Deadly Ever After by Eva Gates (distant reading .txt) 📗

behind them, and Ricky, Leon, and Stephen joined us on the steps.

“We’re on the third floor,” I said. “Go on up, help yourself to refreshments, and grab a seat. If you can find one—we’ve got a full house tonight.”

Evangeline touched my arm as I turned to go inside. “How’s Fluffy getting on?”

“She’s good. I think she’s enjoying it here. We’re going on lots of lovely walks.”

Evangeline glanced around us, taking in the boardwalk, the long grasses of the marsh, the ducks flying overhead, honking to each other. The not much of anything else. “I hope you’re not taking her too far, Lucy. She’s not used to all this … nature.”

“She’s fine. Shall we join the others?” I pulled the door shut behind us.

“I trust you’re keeping that horrid cat away from Fluffy,” Evangeline said as we climbed the stairs. “He looked like a bad-tempered beast to me, and Fluffy has a delicate disposition.”

“Well away,” I said. When I’d called Charles to come for book club, he and Fluffy had been curled up together on the window seat. They had almost—not quite, but almost—been touching. Charles, who loves book club, had to be encouraged to jump down and follow me.

“After your little meeting, I’ll pop up and say hello,” Evangeline said.

Instantly I mentally surveyed my apartment: laundry put away, bed made, dishes washed, trash taken out, floor swept. “Sure, we can do that.”

It was standing room only in the meeting room. Butch, Ricky, and Stephen leaned against the walls. Butch munched on an oatmeal cookie and clutched a napkin containing a pecan square and a mini cupcake in one massive paw, and Ricky balanced a fully laden napkin and a glass of lemonade.

Beside me, Evangeline sucked in a breath when she caught sight of the crowded room.

I turned and looked at her. “Are you okay?”

“Perfectly fine.” She patted her chest. “Those stairs are quite the climb, aren’t they? Suzanne, you should have warned me to wear a pair of sneakers.”

My mom’s the only person I know who can roll her eyes without physically doing so. It is, I’ve always thought, a neat trick.

“The laws of succession are very strict, even now,” Theodore was saying as Mom and Evangeline edged into the room. “Entailed property can only be inherited down the male line, regardless of the number of female offspring one might have.” He leapt to his feet when he saw Evangeline and offered her a slight bow. “Madam, welcome. Please take my chair.”

“I … thank you.” She sat and patted her skirt neatly around her. She threw a sideways glance at Charles, curled up on Mrs. Fitzgerald’s lap. Charles lifted his little chin and turned away.

The snub was almost human.

“Can I get you a treat or a glass of something?” Leon asked Evangeline.

“What? Oh, sorry. Yes, thank you. A drink, please. Whatever they have.”

“Like in Downton Abbey,” Primrose Peterson said. “Lady Mary couldn’t inherit, so she had to find someone to marry.”

“That’s not fair,” her sister Charity said.

“The royal family recently changed their rules of succession,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “Princess Charlotte, being the second child of Prince William, is now second in line after him and her older brother, rather than third after her younger brother, as she would have been before. Isn’t that right, Daisy?”

The Englishwoman chuckled. “I hope you didn’t invite me here tonight for my keen insider knowledge of the workings of the English aristocracy. My field is North American colonial history. The closest I’ve been to the monarchy is the time my mother met Prince Charles when he toured the university where she worked. As for any potential inheritance to sort out, my parents are determined to spend every last cent they have visiting the tourist traps of the world.” She smiled fondly at the thought.

“I’m the oldest in our family,” Charity said, “so I’ll inherit all your money, Mom.”

“Hey!” Primrose, the second daughter, protested.

“Fortunately for you girls, your family is not English and you are not landed aristocracy,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “Your parents can leave their property to whomever they choose.”

“Yeah, but if so, if not us, then who would inherit all your and Dad’s money, Mom?” Charity said. “You have five daughters.”

“I don’t think we want to get into a discussion of our family’s financial situation,” Mrs. Peterson said. “Besides, your father and I plan to be around for a long time still.”

“Drat!” Primrose fell back in her chair and crossed her arms.

Everyone, with the exception of Mrs. Peterson, burst out laughing.

“I assume you’re talking about this because of the inheritance of the Baskerville title and estate,” I said. “An excellent point at which to begin discussion of the book. Imagine being a young American man who suddenly finds out that a relative he never knew has died and left you everything.”

“Including a family curse,” Grace said.

Ricky chuckled. “Including that.” He smiled at Grace. She smiled back.

“And then,” my mom said, “spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t finished it—but I assume we’re here to discuss all of the book—the next heir is someone no one even knows about.”

“It did get rather ridiculous,” Daisy said, “in real life as in the book: the hunt for someone, anyone, to inherit the estates and the title, particularly when there were perfectly acceptable female relatives around.”

“Like in Downton Abbey,” Primrose repeated.

“I’m an only child,” Ricky said to Grace. “No inheritance worries for me.”

His mother frowned at him.

“Previously unknown and illegitimate relatives still pop out of the woodwork at will-reading time,” Butch said.

Evangeline shifted in her seat. She glanced at Theodore as he said, with great relish, “The very stuff of crime fiction.”

“Mom’s right,” I said, “but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That happens at the end of the book. It begins with the death of Sir Charles, supposedly at the hands—or jaws, I should say—of the spectral hound. Did you for a moment think the legend might be true?”

It was a good meeting. The Hound is a great book, drenched in atmosphere as Holmes and Watson bound across the desolate,