Murder Goes Mumming (9 page)

The tree was a balsam fir so tall that not even the biggest of the Condryckes could have reached the topmost branches without something to stand on. Back home, Bert and the kids and an assortment of uncles and cousins would be out in the woodlot by now cutting a tree about a quarter the size of this one, which would still have to be trimmed down when they got it home in order to fit inside the modest farmhouse. Annabelle and her sister-in-law and the Lord knew how many more would be in the kitchen, stirring and baking, drinking cup after cup of tea, chattering nineteen to the dozen.

There’d be more affection than wit in their conversation and nobody would be playing a practical joke on anybody unless one of the kids took a notion to stuff a handful of snow down somebody else’s neck and get his own face washed in retaliation. Janet wasn’t homesick, but she did feel most profoundly blessed to have been born a Wadman instead of a Condrycke. Or instead of a Rhys for that matter, because if she’d been Madoc’s sister she couldn’t very well become his wife without causing talk. She gave her betrothed such a look of adoration that he almost fell off the ladder.

By then Val had made her appearance and Roy was lavishing his attentions on her to show Janet what she’d been fool enough to pass up. Val had on a different pair of designer jeans today, a pair of boots with unimaginably high heels, and another oversized pullover. It had been handknit in Italy of shocking pink mohair by somebody who must have suffered a great many sneezing fits before it was done. Franny and Winny poked their noses into the Great Hall just long enough to sneer at the tree-trimming party and mutter that they were going to play billiards.

“They’re going through a phase,” Babs said indulgently to Clara.

Janet thought Bert would have handled the phase by setting the pair to work at a two-handed saw till they’d emerged from their sulks with a few armloads of stove wood to show for it, but apparently that wasn’t how things were done among the upper crust. She’d better clarify that point with Madoc before they started having young ones of their own.

Squire, Lawrence, and Herbert were having some sort of conference in the library, no doubt as a result of Granny’s death and whatever family business it would entail. Cyril was with them but Donald, for some reason, was not. Janet would have thought the one businessman among them would be the first to sit in at such a meeting.

Val evidently thought so, too, for she asked him, “Daddy, how come you’re not in there with Squire and the rest?”

Donald laughed indulgently. “Because I’m here keeping a fatherly eye on my beautiful daughter. Val, you should know by now that my responsibility is to represent the family interests down in Saint John. I couldn’t manage both that and Graylings. Why should I? Squire has Herbert, Lawrence, and Cyril to help him. That’s not a spider on your back, by any chance?”

“Ugh! One of Uncle Herb’s little nasties, I suppose.”

Val squirmed and Roy leaped to be gallant. Madoc Rhys sat up on his ladder wondering why Donald Condrycke had chosen that particular moment to tangle a fake spider in his daughter’s expensive mohair.

The tree took a long time to finish, even with so many working at the decorating. There were no lights, since there’d have been nowhere to plug in electric ones and candles were out of the question.

“Too dangerous,” Donald explained. “We’re miles from a fire station here, as you must realize. Anyway, the tree’s so big that by the time we’d got the last one lit the first would be burned down. We do cheat a bit and hide a battery lantern behind the trunk so we can enjoy it at night. At least I presume we do. Is that in the drill this year, Clara?”

“It is if we can find some extra batteries. May was fussing that we seem to be running short, for some reason. Of course we do use an awful lot of them, one way and another, around here.”

“It would be so nice if Squire would get on with the general electrification,” Babs sighed.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Clara, “but Lawrence claims the cost would be prohibitive and Cyril objects on general principles. You know Cy and his sense of history.”

Janet looked rather surprised, though she was too well bred to say anything. She must be thinking Squire was a remarkably benevolent tyrant if he put up with so much inconvenience in deference to his son’s sense of history. Rhys thought it might be as well for her to go on thinking so.

This question of how much to tell your wife was going to be a sticker. Some of his colleagues had trouble with it, he knew. Rhys had never understood why, but then he’d never before loved a woman enough to want to share everything with her and at the same time protect her from any possible mischance. He didn’t know what he was trying to shield Janet from, he only knew that an old woman who’d probably have died soon anyway was now murdered for no apparent reason, and that things were not what they seemed at Graylings. That, in his experience, was enough to make the boldest wary. He hung the last trimming, agreed that the tree was indeed a thing of beauty, and asked where he should put the ladder.

“Better let me. It looks heavy.”

That was Janet’s ex-boyfriend, flexing his muscles at the expense of this puny Welshman she’d been silly enough to settle for. Let him. The poor chap was having a bad morning. Val wasn’t giving him much time and clearly he’d had some sort of set-to with Janet upstairs, in which he’d come off a poor second. Rhys wasn’t about to shed any tears over that.

One could see why a girl fresh off the farm would have fallen for a good-looker like Roy. He must be a practiced charmer since he’d also been able to attract so experienced a campaigner as Val evidently was. Val had been one of Dafydd’s dates, and Dafydd had his own code of ethics, such as it was. Deflowering virgins was not on the list, assuming he’d ever met one.

Lady Rhys must have told Dafydd and the rest of the family about Janet by now, and they must be thinking Mother was making her up. Women like Janet Wadman didn’t exist. If they did, why should they want to marry clods like Madoc who couldn’t even read music? Madoc was damned if he’d hold up his wedding for Dafydd. It galled him to think that if Lady Rhys hadn’t been so officious about getting them invited to Graylings, he and his Jenny could be hunting up a justice of the peace right now instead of standing around with pitch on their fingers and apprehension in their hearts wondering which of their genial hosts and/or hostesses had bumped off dear old Granny.

This might even turn out to be a classic case of the butler done it. Ludovic was a capable man, and a man who could well be working his own mysterious courses at Graylings. Criminal record or not, he needn’t bury himself in so desolate a post unless he was (a) getting paid a great deal more for his services than he’d get elsewhere; (b) in love with the cook; or (c) running a little something on the side.

They’d only Ludovic’s word for it that Granny had been alive before they went in to dinner. Squire had sent the butler up alone to see why the old lady hadn’t appeared in the Great Hall and the man had come back with that ludicrous report of the missing teeth, the sort of absurdity the Condryckes would be delighted to accept without bothering to check its veracity. The teeth had shown up in the silliest place possible as soon as dinner was over and there could be no question of Granny’s coming down, but who was to say how long the bear had been wearing them?

After dinner when May had decided on coffee in the library, it had been Ludovic who’d gone ahead to mend the fire and fetch the tray. He wouldn’t have required more than a second to take the teeth out of his pocket and stick them in the bear’s mouth. He’d know the family’s only reactions would be to accuse each other and regret that they themselves hadn’t thought of pinching the teeth first.

Ludovic had made a second trip with that pitcher of wassail, and what of that? He could have drunk the stuff himself, or poured it down the bathroom sink, or given it to Granny for purposes of anesthesia and then done his dirty work. An autopsy would show whether in fact Mrs. Condrycke had drunk the wassail, but would it be possible to have an autopsy performed?

There must be a doctor somewhere nearby who’d been looking after her. The odds were he’d sign a certificate without demur and why shouldn’t he when it was a case of an old woman who, according to Squire, had been more or less written off some time ago? Doctors didn’t create scandals among patients like the Condryckes if they could help it.

Come to think of it, Squire hadn’t even mentioned calling in the doctor to view the remains although he had sent for the undertaker. Was that because he didn’t know the proper steps to take or because he took it for granted there’d be no hitch in the formalities?

Janet was twisting a long strand of tinsel rope around the base of the tree. She stopped and looked up at Babs. “I just thought of a costume. May I use some of this?”

“Certainly, take all you like. Will you need anything else?”

“No, except—excuse me a moment.” She went over and whispered to Madoc.

He nodded in mild surprise. “As a matter of fact, yes. How did you know?”

“Because you never got a chance to.”

He laughed and gave her a hug. “Ah, Jenny love, you’re the girl for me.”

“She is.” Aunt Adelaide had materialized again without seeming to have entered the room. “I told her that last night. I told her not to let anybody talk her out of it. Somebody already has but it didn’t work. She didn’t know who you were, did she? Not till your mother told her. Your mother was right to give her the ring, so you needn’t worry about Janet’s having it. You have been worrying, haven’t you?”

“Well, a little,” Rhys admitted. “As I told Squire, I did more or less walk in on Janet and say, ‘My name is Rhys, would you care to share it?’ It was in fact my mother who filled her in on the family situation, and that wasn’t till yesterday. Remember, Jenny love?”

“How could I forget? I called her Mrs. Rhys and almost died of mortification when she raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Madoc, you idiot, didn’t you
explain?
’”

Janet giggled at the recollection. “I thought Madoc was just another lost sheep on the mountain like me. The last time we were up home, he was lecturing my brother Bert about the best way to build a pigpen. I told Lady Rhys that and she laughed so hard I thought we’d have to give her first aid.”

Those Condryckes present obliged by laughing also, but less heartily than was their wont. “And then she went ahead and gave you her diamond?” Val said, as if she didn’t believe a word of it.

“It was the least she could do,” Madoc confirmed. “Mother was the one who proposed to Janet. Not that I hadn’t meant to, you understand, but she got hers in first. Mother’s rather like that. She had to catch a plane to London and she didn’t want to miss the engagement party, so she hauled off one of her own rings and there we were. That’s the one Janet has on now. It belonged to my great-grandmother, I think. Wasn’t that what Mother said, darling?”

“Yes, and she’d always intended to give it to whichever of her children got engaged first or said she did.”

“Oh, Mother wouldn’t say a thing like that unless she meant it. I wanted to buy Janet a new one yesterday but she dug in her little heels and wouldn’t let me, so we’re going to take the money and build a better pigpen instead. Anyway, I’m glad to have your certificate of approval, Miss Adelaide, and particularly grateful you’ve warned Jenny not to get talked out of marrying me. Mother would have fits if she backed off now. How do you know these things?”

“I only tell what I see,” said the old woman. “I never know what’s coming and sometimes I don’t see things you’d think I ought to. Like poor Rosa, for instance. I could have sworn she was meant to outlive me. Well, the ship will be coming for me next, I shouldn’t wonder. You young things have your fun while you can. I think I’ll go back to Rosa for a while.”

B
ABS AND CLARA EXCHANGED
looks. “Oh, dear,” Clara sighed. “I only hope she doesn’t go spreading doom and gloom in front of Squire.”

“She’ll probably stay upstairs a good bit today,” Babs consoled her sister-in-law. “I suppose Aunt Addie is taking Granny’s death harder than the rest of us. At her age, one would tend to get that ‘me next’ feeling.”

Donald made an odd little noise. “You know, I’d quite forgotten Granny’s name was Rosa. Clara, do you remember the time Cyril said, ‘Every Rosa has its thorns,’ and she hit him with her cane?”

“Must have been over the head,” said May, who’d come in just in time to hear her brother’s boyhood reminiscence. “Where was I, I wonder?”

“At school, most likely. That wasn’t too long after Mother died, when Clara and I still had the governess, I forget which one. We did go through them rather fast. Either they couldn’t stand Graylings or we couldn’t stand them.”

“And Cyril had been sent home again, I suppose, because his headmaster couldn’t stand him,” Clara added rather nastily. “What’s this costume you’re cooking up, Janet?”

“Nothing much, really. It’s just a silly idea I had.”

“The sillier the better,” May assured her. “Wait till you see Herbert and the boys and me! Speaking of the menfolks, how long do you suppose they’re going to keep nattering in there? Fifine’s coming to a slow boil about lunch and my tongue’s hanging out for a drink.”

“So is Cyril’s, I’m sure.” Clara really was in a mood today. “But you know what Lawrence is like once he gets started on the party of the first part and the party of the second part. Squire must be in a proper swivet by now.”

“Drag him under the mistletoe and we’ll elect Janet to kiss him out of it,” May advised.

“Oh, my God,” cried Babs. “We’ve forgotten to hang up the kissing ball. Where is it, quick?”

A frantic scurrying ensued. At last May unearthed a handsome ball of boxwood and mistletoe tied with red velvet ribbons that Clara took well-deserved credit for having arranged. Roy was sent back to get the ladder he’d just taken away and a hot dispute over where to hang the ball this year was in progress when the meeting at last broke up.

If Squire was in a swivet, he didn’t show it. He looked the embodiment of Christmas Present as he stood with a glass of Rainwater Madeira in his hand directing the placement of the kissing ball. When it was hung to his satisfaction, everybody cheered and drank one of the toasts the Condryckes were so addicted to. Roy had got the ladder nicely folded and was about to take it to the woodshed once more when Cyril stopped him.