Murder at Maddingley Grange by Caroline Graham

Author:Caroline Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781631940149
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2014-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Laurie was washing up in the annex. Gaunt, wounded, sat in a wheelback chair, his leg elevated onto a wooden box. Laurie had offered earlier to telephone for a doctor but the servants had both expressed alarm at this, saying they didn’t want to be any trouble and in any case were both alien to the medical profession. Laurie, rather shamedly, had not persisted. She could only have called out Lionel Murchison, Aunt Maude’s doctor, knowing no other, and he was an old family friend who would certainly not keep his juicy discovery of the shenanigans at the Grange to himself. Also he might well diagnose some serious injury necessitating the removal of Gaunt in an ambulance, no doubt accompanied by an anxiously attentive sibling. Then the running of the weekend would fall entirely on Laurie’s shoulders.

As it was she was having to tackle most of the chores. Admittedly Simon (after his sister had threatened to take the bus to Oxford and not come back till Sunday evening) had lent a hand preparing breakfast. He had made the coffee and grilled the sausages, glaring resentfully at his hired help the while.

“Quite honestly,” he had grumbled to Laurie, “given a certain amount of crude scientific equipment and all that lightning we had last night, I could have made something more efficient.”

He had been very blunt in the display of his feelings toward les domestiques, berating Gaunt soundly for wandering around in the middle of the night. Simon had declined a private view of the leg and had further explained that they would not be getting their full whack of cash for the weekend. Indeed, unless they pulled their socks up, not a penny piece would be changing hands. He concluded by suggesting that if either of them had the gall to ask him for a reference it would be couched in terms of such unforgiving clarity that any prospective employer would as soon engage two carriers of the Black Death. He had then returned to his sausages, stabbing the glossy links savagely before piling them up on a hot plate.

But the mood had not persisted, and when Laurie had taken the second batch of croissants and homemade quince jelly into the dining room, he had been full of smiles and pouring China tea for Sheila Gregory. Now—Laurie pulled the plug and rinsed soap from her hands—she could see him on the lawn teaching Rosemary the rudiments of croquet. This seemed to involve an awful lot of proximity. He was standing very close behind her, encircling her waist with his arms as they drew back the mallet. But there came no soft thock of wood on wood. Surprisingly, in spite of all that undivided attention, they missed and had to start all over again.

Laurie looked wistful as she dried her hands with a tea towel. Rosemary was so pretty. She was wearing a Leghorn hat against the sun, tied on with velvet ribbons, and her lounging pajamas rippled and floated as she moved.

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