Murder Goes Mumming (14 page)

“For God’s sake where’s Val with those blankets? Auntie will get pneumonia.”

“I don’t think so.” Madoc Rhys was standing behind the sofa, his arms tight around Janet. “I think she’s past it.”

Nobody paid any attention to him except Janet herself. She twisted around to face him.

“Madoc, I didn’t know what to do. She went out and I started to follow her, but Cyril got under the kissing ball and was yelling at me to come over and …”

“Sh-h, darling. It’s all right. Thank God you didn’t wind up out there with her.”

Babs was standing as close to the fire as she could get, sipping from a glass of brandy Donald was holding for her, huddling his dark green brocade coat around her ruined finery.

“He just seemed to go crazy. I don’t know what happened. When I realized she was out there he—I tried to make him open the door and he kept hitting at me with that cane. I thought he was going to poke my eyes out. I couldn’t—this stupid arm of mine—I’m afraid I’ve put up a bad show.”

“Don’t be silly, Mother, you probably saved her life.”

Val had come back with the blankets and was wrapping one around her mother, who couldn’t stop shivering. “Daddy, I think Mama’s in shock. Can’t we get her up to bed?”

“No, I’m all right. Truly, darling,” Babs protested. “I have to see if Aunt Addie’s—where’s Cyril?”

“He was out in the hall when I came through. Roy’s holding him and Uncle Lawrence is trying to get some sense out of him. He can’t even seem to recall what he did.”

“Herbert, go help them,” snapped Squire. “Get him up to his room and lock him in till he comes to his senses.”

“Franny and Winny can go,” said May. “I want Herb with me.”

Clara brought hot-water bottles. May reached under the blankets and stripped off Aunt Addie’s undergarments, now wet from thawing snow. They rubbed, they slapped, they tried against all tenets of sound first-aid practice to get her to swallow some brandy. The liquid ran out the side of her half-open mouth.

“She’s not getting warm,” Clara said in a puzzled voice. “Why isn’t she getting warm?”

“Keep at it,” panted May. “Put some more logs on the fire, can’t you, Herb?”

“It’s hot enough to roast an ox already.”

Herbert was sweating, wiping his head with the back of his sleeve. One of his cardboard lobster claws was broken and flapping absurdly down over his eyes, the other wilted and curving backward. May looked like a pictorial nightmare by Hieronymus Bosch. The whole scene was a fantasy: the limp, unresponding figure on the opulent sofa with the leaping fire behind, the wet clothes dropped on the floor, the anxious faces above the frivolous costumes.

And still Aunt Addie did not respond. Squire tried to put through a call to a doctor in Dalhousie for advice, but the line was dead. Babs thought of taking the old woman’s temperature and found it under ninety degrees. When May tried again a little later it was two degrees lower. Madoc Rhys suggested holding a mirror to Miss Adelaide’s mouth. It remained unclouded. There was no pulse, no heartbeat. Still May wouldn’t give up.

“I’ve read about people being underwater for half an hour and still coming round. If they’re cold enough …”

“God knows she’s cold enough!” Clara was getting hysterical.

“I’m afraid,” said Madoc Rhys, “that people who’ve been revived after long immersion were given special treatment in hospitals. Fluids were administered intravenously and other things done that we couldn’t manage here. There is also the problem of not all the body organs beginning to work at once even if resuscitation begins. If the head warms up before the heart, for instance, brain cells may be killed. Toxicity may destroy the liver before it can begin excreting. Also, I believe the lowest body temperature at which anybody has so far been known to survive is eighty-eight.”

“I don’t care,” said May. “She’s getting warmer. I can feel it.”

“That’s the hot-water bottles,” Clara argued. “Oh, God, my arms are ready to drop off. Take her temperature again, Babs.”

It was eighty-five. May wouldn’t let them stop until an hour had passed and the thermometer registered eighty degrees Fahrenheit. At that she sat down and buried her face in her hands, the red cardboard lobster claws still waving grotesquely over her bent head.

“She’s gone.”

“And Cyril’s a murderer.”

T
HAT WAS LAWRENCE, TYING
up the loose ends in his precise, legal way. May flew at him.

“Did you have to say that? Where is he? What have you done with him?”

“Exactly what Squire told us to, took him up to his room and locked him in. He was out on his feet before we’d even got him upstairs. Here’s the key, Squire. You’d better keep it. I don’t want the responsibility.”

“I do, if you don’t mind.”

Madoc Rhys stepped between Squire and Lawrence, his hand outstretched.

“You? What the hell for? It’s none of your business.”

“But it is, you see.”

Rhys pulled out his wallet and showed his credentials. Lawrence, agape, read them off.

“Detective Inspector Madoc Rhys, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. What the hell? You said you worked for the government.”

“I do.”

“In research,” Donald added numbly.

“My mother said that. She is embarrassed by my profession. I did not contradict her because it is quite true that I do research. Right now I shall have to start researching the murder of your aunt because that is my job, you see.”

“My God, a Mountie!”

Herbert found that funny, for some reason. Maybe he was drunk or hysterical or a little of both. Maybe he just needed a laugh.

“Now,” said Rhys, “it is the usual procedure for me to take statements from you all. A matter of form, you understand. Janet, is your shorthand up to taking notes?”

“I can make a stab at it, anyway.”

“Then, if I could trouble you for paper and a pen, Ludovic?”

“But surely,” Squire stepped forward, his crimson mantle wrapped around him like a toga, “as Sir Emlyn’s son … you couldn’t … a breach of hospitality …”

“You and my mother would be in full agreement on that point, Squire Condrycke,” Madoc Rhys replied. “It is a social outrage for me to be doing these things. However, it would be a dereliction of duty for me not to do them. Then I should be fired and what would become of my wife? Also, I must point out to you that it is going to look very strange when that undertaker shows up and finds two bodies instead of one. It will be less awkward for you all, believe me, that this dreadful occurrence should be handled in a proper and official manner. Lawrence will appreciate the force of my argument. Also, being your legal adviser, he can counsel you as to your rights and duties with regard to answering my questions.”

“The man’s right,” said Lawrence. “Do it and get it over with. We’ve nothing to hide. Babs, you saw Cyril shove her out.”

“No, I didn’t. Anyway, it was only a … a prank. I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

“Babs, if he meant it as a prank then it would be impossible for him not to mean it at all,” said Rhys. “Could you be more explicit, please?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m so bewildered. I suppose what I meant was that Cyril didn’t mean to kill Aunt Addie. He’d been drinking a lot, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. When the Phantom Ship appeared the second night in a row and she went into her usual performance … I’m sorry, that sounds unkind. Anyway, she’d been getting at him about fooling around with Granny’s cane and mocking the dead. You heard her. He—I don’t know what got into him. Cyril hasn’t been himself all day. Has he, May? Have you ever seen him carry on the way he did tonight?”

“Excuse me,” said Rhys. “I am the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions just now. Your sister-in-law will have her turn. Could you simply describe to me the actual physical acts that took place, without regard to what anybody may have been thinking at the time?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“What prompted you to leave the Great Hall?”

“I had to go to the bathroom, since you’re interested in physical acts. Didn’t you hear me say so?”

Rhys merely continued his questioning.

“Where were Cyril and his aunt when you made this decision?”

“In the front hall, I suppose.”

“Why do you suppose so?”

“Because they’d left the Great Hall just before me, naturally.” Babs was sounding irritated. “You must remember. Cyril had been standing under the kissing ball trying to coax Janet over to him. If she’d been a bit less prissy about it—but I’m not supposed to engage in conjecture, am I?”

So now it was Janet’s fault for refusing to be mauled by Cyril and getting him into a temper. No doubt the Condryckes would cling to that belief, especially since Sir Emlyn’s son had turned out a traitor to his alleged class. Two worms in the same bud.

“You don’t have to write all that down, Jenny love. Just the part about their leaving the room. Did they go together or separately?”

“Together, of course,” said Babs. “Aunt Addie told him to come along with her and for a wonder, he went. Why do we have to go over all this stuff? You were here, weren’t you?”

The answer was no, but Rhys was not about to give it. “I am following customary police procedure,” he explained. “This is the pettifogging way we have to operate. Lawrence will tell you how important it is to conform to the letter of the law.”

“Answer him, Babs,” Lawrence obliged by saying. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Rhys is right. The more open we are, the less scandal there’ll be. Even Rhys himself can testify to the fact that Cyril was behaving in a totally irrational way. I’m sure we can get him off on a plea of … well, I shall have to take advice before I commit myself. I’m not a criminal lawyer, you know, despite local gossip to the contrary. Cyril will wind up spending some time in a sanatorium, I expect, which will do him no harm. Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

The devil in this case being Rhys, from the glares he was getting. Babs went on with her tale.

“My assumption that Cyril and Aunt Addie were in the front hall when I told May I was going to the bathroom is based on the fact that they went out before me and were still there when I passed them. I was in a hurry, to be as blunt as possible.”

“What were they doing when you passed them?”

“I couldn’t say. My impression is that they were standing there talking, but they may have been walking. Auntie moved very slowly sometimes, and she’d have been tired from the mumming and the dinner. But that’s conjecture, isn’t it? I just don’t know. I didn’t look back. I went directly up the stairs—that is, as directly as possible—and along the hallway to the bathroom, where I used the facilities in the customary manner.”

May emitted a nervous snicker. Rhys asked, “Was anybody else upstairs at the time?”

“I couldn’t say. You know how the bathrooms are arranged, all together. The first one happened to be vacant, so I used it. I had no reason to go poking into the others, so I didn’t.”

“You didn’t return to your bedroom to fix your hair or whatever?”

“I was wearing a wig,” Babs reminded him. “I would have had no occasion to fix my hair. I washed my hands, touched up my lipstick in the bathroom mirror, and came straight back down. Altogether I don’t suppose I was up there more than two or three minutes. It was cold in the hallways and I wanted to get back to the fire.”

“Would you say it was unusually cold?”

“I thought so. I put it down to the fact that I was wearing a costume instead of the warmer clothes I’d normally have on. It didn’t occur to me that Cyril might have opened the door, even though he was standing in front of it when I next saw him.”

“When did you see him?”

“As I was coming down the stairs. I didn’t see Aunt Addie but you know how the staircase twists and turns, and the light isn’t much good in the hall. When I got close enough to see that he was alone, I said, ‘Where’s Aunt Addie? I thought you two were going up together,’ or something of the sort. I daresay I sounded as annoyed as I felt. I’d hoped we were rid of Cyril for the evening. I’m sorry, Squire, but …”

“That’s quite all right, Babs,” said her father-in-law. “So had we all. What did Cyril tell you?”

“At first he just leaned against the door and smiled that same silly grin he’d had plastered to his face all evening, so I asked him again. By then I was beginning to feel worried, though I didn’t quite know why. Because of Granny, I suppose. Anyway, I think I said, ‘Did she go upstairs?’ and he answered, ‘No, she went to see the Phantom Ship.’

“Even then it didn’t register. I thought he meant she’d gone into the small parlor on the other side of the foyer to see if she could get a last glimpse of the ship from the bay window that faces west. I stuck my head in there and called, ‘Aunt Addie?’ But she wasn’t there. Then it dawned on me what he might have meant, and I ran back to the door. Cyril was still there with that same silly grin on his face. I said, ‘Cyril, she’s not outside?’ and he said again, ‘She went to see the Phantom Ship.’

“That was when I panicked. I tried to open the door and he wouldn’t let me near it. I struggled with him and he started hitting me with Granny’s cane and I was screaming …”

Babs began to tremble again. Donald put his arm around her.

“Now, Babs, try to calm yourself. We all know you did everything you could. Rhys, if you’re through badgering my wife, I’d like to take her upstairs. It hasn’t escaped your investigative mind, I trust, that she’s sustained physical injury as well as severe psychological shock?”

“It has not escaped me. I have finished with her and you may certainly take her upstairs as soon as I have finished with you.”

“With me? What can I say? I was simply here with everyone else. Helping May arrange chairs around the fireplace, as I recall.”

“Did you see your brother under the kissing ball?”

“Of course I did. He was waving that damned cane and yelling to Janet to come and kiss him, or words to that effect.”

“And did you see what Janet did?”

“She turned her back on him in a rather prim and ladylike fashion and went over to the fireplace. My sister May had been trying to get us to sit down. No, wait, that was after Cyril left the room that we sat down. Anyway, Aunt Addie went over and spoke to Cyril after he’d called out to Janet and said something I didn’t catch. The pair of them left the room, much to my personal relief, and that was when May said something to the effect of let’s all sit down and be comfortable. Since Janet was already by the fireplace, I got a chair for her, which she took. We were all finding seats and getting settled when my wife began screaming from the front hall.”