Docketful of Poesy (19 page)

“Oh, I’d forgotten about those!”

“I hadn’t.”

She giggled, untroubled, and watching her face in the
mirror I felt a twinge of something uncomfortably maternal. I knew
I was eventually going to have to find out more about this new man
in her life—which probably wouldn’t be a problem since I seemed to
spend a lot of my time snooping.

We went downstairs and found most of the cast getting
ready to leave for the tea party, the usual debate ranging about
who would drive with whom. Mona, delighted to have finally located
her missing flask on the mantelpiece in the anteroom next to the
lobby, hitched a ride with us in Cordelia’s black Jaguar.

“I’ve always wanted to have a real English high tea,”
she said, not blinking an eye as Cordelia roared away from the inn.
“Do you suppose there will be crumpets and cucumber
sandwiches?”

I don’t think I’ve ever had a decent cucumber
sandwich in my life, but I murmured noncommittally. Being
vegetarian, Mona probably approved of cucumber sandwiches in all
their soggy glory.

“High tea is dinner,” Cordelia informed her, throwing
a windblown look over her shoulder. “We’re having afternoon tea.
Low tea.”

Mona raised her eyebrows, exchanging a look with me,
and I explained, “You and I, well, most Americans, think of high
tea as a fancy, full tea, but it’s actually the evening meal.
Usually with meat. We’re going to be treated to an afternoon or a
cream tea, I’m guessing. Savories and sweets, scones—crumpets,
probably.” I didn’t tell her that Lady Vee would be serving
crumpets as a concession to the Americans.

“Desserts,” Cordelia said. “Auntie has a new pastry
chef.”

Mona licked her lips. “Lovely.”

The subject of tea and crumpets exhausted, I asked
casually, “Mona, how long have you known Roberta?”

She shrugged a bony shoulder. “We both worked on a TV
special a few years back. I hadn’t seen her for ages. Not until I
got the call for this project.”

“You’ve never done a film for Kismet Productions
before?”

She gave me an odd look. “I don’t believe they’ve
done many films. They’re fairly new from what I picked up.”

“But you knew Miles?”

She laughed. “Oh, yes. Miles and I go
way
back.”

“When I first talked to Walter Christie he said some
things about Roberta and Miles not really being in control of the
production.”

“Poor little Walter,” she said regretfully. “Well,
Miles and Roberta have to answer to their corporate overlords like
all the rest of us minions.”

I’d have liked to ask her more questions, but she
leaned back in her seat, lifting her face to the pallid sun and
enjoying the wind through her hair.

*****

“Grace, my
deah
,” drawled Lady Venetia
Brougham in welcome, vaguely waving her guests to the invitingly
placed chairs and settees littering the elegant drawing room. “You
decided to return after all. I admit I feared we would never see
you again. Dear
Petah
must be utterly…flummoxed.”

“Oh, but I always enjoy our little visits,” I
retorted. “Peter knows that.”

She snickered, eyeing me with her lizard-dark eyes.
In an unexpected concession to her age—which was
eighty-something—Lady Vee had finally given up the raven-haired
Cleopatra bob. Her pale silver hair had been cut pixie-style. And,
in fact, being tiny, wizened, and more than a little malicious, the
cut suited her rather well.

“And how did you find your family and friends?” she
inquired politely, meanwhile directing servants and guests alike
with her long ivory cigarette holder. Uniformed maids placed
heavily laden silver trays on several low tables in front of my
fellow guests.

I resisted the urge to say something
uncharacteristically smart-aleck, like I’d found them without any
problem since they weren’t trying to lose me. “I’m happy to say
everyone was quite well.”

“We did wonder when you kept coming up with
exc—reasons for postponing your return. I think
Petah
had
given you up as a lost cause, my
deah
. I know Allegra had
the impression you were not expected to return anytime soon.”

I happened to notice Cordelia open her mouth and then
close it. She gave me a funny, guilty look. What did
that
mean? Oh, I knew what Lady Vee was implying, but that didn’t worry
me unduly. She liked needling me with the idea that her niece, one
of Peter’s former lady friends, was still—to use one of her own
sporting metaphors—in the running.

“Well, I’m back now,” I said brightly.

“And you’ve brought such
enthrahlling
friends
and colleagues with you this time.” She made it sound like I’d
arrived with elephants and trapeze artists in tow, but before I
could respond—had I a suitable response—Lady Vee turned on her
party manners and began to wow the colonials with her lemon curd
and Earl Grey.

Pammy’s plate was piled BBQ-fashion with pastries and
sweets. I could see Mona observing our hostess quietly and taking
mental notes, but she was too shrewd to make the fatal mistake of
mentioning that she was playing a Lady Vee clone in
Dangerous to
Know
. Although one never knew: Lady Vee might actually have got
a perverse kick out of her cinematic reincarnation.

Miles and Tracy sat on one of the velvet love seats
next to the ancient harpsichord, whispering and eating. At one
point Tracy was actually feeding Miles cake, so I really couldn’t
blame Norton for the glowering looks he was sending their way,
although I didn’t think he was glowering for the same reason
Roberta was.

Everyone else seemed suitably impressed and
enthusiastic, although Todd was overplaying the forelock-tugging a
tad.

But then tea at Lady Venetia’s—any meal, really—was
always a sumptuous affair, and that afternoon was no different. The
quantities of jam-filled scones, blue-frosted fairy cakes,
chocolate sponge cake, and blackberry tarts were provided in
keeping with North American notions of portions. The tea itself was
exquisite, delicate and flavorful, and I could see the old beldame
watching with glinting amusement as her guests puzzled over whether
the milk went into the cups before the tea, whether they were
supposed to balance fragile cups on dainty saucers or hold them
separately, whether the paper-thin slice of lemon went in the cup
or not, and what to do with those gleaming sterling teaspoons.

Something about Lady Vee and her centuries-old
surroundings made even the most confident person suddenly want to
reach for the latest edition of Emily Post.

When we had finally finished gorging ourselves on
sweets, and Lady Vee had grown bored with torturing the savages
with small talk, we were invited to view the justly famous rose
gardens.

It was growing late in the afternoon as we filed out
to explore the series of garden rooms boxed by green hedges and
bordered by huge, ancient rosebushes. The scent of herbs and musky
roses perfumed the neatly trimmed walkways. As expected in a
classic English garden, there were numerous whimsical structures
and topiaries pruned into imaginative shapes, as well as several
lovely marble statues positioned amidst the harmoniously laid-out
flowerbeds. Everyone oohed and ahhed appropriately.

“Has Cordelia mentioned to you that she’s been hired
to act in this film?” I asked Lady Vee as we happened to find
ourselves standing by the goldfish pond while everyone else
wandered along the paths and out of immediate earshot.

“The
deah
child may have said something about
it,” Lady Vee replied vaguely. She had brought a basket and a pair
of secateurs with her, and was ruthlessly clipping withered blooms.
I suspected at first it was just part of her Lady of the Manor act,
but she was getting too much pleasure out of the snipping.

“And you’re all right with that?”

The gimlet eyes met mine. “Shouldn’t I be, my
dear?”

I had no desire to sabotage the film production of my
own work, but honesty compelled me to say, “I don’t know. There’s
something I can’t quite put my finger on. Don’t you think they’re
all a little…strange?”

She said sweetly, “They’re Americans, my
deah
.”

“I realize that. But besides being born on the wrong
side of the Atlantic —”

A shrill scream split the rose-scented tranquility.
Lady Vee went rigid, her eyes meeting mine.

Turning, I ran down the path following the hysterical
babble of voices—there were more screams and then they cut off
sharply.

I rounded the corner of a wall of yew trees. Several
people formed a horseshoe around a body sprawled on the ground. I
stared at the horrified faces: Tracy clung to Miles—and so did
Roberta. Norton knelt on the ground beside the body, staring down
at the twisted face.

“She’s dead,” he said in a sleepwalker’s voice.

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Miles said.

Someone gave a sob, and I looked at Cordelia. She was
in Todd’s arms. Her face was white and streaked with tears; but
seeing her, I relaxed a fraction: it had been her scream that sent
me racing through the garden.

Cordelia quavered, “S-she took a drink and then
she…started gasping for breath…and then she fell down and began
to…went into…c-convulsions.”

“And then she died,” Roberta said dazedly. “Just like
that. It was so fast. She was…
dead.
”

In silence we all stared down at Mona. Her hair lay
in long strands across her face, not quite concealing her staring
eyes. A few inches from her outstretched fingers lay her small
silver flask.

Chapter
Fifteen

“P
oison. That’s clear
enough,” Chief Constable Heron said. “Though it’ll be a few days
before we know what kind of poison.”

“It was something that acted almost instantly, from
what Cordelia said,” I told him.

“Yes, we’ve got the young lady’s statement.”

With the privilege of being—literally—to the manor
born, Cordelia had been questioned first and was now tucked up in
bed upstairs with a hot water bottle, a cup of cocoa, and a couple
of nice sedatives.

I, on the other hand, was still sitting in Lady Vee’s
elegant study several hours after the tragedy. A fire had been laid
in the grate, and a tea tray—much less sumptuous than the one
provided earlier—sat on the table where Chief Constable Heron and
DI Brian Drummond, both my friends very much in their official
capacities, were making notes.

Naturally the police had to question each of us
before allowing anyone to leave the estate. Not everyone was taking
this in civic-minded spirit. I was lucky. I’d been brought in to
the study almost immediately. Not that I ever looked forward to
being interviewed by the police, but it was even more nerve-racking
with all of us crowded in the drawing room under the watchful eye
of a young constable—forbidden to talk about the thing on every
mind.

Having numbly answered most of Brian’s and the chief
constable’s questions, there wasn’t a lot I could add to whatever
they had already learned. I had only known Mona a few days; my
relationship with her had been friendly but not close, although I’d
liked her very much. As far as I knew, everyone did. I’d seen
nothing to indicate she hadn’t got on well with the entire
cast.

“
She found her flask right before
we left the inn. It had been missing for a day or so—but it wasn’t
the first time. She was always losing it. And it was always turning
up.”

“Where did it turn up this time?” Brian asked,
topping off Heron’s teacup and then his own.

“On the fireplace mantel in the little room next to
the lobby of the Hound and Harrier. But that’s exactly where
someone might leave it if they found it and there was no one at the
desk. Or Mona could have set it there herself.”

“Was this Ms. Hotchkiss especially forgetful?” Heron
asked. He was a large man with a waxed mustache and shrewd,
black-cherry eyes. He could easily have played the master detective
in any number of
Mystery!
productions. Through the years we
had forged a cordial if occasionally adversarial relationship.

“
I didn’t have that impression.
Maybe a little absentminded about where she’d left her jacket or
set her purse.”

“Did she keep the flask in her purse?”

“No, she didn’t. She usually carried it in one of her
pockets. She had an enormous suitcase of a purse, but she rarely
bothered bringing it with her—partly because it was so big and
unwieldy. I think that’s why she tended to forget it when she did
lug it somewhere.”

“And this silver flask that she was always drinking
from: what was in it?”

“Some kind of special homemade energy juice—she was
very health-conscious.” My throat closed unexpectedly. It took a
moment before I was able to say, “She called it her ‘magic elixir.’
I can’t remember everything that she said went into it. White
ginseng, juniper berries, that kind of thing.”

Brian glanced at Heron. “I’ve heard of juniper
berries making someone ill. Never killing them. Still, it wouldn’t
be the first time someone accidentally poisoned herself with a
herbal home remedy.”

I have to admit, the idea that Mona might have
accidentally poisoned herself had simply never occurred to me. And
what a sad state of affairs that was: that every death appeared to
me to be suspicious.

I said, “She seemed very knowledgeable about
homeopathic remedies and herbal medicine, but I suppose those are
the very people who are most vulnerable to that kind of
accident.”

Heron, studying me, said, “What’s really bothering
you, Grace?”

“One too many accidents,” I admitted, and told him
about Walter Christie dying in an unsolved hit-and-run on Highland
Avenue.

“Two violent and unexplained deaths,” Brian
commented. His tone was neutral, but I could see him thinking it
over.