An Old-Fashioned Murder (11 page)

 

CHAPTER

10

“Oh, for pity sake,” Aunt Emily said, rolling her eyes at Daisy. “What is that woman bellyaching about now?”

Daisy didn't roll her eyes back. She knew that something was truly wrong. For all her grousing, Lillian never shrieked like a panicky schoolgirl about spiders and spooks. Which meant that she wasn't just startled. She was shocked. And so was the rest of the group as they turned one by one almost in slow motion toward the dining room. Gasps. A cry of horror. May Fowler sinking to the carpet in distress.

Leaving Aunt Emily and Bud Foster in the entrance hall, Daisy hurried toward the others. Her feet stopped the moment she reached the French doors that separated the parlor from the dining room. They were wide open, providing an unobstructed view of the nook where a mere twelve hours earlier Henry Brent had proudly revealed his gift to Aunt Emily. The antique secretary was no longer standing grandly, albeit tippy, against the wall, its golden tiger maple and brasses gleaming. It was now lying facedown on the floor, the two pieces—the desk and the bookcase—separated, no doubt from the impact. Except the impact wasn't with the floor. Between the furniture and the ground lay a body. It was Henry Brent.

There was no need to check for a pulse or seek emergency medical care. Daisy could tell that instantly. Henry Brent's eyes were open and unblinking, staring without seeing up at the ceiling. His mouth was open also, forming a stiff circle. And his limbs were stretched out in every direction like a jumping jack. The exact injury wasn't clear. A heart attack, a shattered spine, internal hemorrhaging. They were all possible based on the great size and weight of the secretary. The end result was the same, regardless. Henry Brent was dead.

He must have seen it coming, considering that he was lying on his back rather than his stomach. Daisy dearly hoped that it had been a quick death. She thought it might have been. There was no visible blood from slowly seeping wounds. Neither his hands nor his arms were scratched and bruised as they would have been had he struggled to get out from underneath or push the secretary off. On the contrary, his right palm was closed and appeared to be holding something.

Daisy felt a warm touch on her shoulder. Glancing up, she found Drew leaning over her. Only then did she realize that she was no longer on her feet but on the ground next to Henry Brent, her fingers mechanically straightening his bow tie.

“Daisy—” Drew began, trying gently to get her to rise.

She stayed put, gazing with some confusion at the bow tie and the accompanying suit—the burgundy seersucker that matched the burgundy draperies.

Drew tried again. “How about if we go sit in the parlor?”

Still not moving, Daisy lifted her head and looked at the group gathered before her. May remained on the carpet where she had sunk at the first glimpse of the body. Edna knelt beside her, patting her hand and crooning in soothing tones. They were dressed in nearly identical long-sleeved, floor-length flannel nightgowns with a ribbon of ivory lace stitched to the collar and hem. Lillian was on her usual settee, wearing a pair of pumpkin-orange pajamas featuring an array of cats chasing mice. In his cartoon wiener-dog pajamas, Parker paced back and forth behind his wife, grimacing and mumbling intermittently to himself.

The neighboring settee was occupied by the Lunts. Sarah perched at the edge of the brocaded fabric with the agitated expression of a caged canary waiting to fly off at the first available opportunity. She was clad in a scanty turquoise silk negligee with an equally flimsy turquoise silk cape. It was a surprising—and rather daring—choice of attire, considering both her personality and that she was at an inn with relative strangers instead of in the privacy of her own home. Kenneth lounged next to her, wearing such crisply starched pajama bottoms that they displayed not even a hint of a wrinkle. They were topped by a sweatshirt from his presumed alma mater.

Finally there was Georgia. Dressed in tie-dye boxer shorts and a faded Dairy Queen T-shirt, she was pressed against the wall in the far corner of the parlor with her gaze studiously averted from everybody else. But it wasn't what each person was doing or individually wearing that struck Daisy. It was the fact that they were all—including her—in their nightclothes, while Henry Brent was in his seersucker. Unlike them, he had never gone to bed.

“Can you get a blanket?” Drew said to Parker.

Parker stopped pacing. “A blanket?”

“A big one, to cover him. Or a bedsheet?” Drew suggested.

“Right. Good idea.” Parker took several quick paces toward the hall before pausing with a frown. There were an awful lot of blankets and bedsheets at the inn. He turned to Aunt Emily questioningly.

Up until that point, Aunt Emily had been standing mute and motionless at the edge of the parlor. “I know just the one,” she murmured, more to herself than to him, and then disappeared down the hallway toward the linen closet.

Parker's frown deepened as his focus shifted to the person that had been next to her. “Who are you?” he asked Bud Foster.

Glancing intermittently at the body on the floor, Bud started to give the same explanation that he had to Daisy and Aunt Emily about getting lost while driving, and the storm hitting, and his car subsequently ending up in a ditch, but May cut him off halfway through.

“I must see Henry,” she said abruptly, paying not the slightest attention to Bud or his story.

“I'm not sure…,” Edna's voice trailed away, her brow heavily furrowed.

“I must see him,” May repeated emphatically, “before they cover him.”

Edna shook her head, as though she thought it far better for her sister not to see the deceased any more or any closer than she already had. It was certainly understandable. May, twisting her handkerchief taut and clutching it to her bosom, clearly did not have the strongest of nerves. But as May looked at her imploringly and reached out feebly for support, Edna didn't have the heart to say no and helped her to rise.

Parker came over to offer his assistance, and together he and the sisters moved slowly, arm in arm, toward Daisy and the nook. The rest of the group seemed to take it as a sign that now was the time when they should collectively pay their respects. Lillian joined her husband. Sarah and Kenneth followed. Even Georgia tiptoed over.

They circled around Henry Brent like a bereaved family of elephants closing ranks around a lost member of the herd. Some stood, others bent down or knelt by his side. It was Daisy who closed his eyes. She wanted to close his mouth, as well. She could see his dentures, and it made her think fondly of his clacking. But his jaw looked as if it was already too rigid, and she decided that it would be best to leave it rather than forcing it.

The wind hollowed outside, and an arctic blast of air whistled through the front door, which was still partly open. There was a communal shiver.

“Shut the door, would you?” Kenneth hollered at Bud, who had yet to move from the entrance hall.

Bud complied without speaking, although not before a second gust carried a shower of snow and ice inside. May swallowed a sob.

“Henry would have been so excited,” she said mournfully. “He would have wanted to see if this storm could have topped the one in sixty-two.”

Edna gurgled.

Parker heaved a sigh. “I sure will miss the old dog.” He gave a farewell woof.

Lillian's lemon lips puckered, and she harrumphed under her breath. Daisy shot her a reproachful look. It was no secret how much Henry Brent's banter—especially with Parker—had annoyed Lillian, but that didn't excuse her being disrespectful to the dead.

“He seemed like such a lovely man,” Sarah remarked quietly.

“He was so kind,” May told her.

“And smart,” Edna added.

“He asked after my mama every chance he got,” Daisy said.

May nodded. “That was Henry. Always thinking of others.”

“Always able to make you laugh,” Parker chimed in.

Lillian harrumphed again.

Daisy's reproachful look repeated itself, and this time, it was joined by a pointed glare from Drew. Sniffing indignantly, Lillian turned her back on them, although she remained next to her husband as the eulogizing continued. Soon thereafter, Aunt Emily appeared with a large wool blanket cradled in her arms. It was a dogwood-colored tartan, the official state tartan of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Daisy knew it to be Aunt Emily's favorite, and she thought it very appropriate under the circumstances.

The circle parted to make room for her, and Aunt Emily approached them with wobbly steps. Rising to her feet, Daisy nodded at her encouragingly. The steps steadied the closer she came.

“Oh, Henry,” Aunt Emily said, gazing at the man lying before her.

She didn't weep, but that didn't surprise Daisy. Although Aunt Emily would occasionally shed a happy or sentimental tear, she never cried out of sadness. Daisy had asked her about it once many years earlier. Aunt Emily had gotten a faraway look in her blue eyes and didn't respond. Ever since then, when the subject came close to being broached, she always deflected it by calling herself a tough old biddy.

“I shall miss you, my friend,” she went on.

Edna gurgled as she had before. May swallowed another sob.

“I should have paid more attention,” Aunt Emily chastised herself. “Everyone was talking about it being tippy. I should have listened better. It's my fault.”

“No, no!” May exclaimed. “It's my fault! The secretary wouldn't have been here at all if I hadn't sold it to him.”

“It never should have left the shop,” Edna said plaintively.

“But it didn't look tippy at the shop!” May wailed.

“Indeed it didn't,” Edna agreed. “And that's why it's not your fault. You couldn't have known what would happen.”

“I should have known,” Aunt Emily interjected severely. “When Henry was squeezing himself behind it last night before dinner, and it wobbled. I should have insisted right then and there that we move it, or at the very least, that we set something up against it, so it couldn't tumble over. I should have…”

As Aunt Emily continued her dour self-reproaches, Daisy remembered the noises—the rumbles and the crash—that she had heard in her bed before Bud Foster's pounding on the front door. She had originally thought that she might have dreamed them, but now it occurred to her that maybe they had been real, after all. Maybe they had been Henry Brent twisting himself behind the secretary again, trying to make it less tippy, or to see whatever thingamabob he said he had been looking at the first time. The rumbles could have been him pushing or shifting the secretary for a better fit or view, and the crash could have been it falling over. That would explain why it had seemed like the thunder came before the lightning.

Daisy also remembered that in between the rumbles—but before the crash—there had been footsteps in the hall on the second floor and also on the stairs. Door hinges had squeaked. There had been voices, too. Garbled voices, some distance away. Were those part of a dream? Drew and Henry Brent had been together in the parlor when she retired to her room, and she had assumed that some of the sounds were from Drew going to bed. But were they all from Drew? Or maybe none was from Drew. The footsteps on the stairs could have been going up or down from the third floor, just as easily as from the second. And the voices had come after the hinge squeaks and footsteps, or at least so she thought.

She looked at Drew, who was standing close by her side with his arm wrapped supportively around her waist. His hair was rumpled, and he was wearing an old hockey jersey. He had definitely gone to bed. But Henry Brent in his seersucker hadn't gone to bed. Which meant that he must have remained in the parlor—or returned to the parlor—to tinker with the secretary after he and Drew had called it a night. So was one of the voices his? Had Henry Brent been talking to somebody? Or maybe she was confused, and she had just imagined the voices.

“Ducky?”

Drew gave her waist a prodding squeeze.

“Ducky?” Aunt Emily repeated. “Would you take that end?”

Waking from her musing, Daisy found Aunt Emily holding a corner of the dogwood-colored tartan in her direction. Apparently she was supposed to take it and help cover Henry Brent.

She grasped the proffered corner. Parker held the opposite corner across from her. Removing his arm from her waist, Drew took the third corner, and Aunt Emily retained possession of the fourth. Together they stretched the blanket wide.

“Under or over?” Parker asked.

For a moment, Daisy didn't understand him, then she realized what he meant. Did Aunt Emily want the blanket to go over the whole secretary, or under the secretary and only over the body?

“Just Henry, I think,” Aunt Emily said.

“We'll have to lift the secretary for that,” Drew told her. “At least partway.”

“Oh, no,” she responded quickly. “We don't want to lift it. We might see how he—Oh, no.”

“I'm afraid the blanket isn't big enough to cover everything,” Parker said.

“We can do the top of the secretary and wrap the blanket under him,” Daisy suggested.

And that was precisely what they did. The entire bookcase was covered, while the desk was left open. The edges of the blanket were tucked under Henry Brent, so that none of him remained visible. In a flurry of activity, everybody in the group lent a hand, and then they all stepped back.

“Gracious, Parker!” Lillian cried. “Can't you even cover a body properly?”

She gestured toward Henry Brent's right arm, to which Parker was the closest. The arm was sticking out of the tartan like a stray caterpillar leg protruding from a cocoon.

“How did that…” Parker gazed at the arm quizzically. “I thought I—”

“Well, obviously you didn't!” Lillian snapped.

“Dear me.” May looked back and forth between them, then at the arm—which in its present state had a rather disturbing disembodied appearance—and she started to swoon.