The Importance of Being Ernestine

Four

“How unforgivably rude of me to doze off.” Lady Krumley raised her head and blinked in upper-crust distress. Only a nightmare could have brought her to this office with its plastic plants and inhospitable furniture. She sat rolling her gloves on her lap. “It has been months since my last heart attack, Mrs. Haskell, so one may not use that as an excuse. My home is in Biddlington-By-Water, not thirty miles from Mucklesby. Therefore, the journey was not the problem. It only seemed long because I haven’t driven myself in years. My apologies to both of you,” she said, directing her nose in Mrs. Malloy’s direction, “for delaying you even longer after my late arrival.”

“Don’t give it a thought your ladyship ducks! But while you’re on about it, what did keep you from your appointment with Mr. Jugg?” Mrs. Malloy nudged me toward Milk’s chair and perched her miniskirted behind on a metal folding one, next to the dilapidated filing cabinet.

“Some vicious thugs took potshots as I drove past the Biddlington-By-Water police station.”

“You were fired at?” I dropped the pencil I had just picked up.

“Thrown at!” Her ladyship’s features narrowed, reducing her to a beaky-nosed silhouette. “They were sizeable flower pots, filled with bronze and yellow chrysanthemums.” Such a sinful waste of good flowers. “Not only was my front passenger window shattered, but I looked as though I had requested to be buried in my car.”

“And you wanting to look ever so nice for Mr. Jugg.” Mrs. Malloy was all womanly sympathy.

“You weren’t hurt, Lady Krumley,” I asked.

. “Shaken up and nerves all to pieces, nothing more.”

“Do you think you were followed by someone who knew you were on your way to consult with a private detective?”

“Not at all; I never said a word to anyone, except Mr. Featherstone, my friend and vicar, about where I was going.”

“Then who?”

Her ladyship frowned with all the aristocratic command at her disposal. “I very much fear that the assault was perpetrated by someone aggrieved by my refusal to contribute to this year’s Police Benevolent Fund. One does have to watch one’s pennies these days. And I did see a heavyset man slinking off as I rubbed the dirt out of my eyes. I suspect it was Constable Thatcher without his helmet. But I may be doing the man an injustice. He and his wife did send a wreath, rather a showy one, for my sister-in-law Mildred’s funeral last April.”

“Nasty losing a family member.” Mrs. Malloy would have set her face at half-mast if possible.

“Mildred was my late husband Sir Horace’s youngest sister. A very spry eighty-year-old to the end, but I never questioned her passing away in her sleep while on a fortnight’s holiday in Liverpool. After all, who can bear to spend more than a few days in such a place? Even when the others began dying it never occurred to me that an evil force might be at work.” Lady Krumley’s voice faltered as she stared grimly into some distant space.

“So that’s why you’re all got up in black.” Mrs. Malloy couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “Relatives dropping off the family twig willy nilly.” She stood up with a good display of leg and poured herself a shot of bourbon. I shook my head, but Lady Krumley accepted a glass.

“Sir Horace would have expected me to go into mourning, even though it isn’t much done these days and he never had more than minimal contact with any of the recently departed, including Mildred.”

“So there was others!” Mrs. Malloy beamed.

Her ladyship inclined her head. “Cousin Clement resided in Australia. He was mauled to death by a passing kangaroo in June. Uncle Dickie resided in one of the Channel Islands and met a mercifully swift end whilst celebrating his ninetieth birthday bungee jumping or whatever it is called. Aunt Theobalda was living in a loft in some newly trendy part of the East End and stepped into a lift that wasn’t there.” Her ladyship swigged down her bourbon. “All of them ancient and addled in their wits. One may not always like one’s relatives. Yet only a fiend would sit back and watch them being systematically wiped off the map. Especially when knowing where the blame lies.”

“Where is that Lady Krumley?” I inquired with what I hoped was the right amount of professional interest, although, to be honest, I couldn’t see that this was going anywhere that mattered.

“With myself. I, Mrs. Haskell, am the villain of this piece!” She rose in a swoop of black to take a brisk walk to the outer office door and back. The hat trembled to one side, but her voice when she resumed speaking was calm. “I must say I now find it a relief that I was not in time to consult with Mr. Jugg. Men are too readily inclined to dismiss a woman’s fears as hysterics. Sir Horace had a way of fidgeting with his thumbs when vexed by what he termed the excess of my imagination. No doubt he would insist that I am dramatizing the current situation.”

“Husbands can be our sternest critics,” I opined sadly.

“How right you are, Mrs. Haskell.” Lady Krumley returned to her chair. “Sir Horace was twenty years older than I. But it can hardly be said that I was a giddy young girl at age thirty-five, when I came as a bride to Moultty”-she spelled out the word-“Towers.”

“I thought Mr. Jugg said Mouldy.” Mrs. Malloy sounded justifiably aggrieved.

“That’s the pronunciation. Has been for centuries. Nothing to do with our occasional problems with dry rot. Sir Horace was devoted to restoring the house to the way it had been before his father allowed it to fall into disrepair. Which makes it so particularly dreadful that it was I who sullied the family crest-Serve Well Thy Servitors-when close on forty years ago I sacked Flossie Jones.”

“Who?” I asked, pencil poised above a dog-eared notepad.

“The parlor maid.”

“Why did you get rid of her?”

“For stealing an emerald and diamond brooch.”

“Well now, that was naughty!” Mrs. Malloy, as president of the Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association, had her standards.

“You believe this incident has some bearing on the recent deaths you mentioned?” My glance at the uncurtained window showed it blacked out by night as if in wartime. Just how late was it now? How long before I would see home again? A tale dating back forty years was unlikely to be told in as many seconds. Would Ben think I had run away from home to destroy other marriages by revamping whole cities of unsuspecting husbands’ studies?

“It has every bearing.” Her ladyship slapped her knee with her gloves. “I now know Flossie Jones was falsely accused and, therefore, wrongfully dismissed. One week ago Laureen Phillips, my newly hired personal maid-very diligent in her duties-found the brooch between the skirting board and the wall in my bedroom, close to the dressing table from which it must have fallen all those years ago.”

“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 you 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.”