Malice in Miniature (10 page)

She shuddered. “I don't think so, but he's been coming and going a good deal lately. I haven't seen him since Friday, but his mum is nervous, so I gather he's about. If he turns up here, I'll—”

I clucked sympathetically. “There's nothing the police can do, you know. I asked. Except that Alan did set up patrols of the area around the Hall. Only occasional ones, but I thought it might make you feel better to know someone's keeping an eye on the place. And on Claude.”

She didn't exactly smile, but those remarkable eyes softened and warmed. “It does. Thanks.”

“All right, then. Now. There is something you can do for me, come to think of it. Do you have any books about making miniatures? They'd have to be written for the all-thumbs set, though.”

“Getting hooked, are you? I think we have just what you want.”

She pulled several books off the shelf, and sat me down with them. It didn't take me long to succumb to their fascination. Once one got used to looking at things in one-twelfth scale (the most common standard for miniatures—an inch to a foot), everyday objects took on new meanings. A large thimble was an admirable wastebasket. Beads and bits of metal from discarded jewelry were reworked into perfume bottles or lamps. Toothpicks could serve as parts of chairs or stairways, and tiny scraps of cloth were useful in all sorts of ways. I let my imagination roam. A small house to start with . . .

“Excuse me, Dorothy.”

I looked up from the small world in which I had become immersed.

“Were you planning to eat lunch, or are those books sufficient nourishment? Because I'm about to go have mine, and I have to lock up.”

“Gosh, I'm starved, now that you mention it. What time is it?”

“Nearly one.”

“Heavens! I thought I'd been reading for about half an hour. Time to call it a morning, then. There's one book I'd like to take home with me, though. Do they circulate?”

“I'm afraid not, and Mordie is a real fusspot about it. But they stock some good books in the gift shop. It's just next to the tearoom. I'll show you the way.”

We went through the maze of corridors to a part of the house I'd never seen, past yet more rooms full of tiny things. The halls were quiet; apparently the school groups had departed. Near the end of one hall was a conservatory, burgeoning with tropical-looking plants, palms and monstrous succulents looking, to my eye, more like predatory animals than plants. Not a room I would care to enter alone.

Across the hall was a large room filled with small, brightly new houses and furnishings, obviously the shop.

“The tearoom is just beyond, if you're brave. Are you all right, then?”

“Fine, thanks. I don't suppose you'd care to join me?”

She grinned, looking much more like herself. “Not in there, and not today. I've an errand to run. But yes, one day I'd like that. Enjoy your lunch—if you can.”

I watched her cross the hall purposefully and enter the conservatory. I would have made book on whom she hoped to find there.

T
he tea room was every bit as appealing as museum eateries usually are. I ate two thin sandwiches that tasted mostly of cardboard and mustard, drank some tea quickly before it ate its way through the paper cup, and repaired to the shop. The choices there were considerably more enticing; they were also expensive. It was the kid-in-a-candy-store syndrome. I agonized over the difference between what I wanted (nearly everything) and what I could afford, and finally bought not one book but three, a kitchen stove and sink, a set of bathroom fixtures, and, blowing the budget completely, a lovely six-room thatched cottage.

I stuffed my credit card back in my purse before meltdown set in and looked with dismay at the house I had just acquired. “I don't have the slightest idea how I'm going to get that to my car. Not to mention where I'll put it when I get it there.”

“That one will fit in most boots,” said the clerk, a round, pleasant woman in her thirties. “And we can find someone to carry it out for you.”

“It won't fit in
my
boot unless I leave the lid up,” I retorted. “And as I drive a Volkswagen, with the boot in front, that would make driving a little awkward.”

“Oh, dear, it would, wouldn't it? We could deliver it, perhaps . . .”

“No! I want it right away; this is a good time for me to get started working on it.”

The clerk smiled gently. She evidently had some experience with children, of whatever age; she knew perfectly well I wanted to get my purchase home immediately so I could gloat over it. “It is a lovely little house, isn't it? A few scraps of chintz would make the most delightful curtains.”

I nodded eagerly. “And rag rugs, don't you think? Or maybe braided—there are patterns in one of the books, and I have lots of leftover yarn.”

“Such fun to plan it all!” said the clerk sympathetically. “As good as a real house, I always think, and less trouble. And though I oughtn't to say so, working here, I'd always rather make my own furnishings. Far more satisfying, to my mind.”

We smiled in complete accord. “I intend to try, anyway. I don't have many talents except patience—and stubbornness—but I'll take a stab at it. Most of the materials are free, that's one mercy. But I do want to get started, so if we can get the house to my car, I'll cram it in somehow.”

To my delight, the man she found to carry my purchase was Bob Finch. “Oh, you're back to work, then!”

“For the past week,” he replied laconically.

“Good. I was afraid . . . listen, can we talk?” I whispered conspiratorially as he trudged down the path to the parking lot, my huge purchase cradled easily in his short, sturdy, brown arms.

Bob grunted. He always reminds me of one of those gnomes people buy as garden ornaments—weathered, compact, and silent. “'Ee's gone to Lunnon,” he said briefly. “There's only 'Er Worshipfulness, and she's 'avin' 'er nap after 'er dinner.” He was too polite to spit in my presence.

“Well, then. There hasn't been any more trouble, has there? Sir Mordred has behaved well about your coming back to work?”

Bob shrugged.” 'Ee apologized. I keeps meself to meself; 'ee don't bother me. An' 'ee's been gone since Monday. An' 'er—I don't pay no mind to 'er.”

“So you're all right?”

He shrugged again. His mother is the one who does the talking in the family, perhaps because it's hard to get a word in edgewise when she's in full spate.

“Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't been able to find out anything very significant about your—er—unpleasant experience, but I don't
think
you'll have any more problems. If Alan and I are right, whatever dirty work may have been afoot, there isn't likely to be any more. Here's my car. Do you think we can squeeze the house in?”

We were struggling with it when Richard Adam appeared from around the corner of the house. He frowned at Bob.

“So that's where you've gone. I need your help with the pruning.”

“We'll be finished here in a minute,” I said with a would-be conciliatory smile. He growled something, turned on his heel, and strode off.

“Goodness! Is he always so surly?”

Bob wedged the last awkward corner of the house into the backseat and closed the car door. “Nah. 'Ad a row last week wiv 'is ladylove.”

“Oh, dear, another one?” I opened the driver's door and got in. “Over what, this time?”

“'Im.”

I wish Bob weren't so fond of pronouns. It makes his conversation distinctly cryptic.

“Sir Mordred?” I ventured doubtfully.

“Nah. Told yer 'ee were in Lunnon. 'Im.” He jerked his head to one side and I saw, through a patch of bushes, the gleam of a big silver motorcycle zooming up the drive. The snarl of its engine reached my older ears a moment after Bob had heard it, as Claude took a corner in a spectacular skid that flung clods of mud over the shrubbery. The bike roared off toward the back of the house and disappeared.

“He didn't see us,” I said with relief. I was not at all eager for another encounter with dear little Claude. “But what do you mean, they quarreled over him? Surely Mr. Adam doesn't think—”

“An' will that be all, madam?” said Bob in a loud, artificial voice as Mrs. Lathrop opened the front door and strode forward with a grim face that boded no good for either of us.

I started the engine.

“Just a moment, Mrs. Nesbitt,” said the housekeeper, holding up an imperious hand. I sat helpless, pinned in my car by the conventions, as she approached ponderously and put her hand on the frame of the open window.

“I wish,” she said stiffly, “to apologize for not welcoming you properly when you first visited. Of course, I could hardly know who you were, since you chose not to use your real name.”

“Dorothy Martin is my real name,” I said, every bit as stiffly. “I kept it when I married Mr. Nesbitt. If I'd known that my husband's position mattered to you, we would have mentioned it. I didn't realize that you mete out your hospitality on the basis of a guest's social prominence. Excuse me.”

I rolled up the window, nearly catching her hand, and peeled out of the driveway almost as gracelessly as Claude, consigning Mrs. Lathrop and all her works to perdition. Pestilential woman! I was childishly disappointed; she'd ruined my pleasure in my new dollhouse. I drove so furiously on the way home that I forgot to worry about the roundabouts.

It wasn't Mrs. Lathrop's snobbery that bothered me most, nor even her rudeness. I'd actually been far more impolite than she, and (I admitted without a shred of guilt) I'd enjoyed it. No, what really irritated me was the loss of my precious anonymity, and with it my freedom of movement. If I'd had any hopes that Alan's encounter with Claude had gone unreported, I was now disabused of them. From now on all Brocklesby Hall knew who I was, and my most innocent inquiry about miniatures would be viewed with deep suspicion. Soon it would enter Sir Mordred's tiny mind that I had been less than candid with him on my first visit to the museum, and he would start wondering what I was up to.

No, correction: He would wonder what the wife of the chief constable was up to. Dearly as I loved Alan, it was galling to be viewed as nothing more than an extension of his job and personality. Not only did it make me less than a person, it also put a considerable limitation on my sleuthing activities.

Was it time for me to hang up my deerstalker and calabash and take up watercolors? Or miniature-making?

What a sweet, appropriate hobby for an old lady, I thought, making a face as I pulled the car into my sorry excuse for a driveway and considered how to deal with the house Bob and I had wedged into the backseat.

“Need a hand with that, do you?”

It was Jane, come to my aid. A never failing help in time of trouble, that's Jane. My hat askew, we wrestled the bulky, awkward thing out of the car and into the house, and Jane said, “Where?”

“On the kitchen table for the moment, I guess. Actually, I never thought about it. Oh, dear! It really is a problem, isn't it?”

It was. The little house was nearly three feet wide, maybe half as deep, and over two feet high. If I was to work on it, painting and wallpapering and hanging curtains and so on, I needed space around it. And in my ancient cottage there was very little extra space, and certainly no workshop.

I must have looked crestfallen, for Jane grinned at me. “Buy in haste and repent at leisure, eh?” She tipped her head to one side, considering the matter. “A good, sturdy table, now. I've a folding one I never use. What's in your spare bedroom?”

“A lot of junk, mostly.”

“Let's have a look.”

Left to my own devices I would have dithered over the junk. Jane made short work of it, appropriating some for resale in aid of one or another of her good causes, ruthlessly stuffing the rest into plastic bags for the rubbish bin. I insisted on keeping the box of gaudy old costume jewelry to turn into dollhouse oddments, but nearly everything else went. By the end of the afternoon we had the twin bed pushed into the corner and the dollhouse ensconced in the middle of the room on Jane's table.

I made Jane stay to supper, and over cottage pie and salad I told her about my morning at the Hall. She sighed (rather theatrically, I thought) at my account of the tangled relationships between Meg Cunningham, Richard Adam, and Claude.

“Getting yourself involved in other people's lives again,” she said. “Sure to lead to trouble.”

“I've noticed,” I said wickedly, “that you pursue a deliberate policy of noninvolvement, yourself. Stand by and watch your friends hang themselves; never lift a finger. Right?”

She suddenly became very busy fending off the cats, who, as usual, were weaving themselves around her ankles, ready for any stray tidbits of attention or food that might come their way. She petted them absently and put her plate on the floor while I waited.

“Oh, well,” she said finally, resignation in her tone. “Daresay you can fend for yourself.”

“With a little help from my friends,” I agreed. “For instance, tell me about that witch of a housekeeper. I had thought Sir M. probably brought her from London with him, but Ada says they knew each other when they were both girls.”

“Sherebury born and bred,” Jane agreed. “Mother was gentry, but married an innkeeper's son, good-looking, plausible fellow—went through money like water. By the time Emma came along they were headed for trouble, and then young Lionel . . . Linford . . . Lawrence—getting old, can't recall his name—anyway, he went off to war and never came back. Emma more or less had to bring herself up; mother went to pieces when she got the news about her husband and was never good for much after that. Not good for a lot before that, if you ask me.

“Soon as she was old enough, Emma went into service as a superior sort of housekeeper-cum-factotum, and managed to do fairly well for herself even in those days of postwar austerity. Better as the country began to recover. Buried a couple of husbands—butlers—worked at some respectable houses. Bullies her employers into thinking she's indispensable.”