‘Someone give me a hand.’ Reggie dashed to the side of the fallen Sir Cedric. ‘Help me get him to his room.’
‘He’s dead!’ The Chandler twins began screaming also. ‘He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s been murdered!’
‘Nonsense!’ Lady Hermione flashed a look of pure venom at them. ‘The old fool has forgotten his pills again. And he knows I hate playing with a dummy. Stop that noise, girl!’ She turned her venom on Lettie.
‘Take his feet,’ Reggie ordered Edwin, who had rushed to help. They took a careful grip on Cedric, lifted him from the floor and headed for the doorway, staggering under his dead weight.
‘What happened? What happened?’ Those who had mounted guard over Algie abandoned him and surged over to the bridge table which had been the scene of the action.
‘He said he wasn’t feeling well—right after a gulp of that coffee.’
‘Naw, he said he was feeling peculiar—and it was just after he drank some brandy.’
‘Is anyone—’ Lady Hermione asked coldly. ‘Is anyone going to pick up Cedric’s hand and give me a game of bridge?’
‘How can you be so cold, so unfeeling?’ Petronella threw down her own hand and glared at Lady Hermione. ‘Your own brother carried out—perhaps dead—and all you can think of is bridge!’
Lettie, hands over her face and sobbing wildly, had been led to a sofa and settled into it by several of the guests.
‘Stand back. Give her air,’ someone instructed.
‘Here.’ Dix pushed forward carrying a glass and bent over Lettie solicitously. ‘Have a brandy. That’s what you need.’
‘Oh, thank you, sir.’ Lettie groped blindly for the glass, found it and took a deep gulp. Immediately, she coughed and spluttered. Dix had gone behind the bar himself in Reggie’s absence and she had been given a straight cognac rather than the cold tea she had expected.
‘You’re callous! Unfeeling!’ Petronella shrieked. I can’t stand you!’ She stumbled away from the table.
‘Steady on, old girl.’ Algie crossed to her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Steady, Pet.’ He assisted her out of the room.
‘Well—!’ Lady Hermione threw down her hand. ‘If no one is going to play—!’ She stood up and stalked from the room.
Stanley Marric bent over the table and examined her discarded cards. ‘No wonder she’s so mad,’ he said. ‘She had a great hand here.’
‘How can you think of a thing like that at a time like this?’ Haila Bond snapped. ‘You’re as bad as she is.’
‘Bram—’ The Chandler twins moved over to flank their prey. ‘Bram, aren’t you going to do something? Sir Cedric has just been murdered. Aren’t you going to solve the case?’
‘No,’ Bram said. Unnerved, he led with the wrong card and lost the trick.
‘We don’t know that it was murder,’ Evelina pointed out loudly. ‘We’re not even sure that Sir Cedric is dead. All we know at this point is that he was indisposed and has been taken to his room.’
‘Is that going to be your story?’ Until Sir Cedric’s collapse, Bertha Stout had been sitting at the Mah Jong table moodily examining the gleaming mother-of-pearl counters and speculating with the other people at the table as to the possible rules of the game. (Unfortunately, the set Reggie had unearthed at a local antique shop had not included a copy of the rules and no one had any idea of how the game should be played. It was there for decorative purposes—and as a genuine period touch.)
‘You’re not going to help, either?’ Bertha Stout challenged Evelina. ‘There are going to be no flashes of insight from the brilliant mind that created Luigi von Murphy?’
‘Not at the moment.’ Evelina calmly led a trump, to the consternation of Alice Dain.
‘Then—’ Bertha Stout looked round at the others and uttered the rallying cry they had all been waiting for. ‘Then we’ll have to solve it ourselves!’
‘Oh, how can you? How can you?’ Lettie leaped to her feet, glaring at them accusingly. ‘Poor Cedric’s not even cold yet—and you’re treating it like some sort of game!’ She turned and rushed from the room.
‘Aha,’ Dix said thoughtfully. ‘There’s more to that girl than meets the eye. She called him Cedric, did you notice? Not Sir Cedric. I’ll bet there was something going on there.’
Midge quietly left the room. Under cover of Lettie’s outburst, she had unobtrusively cleared the fetal table. When they turned to inspect the evidence, it would be gone. This would place her, as ‘housekeeper’ and person who had done some of the serving, under suspicion as well as the actors.
‘It’s started, has it?’ Cook looked up as Midge returned to the kitchen. ‘I saw them carrying Sir Cedric through to the private quarters. They dropped him twice before they got there,’ she added with gloomy relish. ‘And they couldn’t stop and let him walk because a couple of the guests were following them. They had to pick him up and carry on. He won’t half have some bruises in the morning.’
‘Oh dear, poor Cedric.’ Midge stacked the cups, saucers and glasses in the dishwasher and switched it on. ‘There, that will give them something to worry about.’
Ackroyd sauntered over to her feet and complained bitterly about his continued incarceration in the kitchen.
‘Oh, all right,’ Midge said, opening the door for him. ‘You can go and join the party—but don’t get in the way.’
‘Well.’ Cook rose, responding to some inner clock, crossed to the cooker and began removing trays of fragrant, steaming chicken fillets from the oven. ‘I’ll just put these in the larder to cool and then I’m going to go to my room and lock myself in. I don’t know what kind of people we’re getting these days, but there has to be something wrong with them. Whoever heard of spending your holiday pretending a murder has been committed and then chasing around prying into other people’s business and lying your own head off?’
It’s become very popular,’ Midge defended. ‘And thank heaven for it. We’d have had a hard winter without them.’
‘I don’t know what Mr Eric would have said about all these goings-on.’
‘Mr Eric is in Australia, having a wonderful time—and having left all the problems to poor Reggie. He wanted the Manor saved—and we’re saving it. We’re turning it into a going concern. Admit it now, Cook, isn’t it nice to be paid on time?’
Cook was arranging trays on racks in the larder, her reply was indistinct. She emerged, looking flustered but triumphant, and locked the larder door.
‘There,’ she said, ‘that will keep Ackroyd out. Smart as he is, he hasn’t learned to unlock doors yet. I’ll do a mayonnaise glaze on them first thing in the morning. They’ll look a treat for lunch.’
‘And they’ll be a treat. Oh, Cook, you’re a treasure. I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
‘That’s as may be.’ Cook was obviously pleased. ‘I’m not saying it isn’t nice to have lots of people to cook for again—just like the house-parties in the old days when Mrs Eric was alive. But I’m still locking myself in tonight. If you ask me, those people out there aren’t right in the head!’
‘They’re just harmless role-players, having fun in their own way.’
‘Some way!’ Cook sniffed and looked round the kitchen. ‘Just you keep them out of here. I won’t have them poking around and moving things out of their proper places so’s I can’t find them again.’
‘I’ll make it clear that the kitchen is out of bounds.’ Midge hoped she could enforce that rule. Perhaps it was going to be a mistake, bringing Cook in for a bit part. Would some of the guests follow her back to the kitchen for more questioning after she had drawn herself to their attention? It was awfully hard to predict what they might do. Every tour was different—and this one seemed to be keener than most.
Cook was right, though, there was something specially unsettling about these people, although Midge couldn’t quite put her finger on the reason—apart from the Chandler twins. Their open pursuit of Bramwell Barbour was a complication that had not been present on previous tours.
There were muted voices outside the kitchen door. Cook stiffened and watched the door with hostile eyes. Midge moved over to it, prepared to repel boarders.
‘Thought we might find you here—’ It was only Reggie and Ned, returning from having disposed of Cedric and having momentarily shaken off their pursuers. ‘Time to get back and man the bar. All this excitement will be making them thirsty.’
‘I suppose so.’ Midge followed Reggie back to the bar, Ned trailing behind. As Reggie had expected, there were several eager customers waiting.
‘How is he?’ Haila Bond demanded as Reggie took his place behind the bar. ‘How’s Sir Cedric?’
‘Still indisposed,’ Reggie said firmly. ‘But he wouldn’t want to spoil the party for anyone. Instructions are to carry on as usual.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Asey Wentworth accused.
‘Shhh—’ Reggie managed a splendid expression of furtive guilt. ‘We mustn’t disturb the others. There’s nothing anyone can do tonight and we don’t want to cast a pall over the festivities.’
‘Someone has done too much already.’ Dixon Carr fixed Midge with an accusing gaze. ‘Why did you clear that table, Midge?’
‘It’s customary to clear empty tables,’ Midge said crisply. ‘One can’t leave dirty dishes lying about.’
‘And where are those cups and glasses you cleared from that table now?’
‘In the dishwasher, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Haila Bond had crowded closer. ‘And I suppose you’ve switched the dishwasher on?’
‘Naturally.’ Midge was the picture of an innocent housekeeper. ‘That’s the whole point of having a dishwasher.’
‘So that takes care of that,’ Asey Wentworth said gloomily.
‘And just as well, too.’ Bertha Stout pushed her way to the fore. ‘We have no way of analysing substances. I say the only way we’ll solve this case is through the human element. Who wanted Sir Cedric dead? Who hated him? Who profited? Motivation—that’s where your answer lies.’ She glanced at Midge absently. ‘I’ll have a double bourbon. It’s going to be a long night.’
The others ordered enthusiastically, as well. Then, clutching their glasses, let the theories begin flying.
‘There was something extra in Sir Cedric’s coffee. Remember? When Lettie gave it to him, she said it was just the way he liked it. And they looked at each other.’
‘When he was dying, he called out for her. Remember? He kept trying to say her name … Et … Et …’
‘Aha! But did he mean Lettie—or Pet? They both have the et sound and he wasn’t articulating clearly. Could he have been accusing one of them? And which one?’
‘Or maybe he was saying it was something he et. That’s the way some of them pronounce ate over here. Maybe it was the mushroom soup catching up with him. I suspected the soup from the first!’
‘How about the ice-cream? Easy enough to slip a bit of cyanide into the Amaretto. The flavour would mask the taste until it was too late—’
‘Cyanide is too fast-acting for that. He’d never have made it to the drawing-room if it had been cyanide.’
‘Yes, and the gentlemen lingered over port, don’t forget. There was a good time-span between both soup and ice-cream before Sir Cedric collapsed. It must have been in his coffee or brandy.’
‘I still say—’ Dixon Carr glared at Midge—‘it’s too bad that table was cleared. We might have learned something.’
‘How?’ Bertha asked practically. ‘All you could have done was sniff at the cups and glasses. We already know there was something extra in Sir Cedric’s coffee. A few sniffs wouldn’t have necessarily told you what. None of us are that expert, you know.’
‘Here’s the only expert sniffer in the place.’ Midge bent and picked up Ackroyd, who had just strolled into the bar, having completed his circuit of the drawing-room. ‘You could show them a thing or two, couldn’t you, Ackroyd?’
‘Could he?’ Dix quivered with sudden suspicion. ‘Are you trying to tell us that cat is an expert witness?’
‘Why not?’ Midge laughed. ‘Just look at the way he’s shadowing you suspects.’
‘Maybe he’s heard your nickname is Codfish,’ Haila said to Asey Wentworth. ‘He’s going to try a little nibble.’
‘I know what he’s after.’ Midge set Ackroyd down on the floor and found a saucer for him. ‘He’s been haunting the bar ever since we started experimenting with exotic cocktails. It didn’t take him long to discover there’s always a jug of cream back here now. Did it, you little rotter?’ She poured cream into the saucer while Ackroyd twined round her ankles.
‘Just a minute, Midge.’ Dix caught her arm as she began to lower the saucer to the floor. ‘Let me see that.’ He took the saucer and sniffed at the cream while Midge stared at him incredulously.
‘Hmmm …’ He dipped a forefinger into the cream, sniffed again and gingerly touched it to the tip of his tongue. ‘It seems to be all right.’ He released her arm. ‘You can give it to him now.’
‘What on earth—?’ Midge looked at Dix blankly.
‘Just making sure.’ He smiled at her sternly. ‘It wouldn’t be the first death of an expert witness—and right under the noses of other people. I don’t mind losing Sir Cedric, but I’d hate to be party to the murder of Roger Ackroyd.’
