5 Murder by Syllabub (26 page)

Cora Lee didn’t say no. She stopped pacing long enough to swallow the pills Aunt Mary put in her hand. “Thanks.” Handing the glass back, she turned her attention to Mr. Glass. “That idiot Leo is going to get a warrant, or whatever it is you get, and arrest Elizabeth. All because we have an English Yew in the garden. Half the gardens in Williamsburg have yews!”

Aaron Glass watched her patiently. “Cora Lee, will you sit down
? Pacing around and calling Leo names isn’t going to help. It isn’t doing your hip any good, either.”

If looks could kill, that statement would have been Aaron Glass’ last, but she pulled up a chair. Instead of sitting, she tapped over to pick up her coffee mug.

“I would have gotten that for you.” Elizabeth looked over at Cora Lee as if she’d just noticed her juggling the cane and coffee mug.

Cora Lee set the mug on the table and lowered herself carefully onto her chair. She glowered at Elizabeth. “I’m quite capable of getting my own.”

No one said a word.

Hip. The doctor visit in Richmond she’d finally admitted to but claimed was routine, the cane, the winces she tried so hard to hide, the even sharper remarks, they all added up to pain. Had she seen him before or after her appointment with the attorney? I wondered if the surgery was scheduled and how she expected to hide that. She was in her seventies. Just about the time people, especially women, started to have their parts replaced. Cataracts, arthritic hands,
worn-out knees and hips, it was downright depressing, not to mention scary. Was Cora Lee not talking about it because she was scared or just irritated because she couldn’t stop the ravages of aging? As with this old house, a coat of paint alone no longer did the trick.

“I assume Lieutenant McMann doesn’t think Elizabeth is responsible for the death of the man in the kitchen
,” Aunt Mary said to Cora Lee.

It was Elizabeth who answered.
“No.” She sounded more tired than afraid. After all we’d been through this week, it was a wonder any of us was able to stay on our feet. “At least he hasn’t accused me yet.” A small smile appeared. “They seem to be sure the bones belong to Louis. As I’ve never met him, it’ll be hard to get me for that one.”

“They know it’s Louis. They found his wallet.” Cora Lee
frowned. “Leo threw me out when they found it.”

“What else have they found?” It was the first thing Mildred had said since she greeted Aaron.

“Are you referring to the silver tea set?”

Mildred nodded.

“Not a sign of it, but—” Aaron glanced over at Noah and stopped.

“Go ahead. We’re going to hear it sooner or later.”

“It looks as if Louis was shot.” He paused, evidently trying to gauge how much Mildred could take.

She sat, hands clenched.

He sighed. “There’s a bullet hole in the middle of his coat. Or, rather, what’s left of his coat. It’s pretty … Yes. Well. They also found a bullet. Only …”

“Only what?” Noah reached over and took his mother’s hand.

Her fingers tightened around his, but her eyes stayed on Aaron.

“It’s not a normal bullet. At least, it’s not a modern one. It looks like—” he paused and took a deep breath—“it looks like one of those small round bullets that come from colonial era pistols.”

Aaron Glass certainly had our full attention. Aunt Mary set her mug down and stared. Mildred quit pushing her husband’s ring around with her middle finger and looked up sharply. Cora Lee, Noah, Elizabeth and I were all agape.

“A colonial pistol? How could that be? We don’t have one. Do we?” Elizabeth turned toward Cora Lee, who said nothing.

Her hands tightened around her cane. Elizabeth waited. We all waited.

Cora Lee nodded once, as if she’d come to a decision. “We used to.” She glanced over at Mildred. 

“What do you mean,
used
to?” Aaron Glass didn’t look any happier than Cora Lee.

“It was part of my father’s precious antique gun collection.”

“There were a lot of them.” Mildred squinted a little, as if trying to picture something. “We packed them up when we moved your mother out.” She paused. “I don’t remember a small pistol, though.”

“That’s because we didn’t pack it. I didn’t pay much attention at the time. Everything was so hectic. So many details to take care of. I forgot about it. He kept it on a little stand on the mantle in the living room. All the other guns were in his study.”

“What happened to it?” Aaron Glass didn’t look, or sound, one bit happy.

“
I don’t know
.” Cora Lee stressed each word, as if straining to come up with the answer herself. “I didn’t realize it was missing until after Virginia died. I stayed in the big house a lot while Monty was packing up all her personal belongings. After he left, there were a lot of things I couldn’t find. The gun was one of them. William wouldn’t let me confront him about any of it, and I’m afraid I forgot about it.”

“We don’t know that was the gun used
,” Aunt Mary offered tentatively.

None of us believed it.

“I’d be pretty darn surprised if it wasn’t.” Cora Lee, at least, put it into words.

Aaron Glass nodded. “It’s not going to make much difference unless we find the gun.
Maybe you can’t do a ballistics test on one that old, but I know you need the gun before you can do anything.” To Cora Lee, he said, “Do you have any idea when it disappeared?”

“No. I didn’t go in that house much when Virginia lived there, and when I did, I never really thought about it. I don’t know.”

“What did you do with the guns you packed?”

“For heaven’s sake, Aaron
, I sold them. I hated those guns, but the antique dealer I took them to frothed at the mouth. Said it was the best collection of eighteenth-century guns he’d seen in years.”

“So there are no guns around here now?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“This isn’t getting us any closer to finding out who killed my father.” Noah’s eyes
were dark pools of anger. “All these years, my mother has gone through hell, thinking he was wrongly accused, that something dreadful had happened. She was right. We have to find out who was responsible.”

“Hush.” Mildred withdrew her hand and
took a deep breath. She smiled at her son. “As terrible as this is, one thing makes me happy deep in my heart.”

She didn’t need to say it. She’d always known her husband wasn’t a thief. Now, everyone else did
, too. However, he had been murdered and the person who did it was out there, unpunished. Was it the same person who murdered Monty? Could it be? It could be and probably was. Although, if the papers I’d found in the highboy were what I thought they were, that changed things. I had to show them to somebody, but not Lt. McMann. I needed someone I trusted to help me decide what to do. Aaron Glass. Yes. I needed to have a private conversation with him. Only, I wasn’t sure how to arrange it. I had time. The papers weren’t going anywhere. I’d figure it out.

“Do you really think it was Monty wandering through the houses?”

“I thought it was him I saw in the hall upstairs that night.”

“You thought he was searching for something?”

“Why else would he be out here, going through the houses? He’d long since pilfered all the small stuff he could carry out.”

“Cora Lee, you don’t know any such thing
.” Aaron Glass looked horrified. “You can’t go around accusing someone with absolutely no proof.”

Cora Lee smiled.

Mildred stayed on subject. “Do you think Monty killed Louis?”

Aaron Glass sputtered, but Cora Lee wasn’t
going to let him interrupt. “I don’t know,” she said. “He could have.”

“Why?” Elizabeth’s head was going back and forth, as if watching a tennis match.

“It had something to do with the tea set.” Mildred’s voice left no doubt in anyone’s mind that she, at least, believed that.

Cora Lee nodded slightly, but her voice held doubt. “Maybe. Monty would have been in his late teens when Louis—disappeared. Why hasn’t the silver shown up?”

I had been following all this as closely as any of them. I had an idea about that, but it wasn’t nearly formed enough to say out loud. There was one question, however, they hadn’t covered. “If Monty killed Louis,” I said, “then who killed Monty and why?”

The conversation stopped while everyone seemed to consider that.

“We better find out soon before that idiot McMann arrests Elizabeth.” Cora Lee pushed her chair back, walked over behind Elizabeth, put her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders and smiled. She gave her a gentle squeeze. “Not to worry, honey. If he arrests you, we’ll feed the dog.”

W
e all sat around a table in Shields Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg. No one wanted to think about ordering dinner. It seemed no one wanted to think about eating it, either. Noah had fumed the entire time Lt. McMann questioned Mildred and he hadn’t quit. Mildred, on the other hand, sat stoically by—hands folded in her lap, expressionless—while Lt. McMann took her through the events of all those years ago. He stopped just short of accusing her of shooting Louis and burying him.

Now, at the tavern, Mildred’s position and demeanor had not changed.
Felicity sat quietly beside Noah. She’d given up trying to calm him down, contenting herself with keeping an eye on Mildred and listening to the rest of us.

“McMann is an idiot.” Cora Lee’s mouth was set in a rigid line. Her eyes blazed. She seemed to dare any of us to disagree with her. No one did. “Elizabeth isn’t off the hook yet and McMann had better not try to put Mildred up there with her.”

She took another sip of wine and glared at each of us in turn. No one commented. Much of Cora Lee’s ranting seemed to be motivated by fear, but fear of what I wasn’t sure. Fear of what might happen to her two best friends? Or was Cora Lee afraid of something else? I hoped not, but I couldn’t be sure. Not yet.

Lt. McMann had poked and prodded Elizabeth almost all day, asking the same questions, getting the same answers. She didn’t know what
had happened in the kitchen all those years ago, but they’d gone over the role of syllabub in the equation a hundred times. When had she made it, who knew she’d made it, when had she left for the airport, when had Monty arrived. She responded to that one. How would she know? She hadn’t seen him come. She only saw him after he was dead, lying on her carpet and not in any condition to explain why he was there. Lt. McMann left her alone for a while after that, transferring his attention to Mildred. He only stopped when Felicity told him in no uncertain terms that Mildred had just been released from the hospital and couldn’t take any more of his badgering. If he didn’t let up, she would be back in the hospital and it would be his fault. Lt. McMann had left, grumbling, and now we all sat in Shields Tavern, trying to figure out what to do next.

Aaron Glass threaded his way between tightly packed tables until he arrived at ours. He pulled out a chair and squeezed himself into it, barely missing the portly white-haired woman sitting behind him. She glanced back at him but declined to move her chair. Instead, she gave him a sour look. Aaron responded with a courteous nod of his head and moved his own
chair a little to the right.

Cora Lee wasn’t so courteous. She glared at the woman
before turning her attention to Aaron. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Have you ordered yet?”

“Just wine. What do you mean nothing? You’ve been on the phone with Leo for almost an hour. What is this new evidence? That man’s a menace.”

Aaron smiled.

Noah leaned over the table, staring intently at Aaron. “What’s he got?”

“Nothing. He said he had a new development he wanted to discuss. That’s not the same thing as evidence.”

“What was the new development?” I admired Aaron’s deliberate approach, his calm manner and refusal to panic when the phone call from Lt. McMann came saying he had new information and wanted to question Elizabeth once again. Aaron told him Elizabeth was in no shape to come, but he’d be glad to listen. If it seemed Elizabeth needed to talk to him, well, they’d see. How he’d pulled that one off, I wasn’t sure but was glad for Elizabeth’s sake. However, now everyone needed to know. What, exactly, was Lt. McMann’s new development and what was going to happen?

A waiter in brown cloth breeches, white stockings, soft black shoes with buckles and a full white shirt open at the neck appeared. “Red wine tonight?” He didn’t wait for an answer but set a glass in front of Aaron. “I’ll be right back with menus.”

“You must come here often.” Aaron hadn’t bothered to glance at the menu or the wine list and the waiter had anticipated his choice of wine unerringly. “Often” was probably an understatement.

The waiter retreated into another room and reappeared just as quickly. He passed menus around the table and handed the wine list to Aaron. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I dine out quite a lot since my wife died. There are some excellent restaurants in town, but I love the historic district.”

“The only reason we got a table is because of Aaron
,” Cora Lee explained. “So, quit acting so damn calm and tell us exactly what happened.”

He picked up his glass, swirled it slightly and held it to his nose before taking a tentative sip. He nodded slightly and took another, somewhat larger one. “I’m going to miss Roger when he graduates.”

“What? Who’s Roger? Oh. The waiter. He goes to school here?”

Aaron nodded. “William and Mary. He graduates in a few weeks. Already has an internship set up in DC. He’s planning a career in politics. He’ll be good at it.”

“Aaron, forget Roger and his career,” Cora Lee said. “We don’t care, and if you don’t tell us right now what Leo wanted, there’ll be another murder and Leo won’t have any trouble figuring out who did it. What happened?” Cora Lee’s glare would have felled a lesser man, but Aaron Glass seemed impervious.

He simply smiled and turned his attention to Elizabeth. “Nothing. Nothing’s going to happen. You aren’t going to be arrested, and I told Leo that until he has something new and pertinent to ask, you won’t be answering any more questions.” He paused to take a small sip of wine and nodded approvingly. This time he addressed the whole table. “It seems they have identified the poison. It is English Yew. There is, as it happens, an English Yew tree in your garden, which is what set Leo off.”

Cora Lee gave a most unladylike snort. “We knew that. Besides, there are English Yews in half the gardens in Williamsburg.”

Cora Lee had said that before. She must know a lot about English Yews. Mildred gardened. She must, also. Elizabeth didn’t. However, Calvin Campbell would. I let my mind wander for a moment, speculating, before I turned my attention back to the conversation

“Exactly. It also seems there’s no way of identifying which bush, tree, whatever it is, this particular poison came from.” Again he paused and smiled at Elizabeth, who immediately looked less tired.

“Then, he’s not going to arrest me?

“No. He’s not.” He paused again, intently scrutinizing Elizabeth’s face. “He wants to search your house.”

Elizabeth blinked. “What for?”

“A mortar and pestle.”

Never had I seen anyone look so blank. “A what?”

“A mortar and pestle. It’s a bowl, usually made of marble or stone. The pestle is a round piece that fits in your hand and is used to grind up things in the mortar.”

“What kind of things?”

I suspected they wouldn’t find one in Elizabeth’s kitchen.

“Garlic, silly.” Aunt Mary didn’t seem surprised at Elizabeth’s lack of culinary knowledge. “Herbs. English Yew.”

Elizabeth looked at Aunt Mary. “Oh.” Then, as realization set it, she smiled broadly. “Oh!”

“I think we can let McMann search the house?” Aaron Glass smiled and took another sip.

“Fine with me.”

“Someone had to grind up the yew leaves to put in Monty’s drink.” Mildred’s tone was soft and speculative. She smiled.

Even Cora Lee smiled, but it immediately faded. “He’s not to touch even one of our china cups.”

“I’ll make sure you’re there when they search.” Aaron sounded a little weary. Cora Lee could have that effect on you.

“Have you told Payton I don’t need him or Harrison Silverstein?” Elizabeth leaned forward anxiously. She moved back as Roger set a fresh wineglass in front of her and proceeded round the table.

“We’ll start with a white wine
. Have you decided which one?”

No one had
, but Aaron mentioned a label to Roger, who nodded in approval and went off to get the new wine.

“Yes, and I made sure Leo knows I
—and no one else—represent you.” He paused while Roger poured wine into everyone’s glasses. “Ready to order? No? Let me know.” He smiled and walked off.

“It seems Payton had been around, asking Leo all kinds of questions, intimating
that he, or his firm, still represented you. Evidently, he got a little pushy. I told Leo, well … we got it all straightened out.”

“I thought he went back to DC.” Cora Lee frowned. I waited for a little barb, but none came.

“I don’t understand. Why would Payton do that?” Elizabeth didn’t look particularly upset, but she did look confused. “I thought I made it clear you were taking care of everything. I was polite, of course. Thanked him and all that.” She paused. “Maybe I was too polite. Why is he so insistent?”

I thought about the
financial papers I’d found in the hidden drawer. I hadn’t had time to do anything but thumb through them, but I had a pretty good idea of their importance. It was possible—maybe more than possible—they had something to do with Payton’s behavior. I had to have that talk with Aaron soon. “I think he wants to keep track of how the case is building against Elizabeth,” I said.

Aaron nodded as he raised his glass. “My thoughts as well.”

“Why?”

“Because he killed Monty!” Cora Lee brought her point home with a thump of her cane on the wooden floor.

There was no trace of a smile on Aaron’s face. “This afternoon you thought McMann was involved in all this, that he was a thief, maybe a fence and possibly a murderer as well. Now you’ve switched to Payton Culpepper. You don’t have a shred of evidence against either man.”

“Then why all the interest?” Cora Lee banged
her cane once more.

The woman behind us turned and glared.

Cora Lee paid no attention. “Everything Payton does benefits him in some way.”

“Don’t forget, Monty and Payton were friends. Payton sent him overflow clients and he had Monty doing some lobbying work from time to time. It’s entirely possible Payton is going to represent Monty’s widow in some future capacity.”

“Wrongful death.” There was disgust in every syllable Cora Lee uttered.

Mildred’s right eye twitched. Her hand shook a little
as she set her wineglass on the table. I was sure Mildred was thinking about the deed and wondering if she and Noah truly were safe. Maybe we shouldn’t have brought her. She and Elizabeth were both staying upright on nothing but adrenaline and must be about out of that. No. Bringing them had been a good idea. All either of them would do at home was sit and brood over things they had no control over.

Cora Lee opened her mouth as if to make another of her pronouncements, but Aaron got there first. “Shall we order? I, for one, am starved and we can continue this over dinner.”

As if on cue, everyone picked up their menu. Although not extensive, Shields’ menu was filled with hearty and delicious-sounding dishes. The kind, I supposed, people might have eaten in the eighteenth century. They also sounded like a lot of food.

Elizabeth turned to Mildred. “Want to split something?”

“Oh, my, yes. What do you want?”

“How about the chicken?”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Yes, it does.” Aunt Mary put the menu down and looked at me.

“Of course.”

“I’m having the crayfish and shrimp stew.” Cora Lee shut her menu with a snap

A plate appeared in front of me. Salad. Had we ordered salad? The young waiter smiled at me. He put one in front of Mildred and handed one to Noah. He went around the table, placing a salad in front of everyone but Aaron, who got a cup of soup. He immediately scooped up a small amount, tasted it and smiled. “Peanut soup. Best stuff in the world.”

Roger smiled as well, and walked into the middle of the room.

“Soup was very popular in the eighteenth century.” His voice had the commanding ring of an actor determined to be heard in the third balcony. Or, a politician about to give a speech in the House of Representatives. “Eating it could be a challenge. Anyone know why? No? No spoons.” He paused for dramatic effect and waited until the room quieted and everyone’s attention was on him. No spoons?
Of course they had spoons
. I’d seen them. Hadn’t I?

“In the eighteenth century, travelers, such as yourselves, wouldn’t have a complete set of silverware put in front of you, as you have here. You would have brought your own. A poor man, or even one of the middle class, would have with him only a knife and perhaps a fork. The knife would have many uses—skinning a rabbit, fixing a piece of harness or cutting a rather tough piece of beef for dinner. It would have been wrapped in his napkin, which would
bear little resemblance to the napkins you use tonight; they would look more like what they call ‘bandanas’ out west. They were used for many things, some of which we will not mention in deference to the delicate ears of the ladies.” He made a small bow toward the table where we sat and followed it up with a wicked grin. “So,” this was followed by a sweeping gesture, “if you wanted soup, or stew, or anything else we commonly eat today with the aid of a spoon, you had a problem. Rich men carried one with them, but spoons were hard to make; the castings they used were difficult to handle, and poor men couldn’t afford them. What did they use? Anyone know?”