Lucy and the Valentine Verdict (4 page)

“Did she have a heart attack, Doctor?” Ms.
Brent knelt next to the “dead” Mrs. Peabody and placed a paper
cross over the other woman’s heart. “A woman of her years and...
girth... these things do happen.”

Mrs. Peabody opened one eye and gifted Ms.
Brent with a scowl.

Dr. Armstrong was undeterred by the obvious
signs of life in his patient. “No, not a heart attack. I’d say this
woman has been poisoned.”

Lady York, Sir Arthur, and Mr. Blore all
gasped and took a step back.

“You mean murdered?” Lady York asked. Her
shock at the revelation was obvious. A tad too obvious in my
opinion, but since Mrs. Peabody or the woman who played Mrs.
Peabody was still very much alive, I put the lack of true shock
down to poor acting rather than previous nefarious acts.

“But who would want to kill her?” Vera
Claythorne asked, a bit robotically, and shoved at her glasses
which had once again slid down her nose.

“She was wealthy,” Peter read from his card,
not quite as woodenly as Miss Claythorne, but far from believably.
“Who was talking with her last?”

Emily Brent lifted an accusing finger and
pointed it my direction. “She was speaking with her,
and
I heard the dearly departed say that Maid Ann
had lost weight.” Her gaze, resting on me, narrowed. “Did you know
her before this?”

All eyes turned to me. I shrank backward
before remembering that none of this was real.

Lady York slipped closer and pressed a new
card in my hand.

“I did. I worked for her, but I didn’t kill
her,” I read.

Lady York pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh,
my. You are the maid she was talking about. The one she fired for
stealing the silver!”

I hadn’t heard any such claim by Mrs.
Peabody, but that didn’t matter. “I never,” I objected, just as my
card instructed.

“What other motive could anyone here have?
None of
us
knew her,” Mr. Blore declared.
“I say we lock the servant up.”

Sir Arthur stepped forward. “Everyone needs
to calm down. Maid Ann has been with us for over a year, and I have
no reason to distrust her in any way. I suggest that while Captain
Egg assists the doctor in removing the body and double checking the
cause of death, the rest of us go into the dining room.”

“To eat?” Ms. Brent asked.

“Or drink, and I know which I’m doing!” Mr.
Blore reached past her and grabbed the martini shaker.

“Wait!” Peter called out.

Everyone froze.

“If she was poisoned...”

More gasps and everyone pivoted. Their gazes
locked onto the metal shaker. Mr. Blore set it down and took a step
back.

There was another thump. We turned again.
This time to find that the not-so-spinster botanist, Vera
Claythorne, was on the floor too.

“Oh, no!”

I wasn’t sure who had said the last. It
might even have been me.

Then, just as suddenly, the lights went
out.

The room was dark, can’t see your malamute’s
snow-white face dark.

I stood in place afraid to move. Afraid if I
did, I’d trip and knock over something expensive that someone would
expect me to pay for later.

Others didn’t seem to have the same
reservations. I could hear people moving around and felt as someone
walked past me toward the kitchen.

A chill shot up my back. I knew this was all
staged, but it suddenly felt real. Too real.

I slid my feet forward, hoping to run into
the loveseat, which I knew lay somewhere ahead and to my right.

Sir Arthur’s voice broke through my
irrational panic. “Everyone stay where they are! It’s the storm.
It’s knocked out the generator.”

Okay... since there was, last I checked, no
storm outside, I guessed this generator bit wasn’t real either.

“Miss Claythorne, is she all right? Who was
closest to her?” Sir Arthur again.

Butler Mandrake replied, “She’s fine. I have
her. The shock was just too much for her.”

A couple of minutes more and matches flared.
Then Lady York stood in front of us holding a silver candelabra. It
was too dark to see much past our hostess and the candelabra, which
looked heavy and ornate. I squinted, but couldn’t tell if it was an
antique or a nice replica. Not that it mattered. Silver didn’t sell
all that well in my shop.

“Everyone, follow me,” she instructed. “I’m
sure we will all feel safer in the dining room.”

We did as we were instructed, falling into a
line and walking like eight little ducks behind her. At least I
assumed we all followed, it was still too dark to see much that was
happening around me.

The dead Mrs. Peabody tapped me on the
shoulder. I revised my duck count to nine.

“What did you think of my performance?” she
whispered. “I fell forward as they said, but butt up is not my best
side.”

Completely sympathetic with that, I replied.
“Great. I really thought you were dead.” I hadn’t, but she seemed
pleased with my answer.

“Can you believe they used the lights out
trick? How cheap is that?” she asked.

Pretty cheap
. But I kept the thought
to myself.

In the dining room, Lady York set her
candelabra on the table. The glow of the candles did a much better
job of illuminating the smaller room than it had the living
area.

I did a quick head count. Only Dr. Armstrong
seemed to be missing. Which made sense since he, along with Peter -
who obviously wasn’t as dedicated to his role - had been given the
task of checking for cause of death... even though the body was no
longer lying in the living room waiting to be checked.

“If everyone will take a seat, Maid Ann and
Mandrake will serve dinner.”

I realized then that more food had been
placed on the buffet and plates were already set in front of each
seat. Mrs. Peabody winked at me and then took a place at a smaller
table set off to the side.

No one commented on the dead body, or maybe
she was now a ghost, joining us.

And despite her recent demise and
accusations of poisoning, everyone seemed happy enough to eat. I
would have been happy enough to eat too, except apparently I was
expected to serve the salad and fill water glasses.

“Maid Ann,” Lady York called. “That will be
all.”

I glanced around, wondering where I was
supposed to disappear to.

Mrs. Peabody pulled out the empty chair
beside her and patted the seat. I didn’t wait to see if her offer
was acceptable to our hosts. I scurried over and stuck a fork in
the steak that Mandrake had been nice enough to leave on the plate
for me before anyone could tell me to do something else, like mop
the floors.

My concerns, it turned out, were
unwarranted. Lady York’s gaze washed over me as if I wasn’t there
and a couple of minutes later, after finishing his meat
distribution, Mandrake slid into the empty chair on my left.

“You’re lucky,” Mrs. Peabody explained to
us. “You’re at the invisible table. Everyone else has some
information they have to share during dinner, but we don’t. We can
just sit back and listen.”

I wasn’t sure if I liked this or not, but I
did like being given free range to eat. Which is what I did,
cutting into my steak as Emily Brent held up her hands and
exclaimed, “Wait! Grace! We must say grace.”

A childhood of training caused me to take a
guilty pause, but Mrs. Peabody waved her knife at me, reminding me
that this was part of the act and that we, for the moment, weren’t
part of it. I placed the steak in my mouth and chewed, happily.

Coincidentally, Kiska found me then,
plopping down beside me and wagging his tail expectantly.

I didn’t usually feed him from the table,
but as Emily Brent droned on, talking about the sins of our
fathers... and mothers... the excesses of wealth and the evils of
alcohol... I could see he was losing patience. It was distract him
with food or have him distract everyone else with a giant malamute
wooing fit.

I cut my potato into tiny pieces and doled
them out to him a nibble at a time with my left hand, while
continuing to eat the steak with my right.

“How did you know Mrs. Peabody, Mr. Blore?”
Captain Egg, aka Peter, asked.

Mr. Blore blinked like a stunned goldfish.
“Who? Me? I didn’t know her, well, not before this evening.”

“Really? My mistake. I thought I saw you
talking outside before you came in,” Peter added, playing with his
monocle, which, for the record, was lying on the table and nowhere
near his eye.

“Yes, yes, we did chat briefly outside. An
attractive woman and all that. Who am I to let an opportunity pass
me by? Especially with it being Valentine’s and all that.” He
motioned with his knife toward the centerpiece, a rather gaudy
creation of red silk roses and paper cupids blithely shooting each
other in head and ass.

My dining companion, the dead Mrs. Peabody,
snorted. Miss Brent pursed her lips and shook her head in a
thoroughly disapproving manner.

“She did say she was from Boston, didn’t
she?” Miss Claythorne asked. “Isn’t that where you said you are
from too?”

Mr. Blore took a loud sip of his wine. “Big
town, Boston.”

Sir Arthur cleared his throat. “Boston, eh?
Lady York goes down there often herself. Sees a... what is it...
dear?” He glanced at his wife.

She smiled, serene. “Chiropractor.”

There was silence at the table as everyone
scribbled in their notebooks. Well, everyone except Peter. He took
a bite of his steak and smiled.

I took a bite of mine too and frowned. It
was obvious Mr. Blore and possibly Emily Brent were being set up as
having motives. Blore for some connection from their shared city,
and Emily Brent for some real or perceived religious wrong-doing.
There was Lady York, too, with her chiropractor... And what about
everything Mrs. Peabody had practically yelled out right before her
demise?

I opened my mouth to ask if anyone else had
thoughts on her comments, but was cut off by an elbow to the side.
“Seen but not heard...” Mrs. Peabody’s ghost reminded me.

I sighed and made a note to see what “sins”
of the fictional Mrs. Peabody I could uncover. I glanced at her
“body,” wondering if she had any information, but she was busy
chatting with Mandrake and not about anything to do with her
murder.

Mandrake cut into his steak. “We met in
college. We were both in Big Brothers and Sisters.”

Mrs. Peabody dipped her finger into a bowl
of horseradish sauce that had been left on the table for all of us
to share. She made a face and then replied, “Oh?”

“I did it for my resumé,” he confided. “But
it’s important to Michelle.”

Vera Claythorne to me, I assumed.

I smiled and tried to look interested, while
also giving subtle hints that I really wanted to instead be
listening to the conversation going on at the main table.

Miss Claythorne, she of the Big Brothers and
Sisters, stared down at her lap, where I detected a glow... a
phone, I realized.

I glanced at Lady York, wondering how our
hostess would react to this anachronism in her jazz-era dinner.

Miss Claythorne, however, flipped her phone
over face down on her lap, hiding its glow with Lady York being
none the wiser, at least for now.

“So,” she asked. “How long have you all been
here?”

Her question caused our hosts to turn their
heads her direction. At first I thought it was because the question
was directed at them, but I quickly realized it was because Vera
Claythorne, like Mrs. Peabody, had gone off script.

Sir Arthur opened his mouth to answer, but
Lady York beat him to it. “My husband’s family has lived on this
property for 400 hundred years.”

Since Sir Arthur did not look Native
American in the slightest, I had to assume that Lady York was
guiding the conversation back to the land of make believe.

“That is a very long time,” Miss Claythorne
replied, her gaze remaining on Sir Arthur.

“Yes. It is.”

The lights clicked back on, catching Lady
York in a disapproving stare, meant, I was sure, to knock the
younger woman back into place. Or maybe, since she couldn’t have
known her expression was going to be so apparent, just a natural
reaction to the younger woman’s refusal to stay on script.

Either way, the return of the lights seemed
the signal to kick off another stage of our evening.

Lady York smiled and made some comment about
timing. Then she waved her hand in the air, signaling, as it turned
out, for Mandrake and I to snap back into our subservient roles.
“Mandrake! Ann! Clear the plates, please, and serve dessert.”

I glanced at Mandrake, hoping he’d show a
rebellious streak and refuse to move, but he didn’t even hesitate.
He jumped to his feet and immediately began removing plates.

I moved a little slower.

Mrs. Peabody watched me over the top of her
wineglass. “Bossy, isn’t she? If this was a real murder mystery, my
money’d be on her as the victim. She has
went-to-the-dinner-party-even-though-I-was-sick written all over
her.”

I smiled. “
The Mirror
Cracked
.” One of my favorites.

“And who would kill her?” I asked. Morbid,
perhaps, but I was in no hurry to step back into my role.

Mrs. Peabody tapped a finger against her
lip, and then she laughed. “You, of course. She was an unwed teen
mother who left you on a roadside, then once she married into all
of this, ignored your pleas for help. How could you not want to
kill her?”

I shook my head, impressed. “I think you’ve
read a little Agatha Christie yourself.”

“How do you think I landed that?” She
gestured toward Mr. Blore and took another sip, but this time I
noticed a glow in her eyes. Despite her fussing, she loved him.

Feeling even warmer toward her than I had, I
squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re not really dead.”