The Importance of Being Ernestine Read online

  The butler looked severely puzzled. “Did her ladyship not advise you that I have only been in her employ for the past five years?”

  “Most certainly I did.” Lady Krumley was sipping her glass of water.

  “As Watkins, yes,” I said, “but as Ernest… that would be an entirely different matter.”

  “Look, it’s like this.” Mrs. M. took the bit between her teeth. “I got the feeling I’d seen you somewhere before when you let us into the house that first morning. It took a while coming back to me, but then I realized I’d talked to you at bingo one night a few years back in Biddlington-By-Water, and you told me you had a daughter that wouldn’t approve if she knew you was gambling. That’s the effect I have on men,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes, “always tell me more than they mean to, poor saps.”

  “A daughter?” Niles poked his head out from his chair. “You mean Ernestine?”

  “Well, it did seem to fit when me and Mrs. H. here talked to the couple that adopted her. Grew up in to a bit of a prude, she did, a backlash against what she’d heard about her mother perhaps. But who’s to know really?”

  “I do not have a daughter.” Watkins retained his calm.

  “Only when you slip up and mention her to a stranger,” Mrs. Malloy chortled. “And you don’t have much hair left, do you? Came in handy when you decided to return to Moultty Towers and didn’t want to be recognized. Mrs. Hasty said Ernest had a lovely head of auburn hair-‘his most striking feature’ I think was the way she put it. Funny, the little things that can give you away. You was standing under a light in the hall when Mrs. H. noticed you’d got an orange tinge to your eyebrows. Made her wonder if you’d once been a redhead. And then when you was taking us upstairs to the attics you mentioned a couple of items-a library table and a secretary desk-as we might find up there.”

  “And why was that relevant, madam?”

  “Because when we was sitting with Mrs. Hasty in her cottage we made out we was looking for just them pieces. Perhaps to be overheard by whoever was creeping about outside the sitting room. It could’ve been Laureen who was there helping the old lady by straightening up and fixing a meal, but then again it could just as easy have been you, Mr. Watkins.”

  “I don’t think it’s Christian picking on him like this.” Mrs. Beetle’s face grew fierce. “Why, even if he is this Ernest chap, why would he murder a doddering old man like Mr. Vincent Krumley?”

  “Your turn.” Mrs. M. nudged with her elbow.

  “Because Vincent recognized him as Ernest.”

  “The only one to do so after all this time!” Cynthia sneered.

  “They may have met more recently.” I was not prepared to elaborate at this point. “And it seems to Mrs. Malloy and myself that it was Mr. Watkins,” I added, eyeing his impassive face, “who led Lady Krumley to believe that Vincent was no longer in full possession of his faculties by asserting that he had mistaken him for Hopkins the former butler. The names are not that dissimilar, making this plausible to anyone who had witnessessed or overheard the exchange between the two men upon Vincent Krumley’s arrival. But the more my partner and I assessed Vincent’s other apparently foolish comments, the stronger became our suspicion that despite a lifetime of heavy drinking and his advanced age he remained surprisingly… dangerously sharp.”

  “Perhaps I should purchase a new bowl rather than try and replace the lid,” Daisy Meeks mused, while continuing to sit like a bundle of old clothes.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, keep quiet!” Cynthia rounded on her. Her apparent boredom was replaced by a jerkiness that could be explained as her nerves spinning out of control. Did she sense what was coming next?

  “A pity you didn’t have the sense to keep quiet about what you knew,” Mrs. Malloy said smugly. “Blackmail’s a risky business, as you must have realized when you was thrown from your horse. Of course you’ll know better than Mrs. H or me what was done to cause it to rear or whatever it did-some sudden scary noise perhaps, or a dart shot into its poor rump? And all because you wanted to get your greedy hands on some quick cash.”

  “Niles!” Cynthia now directed her rage at her husband. “Are you going to just sit there and let this ignoramus insult me?”

  “I don’t know.” He trembled from head to foot. “What do you think, Aunt Maude?”

  “That I hope you are in no way involved in your wife’s doings. It is one thing to have a nephew who may have blown up his parents on purpose-these past few days have perhaps made me cynical-but blackmail is quite another matter. Vulgar is the word that springs to mind. And now let us continue to hear what my private detectives have to say.” Upon her ladyship pointing her formidable nose our way, Mrs. Malloy gave me the elbow and said it was my turn to hold forth, possibly indicating she had forgotten what she had been going to say next or that she wished to be at the ready should Watkins make a bolt for the door. Up to this point he had admirably retained his impeccable calm.

  “Our first suspicion, Mr. Edmonds, was that you were the object of your wife’s blackmail. After all you do manage Lady Krumley’s finances. However, when we began to zero in on Watkins we recalled being told-by Mrs. Beetle I think it was-that he did her ladyship’s banking along with other errands on a regular basis. Who would question him if he were to sign Mr. Edmonds’s name to an extra check, or a number of checks for that matter supposedly for household expenses? Which money he would then turn over to Mrs. Edmonds. And how likely was it that Mr. Edmonds, a man possibly far more interested in his train sets than business, would think twice about the additional withdrawals?”

  “If I may be forgiven for intruding myself into the conversation.” Watkins might have been announcing that dinner was served. “What do you believe to be the subject of Mrs. Edmonds’s attempt to blackmail me?”

  “There again we can thank Mrs. Beetle for the answer.” I nodded at the bewildered-looking woman. “During our talk in the kitchen the other day, she mentioned that the door to the cellar was kept locked, only to be opened by the key in your jacket pocket, Mr. Watkins. But we saw you hang your usual jacket on a peg, where anyone needing that key could help themselves to it, when you changed into one for cleaning the silver. Mrs. Beetle also told us that in addition to the wine stored in the cellar there was also a supply of apples. And,” I continued, glancing at a still highly resentful-looking Cynthia, “that Mrs. Edmonds was in the daily habit of taking apples to her horse, which would on occasion have presented a problem when you were not available to unlock the cellar door for her, Mr. Watkins.”

  “Indeed so, madam, and what I presume you to be suggesting is that on one recent day Mrs. Edmonds went into my pocket for the key.”

  “And found the brooch that was soon to turn up behind the skirting board in her ladyship’s room.”

  “Is that what happened, Cynthia?” Niles was nibbling on his nails.

  “Why should I deny it?”

  “You let dear Aunt Maude believe it had appeared out of thin air as a result of Flossie Jones’s deathbed curse?”

  “Can I help it if she’s a gullible old fool?”

  “I say, enough of that!” Sir Alfonse protested.

  “Mrs. H. here doesn’t think there was any deathbed curse.” Mrs. Malloy could not contain her bitterness. “She goes for the idea it was just another of Mr. Watkins’s stories, put around way back when he was working here as Ernest, for the purpose of getting even with the Krumley family. All mixed up in your feelings you was,” she continued, returning the butler’s steady gaze without a twitch of an eyelash. “Leastways that’s how Mrs. H. and I sees it. Angry with Sir Horace for having a fling with Flossie, and bitter against her because she’d convinced you the baby wasn’t yours. It wasn’t till years later, after wasting your life on drink-not that I’ve got anything against the occasional gin and tonic-that you realized you’d been hoodwinked. That was when you came face to face with Ernestine. It was the same as with me own father-something I mentioned and Mrs. H. picked up on. He didn’t beli
eve I was his daughter until he saw with his own eyes that I was the spitting image of him. When that happened to you Mr. Watkins you was driven to coming up with your plan.”

  “Which was?”

  “To take the post advertised for a butler at Moultty Towers and search for the brooch Flossie had told you she’d hidden in the grounds, is my guess. Maybe you’ve been looking for it for most of the last five years. Could be she’d hidden it near a tree that’s been chopped down, and you couldn’t pinpoint the place. Or maybe you felt you had to wait for the moment as would give you the best hope of success. Wouldn’t do to bungle things at this stage of the game would it? Lucky you when all them relatives began dropping off the family twig, putting Lady Krumley in just the right frame of mind to think Flossie had finally got round to dishing up the curse. You were very clever in some ways, Mr. Watkins. Those birds were a nice creepy touch. But you made your mistakes, such as not cleaning the brooch properly after digging it up. Perhaps your eyesight’s not all that good. We thought you hadn’t polished that candle stick, remember, but it must have looked all right to you.”

  The moment had come for me to play my ace. “Now then, Mrs. Malloy,” I chided, “it isn’t fair to lay all the blame at Mr. Watkins’s door. He might never have embarked on this wicked scheme if not egged on by Ernestine. The naughty girl was not averse to getting her paws on the Krumley fortune the moment her ladyship could be stowed underground, having conveniently succumbed to another heart attack resulting from recent stress.”

  “Now you sound truly mad!” Watkins’s imperturbability had finally slipped.

  “And I suppose you’ll claim I am lying if I say that Ernestine is here.” I took my time looking from one face to another. “Right now, in this very room.”

  “I would… yes, I would and all you wretched women!” His careful diction was gone, replaced by that of a man who had been brought up rough and had never pictured himself swanking around the insides of a house the likes of Moultty Towers.

  “Let’s consider Mrs. Beetle as Ernestine,” I said.

  “What me?” Her voice came out in a squeak, far too small for her size of face. “There’s things that fit.” Mrs. Malloy was plainly beginning to enjoy herself. “Like you speaking so sympathetic like about Mr. Vincent Krumley’s dog, calling it a poor little orphan, which is what someone that had been orphaned herself might well say. And then there was you giving Mrs. H. and me to understand as how you are deeply religious-Roman Catholic I think you said. Now the Merryweathers that adopted Ernestine didn’t say nothing about her being partial to any particular faith, but they did let us know she saw sin everywhere she looked, which isn’t to say that’s not a stage young people go through and you’ll have come out of it if you did join up with your father…”

  “Watkins is not my father!” Mrs. Beetle gave a bounce that shook the room.

  “Well, you don’t look much like him, I’ll give you that,” Mrs. Malloy conceded, albeit begrudgingly. “And one thing I’ll say for Roman Catholics is that they do like their bingo, so I can’t see why-if you really are one that is-you’d object to your old Dad enjoying an evening of it now and then. Besides, as I can see Mrs. H. is itching to say, there’s someone else here as is another likely candidate for being Ernestine, and that is…” She took her sweet time before pointing her finger toward Daisy Meeks.

  “What? Did I say something?” That lady blinked as if coming out of a trance filled to the brim with Tupperware. “Why is everyone looking at me?”

  “We’re wondering about your life before you suddenly showed up at Moultty Towers claiming to be a long-lost relative and then bought a house in the village,” I said. “It’s not always easy to tell a woman’s age these days, when one can be confused by makeup, or the lack of it, into adding or subtracting ten or even more years.”

  “I’m fifty.”

  “So am I on a bad day,” Mrs. Malloy shot back at her. “The rest of the time it’s twenty-nine. And maybe for you it’s forty, like if you was Ernestine.”

  “I’m not following?”

  “Or you don’t want us to think you are, ducks. Playing like you’re muddleheaded so that people lose patience and ignore you, while all the time you’re thinking deep inscrutable”-Mrs. M. brought out the word with a flourish-“thoughts.”

  “I am?” Daisy Meeks looked vaguely pleased.

  “Stop it! Put an end to this cat-and-mouse game, Father!” This exclamation came from Laureen as she flung herself toward Watkins. They know from this,” she said, wildly tugging at her auburn hair until it tumbled out of its carefully arranged coil to cascade over her shoulders, “that I’m your daughter.”

  “No.” Watkins was losing it fast. He backed away from her as if persued by the devil. “You’re not my Ernestine.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Her voice spiraled into rage. “That I’ll reject you as my mother did? Well, let me tell you I’ve done more than that. I’ve helped these women-these two private detectives-because someone had to be made to pay for my life as the child of those appalling Merryweathers. And you made it so easy for me to settle on you.”

  “Liar. You’re nothing to me! My Ernestine is sweet and gentle!” Watkins had collided with Mr. Featherstone who clamped hold of his arms from behind. Lady Krumley sat as if turned to stone, while the rest of the group was reduced to a blurred photograph.

  “I led these dear women step by step to Constable Thatcher’s boy, Ronald.” Laureen waved a hand at Mrs. Malloy and me and continued remorselessly. “In picking up bits and pieces from Mrs. Hasty I knew he had seen something that had aroused his suspicions about Vincent Krumley’s death. And when this one,” she said, poking at Mrs. Malloy’s shoulder, “got him to open up, he told her he had seen you dragging Pipsie into the shrubbery and beating on it when it yelped. Ronald is very fond of animals. He’s been begging his parents for a dog of his own, and he was charging to the rescue when he and his friend both pitched into a ditch. By the time they managed to scramble out you were nowhere to be seen, Father, and neither was Pipsie. They thought you had killed him, instead of locking him inside the cottage, so that when you offered to help Vincent look for him in the grounds he would start barking and you would follow the sound and suggest looking down the well. That’s why Ronald and the other boy threw those flower pots at your car.” Laureen whirled around to throw herself at Lady Krumley’s feet and clutch at the skirt of her black dress. “They thought Watkins-Father-would be driving. He was the one who most often did so. They never meant to hurt you. And neither did I. Yes, I knew what he was up to, and I played along, giving him enough rope to hang himself. Let him play his little tricks with the brooch! And then I’d expose him. I never thought of murder.”

  “Oh, come off it!” Cynthia was back in form. “You were in it up to your neck, hoping to get your hands on a fortune.”

  “It does look that way.” Niles appeared to be reviving now that the focus had shifted. “What do you think Aunt Maude?”

  “My dear, how are you holding up under this emotional strain?” Mr. Featherstone spoke with deep feeling. But Lady Krumley’s response was cut off by Watkins releasing a roar that knocked a couple of moose heads sideways. Staggering out of the vicar’s clutches he swung around to pummel his fists in the air.

  “You,” he said, glaring at Laureen’s kneeling back, “you’re not worthy to speak my Ernestine’s name let alone pretend to be her. She’s a good woman. None of her mother’s ways about her. It broke my heart the moment I first laid eyes on her after she’d been kept from me all those long years. I made up my mind I’d make it up to her. And it was like a sign when I saw in the paper a few months later that there was a job going here. It didn’t bother me none when I had trouble finding the brooch. I knew inside here,” Watkins thumped his chest, “that I’d find it when the time was right. And so I did. But I never told my Ernestine nothing. Not even that I was her father. To her I’m still just another of the men who’ve found their way to the organization
she set up to help people with problems. It’s called The Waysiders. I went there when I realized I needed help with my drinking, and it’s there I met Vincent Krumley. He didn’t remember me from the days when I was gardener here, but I had to go and tell him, didn’t I, before I got sober enough to think straight.” He was now clawing at his bald head. “In all this time I’ve been back at Moultty Towers the old geezer never once showed his face, until that other night when I made up my mind I’d be damned before I let him ruin things for me.”

  The drawing room door swung inward and a man in police uniform stood in the opening. This had to be Ronald’s father, Constable Thatcher. Beside him was a woman in her late thirties to early forties-quite a pretty woman, despite a severe hairstyle and nunlike attire. It seemed to me that there was an aura about her, but that might have been because the atmosphere was so highly charged with emotion.

  “Father,” she said in a softly compelling voice, “it has all been explained to me, and I have come to help you.” She held out her arms, and Watkins stumbled into them, sobbing like a brokenhearted child. As she stroked his bowed head she looked over her shoulder as if drawn by a magnet to meet Alfonse’s bemused gaze across the crowded room. I’d heard of such things happening… and didn’t get the chance to glory in witnessing it because Laureen had risen slowly to her feet. For a moment I mistook the look on her face for exhaustion from playing the role Mrs. Malloy and I had assigned to her. Then when I saw her lift Lady Krumley’s hand my heart sank. That nerve pill she had taken, what had it been really? And why, oh why hadn’t Mrs. Malloy and I suspected that Watkins had chosen this moment to commit the murder he had been working toward all these years?

  Twenty-three

  “What completed Watkins’s disintegration,” I explained to Freddy the following morning while I did the breakfast washing up and he watched, “was when the little dog Pipsie burst into the room like the angel of vengeance and made snarling leaps at his ankles, the throat being for a dog of his size the equivalent of a mountain peak.”