No Clue at the Inn (Pennyfoot Hotel Mystery Book 13) (20 page)

"These bushes look like they could use a bloody good trim," Gertie remarked, pointing at the rows of rosebushes on either side of the crazy paving path.

"They do look a bit ragged." Mrs. Chubb frowned. "What happened to the arbor? It used to be so pretty with its archway of climbing roses."

"I knew something was missing." Gertie shook her head. "These gardens haven't looked the same since poor John Thimble died."

"I thought Ross did a good job of taking care of them when he worked here."

"Yeah, he did. But he really didn't have the time to do much before we moved back to Scotland."

"I've really missed living here," Mrs. Chubb said softly. "Scotland is very nice, but it's not Badgers End."

"I know." Gertie stretched out her booted feet. "It's too wild, too lonely. I miss the sea, and the shops, and the cliffs."

"And the people."

"Yeah, 'specially the people."

"Mama!"

The bloodcurdling shriek brought Gertie to her feet. "It's time we moved on before these two kill each other. Let's go for a walk around the tennis courts. By that time it should be close to mealtime again."

Mrs. Chubb rose a little stiffly. "All I seem to do here is eat."

Gertie grinned. "So what's bleeding wrong with that?" She grabbed James's hand as he raced by her. "We have a
rehearsal this afternoon. Daisy said she'd look after the twins. It will give us both a bit of a break."

"I'm surprised Daisy didn't want to be in the pantomime," Mrs. Chubb remarked as she dusted a smear of dirt on Lillian's coat.

"Nah, Daisy doesn't like to be on show in front of everybody. She says she leaves that sort of thing to Doris. You know, it's a funny thing. I always thought Doris was the shy one, and Daisy was always so sure of herself, always ready to stand up to anyone what gave her lip. Yet now it's Doris what loves the stage and performing in front of people, and Daisy would rather be on her own than in a crowd."

Mrs. Chubb nodded. "Just goes to show, you never really know people as well as you think you do."

They rounded the end of the rose garden and came out on the edge of the bowling green. The grass had been allowed to grow a little too long, and needed a roller across it. The brief snow shower had ended, and a watery sun peeked out from behind the ominous clouds. As they neared the tennis courts, James tugged on Gertie's hand, anxious to explore this new and unusual playground.

"What's it for?" Lillian asked when they reached the high fence that surrounded the courts.

Gertie explained as best she could the rudiments of tennis. "It's a game, and you have a racquet and you hit the ball to each other across the net."

"I wanna play tennis!" James announced.

"Me, too." Lillian broke free from Mrs. Chubb's hand and rattled the gate. "I want to go in there."

Gertie unlatched the gate and opened it. The twins
raced onto the court and started chasing each other all around. "That'll get rid of some of that energy," she said smugly.

"You hope."

Even as Mrs. Chubb spoke, James came running back to them. "We wanna play the tennis game!"

"Well, you can't." Gertie waved a hand at the empty court. "Tennis is a summer game. You can't play it in the snow. Besides, there's no net, and no racquets and no balls. So you can't play tennis now."

"I wanna play!"

James stamped his foot, and Lillian joined in, chanting over and over, "Wanna play tennis! Wanna play tennis!"

"All right!" Gertie glanced over to the shed that housed the equipment for the tennis courts and the lawn bowls. "I wonder if the shed is locked."

"I doubt it. Judging by the way the grounds have been neglected." Mrs. Chubb looked at the expectant faces of the twins. "It's worth a look, I suppose."

"All right, you keep an eye on them while I go and look. If it's open, I'll just bring a couple of racquets back and some balls. They don't need a net."

"Wanna net!" James insisted.

Gertie rolled her eyes skyward and headed for the gate. After closing it carefully behind her, she crunched her way across the crisp, overgrown grass to the shed.

As Mrs. Chubb had predicted, the door had been left unlocked. It swung inward with a groaning creak that made Gertie wince. She stepped inside, holding her nose at the stench that greeted her. Must have been a skunk in there, she told herself as she glanced around.

Mounds of black tarpaulin hid the contents from view,
and sighing, Gertie advanced farther into the evil-smelling shed, wary of spiderwebs and whatever else might be waiting to snag her hat. She lifted the hem of her skirt with one hand, conscious of the thick layer of dust covering the bare floorboards. They creaked and snapped as she moved forward, making her jump with every sound. Then, without warning, the door swung to, plunging her into darkness.

For a moment she stood, heart pounding, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light struggling to penetrate the small grimy window. Finally the shadows separated themselves, and she was able to make out the shapes again.

She was tempted to go back and open the door wide so she could see better, but instincts told her to grab what she wanted and get out of there. The stink was overpowering.

She reached for a corner of the closest tarpaulin and dragged it aside. To her relief, she saw a stack of tennis racquets lying on top of a folded net. She dragged them out to the middle of the floor. Now all she needed was a couple of tennis balls.

The mound next to the one she'd disturbed was smaller. It seemed a likely place to be concealing a box of tennis balls. She tugged on the tarpaulin, but it seemed caught on something, so she lifted it instead.

At first she thought someone had left a pile of clothes under there, but then she saw a pair of shoes sticking up on end. Something about the way they remained in that odd position made her go cold. They could only be that way if there were feet in them.

With a growing sense of horror, she tugged really hard on the tarpaulin. The thing under there rolled out into the open.

Gertie opened her mouth to yell, but no sound came out. Frozen with shock, she stared at the bone white face with its glassy sightless eyes. She barely recognized the maid, but there was no mistaking the uniform. The black afternoon dress was crumpled, and the white lace collar around her throat was soaked in something that was dark and horribly messy.

At last Gertie's voice exploded in her throat and her scream rattled the walls. It was the last thing she remembered as she fell to the floor.

Mrs. Chubb heard the scream and knew at once something dreadful had happened. She closed the gate on the twins and, despite their howls of protest, stumbled across the grass to the shed.

The door was closed, and she couldn't open it all the way. Peering through the gap, she could see Gertie's boot sticking out from under a pile of skirts. The rest of her body prevented her from opening the door far enough to squeeze her tubby figure through the narrow space.

Afraid to push too hard in case she hurt Gertie, she tried to peer farther into the shed to see the reason for Gertie's scream. But the shadows were too thick, and all she could see were mounds of tarpaulin and some old clothes. Wrinkling her nose against the foul smell, Mrs. Chubb banged on the door with her fist.

"Gertie! Ger
tay!"

A low moan answered her.

"What's the matter, duck? What happened?"

The boot moved, and the door gave a little under Mrs. Chubb's hand. "Get me out of here," Gertie moaned. "I'm going to be sick."

Thoroughly alarmed now, Mrs. Chubb leaned on the door. It flew open and she stumbled inside, coming up short when she saw the crumpled figure lying in the middle of the floor. "Oh, good God, who's that?"

"It's one of the maids."

"Is she . . . ?" Mrs. Chubb let her voice trail off.

"She's bleeding dead, ain't she," Gertie snapped. She got unsteadily to her feet. "Let's get out of here, quick. We've got to tell someone."

Mrs. Chubb spun around, gulping down huge breaths of air, which didn't help much, seeing as the smell was enough to kill an elephant.

Gertie tugged the door open, stumbled outside, and promptly got rid of her breakfast.

Moaning, Mrs. Chubb surged forward after her. Her foot struck something and sent it skidding across the floor. She caught sight of it as she barreled through the door, and her stomach heaved.

"There's a knife in there," she gasped as Gertie turned a chalk white face toward her. "A big carving knife. I think it's covered in blood."

Gertie moaned and turned away from her again. "Bloody hell," she muttered when she was finished. "I used to have a stronger stomach than this."

Mrs. Chubb kept on taking deep breaths until she was reasonably sure she wasn't going to follow Gertie's
performance with one of her own. "Enough to make anyone sick," she gasped at last. "You'd better go back to the club and find Mrs. Baxter. I'll bring the twins back if I can get them calmed down." She sent an apprehensive glance over to where both children stood with their fingers entwined in the fence, wailing loud enough to wake the dead, which was an unfortunate choice of words, she realized.

She hurried back to the enraged twins. Poor little mite. Who in the world would want to harm a young girl like that? A lot of sick people in this world, that was for sure. Poor Mrs. Baxter. She'd be beside herself when she heard the news. Couldn't have happened at a worse time, being Christmas and all. Though there was no good time for a murder to happen. What a mess.

She tugged open the gate and the twins hurled themselves through it, grabbing at her skirts and howling in a mixture of outrage and fright.

"What the matter with Mama?" James demanded between sobs, pointing at Gertie, who was rapidly disappearing in the murky distance.

"I want my mama!" Lillian stamped her foot. "
I want my mama!"

"Then let us go find your mama." Mrs. Chubb grabbed a hand in each of hers. She felt better now that she was in charge again. Worrying about the children made her forget the ugly thing she'd seen in the shed. Though she had a nasty feeling that once she got to bed that night, she'd be seeing it all over again in her dreams. The prospect was extremely unsettling.

"We shall have to notify the constables now, of course," Baxter said when Cecily gave him the bad news. "They are bound to call in Inspector Cranshaw."

Cecily sat glumly in his office, wondering if there was anything she could have done to prevent this awful thing that had happened to the young girl. "I suppose there is no way we can avoid involving the inspector."

"None at all," Baxter said firmly. "The sooner we get this into the hands of the police, the better. We don't need the Pennyfoot involved in an investigation. It's obvious the girl was involved with someone of ill repute. Someone willing to buy the pearls she stole from Miss Bunkle. Probably one of those louts who hang around the George and Dragon all night. The sooner the culprit is arrested, the sooner we can put this behind us. All they have to do is find someone trying to get rid of a string of pearls. That shouldn't be too difficult for Cranshaw to handle, you'd suppose."

"I don't think it was someone from the village," Cecily said unhappily. She told him what Moira had told her.

"I don't believe it for one minute," he declared when she was finished. "Peebles and a kitchen maid? Never. The scandal could finish his career, not to mention his marriage."

"Exactly," Cecily murmured. "Perhaps that's why he had to kill Jeanette. She could have threatened to tell his wife and he had to silence her."

The icy expression she knew so well frosted his eyes. "Cecily, I absolutely forbid you to pursue this line of thinking. To accuse one of our most important guests without justification could cause a ruckus that would ruin
the reputation of the Pennyfoot once and for all. We simply cannot take that kind of risk."

"I agree. Which is why I shall not inform the inspector at this time of my suspicions."

His shrewd gaze bore right through her head. "It is my firm belief that the maid was trying to sell Miss Bunkle's pearls to a hoodlum who decided to rid himself of the need to hand over the money. That is what I shall tell the constables. I sincerely hope that you let the matter rest there and allow the constables to do their job."

She merely nodded, hoping he wouldn't insist on her word. She had no intention of allowing the matter to rest there. What Baxter didn't know, however, wouldn't concern him. At least for the time.

Apparently accepting her silence for acquiescence, he reached for the telephone. After a lengthy wait for the operator, he managed to get his call put through to the police station.

She listened with one ear while he explained the situation. The rest of her mind worked busily on this latest development. She'd accompanied Raymond to the shed, where he'd locked it securely in case someone else should stumble upon the body before the constables arrived for their investigation.

She would have liked to conduct a far more intensive investigation herself, rather than the quick glance around she'd taken. She knew better, however, than to intrude on the scene and arouse the inspector's wrath. He was quite capable of closing down the Pennyfoot at the slightest provocation, especially when he learned that she was back at the helm, albeit on a temporary basis.

She and the inspector had drawn swords too many times for her to take a chance on antagonizing him now. Edward would never forgive her if she caused the cancellation of the Christmas Season. As it was, things were going to be somewhat disrupted. Unfortunately there was no doubt about that.

CHAPTER

15

Cecily's worst fears were realized when the inspector arrived an hour or so later. In spite of Baxter's theories about Jeanette's involvement with someone from the village, Cranshaw insisted that no one be allowed to leave until he'd had a chance to question potential witnesses. P. C. Northcott was given access to the current register, and generally made himself a nuisance while he copied down the list of guests currently staying at the club.