grievance and shook her head. “He insists on stocking the rooms with reproductions, no matter what I say. And Mrs. Butler is on his side; she says the children appreciate the houses more if they’re complete, which I suppose is true. Or if he’s not there, you might try his rooms. He’s been on the telephone a lot, trying to settle the staffing problems.”

  “I’ll try the workshop first. I’m sure I can find it, whereas his private rooms . . .” I made a face, inviting a laugh, and got it, though a grudging one.

  “I’ll lead you through the maze, if necessary.”

  “Thank you, my dear. And give me some bread crumbs, so I can find my way out.”

  She disappeared into the Hall and Richard down the drive, and I squelched through the parking lot, glad I’d remembered my wellies. They were heavy with mud by the time I reached the corner of the workshop; I stepped off the path to wipe them in the soft grass that surrounded the building.

  I didn’t mean to startle anyone. It was just that the grass muffled my footsteps. I paused in the doorway and spoke. “Anyone home?”

  In the shadows by the far corner of the workbench a figure whirled, hand to mouth. Before I could say another word it sagged against the bench and started to slither to the floor.

  15

  With a lunge that my joints and muscles would regret later, I managed to reach him before he hit the floor, and softened his fall a little. It was the least I could do, seeing as how I had caused his collapse.

  He was out cold for a few moments, only a few, thank goodness. I aged a good deal in those moments, caught in an impossible predicament: I could neither do anything useful nor go for help. It was with enormous relief that I saw his eyelids flutter, but he wasn’t quite functional for another five endless minutes. I helped him to a chair and hovered anxiously.

  “Sir Mordred, I am most terribly sorry! I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that. Will you be all right alone for a little while? Because I need to get help. There’s no phone out here, is there?”

  “No—phone,” he said vaguely. “No—help.”

  I remembered his phobia about doctors. Well, I intended to get a doctor, but I’d only upset him if I said so.

  “All right, but I’ll just run into the house and get some tea. You need to get warm. Here, I’ll tuck this around you.” I stripped off my coat and laid it over him like a blanket. “Now don’t you move; I’ll be right back.”

  I tried to run between the raindrops, but I was pretty wet anyway by the time I made it to the front door and rang the bell. If it hadn’t been for the deep portico over the door I would have gotten much wetter; they took their time about answering the bell. Growing more and more frantic, I finally put my finger on the bell push and left it there. When the door finally opened it was with an angry jerk.

  “The sign plainly says that we’re not open. What do you think—”

  “Mrs. Butler, where’s Richard?”

  “What do you mean, where’s Richard? Who are you? How do you know me?”

  “My name is Dorothy Martin, and I need Richard Adam immediately!” I, too, can be commanding when I need to be. “Sir Mordred is ill and needs help at once. Please find Richard and tell him to go to the workshop with blankets, while I get some tea.” I strode off in what I hoped was the direction of the kitchen, leaving the suddenly galvanized woman to run like a rabbit down another corridor.

  Fortunately, lunch was not long past. When I got in the general vicinity I could follow my nose down to the kitchen. It was deserted (I assumed Mrs. Hawes was resting from her noon-time labors), so I put the kettle on the hottest burner of the Aga and began to rummage for tea and a pot.

  “And what,” said a loud voice behind me, “do you think you’re doing, poking about in my cupboards?”

  She stood in a doorway, massive arms crossed, the bosom of her white apron heaving with disapproval.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hawes.” Now that Richard was presumably dealing with the emergency, I could afford manners again. “I’m trying to make tea for Sir Mordred. He had some sort of fainting spell in the workshop, and I thought he needed something hot.”

  “Hmmph!” She didn’t seem overly impressed, but she moved forward, quickly for a woman her size, and began laying out a tray with the necessities. “And who might you be?”

  “My name is Dorothy Martin. We did meet, when my husband and I had tea in the kitchen that terribly stormy day.”

  “Oh.” Either she didn’t remember, or her memory was not pleasant. I didn’t pursue it.

  “Does Sir Mordred Have a heart condition, or something like that?” I ventured while we waited for the kettle to boil. “I did startle him today, I admit, and that’s probably what made him faint, but I’ve seen him looking pretty pale and shaky on several occasions now. Do you know what doctor we should call?”

  She sniffed and filled the teapot with boiling water. “Won’t see a doctor. One of them Scientific Christians, or whatever they are. I’ve got no patience with that sort of nonsense. What have we got the National Health for, is what I say. Drop down dead one of these days, I tell him, and then where’ll we all be? But he don’t care for nothing but them toys of his.”

  She thumped the teapot down on the tray. “Here’s the tea. I hope you don’t expect me to carry it out to him. I got the rheumatics something cruel, and I’m not traipsing out there on a day like this. Not to mention I need my rest. Doing the work of five people in this great barracks of a house, and at my age!” She thrust the heavy tray into my arms and clumped back toward the door into her quarters, breathing heavily as she went and slamming the door behind her with a loud thump.

  I might have to rethink my opinion of Mrs. Hawes as a murder suspect.

  Meanwhile, however, there was Sir Mordred. I put a few more cups on the tray and hurried back through the long hallways to the front entrance hall, where I filched someone’s coat off the rack and squished my way to the workshop, tray in hand.

  The lord of the manor was ensconced on a chaise longue that someone, probably Richard, had brought from some garden storage. It was the folding kind, and didn’t look particularly comfortable, but it was well padded with blankets, and Sir Mordred seemed to be doing all right. His color was back, and so was his temper.

  “Doctors! Pack of idiots!” he was shouting to the little group hovering around his chair, Richard and Meg and Mrs. Butler. His voice rose to a higher and higher squeak. “Nincompoops! They let my mother die, couldn’t decide whether she had the flu or pneumonia. It turned out to be TB. She could have been cured, if they’d had the sense God gave a newt, but not by the time they—what do you want?”

  “I brought you some tea, Sir Mordred. It’s chilly out here, and I thought you—”

  “I don’t want it.” He turned his shoulder away from me. “I don’t want anything. I have work to do.”

  “But you might as well have some tea, now that it’s here,” said Meg gently. “That can’t hurt anything.”

  “Killed Mrs. Lathrop, didn’t it?” He eyed the tray with suspicion.

  “That was her herbal tea, Sir Mordred,” I said, trying to be patient. “This is real tea, good Darjeeling, and if you don’t want any, I’ll have a cup myself.” I suited the action to the word. “Would anyone else like one? It’s awfully cold out here.”

  I poured, we drank, and when, after a moment or two, none of us showed signs of expiring, Sir Mordred condescended to accept a cup. “I’m sure it’s very kind of you all,” he said with a grudging nod, “but I don’t like fusses. Someone’s always fussing about my health. I’m healthy as a horse. You simply start
led me, Mrs. Martin. My nerves are on edge, and whose wouldn’t be, with what we’ve been through here? I’m obliged for the tea, but I must get on with my work.”

  “Can’t we at least turn on some heat?” I begged. “Surely you can’t do delicate work out here in the cold. I’d think your fingers would refuse to move.”

  “Oh, very well, there’s an electric fire next to the workbench. I suppose the room may be a bit chilly, though I’m roasting in these blankets.”

  Americans and Englishmen are born with different internal thermostats, I’m convinced. My teeth were chattering. Richard found the electric heater before I did and turned it on, picking up a cloth from the floor as he did so.

  “Where do you want this?”

  “Put it on the bench. I don’t like mess. I dropped it, I suppose, when I—um—became dizzy. I was cleaning my tools.”

  “A bit rusty,” commented Richard, looking at the rag.

  “Yes, it’s the damp. I do my best, but metal will rust. I daren’t put too much oil on them; a stain is so hard to get out of a tiny piece of wood.”

  Eventually he shooed us all out, insisting he felt perfectly fit. I was the last to leave, staying to retrieve my rumpled coat and apologize once more.

  “No harm done, Mrs.—er—Martin,” he said grudgingly. “But it has cost me a great deal of time, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  I couldn’t think of any excuse to remain, in view of his obvious preference for my absence. I left him fanatically polishing the jaws of a vise and tramped back to the house to talk to Mrs. Butler.

  I let myself in, someone having left the door unlocked, and finally tracked the woman down in the library. She was almost hidden behind a stack of books and pamphlets. Meg was elsewhere: with Richard, I speculated with a mental grin. I sat down beside the education director, who did not so much as look up.

  “Mrs. Butler, thanks so much for your help. I was really in a state, and I’m afraid I wasn’t very polite.”

  “Not at all,” she murmured coolly. I wasn’t sure whether she was uttering the standard English version of “forget it,” or agreeing with my own description of my behavior. I tried again.

  “I was really worried about Sir Mordred, you see. Does he often collapse like this?”

  “I’m sure I’ve no idea. I’ve been employed here only a few days.”

  I seized on that. “Yes, Meg says you’ve done a marvelous job in the little time you’ve had. I suppose all the crises have meant you’ve had to put in a lot of extra time, coming back at night and that kind of thing.”

  I was watching her carefully. She turned a page, picked up her pencil, made a careful note, and looked up at me.

  “I shouldn’t dream of coming back at night. I live quite some distance away, beyond the university. I have been hired to do a job, Mrs. Martin, not to worry about my employer’s health or ruin my own with night work. I am kept extremely busy during normal working hours,” she added pointedly.

  It seemed that no one wanted my company today. I plodded away; I doubt Mrs. Butler even noticed that I had left.

  There was one more thing I wanted to do before I left the Hall, if I could get by with it. I wanted to have a look at Mrs. Lathrop’s rooms.

  Now was as good a time as any. Mrs. Hawes was probably down for another half-hour’s nap, at least. I didn’t know where the maids were, but if they were working hard, in the absence of any sort of supervision, they were more than mortal. If Meg and Richard were together, they wouldn’t notice a herd of thundering busybodies, let alone just one who was trying to be inconspicuous. Sir Mordred was safely out of the way, and I had seen no police around at all.

  Fine. I could snoop unobserved. If, of course, I could find the rooms in a house with fifty bedrooms. Slipping out of my boots—no point in leaving a trail of muddy footprints—I tiptoed up the main staircase, trying not to look the leering cupids in the eye.

  It took me a while to find the rooms, but meantime I learned quite a lot about Brocklesby Hall. Most of it was obviously not in use. Many rooms, completely unheated, were filled with ghostly humps of furniture, shrouded in big once-white dust sheets. Cobwebs festooned the corners, and when I opened doors, there were often rustlings that I preferred not to speculate about. On the whole I hoped they were mice; the alternatives were even less appetizing.

  Sir Mordred’s miserliness was strongly in evidence on the upper floors of his fantastic mansion. Many of the light fixtures were without bulbs, so I did a good deal of stumbling in dark corners, especially where hallways indulged in entirely unnecessary three-steps-down-and-two-up routines. If anyone had been trying to track my progress, he would have had no trouble; with all my barging into things I was about as quiet as a rampaging she-grizzly. But no one interrupted me, and in due time I found the right rooms.

  I could tell, not only because they were the first I saw that showed any sign of occupation, but because of the black dress draped pathetically across a chair. Evidently the rooms had been kept as Mrs. Lathrop left them that last night. I shivered slightly, and not just from the cold.

  The rooms were large: sitting room, bedroom, bathroom. (Evidently, someone since the first Brocklesby had seen fit to modernize the sanitary facilities.) With a little love they could have been made pleasant and comfortable, but as they were I found them infinitely depressing. Heavy, dark paneling; heavy, dark furniture; even a heavy staleness to the air, which was only marginally warmer than in the disused rooms.

  Mrs. Lathrop had made little effort to personalize her surroundings. There were no photographs, no knickknacks, nothing feminine lying around. Without the dress on the chair, they might have been a man’s rooms.

  There were a few touches. In the sitting room one small vase held some chrysanthemums. They were long dead, and the rank water contributed to the unpleasant atmosphere of the room, but the vase was beautiful, also valuable, if I was any judge. Certainly antique Chinese, very possibly Ming. An expensive, though very ugly, jewel box held a few pieces that looked to my inexperienced eye as though they were worth a good deal: a large, rather dirty diamond brooch, some massive gold earrings, one or two rings heavily laden with stones. I remembered that Jane had said Mrs. Lathrop’s mother had been “gentry,” and wondered if the small collection of treasures was inherited.

  The huge mahogany wardrobe held two more black dresses cut along the same lines as the one on the chair, a couple of sensible suits in depressing tweeds, and one appalling black taffeta evening dress. What a shame! The fabrics were good, the tailoring impeccable, but the garments had been made without any sense of style or flair. Even the Mrs. Lathrops of this world look better if they’re properly dressed, and if she could afford to have her clothes custom-made, surely she could have had them made attractively, as well?

  An image sprang up in my mind of Mrs. Lathrop, icily edging past Ada Finch in the King’s Head. Well, maybe, after all, it wouldn’t have mattered much what she wore.

  Suddenly revolted, I realized I couldn’t bear to go through her dresser drawers. Even if I had known what I was looking for, who was I to pry into the most personal belongings of a dead woman? She would have hated my seeing her clothes and the way she lived, and the heavy stuffiness, or my sense of guilt, was giving me a headache.

  Thankfully, I closed the door behind me, groped my way back to the public area of Brocklesby Hall, and slipped out the front door. No one saw me leave.

  I drove home with the car windows open. I got rained on, but the fresh air smelled wonderful.

  When I got home, the telephone was off the hook, a sure sign someone had been trying to call me. Samantha doesn’t like the sound of the phone ringing, so she knocks off the receiver and then tells it how annoyed she is. Most of my friends have by now gotten used to hearing unearthly yowls at the other end of the line. I replaced the receiver and thought about scolding Sam, but there was little point. Even on the doubtful chance that she would understand why she was being scolded, it would make not the slightest differe
nce in her behavior. Some cats can sometimes be taught. Not Sam; her goal in life is to get her people properly trained.

  I made a cup of tea and sat down, dissatisfied, with my morning’s list in front of me. It looked even less helpful now than it had then. Mrs. Butler? She’d denied working late any night My questions had produced no reaction but mild irritation, and that only, it seemed, because they’d interrupted her work. I’d done nothing either to confirm her as a likely suspect or to eliminate her from contention. Her name stayed, but with a very large question mark beside it.

  I sighed and considered Mrs. Hawes. She was an unpleasant woman, with an abrasive personality. She, of all people, would have had a splendid opportunity to doctor Mrs. Lathrop’s herbal tea. But she would have had no reason to be abroad on a bicycle before dawn. Scratch Mrs. Hawes. I was convinced the bicycle woman held the key to Mrs. Lathrop’s murder.

  Was that a stupid conviction? Was it just as likely that the woman was a blameless passerby who would turn out to have been on her way to market with turnips in the bicycle’s carrier baskets? It was entirely possible; Thursday was one of Sherebury’s market days. And the fact of the market traffic, I realized with a groan, was going to make the job of the police much harder. Anyone could have been out on a bicycle for legitimate reasons.

  But if our particular woman on a bicycle was irrelevant, we had reached a dead end. I would cling to my bicycle woman. A slim hope is better than none.

  I had reached that stage, and had let my tea get cold, when the phone rang. I beat Sam to it by a whisker.

  “Ah, you’re home, my dear. Samantha answered last time. We had quite a lengthy conversation, if you can call it conversation when one party does all the talking.”

  “Or screaming. I hope nobody was close to the phone on your end.”

  “As a matter of fact, Betty placed the call for me. She is now convinced my home is inhabited by banshees, or whatever the Kenyan equivalent may be. What have you been up to, gadding about and letting cats answer the phone?”