Dorothy Cannell - The Importance of Being Ernestine

“Don’t give it a thought your ladyship ducks! But while you’re on about it, what did keep you from your appointment with Mr. Jugg?” Mrs. Malloy nudged me toward Milk’s chair and perched her miniskirted behind on a metal folding one, next to the dilapidated filing cabinet.

“Some vicious thugs took potshots as I drove past the Biddlington-By-Water police station.”

“You were fired at?” I dropped the pencil I had just picked up.

“Thrown at!” Her ladyship’s features narrowed, reducing her to a beaky-nosed silhouette. “They were sizeable flower pots, filled with bronze and yellow chrysanthemums.” Such a sinful waste of good flowers. “Not only was my front passenger window shattered, but I looked as though I had requested to be buried in my car.”

“And you wanting to look ever so nice for Mr. Jugg.” Mrs. Malloy was all womanly sympathy.

“You weren’t hurt, Lady Krumley,” I asked.

. “Shaken up and nerves all to pieces, nothing more.”

“Do you think you were followed by someone who knew you were on your way to consult with a private detective?”

“Not at all; I never said a word to anyone, except Mr. Featherstone, my friend and vicar, about where I was going.”

“Then who?”

Her ladyship frowned with all the aristocratic command at her disposal. “I very much fear that the assault was perpetrated by someone aggrieved by my refusal to contribute to this year’s Police Benevolent Fund. One does have to watch one’s pennies these days. And I did see a heavyset man slinking off as I rubbed the dirt out of my eyes. I suspect it was Constable Thatcher without his helmet. But I may be doing the man an injustice. He and his wife did send a wreath, rather a showy one, for my sister-in-law Mildred’s funeral last April.”

“Nasty losing a family member.” Mrs. Malloy would have set her face at half-mast if possible.

“Mildred was my late husband Sir Horace’s youngest sister. A very spry eighty-year-old to the end, but I never questioned her passing away in her sleep while on a fortnight’s holiday in Liverpool. After all, who can bear to spend more than a few days in such a place? Even when the others began dying it never occurred to me that an evil force might be at work.” Lady Krumley’s voice faltered as she stared grimly into some distant space.

“So that’s why you’re all got up in black.” Mrs. Malloy couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “Relatives dropping off the family twig willy nilly.” She stood up with a good display of leg and poured herself a shot of bourbon. I shook my head, but Lady Krumley accepted a glass.

“Sir Horace would have expected me to go into mourning, even though it isn’t much done these days and he never had more than minimal contact with any of the recently departed, including Mildred.”

“So there was others!” Mrs. Malloy beamed.

Her ladyship inclined her head. “Cousin Clement resided in Australia. He was mauled to death by a passing kangaroo in June. Uncle Dickie resided in one of the Channel Islands and met a mercifully swift end whilst celebrating his ninetieth birthday bungee jumping or whatever it is called. Aunt Theobalda was living in a loft in some newly trendy part of the East End and stepped into a lift that wasn’t there.” Her ladyship swigged down her bourbon. “All of them ancient and addled in their wits. One may not always like one’s relatives. Yet only a fiend would sit back and watch them being systematically wiped off the map. Especially when knowing where the blame lies.”

“Where is that Lady Krumley?” I inquired with what I hoped was the right amount of professional interest, although, to be honest, I couldn’t see that this was going anywhere that mattered.

“With myself. I, Mrs. Haskell, am the villain of this piece!” She rose in a swoop of black to take a brisk walk to the outer office door and back. The hat trembled to one side, but her voice when she resumed speaking was calm. “I must say I now find it a relief that I was not in time to consult with Mr. Jugg. Men are too readily inclined to dismiss a woman’s fears as hysterics. Sir Horace had a way of fidgeting with his thumbs when vexed by what he termed the excess of my imagination. No doubt he would insist that I am dramatizing the current situation.”

“Husbands can be our sternest critics,” I opined sadly.

“How right you are, Mrs. Haskell.” Lady Krumley returned to her chair. “Sir Horace was twenty years older than I. But it can hardly be said that I was a giddy young girl at age thirty-five, when I came as a bride to Moultty”-she spelled out the word-“Towers.”

“I thought Mr. Jugg said Mouldy.” Mrs. Malloy sounded justifiably aggrieved.

“That’s the pronunciation. Has been for centuries. Nothing to do with our occasional problems with dry rot. Sir Horace was devoted to restoring the house to the way it had been before his father allowed it to fall into disrepair. Which makes it so particularly dreadful that it was I who sullied the family crest-Serve Well Thy Servitors-when close on forty years ago I sacked Flossie Jones.”

“Who?” I asked, pencil poised above a dog-eared notepad.

“The parlor maid.”

“Why did you get rid of her?”

“For stealing an emerald and diamond brooch.”

“Well now, that was naughty!” Mrs. Malloy, as president of the Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association, had her standards.

“You believe this incident has some bearing on the recent deaths you mentioned?” My glance at the uncurtained window showed it blacked out by night as if in wartime. Just how late was it now? How long before I would see home again? A tale dating back forty years was unlikely to be told in as many seconds. Would Ben think I had run away from home to destroy other marriages by revamping whole cities of unsuspecting husbands’ studies?

“It has every bearing.” Her ladyship slapped her knee with her gloves. “I now know Flossie Jones was falsely accused and, therefore, wrongfully dismissed. One week ago Laureen Phillips, my newly hired personal maid-very diligent in her duties-found the brooch between the skirting board and the wall in my bedroom, close to the dressing table from which it must have fallen all those years ago.”

“You’re saying?” I was at a loss to do more than resharpen my pencil.

“Isn’t it as clear as the nose on her ladyship’s face?” Mrs. Malloy was so excited she handed her ladyship another bourbon and sat down without bothering to pour herself one. “This Flossie woman is taking her revenge by bumping off all these members of the family! Well, one good thing. It shouldn’t be hard to catch up with her. All we have to do is look for someone as fits her description that’s been bobbing about on holiday all of a sudden to Australia and the like. Course she’s probably aged a bit like we all do, but even so…”

“If bent on murder,” I interposed, “why wait this long to get busy, and, if you’ll forgive me, Lady Krumley, why not start with you?”

“I am not talking murder, Mrs. Haskell, at least not in the usual sense of the word.” The bourbon disappeared in a gulp. “Flossie herself died within a year of leaving Moultty Towers. My contention is that she is wreaking havoc from beyond the grave. With her last breath Flossie Jones cursed the Krumley family.”

“Gracious me!” Mrs. M. looked unsuitably thrilled.

“Are you absolutely sure the brooch your new maid discovered was the one that had gone missing?” The night wind moaned an echo and somewhere inside the building a floorboard creaked, but I didn’t go and take a peak outside the office to see if anyone was lurking in the shadows. Her ladyship’s dark tale, had yet to set my nerves jumping.