5 Murder by Syllabub (7 page)

Elizabeth nodded. She looked as if she knew what was coming next.

“Was he dressed like the dead man next door?”

Elizabeth nodded again. “Before you ask the next question, yes, I think it might have been Monty. I didn’t get a good look. I was shocked to see someone standing there and the dog was barking and growling, the light was bad, but even then, I thought it might be him. Only, why would Monty be in my upstairs hallway?”

“What was he doing?” Cora Lee sounded
apprehensive and this time her voice didn’t contain any of her barbs.

“Standing outside one of the bedroom doors. The one Ellen’s going to use. I think he was about to go in, but when he saw me, he turned. It was dark, so all I got was an impression. He was about Monty’s build
, wore a tri-corner hat, and his hair was tied with a ribbon in back.

“The dead man, Monty. He had on a wig, didn’t he?” I remembered hair over one eye.

Elizabeth nodded. “Then Petal ran out, barking hysterically. Whoever it was kicked out at her. She ran back into the room and he headed for the stairs and just sort of disappeared.”

Cora Lee wasn’t
easily put off. “Do you think it was him in the cellar?”

Elizabeth sighed deeply and picked up her glass. She held it up, examined
it, and set it back down. “I don’t know. That happened so fast. I turned on the light at the top of the stairs and was halfway down when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I guess Petal also saw it because she started to bark then turned tail and ran back up the stairs, right through my legs. I was so startled I stopped. That’s when I heard the crate creak. It was dark on that side of the stairs, but there seemed to be a figure in colonial dress. I couldn’t be sure. When that crate fell, well, I turned and ran back up the stairs almost as fast as the dog.”

“Then what happened?” Aunt Mary tense
d up again. This whole thing was too much. She picked up her glass and sipped.

“Nothing. I pulled a table in front of the cellar door, grabbed the poker and ran upstairs after the dog. Then I sat on the side of the bed and waited. Petal
was hiding under it.”

“For heaven’s sake, Elizabeth, why didn’t you wait by the cellar door and smack whoever came up?” Cora Lee bounced her cane a little on the floor, as if
to show that she would have acted a lot more forcefully.

I wondered. According to Aunt Mary, Elizabeth had been in a lot of tough situations in her life, but this time she’d been caught off guard. Of course, getting older probably didn’t help, although I doubted she’d thank me for saying so. I would have taken the poker and locked myself in the bedroom as well.

“How long did you wait?”

Elizabeth sighed. “Must have been an hour or so. Nothing happened, so I decided whoever was in there was long gone. Only, I couldn’t figure out how. Finally I opened the door and, holding the poker up and, feeling like an idiot, I went downstairs. The table was still up against the cellar door.”

“He went out the outside cellar door. Must have.” Cora Lee sounded positive, but there was a question in her voice.

Elizabeth shook her head. “It’s padlocked. Was then. Still is. I went around the side of the house and looked.”

“There must be another way.” Aunt Mary nodded with certainty.

Elizabeth and Cora Lee shook their heads.

“Only two ways in or out,” Elizabeth said. “One is through that door over there.” She pointed to a door on the opposite side of the fireplace from where we sat, one that blended into the paneling that covered the wall so well it was easy to miss. “Or through the outside door. I have no idea how whoever was down there got in or out.”

We all looked at each other, saying nothing, trying to come up with a logical answer. There didn’t seem to be one.

Finally, Aunt Mary took another sip of her wine and placed the glass back directly in front of her. She let her fingers run down the slender stem for a second and then raised her head. “I’ve got one question I think you two can answer.”

“What’s that?” Elizabeth sounded a little guarded.

“Just who exactly is, or was, Monty?”

M
onty’s identity remained a mystery, at least for the moment. The front door opened and Noah appeared in the doorway of the gathering room.

He walked over to the table where the four of us sat
, pulled over a ladder-backed chair that was against the wall, and sat down. “Monty’s gone and so is the rug,” he told Cora Lee. “Lieutenant McMann will be in soon to ask you all some questions.”

Cora Lee
bristled. “Leo? Leo McMann? You mean to tell me with all the police in that department of yours, we get Leo McMann?”

Noah’s expression hardened. “
Lieutenant
”—there was a definite emphasis—“McMann is head of our homicide squad, as you well know. Please try not to bait him. It will make life easier for all of us.”

“Humph.”

I hoped Cora Lee confined herself to that remark. Policemen liked straight answers with no barbs thrown in. That could do nothing but cause us problems and we already had plenty. The thought of the syllabub sitting in Elizabeth’s refrigerator, and the possibility that syllabub was what was in Monty’s glass, made me nervous. Which raised another possibility. The syllabub glass had been beside Monty’s outstretched hand. There were matching glasses on the buffet. I tried to remember. Maybe I was wrong, but I didn’t think so. “Where was the other glass?”

Noah looked at me as if he’d only now noticed I was there. “What?”

“The other glass. Monty drank something and died. Someone was with him. Monty didn’t get himself a glass of syllabub, poison it and drink it all by himself. At least, I don’t think so. Only, I didn’t see another sticky glass. Only those clean ones on the buffet.”

Noah’s expression started to change. A small smile formed and once again he ran his hand over his hair. “You’re right. There wasn’t one.”

I turned to Cora Lee. “How many glasses did your mother have?”

The answer was prompt and emphatic. “Eight.”

The gleam in Aunt Mary’s eye told me she’d caught on to what I was thinking. Her question to Noah was sharp and to the point. “Did you count them?”

“There are seven. Six on the buffet and one beside Monty. That’s the one the crime scene guys took away.”

“They took that
and
the rug? Those glasses are two hundred years old! They belong in a museum, not banging around in some lab somewhere. If that glass gets broken, it will be on your head, Noah Long.”

This time Noah didn’t even acknowledge Cora Lee. “Eight. One’s missing. Isn’t that interesting
?”

“Someone took one away.” Elizabeth pushed her wineglass to the side and stared at Noah. “Why? Why would
they do that?”

“I don’t know.” Noah looked around. “I don’t suppose you have any coffee made?”

Aunt Mary started to push back her chair then stopped. The room where we sat was long, the table almost in the middle. One end of the room—the end, I thought, that faced the river—had a floor to ceiling fireplace and paneled walls on each side. The wingback chair that contained the small dog, Petal, and a rocking chair sat on each side of it. The buffet was on the inside wall. The opposite end of the room was a kitchen as elegant as any I’d seen in magazines, nothing like the one in my old house or Aunt Mary’s. She’d taken stock of it and I knew her fingers were itching to explore its huge gas range, the copper hood, the stainless steel French door refrigerator, but not now. Especially not the refrigerator. That was where I kept my coffee and so did Aunt Mary. I had no idea where Elizabeth kept hers, but I knew where the syllabub was. We didn’t need to open that door.

“I’ll do it.” Elizabeth headed for the kitchen end of the room.

I held my breath. She opened a cupboard and took out the coffee tin and filters. I let my breath out with a sigh but caught it again as I looked at Noah’s face. What was he thinking? He looked from Elizabeth to Cora Lee with a speculative gaze. Was it the glasses? Cora Lee had made no secret they were old and belonged to Smithwood. Or was it what had been in one of them? I didn’t like that thought at all. It wasn’t hard to figure out what Cora Lee was thinking. Her expression had been mulish ever since she heard that Lt. McMann—whoever he might be—would be coming in to ask questions. That she had no use for him was obvious, but why?

I guessed we’d find out eventually. “Noah, do you know what Monty was drinking? It was something yellow, thick and a little sticky looking.”

Cora Lee’s head jerked up, Lt. McMann forgotten. Elizabeth stiffened. She’d been taking cups from the cupboard but now seemed barely able to put the cup she was holding on the counter before she froze, waiting for Noah’s answer.

Noah seemed conscious of the reaction my question set off. He turned slightly so as to see Elizabeth at the sink. It was impossible to miss Cora Lee. Her eyes bored holes in him. However, it was me he addressed.

“It looked, and smelled, like syllabub. Do you know what that is?” He included Aunt Mary in his question.

We both nodded.

He smiled slightly. “We’ll know for sure after the lab guys get through with it.”

“Syllabub? Impossible.” Cora Lee almost snorted in her zeal to prove Noah wrong. “Where would Monty have gotten that?”

“An excellent question. If it proves that’s what he drank, it’s a question we’ll have to answer. Along with all the other questions, such as what else was in the drink and who gave it to him.”

“And why.”

The look Noah gave Aunt Mary was speculative. “Yes. And why.” He turned around in his chair and said directly to Elizabeth, “Did Monty still have a key?”

Elizabeth’s hand shook slightly as she poured the coffee. “I have no idea.” She picked up one cup only, walked back to the table and set it in front of Noah. She didn’t offer any to the rest of us. Instead, she sat and picked up her wineglass. “Is there any wine left, Cora Lee? If so, I think I’d like some.”

Cora Lee rose and brought the bottle back to the table. She poured a little in Elizabeth’s glass then finished it off between herself and Aunt Mary. I still had an almost full glass, a situation I planned on correcting soon.

“He didn’t have a key. I took it.”

The Wonderland feeling was back. Why would Cora Lee take Monty’s key? Why did he have one? Who on earth was he, anyway?

“Are you sure?” Noah didn’t look convinced. He shoveled sugar into his coffee and stirred, not noticing when it sloshed.

Aunt Mary’s fingers actually twitched with an almost overwhelming need to mop up the small pool. She removed her hands from the table and folded them in her lap. I almost laughed, but refrained.

“It wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t.” Cora Lee smiled. “I didn’t trust Monty not to have another one. I got Colonial Lock and Key to come out and change the locks on all the outside doors on all three houses, oh, a couple of years ago. I made sure they kept the old colonial style keys. Those blasted things are heavy, too.”

The cat that ate the canary. The expression on Cora Lee’s face had to be where that old expression came from. Only, why would she do that and why was she so pleased?”

“Why would Monty have a key?” Leave it to Aunt Mary to get right to the point.

“Because his mamma died.”

I looked at Aunt Mary. She looked at me, and I shrugged.

She narrowed her eyebrows and her nostrils flared a little, a sure sign her patience was wearing thin. “What does Monty’s mother have to do with anything? Who was he, anyway?”

“Oh, dear. You don’t know, do you?” Cora Lee clicked her tongue and smiled. “Why, honey, his mamma was my brother William’s first wife, the one who lived here while William lived with Elizabeth at that college in Wisconsin where they taught whatever it was they taught. Monty and William didn’t get on one little bit. Actually, William couldn’t stand to be around him.” She paused for a moment, as if reliving
the events of long ago. Finally she sighed and went on. “That was a marriage that should never have happened. It was a disaster from the moment they said, ‘I do.’ ”

She looked at Elizabeth and smiled. Elizabeth smiled back. Clearly, Cora Lee approved of William’s second wife.

“That’s why, after she died and I found out Monty was fixing to move in here with his wife and kids, I had to do something. William would have had that stroke a whole lot earlier if he thought Monty was living in his house. So, I dropped into Mr. Monty’s law office one day, collected the key and told him the only way he’d ever move into Smithwood again would be over my dead body. Or his.” The old sarcastic smile was back on Cora Lee’s face. “Mr. Montgomery Eslick was pretty unhappy with me, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. It was a nice day for me. I don’t think Monty enjoyed it nearly as much, and I’ll bet he enjoyed it even less when he went home and told that little social climbing wife of his.”

Cora Lee’s southern accent had gotten thicker as the story went on, but I had no problem understanding her.

“So Monty was William’s stepson? He used to live here?” Aunt Mary looked from Cora Lee to Elizabeth.

“All the time he was in high school and during all the holidays while he went to college. He was a disgusting teenager and didn’t improve with age. Happiest day of my life was when I picked up that key.” Cora Lee beamed.

Aunt Mary looked stunned. Evidently, Elizabeth had never mentioned a stepson. I wondered if she’d mentioned a wife. That Elizabeth and William lived together without benefit of wedlock she’d known for years and accepted without batting an eyelash. But that William still had a wife in the background? She glanced over at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth’s eyes were
fixed on her wineglass. “I guess I should have told you. It just, somehow, never came up.”

It never came up? Aunt Mary’s face showed she was having trouble with that one. It was, of course, none of her business. If Elizabeth chose not to mention them, well, she didn’t have to. But I also could tell Aunt Mary was hurt. Elizabeth never did anything in a conventional way. Aunt Mary expected that. Living with William in one state while
his wife and stepchild resided in his ancestral home in another wouldn’t have surprised her. She would have worried about it, but she would never have thought less of Elizabeth or even questioned her about it, I was sure. All this did answer one question, however. We now knew who Monty was. Now for the other questions …

“Okay, Monty lived here, grew up here and at one time had a key. If he wasn’t supposed to be here now, and didn’t have a new key, how was he getting in and out? Why was he here?” I paused, waiting for someone to comment, add something, guess. No one said a thing. “Who would want Monty dead, and why was he killed here, in the old Smithwood mansion, on your dining room rug?”

Everyone was silent, even Cora Lee.