The Castle Mystery by Faith Martin

Author:Faith Martin [Martin, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books mystery and crime
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jenny reached for a jar of the old cook’s preserved pears and opened the lid. She sniffed suspiciously. She supposed they would be all right. But she was now habitually wary of anybody else’s preserves ever since that very tragic incident involving a sultan and his pampered Persian cat.

She drained the large, juicy pears, silently congratulating the gardener on his skill, and washed and diced them. Next, she laid them out in a huge baking dish with some greengages and a good sprinkling of sultanas. Adding sugar and a dash of brandy, she put it to one side and set about making the shortcrust pastry to go on top.

Jenny worked automatically, for her thoughts were very much elsewhere. On Meecham, to be exact, and what he had just told her.

Gayle had left to see to Lady Vee, and Meecham, no doubt wanting to be alone with his thoughts, had skulked off somewhere, leaving her free to digest this latest revelation.

Would losing the family fortune, so to speak, drive him to kill a relatively innocent party? There was no reason to suspect that Ava Simmons even knew of her father’s perfidy, let alone condoned it. And she would have been a child herself at the time of the sale of the Meecham family painting.

No, it just didn’t ring true. Now if Basil Simmons had turned up stabbed to death by a dagger, then yes. But Ava?

Jenny rolled out the pastry with a marble rolling pin — she never used a wooden one; pastry needed the cold strength of marble behind it — and sighed. And what was all this about Janice? She could think of no good reason why the parlour maid should have been lurking about in the governess’s room, unless on some errand of skullduggery. Could Meecham have been lying? Trying to throw the spotlight onto somebody else? But Jenny really didn’t think so. He wasn’t that spiteful. She pulled a dish towards her without really seeing it and laid the pastry on top. Her fingers began to crimp the edges automatically.

She remembered now the way that Meecham had stiffened whenever Janice had said that she had not returned to the castle the afternoon of the murder. So she probably had gone to the governess’s room. But why?

She looked down at her pie, admiring the dome shape and bulky dimensions. She liked her fruit pies to be fruit pies. Not all air and pastry pies. But, as she stared down at the pleasing domed top of the pie and the anaemic-looking, uncooked pastry, a small frown furrowed her brow. For a second she couldn’t think what was wrong. But her brain was sending out urgent signals that something definitely was. Then it hit her. The pie was only supposed to rise like that after it had been cooked.

She spotted the pear-and plum filled bowl still sitting in the centre of the table, and staring down in consternation at the pastry-covered dome, she sighed.

Carefully uncrimping the pastry from around the sides she lifted it off Henry, who stared up at her, his small, bulging eyes twinkling.

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