Duenna to a Murder by Rufus King

Author:Rufus King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, mystery, crime, noir, detective
ISBN: 9781479405992
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

The morning being Sunday, the press had no editions in which to herald the Tyler-Millay job (Brandgwyn Heiress—Slaughtered War Hero), with its tailor-made, sob-sister tangents of the damped-out elopement and of Bruce, jilted scion of the socially prominent Calverses. On the other hand, the radio was pleased, and its nation-wide newscasts did a well-browned coverage.

Brandgwyn itself was in no sense pleased.

An air of unbearable expectancy underlay its surface routine which barely managed to run along with a sketchy semblance of normal equilibrium. Small details alone betrayed its true state of nerves—the open salts being poltergeisted into sugar—a dust-cloth absent-mindedly left swaddling a marble bust of Theodosius the Great—such minor things.

Girded in a dress of cool checked cotton for what was bound to be a jaw-buster morning, Margot went down to breakfast at eight. She had expected it to be a solitary meal, but it was not. The family was entirely there.

Melissa looked her own quiet self except for a touch of puffiness about her eyes and, in them, a hint of the miserable anxiety which she was controlling with firm success. Henry was semi-formalized in white linen, a dove-toned shirt, and a subdued orchid-crepe tie. His expression was soberly masterful, and Margot wondered about it until a probable explanation came to her.

Under the weight of tragic circumstance, he was once more the head of the house, the bulwark of strength against which his wife and daughter could trustfully lean. It was the role he had played with such staunch, good kindness until the Brandgwyn money had sledge-hammered its base into silly bits and had left him dangling with all the inoperative and bootless feelings of an empty figurehead.

Francine (frosted in pique) looked a studied blank. Margot saw no ravages from what must have been a sleepless night, and her greeting blended indistinguishably with Henry’s while Jarvis—already crowding sail toward the jitters—held Margot’s chair.

“Miss Gilland,” Melissa said with her effect of wholesome directness, “Henry wanted me to but I refused to stay in bed. I am quite well, truly well, and I know what we shall be called upon to face. It will be an unhappy repetition of Cousin Elizabeth’s bequest.”

It took a moment for this to make sense. “Oh—you mean the press.” It was peculiar, more than just peculiar, Margot thought, that reporters should be uppermost in Melissa’s mind rather than any probings about the crime on the part of Buran or Chaney. Could even Melissa feel as assured-of a security-in-innocence in her husband and her daughter as all that? No, it wasn’t peculiar. Of course Melissa both could and would.

“Yes, Miss Gilland. We were wondering whether you could see the interviewers for us.”

“I could, but I don’t think it would be wise, Mrs. Tyler. I’d even suggest my staying deliberately out of the picture.”

Henry said: “What Miss Gilland is getting at, Melissa, is for us not to antagonize them or act as if we were being coached. We’re bound to get a bum pitch, but there’s no sense in making it worse.

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