Death of a Mad Hatter (A Hat Shop Mystery) (14 page)

“Aside from my mum and her sisters?” he asked. “None.”

I stared at him. “You don’t really think—”

“That my mum and her sisters murdered their brother?” he asked. “No, but given that they were about to sue him for their percentage of the estate, it really doesn’t look good.”

“They were going to sue your uncle?” I asked. I hadn’t heard about a lawsuit in all of the hullabaloo.

“Pretty lousy timing, right,” he confirmed. “It looks terrible.”

“That might be something you want to keep to yourself,” Viv said.

“It’s already public knowledge, like the poisoning,” he said. “Not much point in pretending it wasn’t happening.”

“I take it Detective Inspector Finchley has been visiting you as well?” I asked.

“Frequently,” George said. He looked irritated. “I know how it looks, but not one of them is capable of murder and certainly not over money. I mean, if they were planning to murder him to get the family fortune, why would they sue him?”

“What about the estate?” I asked. “It’s a beautiful piece of property.”

“Now it’s the scene of a murder,” George said. “Sort of taints the whole thing, which is why we’re all at the Savoy. Well, that and the damn reporters. Speaking of which, how did you know we were here? Even the press hasn’t figured it out yet.”

“T—” Viv began, but I cut her off.

“Total luck,” I said.

George stared at me for a moment and I knew he was trying to decide whether to believe me or not. Viv rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe that I was covering for Tina. I was not about to tell George that she had come to the shop, however, because there would be uncomfortable questions as to why she had stopped by, and I was not prepared to divulge her secrets.

If he doubted me, he didn’t question it but instead changed the subject. We discussed an art show that was currently at the Hayward Gallery. To my surprise, George knew quite a lot about art and artists, and he admitted that growing up with Lily for an aunt had been very educational. He had spent the past few years studying art in Florence, Italy. He was studying to be a curator and planned to go into museum work when he graduated.

“Would you like to come up and see everyone?” he asked as we finished tea. “I know my grandmother would be pleased to see you both, especially you, Viv.”

Now that the opportunity had presented itself, I felt sort of bad that we had maneuvered George into it. Viv, obviously, did not.

“We’d love to,” she said.

“Brilliant,” he said. “Of course, I’m sure my brother will be delighted to see you as well.”

Viv ignored his knowing look, and I tucked my lips in to keep from smiling. We followed George to the elevator, which took us up to one of the top floors.

The doors opened onto a black-and-white foyer with dark wood paneling, much like the lobby below. George led us to a door at the far end.

A uniformed doorman stood beside the heavy wooden door. With a nod at George, he pushed it open. We stepped into a small foyer that led into a large main room, which boasted a lovely view of the city and the Thames River. The room held lots of large soft-looking furniture on one side and a grand piano on the other.

A woman was sitting at the piano, playing a classical piece quite softly. It was Rose, and I marveled that she played piano much like she spoke, so as not to be noticed.

“Stop it!” a voice shouted. “Stop coddling her!”

George stopped in his tracks and Viv bumped into his back. Unprepared to stop, I slammed into hers and we stood like a three-car pileup on the motorway.

“Ouch!” Viv yelped.

I stepped back and George stepped forward. The piano playing stumbled to a halt and the people in the drawing room all turned as one to look at us.

It was easy to see who had done the yelling. Daphne stood in the middle of the room with her arms held out wide and her face an unpleasant shade of red.

I glanced to see who her adversary could be—obviously not Rose, who’d been at the piano, which left only Lily or Liam. Liam was texting on his phone and Lily was flipping through a magazine. Of the two, my money was on Lily.

“Oh, look, company,” Lily said. “Your temper tantrum will have to hold, sister.”

“George,” Daphne spoke through clenched teeth. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“I thought seeing Viv might perk Gram up,” he said. “Since she thinks she’s an old friend and all.”

Lily tossed the magazine onto the table and tipped her head. “I think you might be right. I’ll go get her.”

“I don’t think—” Daphne began to protest, but Lily cut her off.

“I don’t really care what you think,” she said. “Vivian, Scarlett, it’s good to see you. I’ll be right back.”

Liam shoved his phone in his pocket strode across the room to greet us. It was impossible not to notice how his eyes lit up at the sight of Viv. He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and then turned and exchanged the same greeting with me. I noted he didn’t linger near me like he did with Viv, however.

“Brother, how did you stumble upon two of the city’s finest ladies when you only stepped out for a smoke?” Liam asked. “You have the devil’s own luck.”

George grinned. “I like to think my animal magnetism drew them to me.”

“Like a pair of oxpecker birds to a hippopotamus,” Daphne snapped. It was clear the insult was directed at Viv and me. I wasn’t too happy to be compared to a scavenger bird that eats the bugs off of a hippo’s butt.

“Does that make me the hippo?” George asked his brother in mock alarm. Then he turned to me. “You’d tell me if I was getting hippy, wouldn’t you?”

“And damage that fragile ego?” I asked, trying not to laugh at his mock look of horror. “No, I don’t think I would.”

Whatever George had been about to say was interrupted by the appearance of Dotty and Lily.

Dotty looked strained. Her face was pale, and her wrinkles seemed more deeply etched into her sagging skin than they had a few days before. Her grief was evident, and it changed the tone in the room as effectively as a shroud being drawn over a body.

“Oh, Ginny,” she said as she stepped forward. “So good of you to come.”

Viv stepped forward and took Dotty’s hands in hers. “I am so sorry for your loss, dear.”

“Loss?” Dotty repeated. She turned to Lily and said, “Did I lose something?”

I frowned and turned to look at Liam and George. Liam shrugged and George twirled a finger by his temple, which I took to mean that Dotty wasn’t processing her son’s death in the expected way.

“They’re talking about Geoffrey, Mum,” Lily said. Her voice sounded encouraging as if she was willing her mother to put it together on her own.

“Oh, Geoffrey—he’s away on business, you know,” Dotty said. “Such a hard worker, just like his father. I quite worry about him.”

I heard a scoffing sound coming from Daphne, and this time Liam glared at his mother. She appeared to want to argue but instead she gave us a patronizing look.

“You really need to be resting, Mother,” she said. “I’m sure your friends can come back another time when it is more convenient.”

Well, didn’t I feel like the stray dog who’d snuck into the house and peed on the carpet.

“It is always the right time to visit with friends,” Dotty said, giving Daphne a reproving glance. She led us over to the squashy furniture by the window and gestured for us to sit down.

Viv took a seat on the couch beside Dotty while I commandeered an armchair nearby. Lily sat on the other side of Dotty while George took the wing chair next to mine and Liam stood leaning against the wall that offered him the best view of Viv.

Dotty glanced over at the piano where Rose sat with her hands held in her lap as if she was afraid to move.

“Go ahead, dear: play something pretty,” Dotty said.

Rose’s fingers faltered a bit but then she found her rhythm and a soft melody filled the suite. It was a lovely tune with a heartbreakingly sad melody carrying the weight of the piece.

“I never thought I’d be here,” Dotty said.

“No, I expect you didn’t,” Viv said.

I thought it was very diplomatic of Viv to agree, since we really had no idea what Dotty was talking about. Did she mean she never pictured herself at the Savoy? Because, clearly, she was not grasping the fact that her son was dead. In fact, she seemed to have transferred the way she dealt with her husband’s abandonment right onto her son’s murder, which just showed how incapable of dealing with reality she truly was.

“Ginny, do you remember when we were young, before I married into the Grisby family and you had just arrived in Notting Hill? Oh, the times we had.”

Viv and I perked up. Were we about to get some dish on Mim?

“Yes,” Viv said. “That would have been the late sixties and early seventies, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, the parties,” Dotty gushed. “I remember the time we were all at All Saint’s church hall and you jumped up on the stage and began to dance. Oh, you had all the men following you around that night. I was sure one of them was going to propose to you.”

“Right,” Viv said. She glanced at me and I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was—that Dotty was proving to be quite a source of information about our grandmother.

“You didn’t go for him, though,” Dotty said as if confused by Mim’s choice. “Good call, since he died of an overdose a few years later. Musicians.”

I felt my eyebrows lift as I gazed at Viv. Mim had been hooking up with musicians? No way! And, while I’m sure there were a lot of musicians who overdosed back in the sixties in Notting Hill, the most famous one was Jimi Hendrix in 1970. Mim and Hendrix? It boggled. Viv looked as intrigued as I did, but like me, I suspected she didn’t know what to say to get more information out of Dotty, who, quite frankly, was not the most reliable source of information to begin with.

Still, the time line fit. Mim was widowed by the time the hippie counterculture had swarmed the Notting Hill area. She would have been right at the epicenter of the movement.

She and my grandfather had met and married in their small village in Yorkshire and moved to London for his career as a barrister. Shortly after my aunt Grace was born, my grandfather was killed in a car accident. My mother remembers her father a little, but not clearly, since she was only three when he died. Instead of moving back to her village, Mim had found a cheap shop to buy in Notting Hill, which was a bit of a hippie ghetto back in the day, and had started up her millinery business much to the disapproval of her own family.

She would have been a widow in her twenties. And given that Mim, like Viv, had quite the artist’s temperament, it was easy to picture her as part of the scene.

“No, I never loved anyone as much as my Emerson,” Viv said. She glanced at me. Mim had always said this about our grandfather. Whenever we asked why she didn’t marry again, she said she never met another man with her Emerson’s spark.

“I chose Geoffrey,” Dotty said. She said it with an air of puzzlement as if she wasn’t quite sure now why she had chosen to marry him.

“And now he’s going to have a hospital wing named after him,” Viv said. She glanced at Lily and Liam to see if this was all right. Liam gave her a small nod.

“Quite right,” Dotty said. “He sacrificed so much for our family, always away on business, you know.”

Another gagging sound was emitted from Daphne, who was pacing around the piano. She met my gaze and pointedly looked at her watch.

If Dotty heard her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she had a far-off look in her eye. “Dear Geoffrey, such a devoted father, and what an excellent role model for his son.”

Daphne opened her mouth to speak, and I had no doubt it would be a caustic comment about her father, but Lily cut her off.

“He would be proud, just as we all are,” she said.

“Quite right,” Dotty said and she patted Lily’s hand affectionately.

“Stop it! Just stop,” Daphne snapped. “Why must we participate in this sham? Mother, Geoffrey, your son, our brother, is dead—not away on business, dead.”

Rose’s fingers faltered on the piano while everyone in the room froze to see how Dotty would react.

“Daphne, how can you say such a thing?” Dotty pressed her hand to her throat. “I know you’re unhappy about the terms of your father’s will, but to declare your brother dead is just vile. I am not amused, young lady.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mother,” Daphne cried. She was so angry she was shaking. She began to pace. “I get that you have altered reality for the past thirty years, but you can’t alter this. Geoffrey is dead.”