5 Murder by Syllabub (9 page)

A large butcher-block island took up the middle of the room. A pot rack hung above it, the array of cooking utensils impressive. Deep drawers held more pots, lids and baking dishes. Whoever designed this kitchen was a cook. Elizabeth? Didn’t seem likely. I shut the drawer.

Aunt Mary stood right behind me. “This kitchen is a dream come true.”

I nodded. “I thought you said Elizabeth wasn’t interested in cooking.”

“She never was before. Food, yes, cooking, not in the least. Someone is, though.” She continued the tour of inspection, raising the concealed vent in the island, testing the simmer burner, attempting to reach the pots on the rack.

While she drooled over the kitchen, I walked down to inspect the rest of the room. The ceiling was high
, with deep crown molding; the baseboards were also high and both were painted white. The rest of the room was a soft robin’s egg blue that deepened as the color extended into the paneled dining end of the room. The wood was painted. I sighed. No one would paint that beautiful wood now. Was that the way they did things in the eighteenth century? A question for Elizabeth.

The
end of the room we had occupied last night was a combined sitting and dining area and determinately old. The table was square and seated four comfortably, six with a little squeezing. It sat on a beautiful Oriental rug that was almost threadbare in places. For much of the evening, Aunt Mary had used the little rocker by the fireplace. I’d barely given it a glance, but now I observed that it was wider, higher than any I’d ever seen; it was also shallower, with a hearth that extended well into the room. Why? Something that must be a table was pushed up against the wall behind the rocker. The round top was tipped so it sat horizontal with the base, which was pushed up against the wall.

“What’s that?” I walked over for a closer look
.

Aunt Mary joined me. “A colonial table. I’ve seen them in magazines. There wasn’t much room in lots of houses, so they made tables with the top on a hinge so they could sort of fold it up when they didn’t need it
, like that one.” The joint showed where the top folded upright. What a wonderful idea. There when you needed it but out of the way when you didn’t. Very practical.

My gaze wandered over the rest of the room. Old pictures featuring women in long full skirts hung on the walls, and heavy draperies, which we’d forgotten to let down from their ties last night, flanked the tall French doors Aunt Mary had opened earlier to let Petal out.

It wasn’t until I turned to go back into the kitchen, anxious to see if the coffee was ready, that I noticed the small door on the other side of the fireplace. The door to the cellar. I moved in closer. Wrought-iron hinges held the door in place. A wrought-iron latch held it closed. I reached out and pushed the thumb latch down. The door opened, revealing nothing but a black hole.

“Come look at this.”

Aunt Mary hurried over to stand behind me and stare down into nothingness. All you could see was the top couple of steps. “Should we try and find a light?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “No.” I reached for the door. “We’re not going down there, at least not without Elizabeth.” I closed the door again and examined the latch. No lock that I could see.

“Oh, that smells good.”

I wheeled around so fast I almost tripped. “Elizabeth. You’re up. How do you feel?”

“Like I need coffee. I came down to start it, but I see you beat me to it. Thank goodness. I’d probably kill for a cup if I had to.”

An unfortunate phrase under the circumstances. Elizabeth pulled down three large mugs
from one of the cabinets. Bright blue, red and yellow flowers, a bee and dancing butterflies showed gaily against white porcelain. Filled with hot, black coffee, they were a lovely way to start what was going to be, I was certain, a difficult day.

“Have you seen Petal? Cream and sugar or black? I see you found the cellar door. Have you gone down?”

“Black. Petal just went outside. She seemed anxious. And no, we haven’t. We thought we’d wait for you.”

Elizabeth nodded and poured coffee into the mugs. She set two on the island and motioned to them. The other she carried to the table
, where she pulled out a chair. Aunt Mary headed for the island and reached for her mug. Steam rose from it. She sighed but picked it up anyway, holding it gingerly as she walked to the table. I picked up mine and joined her. A little cream would cool them right off.

Elizabeth picked up hers, stared at the steam and set it back down. “Thanks for letting the dog out. She’s not the most patient thing in the world. She’ll hold it just so long. Then if you don’t let her out
… well.”

Aunt Mary frowned. She liked dogs, although I didn’t remember her ever having one. Maybe because she didn’t like puddles. “Elizabeth, we’ve got to talk.”

Elizabeth pushed back her chair and started to rise to her feet. She acted as if she hadn’t heard. “Don’t know why I’m sitting here. That dog will be along shortly and will want in.”

“Never mind the dog. Please sit back down. You called us out to help you, and we want to, but there’s too much going on here we don’t understand. You need to tell us about Monty and what
syllabub has to do with all of this.”

Elizabeth sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I’d better give you some background.” She paused again, put her hand on top of her coffee mug, as if to warm it, but quickly removed it. Without looking up, she
began.

“Things have been hard lately. I haven’t been sleeping very well. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and
then I can’t seem to go back to sleep.”

Aunt Mary nodded. The first year or so after Uncle Samuel died had been hard. I’d stayed with her for a week or so after the funeral, but I knew it had taken her a while to even begin to adjust. She nodded at Elizabeth. “Thinking. Yes, I remember.”

Elizabeth almost smiled. “There’s been a lot to think about lately.” The smile disappeared and she gave a choking sort of sigh. “About Monty. His mother wanted William to adopt him. Legally. Monty wanted that too. He wanted to be a Smithwood, wanted to live here, wanted to own it. That was the last thing William wanted. He wanted a divorce.”

She paused again, seemingly lost in a past only she could see. We waited a minute before Aunt Mary gently prodded her. “Go on.”

Elizabeth started a little, as if she’d forgotten our presence. “Oh. Yes. William was a gentle man. Controversy made him sick to his stomach.” Her smile was full of fondness. “I used to keep Maalox handy at all times.”

I could almost see Elizabeth shake herself
to try to stop remembering these details, at least about William. She took a healthy gulp of coffee.

“Anyway, William was offered the mathematics chair at Westover. He was delighted. His wife refused to go. William was even more delighted. He told her she could stay on, which was exactly what she wanted, and so could Monty. His one stipulation was that Cora Lee
would manage the plantation and all the money.” Elizabeth’s smile was mirthless. “She wasn’t pleased, but she didn’t have any choice, and staying here was important to her. She stayed for over twenty years.”

Aunt Mary blinked. “Twenty years?” She put down the coffee. “Then what happened?”

“She died. Monty had long since moved out. He was married and had a law office in town. That’s when William and I started to come back—summers, Christmas, that kind of thing. I loved it here and when I got the idea for my project, he agreed. After we retired, we moved here. We’d only been here a couple of months when he had the stroke.”

I sipped my coffee. It was still too hot, but I needed the caffeine to clear my head if I was going to piece any of this together. I opened my mouth to ask Elizabeth a question.

Aunt Mary got there first. She began with what had obviously been nagging at her. “Why didn’t you tell me about his wife? It wouldn’t have bothered me, you know.”

The sigh Elizabeth
heaved was deep and long. “I know, but it bothered me.” Her brow furrowed and her eyes stayed on the contents of her mug. “Not being married to William didn’t, but the fact he had a wife did.” She almost smiled. “Don’t ask me why. I was the original nonconformist. It shouldn’t have, but it did.” She paused, turning her mug around slowly, watching the coffee sway back and forth. “We only came here once when she was alive. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.”

We both waited
for Elizabeth to gather herself. Was she going to go on? I tried to imagine not being married to Dan, or him with his first wife, who died in a fiery car crash. I couldn’t. Our lives together seemed so right, so intertwined. I sure hadn’t felt like that when I was married to Brian. Living without his constant put-downs had proved to be easy.

I couldn’t begin to imagine the sense of loss Elizabeth was feeling and didn’t want to try. Aunt Mary could. It must be very much like what she felt when she lost Uncle Samuel. Their lives had been the opposite of unconventional. He owned the most successful insurance office in Santa Louisa, which wasn’t saying much
, considering the size of the town. They had a secure and happy, although somewhat uneventful, life, but it suited them. They’d been happy.

Marriage wasn’t what I needed to dwell on. Murder was. “So, you and William came back here to retire?”

Elizabeth nodded. “We’d already remodeled this house but hadn’t touched the main house or the east house. Those we planned to take back to the eighteenth century. This one, well, neither of us was willing to give up electric lights or modern bathrooms.”

Aunt Mary nodded. “Get to the part about Monty.”

Elizabeth stirred her coffee, staring down into it, watching it swirl. It seemed physically painful to talk about him. “When he found out William left everything to me and nothing to him, he had a fit. A real major one.” She shuddered slightly. “I’ve never seen anyone like that before. Even the captain of that whaling boat we rammed wasn’t that bad.” She paused. “Of course, he didn’t speak English, so maybe he was and I just didn’t know it.”

“Elizabeth, try to stick to Monty. What did he say?”

“That if I didn’t sign Smithwood over to him, he’d take me to court and claim William’s will was invalid due to diminished capacity. That I married him when he wasn’t capable of making a decision.” Her eyes filled with tears and she stopped.

Aunt Mary waited and I took my cue from her. She knew Elizabeth. Elizabeth wiped the tears away with the edge of the tablecloth and smiled. “I told the little bastard to get lost.”

Aunt Mary exploded in laughter but immediately turned serious. “Did he? Have diminished capacity, I mean. You never said anything about his mind, just that he had trouble with his left side.”

“That was all that was wrong. Until the second stroke. Th
e one that killed him.” The smile faded and the worried frown reappeared. “Monty knew all that. He said he’d tie up the estate so tight I’d never get my school up and running before I ran out of money or out of life, whichever came first. In the end he was going to own Smithwood.”

There was no laughter left in Aunt Mary when Elizabeth finished that statement. “Could he have?”

“He could have, and he would have. The Smithwoods have a ton of money, but even they don’t have enough to withstand years in court. Monty had the advantage of not having to hire an attorney. We would have needed one. He could have bled us dry.”

Cora Lee drifted into the kitchen, clutching a flimsy dressing gown around her. Satin mules tapped on the floor as she headed for the coffee. “I smelled this all the way upstairs. It’s the only thing that could have gotten me out of bed. That and Calvin’s weed whacker. Does he have to make that much noise?” She filled a pretty china cup with coffee, set it on a matching saucer and carried it to the table, cane hung over her arm
.

I held my breath as I watched. The cane swung. Cora Lee’s slipper heels were high and her dressing gown kept slipping down over one shoulder. A perfect recipe for a crash, but she made it. The cup and saucer
was set on the table, the cane was propped beside the chair and the dressing gown was yanked back into place before Cora Lee got herself seated. Taking a small sip of her coffee, she said, “Monty was despicable as a child and he didn’t get better with age. He got what he deserved. Now, we’re going to have to decide what to do with that bowl of syllabub before the police come back. Leo McMann would like nothing better than to find some reason to put you in jail.” She paused, and her smile was rather self-satisfied under the circumstances. “Dear Leo would love to put any or all of us in jail.” She straightened a little and the smile got a little larger. “However, I look just awful in orange and it would make Elizabeth look downright peaked. So, let’s dump that stuff down the drain.”

“No!”

“We can’t!” Aunt Mary and I blurted out in unison.

“Why not?” How Cora Lee managed to look so innocent while she proposed destroying evidence, or what might be evidence, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t about to let it happen.

“Cora Lee, sometimes you get the worst ideas of any human being I’ve ever known.”

I jerked around, almost knocking over my coffee at the sound of this new voice. I hadn’t heard the French doors open, but there stood a tall, black woman holding a covered dish
. The two dogs at her side were gazing up at her with hope in their eyes.