Quilt Trip: A Southern Quilting Mystery (18 page)

Beatrice froze in bed, her eyes open wide. Had she been dreaming? She lay completely still, listening. Then it came again—a definite scratching on her bedroom door. Was it a rat? The cat?

She sprang out of bed, stumbling toward the door in the dark. Beatrice yanked it open and strained her eyes to peer in both directions in the darkness. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely think straight.

Beatrice walked down the hall toward Muriel’s room and the attic stairs, but didn’t see anyone. She’d wondered whether she’d been mistaken—maybe she’d actually heard Alexandra sneaking into the attic to go will hunting? She didn’t see anyone, though, so she started down toward the other end of the hall. Beatrice squinted as she thought she spotted motion down at the other end of the hall. She hurried in that direction, calling out, but right as she was passing the stairs, arms reached out from nowhere and pushed her diagonally onto the staircase. She cried out in horror as she tumbled down the stairs.

•   •   •

Beatrice hit the side of the staircase, running directly into the banister, where she was able to grab hold of the balusters for dear life.

Her fall must have made a tremendous crashing sound—soon everyone was awake and gaping at her from both upstairs and downstairs.

“Beatrice!” Posy gasped, rushing to her and gently putting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Can you move everything?” Meadow asked urgently. “Any broken bones?”

“God forbid,” said Alexandra in a sarcastic tone. “We’d have Dot and Beatrice fighting over the cane and walker.”

Beatrice gingerly moved everything. It all hurt, but nothing hurt so bad that she thought it was broken or even sprained. “I don’t think I’ve broken anything.” She still felt that overwhelming horror at falling, though, and her heart still thumped so hard that her head was spinning. The headache had returned, too.

“What happened?” asked Posy.

“Did you take a wrong turn on the way to the restroom?” asked Meadow.

“I was
pushed
,” Beatrice said grimly as she struggled slowly to her feet.

There was a murmur of consternation from the quilters.

Alexandra said sarcastically, “More drama, Beatrice? Did you have to fabricate a push just to prove that you still have a case?”

“I was
pushed
,” Beatrice repeated through gritted teeth. “I heard a scratching sound at my door and came out to investigate.”

“It was probably a rodent of some kind,” Alexandra said with a shrug.

“Or the cat?” Holly said in a concerned voice.

“I think I might have spotted the cat at the end of the hall when I was walking past the staircase,” Beatrice said. “But it definitely wasn’t a cat that pushed me down the stairs.” She shivered. Someone had tried to kill her. It wasn’t just a small push to make a point. It was a strong shove that was intended to make her fall all the way down the very steep flight of stairs. And whoever had tried to kill her was standing in front of her right now.

“All right,” said Meadow, bustling up to her. “Let me help you into the library, Beatrice. You’re shivering with cold and shock and could use a glass of wine, too.”

“By all means.” Alexandra rolled her eyes. “Go ahead and deplete my wine collection.”

They ignored her and Beatrice gingerly made her way down the stairs, holding on to Meadow’s arm. Her legs were shaking so badly she thought they were going to buckle under her.

Meadow helped settle Beatrice in the most comfortable armchair in the library and Posy found a soft quilt to put over her legs.

“Red or white wine, Beatrice,” Meadow called to her. “Never mind—let’s do red. Supposed to be better for you.”

Beatrice continued shivering, despite the warmth of the room. Miss Sissy came in and sat down in front of her, watching her with serious eyes. “I guess you didn’t see who pushed me, did you?” Beatrice asked.

Miss Sissy shook her head. “I was sleeping. In here.” She gestured toward the far wall of the room.

Typical. When Miss Sissy had the opportunity to witness a crime, she slept right through it.

“Wickedness,” Miss Sissy muttered. “Eye for an eye.”

Beatrice studied the old woman with narrowed eyes. “So you think these murders are all about revenge?”

Miss Sissy snorted scornfully. “’Course they are.”

Meadow returned with a bottle of red wine and a large glass. “This looks good,” she said, squinting vaguely at the label. “Or at least, I’m presuming it’s good because it’s here. If not, then you can do a taste test for another bottle.”

Beatrice took the glass from her and drank three big gulps, without even tasting it. She sat back in her chair with a sigh. Meadow was waiting expectantly. “Oh. It’s fine, Meadow. Thanks.”

Posy said, “Beatrice, are you sure you’re okay? Even a short fall on those stairs would hurt.”

“I think I’m going to be very sore tomorrow morning and will have lots of bruises as souvenirs of my trip down the stairs. But besides that, I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with me. Of course, it just about gave me a heart attack. I still feel like my heart is beating at double its usual speed.”

Meadow said, “I don’t understand why someone would do something like that. What would killing you benefit anyone here?”

Beatrice shivered again and took another gulp of her wine. Meadow poured more in. “I think maybe I’m getting close to figuring out who’s behind all this. That I’m scaring the murderer into wanting to get rid of me so that I can’t report what I know to the police. Or maybe it’s even personal—a vindictive shove. The murderer has got to be feeling pretty confident by now—she’s killed two people and gotten away with it so far. Maybe she wants to make life easier by killing me, too.”

Posy reached out and hugged Beatrice. “You look so bleak!”

Beatrice felt bleak. Despite what the murderer thought, she felt no closer to figuring out who the culprit was than she had been at the start of her investigation. Now the aches and pains of her tumble were starting to set in, she was hungry for a good meal, she was exhausted from nights of fright and sleeplessness, and she was bone cold from fear and the chill. What a night.

Miss Sissy studied her cannily. Slowly, she reached into the large pocket of her floral skirt and pulled out a butcher knife.

Everyone gasped and Meadow giggled nervously. “Here, Miss Sissy, what do you want with that? Let’s put it away, okay?”

Miss Sissy was scornful. “Not for you! For Beatrice. To carry for protection.”

Miss Sissy had tried protecting Beatrice before, in other cases she had investigated, with mixed results. Beatrice smiled at her. “Thanks, Miss Sissy, but I don’t have a big pocket like you do. I’d have to carry it around in my hand, and that wouldn’t work very well.”

Miss Sissy studied her shrewdly, then reached into her other skirt pocket and pulled out a pocketknife.

“Goodness! You’re well armed, Miss Sissy,” Beatrice said weakly. She reluctantly took the pocketknife from her. The old woman bobbed her head in satisfaction.

“Now what?” asked Meadow.

Beatrice said, “Well, I’m definitely sleeping downstairs now. I’m done wandering around in the middle of the night, despite having Miss Sissy’s weapon.”

“I blame myself for this,” Meadow said with a gusty sigh. “If I hadn’t slept downstairs, it never would have happened. I’d have gone
with
you to chase the intruder. I’d have been George to your Nancy Drew.”

“I see you as more of a Bess,” said Posy, squinting thoughtfully at her.

“It’s no one’s fault but my own,” said Beatrice glumly. “I don’t know what I was thinking, jumping out into that dark hallway, knowing we have a murderer on the loose.”

“You were half asleep,” said Meadow loyally.

Beatrice appreciated their efforts to cheer her up, but it wasn’t doing any good.

•   •   •

When Beatrice woke up, she felt sore from head to toe. She was relieved to find that stretching seemed to help a little. Posy gave her two ibuprofen from her pocketbook.

Meadow entered the library with fruit cocktail and a guilty expression on her face.

“What’s wrong, Meadow?” Posy asked.

“Oh, I just feel sort of bad,” muttered Meadow. “I didn’t want to hang out in the kitchen because Winnie is having some kind of breakdown and I couldn’t handle it.”

“A breakdown? Did something else happen?” Beatrice asked.

“No, nothing happened. Well, nothing happened that I know about, anyway. She’s absolutely falling apart—you saw it coming. Seeing ghosts, acting so jumpy all the time. Winnie isn’t handling the stress well. So she’s in the kitchen crying over her bean salad.” Meadow shrugged helplessly. “I tried to give her the fruit cocktail as sort of a consolation prize, but she waved me off. So she’s stuck with the bean salad.”

Posy and Beatrice glanced at each other. “I hate to admit it, but I don’t feel particularly inclined to try to comfort Winnie, either,” said Posy. “Every time I talk with Winnie, it makes me feel anxious and stressed.”

“She has a gift for drama,” drawled Beatrice. “How about I go in the kitchen and just give her an ear? It might make her feel better and I might learn something at the same time.”

“Are you sure you feel up to it?” Posy asked doubtfully. “Has that ibuprofen started kicking in yet?”

“I’m feeling fairly limber,” said Beatrice, giving her a smile and being careful not to wince as she moved toward the kitchen. She pushed open the door and was stunned to see Alexandra with her hand on Winnie’s shoulder. She was patting it in a way that was meant to be comforting, although Alexandra looked rather stiff doing so.

“You need to stop worrying, Winnie,” Alexandra said. Her voice was peremptory, but Winnie responded to it. “There’s no reason to be so upset. You’ll sleep in the library with the others tonight, right? You’re clearly getting no sleep at all upstairs and it’s at nighttime when these incidents happen. If you sleep downstairs you’ll be nice and warm and won’t be by yourself. I don’t know why you’ve been sleeping upstairs in the first place.”

Winnie gave a small hiccup. “It’s too uncomfortable on the floor. And anyway I don’t know if I’d get any sleep with the others in the same room.”

Alexandra pinched her mouth shut while she appeared to be making a decision. Then she bobbed her head in a short nod. “All right. What if we put some mattresses downstairs? Would you try it?”

Winnie’s voice trembled. “But you said you didn’t want to move things around the house.”

“Well, when something isn’t working, I can change my mind in response,” said Alexandra briskly. She stiffened as Winnie reached out to hug her.

Beatrice, not wanting to embarrass Winnie, popped back out of sight until Winnie left the kitchen. Then she walked in, startling Alexandra, who was staring blankly into space.

“Sorry,” said Beatrice.

Alexandra, quickly back to her normal self, rolled her eyes. “Sure you are. You were happy to eavesdrop, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t want to embarrass Winnie, that’s all,” Beatrice said mildly.

Alexandra shifted restlessly, tapping her fingers on the table. “What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette,” she whined.

Beatrice raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I do. But I haven’t since I’ve been here, obviously. I stupidly didn’t bring any with me. I thought it was only going to be a short visit at my mother’s house, and I knew she didn’t approve of them.” She laughed harshly. “I sure am sorry about that now, though.”

“Nicotine withdrawal couldn’t have helped your general disposition much,” said Beatrice, more to herself than to Alexandra, but Alexandra grated out a laugh. “I did overhear a little of your conversation with Winnie. What you did was very nice.”

Alexandra grunted. “It wasn’t really. I still dislike Winnie, so I feel fake when I’m nice to her.”

“But she needed some kind words. And perhaps a little firm redirecting, too, which you also provided. I’ve been concerned about Winnie’s health lately and was wondering if she could handle the stress here.”

“She’ll be all right. She’s still in better shape than that Miss Sissy of yours,” Alexandra said with a snort. She hesitated, staring blankly out the window again. “As I said, I don’t like Winnie. But I do feel sorry for her.” She sat rigidly, as if regretting even mentioning her feelings. “Winnie is my mother’s victim, the same as me. She trusted her to be a good friend and I trusted Muriel to be a good mother and we were both let down by her.”

Beatrice nodded and opened her mouth to agree with Alexandra and coax her on, but the words were already spilling out of her.

“I can’t cover for her,” said Alexandra, almost to herself. “Just because I feel sorry for her, I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Pretend what didn’t happen?” asked Beatrice, sitting very still.

“Pretend I didn’t spot her coming out of my mother’s room the night she died,” Alexandra said with a sigh. Then she fixed Beatrice with a stern expression. “Not that I’m buying your theory that Mother was murdered. But I was stepping out of my room late at night and saw Winnie hurrying out of Mother’s room. I know I told you I heard them arguing, but I only said that so you’d focus your investigative zeal on Winnie. It wasn’t actually an argument that I witnessed—it was Winnie coming out of Mother’s room at a very late hour.”