‘Lettie!’ All eyes turned to stare at her. ‘Here’s Lettie now. What does she have to say about it?’
‘Good morning.’ Smiling placidly, Lettie advanced to the nearest table, the one filled with the undemanding guests who were just along for the ride. It was a nice try, but she didn’t get away with it.
‘Lettie!’ Bertha Stout called her over to her table. ‘Lettie—’ She waved a piece of paper at her—‘do you know anything about this? It was pushed under my door this morning.’
‘What—?’ Lettie snatched for the piece of paper, but Bertha pulled it back out of her reach. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘I just told you. It was pushed under my door this morning. You recognize it, don’t you?’
‘No!’ Lettie said frantically; she did it very well. ‘I never saw it before in my life. It’s a forgery!’
‘If you never saw it before and you don’t know what it is, how can you say it’s a forgery?’ Asey Wentworth pounced. ‘Got you there!’
‘What is it?’ someone called from an adjoining table. ‘What have you found?’
‘Evidence,’ Bertha said triumphantly. ‘It’s an application for a marriage licence—made out to Sir Cedric Strangeways and Letitia Heyer, Spinster of this Parish.’
‘And it’s two months old,’ Asey pointed out. ‘How about it, Lettie? Did you get the old boy to go through with it? Is there a marriage certificate hidden away somewhere? Are you really Lady Strangeways?’
‘That’s no concern of yours!’ Lettie flared.
‘Lettie!’ Lady Hermione rose from her table and stalked over to confront her. ‘Is this true? What have you to say for yourself, girl?’
‘Don’t you girl me, your high-and-mighty Ladyship. I’m as good as you are!’ Lettie hurled her tray down on the table and rushed from the room.
‘Come back here! Don’t you run away when I’m speaking to you!’ Lady Hermione chased after her.
‘I don’t understand—’ Alice Dain said into the momentary silence that followed. ‘Did she marry him, or didn’t she? Is she Lady Strangeways? Is that what she meant when she said she was as good as Lady Hermione?’
‘If she married him, then this place ought to belong to her now. So why is she still wearing her maid’s uniform and waiting on us?’
‘To throw us off the track. If she inherits, that gives her a motive for doing away with him.’
‘But if she hadn’t married him yet, it would give Lady Hermione a motive for getting rid of her brother before he was able to marry Lettie. Lady Hermione would hate having a maid for her sister-in-law—and she’d inherit if Sir Cedric was still a bachelor when he died.’
‘Unless he left a Will saying otherwise. Has anyone heard anything about a Will?’
Theories were flying thick and fast. Only the table occupied by Dixon Carr and his cohorts refrained from adding to the din. When the first outburst had died down, if only to allow the guests to eat their breakfast while it was still hot—Dix cleared his throat.
‘I wouldn’t want to detract from your triumph—’ He leaned across the space between their tables and addressed Bertha. ‘But I found a little something slipped beneath my own door this morning.’
‘The marriage certificate?’ Bertha was instantly jealous of her personal clue.
‘No, no. Not so dramatic as yours, I admit.’ He paused. ‘But food for thought.’ He unfolded a small slip of paper and smiled at it. ‘Definitely food for thought.’
‘Tell them,’ Haila Bond prodded eagerly. ‘Read it out to them.’
‘It just says: Et tu, Brute? Now, doesn’t that make you think?’
‘Think what?’ Bertha sniffed. ‘It’s too cryptic to be of any use.’
‘Is it?’ Dix nodded as though his private estimate of her intelligence had been confirmed. ‘Think of Sir Cedric’s last words: Et … et. I believe that this is what he was trying to say: Et tu, Brute?’
There was an impressed silence.
‘But who’s Brute?’ Alice Dain wailed.
‘Would you like to answer that, young man?’ Dix turned to Edwin Lupin.
‘You’re way ahead of me, sir,’ Ned confessed with an easy grin. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, it wasn’t me. I’d never seen the old boy before yesterday. I certainly don’t qualify as Brutus to his who-ever-it-was.’
‘Cæsar,’ Dix said. ‘Julius Cæsar—one of the greatest Generals in the history of mankind. And Sir Cedric was a military historian. At this moment, his thoughts turned to the parallel—the betrayal of Caesar by the friend he trusted.’
‘What friend?’ Bertha demanded. ‘We’re all strangers to him. He was sitting at the bridge table with his sister and Petronella—he wouldn’t call either of them Brutus. And Edwin had never met him before.’
‘Aha!’ Dix nodded maddeningly. ‘I hope to have more information about that before the day is over.’
‘You mean you hope something else will be pushed under your door,’ Bertha said witheringly.
Before Dix could reply, a bloodcurdling scream resounded through the hallway outside, accompanied by sounds of pounding feet, then another scream.
This was unscheduled. Midge took a firmer grip on her tray and waited; her nerves had toughened immeasurably in recent weeks.
‘He’s gone! Gone!’ One of the Chandler twins appeared in the doorway, hysterical.
‘He isn’t in his room! He isn’t anywhere!’ Her twin pushed her aside and howled out her news. ‘Bramwell Barbour has disappeared!’
Bertha and Dix threw down their napkins and were neck-and-neck racing for the doorway.
‘Are you sure?’ Bertha demanded.
‘Has his bed been slept in?’ Dix wanted to know.
‘Yes,’ one of the twins wailed. ‘But I’m sure he wasn’t in it for long. He—he’s gone!’
‘Now take it easy.’ Dix looked over her shoulder and addressed his next question to Amaryllis, who has just appeared. ‘Is this true?’
‘It’s true,’ she said grimly. ‘Bramwell has disappeared. He must have gone during the night. I didn’t see him or hear him this morning. When I knocked on his door and went in—he wasn’t there.’
‘He can’t have gone far,’ Bertha said. ‘Not in this storm.’
‘I didn’t like to say anything—’ Haila Bond was clearly delighted to be able to bear witness—‘but I heard footsteps in the middle of the night. Footsteps where they couldn’t have been—inside the walls. I was going to ask if the place was haunted.’
‘It isn’t,’ Midge said firmly. Someone must have been careless using the servants’ passage.
‘Then maybe it was Bramwell Barbour, I heard. Maybe he walks in his sleep.’
‘He’s never done that before,’ Amaryllis said coldly.
‘There’s a first time for everything.’ Bertha frowned. ‘But where could he have gone? Did you check outside?’
‘We looked out of all the windows,’ Brigid choked. ‘We couldn’t see anything.’
‘You couldn’t,’ Lauren said. ‘I saw a trail of hollows in the snow, like footprints filled in by fresh snow. I think we ought to follow them. He may be lying out there—buried in the drifts.’
‘Excuse me,’ Stanley Marric interrupted, a wicked gleam in his eyes. ‘But has anyone noticed that Evelina T. Carterslee isn’t here, either? Maybe they’ve run off together.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Amaryllis snapped. ‘Why, she’s old enough to be—’
His mother? Unspoken, the thought hung heavy in the air that Bramwell was perhaps more comfortable in the company of older women.
‘That’s silly!’ Lauren was furious. ‘Why, Bramwell’s engaged to us—or as good as.’
‘Us?’ Dixon Carr blinked. ‘Surely you mean one or the other of you.’
‘Oh, sure. Either one.’ The twins exchanged glances and tittered. ‘It doesn’t matter. We share everything.’
‘I should think that the gentleman concerned might have something to say about that.’ Dix regarded them with severe disapproval.
‘Him? He can’t tell us apart, anyway.’ They tittered again. ‘No one can. He’ll never know the difference.’
‘And you, madam—’ Dix turned his stern gaze on Amaryllis. ‘Do you approve these plans for a ménage à trois? With your own son as an unknowing victim?’
‘Oh, they’re just being silly little girls,’ Amaryllis said indulgently. ‘They don’t really mean it. They’re only trying to shock you.’
‘They’ve succeeded,’ Dix said.
The Chandler twins meant it. Amaryllis must be the only person within earshot who didn’t believe them. Of course, she wouldn’t, would she? She could not admit to herself that she was willing to sell her son into that sort of slavery. Midge felt new sympathy for Bramwell. He had more problems than she had thought—and she’d been aware that he had plenty.
‘Oh! Why are we standing here?’ Brigid exploded. ‘We’ve got to find him! Let’s make up two search parties—one for outdoors and one for inside the house. We’ve got to find him!’
‘One last question,’ Dix said. ‘How did you—I mean, you two—happen to discover he was missing?’
‘We were going to have breakfast with him. Amaryllis invited us. We waited and waited for him to wake up. When he didn’t, we opened his door—and he was gone!’
‘Umm-hmm …’ Glances were exchanged, several people began to drift back to their abandoned breakfasts. Suddenly, there wasn’t quite so much mystery about Bramwell Barbour’s disappearance. He had a motive none of them could quarrel with—they would have leaped out of a window themselves, if necessary, to escape breakfast with the Chandler twins.
‘We’re wasting time!’ Lauren said. ‘He could be lying hurt somewhere—dying!’
Some of the others were becoming uneasy again. There was just the possibility …
‘Those footsteps I heard—’ Haila Bond’s eyes snapped avidly. ‘They were going upstairs. To the attic.’
‘That’s a clue, if I ever heard one.’ Dix grasped it eagerly. No one was anxious to go out and blunder about in the storm just to quiet the twins’ hysterical fears. ‘Suppose we search the house first? If we don’t find him in here, then we can think about looking outside.’
‘Great idea.’ Stanley Marric was enthusiastic. He glanced towards the windows and shivered involuntarily. ‘We’re bound to find him inside somewhere.’
Midge was sure of it. If necessary, she would kick him out of his sanctuary herself.
‘But if he is outside—’ The Chandler twins remained unconvinced. ‘If he is, he could be frozen to death while we’re searching in here in the warmth.’ Lauren didn’t realize it, but she had just blown her argument. Reminded afresh of the blizzard outside and the comfort within, the searchers were unanimous in their determination to begin inside—and stay inside.
‘We’ll start with the attic,’ Haila said. ‘That was where those footsteps were heading.’
‘Not only that,’ Dix backed her, ‘but it’s the correct way to search a house. From the top down.’
‘I still think we ought to start outside,’ Lauren protested. ‘Just because Haila has been hearing ghosts is no reason—’
‘There are no ghosts in Chortlesby Manor,’ Midge said.
‘There are always ghosts in a place like this.’ Brigid was equally firm. ‘You’re just trying to keep it from us because you think we’d be scared.’
Midge opened her mouth, then closed it again. Let them believe what they liked. The main thing was that the search could replace the scavenger hunt and keep them occupied until the next murder.
Roberta Rinehart was in the kitchen, looking inordinately happy, when Midge returned. The night’s sleep seemed to have accomplished a minor miracle.
‘I couldn’t face the hordes at this hour,’ she greeted Midge cheerfully. ‘I’m hiding out here until I have time to wake up. Cook’s taking care of me wonderfully. I told her I only wanted toast and coffee, but she’s insisting I have the full English breakfast.’
‘Quite right,’ Midge said absently. ‘You’ll need to be well fortified to put up with them this morning. They’re searching the house right now.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Bramwell Barbour has disappeared.’
‘That was sporting of him.’ Roberta looked thoughtful. ‘Or should I say cowardly?’
‘Cowardly, by all means. He’s behind the scenes with Cedric, escaping the Chandler twins.’
‘I see.’ Roberta sighed. ‘I did feel a bit guilty about that, I must admit. But what could I do? They insisted on joining the tour—and heaven knows they have enough money. I couldn’t refuse to take them just because it would upset Bram. Let his mother protect him from them.’
‘His mother appears to be on their side.’
‘In that case, he’s just going to have to grow up and fight his own battles.’ Roberta shrugged off Bramwell’s troubles, obviously in too good a mood to let anything disturb her. She stretched luxuriously, raising her arms full-length above her head, and giggled.
‘What are you so pleased about?’ Midge was instantly suspicious. The difference between Roberta last night and Roberta this morning was so dramatic that it could hardly be accounted for by just a good night’s sleep.
‘Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve had a lovely sleep, a delicious breakfast—and it’s a beautiful day!’
‘You call this blizzard beautiful? Don’t you realize you’re all going to be stranded here for heaven knows how long?’
‘Yes,’ Roberta gurgled joyously. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Wonderf—? Roberta, is there something you’d like to tell me?’
‘I’ll tell you—’ Roberta’s eyes were dancing—‘but, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell anyone else. I’ve been worried sick for the past couple of days. The charter company let us down. They suddenly notified me that they couldn’t supply a plane to fly us home tomorrow night. If we had to re-book the tour on to commercial flights, it would eat up most of our profits and we’d probably have had to split up the tour and send them on different planes. It would have upset everyone and spoiled the whole tour for them. Now, we’re saved! We can’t be blamed for a blizzard. Another couple of days and the charter company will have a plane available and the tour will never know.’ She suddenly looked concerned.
‘It is all right, isn’t it? You have enough food—?’
‘Plenty,’ Midge said. ‘The freezer is well-stocked. Depending on how long we’re snowed up, the food may get a bit monotonous, but there’ll be enough of it.’
‘Good.’ Roberta sighed with relief. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make it up to you on the price. You won’t lose by it.’
‘I’m not worried,’ Midge said truthfully. A couple of extra days of the cash bar would bring a hefty profit. Happily, this was a fairly heavy-drinking crowd. Or perhaps the Thirties theme, with its reminder of Prohibition, was encouraging them to drink more.
‘Good. Then we have nothing to worry about.’
Loud hysterical screams suddenly resounded from somewhere above them.
‘Nothing—’ Midge said grimly—‘except the possibility that one of us may do actual murder before this crowd leaves. Come on, let’s go and see what they’re taking on about now.’
