Death of a Mad Hatter (A Hat Shop Mystery)

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Total luck,” I said.

  George stared at me for a moment and I knew he was trying to decide whether to believe me or not. Viv rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe that I was covering for Tina. I was not about to tell George that she had come to the shop, however, because there would be uncomfortable questions as to why she had stopped by, and I was not prepared to divulge her secrets.

  If he doubted me, he didn’t question it but instead changed the subject. We discussed an art show that was currently at the Hayward Gallery. To my surprise, George knew quite a lot about art and artists, and he admitted that growing up with Lily for an aunt had been very educational. He had spent the past few years studying art in Florence, Italy. He was studying to be a curator and planned to go into museum work when he graduated.

  “Would you like to come up and see everyone?” he asked as we finished tea. “I know my grandmother would be pleased to see you both, especially you, Viv.”

  Now that the opportunity had presented itself, I felt sort of bad that we had maneuvered George into it. Viv, obviously, did not.

  “We’d love to,” she said.

  “Brilliant,” he said. “Of course, I’m sure my brother will be delighted to see you as well.”

  Viv ignored his knowing look, and I tucked my lips in to keep from smiling. We followed George to the elevator, which took us up to one of the top floors.

  The doors opened onto a black-and-white foyer with dark wood paneling, much like the lobby below. George led us to a door at the far end.

  A uniformed doorman stood beside the heavy wooden door. With a nod at George, he pushed it open. We stepped into a small foyer that led into a large main room, which boasted a lovely view of the city and the Thames River. The room held lots of large soft-looking furniture on one side and a grand piano on the other.

  A woman was sitting at the piano, playing a classical piece quite softly. It was Rose, and I marveled that she played piano much like she spoke, so as not to be noticed.

  “Stop it!” a voice shouted. “Stop coddling her!”

  George stopped in his tracks and Viv bumped into his back. Unprepared to stop, I slammed into hers and we stood like a three-car pileup on the motorway.

  “Ouch!” Viv yelped.

  I stepped back and George stepped forward. The piano playing stumbled to a halt and the people in the drawing room all turned as one to look at us.

  It was easy to see who had done the yelling. Daphne stood in the middle of the room with her arms held out wide and her face an unpleasant shade of red.

  I glanced to see who her adversary could be—obviously not Rose, who’d been at the piano, which left only Lily or Liam. Liam was texting on his phone and Lily was flipping through a magazine. Of the two, my money was on Lily.

  “Oh, look, company,” Lily said. “Your temper tantrum will have to hold, sister.”

  “George,” Daphne spoke through clenched teeth. “This really isn’t a good time.”

  “I thought seeing Viv might perk Gram up,” he said. “Since she thinks she’s an old friend and all.”

  Lily tossed the magazine onto the table and tipped her head. “I think you might be right. I’ll go get her.”

  “I don’t think—” Daphne began to protest, but Lily cut her off.

  “I don’t really care what you think,” she said. “Vivian, Scarlett, it’s good to see you. I’ll be right back.”

  Liam shoved his phone in his pocket strode across the room to greet us. It was impossible not to notice how his eyes lit up at the sight of Viv. He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and then turned and exchanged the same greeting with me. I noted he didn’t linger near me like he did with Viv, however.

  “Brother, how did you stumble upon two of the city’s finest ladies when you only stepped out for a smoke?” Liam asked. “You have the devil’s own luck.”

  George grinned. “I like to think my animal magnetism drew them to me.”

  “Like a pair of oxpecker birds to a hippopotamus,” Daphne snapped. It was clear the insult was directed at Viv and me. I wasn’t too happy to be compared to a scavenger bird that eats the bugs off of a hippo’s butt.

  “Does that make me the hippo?” George asked his brother in mock alarm. Then he turned to me. “You’d tell me if I was getting hippy, wouldn’t you?”

  “And damage that fragile ego?” I asked, trying not to laugh at his mock look of horror. “No, I don’t think I would.”

  Whatever George had been about to say was interrupted by the appearance of Dotty and Lily.

  Dotty looked strained. Her face was pale, and her wrinkles seemed more deeply etched into her sagging skin than they had a few days before. Her grief was evident, and it changed the tone in the room as effectively as a shroud being drawn over a body.

  “Oh, Ginny,” she said as she stepped forward. “So good of you to come.”

  Viv stepped forward and took Dotty’s hands in hers. “I am so sorry for your loss, dear.”

  “Loss?” Dotty repeated. She turned to Lily and said, “Did I lose something?”

  I frowned and turned to look at Liam and George. Liam shrugged and George twirled a finger by his temple, which I took to mean that Dotty wasn’t processing her son’s death in the expected way.

  “They’re talking about Geoffrey, Mum,” Lily said. Her voice sounded encouraging as if she was willing her mother to put it together on her own.

  “Oh, Geoffrey—he’s away on business, you know,” Dotty said. “Such a hard worker, just like his father. I quite worry about him.”

  I heard a scoffing sound coming from Daphne, and this time Liam glared at his mother. She appeared to want to argue but instead she gave us a patronizing look.

  “You really need to be resting, Mother,” she said. “I’m sure your friends can come back another time when it is more convenient.”

  Well, didn’t I feel like the stray dog who’d snuck into the house and peed on the carpet.

  “It is always the right time to visit with friends,” Dotty said, giving Daphne a reproving glance. She led us over to the squashy furniture by the window and gestured for us to sit down.

  Viv took a seat on the couch beside Dotty while I commandeered an armchair nearby. Lily sat on the other side of Dotty while George took the wing chair next to mine and Liam stood leaning against the wall that offered him the best view of Viv.

  Dotty glanced over at the piano where Rose sat with her hands held in her lap as if she was afraid to move.

  “Go ahead, dear: play something pretty,” Dotty said.

  Rose’s fingers faltered a bit but then she found her rhythm and a soft melody filled the suite. It was a lovely tune with a heartbreakingly sad melody carrying the weight of the piece.

  “I never thought I’d be here,” Dotty said.

  “No, I expect you didn’t,” Viv said.

  I thought it was very diplomatic of Viv to agree, since we really had no idea what Dotty was talking about. Did she mean she never pictured herself at the Savoy? Because, clearly, she was not grasping the fact that her son was dead. In fact, she seemed to have transferred the way she dealt with her husband’s abandonment right onto her son’s murder, which just showed how incapable of dealing with reality she truly was.

  “Ginny, do you remember when we were young, before I married into the Grisby family and you had just arrived in Notting Hill? Oh, the times we had.”

  Viv and I perked up. Were we about to get some dish on Mim?

  “Yes,” Viv said. “That would have been the late sixties and early seventies, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh, the parties,” Dotty gushed. “I remember the time we were all at All Saint’s church hall and you jumped up on the stage and began to dance. Oh, you had all the men following you around that night. I was sure one of them was going to propose to you.”

  “R
ight,” Viv said. She glanced at me and I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was—that Dotty was proving to be quite a source of information about our grandmother.

  “You didn’t go for him, though,” Dotty said as if confused by Mim’s choice. “Good call, since he died of an overdose a few years later. Musicians.”

  I felt my eyebrows lift as I gazed at Viv. Mim had been hooking up with musicians? No way! And, while I’m sure there were a lot of musicians who overdosed back in the sixties in Notting Hill, the most famous one was Jimi Hendrix in 1970. Mim and Hendrix? It boggled. Viv looked as intrigued as I did, but like me, I suspected she didn’t know what to say to get more information out of Dotty, who, quite frankly, was not the most reliable source of information to begin with.

  Still, the time line fit. Mim was widowed by the time the hippie counterculture had swarmed the Notting Hill area. She would have been right at the epicenter of the movement.

  She and my grandfather had met and married in their small village in Yorkshire and moved to London for his career as a barrister. Shortly after my aunt Grace was born, my grandfather was killed in a car accident. My mother remembers her father a little, but not clearly, since she was only three when he died. Instead of moving back to her village, Mim had found a cheap shop to buy in Notting Hill, which was a bit of a hippie ghetto back in the day, and had started up her millinery business much to the disapproval of her own family.

  She would have been a widow in her twenties. And given that Mim, like Viv, had quite the artist’s temperament, it was easy to picture her as part of the scene.

  “No, I never loved anyone as much as my Emerson,” Viv said. She glanced at me. Mim had always said this about our grandfather. Whenever we asked why she didn’t marry again, she said she never met another man with her Emerson’s spark.

  “I chose Geoffrey,” Dotty said. She said it with an air of puzzlement as if she wasn’t quite sure now why she had chosen to marry him.

  “And now he’s going to have a hospital wing named after him,” Viv said. She glanced at Lily and Liam to see if this was all right. Liam gave her a small nod.

  “Quite right,” Dotty said. “He sacrificed so much for our family, always away on business, you know.”

  Another gagging sound was emitted from Daphne, who was pacing around the piano. She met my gaze and pointedly looked at her watch.

  If Dotty heard her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she had a far-off look in her eye. “Dear Geoffrey, such a devoted father, and what an excellent role model for his son.”

  Daphne opened her mouth to speak, and I had no doubt it would be a caustic comment about her father, but Lily cut her off.

  “He would be proud, just as we all are,” she said.

  “Quite right,” Dotty said and she patted Lily’s hand affectionately.

  “Stop it! Just stop,” Daphne snapped. “Why must we participate in this sham? Mother, Geoffrey, your son, our brother, is dead—not away on business, dead.”

  Rose’s fingers faltered on the piano while everyone in the room froze to see how Dotty would react.

  “Daphne, how can you say such a thing?” Dotty pressed her hand to her throat. “I know you’re unhappy about the terms of your father’s will, but to declare your brother dead is just vile. I am not amused, young lady.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mother,” Daphne cried. She was so angry she was shaking. She began to pace. “I get that you have altered reality for the past thirty years, but you can’t alter this. Geoffrey is dead.”

  Dotty rose to her feet. She looked even more pale and pinched than when she’d entered the room, but her eyes blazed with heat as she glared at her daughter.

  “You are being beastly!” she declared. “In front of guests, no less. I am appalled. Ginny, Scarlett, I am so sorry. Lily, please take me back to my room.”

  Viv and I rose with Lily. I glanced at Daphne to see her raise her chin in defiance while Rose hissed at her to behave herself. She shrugged her off.

  George glanced around the room in bemusement as if he wasn’t quite sure how he could be related to these people. I didn’t blame him a bit on that one.

  “Really, sister, I think you need to go to your room as well and calm down,” Lily said.

  “She’s right. You’re going too far,” Liam hissed between his teeth. “George, let’s get her out of here.”

  Daphne glared daggers at her son. “Why? Because I spoke the truth? Here’s a little more for you. Not only is our dear brother dead, Mother, but it quite possibly could be someone in our family who murdered him.”

  The room was silent. No one was making eye contact. I couldn’t tell if it was guilt, shame or embarrassment blanketing the room, but either way I’m not very good at awkward pauses and generally feel compelled to fill them with mindless chatter.

  I suppose it’s the pleaser in me, but I can’t help but try to get everyone to a happy place, and if happy can’t be achieved, then I settle for a diversion.

  “But I assumed the most likely person would be Cara Whittles,” I said. “I mean, she had motive and opportunity.”

  Viv looked at me with both eyebrows raised as if she couldn’t believe I was going there. But given that Daphne had just accused someone in her own family of killing their brother, I really didn’t think what I had to say was that bad.

  “Who is Cara Whittles?” Dotty asked.

  Ah, and this is where I open my mouth and enjoy a nice shoe-leather sandwich. What exactly was I supposed to say here? Why, darling, Cara Whittles was your husband’s lover of thirty years, who was left nothing, crashed your tea party and threatened your son’s life—you remember, the party where your son was murdered. Yeah, not even the threat of electric shock could make me say that sentence.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Dotty said. She sniffed as if she was about to cry, causing both Viv and Lily to give me dirty looks.

  “Geoffrey is a charming, hardworking boy. He’s away on business and he’ll be back when he’s done. You’ll see.”

  There was a heartbreaking plaintive note in her voice that made my throat close up. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Dotty clung to her belief that her son was away on business because the reality of his death was too much to bear. It seemed criminal to take the escape away from her.

  “Of course, you’re right, Mum,” Lily said. She put an arm around Dotty’s shoulders. “Daphne is just being dramatic. You know how she gets.”

  Daphne looked like she would argue, but I honestly thought Lily would punch her in the mouth if she said another word. Daphne tossed her hair and stomped across the room to stand by the piano.

  Rose hadn’t moved. I suspected she was doing what she always did when voices got heated and tempers flared. She sat perfectly still and quiet as if she could blend into the wood of the piano and remain unseen and unengaged. These were some crazy family dynamics at work.

  Lily led Dotty from the room. Viv nodded at me and we began to move to the door, making awkward good-byes as we went. We were almost there when the door to the suite opened and Tina came in. She looked pale and shaky and when she took in Viv’s and my appearance, she looked wary and startled.

  I didn’t want her to think I had betrayed her confidence, so I snatched the hatbox from Viv’s hands and handed it to Tina.

  “Here,” I said. “This is for you.”

  I could feel George’s eyes on me, but I figured I’d explain, okay, yes, I’d make something up later. For now, I just wanted Tina to know that her secret was still safe with me and that I hadn’t come here to blab her secrets.

  “Oh, how thoughtful,” she said. Her eyes met mine and I saw an imploring look in them. I gave her a tiny nod to let her know we were okay.

  “It’s just a little something from the shop,” Viv said. She glanced over her shoulder at where Dotty had gone. “You know, in case you might
need a black hat for some reason.”

  Daphne made another derisive sound and Liam frowned at her. “Not now, Mum.”

  “What do you mean, not now?” Daphne said. “Is there a better time for me to show my contempt?”

  Tina flinched and Liam took his mother’s elbow in an attempt to lead her away while George stepped up and stood beside Tina. This show of support was obviously too much for Daphne.

  “What’s the ruckus now?” Lily asked as she returned to the room. “Daphne, you really need to get a hold of yourself. Mum isn’t well and blasting her with reality is not helping. Oh, hello, Tina. Are you all right? You look peaky.”

  “No, she’s not all right,” Daphne said. She turned her angry gaze on Tina. “You’re finally figuring it out, aren’t you? You’re his widow, not his heir, you know. Once his funeral is over, you’ll need to leave the estate, since you won’t be getting a pence from it.”

  “Surely, she is provided for,” Lily said. She sounded aghast at the thought that Tina would be tossed to the curb.

  “No, I’ve already spoken to the solicitor. Geoffrey had no will,” Daphne said. “He never got around to it, so as things stand, the entire fortune will go to Liam.”

  Liam turned a ghostly shade of white and then a hot shade of red. He glowered at his mother.

  “This is neither the time nor the place to have this discussion,” he said. He cast a glance at the door to Dotty’s room.

  Tina had paled as well, as if the reality of her situation was becoming clear to her. She leaned heavily on Liam.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Tina shook her head. “No, I’m afraid I’m not.”

  “Help her to a seat,” Lily said.

  George stepped forward and both he and Liam guided her into the padded chair I had vacated. She sat down on shaky knees.

  “What is it, dear?” Lily asked. Worry lines creased her brow with concern as she gazed at her sister-in-law.

  When Tina spoke, her voice was faint but unmistakable.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Chapter 18