Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery by Benedict Brown (romantic novels in english .txt) 📗

My grandfather looked up at the blue sky above us with an exaggerated twist of his neck. “What on Earth are you talking about, Clemmie? The day couldn’t be finer.”

As if the sound needed time to travel over to her, Great-Aunt Clementine didn’t reply for a moment and then, in a most indignant tone said, “And who says ducks can’t enjoy a bit of sunshine?”

He offered up a mocking smile. “As much as I always love our conversations, my dear, we’re mainly here to see your granddaughter.”

Cora hadn’t moved a muscle since we’d arrived. With her hands gripping the armrests, she looked as though she were bracing herself for a car crash. She still wore the long, narrow trousers and cream jacket she’d had on at the ball, but her normally smooth hair was unkempt.

“Perhaps you’d prefer to talk to us alone, eh, Cora?” Grandfather suggested and she pushed her boyish fringe from her eye before replying.

“No, Christopher can stay.” She glanced across the garden, as if she had no interest in looking at my grandfather directly. When he didn’t reply, she realised his implication and added, “Oh, you mean Grandmother? There’s nothing I can’t say in front of her.”

Cora reached one slender hand across the table to the woman who had largely raised her. As her parents had died when Cora was still young, the two women had always been close. My cousin had only left the bucolic surrounds of Langford House for a place of her own a few years earlier, though this may have precipitated the small estate’s decline.

Nestled in beneath a thick Welsh quilt, the old lady smiled affectionately at me just as Todd appeared from the conservatory with two more chairs. He nodded silently and returned to his far comfier seat back in the Aston Martin.

“If you’ve come all this way to accuse me of murder, then it was a wasted trip.” Cora reached into the small, sequined purse on the table in front of her and extracted a cigarette and some matches. I took careful note of what was written on them, as, so often in detective novels, matchbooks provide a vital clue to the identity of the killer. I couldn’t see how the fact she preferred Swan Vestas over Bryant and May’s own brand particularly helped me though.

“And what makes you believe that we had entertained such a possibility?” Grandfather stroked the bristles on one side of his face as if considering his own question.

Cora studied him for a moment and in a brisk, workmanlike manner replied, “Oh, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Who would benefit more from your family being brushed out of existence in one fell swoop than I would?”

“It’s true that, had the killer’s plan been executed, the Cranley estate would have transferred to your grandmother and ultimately you.” Cora scoffed but the old man hadn’t finished speaking. “But, please remember, I held you as a tiny baby, Cora. I watched you growing up and I like to think that I took on the role your own grandfather would have occupied. So, you’re wrong, I don’t believe you could be guilty of such a horrific crime.”

I was once again confused as to why a man who had built his reputation as a ruthless, hard-nosed police officer could go so lightly on a suspect. If Cora was responsible for the murders, she had him wrapped around her finger.

“I imagine that the rest of the family are simply desperate to see me behind bars.” There were cracks beginning to show in her steely persona. Her voice sounded as though it might break altogether and I was trying to judge whether it was all just an act. “I’ve never really fitted in with the Cranleys, have I? When I was little, Maitland called me wild and Belinda treated me like some kind of savage because I once visited my parents in Africa and came back nut brown.”

A thread of pure anger suddenly emerged in her. “It isn’t much better now that I’m an adult either.” She adopted a voice then that sounded just like my stuffy aunt Winifred. “A woman with short hair and trousers! Whatever next? Women soldiers? A lady prime minister? The very idea doesn’t bear thinking about.” She had to catch her breath after these theatrics. “Dear George runs up gambling debts wherever he goes, seduces half the debutantes in England and you all think he’s marvellous, and yet I’m the black sheep?”

Grandfather’s eyes flicked across to his sister-in-law who was feeding Delilah bits of jam-covered scone and showed no interest in our conversation.

He kept his voice steady as he replied. “You know that’s not what I think of you.”

Cora’s stare hardened. “So then why are you here? What do you want from me?”

“I need you to tell me where you were just before I gave my toast last night and again this morning when Maitland was killed.”

Like a gunslinger from the American west, she fired straight back at him. “Just asking that question proves you don’t believe me.”

The ferocity of Cora’s words had startled her grandmother. Peering around the other faces at the table, as if she couldn’t work out where she knew us from, Clementine distracted herself by pouring some more tea from the pot.

It was Grandfather’s turn to raise his voice. “That’s not why I’m asking. I may not consider you a suspect, but I still need to know where you were and what you were doing at the time that the murders were committed.”

She looked down at her hands, as though considering what they were capable of. When she eventually spoke, her voice was a distant breeze, barely audible over the hum of the natural world which surrounded us. “You already know, don’t you?”

The unmown grass swishing in the air, a pair of bumblebees inspecting a patch of cranesbill geraniums, the brook which ran behind the house and a blackbird tossing leaves about in the