The Body under the Piano Read online

  Grannie Jane sighed. “We shall address the matter of God on another day. Young Leonard is waiting to drive us to EverMore.”

  The Eversham villa was mostly hidden by trees. I could have got there in a wink—past the animal cemetery, over the stile with my skirts hiked up, and across the creek on stepping-stones. But for someone so rickety as Grannie Jane (May I never be sixty-six, I frequently prayed), taking the cart was a necessity. The poor old woman did not like to walk even so far as the end of the drive, let alone out onto Bertram Road and all the way up the winding path to EverMore.

  Although today’s venture must not be called exhilarating, visiting the home of a murder victim was not a usual outing. I vowed to remain alert to suspicious behavior on the part of our fellow guests.

  “Never shirk your duty, my dear,” said Grannie, as we jounced along, “when it comes to visitations and funerals. Mourn unto others as you would have them mourn unto you.”

  “Oh, Grannie, please don’t speak of dying.” I slid my white-gloved hand into her purple one.

  “You are not to worry about me, my dear. I am not yet ready for the glue-pot.”

  “You’re not a horse, Grannie Jane.” I smiled up at her. “You won’t be turned into glue.”

  “A worm’s breakfast, then,” said Grannie. “But let us assume that is some time in the distant future. Today we are to comfort Miss Eversham and Rose, who have had such a grievous loss.”

  Belle, pulling the trap, began the turn into the EverMore drive. Coming straight toward us was a police wagon drawn by huge black mares. Leonard got down and led Belle backward, making room for the shouting fellow on the other vehicle.

  “What a palaver,” said Grannie Jane, tsking her dis­­approval of the police. Our trap creaked back into motion. Grannie craned her neck, watching the police wagon clatter its way down the road.

  “An inspector gobbling his mustache,” she said, “is the last thing a bereaved family needs while they prepare for a visitation.”

  I was in a bereaved family too, I thought. Nothing had been right since Papa died and that was nearly a year ago. How long did it take for grief to fade?

  “Grannie?” I whispered, after a moment. “Sometimes I think about Papa in the most unexpected moments…as if a garden snake has slithered through the grass and arrived unbidden on my shoe. It sends a jolt right up my legs.”

  The trap stopped. Grannie put her arm about my shoulders and gave me a hug. “Well put, my dear. You will be a poet yet.”

  Leonard helped us down and offered my grandmother the use of his arm for the journey to the front step.

  “Thank you, young man. You may wait in the carriage yard until we are done.”

  Leonard touched his cap and led Belle away.

  Grannie paused to look up. “Such a lovely house,” she said.

  “Not to be gloomy,” I said, “but does it now belong to Rose?”

  “No, no, my dear,” she said. “This is gossip of the most pertinent variety. With a stroke of unexpected wisdom, the Captain willed the house to his sister and the money to his wife. This is why the two were forced into such uneasy proximity. Irma displayed enough good sense not to drag Rose from her childhood home, though I imagine she was waiting with bated breath for her daughter to be married so they could all go their separate ways.”

  “And now they needn’t,” I said. “Go separate ways, I mean. Rose and her aunt can just go on living here together. They love each other dearly.”

  “Indeed,” said Grannie Jane. “Let us hope that continues to be true. If one of them has poisoned Irma’s tea, it might be quite an imposition on the other’s loyalty, might it not?” She patted her lip with a handkerchief and snapped shut her black tasseled handbag. “Unless they planned it together, I suppose. Shall we go in?”

  The entrance of EverMore was dramatically draped with black crepe ribbon. Grannie Jane’s remark was most unsettling, coming as it did one minute before I was meant to be expressing sorrow to the bereaved. With one idle comment from my grandmother, I must reconsider the list of suspects. My instincts were hollering NO! Not Miss Marianne! Not Rose!!! But my common sense, so often in hiding, was calling out just as loudly. The two people apt to benefit most from the death of Irma Eversham waited beyond this door, receiving sympathy from friends and neighbors. Aunt and niece were the best of friends. Had my admiration assumed their innocence without sufficient examination? Were they, in fact, united in the gravest of deeds?

  This was not the moment to explore such a possibility, for now here we were in the formal parlor, the shades drawn and elaborate wreaths resting on every chair, obliging mourners to stand. I struggled to bring out my memorized words, Please accept my deepest condolences for your terrible loss. Not a sound could I utter. Instead, I made a slight curtsy, which I thought Miss Marianne would appreciate, knowing how devotedly I had practiced.

  When I raised my head, her eyes gazed most intently into mine. Eyes rimmed with red and shadowed with exhaustion.

  Was this a woman meant to die by another’s hand? Or could this be the face of a poisoner?

  CHAPTER 10

  A GLUM VISITATION

  “DEAR AGGIE,” said Miss Marianne. “I deeply regret that you were exposed to the vision of poor Irma’s death.” She squeezed my hand, which was damp inside its clean white glove. To Grannie she said, “Mrs. Morton, I apologize from the bottom of my heart…a shocking thing for a child…”

  “We are here to give you comfort, my dear,” said Grannie Jane. “Not the other way around. Agatha is quite a practical girl, and not unduly fussed.”

  Miss Marianne endeavored to smile, but weakly. “The police have been here again.” She touched her hair, and let her eyes drop shut for two long seconds. “What more can they expect me to say? She died a hideous death. I’m the one who brewed the tea. But how can they imagine that—?”

  She’d brewed the tea! That answered Hector’s question. And she’d said so plainly, with no hint of hidden guilt. This renewed my confidence momentarily.

  “We saw the police driving away,” I said. “They came yesterday to Groveland and asked me questions too.”

  “What could they want from you? What did you tell them?” My idle wondering that she might have offered poison in a sugar bowl became preposterous under her imploring gaze. And yet, as Grannie had suggested, who other than she and Rose would achieve wealth and peace with one simple stir of a spoon? It seemed that every minute following such a crime held a new suspicion, a new question, a new puzzle.

  Grannie Jane put a hand on Miss Marianne’s arm, smoothing the black silk with gentle strokes. “They were merely doing their duty, interviewing a witness. Do not fret, my dear.” She glanced at the door where more visitors were coming in. “You’ll want to speak with others now. But keep us in mind. We live right next door, should you need us.”

  For someone who had suggested only moments earlier that this woman had conspired to murder, Grannie was being exceedingly tender! These were the manners, I supposed, that she expected me to learn: How to Be Gracious at All Times, Even with Villains. Miss Marianne, shivering in agitation, leaned close and whispered, “Have you written a poem about this? Do you have your little book with you?”

  I shook my head. “No, miss. The circumstances are too sad to be inspiring.”

  “I should like to read your other poetry.” Miss Marianne clasped my hand more tightly than I could slip from. “Would you bring your little book to me? Tomorrow perhaps?”

  A Very Odd Request. I could not think what to say. She was giving an impression of being slightly unhinged. Perhaps it made more sense that she had killed Irma Eversham in a fit of madness, rather than part of a carefully devised plot. Seeing her so upset was most disconcerting. At last, she let me follow Grannie Jane to where we now must speak with Rose.

  On Friday evening, when Rose had rescued me—partway, at least—
from eternal embarrassment…Had she then been dreaming of killing her mother? Was she so full of hurt and anger that she somehow conspired to end her mother’s life as a way to rescue herself? Or had someone done this to her, by removing her dearest, if prickliest, person?

  My eyes were spilling tears before I even spoke. I wished to express gratitude and condolence in one heartfelt sentence. Instead, I was struck mute. I wrapped my arms around her middle and let myself weep, for all the lost parents and left-behind children. I had seen something that even Rose had not—her dead mother. It was as though I’d spied her in the bath, or heard her snoring, some intimate act that only family should ever know about. “Ssh.” Rose patted me gently on the back.

  I gulped in the next swoop of tears and stood straight again. Grannie Jane murmured her own words of sympathy and pulled me aside to dry my eyes with her handkerchief as others approached Rose. The room had become over-warm and stuffy, thanks to a crackling fire and the growing number of black-clad mourners.

  “I am tempted to say…” Grannie used the low voice she reserved for improper observations. “Irma Eversham was never so popular alive as she has apparently become when dead as cinders.”

  I covered my laughter with a cough, and knew her to be correct. Years of eavesdropping had informed me that many of these townsfolk would have crossed the road rather than speak to Mrs. Eversham, or find themselves the target of her spite. But was any one of them—aside from Rose—genuinely distressed by her demise?

  “Nothing like a murder,” said Grannie Jane, “to gather a flock. Irma Eversham will be honored by more people as she enters her eternal slumber than she spoke to civilly in all of 1902.”

  We edged our way to the dining room, where somber men and women gathered near a splendid array of refreshments. Two plates of sandwiches, fish paste or sardine. Tiered trays of champagne wafers, macaroons and ladyfingers. An enormous platter of sliced lemon cake. Eyeing the riches with anticipation, I was overtaken by a memory from after Papa died. Along with new clothes, another small comfort of being in mourning was the quantity of cake delivered to our house from many kitchens about town. I particularly recalled buttered slices of a caraway seed loaf, delivered by a distant neighbor. Only two days after losing Papa, I spent whole minutes devouring cake instead of pondering my bereavement.

  A lady wearing a hat with four black-dyed ostrich feathers had snagged Grannie Jane in conversation. I sidled over to the refreshment table for a better look. I peeled off my gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of my coat before choosing a miniature cream puff sprinkled with powdered sugar. The plates and serviettes were at the end of the table, too far away to bother with. I popped the whole confection into my mouth and took another.

  “I’m not one to speak ill of the dead,” said a hushed voice behind me. “But it comes as no surprise that someone should want to remove Irma Eversham. On her best days she was merely cranky.”

  “And that’s being kind,” whispered another voice.

  Goodness! Who was saying such things? I dared not turn around to find out. The recently deceased seemed to have no friends at all.

  I stopped my tongue from licking the cream puff. The sugar dusted on top was very like the powder discovered by Hector on the paper in his new shoe. I tucked the pastry into a serviette and chose instead a pale yellow meringue.

  “What a trial it must have been to live with her! Like a cat among the pigeons, she was. I could scarcely abide her bossiness for the length of a Ladies Committee meeting, let alone share a lavatory!”

  There were several gasps of swallowed laughter.

  “Hush, Myrtle! You naughty woman!” said a third voice. “Though I do wonder how her daughter came to be so nice.”

  “Rose Eversham is not so nice as she pretends,” said the first voice. “Very saucy when she’s with the boys, I’ve heard. Not at all pliant to her mother’s will.”

  “Only a spitfire could stand up to Irma,” someone commented. “She’ll have her own way now, without having to fight for it, won’t she?”

  “Do you recall,” said the one called Myrtle, “early in Irma’s marriage to the Captain? He did something she nearly didn’t forgive him for. Wouldn’t speak to him for weeks, as I remember.”

  A murmur: “And she never did say what he’d done.”

  A clucking of quiet guesses came in response to that.

  Another lady? He must have been unfaithful. No, no, he just got drunk and told her she was a homely sow. Not true, he was never a drinking man. He caught her stealing guineas from his handkerchief drawer. Oh nonsense, he simply would not agree to having a cat.

  I ate the meringue and considered another. This chatter was as good as a play and I had a front-row seat, though I had yet to identify the players. Staying as still as a cream puff, I studied the lace of the tablecloth, my fingertip tracing the intricate curlicues of thread.

  “And now she’s dead,” said Myrtle. “Taking her secrets with her.”

  “Her secrets—or somebody else’s,” said one of the others.

  “Agatha?” Grannie Jane beckoned from near the shaded window. It was terribly dim in here! Why did the rules say that we must mourn in darkness? Shaded rooms, shuttered windows, drab clothing, black-and-purple dahlias in the wreaths. I remembered Papa best in the sunny garden, sitting in his chair with an iced lemon water at his elbow, devising sums and puzzles for me to solve.

  Next to Grannie was a man whose very stiff collar appeared to push his chin uncomfortably upward. His nose was beaky, but his eyes crinkled when he smiled, as if truly happy to make my acquaintance.

  “This is Fletcher’s daughter,” said Grannie Jane. “Agatha Morton.”

  I furtively wiped the sugar from my fingers as I dipped into a curtsy. Standing straight again, my eyes flew across the room instead of politely meeting those of Grannie’s gentleman. I wished to see whether I might spot Myrtle and her gossiping friends. A row of plump, motherly women stood nibbling pastries and looking entirely innocent.

  “Agatha, this is Mr. Hugo Standfast. He is a solicitor and now lives in London. He and your father were chums back in their boyhoods.”

  “Ancient history, it will seem to you, Agatha,” said Mr. Standfast. “Your father was a couple of years older than I, and knew all the ropes. Very able, he was, getting us into—and out of—all sorts of scrapes. Dared me to go off the gentlemen’s diving platform my very first time. Must have been about nine years old. Had this ever since.” He pointed to a tiny scar above his left eyebrow, pale as a dove’s feather.

  How odd to think that strangers had recollections of Papa entirely different from my own. This Mr. Standfast held memories of someone that I had never met! He knew the boy who’d plunged into the sea and spilled lemonade on his trousers at the town fete. The Papa of his memory was untarnished by weeks of illness, or the wheeze of troubled laughter.

  “Your father was my hero,” said Mr. Standfast. “I was most distressed to hear of his passing.”

  I did not know what to say. His distress was mere hiccups compared with Mummy’s, or with Marjorie’s and mine, and yet his sorrow should not be disregarded. Grannie’s lesson on bereavement had not addressed this courtesy, but she would expect me to respond with more than a mute nod.

  “Are you friends of the Evershams also?” I managed.

  “Again I have Fletcher to thank,” said Mr. Standfast. “He introduced me to the Evershams long ago. I was the Captain’s solicitor and also prepared his wife’s will.” He paused to glance over his shoulder. The smile he offered Grannie was one that seemed tinged with apology.

  “The will,” he whispered, “is now of great interest to the police, in their pursuit of a motive. But I stand by my oath of privacy, that it must first be read to the family, which will happen in a few days.”

  “Surely the family is curious as well?” said Grannie Jane. And I knew she meant that she was. />
  “Is there any family?” I said. “Apart from Rose?” Miss Marianne was not related by blood. Would Rose not inherit everything? But how much was everything? Enough to kill for?

  “Do you know what a will is?” the lawyer said to me.

  “Yes.” I knew exactly what a will was, how it could alter lives. The document that Papa had written and left behind had initiated our financial woes, being nearly fully fiction. Papa had not, after all, been astute in his accounts, despite his role as my maths tutor. His imaginary wealth was far greater than what he’d actually possessed, not enough to pay his debts, let alone keep his family secure. Luckily it was Mummy who owned Groveland or we should have lost our home. Luckily too, Marjorie had married rich, lovely James, who would help take care of us all. Grannie Jane had a bit of money of her own and wouldn’t be a pauper. Really, only Mummy and I were the ones to feel the pinch, and the servants we had to let go, poor things. We never ate steak as we used to, and that was my favorite. Now I wore dresses for two years instead of getting new ones each season. All sorts of corners to be cut.

  What if Captain Eversham and his wife had been similarly negligent? What if an impoverished fate awaited Rose? Perhaps she should not have been so generous in her donation to the refugee boxes! But if Rose had suddenly become a wealthy woman—and had known beforehand that this would be so…Mr. Standfast may be in possession of information that could prove—or disprove—a reason for Rose to initiate a conspiracy.

  “What does the will say?” I was too eager to be shy. “Do you know what lies ahead for Rose Eversham?”

  “Agatha.” Grannie Jane was sharp and firm. “One never inquires about money.”

  Mr. Standfast took a large bite of cake, leaving a smear of icing on his upper lip. “My profession,” he said, “is rather like being a detective or a spy. I, too, am concerned with other people’s secrets, but the difference is that I do not pry. A lawyer waits for clients to come to him, and then listens to their confidential tales. But I certainly do not tell those tales myself.”