Murder Goes Mumming (3 page)

In fact, the entire group looked much alike. Babs was another blue-eyed blond, and so were the rest of the in-laws. A family that came in matched sets was going to be a problem to keep sorted out. Janet tried to remember some of the professional tricks Madoc had taught her about remembering people’s faces as they thronged around clamoring for introductions.

The woman who was even taller and somewhat older than Babs, and who looked the most like Squire, was his eldest daughter May, who appeared to function as housekeeper at Graylings. Like Babs, May had on a long skirt and sweater, but her skirt was checked in a dazzle of red, green, and yellow. Her pullover was the same canary yellow as her father’s. Around her neck hung a gold pendant made to represent a parrot and enameled in the same vivid shades as her skirt. The thing was about the size of a real chickadee and when she pulled the tail it flapped its wings and squawked. Janet laughed more from surprise than amusement, and May roared with her.

“Isn’t this priceless! Herbert gave me the bird for our last anniversary. He claims it reminds him of me. Don’t you, you old louse?”

May put a neat hammer lock on a tall, blond, jovial soul who was running a bit to fat, and dragged him to the fore. “This is my ever-loving husband Herbert, who’s Squire’s steward when he can get his mind off other things. Don’t let him back you into any dark corners, Janet. Ever-loving doesn’t necessarily mean he’s loving
me.
”

“Pay no attention to my wife, Janet,” drawled the alleged lady-killer. “I never do.”

He gave May a mighty whack on the rump with his left hand and stretched out the right to shake hands.

Madoc managed to get his own hand in before Janet’s and was not a whit surprised to feel a tingling buzz against his palm. May thought this was pretty funny, too.

“Didn’t I tell you he was a louse? We’ve got a couple of sons around somewhere, as I dimly recall. They’ll show up for dinner, no doubt. And this is my sister Clara. Shake hands like a good little girl, Clara.”

“Not with Herbert, I won’t. How nice to meet you, Janet. Madoc, we’re so glad you could come. Do you sing like your brother? And don’t you positively hate being asked?”

Clara was either several years younger than May or a good deal better preserved. Her skirt was a discreet blue and beige plaid with a faint wine-colored stripe, and she wore a light blue pullover with a string of garnets.

“I do not sing like my brother,” Rhys assured Clara. “Nobody does. Not even my brother, sometimes.”

That quip raised another laugh from one and all. Janet was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm inside the ski suit she still had on, and to realize how tired she was. She managed to get through a couple more introductions, not sure which was Clara’s husband Lawrence the lawyer and which was Clara’s brother Cyril. There didn’t seem to be any Mrs. Cyril.

“Now we really must let these two get changed,” Squire intervened with a slight edge to his geniality. “They’ll meet the rest at dinner. It’s after six already and we’ve still the Yule log to do. Get along, May, show them upstairs.”

“I’ll do it,” Babs volunteered. “Where are you putting them, May?”

“Janet will have to share with Val, since Val towed that devastatingly unforgettable young what’s-his-name along and didn’t tell us in advance. I’ve given him the room that would otherwise have been Madoc’s, and Madoc can have the one next door to Janet and Val, which Janet would have had if I hadn’t given it to Madoc. Nicely confused, everyone? I’ll buzz on out to the kitchen and see how Fifine’s making out, and with whom. Herbert, you’d better drag the young fry out of the billiard room if that’s where they are. Clara, would you mind checking the table?”

May stamped off, pulling her parrot’s tail and laughing at the squawk as though she’d never heard it before. Madoc looked around for his and Janet’s luggage.

“Oh, Ludovic will have taken up your bags. This way, please. Luckily we have electricity of sorts on the staircase and in the bathrooms when the dynamo’s working. Oil lamps or candles elsewhere, I’m afraid. There’s always talk of wiring all Graylings, but it never happens. Do mind the turns, they’re tricky. Perhaps you haven’t seen a switchback staircase before. I never knew such things existed till I married Donald. I’m still not quite sure they do.”

Babs laughed as she led them up a dimly lighted, strangely zigzagging stairway that seemed to have at least one window and two landings to each flight. Madoc kept a protective arm around Janet so that she wouldn’t be apt to stumble on one of the pie-shaped steps at the turns, which didn’t make for the soundest of footing. Janet was glad of the support for several reasons, but mostly because it was Madoc’s arm and not someone else’s.

“J
ANET, YOU’RE IN HERE.
We gave Val this big room when she was a youngster because she always liked to bring her girlfriends when we came. Now she brings her boyfriends, but we’re creatures of habit. You’re quite sure you won’t mind sharing? That’s a trundle bed underneath the four-poster. You just pull it out and flip a coin to see who gets which.”

Babs demonstrated, making sure the trundle bed was properly made up. Janet was relieved to see there were good, thick Hudson Bay blankets on it.

“No, I don’t mind sharing. I’m used to roommates.”

Janet was relieved that she’d at least get a bed to herself, and it was only for a night or two anyway. She had a sneaking hunch Babs might be putting her into service as a chaperon, since there must surely be some other place she could camp in a house this size. On the other hand, perhaps Valerie was supposed to chaperon her. It was an amusing thought.

“Madoc, you’re right next door. This used to be a boudoir and there’s room enough in it to swing a cat if you don’t pick too big a cat.”

Babs laughed with what might almost have been a naughty imitation of May’s lusty guffaw and opened a door connecting the two rooms. “You can lock this if you’re feeling prudish. There, you see. What they call functional.”

The room allotted to Rhys was in truth not much smaller than the bedroom Janet had slept in most of her life back at the farm, and far less simply furnished. Some antique dealer would give his eyeteeth for that roped cherrywood bedstead. It must date from Loyalist times, maybe even from the early French settlers. Madoc was amused to see both his and Janet’s bags on the luggage rack.

“Here, Jenny, this is yours.” He carried it back into the larger room for her. “We shall be very comfortable, Babs. Are there really bathrooms?”

“Four, thank goodness, but they’re all clustered in one place, around the main chimney just across the hall here. To keep the pipes from freezing, you see.”

“Of course. An extremely sensible arrangement.”

“Use any one that isn’t occupied. There should be plenty of hot water and towels. And we have just about fifteen minutes before we light the Yule log, so please be as quick as you can. Put on whatever you’re comfortable in. As you see, we don’t dress.”

Janet took the not dressing for what it was worth and decided she’d be most comfortable in her red velvet skirt. She wished she dared stretch out for a few minutes’ rest on that cozy-looking trundle bed, but she did manage a quick hot shower, taking her clothes into the bathroom with her to steam out the travel creases as best she could. When she emerged in the long skirt, a lacy white cable knit pullover Mama Dupree had made for her last Christmas, and her new pearl necklace, she met Madoc, freshly shaven and damp about the ears, coming out of the bathroom next to hers.

“Integrating with the group, I see.”

He smiled and pulled her close. “My darling Jenny, how beautiful you are. I hope you’re going to enjoy this.”

“I expect I’d enjoy anything so long as I had you with me,” she murmured, rubbing her lips along his clean, warm jawbone. “Come on, we mustn’t miss the Yule log, whatever that is. I’ve never seen one. Have you?”

“Oh, yes. At my great-uncle’s place in Wales they always do it. We’ll go there next Christmas, eh?”

“Let’s cross that ocean when we come to it. All sorts of things can happen before then. What have you done with your shaving things?”

“Nagging already, are you?”

Madoc dutifully fetched his gear from the bathroom. Laughing, they ran hand-in-hand down the hall to their bedrooms. When Janet popped in to get rid of the clothes she’d worn in the helicopter and run a comb through her hair, she found yet another tall blond in designer blue jeans and a fabulous Icelandic sweater, doing things to her face at the dressing table mirror.

“Hello,” she said. “You must be Valerie Condrycke. I’m Janet Wadman.”

“Hi. Mum warned me I was getting a roommate.” Valerie didn’t sound altogether thrilled at meeting her. “She said you came up with Dafydd Rhys’s brother. He never told me he had one.”

“Well, Madoc isn’t musical. There’s a sister, too. They’re in London right now with their parents.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“Madoc couldn’t get away from his job long enough. Anyway, we only got engaged last night. He’s waiting for me now so I’d better scoot. I’ll see you downstairs, eh?”

Janet was not eager to be pumped about Madoc’s family until she’d had a chance to glean some more information from him. She understood perfectly why he hadn’t cared to make a parade of being Sir Emlyn’s son. No doubt he’d run into any number of people who’d been ready to make up to him on the strength of his connections, as the Condryckes were doing now. Anyway, it wouldn’t have mattered to her who he was, and it still didn’t. Detective Inspector Madoc Rhys was the man she’d decided it would be awfully nice to be married to when she was frying his breakfast eggs last summer in Pitcherville, and Mrs. Madoc Rhys was who she was going to be and that was title enough for her. Nevertheless, she was not about to be patronized by any willowy snip with a Calvin Klein label plastered across her backside, even if she did take Valerie’s father his tea in the conference room.

At that moment Madoc, bless his heart, rapped on the connecting door and called, “Jenny love, are you ready?”

“Coming.” Janet poked her hair with the hand that wore the diamond so Val could see it flash in the lamplight, settled her pearls about her throat, and sailed out of the room head up and tail a-risin’, as her father used to say. Sir Emlyn or no Sir Emlyn, she had a position of her own to consider.

The room downstairs they called the Great Hall since it was much too vast to be a parlor and too well-furnished for a ballroom, was now even fuller of Condryckes than it had been before. Two tall, skinny boys perhaps fifteen and seventeen years old were over by the door on the far side, with a thick rope slung over their shoulders. Squire was chivying the other male members of the group into line behind them.

“Come along, Madoc. Tail on to the rope with the rest of us. Herbert, Cyril, Donald, take your places. Lawrence, are you ready? Where’s that young chap who came with Val?”

“Where’s Val, for that matter?” drawled May. “Lost her eyelashes?”

“She was putting them on when I left her just now,” Janet answered. “I expect she’ll be right along.”

“Then you don’t know Vallie like I do. Call her, Babs, before Squire has apoplexy.”

“Hark!”

A hand grabbed Janet’s arm and she jumped. “They’re coming now. Can’t you hear them?”

Janet couldn’t see how anybody could distinguish one sound from another in this babble, unless it was a bray like May’s. Moreover, she didn’t like having her arm clutched and her ear hissed into. She was about to pull away when she realized the grabber was an elderly woman who, for a wonder, was not wearing a wool skirt and pullover but an old-fashioned dinner gown of rubbed wine-colored velvet.

Perhaps this was Mrs. Squire. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t. The hand on her arm bore several antique garnet and opal rings, but no plain gold band.

“How do you do?” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Janet Wadman.”

“Ah, but you won’t be for long. You’re going to be married much sooner than you think, and it won’t be the way you planned it, either. It’s all happened faster than you expected, but never you mind. You’re the only one in the world for him and he’s the one for you and there’s nobody going to talk you out of it, though there’s somebody who’s going to try. Look, I told you he was coming. What did you ever see in a thing like that?”

“I’ve often wondered.”

Janet was not really surprised to see who’d got himself invited to Graylings as Valerie Condrycke’s escort. After all, Val was a board member’s daughter and Roy Robbins couldn’t rise far on looks and charm unless he applied them in higher places than the typing pool.

Roy himself went into shock when he caught sight of Janet. His eyes looked glazed as he turned his head away and let himself be hustled across the floor by Squire. It hadn’t been good office politics getting off on the wrong foot with the head of the family first crack off the bat like this. Perhaps she ought to give him a hint for auld lang syne.

It seemed unbelievable to Janet, watching Roy tag on to the rope behind Madoc, that a year ago this time she’d fancied herself in love with that shop-window dummy. She’d been flattered, she supposed, and too green to know better. At least she’d had sense enough to learn from the experience. She wondered whether Val would. No sense in trying to tell her, of course. But how had this odd old woman known about herself and Roy, and about her hurried-up engagement? Who was she, anyway?

There was no time now to ask. The men on the rope were pulling a great log across the floor. It lay on a well-waxed skid and must not be all that difficult to move, though everybody except Madoc was putting on a great show of slaving at the task. Rhys was only looking gently amused and quite remarkably handsome, Janet thought, among this lot of blond beeves. Roy was going to be just like the Condryckes in a few years; still a fine-looking chap, no doubt, but too thick around the beltline and running to jowl at the jaws. He’d got over his astonishment now and was grunting and groaning with the best of them while the women cheered them on.

Suddenly Janet wasn’t tired any more. She was laughing and clapping while Squire and his crew with great fanfare rolled the Yule log into the fireplace and set it alight. She was running across the Great Hall to hug her sweetheart, knowing she was his and the odd old lady was right forever and ever, amen. On the whole, she was rather pleased than not that Roy was here, because now she knew she’d never have to give him another thought, but only a pleasant nod and smile as she would any casual acquaintance.