Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery by Benedict Brown (simple ebook reader txt) 📕

“But none of you liked her.” It was rather clever of my grandfather to have noticed this fact.

Shamefaced, Cook attempted to explain. “Yes, but… Well, no one should have to die like that, should they?”

Grandfather extended one hand to comfort her. “My daughter and I butted heads like mountain goats. She was not an easy person to like, but I never stopped loving her. Which is why I’m determined to get to the bottom of what happened here tonight.”

Fellowes was oddly shy during this exchange. He was leaning against the sink looking like a deflated balloon and was yet to let out a squeak. He displayed none of his usual poise or arrogance and I had to wonder what was going on in that strange head of his.

“Where have you stowed the champagne?” my grandfather addressed him and, with one finger, the butler pointed towards the staff dining room.

Grandfather tightened his grip on his amethyst-topped cane. “We’ll talk in there if you don’t mind.”

Fellowes bowed mutely and the old policeman spun on his heel for us to follow. Delilah must have heard her master as she came scurrying out of her basket to accompany us. The room was locked and Fellowes produced the key to reveal the dim chamber with the drinks trolley just inside.

Grandfather got straight to work, putting his nose into the bottle and examining any sediment at the bottom of each glass before calling me over. “What can you smell?”

I thought this might be another of his tricks but gave one of the glasses a good sniff. “Well…” I hesitated over my answer. “It smells like… Yes, it smells just like champagne.”

He actually rolled his eyes at me then. “Apart from the champagne, man!”

“Oh!” I chuckled at my evidently silly reply and tried again. “Well… apart from the champagne… Not much.”

He crossed his arms in front of his chest and reflected upon this. “I assumed as much. In actual fact, only certain people can smell cyanide. I spent some time as a young officer familiarising myself with various poisons and so it jumps straight out at me.”

“What does it smell like, Milord?” Fellowes, who had been standing discreetly in the corner, was quick to enquire. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Lord Edgington raised one brow a little. “Cyanide smells like cyanide, though the fact that it is prevalent in bitter almonds makes many people think of them.” He bent low for one last look at the deadly, bubbly delight. “Even if poor Belinda had been capable of smelling it herself, she’d been drinking since before the party began and was in no frame of mind to worry about it. The speed with which she died might also suggest that she had a large concentration of the substance in her glass or simply that the killer used a lot of cyanide to begin with.”

He straightened up again and Fellowes and I watched as waves of thoughts, theories and observations passed through him. After some moments like this, he clicked his fingers and pulled a chair up at the table.

The staff rarely used their dining room, as the kitchen was so much warmer. It was a drab, dark space with no decoration or comfort. Grandfather’s golden retriever seemed happy to be there with her master and settled on the floor by his feet.

“Sit down, please, Fellowes.” The cold singularity of thought which was evidently controlling my grandfather at this time was impressive. He was focussed solely on his task and I could see how such a skill was vital to his detective work.

The butler hovered beside the table for a moment and then did as instructed. I decided to remain standing and leaned against the wall beside a cupboard filled with plain white crockery.

“I need you to tell me what happened between the time you opened the champagne and the time you served it.”

Now that the question had been asked, Fellowes appeared to rediscover some of his confidence.

“Yes, Milord. Of course.” He needed a moment to assemble his thoughts. “I took the bottle from the cellar to warm a little after the guests arrived, but didn’t open it until shortly before the toast.”

“You opened it in the drinks room, is that correct?”

Fellowes darted his eyes away from his interrogator who sat, as is only right for the lord of the manor, at the head of the table. “That’s correct. I thought it best to do so, given the lively display of dancing taking place in the ballroom. Such precious wine doesn’t want wasting.”

“But you left the bottle after you opened it, isn’t that right?”

Panic tore through the man once more and he glanced at me at the side of his vision, perhaps hoping I would be able to soften my grandfather’s resolute tone.

“No, that’s…”

“Tell me the truth, man.” Lord Edgington’s temper flared like a spitting bonfire. “You opened the champagne then left the room, why?”

I’d never seen Fellowes look anything but cocky and self-assured but I swear that he was shaking right then from the pressure. I was not the detective of course and couldn’t tell you one way or another whether this was a sign of guilt or merely his fear of landing in the soup.

“I heard a voice.”

Those spectacularly expressive white bushes on grandfather’s brow twitched higher. “A voice?”

“Well, a sound at first. A tapping on the window and then I thought I heard my name being called so I…”

A tapping on the window of the drinks room which is twenty feet off the ground? Something about his story didn’t add up. I felt sure our superlative investigator would jump on such an inconsistency, but he remained calm.

“You went out to see who it was.” Grandfather’s eyes fixed themselves on a point in the middle distance and I had to assume he was taking mental case notes to pass on to the police when they arrived.

Fellowes was quick to drum up an explanation. “I had plenty of