5 Murder by Syllabub (4 page)

Maybe Cora Lee was re
considering barging in on who knew what. “That’s a good idea. Let’s do it.”

“He’s not home yet and I’m not waiting. Besides, I’ve faced down bigger threats than some wimpy candle carrier.” Elizabeth forged forward up the
porch stairs. Cora Lee nodded. She planted her cane on the first step and followed.

Aunt Mary looked up the stairs, then at me. Both the other women were already up,
and Elizabeth was trying to fit the key in the heavy front door. Cora Lee leaned on her cane, watching.

I took a deep breath, put my foot firmly on the first step, paused and turned to her. “Stay down here. If something happens, run. Do you have the cellphone I got you?”

She nodded.

“Do you remember how to use it?

I got a scornful look.

“If something happens, call nine-one-one. After you run
away.” I turned back and started up the stairs, grateful for the moonlight that made the climb, if not less treacherous, at least visible. Footsteps sounded behind me. Aunt Mary. I paused, sighed and kept going. At least I’d tried.

Elizabeth still fumbled with the heavy key, trying to fit it into the lock. “Blast.” She tried the latch, but it was firmly locked. The door didn’t respond to rattling, either. She tried the key again. “I don’t suppose either of you
has a flashlight.” Frustration was ripe in her voice as she bent down closer to the door.

Aunt Mary opened her tote bag purse, fished around and found the small flashlight she always carried. She flashed it on the keyhole.

Elizabeth glanced up. “That part of your girl scout training?”

“Came in handy, didn’t it?”

Elizabeth laughed and the key went in. The door opened with a loud creak. Cora Lee gave a little gasp and clutched Aunt Mary’s arm.

“What, what!” Aunt Mary clutched Cora Lee right back. “Do you see something?”

“No.” She dropped her arm.

“What are you two doing?” Elizabeth pushed the door open a little more. “You coming or not?”

Aunt Mary gulped.

So did I
.

Cora Lee straightened and clutched her cane a little tighter. “Right behind you,” she whispered loudly.

We crept through the doorway into a pitch-black hallway. The only light was the dim beam of the moon that stopped at the porch.

“What’s that smell?” Cora Lee’s whisper
broke the silence like a shout.

“Shhh. You’ll scare him away. Listen.”

We did. Cora Lee clutched Aunt Mary again with her left arm, swinging the cane with her right. The gleam of the silver handle shone in the tiny sliver of light from the open door. Elizabeth stood a little in front of us, a barely discernible shadow, turning her head one way and then the other.

“Ouch! Cora Lee, will you watch what you’re doing? You darn near broke my ankle.”

I could just make out Elizabeth standing on one leg like a crane in a skirt. I smothered the nervous laugh that almost escaped and my hand that held the cellphone shook a little. I couldn’t seem to make it stop. I let it drop into the open mouth of my drawstring bag. If I dropped it on the floor in this cavernous darkness, I’d never find it again.

“What is that smell? It’s horrible.”

I had no idea but Cora Lee was right.

Aunt Mary sniffed the air. “It smells like someone lost their cookies.”

“Or worse.” Elizabeth gave a little cough. “Ugh. Where’s it coming from?”

The rancid smell was strong but there was something else, something faint but familiar. I gingerly sniffed the air, trying to identify the other smell. Candle wax. A freshly blown out candle. Unmistakable. I sniffed again. The horrible odor almost covered it up, but it was there. I quit sniffing and stirred. We couldn’t stay huddled in this room, hallway, whatever it was, all night. I whispered at Aunt Mary, “Where’s your flashlight?” She fished around in her bag, finally pulled it out and flicked it on. The beam traveled but illuminated nothing more threatening than closed doors.

“Do the lights work in this house?” I asked in a loud whisper. Why, I had no idea. If anyone was here, they knew we were also. “If so, will someone please turn them on?”

Cora Lee moved toward the wall. “Flash that light over
 … no, more … there.”

Lights appeared. Aunt Mary blinked and tensed, ready to run. Or hide. Only, no one jumped out waving a pistol or brandishing a knife. Nothing happened, and there was no sound. She relaxed a little. So did I. I shook out my shoulders and looked around. The room where we stood was actually a wide hallway that ran the length of the house.
In the middle was a round table with a badly tarnished empty silver bowl on it. Two straight-backed chairs sat against the walls on each side of the hallway, one with a small table beside it. A huge chandelier hung over the table, but that wasn’t the source of the light. Small sconces glowed on the wall areas between two closed doors. There were double doors at the very end. “What’s behind those doors?”

“The river.” Cora Lee crept down the hall
way, cane tapping, slowly examining each closed door, pausing before one. It was slightly ajar.

“They open on the river side. In the summer, both sets of doors would be
left open to let a cross breeze cool the house.” Elizabeth tiptoed closer to Cora Lee. “Can you see anything?”

“Not a thing, but I think the smell is coming from in there.” She gestured at the partially opened door.

Elizabeth pinched her nose and coughed. Her voice sounded gravelly as she tried to see around Cora Lee. “Ugh. That’s foul.”

Cora Lee held her cane over her shoulder,
as if it were a baseball bat. “Don’t just stand there. Push it open all the way.”

Elizabeth pushed. The smell rushed out to fill the hallway.

“Oh. I’m going to be sick.”

“Cora Lee,
don’t you dare! I’ll never forgive you.” Elizabeth peered into the room. The light from the great hall only cast more shadows. “Someone’s drawn the curtains. Damn. Where’s the light switch? Mary, where’s that flashlight?”

“The switch is there, by your left hand.”

Elizabeth stepped into the room and felt along the wall. Aunt Mary squeezed in behind her, flashing her light around. The house felt empty, but someone had been here. Was he hiding in some other part of the house, waiting for us to leave so he could make his escape? Phew. Cora Lee was right. The smell was overpowering. So overpowering I forgot for a minute to be afraid. Aunt Mary flashed her light on the dark oak floor, then along the walls, but all it illuminated was wood wainscoting topped with red and gold flocked wallpaper. Her light lingered on it a second. Hideous. The light traveled on. An elegant Oriental rug lay inside the door. A long dining room table above another, larger rug was located farther in the room. Carved chairs with ball feet sat around the table. Heavy draperies covered what was probably a window on the far wall. Nothing that could be the source of the smell. I took another sniff and instantly covered my mouth with my hand. We had to find out what it was and get rid of it. Quickly.

Lights came on. The crystal chandelier above the dining room table blazed, pouring light into every corner of the room. Elizabeth rounded the table, stopped abruptly
, and gasped. She was seemingly transfixed by something on the floor behind the table. Aunt Mary moved around and stopped just as abruptly as she, too, stared at the floor by the buffet. “Oh, dear God in heaven.” She gagged and almost dropped the flashlight. “It’s George Washington.”

Cora Lee pushed in between them. “What’s the matter with you two?”
There was a sharp intake of breath as she skidded to a stop. She didn’t say anything for a moment and when she did, her words were almost inaudible. “No, it’s not. It’s Montgomery Eslick.”

I rounded the table from the other end, confused. What lay there halted me just as quickly.
My gasp was loud in the silent room. A man lay on the Oriental rug, body bent backward as if in agony. It wasn’t just any man. For one brief moment, I thought Aunt Mary had been right—it was George Washington. Of course it wasn’t, but this man was dressed in dark-blue knee pants tied just below the knees. Rumpled white hose showed above black buckled shoes. The blue jacket had long, wide skirts, now half wrapped around the corpse. A ruffled white fissure, only partly visible, was white at the throat, the ruffles stained yellow. Yellow stained the Oriental carpet under the head of the man as well. A small crystal glass lay beside his hand, its pale yellow contents mixed with what had once been the contents of his stomach. A blue tri-corner hat lay half under the table.

No one
spoke for a moment. I don’t think any of us could.

Finally, Elizabeth
said, “It’s the ghost. Only, it’s not. It really is Monty. What’s he doing here?”

“I have no idea.” Cora Lee stared at the body, then at an array of small tapered glasses on the buffet. “Looks like he was having a party that didn’t turn out so well.” She took a step closer.

“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth looked around the room, then back at the body. “Why would Monty have a party in the dining room? Cora Lee, what are you doing?”

“
Making sure this time he’s dead. If this is who you saw in our upstairs hallway, he was no ghost. At least, he wasn’t then.”

“You’re making sure by poking him with your cane?”

“How else am I going to find out?”

“If he was faking it, he wouldn’t be lying in all that.” Elizabeth shuddered and took a step back. “He’s dead all right.”

“Hmm.” Cora Lee pulled her cane back and leaned on it, still staring at the body. “I guess you’re right.”

I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing. The need to take
a deep breath suddenly became strong. I gave in, to my immediate dismay. Knowing what the stench was somehow made it worse. Much worse. So did the realization of what must have happened. “Not much of a party with only two people.”

“How do you know there was someone else?”

“Elizabeth, we’re here because we saw a light through the front windows, a light that shouldn’t have been there. This person,” I gestured at the dead man, “is very dead, and has been for more than a few minutes, so someone else had to have been present. Unless, of course, you think he swallowed something lethal, walked around with a candle until he started to feel bad, blew it out and came in here to die.”

“A very unlikely scenario. I see a glass but no candle.” Cora Lee’s voice was amazingly matter of fact.

From where I stood, only the back of the dead man’s head was visible. His white wig, its hair tied neatly back with a dark blue ribbon, had slipped to one side, covering one ear and obscuring his face. If he had appeared in my hallway, I’d have been just as terrified as Elizabeth evidently had been. Only, he wasn’t in the hallway. He was in the dining room of what was supposed to be an empty house, with one small glass from a set lying on the floor beside him. I looked a little closer. It appeared to have contained some liquid, yellow and sticky, that had not agreed with him.

Aunt Mary looked a little white. I hoped she wasn’t going to faint. Cora Lee didn’t look much better. Her hand shook as she leaned on her cane
.

“Are you all right?”
Should I pull out one, or two, or maybe three, of the chairs? Vague thoughts of crime scenes and much less vague thoughts of interfering with the scene stopped me.

“Of course.” Cora Lee stood straighter, visibly trying to stop the trembling.

“We’ve got to get the police.” Aunt Mary fumbled in her tote bag for her cellphone, dropping it back in before getting it all the way out. Luckily, it hadn’t landed on the floor. “Drat. Ellen, do you have yours?”

“Let me call.” Elizabeth’s voice had a distinct tremor, but she still had enough control to take charge. She reached for my phone
, and I handed it over. “I can describe better where we are. Then I think we should try to reach Noah.”

“Call Noah first.” Cora Lee quit leaning on her cane. She glanced at the other two, then me, walked to the doorway and looked into the hall. “You locked the passageway door to your house, didn’t you, Elizabeth? I can see the front doors and also the back ones from here, and about the only other way out of this house is through my father’s conservatory. You don’t suppose whoever was here with Monty hasn’t left yet?”

Elizabeth’s hand seemed to freeze in place as she started to punch the buttons on my phone. “The conservatory door’s locked with a padlock.”

“How about the cellar? Could someone get out that way?”
I looked around, wondering where the steps might be.

“The only inside cellar steps are in my house and the only outside door is padlocked. I think we’d better leave. I can make those calls from the other house.”

“Wait.” Cora Lee hurried back into the room, avoided the corpse, and stopped at the buffet to stare at the little glasses. “I thought so. Why, those are my mother’s. The original Smithwood Syllabub glasses.” She took a step closer to the buffet, but Elizabeth grabbed her arm.

“Those glasses aren’t going anywhere, but we are. Right now.” She let go of Cora Lee and crept over to the door. She peeked around it toward the back doors then took a step into the wide hallway. “Seems to be all clear. Cora Lee, you go first. You have the cane.”