The Importance of Being Ernestine

by Dorothy Cannell

  “You’re saying?” I was at a loss to do more than resharpen my pencil.

  “Isn’t it as clear as the nose on her ladyship’s face?” Mrs. Malloy was so excited she handed her ladyship another bourbon and sat down without bothering to pour herself one. “This Flossie woman is taking her revenge by bumping off all these members of the family! Well, one good thing. It shouldn’t be hard to catch up with her. All we have to do is look for someone as fits her description that’s been bobbing about on holiday all of a sudden to Australia and the like. Course she’s probably aged a bit like we all do, but even so…”

  “If bent on murder,” I interposed, “why wait this long to get busy, and, if you’ll forgive me, Lady Krumley, why not start with you?”

  “I am not talking murder, Mrs. Haskell, at least not in the usual sense of the word.” The bourbon disappeared in a gulp. “Flossie herself died within a year of leaving Moultty Towers. My contention is that she is wreaking havoc from beyond the grave. With her last breath Flossie Jones cursed the Krumley family.”

  “Gracious me!” Mrs. M. looked unsuitably thrilled.

  “Are you absolutely sure the brooch your new maid discovered was the one that had gone missing?” The night wind moaned an echo and somewhere inside the building a floorboard creaked, but I didn’t go and take a peak outside the office to see if anyone was lurking in the shadows. Her ladyship’s dark tale, had yet to set my nerves jumping.

  “Not a doubt in the world! That brooch was engraved on the back with his Sir Horace’s maternal grandmother’s initials and her birth date. He was seriously displeased at the time of its disappearance by what he asserted was my carelessness with a family heirloom. I had left it on the dressing table instead of locking it up in my jewelry box.”

  “Was it extremely valuable?”

  “A mere trinket.” She waved a gnarled hand. “It wasn’t even insured. The stones weren’t the finest, having been given to Sir Horace’s grandmother when she was a young girl by an aunt in straitened circumstances.”

  “Shame! But have to cut your garment according to the cloth.” Mrs. Malloy shook her head as if remembering all the second- or third-rate emeralds and diamonds she had accepted with feigned enthusiasm.

  “My husband liked me to wear it. Alas, truth be told, it was not to my taste. Far too dainty and demure. It was never my desire to look like a determinedly youthful debutante. There were already enough people wondering why he had married a beanpole like me, when he might have had his choice among the great beauties of the day. Sir Horace was at that time an extremely handsome man in his mid-fifties; indeed his looks never left him. Upon his death ten years later he made a fine corpse.” Lady Krumley stared into some distant place.

  “Tell us how Flossie came into the matter?” I prodded gently, feeling an unexpectedly strong wave of sympathy for the autocratic old lady.

  “Sir Horace and I had been married for three or four years when she came to work at Moultty Towers. Her Christian name was actually Florence. But as that was also the housekeeper Mrs. Snow’s name, the senior members of the staff would have deemed it an impertinence for a parlor maid to share it. Hopkins the butler, after consulting with me, made the necessary adjustment. That should of course have been the end of the matter.” Her ladyship’s mouth tightened. But the girl protested to Sir Horace, not to Mrs. Snow or to me. I was annoyed. My husband amused. He laughed and said the girl had spunk and that we should make allowances. He reminded me that it had become increasingly difficult since wartime to keep any sort of help, good, bad or indifferent.”

  Mrs. Malloy opened her mouth. I thought she was about to state the main cannon of the Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association, that employers needed to be kept firmly in their place. But she bit her lip remembering, no doubt, that if she really wanted to become Milk Jugg’s Girl Friday, her first objective must be to keep the client talking.

  “May I?” Lady Krumley reached out a hand for the half-empty packet of cigarettes on the desk. “I haven’t touched the things in months. Doctor’s orders.” She lit up. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  I wanted to say that it wasn’t her doctor we needed to worry about. But who was I, after my recent stint with tobacco, to tell a seventy-plus titled woman she would be better off sucking her thumb? Cowardly of me. But I couldn’t see into the future to know how bitterly I would regret not snatching that cigarette out of her mouth.

  “Despite being amused by Flossie’s cheek, as Mrs. Snow called it, Sir Horace told her that she would have to do as she was told about the name business, or find other employment.” Her ladyship dangled her cigarette above the ashtray. “For several months she must have performed her duties adequately enough for I heard no more about her, until one morning Mrs. Snow reported to me that the girl was pregnant by the under gardener. And not evincing an ounce of shame! The young man was willing to make an honest woman of her, but seemingly Flossie wasn’t sure that she wished to be married.”

  “Hanging out for a decent engagement ring, is my guess.” Mrs. Malloy nodded her blonde head. “One with a proper diamond, not the sort you can’t see even with a magnifying glass. Or perhaps the girl preferred emeralds. Taken a fancy to your brooch, had she? Is that why you thought she stole it?”

  Her ladyship stubbed out her cigarette and lit up another. “On the day the brooch disappeared Mrs. Snow informed me that she had seen the girl sneaking out of my bedroom, a place where a parlor maid had no business being. I had already, with the assistance of my personal maid, searched not only my bedroom and bathroom but also Sir Horace’s adjoining suite, all to no avail.”

  “Because the brooch had dropped off the dressing table and was lodged between the skirting board and the wall?” I looked up from the scrawls I had been making on the notepad. “Meaning it wasn’t found in Flossie’s possession. Did you act entirely upon Mrs. Snow’s information?”

  “Well, you have to admit that made things look bad for the girl,” tut-tutted Mrs. M., who would have taken the utmost offense if barred from any room at Merlin’s Court and indeed would have taken up permanent residence in my wardrobe if she felt like it.

  Her ladyship stared bleakly through a cloud of smoke. “Flossie didn’t act the innocent when I sent for her. Her self-satisfied smirk was most annoying. She was pretty in a pert, snub-nosed sort of way. When I told her that the brooch was missing and that Mrs. Snow had seen her exiting my bedroom she tossed her head and was insolent, to put it mildly.”

  “What did she say, your ladyship ducks?” Mrs. Malloy leaned so far forward on her folding metal chair that she almost toppled into the wastepaper basket.

  “To repeat her precise words: I was a spiteful old cow. Jealous that she was going to have a baby when I never would, because I was too old, along with being as plain as a flannel nightgown. She said the brooch was just a trumped-up excuse for my getting rid of her. If she had wanted it she would have taken it, but she hadn’t. And Mrs. Snow was a snake in the grass.”

  “Hardly surprising that you sacked her.” I didn’t add that I thought Flossie might be right about Mrs. Snow.

  “I told Flossie the room she shared with the kitchen maid was being searched as we spoke, but that didn’t seem to bother her in the least. Indeed, she grinned more broadly than ever”-Lady Krumley was now onto her third cigarette-“making me sure she had hidden it elsewhere. So I wasn’t surprised when it did not turn up. There was no doubt in my mind as to her guilt. Only anger when she said she would go to Sir Horace and hear what he would have to say about the matter. It was appallingly clear that she believed that being a man, however elevated above her lowly situation in life, he could be charmed into saving her from being dismissed. As it happened he was away from home that evening, and by the time he returned, Flossie Jones had already been escorted off the premises by Hopkins the butler, now also deceased. Her ladyship swallowed the inch of bourbon left in her glass and disposed of her cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Flossie y
ou said died shortly after leaving Moultty Towers.” I was occupied in resharpening my pencil, while Mrs. Malloy looked on admiringly as if this were a secretarial skill she someday hoped to master.

  “I heard about it from Mrs. Snow who received the information from the kitchen maid. Seemingly Flossie eked out an existence for several months in a dismal bed-sitter after giving birth to a girl she named Ernestine after the father.”

  “And what would his name have been?” inquired Mrs. Malloy.

  “Ernest?” I suggested.

  Lady Krumley inclined her head. Her black headgear shifted but did not fall off, thanks to a sizeable hatpin. “According to what I learned from Mrs. Snow, Flossie succumbed to pneumonia and the child…”

  “Was left in a suitcase at a London railway station?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Placed with a childless couple. I regret I cannot tell you more. Naturally, despite the handsome fee I am prepared to pay for your services, I would wish to make the business of locating Ernestine as straightforward as possible.”

  “So that’s what you want from us. Exactly how much is handsome?” Mrs. Malloy teetered forward on her high heels, bourbon bottle in hand.

  “That can be discussed later. It may not be a piece of cake to find a baby now approaching forty years of age.” My wording might be muddled, but I anchored my elbows on the desk and twirled my pencil with professional precision. Inevitably I was thinking of Rose and wondering how Ernestine and her adoptive parents would handle the situation, should they be located.

  Her ladyship picked up the carpet bag. “I wronged the mother and now must find some way to make the necessary reparations if the surviving members of the house of Krumley are not to crumble to dust in the churchyard. It is still my opinion that Flossie Jones was not a nice girl. All the more reason,” she rose to her impressive height, “that you two women make haste to prevent her deathbed curse from being fulfilled.”

  “Curses are a specialty of ours at Jugg’s Detective Agency.” Mrs. Malloy laid a comforting hand on her arm, then added, as I knew she would, “But they do cost a bit extra.”

  Five

  “Well, that’s that for a night’s work.” Mrs. Malloy sagged against the office door after returning from seeing Lady Krumley down to her car. “Me feet is killing me, and I expect your fingers are worn to the bone after taking all them notes.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.” I stood up and stretched. “Every time her ladyship paused to light up another cigarette, I was able to go back and squiggle in the missing bits.”

  “Squiggle is right.” Mrs. Malloy now hovered admiringly over the desk. “Clever of you to put it all down in code. Made it up as you went along, did you?”

  “That’s Pitman’s shorthand.” I shuffled the pages together. “While I was waiting to begin my design classes I took a course.”

  “Back in the dark ages,” Mrs. M. smirked. “But that’s all to the good, isn’t it? Don’t suppose too many people use is it nowadays with them modern gadgets you talk into with the bossy-sounding name.”

  “Dictating machines.”

  “Meaning your shorthand’s as good as code, if it should fall into the wrong hands. Not that you won’t be careful, Mrs. H., seeing that this is your big chance to prove yourself with Jugg’s Detective Agency.”

  “I don’t intend to prove anything,” I stared her down, “other than that I can type as well as take shorthand. But not tonight. If it’s all the same with you, I’ll take these notes home with me and use Ben’s typewriter in the morning.” I was crossing to the coatrack to retrieve my raincoat when I was brought up short by a realization. Ben no longer had a typewriter. He was now the owner of a word processor, a piece of wizardry I wasn’t sure how to turn on, let alone operate. Bother! There was no help for it. I would have to sit back down at the desk and set my fingers drumming on Milk Jugg’s old manual, which looked to be in far worse shape than the one I had donated to the charity of Kathleen Ambleforth’s choice. The thought of telephoning her the next day and explaining that I needed not only the typewriter but all the other items from Ben’s study back caused me to feel quite glad to be stuck in the present moment.

  “Changed your mind, have you? Can’t wait to get everything her ladyship told us printed up?” Mrs. Malloy stood with arms folded as I sat back down. “If it’s not too much trouble, better use some of that carbon paper stuff so’s there’s a copy for both of us. I’ll go over mine when I get home. Should make for a nice read along with a cup of cocoa and a chip butty.”

  “But I’m not typing this for us.” I began tapping away at the keys. “It’s for Mr. Jugg. You can read it to him if he telephones or, if you can’t get hold of him, put it away in a drawer until he gets back.”

  “Did I say cocoa?” Mrs. Malloy’s musing voice drifted my way, “I meant to say another stiff bourbon. That’s what Milk would advise, and as you’re saying, we’ve got to keep him in the forefront as we get going on this case. Thrust into the thick of things through no fault of our own! A pity. But there it is. No rest for the wicked as the actress said to the bishop. You go ahead and forget I’m here, Mrs. H., I’ll just sit here and think about that girl Flossie and the brooch. I wonder just what sort she was really?”

  “I really don’t care.” I rolled paper into the typewriter. “I’m sorry she was falsely accused of theft and it was tragic her dying so young, but her date of birth and vital statistics do not interest me. All this stuff about the deathbed curse is complete rubbish. A product of Lady Krumley’s guilty conscience. Aged family members die off without any unearthly interference.”

  “But that old geezer going balloon riding?” Mrs. Malloy screwed up the empty packet of cigarettes and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

  “Uncle Dickie in the Channel Islands?” I found him in my notes. “It was bungee jumping.”

  “Go on, correct me! The point is, Mrs. H., that’s not the way most people end their days at ninety or whatever he was.”

  “The upper classes pride themselves on their eccentricities. True, it would have been safer for him to howl at the moon from the top of his tree house, but to each his own.”

  “And then there was the kangaroo.”

  “That got cousin Clement in Australia,” I continued pounding away at the keys. “Perhaps he failed to read the notice that said, ‘Please don’t feed the animals or pull their tails.’ And, Mrs. Malloy don’t bring up Aunt Theobalda who fell down the lift shaft. Accidents happen. As for the sister-in-law,” I typed in the name Mildred, “no one can make anything the least bit weird out of an old woman dying in her sleep.”

  “In other words you don’t have an ounce of sympathy for poor Lady Krumley and her wanting to find this Ernestine person to try to make things right for what was done to her dear mum.” Mrs. Malloy went to sit down on the metal chair, but her glare caused it to panic and skid into the wall. “Well, I must say I’m shocked, Mrs. H., shocked to me very core! I don’t think I’ve felt this bad since me husband Leonard turned nasty and said I looked like I’d aged twenty years.”

  “But you had,” I hit the carriage return. “He hadn’t seen you in all that time, after going down to the shops to get a pound and a half of stewing steak for the meat pudding you wanted to make and forgetting to come back. You weren’t all that thrilled if I remember rightly when he re-entered your life out of the blue”-I dabbed whiteout on a mis-typed word and looked up at her while waiting for it to dry-“just as Ernestine may not be especially thrilled at being hounded to ground. She’s probably living a nice, fulfilled life somewhere. Possibly with children of her own. Why does she need to know that her mother died spewing vengeance on the Krumley family?”

  “You forgot to ask what happened to Ernest, the dad?” asked Mrs. M. at her most uppity.

  “Clearly he wasn’t willing or able to take the baby, or she wouldn’t have been adopted.”

  “If he wasn’t married to Flossie he might not have been given the chance, not back in
them days. Could be he was fair broke up and would give anything to finally meet up with his daughter.”

  “There is that. But it doesn’t sound as though he was helping her mother out much financially, if Flossie was struggling to make ends meet in the miserable bed-sitter her ladyship described. Although, to be fair, I don’t suppose under gardeners were paid more than a pittance in those days.” I sat back from the typewriter. The clatter I had been making on the keys had drowned out the patter of rain on the windows. It made for a mournful sound. I wasn’t as hard-hearted as Mrs. Malloy had claimed.

  Flossie’s was a sad story, and it could be that Lady Krumley’s hope of finding the daughter would turn up some silver linings. She hadn’t said how she planned to make reparation, but Ernestine might welcome a bank draft, along with a heartfelt apology. But there was no urgency to the matter. Mr. Jugg would return from his holiday and take care of the matter with the proficiency provided by training and experience. As an interior designer I could perhaps be of some help to Lady Krumley. Getting rid of the gargoyles in the Great Hall and repapering the dungeons in a nice bright plaid might do much to lift her spirits. But a detective I wasn’t. I said as much to Mrs. Malloy and spent the next five minutes listening to her rant on about the number of bodies that would pile up while I sat twiddling my thumbs.

  “And it’s not like you’ve got any jobs lined up right now,” she pointed out ruthlessly.

  “True,” I paperclipped my typed notes together, “but I do have to take care of the children, in addition to doing all my own housework now that you’re spending so much time here. Although I do have to wonder why,” I recapped the bottle of whiteout, “if you’re really so keen on developing the necessary secretarial skills to become Mr. Jugg’s Girl Friday you left me to do the clerical work this evening along with posing as his partner.”