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

My grandfather looked back at her without hesitation. “I believe I do. But until I hear you say the words, I can’t be sure.”

Her head drooped. The determination faded away and she pulled a breath deep down inside her before replying. “I was with Fellowes on both occasions.”

“Thank you, dear child. Thank you for your honesty.” Grandfather clearly found some shred of relief in her answer. Despite dismissing my theory, perhaps the possibility of Cora being the killer had been weighing on his mind all along.

He held his hand out for her to hold, but dear, batty Clementine took it instead. To contrast with the sad moment we’d just experienced, Grandfather couldn’t hold back his laughter as the old woman looked affectionately at him.

“Oh, Clemmie.” His mirth soon infected the rest of us. “For all your quirks, I can’t deny that you’ve always had a sense of humour.”

His face curled up in a broad smile but his words didn’t connect with the old lady. She pulled her jam-stained hand back, as if afraid he was mocking her. To compensate, Cora leaned over to hug her grandmother and Clementine’s usual cheerful expression reshaped her face.

Grandfather wasn’t to be distracted and returned to the matter at hand. “I’ll need you to tell me the exact circumstances of what happened last night. Did you throw a stone to get Fellowes’s attention? Were you waiting for him in the garden? Did any of that actually occur?”

Cora glanced down at the table, clearly still reluctant to go into details. “Yes, it did. I was acting like a spoilt child and couldn’t wait to have Reginald to myself, so I interrupted his duties for a few minutes. He came outside and we hid beneath the steps to the petit salon to… well, I think that’s a part of the story I can keep to myself.”

She giggled like a little girl and Grandfather asked his next question.

“Did you see anyone else when you were out there?”

She took a moment to prepare her answer. “No, though we did hear someone running up the steps immediately after we arrived. He was positively sprinting. I think it must have been a man from the sound of his footsteps. I can’t imagine any of the women running like that in their ball gowns.”

“And afterwards?”

“I went in through the offices on the lower floor so that no one would see the two of us together. I stopped at the first mirror I could find, to make sure I didn’t look a total mess and then went back upstairs.” She let out a lascivious laugh and something finally clicked in my brain. “By the time I got to the ballroom, Reginald was serving drinks and the toast had begun.”

Forgive my naivete, but it had taken me until now to understand what my chic, pretty cousin and our uncouth butler had been doing together. The revelation of a romantic entanglement between a servant and a member of my own family sparked a feeling of shock. The snobbery that had been hammered into me during the decade of my elite education rushed to the surface and, in the voice of my vitriolic headmaster, I thought, How dare they do such a thing!

Of course, this unease was quickly kicked from my head to make way for the realisation that, if Cousin Cora could fall in love with Fellowes without my Grandfather instantly disowning her, perhaps there was hope for Alice and myself. And as joyful as this made me, I couldn’t help wondering where Cora’s explanation fitted in with what we already knew of Belinda’s murder.

We now had the confirmation that she had thrown the stone against the drinks room window. It followed, therefore, that Fellowes had opened the champagne, then gone outside to meet Cora and do… whatever men and women do when they’re alone together (I have to admit, this is not something I’m entirely clear on. I did once ask my father, but his cheeks turned scarlet and he said, “It’s awfully complicated, old chap. My advice would be to get a book from the library.”)

So they were kissing, etc. when the killer slipped into the drinks room to put the cyanide in the champagne. The two of them finished up outside with the hugging and whatnot, Fellowes brought the champagne into the ballroom and Cora stumbled in, shortly after. Which was all well and good but it didn’t get us any closer to identifying our culprit.

No doubt going through a similar thought process to my own, Grandfather allowed her story to stew in his mind before formulating a response.

“Now, my dear, I’m sorry to tell you that Fellowes is in trouble. The police found out about his past and they’re going to pin the blame on him. It’s not because they have evidence, or he has any motive for murder, but because he’s the easiest fit.”

Cora bridled at the accusation. “They can’t do that.”

“They can and they will. They’ll say that he’s a disgruntled servant who couldn’t stand being ordered around anymore. They’ll find out from our relatives how rude he can be and the police will use whatever they come across to paint him as a violent, confrontational man. Blunt won’t listen to me, and there’s little I can do to control him. If you don’t tell the police about your relationship, I suspect that Reginald will at best spend his life in prison and worst book a trip to the gallows.”

Seizing hold of her belongings, Cora shot up to standing. “I must go, I should never have left the house this morning, not with the state that Reginald was in. I’d gone to check on him, you see, but when we heard people screaming outside, he feared that someone would notice I was missing and he begged me to leave.”

“Wait one moment. Did you see anyone else?” my grandfather followed up with. “Last night when you returned to