The Mystery of the Missing Misses: A 1920s Murder Mystery by CM Rawlins

Author:CM Rawlins [Rawlins, CM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CleanTales Publishing
Published: 2024-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

“Mother,” Lady Alice interrupted after letting her mother let fly for ten minutes, “what you need is a score sheet?”

“A what?”

“A score sheet. A bit like Daddy does with his slugs.”

“How do you know what he does with his slugs?”

“Because I watch him from time to time.” Closer questioning on this subject meant the truth coming out. Alice often spent periods of time in semi-silent observation of her father at work. “It’s not that I like slugs, Mummy,” she explained. “I think they’re about the yuckiest things in this entire world. But, I like being with Daddy.”

“Daddy? First ‘Mummy’, now ‘Daddy’.”

“Well, Father then. It’s the same thing. Back to the score sheet. I know, I’ll do it with you. Back in a tick. I’m just going to the schoolroom for some paper and pencils.”

She was back in not much more than a tick, three pencils sticking out of her mouth and a roll of paper in her arms.

“Mrs Robinson, let me have it,” she said, “Cess and Freddie use it for art, but she let me have as much as I need.”

She rolled out four feet on the floor and tore it from the rest, tossing the remaining roll on the sofa by the bay window.

“Now, we put columns down on the sheet, one for each person involved. How many people are staying here?”

They worked this out at nine, including Baritone recently arrived.

“I’ll do twelve columns, then.”

Lady Darriby-Jones was about to ask why twelve when it occurred to her. Nine guests plus three hosts came to twelve, just as ninepence and a threepenny bit came to a shilling.

“But that’s thirteen columns,” Lady Darriby-Jones said after counting them twice.

“Yes, you see the first column is for the subject areas. See, we have…” she paused, looking at her mother in a way that made Lady Darriby-Jones feel a surge of pride and love.

“We have means,” Lady Darriby-Jones filled in the blanks, “motive and opportunity. No, write them in neatly, Ali, so we can read them properly later on.”

Alice scribbled out her scrawls and printed the words neatly, sighing in an exaggerated mode as she did so.

“There we are,” she said, “satisfied, Mother?”

Lady Darriby-Jones never got the opportunity to reply. She had been planning to praise her daughter for her idea, but just then a great shout came from the main hall downstairs, followed rapidly by several more shouts, all of them male.

“Oh, what fun,” Lady Alice cried, “I do believe they are fighting over little old me.”

She disappeared in an instant, leaving Lady Darriby-Jones to hobble onto the landing with the aid of the fire poker she managed to reach this time.

“What’s going on?” she called over the banister. “What on earth is going on?”

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