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

said I was to follow him all evening and report back because your cousin had a task to carry out and he couldn’t be trusted to go through with it.”

“What did he have to do?”

His eyes shifted about the room. He looked scared that there was someone lurking behind the drapes, or hidden away in the wardrobe. “You have to understand, Chrissy, that my father is not someone I answer back to. When he tells me to do something, I say, ‘Yes, sir.’ I’ve never seen him become violent, but I have no doubt that he could.”

“Answer the question, Marmalade.” The power had gone to my head! I don’t know how his nickname had emerged from my lips and, for a moment, I was terrified he’d launch himself across the room to blacken my other eye.

“George isn’t the only Cranley who owes my father money. He came here to tell your uncle that, if he didn’t pay back his debts before the summer, he could expect trouble.”

I breathed in theatrically, like an over-the-top hero on a radio drama. It wasn’t just the news of Maitland’s dilemma that surprised me, Marmaduke had used the present tense. So far at least, it really seemed as though he knew nothing of the second murder.

“But what does that prove?” I asked. “Both men owed your father money. How could that have anything to do with the poison that was planted in the champagne?”

He pondered his answer before continuing, his visage still gripped with fear. “I overheard them, you see. I did as my father asked me and, when I saw George head outside, I followed him out through another door. He spoke to your uncle further along the terrace and I hid in the shadows to hear.”

“What did they say?”

“Maitland dismissed the threat outright. Said he wouldn’t be scared of some boy, no matter who’d sent him.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “George didn’t like that, he seized your uncle by the collar and forced him against the wall. He said that things were about to get very nasty for him very soon if he didn’t do as instructed.” Marmaduke came to a sudden stop, as he relived the scene.

I was gripped by his story and needed to know what came next. “So, what did Maitland do?”

“That’s the thing; when Maitland wouldn’t give in, George went wild. He was shouting the place down. They were only twenty yards along the balcony from the entrance to the ballroom, If the band had stopped playing, everyone inside would have heard.”

He turned to look through the curtains but continued with the next morsel of the story. “He said that it wouldn’t just be Maitland who would suffer, but his whole family. But it wasn’t enough. No matter what George said, Maitland laughed right back in his face. I must have leaned out too far from the bay I was hiding in, as that’s when George caught sight of me. Five seconds later, he’d stormed over and started pillorying me about the face.”

The account of his beating forced him to stop once more and I couldn’t help but feel bad for the fellow. If there’s one person on the planet who I had never expected to feel sympathy for it was Marmaduke Adelaide. Yet I could see that, for all his brawn and bluster, he was just as scared as any boy our age would have been.

I felt I had to ask the obvious question, nonetheless. “But why did he hit you? Wouldn’t your father have taken exception to that?”

“Your cousin hit me because I was insignificant.” His voice had fallen even quieter. “He couldn’t very well send your uncle back into the party with bruises all over him, but no one would look twice at me. George hit me so hard that my head is still ringing, but his eyes were on your uncle the whole time and, when he was done, he dropped me to the ground and said, ‘I have my orders, Maitland, and you’ve had your chance. Don’t blame me for what happens next.’ Your uncle cut back into the house then and George gave me one more contemptuous look before following after through a side door.”

I let these last details settle in my mind. If what Marmaduke was saying was true, my charming cousin, the heir to our family estate, was a brute and a blackmailer. He was in debt to a dangerous man and had threatened Maitland’s family, mere moments before the champagne was laced with poison.

But was it enough to explain the murders? Maitland was the one whose debts had been called. If George was working for Adelaide, surely his own situation was not nearly so precarious. Would he really have poisoned our whole family just to dig himself out of a hole?

“After what I’d heard, I was scared that George would try to kill me too.” Marmaduke spoke with great certainty then. He clearly believed that my cousin had murdered his own mother. It was almost too horrible to consider. “I’m not sure of the exact timing, of course, but it seems as though he would have had the opportunity to poison the champagne.”

I didn’t want to traumatise the chap, but there were still holes in his story that I needed to plug. “Do you know anything about the money the two men owe? Or why your father used George to threaten Maitland?”

He shook his head despondently. “All I know is that your uncle has been in debt for years and my father is tired of waiting. He seemed to regard his sway over George as a real feather in his cap. He called him, ‘a charming young gentleman who can get into places where Horatio Adelaide will never be welcome’.”

The revelations spun like a tornado, and it took me some time to settle on a response. “I believe you, Marmaduke. Maybe I’m a fool, but I think you’re telling the truth. If you repeat to my grandfather