The Clue is in the Pudding (6 page)

Curbing her impatience, Cecily tried again. “I’d really like to know what the argument was about, Phoebe.”

Phoebe widened her eyes. “You’re not usually one for gossip, Cecily. You surprise me.”

Cecily gritted her teeth. “It’s important.”

Phoebe looked even more nonplussed. “I really don’t . . . oh!” She slapped her gloved hand over her mouth. From behind it she mumbled, “Don’t tell me Mr. Armitage was
murdered
?”

Cecily silently cursed her lack of caution. It didn’t happen often, but once in a while, Phoebe could be quite perceptive. “I didn’t say that. I merely asked what the argument was about.”

Looking shaken, Phoebe stared down at the toes of her boots peeking out from under her skirt. “Well, er . . . I wouldn’t normally repeat such things, but since you seem so intent on knowing, I suppose I could make an exception.”

Hanging onto her patience by a mere thread, Cecily muttered, “Please do. Preferably before we are interrupted again.”

“Oh, of course.” Phoebe looked over her shoulder. “Well, it was rather a delicate matter, which is why I hesitate to reveal it. It concerned the gentleman’s daughter, from what I heard.”

“You mean Sir Reginald’s daughter?”

“Yes.” Phoebe’s cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink. “I really don’t like discussing such things, but from what I heard”—once more she glanced over her shoulder—“the gentleman’s daughter was . . . ah . . . compromised . . . by the actor and died giving birth to his child.”

Cecily drew in a sharp breath. “How awful. Sir Reginald and his wife must have been devastated.”

“I imagine they were. I can quite see why the gentleman was so infuriated with Mr. Armitage.”

“Yes,” Cecily murmured. “So can I.”

Phoebe’s eyes widened. “You don’t think he—”

“I don’t think anything of the sort,” Cecily said, forestalling the rest of Phoebe’s sentence. “I’m sure Mr. Armitage’s death was due to an unfortunate accident.” She curled her fingers into her palm and prayed that was so.

Phoebe looked as if she would argue, then she shook her head. “Yes, well, if you say so. I suppose I should go backstage and see what those silly girls are doing. They can be so destructive when they’re not supervised.”

Cecily had to hide a smile. Phoebe treated her dance troupe as if they were small children instead of grown adults. Though perhaps, she amended as she left the ballroom, calling them adults was possibly giving them more credit than they deserved. They delighted in tormenting Phoebe, and thanks to their considerable lack of talent, her presentations on the stage more often than not ended in disaster.

Thinking of disaster brought her back to the subject of Archibald Armitage’s death. The moment she arrived back in her office she rang Dr. Prestwick, and was vastly relieved when he answered.

“The poison wasn’t in the Christmas pudding,” she said, in answer to his greeting. “One of my maids found it untouched in Mr. Armitage’s room.”

“Then we can rule that out.” Kevin sounded relieved. “We shall have to look elsewhere for the source of the poison.”

“Everything that Pansy took out of the room has been put into the coal shed.” She paused, then added, “Could you possibly come back this afternoon and take a look? I’d like to have some answers for P.C. Northcott when he gets here.”

“Of course. I can be there in about an hour.”

“Thank you, Kevin. If we can eliminate as the source everything that was in the room, and seeing that no one else has taken ill, we should be able to assume that Mr. Armitage was poisoned elsewhere, should we not?”

“I should think so, though you never know with Northcott. He can be quite obtuse at times.”

Cecily sighed. “Well, he should be on the brink of leaving for his annual Christmas visit to his wife’s relatives. If that’s so, he’ll be in a hurry to settle this and more likely to accept what to me would be a logical conclusion.”

Kevin laughed. “I’ve yet to see the day that Northcott is logical in any shape or form, but one can always live in hope.”

Cecily replaced the receiver with cautious hope. If all went well, this whole dreadful business could be behind them by the evening, and she could then concentrate on providing the best Christmas season yet for her guests. If that were so, it would indeed be a blessing.

*   *   *

Gertie peered at the dusty bottles lined up along the shelves, trying to read the labels. She’d never liked coming down to the wine cellar. It was too dark, too cold, and had too many spiders and other nasty stuff crawling around.

The cellar had no gas lamps to light the way. In order to see, she had to light the oil lamp that hung by the entrance, and with a basket in one hand and the lamp in the other, creep down the steps to the cellar below. The smell reminded her of rotting apples and something else she didn’t want to think about.

The room wasn’t that big, and it was crammed with shelves from end to end. She had to walk down the aisles, looking for a dozen or so bottles of wine that Barry Collins, the publican, had ordered for the bar. As she walked, the lamp swung in her hand, sending weird shadows dancing all over the place.

She kept thinking that someone was down there with her. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be. Maybe even the someone who had murdered Archibald Armitage in his bed. The thought gave her sharp stabs of panic, and she had to fight the urge to turn and race up the steps to the daylight.

Once, not so long ago, she’d been trapped down there with a killer. She’d managed to get away from him, but the memory was as sharp in her mind as if it had happened yesterday. Ever since then, she had the creeps every time she had to go down there.

Mrs. Chubb understood that and did her best to avoid having to ask Gertie to go down in the cellar. Tucker the Terrible, of course, wouldn’t listen when Gertie had suggested that Pansy get the wine. Oh, no. She ordered Gertie to go down there, and now here she was, standing in the dreaded stuffy room, trying to read the dusty labels.

Farther down a narrow corridor lay empty rooms. They’d once housed the card games that the toffs had so enjoyed, and which had been illegal all the time the Pennyfoot was a mere hotel. There was once a secret trapdoor to the rooms, but when the hotel was turned into a country club, making it legal to gamble, madam had closed off the rooms and a new floor had been laid over the trapdoor.

Now the only way to the rooms was down the corridor, and that was somewhere Gertie would never venture. The passageways had once been used by pirates smuggling everything from spirits to perfume from Europe. They led under the building all the way to the ocean. Rats had now taken up residence, and heaven knew what else. Odd sounds echoed down the corridor now and then, making Gertie jump in fright. It would take a matter of life and death for her to go down those passageways now.

She tried not to look at the entrance to them as she turned the corner of a row of shelves and started up the other side. As she did so, a large shadow seemed to move across the other end. Her heart seemed to leap right up into her throat as she stared at the far wall, blinking hard to clear her vision.

It was too dark to see clearly, but the shadow had gone, and she let out her breath. The place gave her the willies and made her imagine all sorts of things. She still had another three bottles to collect and already the basket was almost full.

It was just as well that Pansy hadn’t come down, she thought, as she studied more labels. Her friend would never have been able to carry all that weight up the steps. She spotted a label she needed and placed the oil lamp on the shelf while she picked up the bottle.

As she did so, she heard heavy footsteps coming up behind her. Unnerved by the sudden sound, she let out a scream and the bottle fell from her fingers. The crash of splintering glass seemed to echo over and over again in her ears. She could smell the wine as it splashed over her shoes, and it was all she could do to hold onto the basket that contained a dozen bottles as she swung around to face the intruder.

Memories of her last encounter with a killer seared her mind. She hastily put the basket down, grabbed one of the bottles and prepared to fight for her life.

*   *   *

Hauling the heavy basket of linens down the top flight of stairs, Pansy wished the country club had a laundry chute that went all the way from the top floor to the bottom. There was one outside the dining room that went down into the laundry room. That’s where she dumped all the soiled tablecloths and serviettes.

There was nowhere, however, where she could drop the sheets and pillowcases she took off the beds, and that meant struggling down three flights of stairs with an unwieldy basket that weighed a ton.

Grunting with the effort to raise the basket higher, she balanced it on her hip and turned the corner on the first landing. At the same moment, a footman came bounding up the stairs and onto the landing. Unable to avoid him, Pansy smacked into him, sending the basket flying out of her arms and rolling down the stairs, spilling sheets and pillowcases all over the steps.

“Now look what you’ve done!” She glared up into brown eyes sparkling with mischief and suppressed a groan. She might have known. Charlie Muggins was always finding an excuse to get in her way and keep her talking. More than once she’d been in trouble for being late because the cheeky young footman had stopped her from going where she was supposed to be going.

Not that she minded all that much. Charlie was always good for a laugh, and she rather liked him. If she hadn’t been so head over heels in love with Samuel, she might even have accepted one of Charlie’s numerous invitations to go walking with him.

Right now, however, she was in a hurry to get the linens down to the laundry room, and it was going to take her ages to pick up all that mess. She tossed her head at the footman and made her voice really stern. “Out of my way, Charlie. I’ve got work to do and I’m late already.”

“Wait a minute.” He laid a hand on her arm. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

She shook off his hand and tried to push past him. “I haven’t got time to listen to you now.”

He shifted his body so she couldn’t get by him. “Just give me a minute and I’ll help you pick up all that stuff. I’ll even carry it down to the laundry room for you.”

She squinted at him, wary of what he might want from her. “What are you up to, Charlie Muggins?”

“Nothing, I swear.” He raised both hands in the air. “I just wanted to know what happened to Archibald Armitage, that’s all.”

She pinched her lips together and raised her chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I heard it from one of the maids. Gertie found him dead in his room.”

Worried now that she might be blamed for letting out the news, Pansy shook her head. “I don’t know nothing. Ask Gertie if you want to know.”

“Gertie won’t tell me.” He leaned in toward her, a smile on his lips. “I know you will, though. Especially if I carry that heavy basket all the way down to the laundry room for you.”

Pansy eyed the tumble of white sheets on the stairs. The basket had bounced all the way down to the next landing. It would take her ages to get everything picked up on her own. “I don’t know much,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “All I know is that he was poisoned by something he ate in the hotel.”

“That’s what I thought.” Charlie narrowed his gaze. “I thought I should warn you.”

A spasm of fear shot down her back. “Warn me of what?”

“Not of what. Who.” He looked over his shoulder again. “You see Gilbert Tubbs a lot, don’t you.”

Pansy frowned. “I see him when I visit Samuel in the stables. What of it?”

Charlie leaned closer. “I think he may have poisoned Archibald Armitage.”

Shocked, Pansy uttered a shrill laugh. “What? Whatever makes you think that?”

Charlie took hold of her arm and drew her into the corner of the landing. “I know Gilbert. We used to go to school together until he moved to London. It was me that got him the job here as Samuel’s assistant. I felt sorry for him.”

“Why did you feel sorry for him?”

“I was in the Fox and Hounds one night when Gilbert came walking in. I didn’t even know he was back here. The last I heard, he was doing all right for himself in the city, managing a nightclub in Piccadilly.”

Pansy raised her eyebrows. “Go on! Whatever made him come back here, then?”

Again Charlie glanced over his shoulder. “Well, it turns out that Archibald Armitage swindled a lot of money out of some investors in a play. Gilbert was one of them. He lost a bundle and ended up pretty much broke. He couldn’t afford to stay in the city anymore so he came back here. He begged me to get him a job here, so I did.”

Still struggling to absorb what she’d just heard, Pansy shook her head. “Mr. Armitage stole Gilbert’s money? I don’t believe it.”

Charlie shrugged. “Gilbert showed me an article in the newspaper about it. There was a court case and everything but the investors couldn’t prove that it wasn’t a legitimate business deal.”

“Well, then, that just goes to show that Mr. Armitage didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“Gilbert said that Armitage took the investors’ money for the play, but didn’t produce it. It never made it to the stage. He trumped up a few receipts for the court, but all the investors knew he’d never spent anything on the play. He just pocketed all the money.”

Pansy pouted, still unwilling to believe her hero could be so dishonorable. “Well, even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean that Gilbert poisoned him.”

Charlie leaned in closer. “When Gilbert asked me to get him a job here, he mentioned that Armitage would be coming here for Christmas. He saw it in the newspaper. He said he’d like to fix the brakes on Armitage’s motorcar so he’d end up in the ocean. I thought he was joking and I didn’t think nothing of it at the time. Now that the poor bloke is dead, though, I’m wondering if that’s why Gilbert wanted to work here. So as he could do something nasty to Armitage.”

Pansy began to get a sick feeling in her stomach. Holding one hand over her midriff, she muttered, “I can’t believe Gilbert would do something like that.” But she could. She heard again the bitterness in Gilbert’s voice.
Armitage was not a good man by any means. He was a thief and a liar.