Malice in Miniature (27 page)

He smiled unpleasantly.

“Anyway, I thought you sneaked back from London early Thursday morning, disguised in women's clothes. You'd left a bicycle at the station, and came out to the Hall to put the monkshood in the tea. You left it awfully late; she almost caught you.”

“I had read an old railway schedule. There used to be an earlier train. It wasn't my fault.”

“And then Claude somehow figured out something. Either that you were a murderer, or else whatever his mother had over you. Anyway, he decided to take up where Mum left off, and you had to kill him, too. Hit him over the head, probably with that little vise of yours. It would make a lovely weapon.”

“A perspicacious woman,” he commented lightly.

“But I still can't figure out
why
you were being blackmailed.”

Sir Mordred laughed with what seemed almost genuine amusement, clapping his pudgy little hands together. “I think, dear lady, that we will allow you to remain ignorant on that subject. Though doubtless you would have reasoned it out, given sufficient time. It is rather a pity that I cannot allow you that time, but you will quite understand that I am not eager for you to convey your ideas to your illustrious husband. They are only ideas, of course. You haven't a shred of proof.”

My brain was beginning to work just a little, and I didn't care for the implications of what he was saying. “I've already told my husband everything I know.”

“No, you haven't. Your husband is out of town, and if you had managed to reach him, there would even now be hoards of flat-footed bobbies swarming over the place, looking for evidence. They might even find some; who knows? So I think I shall have to work out a way for you to disappear. I should prefer to wait until nightfall, which comes early in November. Meanwhile, this is a large house, and particularly with your indisposition—I do
wish
you would not sniffle, my dear—I shall be able to give you another pill or two and leave you for a lovely little rest until I have decided exactly how to—”

There was a crash somewhere near the bottom of the stairs, and a roar. “Dorothy! Are you there? DOROTHY!”

I stood, swaying a little, and started past Sir Mordred. “I'm afraid you've left it a little late. ALAN! I'm up here! Al—”

Sir Mordred clapped a hand to my mouth and pulled me close to him in a frantic embrace. “Quiet! Up the stairs! Now!” He forced me up a few stairs with a strength amazing in such a soft little man.

I bit him, freeing my mouth. “I won't! Let me go, you idiot! It's no use, they've heard—”

Footsteps began to pound up the stairs two flights below as I struggled to free myself. I got in one blow to Sir Mordred's chest that astounded me; he screamed in pain and I pulled back in horror. “But—” And then we both lost our balance and were falling, falling . . . falling, at last, into the arms of my husband.

There was a terrible pain in my leg, but I had to tell him. “But listen, Alan, he isn't—” And then a garden gnome brushed against my leg and I screamed, then sank thankfully into deep blackness.

W
e were seated around the dining room table almost a week later, with the remains of Thanksgiving dinner, carefully prepared by Jane at my direction, in front of us. The cats, replete with illicit turkey scraps, were sleeping it off somewhere; the rest of us were near that somnolent state. Jane sat back in her chair, her hands folded comfortably over her stomach. My American friends, Tom and Lynn Anderson, chomped absently on some celery. Richard sat with his arm draped casually along the back of Meg's chair, while young Jemima, in the corner of the room, played with my dollhouse, brought downstairs for the occasion. She didn't know it yet, but it was going to be her Christmas present.

Ada and Bob, who had been invited, had declined with thanks, but Ada had sent along a batch of English-style mince pies, the little ones like tarts. “Which,” she had commented, “I don't know as 'ow they're the right thing, seein' as it's not Christmas, but I 'ear tell as you 'as 'em for this Thanksgivin' 'oliday, too, and I wouldn't want you to think as I wasn't thankful, though I wouldn't feel right, sittin' down to dinner with you and 'Is Nibs an' all.”

I was almost comfortable, my leg stretched out in its cast to one side of the table, my crutches on the floor. I nibbled a mince pie idly and said into the sleepy silence, “And to think that I never realized he wasn't a man, until it was almost too late.”

“Almost too late, indeed!” snorted Alan. “If Bob hadn't sobered up enough to remember seeing you, I'd have gone off looking for you somewhere else, and . . .”

“Now, now,” I said soothingly, “you know I tried to call you and the chief inspector, and I never intended to confront him—her—I don't know what to call Sir Mordred.”

“Might as well call her Morgana,” growled Jane. “Her real name.”

“Anyway, I was just going to get the proof I knew you'd need before he had a chance to clean all the blood off the vise. It was when I looked at that bloody tissue, you see—sorry, all you English, I'm not swearing, I mean the tissue that had my blood on it from the cat scratch—it was when I looked at it that I realized how much dried blood looks like rust. I knew then that he wasn't cleaning rust off his tools that day. I should have realized, anyway. He was much too good a craftsman to let his tools get rusty. I'm sorry, I keep saying ‘he.'”

“I can't get used to it myself,” said Meg, shaking her head. “Over a year I worked there, never having the least idea I was working for a woman.”

“There were things everyone should have noticed,” I reflected, “though I didn't, either. His—her voice got very high and squeaky whenever she was upset, for one thing. And she would never see a doctor. That, of course, would have given the game away.”

“Just what
was
the game?” demanded Lynn Anderson. “I've grasped the fact that Morgana Brocklesby was pretending to be her brother Mordred, and had been for years. But why?”

“For the sake of the Hall,” said Alan.

“I always said the Hall was at the back of it,” muttered Jane.

“I'll explain, Dorothy,” Alan went on. “You're still a trifle hoarse from that cold, and there are some details I've not yet had a chance to tell you.”

He tented his fingers and went into his lecturing mode. “Mordred and Morgana were in their twenties—there was only a year's difference between them—were in their twenties when their parents died, and they decided to continue living together in Brentford, just outside London. I don't know that they were particularly devoted to one another, but they stayed on in the family home, perhaps out of inertia. Neither was interested in marriage, and they were disinclined to move from a place they were used to. They kept themselves to themselves, their neighbors say, and pursued their own interests.

“The switch happened during a trip abroad together in the fifties. There was a disastrous hotel fire in Venice; many people were killed. Morgana tells us she was out for the evening and returned rather late to find the place engulfed in flames. She realized immediately that her brother was dead, and with him her hopes of living one day in Brocklesby Hall. The inheritance was through the male line only.”

“But he—she—hated the Hall!”

“So ‘Sir Mordred' would have had us believe. In fact, Morgana's heart, all those years ago, was already given over to the collection of miniatures and to her dream, one day, of establishing the finest museum of dolls' houses in the world. Brocklesby Hall, and the money that would come with it, were essential to her dreams.

“So she decided, on the spot, that she would become her brother. They were not unlike, physically. He was a soft little man, and she a rather masculine woman. It remained only for her to stay somewhere obscure the night of the fire, buy some men's clothing in the morning, and show up at the morgue to identify her brother's body as hers.

“Italy was rather disorganized for some years after the war, or she probably wouldn't have been able to get away with it. Nowadays fire inspectors do what they can to identify bodies before the families ever see them, with dental records and so on. Even if only bones remain, they can be identified as male or female, at the very least. But at the time, her word was apparently accepted with alacrity, and no difficulties were put in the way of her obtaining emergency identity papers that would allow her a new passport, since she claimed she had left hers—his—at the hotel that night, and it had been burned. (You're right, my dear, the pronouns are confusing.) At any rate, from that day, Morgana Brocklesby vanished, and Mordred moved to another part of London, where no one would be likely to recognize that he was not quite what he seemed, and flourished.”

“But Morgana must have resurfaced from time to time,” I put in. “Or else why did she keep women's clothes in the attic?”

“She says she simply grew tired of being a man all the time, and now and then would go as Mordred to her club, which admits both men and women as members, change her clothes, exit as Morgana, and enjoy a day of nice feminine shopping.”

“And that's how Mrs. Lathrop found out, I'll bet. She snooped and found the clothes, and then blackmailed her boss, since he—whatever—would do anything to keep from being found out and disinherited.”

“Morgana says not. She says Mrs. Lathrop had met her many years ago, at some country-house function when she was a young woman and Mrs. Lathrop a housemaid. There is a small birthmark on Morgana's forehead, mostly hidden by hair, but Mrs. Lathrop had dressed her hair all those years ago and had, unfortunately for Morgana, an excellent memory. Lathrop apparently spotted the mark one warm day when Morgana pushed her hair back. She started blackmailing her a few days later. Morgana has gone on at some length about how monstrous Lathrop's behavior was.”

“She seems to be talking an awful lot,” commented Tom Anderson with a yawn.

“Oh, yes. She's gone right round the bend, and is quite proud of her exploits. She's explained any number of times to Derek Morrison that Lathrop was a criminal, robbing the Hall blind. You were right about that at the end, love; Morgana was stealing her own miniatures and selling them to pay off Lathrop's increasing demands. She knew the Hall could be profitable without that drain, so once she had finalized her plans to murder Lathrop she began buying them back, and hiring the staff her beloved museum required. She says she did nothing more than what had to be done to save her precious miniatures, and that she would have got by with it if it had not been for Dorothy. She seems to feel that justifies her being released, with our apologies!”

“Is she right?” growled Jane.

Alan looked amused. “I don't believe Derek has any plans to release her soon.” His smile faded. “In any case, her heart is not strong. It's quite possible she may never stand trial.”

Jane sighed with heavy patience. “Right about Dorothy.”

“Oh. Well, very possibly, as a matter of fact. She had covered her tracks nicely. No one at her London club had any idea ‘Sir Mordred' had not spent the whole night there, when she came back to poison Mrs. Lathrop's tea. As for Claude's murder, the staff at a busy pub couldn't say with any certainty whether a particular person had been there on a given night, and any marks there might have been in the grass, from dragging Claude's body to the lake, were nicely erased when you, Richard, mowed the lawn.”

“At the order of ‘Sir Mordred,'” said Richard.

“Exactly. It's true there were still traces of blood in the jaws of the vise. We'd have spotted that, if we'd had occasion to look. But it seemed that ‘Sir Mordred' had no possible motive for either murder, not to mention having been apparently elsewhere at the relevant times. No, without my perceptive wife—”

“‘Perspicacious,' Sir Mordred called me.”

“Rather high-flown language, don't you think, my dear? At any rate,” he cleared his throat, “that is why I have a proposition for you, and I might as well make it quite publicly, lest I ever be tempted to renege.”

“Alan, what
are
you talking about?”

“Just this, my dear. We've done some talking, and I for one have done considerable thinking, about your involvement in criminal investigation.”

I looked ruefully at my broken leg, which was beginning to ache a good deal. I knew what was coming.

Alan saw my glance and grinned broadly. “No, you will need to be married to me for a good many more years before you can
always
read my mind. I am
not
going to warn you off, despite your tendency to damage yourself. Quite the contrary, in fact.

“You have agreed that the move to Bramshill is a good idea, and that you can accept the temporary oversight of a country manor, though the thought gives you qualms. In appreciation for that generosity of spirit, I wish to state publicly that there is no excuse whatever for my discouraging you from getting mixed up in crime as much as you wish.”

I opened my mouth; he held up a hand.

“Let me finish my speech, love, and then you can say all you want. You see, I found myself recalling the reasons I first went into police work, all those years ago.”

“I asked you about that once,” I said, interrupting in spite of myself. “You said something about not liking crime.”

“I understated the case. I detest crime, and what it does to the victims.” His eyes moved for a moment to Meg and Richard, and then to Jemima. “They include the whole community, you know. Everyone is hurt by crime, especially violent crime.”

“And Bob lost his jobs,” I commented. “Even though he hadn't done anything.”

“Precisely. And when I was young, and discovered that I had an aptitude for finding out about things, and could be quite good with people, I decided to have a go at police work. I've never regretted it for a moment, not even through budget cuts, and the rise of public indifference— all the frustrations. I've spent forty years doing what I wanted to do, and I've done it well. That's a satisfying sort of life.