Death Misconstrued

by Beth Byers

  As Marian stepped inside, Charles whispered, “Don’t get your hopes up, Georgette. It would take everything falling perfectly into place for that house to work out.”

  Before she could reply, Harrison stepped into the hall.

  “You’ve got a card from Mrs. Williams,” Harrison said. His gaze moved between Georgette, Marian, and Charles. “I believe, given what the boy who delivered it said, you’ve been invited to come rather early tomorrow.”

  Charles groaned while Georgette opened the letter and skimmed it quickly. “She wants me to come so she can express her gratitude.”

  “Just you?” Marian asked.

  Georgette nodded.

  “No,” Charles said. “She’s not right, Georgette. I suppose it’s paranoia, but after the last few months, I’m not sure I have that much trust left in me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable for you to be there alone.”

  Georgette’s mouth twisted as she considered. “We could go together, or I’ll write her a note. If you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”

  “Either is fine with me,” Charles told her.

  “Let’s go see what she really wants,” Georgette told him, and a bit of her inner mischievousness flashed across her face. “What good fodder seeing her will be for my next book.”

  “We need to get you somewhere where you can write,” he told her. “Or we might have to move back to Bard’s Crook and live in your little cottage.”

  “Surely you can write here,” Harrison said. “It’s not like we don’t have pens and paper.”

  Georgette shot him a glance and then turned back to Charles, very much wanting to take the room reserved for Joseph and escape this house. “Now that I’ve begun writing with a typewriter,” Georgette explained, “it’s rather hard to think using a pen. I’ve become spoiled.”

  She kissed Charles’s cheek and disappeared upstairs before Harrison could say anything else. She was very much finished living with Harrison and Mrs. Parker. As much as Georgette appreciated them sharing the house, she wanted to leave.

  She found Marian had already taken the bath when Georgette reached the bedroom. With a sigh, she sat down on the floor and stretched towards her toes. Her mind wouldn’t leave the wonder of that house alone, and she curled up onto the bed with a pencil, a notebook, and ideas for the house.

  She fell asleep on top of the paper while Marian was still in the bath and didn’t wake until after Marian got up the next morning and the dogs wriggled their way up to Georgette’s head. Beatrice licked Georgette’s nose. She tried pulling the blanket over her head but Marian called, “Charles is coming, remember. Breakfast then Edna’s house.”

  Georgette hauled herself out of bed, soaked her aches away, and stumbled through breakfast despite Charles’s presence and a cup of tea. She didn’t quite wake up until she took in a deep breath of air.

  “Georgette,” Charles said and gestured with a single nod before they turned down a connecting street. She followed his gaze to Osiris Page, who was wearing quite a fancy suit, carrying roses in his hand.

  Georgette gasped. “He couldn’t possibly be romancing Mrs. Parker, could he?”

  “Oh, I think he is,” Charles told her. His kind eyes focused on Mr. Page. “They’re not too old to love.”

  Georgette elbowed Charles lightly. “I wasn’t thinking that. Hello, my darling Charles, I’ve spent much of the last decade being a spinster. What I was thinking was that they’ve spent so little time together. They should be discussing favorite books and what they like to do on Boxing Day. It’s too fast.”

  “They have less time,” Charles said, kissing the side of Georgette’s face. “Rather like us.”

  “We’re ancient,” Georgette laughed.

  “Decrepit.” Charles lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “We should savor every second.”

  Georgette laughed and they enjoyed the remainder of their walk in silence. When they reached Edna’s street, both of them stopped as they saw Kaspar stumbling out of the house. He took in them and called, “Help! Help me, please. Oh help, help!”

  Charles let go of Georgette’s hand and pelted down the street with Georgette only paces behind him. They reached Kaspar and he moaned, “Doctor! We need a doctor!”

  “Doesn’t your aunt have a telephone?”

  Kaspar shook his head and Georgette darted past and up the steps to Anna Allyn’s house. She banged on the door until a swollen-eyed Anna opened it. Two little boys were sitting on the steps behind her and Georgette noted the hall filled with trunks. She ignored all of that and demanded, “Do you have a telephone?”

  Anna nodded.

  “Call for a doctor. There’s an emergency.”

  Charles stepped up to the doorway and added, “Put in a request for the constables. Edna is asking for them.”

  Anna hurried to make the telephone call while Georgette turned to Charles. Her gaze met his and she saw the worry in his eyes.

  “Is she going to make it?”

  “It’s not good, Georgette.” The look on his face said it was very bad indeed.

  Anna watched them as she spoke into the telephone. When she replaced the receiver, she asked, “What’s happening?”

  “Edna Williams is ill.” Georgette had no idea if Edna was ill or injured. Edna’s theories about a previous murder were heavy on Georgette’s mind as she considered the healthy yesterday woman needing the hospital today and asking for constables.

  Anna’s gaze darted to her children and she ordered, “To the garden. I’ll be right back.”

  She ran out of the door and Georgette and Charles hurried after. They found Kaspar holding Edna’s hand at the base of the stairs. It was clear that Edna had fallen down the stairs from her position. Her breathing was rough and her eyes were terrified. Terrified, but confused. Her arm looked broken as did her collarbone if Georgette was any judge.

  “No.” Georgette pressed her face into Charles’s shoulder. She couldn’t help but think back to Ruth Dogger the poor woman Georgette had found poisoned. Georgette had stayed with the woman while she wondered if she was going to die, and Georgette didn’t want to do it again.

  “Charles,” Georgette whispered, “she looks so scared. She thinks someone was trying to hurt her.”

  “I know, darling,” he said against the top of her head. There wasn’t anything they could do other than watch until help arrived.

  It didn’t take long, and Edna was yet alive when she was taken to the hospital. What could they do for her? Would she make it? Georgette couldn’t imagine how terrifying it must be for the poor woman.

  “What happened?” Charles asked Kaspar.

  “I don’t know.” He was swallowing over and over again. “I came by to tell her I needed to go back to London. I found her like that and I knew—that wasn’t normal. Edna is light on her feet. She was a girls school swim teacher, did you know? She still swims often. She moves like a woman half her age. It didn’t look like a heart attack and then falling down the stairs. It didn’t look like a brain fever and then falling down the stairs. I don’t understand what’s happening. What happened to her? I suppose she could have tripped, but why would she be afraid of me if she had?”

  Charles didn’t answer and neither did Georgette, but both of them were wondering if Edna hadn’t been pushed.

  “Were you here when your Aunt Betty died?” Georgette asked.

  Kaspar shook his head. “No one was. Aunt Betty was alone. Aunt Edna had taken a walk with Mr. Page. He’d come by, had tea with them both. Why?”

  Charles didn’t answer the question. “Tell us more, please.”

  Kaspar wasn’t stupid, so he was following the same thought process that Georgette and Charles has already traversed. “You think that someone killed Aunt Betty?”

  “Edna thought you did something to Betty,” Anna told Kaspar from where she stood in the doorway. “She assumed you thought you’d inherit from Betty and you killed her to get the money.”

  “Me?” Kaspar shook his head and th
en muttered, “Women.”

  Anna glanced at Georgette. “It’s why Edna lied about Jane staying with her.”

  “I realized that was a lie almost immediately.” Kaspar pressed his thumb to his chest. “I just thought Aunt Edna was nervous around men.”

  “Do you think Betty was murdered?” Georgette asked Kaspar flatly, but she included Anna in the question.

  “I hadn’t thought so.” Kaspar sounded doubtful.

  “What about you?” Charles asked Anna.

  She paused before answering. “I always thought that Betty was too healthy to have just keeled over, but the doctor seemed convinced, and what good did it do to encourage Edna’s fears?”

  Charles bit back the curse that Georgette was also swallowing. What good did it do? It might have saved Edna from sharing the same fate.

  Chapter 10

  Georgette Dorothy Marsh

  “Now why are you all here?” A constable glanced around, shaking his head. “Why did you call for the police? Our time isn’t to be wasted for little ladies who trip down the stairs.”

  Charles cleared his throat and started to explain their worries. Given the disbelieving and baffled look on the constable’s face, Georgette had little doubt that they would make no headway.

  In fact, Georgette thought, if she or Mrs. Allyn were the ones who explained why they were concerned about what happened to Edna Williams, they’d have been mocked immediately. Every time Charles referred to anything that Edna worried over or anything that Georgette had noticed, the constable snuffled, wiped his nose, and cleared his throat. The handkerchief was not a very good disguise for the mocking grin, and Georgette only just prevented herself from scolding the man thoroughly.

  No wonder poor Edna had turned to a random woman in the bookshop for help rather than the constables. Charles, unlike Edna, got the benefit of being listened to—which wasn’t much of an improvement.

  “So let me get this straight,” the constable said to Charles. “An old lady died in her sleep six months ago and you decide that this other older woman falling down the stairs is now an attempted murder? You realize that doesn’t make sense, correct? Are you just listening to the worries of the ladies and pushing off on me having to tell them they’re being imaginative?”

  He turned to Georgette and Mrs. Allyn. “No need to worry, ladies,” he said in a patronizing tone. “There isn’t some crazed killer. Mrs. Williams just stumbled and fell down the stairs.”

  Georgette rose and walked away from the constable. It turned out that being the seen female was, in many ways, worse than being the unseen one.

  “Miss, where are you going?”

  “I’m feeling faint,” Georgette lied and then left before he could stop her. She walked up the stairs of the house and opened door after door until she found Edna’s bedroom. It was not the master bedroom, and Georgette guessed that Edna hadn’t been comfortable moving into her cousin’s room after her death.

  Edna’s bedroom was lovely with blue curtains and carpet. Silver-pinstriped blue paper lined the walls. The bed was a mess with the covers shoved back. Georgette noted every other aspect of the room was neat. The books were lined on the shelves precisely along the edge. There was no dress hanging over the back of the chair. Georgette opened the wardrobe and found that each dress was hung facing the same direction, with shoes that were paired, cleaned, and carefully placed in a row.

  Georgette turned back to the bed. There was a pillow on the floor that looked like it had been tossed from the bed. It looked unseemly to the extreme compared to the preciseness of the rest of the room. She just couldn’t see a person who kept their bedroom this neat allowing her pillow to lie on the floor. And leave the bed unmade.

  What if someone used that pillow for nefarious reasons? What if the reason that the cousin, Betty, didn’t wake from her nap was the same? Would anyone have realized that an older woman with a cold had been smothered if there were no signs?

  What if the person thought they had murdered Edna, left her, and she’d survived and been disoriented? She might have fallen down the stairs then.

  Georgette heard Charles call her name and she knew she needed to leave. If someone had tried to kill Edna, and the constables didn’t think she was in danger, would the killer strike again at the hospital?

  Georgette shivered and hurried down the stairs. The constable was waiting to lock up Edna’s house while she was in the hospital, and the others were standing on the sidewalk. Anna’s children had joined her and she was holding each one by the hand.

  Georgette joined the others

  “He didn’t believe us at all,” Kaspar whispered. “We’re not foolish women or drunkards. Why—”

  “Excuse me,” Anna Allyn hissed, covering her older child’s ears. “Your aunt was the woman who recognized what happened to Betty. Not you. Not the constable. The girls school teacher.”

  “Indeed.” Georgette wanted to rush to check on Edna, but another idea was occurring to her instead. She met Charles’s gaze and nodded away from the house. He understood and they left Anna Allyn and Kaspar Williams behind.

  She told Charles what she had seen and then finished with, “Charles, I think we need to make sure that Edna isn’t left alone until she’s able to tell us what happened.”

  Charles didn’t disagree, but his frown was deep and his gaze was distant.

  Georgette didn’t want to ask, but she was sure that he was concerned, either for her, or perhaps them. He had good reason to be, she had to admit, given all they’d experienced at Bard’s Crook. Every so often on their walk back to the Parker house, he rubbed his thumb over her wrist or absently lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.

  When they walked up the steps, Georgette heard her dogs bark a happy greeting. There was a shout for quiet, and for a moment, she thought Harrison Parker was yelling at her dogs. A second later, however, Charles muttered, “Thank heaven.” At her look, he added, “Joseph has arrived.”

  “Oh!” Georgette grinned at him. “Perhaps we can get him to speak to these local constables.”

  “Perhaps,” Charles said, sounding unconvinced.

  She considered for a moment and then realized that the local police would hardly welcome some London detective stepping in to tell them they were doing things wrong. Her mouth twisted and she sighed. That wasn’t going to work. Unless—

  She grinned and went into the house.

  The parlor contained Mrs. Parker, Marian, Harrison, and Joseph. Upon a more careful study, she that found Robert Aaron, Charles’s other nephew, had also arrived. They’d have been a crowded bunch in the small Bath house even without Mr. Osiris Page, but he had a prominent seat near the fire.

  “There you are!” Joseph said. “How was your visit with Georgette’s newest acquisition? I am unsurprised, Georgette, that you made friends so quickly.”

  “There was an accident,” Charles said bluntly.

  The gasps drowned out everything else. Georgette crossed to Marian to share her chair and greet the dogs. While everyone hung on to Charles’s recounting of the ‘accident,’ he kept the details vague and only about Edna herself.

  “How is her nephew doing?” Mr. Page asked, “losing his aunt like this?”

  “The doctors haven’t lost hope,” Georgette told him. “It is hard, I know, to face losing another friend after Betty, but Edna is quite active and healthy. She may have untold reserves. Don’t give up, Mr. Page.”

  He nodded quickly, gazing down at his hands where they were clenched fiercely. “You’re right. First Betty, now Edna. It’s hard for those like us, isn’t it, Mrs. Parker?”

  Marian’s aunt jumped at the question. “Other than my dear husband, who died quite young, I haven’t faced losing my friends yet. I pray it won’t happen for some time.”

  Mr. Page nodded, glancing back down at his hands. “I suppose I am leaping to all sorts of conclusions today. I think I had better go check on Kaspar. At a time like this, he needs his friends.”

  After the
door closed behind him, Charles turned to Joseph. “If it was an accident, I am a cuckoo.”

  Joseph’s gaze met his uncle’s and then he cursed.

  Mrs. Parker moaned. “Not again. I am not doing this again, Marian. And neither are you or Harrison. Georgette, you should come with us. I suppose you’re family now, and I won’t see my girls embroiled or hurt because of some…some…fiend.”

  Georgette stared at Mrs. Parker with her kind face and ready acceptance. There was a fierceness there that declared Georgette one of Mrs. Parker’s ducklings. Georgette had wished for nothing more than to be wanted by someone, and it was happening for her because of Charles and Marian. Georgette’s eyes were, therefore, burning with emotion, as was her nose and the back of her throat.

  “I can’t tell you what that means to me, Mrs. Parker.”

  “It’s Aunt Parker now.” Her kind eyes softened despite Georgette’s shaking head.

  “I can’t leave Edna alone.”

  “You’re not responsible for her,” Aunt Parker told Georgette. “She’s a mature woman.”

  “Who was nearly murdered, I think,” Georgette said quietly. “She’s nearly as new to Bath as we are. If we don’t help her, who will?”

  “Mr. Page? Her nephew? That loud, emotional neighbor?” Aunt Parker rose and took Georgette’s hand. “This is not your responsibility, Georgette, and we must think of our safety as well.”

  “Aunt Parker,” Marian inserted, “if we all work together, there’s no reason for any of us to be in danger. If we stand as a family, we can do what is right.”

  Charles cleared his throat, then told Mrs. Parker, “There is nothing I want more than to escape Bath with Georgette in tow.”

  “And yet,” Marian said, her gaze fixed on Joseph, “leaving behind someone who needs our help isn’t who we are.”

  Joseph groaned but finally asked the question hanging over them. “Summarize for me why you think this is murder?”

  Georgette told Joseph the tale of Edna Williams, her cousin, Betty, and her fears about her nephew, Kaspar.