G Malliet - Death of a Cozy Writer

It was seven the next time she looked, and now she really did not know what to do. Watters had left for his cottage in the village some fifteen minutes before, and Paulo had appeared, ready for his stint serving at table. The adenoidal Martha arrived, late, just after Paulo.

Most of the meal Mrs. Romano had prepared ahead of time- she was pleased with the afternoon’s culinary experiment, which included thickening the chicken gravy with carrot she’d puréed in her new Cuisinart-so she considered sharing another glass of whiskey with Paulo. She hesitated to share with him her news; she suspected he wouldn’t have believed her. He was still at the age where sex between partners over fifty he thought of as an impossibility, if he thought about it at all, like the conception of the Minotaur.

She decided she had better forego the whiskey; it wouldn’t do to have Paulo breathing fumes over the dinner party. She set about making the salad dressing, whisking olive oil, mustard, and vinegar together, creating rather more of a mess than usual. After awhile, she sent Paulo out to the drawing room to report on how things were progressing. He came back.

“They’re all there, except for Sir Adrian,” he told his mother.

Again, unprecedented. Then she realized what he was actually saying.

“His wife is there?”

Paulo nodded, not much interested, busy with getting the dishes ready for their journey to the hot plate-in actuality, a large black cabinet that resembled a bank vault-in the serving room. The distance of the dining room from the kitchen, separated from the family area by a long, winding corridor designed to keep cooking smells from traveling into the main part of the house, necessitated this holding stage to keep the food from cooling by the time it reached its final destination. It made meal preparation difficult on the best of days, and this day Martha was even less help than usual, nervously dropping knives and serving spoons that then had to be rewashed.

“Oh, give over, do,” snapped Paulo at last. “Let me do it; it will save time.”

Martha took this display of bad temper as a sign of Paulo’s gentlemanly and helpful nature. Tittering, pleased-for in her mind Paulo resembled the swashbuckling heroes, cross-eyed with lust, depicted on the covers of the romance novels she read, and he featured in more than a few of her daydreams-she sank into a chair by the wooden work table. For the first time, she noticed Mrs. Romano’s abstracted look.

“What’s wrong then, Mrs. R.?”

By way of answer, Mrs. Romano said to Paulo:

“You’re sure he’s not there?”

“It’s not like you can miss him, is it? I told you, he’s not there. The rest are. That Albert came in last, as usual. But they’re all there.”

“Something is wrong,” she said. “When have you ever known him to be a minute late for the cocktails? I should go…”

But the memory of her earlier rebuff at Sir Adrian’s door stilled her. She couldn’t risk it. Still, according to what Paulo said, Violet wasn’t with him. Perhaps he was changing for dinner-yes, that must be it. He was just thrown off schedule by the novelty of the evening tryst with his bride.

But by quarter to eight, when Paulo reported back with Sir Adrian’s continued non-appearance, she could no longer contain herself. Her dinner would be ruined, for one thing. And if this was the way things were going to be with her Ladyship in charge, Mrs. Romano felt she was going to have a few words to say on that subject with her employer.

She stood up.

“I’ll go see what’s the matter,” she said, in the manner of a gladiator stepping into the Coliseum. Unscheduled visits to Sir Adrian’s study, even by Mrs. Romano, were another item in the “unheard of ” column. He would bellow, he would rage. She didn’t care. Her chicken was going to be overdone.

Again she made her way down the long connecting corridors into the family area. She would one day attribute her long life to the exercise afforded by the floor plan of Waverley Court.

She stopped outside the massive double doors of the study. She knocked. Louder. Nothing. He must be upstairs. But just in case… Because she didn’t believe he was upstairs dressing. She believed he was behind these doors-every instinct told her this was so-and not answering. Something wrong, wrong, wrong ; the word reverberated as she slowly turned the handle and peered through the opening.

Sir Adrian sat at his desk in his smoking jacket, as always, with his pen and papers and the other accouterments of his profession spread out before him. But he was slumped forward on the desk, head atop a sheaf of blue onionskin paper, eyeglasses askew, and with his hands spread out before him as if he had tried to brace himself from a blow, or made an effort to raise himself to confront his assailant. He had knocked over the poinsettia plant on his desk in his fall; for a moment all she could focus on was the damp black soil scattered across the green blotter.

But sticking out from Sir Adrian’s back, impossible to ignore, was a long, black, ornately carved object. It took Mrs. Romano’s brain, cushioned as it was by shock and whiskey, full seconds to register this as a handle attached to a knife, the handle dark against a large, spreading stain on his back that could only be blood.

She threw the door open wide, inching into the room. No, she thought, not a knife. Bigger. Spada . No, no, no: sword. Her brain scrambled for purchase in two languages as she processed what she was seeing, as if finding the words for what she saw would make it all come right. Sir Adrian, he was pretending? Si , it was one of his jokes. She inched closer. No, not, pretending: Dead! Dead! Morta ! Dio mio! Dagger!

Mrs. Romano staggered a few more steps toward the body, her hands pressed tightly against her mouth. Then she dropped her hands and screamed. She screamed until she fell, unconscious, to the floor.

They came running, a jostling stampede from the direction of the drawing room, led by George, Albert bringing up the rear. Just inside the door they stopped as one, like a panicked herd brought up short by an electric fence.

They nearly trampled Mrs. Romano before they noticed her crumpled form on the carpet.

George spoke first, but Sarah’s screams had already begun to provide background music to his words.

“What the devil? Are they both dead? What’s going on in this house? Goddammit, Sarah, will you shut up?”

She would not. He drew back his hand and slapped her with all his considerable strength-something he’d seen done in films to quiet hysteria. Unlike in the films, it made her scream louder. Natasha, with a fierce look at George, grabbed Sarah, held her massive form against her own reedlike one, stroked her hair, and tried to soothe her. When she saw Natasha staggering under Sarah’s collapsing weight, Violet took the other side, sandwiching Sarah like a second slice of bread.

Meanwhile, a hubbub of exclamation rose around them as they all, like Mrs. Romano, tried to comprehend what had happened.

Only Albert, perhaps from what was beginning to seem like long practice, knew what to do. With no small sense of déjà vu - again playing the messenger part he seemed doomed to play-he ran to ring the police.

He thought of ringing the family doctor, or an ambulance. But what was the point?

Albert even knew what the weapon was: a Scottish dirk, one that had formerly hung in the hall, its lethal blade about a foot long. The weapon had been precisely inserted between the ribs, into the heart. No one could have survived that. Any fool, even one only trained in stage combat, could see Sir Adrian was dead.

The call, even though it bounced around Parkside Police Station a few minutes, reached St. Just in nearrecord time. He happened to be still at his desk, sitting amidst a clutter of takeout cartons and discarded “fortunes” from Wing Dynasty (“ Beware the dragon of desire disguised as fear. Lucky numbers: 1, 6, 10, 24, 36” ) mixed with piles of case files becoming overripe from neglect.