The Importance of Being Ernestine

Eleven

After dropping Abbey and Tam off at school and Rose at her play group, I picked up Mrs. Malloy at one minute past the time arranged and then headed toward Biddlington-By-Water, which Mrs. Malloy proceeded to remind me was a proper dead-in-a-live-hole.

“But you were only there once to play bingo,” I pointed out.

“So?” She sat looking the picture of some Hollywood costume designer’s idea of an interior decorator in a black velvet toque trimmed with faux leopard to match her coat and a pair of doorknob-sized earrings. “As I’ve been known to say time out of mind, the people you sees at bingo is a micro-cousin of what the rest of the place is like.”

“You did get in touch with Lady Krumley? And explain our plan?”

“Course I did. And she said she didn’t mind what sort of cover we used if it helped us pick up some clues about how to find Ernestine. Poor duck! Can’t be easy lying on that hospital bed, hoping and praying that she’ll live to see the day she can put things right with her hubby’s love child after all these years.” Mrs. Malloy heaved a sentimental sigh before telling me I was driving in circles.

“I’m on the roundabout.”

“You’ve been round it three bloody times.”

This was true, but I was having trouble figuring out which exit would get me to Biddlington-By-Water. Pressed into making a decision by Mrs. Malloy’s nudge in my ribs, I took the sign to Swayford, because it sounded vaguely familiar, and relaxed into my seat. It wasn’t as though we were in a rush to arrive at an appointed time, but I did hope that her ladyship had warned her nephew Niles or his wife to expect us sometime during the morning.

“She said she’d phone the moment she hung up after we’d done talking.” Mrs. Malloy opened her handbag and popped a lemon drop into her mouth. “Now let’s get ourselves clear, Mrs. H., about what we’re really up to in going to Moultty Towers. Is it just about Ernestine? Or are we going to have a nose round and see what we can’t sniff out about all them deaths in the family, including the fellow that just got murdered down that well? Now what was his name?”

“Vincent Krumley. And for all we know it was an accident, plain and simple.”

“And I’m the Queen Mother!”

“All right!” I said. “We have our suspicions. But we’re not the police. We’re not even proper private detectives. And I’m not all that keen on being tossed over the cliffs for sticking my nose in where it isn’t wanted.”

“There aren’t any cliffs at Biddlington-By-Water.” Mrs. M. could nitpick with the best when she chose. “It’s not a seaside place. Got nothing going for it, as I told you.”

I had to agree when we reached High Street that Biddlington-By-Water did not abound with charm. The buildings mostly looked as though they had been erected in the 1950s. There were a couple of banks, a cinema and what appeared to be a local department store. Even the cakes in the bakery window might have been there for half a century, with the cherries on top being replaced periodically as the proprietor saw fit. The Pizza Hut and McDonald’s on opposite corners looked as though they had been put up in the night when nobody was looking.

“There!” Mrs. Malloy pointed at a block of concrete with a door stuck in the middle. “That’s the hall where I played bingo. And if I remember Lady Krumley’s directions rightly, we need to turn left at the next traffic light, go down to the post office and take a right. That should bring us onto a road that narrows into a lane about half a mile down. Right after we come to a field with a sign saying ‘Free Range Eggs,’ we’ll round a corner and see Moultty Towers on our left, or it could be right.” She continued to vacillate on this point for the next two-and-a-half miles, at which point we could see the house, for surely there could not be two of such size in close proximity.

“Looks the right sort of place for a murder!” Mrs. Malloy had her nose pressed to the windscreen.

“What a monstrosity!” I was truly appalled. “All those towers stuck up on the roof like a bunch of cannons, and the whole thing looking like a boys’ reformatory school in some black and white film from the 1920s. Probably at some point in its history it was a perfectly charming house-until some fiend decided to modernize it and then not being happy with the results glued the towers back on and hammered big iron nails in the front door.”

“Okay! Okay!” Mrs. Malloy climbed out of the car to stand beside me. “I can see for meself it needs to be knocked down and put out of its misery. Now tell me again,” she was looking uncharacteristically nervous, “what sort of things I’m to say to show I knows what I’m talking about.”

“You could suggest that the fireplace needs merchandising.”

“Meaning they should sell it?”

“That,” I said, hoisting the bag containing furniture catalogues and fabric samples onto the curve of my arm, “it should make a decorating statement. Look, follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

“That’s right, let you queen it while I walk three places behind like poor Prince Phillip!” She was still grumbling as we mounted the broad sweep of steps to the front door, and would undoubtedly have gone on indefinitely if it had not been opened almost immediately by a man in a dark jacket and sober tie. He was short and almost completely bald. His age appeared to be in the sixties. His expression intimated nothing more than a mild inquiry.

“Good morning.” One of his eyebrows shifted a hair or two.

“Haskell and Malloy, interior designers.” I tapped the bag and beamed at him. “Lady Krumley did say to expect us?”

“I know nothing of the matter, madam.” He stepped aside for us to enter and closed the door behind us. “If you will wait here”-indicating the large and intensely gloomy hall-“I will apprise Mr. and Mrs. Edmonds of your arrival.” His was the sort of face that one sees on dozens of buses, neither good looking nor ugly and impossible to describe five minutes later. But Mrs. Malloy was eyeing him coyly.

“Have you and me met somewhere?”

“Not that I recall, madam?”

She giggled. “Then it’s on to the next line, isn’t it? Do you come here often?”

“Frequently. I’m Watkins, Lady Krumley’s butler.” He turned and entered a door to our left, leaving Mrs. Malloy with a sigh on her lips and a dreamy look in her eyes. “I’d have sworn, but I suppose it could be as how he reminds me of Cary Grant.”

“Have you had your eyesight checked recently?”

“It’s the voice.” She now stood admiring herself in a mirror, carved with bunches of gigantic fruit, hung above a table topped with a bilious shade of green marble. “All lovely and posh, but with a hint of earthiness underneath. Give me a man of mystery any day. So long as he’s not the sort to look down his nose at bingo.”

“Slip him a note before you leave. Just don’t suggest meeting him at moonlight by ye old wishing well. Remember it’s usually the butler who did it in these situations.”

“You’re right!” Mrs. Malloy froze in place. “How could I have been so taken in? Now you say it, there is something about his eyes-sort of shifty like-and that nasty cruel twist to his mouth. I’ve been missing Milk, that’s my trouble. Now there’s a real man if ever there was one.”

“You haven’t heard from him?”

“Not a dickie bird.”

I was staring at the black oak staircase that, in conjuction with a fireplace suitable for roasting an ox, dominated the far end of the hall, when Watkins reappeared.

“If you will be so good as to follow me, Mr. Edmonds will see you now. Mrs. Edmonds is out, but is expected back shortly.”

“If we might leave our coats?”

“Certainly.” He waited patiently for Mrs. Malloy to finish unbuttoning hers, laid them across a chair, sprouting more carved fruit, and led us into the room that he had just vacated. “The decorators, sir,” he informed Niles Edmonds who was hovering in the center of the room looking as if he had wandered into the women’s loo by mistake and was about to have half-a-dozen rolls of toilet paper hurled at him.

“Thank you, Watkins.” His bleating voice matched his sheepish look.

“If you should require me, sir, to have the furniture draped in sheets and the floors covered with plastic cloths, I will arrange for it to be done with all due speed. I am sure that Mrs. Hasty would be happy to oblige by coming up from the cottage to lend a hand.”

“Yes, quite! Absolutely! Good idea.” Niles Edmonds retreated back a few paces under Mrs. Malloy’s frowning stare.

“We’re not them kind of decorators-the ones with paint pots and brushes.” She set about putting him straight before Watkins was out the door. “Me and my partner, Mrs. Haskell here, are a high-cost operation. I’d have thought as you’d have been able to tell that by this hat I’ve got on me head. A model it is, bought at one of them fancy boutiques, like I expect your own wife shops at. But of course there’s them that can wear hats and them that looks like they’ve got a colander on their head. You can put people in big houses I always say, but you can’t always make them look the part.”

“Very true. Your point is well made. Couldn’t be better expressed.” The man appeared ready to collapse on the carpet that looked as though it might have seen better days, perhaps in the time of Henry VIII, although the room wasn’t of the Tudor style. It was a game room. Not the billiard table, chess set sort, but the other… wild animal kind. Almost every inch of wall was covered with furry heads. Everywhere I looked there were glass eyes gazing at me with deepest reproach. Unbidden, the tune to “Old Macdonald Had a Farm” wormed its way into my head, and I caught myself humming “here a moose head, there a moose head, everywhere a moose moose.” Before I could burst into song, Mrs. Malloy kindly trod on my foot with her four-inch heel, and I was able to meet Niles Edmonds’s eyes without a song in my heart.

“Didn’t we meet at the hospital?” He adjusted his glasses for a better look. His frown etched lines on his forehead all the way up to his receding hairline. Here I suspected was a man living permanently in a state of perplexity. It was cruel to keep him on pins and needles for a moment longer than necessary. Seemingly, it was all up to me. Mrs. Malloy was prowling the room, inspecting the cushions on the half-a-dozen armchairs that, in addition to two sofas, encircled the fireplace with an eight-foot tapestry rotting away above it.

“That’s right, Mr. Edmonds, we spoke in the corridor outside Lady Krumley’s room at the hospital. You mistook us for social workers, and neither Mrs. Malloy nor I felt in a position to correct you, because her ladyship had told us that she wanted to surprise you and your wife with her plans to redecorate.”

“Yes, quite! A very difficult position for you.” He waved a limp hand. “Won’t you please be seated?”

“Thrilled!” Mrs. Malloy gingerly lowered herself onto a wooden chair, of the sort that might conceal a chamber pot for use in emergencies, while I perched on a sofa.

“I do understand Aunt Maude’s wanting to keep it a secret until the last minute,” Niles murmured with doleful resignation.

“Likes her little surprises, does she?” Mrs. Malloy elevated a penciled eyebrow.

“Dear Auntie! She’s very sensitive to my feelings, knowing that change of any sort can bring on one of my attacks.” He demonstrated with a wheeze, but rallied after thumping his chest and grasping the arms of his chair. “I suppose she thought it best to say nothing until she had brought you on board ship. Indeed I do see that there are things needing doing to the house. Things have rather been allowed to slide since Uncle Horace’s death. And Watkins is not the butler Hopkins was,” he said through another pathetic wheeze, “but he’s done his best these past five years while managing with shortage of staff. We’ve been without a housekeeper since Mrs. Snow retired. It’s all been very hard on my wife. Cynthia married me hoping for better things.”

“Indeed!” I said.

“She anticipated that I would be out of the house most of the time. But I had to take early retirement from my work as an accountant.”

Mrs. Malloy made sympathetic clucking sounds while sitting as if about to lay an egg.

“I do keep my hand in managing Aunt Maude’s business affairs. Everything except the housekeeping accounts. Watkins sees to those. It gives him an outing once or twice a week to go to the bank. Did Aunt Maude say how you would be paid?” Niles flicked a glance between Mrs. Malloy and me. “How big an expenditure are we talking about? A couple of tables and chairs…” He blinked behind his glasses. “Or something more drastic? You won’t be tearing down any walls, will you?”

“Lady Krumley has given us carte blanche.” I opened my bag and produced my paint chart and fabric samples. “So we may be in and out of here for a few days before making any final decisions. Please don’t let us upset your routine. We’ll be as unobtrusive as possible and, of course, we are hoping that her ladyship will be out of hospital very soon.”

“It don’t bear thinking about that she could be laid up there for weeks being jabbed with needles, every time one of them nurses gets bored, until her poor old bum’s like a pincushion.” Mrs. M. exuded gloom. “Terrible shock it must have been her hearing about that relative of yours dying so unexpected like.”

“Vincent?” Niles wheezed out the name. “Frightful cheek is the way Cynthia viewed it. His showing up here out of the blue. I mean we hadn’t seen or heard of him in years.”

“And then to go and make free of that well, without a by-you-leave.” Mrs. Malloy adjusted her hat to a more business-like angle. “Talk about taking liberties! But mustn’t speak ill of the newly departed, must we now? From what Lady Krumley had to say, me and Mrs. H. here got the idea he could have been going a bit potty in his old age. Wasn’t there something about him saying as how he thought your wife had been a go-go dancer before you was married? And that some other relative had a twin? That was news to Lady K.”

“That would be Daisy Meeks. Lives in the village. She was here the night Vincent showed up and the following day. An annoying woman, but definitely an only child.” Niles stirred restlessly in his chair. “Drink, that was Vincent’s problem, although he made a big point of saying that he’d not touched a drop in years. Taken the cure at one of those places, where one gets to see that one’s life up till that point has been nothing but wickedness and sin. Heard him going on to Watkins about it out in the hall, causing dinner to be delayed half an hour. And if there’s one thing Aunt Maude dislikes it’s not having meals to time. It was some sort of beef stew.” He shook his head fretfully. “Mrs. Beetle, the cook, called it a ragout, but to me a stew by any other name is still the same.”

A pity he had to mention food. I had been feeling decidedly peckish for the past five minutes and had little hope of the butler materializing with a silver tray on which would repose a teapot, cups and saucers and a large plate of buttered crumpets. It couldn’t be expected with so many disruptions to the household routine.

“Very upsetting, Vincent’s death,” Niles continued.

“Let’s just be glad he didn’t linger,” said Mrs. M., who then had to go and add, “that’s if he didn’t teeter on the edge of that well, fighting to save himself while his whole life flashed before his eyes and him crying out for that little dog of his, just wanting to hold it in his arms one more time…”

“Mrs. Malloy,” I patted the paint charts and fabrics on my knee, “we’re here to do a job, not to take up Mr. Edmonds’s time with our expressions of sympathy.”

“No, no! It’s good for me to talk. If Aunt Maude were here she would insist I not bottle up my emotions. You see,” he removed his glasses and polished them against his sleeve, “I was orphaned as a child of ten and, as with Vincent, my parents died in an accident. Perhaps it may be said, as my wife often does, that I have never recovered from that experience.”

“You poor lamb.” Mrs. Malloy dabbed at her eyes, leaving mascara smudges on her cheeks. “Loved your Mum and Dad to bits, did you?”

Niles returned his glasses to his nose. “Sometimes. Mummy had been awfully cross with me that day when I brought home a note from school saying I had cheated on the spelling test and Daddy took her side that I shouldn’t be allowed any ice cream for a week. Then,” his voice dropped to a whispering wheeze, “my electric train set blew up with fatal consequences.”

“And I suppose you went to pieces.” Mrs. Malloy winced in sympathy.

“No, Mummy and Daddy did.”

“Tragic,” I said.

“But then I came to live here, which would have been perfect but for the fact that Uncle Horace never liked me. The only person who ever really did like me was Aunt Maude. And even she… just recently seems to have been focusing her attention on someone else. Someone named Ernestine.”

A silence added its somber weight to the room, but only for a moment. The door was flung open and a tall, slim woman stormed into the room. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and was dressed in black leather trousers and a cashmere sweater with a flutter of feathers around the neck.

“My wife, Cynthia,” Niles said, struggling to his feet, “back from an appointment with her hairdresser.”

“Who are these people?” His better half flung a look at Mrs. Malloy and me that should by rights have sent us flat on our backs. “Don’t tell me you’re from the undertakers? Is this the coffin brochure?” she asked, snatching the paint chart out of my hand as I stood up. “Please tell me, Niles, that you haven’t gone nuts and picked the most expensive one? Didn’t we agree to economize this month, what with the charges for stabling Charlie going up to almost double.”

“Charlie is my wife’s horse,” he explained.

“We are the interior decorators hired by Lady Krumley.” I returned Cynthia Edmonds’s scowl with a crisp smile.

“See any colors you like in them paint charts?” Mrs. Malloy chirruped.

“I certainly do!” The blue-eyed vixen shot out her arm full length while moving toward the window for a better inspection. “This one: platinum mink! It’s exactly the shade I told that wretched man I wanted my hair tinted. But what he’s given me is,” she said, flinging the chart across the room, “champagne pearl.”

“And what’s your hairdresser’s name?” Mrs. Malloy appeared to forget that we were pretending not to be private detectives. “Just for the record like.” Cynthia Edmonds was so incensed she didn’t balk at answering.

“Jorge!” She spelled it out. “And to think I’ve given that man sixteen of the best years of my life. But I’ll get even! I’ll cut my own damn hair! And you,” she said, pointing a scarlet-nailed finger at me, “can redecorate to your heart’s content. It won’t matter to me if you bury Vincent under the floorboards, because I don’t plan to be here much longer. Not if my little business venture bears fruit!”