The Body under the Piano Read online

  I shook my head no.

  “Take your time. Something white, perhaps?”

  “No.” I closed my eyes again, to improve my recall and my ability to report. “Her hands were…puffy, and a bit gray, really, more than blue. The closer one, the right one, was…open. Palm up, and certainly empty.” Rather like a gardening glove left on the path.

  “And the other?”

  “The left hand was curled over. I suppose it might have held something, but it would have been very small. I couldn’t see properly, either time.”

  “Either time? You had more than one encounter with the deceased?”

  “I…I…left when the doctor came in,” I said. “But then…”

  “Spit it out, Miss Morton. We are not chatting for pleasure.”

  “I’d forgotten my notebook,” I whispered, examining my hands. “On the piano. I popped back in to fetch it.”

  The inspector cleared his throat. “And when you re-entered the room, can you tell me, did your dancing teacher have anything in her hand?”

  “No.” I remembered clearly. “She was sitting on the piano stool, so she must have set that to right…”

  “Moved the piano stool…” The inspector scribbled in his book.

  “Well, yes, but I expect she needed to sit down, didn’t she?” The words came more easily now. This was quite diverting. “She…she sagged a little, shoulders hunched, not anything like her usual dancer’s posture. And she was wringing her hands.” I turned my own hands over each other to show what Miss Marianne had been doing. “They were certainly empty.”

  “Nervous, was she?” He made another note.

  “Upset, I’d say. Grievously upset! Who wouldn’t be? Her sister-in-law was dead at her feet!”

  “Indeed she was,” said Inspector Locke. “Quite dead. To someone’s great satisfaction.”

  His words sent a chill up my back. Did he already have a suspect?

  Grannie Jane leaned forward and spoke confidentially. “Surely no one we know, Inspector?”

  “In cases of murder, ma’am, the killer is nearly always closely related to the victim.”

  Life would certainly be smoother, Miss Marianne had said, if she were not in Torquay.

  And Rose’s words. At least once a day, I find myself wishing that she were dead.

  “You can’t be thinking—” I broke off. I’d had the same ghoulish ideas but they sounded worse coming from him.

  “What I can or cannot think is up to me, young lady. Your task is merely to give me a picture of the room. Tell me about the tea things. Was she so careless as to move those too?”

  I closed eyes that were suddenly blurred with tears. Could I tell him anything to prove the innocence of the Eversham ladies? Were they innocent?

  The puddle on the floor was milky tea, not clear, so it must have come from the cup, not the teapot. The pot…where was the pot? Had Miss Marianne poured the tea in the pantry and carried it out to her visitor? That would suggest she’d prepared the tea in private. But perhaps I should not tell him that.

  “There isn’t a tea trolley in the dance studio,” I said. “It would take up too much room. I don’t remember seeing the teapot, but a smashed cup on the floor had tea spilled around it. The floor is wood, of course, for dancing on, so there is no carpet for the tea to soak into. It just sat there in a puddle.”

  I squeezed my eyes tight. “Miss Marianne’s little blue milk jug was sitting on top of the piano.” My notebook had lain nearby. “And next to it was a sugar bowl.” As I noted that, my skin prickled in recognition that something was wrong.

  Grannie was paying close attention. “Was the sugar bowl blue as well, dearie?” she said. “Was it part of a set, with the milk jug?”

  I stared at her in admiration. “No,” I said.

  I looked directly at Inspector Locke to deliver what suddenly felt like very important information. “The sugar bowl was imprinted with the crest of the Royal Victoria Hotel.”

  * * *

  “I believe my destiny is decided!” Hector’s green eyes shone, and there was a shell-pink hue to his pale cheeks. His grin stretched in true delight. “I like very much this occupation of knowing other people’s business! The job of a policeman is for me an excellent match.”

  “Not if it means you have to grow a nasty great bramble bush on your face.” I was thinking of the inspector’s shaggy upper lip and jaws. “Only slightly better than a furry, crawling caterpillar like Mr. Roddy Fusswell’s!”

  “Mais, non! My mustache will be elegant. Sleek. With ends to here, fine and pointed…” Hector rubbed his fingertips together close to his earlobes, as if his mustache would be as grand as that of a circus ringmaster.

  “Ugh.” I was quite firm.

  “The asking of questions that no polite person may ask!” said Hector. “Unwrapping the thoughts of the suspect, seeking always the solution to a puzzle! Is this not a wonderful endeavor?”

  “I want to hear about Charlotte and the policeman!” I said. “What happened?” I had already described my forty-two minutes with Inspector Locke. Now it was his turn.

  Hector had been miserable—“desolate!”—when told to leave the library. “Excluded from the heat of the fire,” he said. “But the policeman’s infatuation with Miss Graves, this is lucky for me, non?”

  “Go on, tell!”

  Hector had been sitting on the hallway settee, nursing his wounded spirit and wondering how he should go about informing Miss Graves that she was desired for questioning. He hoped that a servant would pass through the hallway, for where in a big, strange house should he begin to look? Happily, Charlotte herself appeared from upstairs and tapped on the library door. Constable Beck, face aflame, informed her that he had official questions to ask, and would she please step into the dining room. Hector used the moment while the young officer gained approval from the inspector to slip in ahead of them and hide under the dining table.

  “Just as I would have done!” I told him. “That’s one of the best hiding spots! When Papa was alive, my parents had fancy dinners with lots of people wearing evening clothes. The champagne made them terribly chatty. It was an excellent game. Now it’s only ever family, and I already know their secrets.”

  Tony’s paw nails clicked on the wooden floor as he padded over from his spot in a shaft of sunlight. He made a small, polite yip.

  “We need to take Tony outside,” I said. “Better that you make your report out there.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Grannie Jane says that servants listen to everything.”

  I ushered Hector along the hallway to the kitchen, with Tony skittering at our heels.

  “Hello, Mrs. Corner!” I patted Cook on the arm as we crossed to the garden door. “This is my friend, Hector. He’s the extra for tea.”

  “I hope you like fruit pie, laddie,” said Mrs. Corner. “As much as Miss Aggie does.”

  “Mais oui, madame!” Hector performed a quick bow, managing not to trip over Tony.

  “I’m going to show you a favorite place.” I dragged him past the grove of pear trees to a spot at the edge of the little wood that separated our property from the Eversham villa next door.

  “See?”

  Groveland was so far above the town that when winter came and the trees were bare, we could see the sea. Today, though, the warm yellow of a few remaining October leaves still blocked the view, casting dappled shadows on a wooden bench and the row of painted gravestones at our feet.

  “What is this?” said Hector, peering.

  “Mummy would say it’s a symptom of my Morbid Preoccupation. But really, it’s perfectly genteel. This one is for Marigold, my canary. She was my first pet when I was six. Then Kiki, here, and Tom-Tom. They were mynah birds, that’s why I put the colored stripes across the headstones.”

  “Most thoughtful,” said Hector, admirably unperturbed.
“And this?”

  “That’s just a squirrel,” I said. “He wasn’t a pet, but I named him Squiffy to make the tombstone more personal. And the big one, here, was the kitchen cat, named Ivy. That’s why I’ve painted leaves, you see? When Ivy died, I played the mandolin at her funeral. It was ever so doleful and reverent. Cook cried and cried. We never got another cat, so we’ve got mice instead, like everywhere else in Torquay.”

  “You make a pleasant rest for the animals,” said Hector. “And a good place to discuss death.”

  “Let’s sit,” I said. “While you tell me everything.”

  Hector brushed the bench with his hand and checked his palm to see that nothing had stuck. He sat carefully, knees and ankles touching. I supposed it was best not to tease him for something so inconsequential as being a fussbudget. Not while there was a murderer on the loose.

  “Well?” I said. Tony was snuffling in a patch of tall grass overlooked by Leonard’s mowing.

  Hector picked up the story. “I am under the table, twisted into a knot like a serpent in a basket,” he said.

  “And what did you hear?”

  “The policeman, he asks many questions. Who is standing where, how does the body lie, can she name anything out of position? Miss Graves, she answers most efficiently. She tells the same details that you tell to me already.”

  Tony yipped twice, excited by something he’d found near the tree.

  “Ssh, Tony,” I said. “Go on, Hector.”

  “However,” said Hector. “There is one curious item. Constable Beck is particularly interested in the piece of paper.”

  “What piece of paper?”

  “You do not mention such a thing in your description of the murder scene, so I try very much to hear, but my limbs are becoming most cramped. A missing paper is indicated because of the scrap.”

  “What scrap? Did you find out why it matters?”

  “A tiny scrap of paper is squeezed between the thumb and the forefinger of the deceased, discovered by Doctor Chase during his examination.” Hector’s eyes narrowed. “You do not know of this?”

  That’s what Inspector Locke had been prodding me to remember! Think very carefully, he’d said. Was the victim holding anything in her hand? Something white, perhaps?

  How irritating not to have seen it! “Nothing visible was clutched in the corpse’s hand. It must have been very small.” The only paper in the room that I knew about were the pages of my poetry notebook, sitting on top of the piano.

  “Your nursemaid also reports no evidence of a paper or a scrap,” said Hector. “After this, the interview between Constable Beck and Miss Graves becomes what I believe you English call gooey. The words of inquiry turn to murmurings of…romance. This is when I put fingers into my ears and cease to listen.”

  “Romance? Really?” Plain and earnest Charlotte? I could not think of a less gooey person!

  “They do nothing improper, I assure you,” said Hector. “Simply the whispering of lovebirds.” He twirled his imaginary mustache.

  “They only met a week ago!” I said. “It’s rather saucy of Charlotte to be whispering like a lovebird, don’t you think?”

  Tony yapped and began to paw furiously at something amongst the weeds.

  “What have you got there, Tony?” I got up to look. “Something nasty, I expect, since you’re so excited.”

  A rabbit lay dead, its stiff fur ruffled and its little head torn open, a trickle of blood seeping from a gray puddle of muck.

  CHAPTER 7

  A SLEIGHT OF HAND

  “I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT my brain was pink.” I leaned over to get a better look at the earthly remains. “Are rabbits different from people?”

  “No, no,” said Hector. “I am a devoted student on the topic of the human brain. For something so intriguing, it is notably a dull gray in color. As you can see.”

  “Ugh, Tony, no!” I caught the dog’s collar and tugged him away from his prize. “Let the poor bunny rest in peace.” I pulled up fistfuls of grass and sprinkled them over the mutilated carcass. Mrs. Eversham’s feet appeared in my mind.

  “Losing one’s brains is undignified enough,” I said. “Let alone being mauled by a frenzied terrier. Not that a rabbit has much to lose, with a brain the size of a plum.”

  “Au contraire,” said Hector. “A rabbit is a creature of much character, most playful and clever.”

  “Clever?” It took a bit of strength to wrestle Tony along the path, away from the corpse.

  “Inside the brain…” Hector tapped his forehead, “are billions of nerves dancing together, telling to each other many messages. This friction is the essence of how we think.”

  “And a rabbit has an abundance of friction amongst its brain cells?” I said.

  “Not so much as a human,” said Hector. “But for its size, yes. Alas, the size makes him prey to nearly every other animal, including us. He is born expecting to die.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Tony raced ahead, circled back, and bounded onward again.

  “Look, there’s Leonard.” I waved at the garden boy. He looked up from his digging and pushed back his cap, freeing a curl over his eyebrows.

  “Miss Aggie,” he said, and glanced sideways at Hector.

  “This is my friend, Hector Perot,” I said. “He’s staying for tea. Hector, this is Leonard. He works here in the garden.”

  Leonard nodded at Hector and Hector nodded back.

  “We found a dead rabbit.” I pointed. “Tony did, actually. Its brain is…”—I wiggled my fingers beside my head—“leaking out.”

  “Maybe a fox got him,” said Leonard.

  “As we didn’t know him, we needn’t hold a funeral,” I said. “But could you…Would you mind digging a hole? Near the others?” I looked toward the leafy awning of the beech tree protecting the creatures buried below.

  “Yes, miss,” he said. “I’ll do that before dark.”

  “Thank you, Leonard. I’ll think of a name, and make him a stone later.”

  “Yes, miss.” He shifted the shovel to his other hand. “I was wondering, is there trouble? I saw the police wagon.”

  “There’s been a murder!” It was thrilling, being the one to tell such news before anyone else. “In the Mermaid Room where you brought the flowers last night. I was meant to be having my Saturday lesson, you see? And I found the body!”

  Leonard stared. Perhaps I shouldn’t sound so eager. I took a breath.

  “That’s why the police came, to interview me and Charlotte. I was practically a witness to a monstrous crime!”

  I could feel Hector fidgeting next to me. “This is perhaps not an item to be trumpeted,” he said. “If indeed it is murder, there is still a murderer to be found.”

  “Of course it’s murder! Do you think she poisoned herself? I’m only telling Leonard,” I said. “Not advertising in the Torquay Voice! Goodness! That means I’ve found two dead bodies in one day! First Mrs. Eversham and now the poor rabbit.”

  Leonard gazed at me with those enormous brown eyes. “Mrs. Eversham, miss? She’s dead?”

  “As dead as dead,” I said. As dead as the rabbit in the grass. As dead as a coffin nail. As dead as Papa.

  Leonard looked faintly perturbed, so I allowed the corpse to rest and turned instead to the police.

  “They asked a lot of questions,” I told him. “I had to demonstrate the position of the body. And I’m sure to think of more clues later. The police seem a bit plodding, to be honest. But goodness! You were there this morning as well, Leonard! Did you see anything suspicious when you collected the bouquets? Thank you, by the way, for hauling them back to Groveland. It’s like having spring in the drawing room. Nice for us that Miss Marianne didn’t want to keep them.”

  Leonard was fiddling with the brim of his cap. “I nipped in and out quick as I could,”
he said. “The stairwell was plugged up like an old pipe, with the vicar’s men shifting those whopping crates. That bossy chap from the hotel packed up his tea things as if they were as precious as the King’s china. And there I was, doing my best with the vases.”

  “Did you see Mrs. Eversham?”

  “In a proper snit with your teacher, she was.” He looked at the ground, kicking a clot of dirt off the path.

  “Have you thought of something?” I said.

  “It’s nothing.” Leonard pulled his cap off and put it back on at a new angle over his brow.

  “Nothing can be considered nothing,” I said. “She’s dead.”

  “I’ll tell you who I don’t think much of,” said Leonard. “That Mr. Fusswell. He nearly stepped on me more than once, but never actually went anywhere. Just took his time, stacking teacups one by one.” He looked from my face to Hector’s and back again. “You want to steer right clear of it,” he said, quite urgently. “No reason to get mixed up in anything so—”

  “So shockingly macabre?” I said. “So horrifically gruesome? So morbid and grisly?”

  Leonard didn’t smile as I’d hoped he would. Perhaps he’d cheer up if I asked for his specialty.

  “Will you do a trick for us, Leonard? Hector will be ever so baffled. Please?”

  “Aw, miss.”

  “He does conjuring,” I told Hector. “Watch.”

  Leonard shuffled his boots. “I haven’t got a sixpence.”

  I hadn’t got one either, my pocket money being minded in Charlotte’s pocket.

  “But how about I have a look around, eh?” Leonard laid down the shovel and pulled his trouser pocket inside out to show how empty it was.

  This was part of the trick!

  “Oh dear,” I said. “Nothing there.”

  Leonard examined the ground for a moment, as if he might spot a coin in the grass. He took off his cap and peered at its lining.

  Then, “Aha!” His fingers nimbly plucked a sixpence from behind Hector’s left ear. He held it up with a victorious grin.

  I laughed and clapped my hands.