Murder Goes Mumming (17 page)

Franny and Winny were trying ever so hard not to look at each other, Rhys noted. He’d tackle that pair when he could get them alone. They’d be too smart or too scared to give a coherent answer in front of the assembled clan.

May couldn’t think of anything, or claimed she couldn’t. Either she was a remarkably obtuse mother or an overprotective one. Rhys felt like telling her to smarten up. Instead he went doggedly on with his questions.

“If Cyril had no friendly contact with any of the servants and hadn’t been off the place in months, that means one of yourselves is the likeliest person to have got the drug for him. You’re quite sure nobody has anything further to tell me? He hasn’t asked any of you to fill a prescription or pick up a package for him, for instance? You could have done it in all innocence, you know.”

Squire appointed himself spokesman for that one. “The suggestion that Cyril hasn’t been off the place for months may be open to question, Inspector. We’re a busy family and we don’t sit in each other’s pockets all the time. Clara and Lawrence only come for weekends and holidays as a rule, Donald and Babs can’t be with us as often as we’d like, and Val and the boys are still at school. Herbert, May, and I all have reason to leave the place from time to time. May and Clara went on a Christmas shopping spree to Montreal a week ago, for instance. I was in Fredericton on business for the estate last Tuesday and Wednesday. Herbert drove down to pick up the boys day before yesterday. This is typical of our behavior pattern. Cyril might easily have decided to drive into Charlo or somewhere without bothering to mention it. As long as he was back in time for dinner, it’s unlikely anybody would notice. As to how he might have obtained drugs on any such excursion, I expect you could answer better than I. From what one reads in the papers, it would appear these things are readily available.”

“One would have to know where to look, however,” said Rhys. “A respectably dressed, middle-aged man asking at random where he might purchase narcotics would be apt to get taken for an underground government agent doing a remarkably stupid job of investigation.”

“Why the hell should Cyril start looking for dope anyway?” Herbert broke in. “Cyril’s not a drug addict, he’s a soak. Don’t glare at me, Squire. We all know Cy drinks from the time he gets up in the morning till he keels over for the night. We also know there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop him, so we don’t try. What the hell, the rest of us like our cup o’ tea, too, though we don’t overdo it as he does. Anyway, Rhys, what I’m getting at is that Cyril likes booze and he can always find plenty of it right here at Graylings. Why should he risk his neck and freeze his ass off humping over the road looking for something to get high on when he’s high as a kite already? Answer me that one, will you?”

“Herbert, you might have had sense enough to keep your foot out of your mouth,” snarled Clara. “Squire just got the rest of us off the hook and now you’ve stuck us right back on again. I’ve always said May was a fool to marry you.”

“That so? Then I’ve been a damn sight kinder to you than you have to me, Clara. Want me to go into particulars in front of Lawrence?”

“Shut up, you two,” May barked. “If there was ever a time when a family should stick together, this is it. I don’t know what we’re standing around here spouting this nonsense for in the first place. All we have to do is wait till Cyril wakes up and ask him where he got whatever it was he took.”

“Huh!” snorted her younger sister. “Do you think he’ll tell you?”

“He’d better. He knows what will happen to him if he doesn’t.”

“What will happen?” Rhys asked.

“Oh, May has her own little ways of putting a man through hell if he doesn’t toe the line,” the loquacious Herbert replied. “His socks don’t match, his bed gets lumps in it, he always winds up with the piece of meat that’s all fat, he can’t sit down without a draft on the back of his neck. Yes, sirree Bob, when it comes to driving a man nuts, my little Maysie’s got ’em all beat hands down.”

Little Maysie replied that ol’ Herb was no slouch at it, either. “Anyway, Madoc, you just wait. I promise you faithfully I’ll get it out of him first thing in the morning, one way or another. And I’ll bet you five dollars it’ll turn out some floozy in a bar somewhere sold him the dope as a virility pill and he’s been hanging onto it in case some cute little trick like Janet happened along.”

Janet took that remark none too kindly. “I can’t imagine why he’d bother. He has no cause to suppose I’d be interested.”

“Hell,” said Herbert, “that wouldn’t stop him. If Cyril could think straight, he’d lay off the hooch once in a while. Then maybe he wouldn’t need to be taking stuff in the first place.”

“Does Cyril in fact take aphrodisiacs?” Rhys insisted.

“Not to my knowledge. We were kidding about it the other day, that’s all. He said he hadn’t been able to—I shouldn’t be saying these things in front of the kids.”

“They could no doubt tell you a few things,” snorted his wife with a glance at Val. “Madoc, for heaven’s sake, it’s Christmas Eve. Do we have to go on and on about this awful thing? Why don’t we just get poor old Aunt Addie upstairs, then sing a few carols—religious ones, you know, like ‘Silent Night’—and maybe have a little nightcap and go to bed?”

“I can’t say I feel much like singing Christmas carols,” Babs replied in an exhausted voice, “but I should most awfully like to have a good, hot soak in a bathtub and then go straight to bed. I’m sure Cyril didn’t realize how hard he was hitting me with that cane.”

“Good Lord, Babs, do you think he broke something?” cried her distraught husband. “Where does it hurt?”

“Right now I simply ache all over. Please, Inspector, couldn’t we leave the rest of it till morning as May suggests? I assure you we’re none of us going anywhere in this storm.”

“Have to be crazy to try,” Lawrence grunted. “What do you say, Rhys?”

“Yes, why not? I think we have accomplished all we can with this discussion. Roy and Herbert, perhaps you might carry Miss Adelaide’s body upstairs and put her in the same room with her sister. I shall remain downstairs in case anybody might like a word with me in private. Janet will also stay, in her capacity as note-taker. If you don’t mind, Jenny,” the Mountie added with his most wistfully pleading smile.

“I don’t want to leave you, Madoc. Maybe Franny and Winny would like to have first crack at a private talk with you. I can tell they’re itching to get into a huddle with a real, live detective.”

That was a lie pure and simple. Franny and Winny were no doubt wetting their pants at the prospect, but they wouldn’t dare say so. Janet had all the instincts of a policeman’s wife, bless her resourceful little heart.

“All right, you two,” said Herbert, “but make it short and cut along to bed right afterward. This isn’t the sort of treat your mother and I had in mind for you, but you might as well enjoy it if you can. We’ll find a way to make things up to you somehow.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. We’re okay. You’d better get some sleep yourself.”

Franny was by far the more self-possessed of the two. Winny was trying hard to emulate his brother’s coolness, but making a poor fist of it. As Roy and Herbert were preparing to move the blanket-wrapped body from the chesterfield, Ludovic, who had remained discreetly absent until now, manifested himself.

“Will there be anything else tonight, sir?”

“I think not,” said Squire. “I doubt if anybody wants to sing carols, May, and I for one have no interest in a nightcap, except to cover my old bald head. The family will be going to bed, Ludovic. Inspector Rhys will stay down here for a while.”

Squire took it for granted the butler would require no explanation. Ludovic didn’t even nod.

“I have opened the damper in the library stove, sir. Perhaps Inspector Rhys would prefer to sit in there.”

“Thank you, Ludovic. That would be more comfortable.” At last he was going to have a chance to do what the real detectives did, though probably little would come of it. “Shall we go to the library, boys?”

Rhys didn’t have to ask Janet her preference. The Great Hall was arctic now that the wind had picked up again, the fire was down, and the thermometer must be hovering well below minus thirty. That thermal underwear with its tinsel trimming couldn’t be doing his affianced bride much good. He put his arm around her and squeezed her as tight as was consistent with locomotion as they walked together away from the departing Condryckes.

“L
UDOVIC, WOULD THERE BE
a cup of hot tea going? I think Miss Wadman could use one. So could I, for that matter. How about you lads? By tea I mean, of course, tea,” Rhys added and Winny looked around as if for a chance to escape.

“We never touch the stuff,” Franny said with a swagger that might have deceived himself but not anyone else.

Ludovic went out of the library, still impeccably deadpan, and Rhys got down to work.

“Now would you two care to tell me what it was you fed your Uncle Cyril this afternoon?”

“Us? We never gave him anything. What makes you think we’re into speed?” Franny protested.

“Well, you do toss around expressions like speed as if they weren’t totally unfamiliar to you. And there is the fact that you’ve been high on pot ever since Miss Wadman and I arrived at Graylings. Where do you get it?”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Winny tried to insist.

“Come off it, young man. You’re not talking to your doting and innocent parents now. I do have a nose, fairly sharp eyes, and far too much experience with silly young chaps like you. You’ve been smoking in the billiard room. You had one last night and you shared a joint right after lunch today.”

“Get him!” cried Franny. “The big detective. How the hell would you know we had one right after lunch?”

“Elementary, my dear jughead. Lunch was very late today on account of the conference among your elders. You were in reasonable shape then. At approximately three o’clock pip emma, when Miss Wadman and I were forced in from a walk by a snow squall, we wound up in the hallway that leads past the billiard room. We smelled pot and heard you talking. You were totally spaced-out and talking a bunch of sickening rot that no doubt struck you at the time as brilliant. Your eyes were still red when you appeared in your lobster suits later, but your brains were somewhat less addled. You haven’t been at it long, have you? Otherwise you’d have known enough to open the windows and do something about your eyes. Not a remarkably good show, all in all. To rephrase my earlier question, where did you get it?”

“At school,” Franny mumbled.

“From whom?”

“A kid.”

“What kid?”

“John Smith.”

“Come off it.”

Franny shrugged. “That’s what he calls himself.”

“Is he a student at the school?”

“No.”

“If you’d talk a little faster, we could get this over sooner. Who is he, then?”

“I don’t know. He’s just a guy who comes around and the kids buy off him.”

“What do they buy?”

“Pot, mostly. I guess.”

“And what did you buy?”

“A nickel bag.”

“By which I assume you mean five dollars’ worth, right?”

“Yeah. Five was all we had. Winny and I’d been buying presents for the family, see?”

“How noble of you. How often do you make your buys from this alleged John Smith?”

“This was our first time. We just thought it would be something to do up here.”

“To take your minds off the joyous merrymakings?”

“It’s such a drag.”

Franny made the pronouncement in the tone of a world-weary roué. “The same damn stuff every year, and we’re supposed to make believe we’re having a ball so Squire won’t go into one of his fits. How much can you take, eh?”

“What sorts of fits does Squire go into?”

“Oh, you know. Huffs around and sulks and says he’s going to cut off our allowances because we’re a pack of ingrates.”

“Squire pays your allowances?”

“How could he cut them if he didn’t?” Winny asked logically enough.

“Doesn’t your father get a salary for his work as steward?”

“Well, that’s an allowance, sort of, isn’t it? I mean, Squire doesn’t have to keep Dad on here if he doesn’t want to. At least he’s said so often enough. Granny used to shut him up and say she was the boss here, not Squire, but I don’t know if she meant it or was just being nasty. Anyway, she’s gone now so you’d have thought Squire was boss, but now Uncle Cyril says he is. Only Uncle Cyril’s going to jail, isn’t he? What’s going to happen?”

“Time will tell,” said Rhys.

“You’re not going to rat on us?”

“About smoking pot? How much do you have left?”

“None,” mumbled Franny. “That was our last joint we smoked this afternoon.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah, sure. I guess. I don’t remember very well.”

“Rather a stupid way to blow five dollars, then, wasn’t it? You’d have done better to buy comic books, since you appear inclined toward infantile pastimes.”

“What do you mean, infantile?”

“Sticking something in your mouth and sucking on it. Reducing yourself to the state of a baby who can’t even talk straight so that you can swank around in front of a bunch of other nitwits who don’t know what’s going on, either. This John Smith is either another sucker like yourselves with a habit to support or else he’s trying to make suckers out of you. When you get back to school, someone from the local police will be in touch with you about John Smith. You will keep your mouths shut and cooperate. Is that fully understood? If you’d prefer, I can haul you in and let you think about it.”

“You don’t give us much choice, do you?”

“I’m giving you a chance to save your necks and you’ll be smart to take it. What did you buy your Uncle Cyril for Christmas?”

“A book,” Franny replied. “We always get him a book. That way we can put it on his charge account and he never knows the difference.”

“The true Yuletide spirit. Where is the book now?”

“Under the tree with the rest of the presents, I guess. We got Val to wrap it for us.”

“Nice of her. What did you get Val?”