Arsenic with Austen (4 page)

Suppressing a groan, she pulled herself back into a sitting position. “Where are you staying?”

“Stony Beach Inn. Not exactly the Ritz, but at least they got rid of the bedbugs. I thought the Driftwood might give me a discount, but no. That's one of your properties, not mine.” His voice put an edge on the words, but he flashed her a smile that took it off again. “Used to belong to the Landaus, you know. Just a bit of local history.”

“I could call them and arrange something if you like.” Why she should feel some obscure sense of guilt and obligation to this man, Emily couldn't fathom. Just the aura she got from him, she supposed.

“Don't bother. Of course I'd really prefer to have my old room here, but Agnes Beech seemed to think it wouldn't be appropriate.” He made a deprecatory face.

“Your old room? I didn't know you'd spent that much time here.”

“Oh, you know, just off and on.” He waved a vague hand. “Beatrice was an entertaining character. And now I have even more reason to spend time here.” He sat up and fixed his gaze on her. “Family relationships are always worth cultivating, don't you think?”

“You weren't technically Beatrice's family. And you're certainly not mine.” Why was she so quick to repudiate him? She had no other family. An oily cousin might be better than none.

“Well, not blood family. But that just makes things more interesting.”

Emily cut narrowed eyes toward him. What was that glint in his eye? Surely he wasn't thinking—

No. That was impossible. “I really do want the house to myself, Brock. I'm sorry to be rude, but I've had an emotionally wrenching, as well as physically exhausting, day, and I just want to curl up with a book and a big cup of tea.”

He sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “Never let it be said that Brock Runcible can't take a hint when it's served on a platter. But are you sure you won't reconsider? I can be very useful around the house.”

She certainly wouldn't take him for a handyman—not with those soft, elegant, manicured hands. Maybe he
was
thinking, incredible as it seemed. “Thanks, but no.”

“Then I shall say au revoir.” He caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “Until we meet again.”

“I know what au revoir means.” She wondered if he did.

He left, the caterers at his heels. At last the house was empty but for herself. And Agnes Beech.

She wondered how one summoned that august personage, or indeed if summoning was acceptable. She didn't see anything in the nature of a bellpull. But she knew well where the kitchen was; the housekeeper in the old days had been a motherly sort who let Emily and her brother, Geoff, have cookies and milk on the sly whenever they wanted them.

She was about to push open the kitchen door when it opened from the inside onto the towering figure of Agnes Beech. “Did you want something, madam?”

“Some tea would be lovely, Mrs. Beech. If it isn't too much trouble.”

“The name is Agnes, and it's my job. Anything to eat? That fancy stuff those caterers brought wouldn't satisfy a fly.” She said
caterers
as one might say
worm-infested feces
.

Emily realized she'd never had time for a bite of that “fancy stuff,” which had looked plenty filling to her. “Something light would be wonderful, thank you.”

Agnes Beech looked her over as if she could deduce her taste in food from her appearance. “An omelet. And some of my currant scones.” It wasn't a question, so Emily simply smiled in reply.

“Oh, and there's no need to come to the kitchen. There's an intercom in every room. Will you eat in the dining room, or do you want a tray?”

The books down the hall rustled on their shelves, calling to her. “A tray in the library, please.”

With the feeling of greeting a long-lost friend—one with far less baggage than Luke carried—Emily opened the double doors of the library. A smell of leather and lemony wood polish greeted her, spiced with the faintest whiff of ancient cigar from Horace's days. Oh, blessings on the head of dear Aunt Beatrice: it hadn't changed a bit.

The wood in this room could have built a whole cottage. Parquet floor, inlaid ceiling, and shelves covering every inch of three walls—all wood, and all gleaming with the proof of Agnes Beech's diligence as a cleaner. The fourth wall was a semicircle of windows looking down toward the sea, with a French door to the terrace at one side.

Emily made a circuit of the room, trailing her hand across the tooled and gilded leather bindings—no cheap editions for Aunt Beatrice. And nothing published after 1960. Emily chuckled. That was all right; her own library at home would make up that deficiency.

She knew from of old that the books were arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System, although no numbers marred the handsome spines or even headed the shelves. This was not a public library. The people who used it—or, for many years now, the person—knew where everything was.

Emily had always gone straight for the fiction section, housed in a queer semicircular case that bowed out from one corner into the room. She stopped there now and greeted all her old friends: Austen, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Montgomery, Sayers, Tolstoy, Trollope, Wodehouse. E. M. Forster, from whom Beatrice had borrowed the name Windy Corner for her home. Emily had known them all more intimately than she knew any but a few real people. Luke. Geoff. Philip. Marguerite, her closest colleague in Reed Lit and Lang. Only they were as vivid to her as Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Shirley, Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, Lord Peter Wimsey, Bertie and Jeeves.

The thought of Philip brought home to her with a jolt that she hadn't spoken to him all day. Could it be his presence was confined to Portland and he hadn't followed her to Stony Beach? Or did all the older voices drown him out?

Philip?
she thought tentatively.
Are you there?

I'm here, my dear. You've had quite a day, haven't you?

I know, can you believe it? I'm rich! Now we can go to Russia like we always wanted to.
But touring Russia with an invisible husband only she could hear did not sound all that appealing.

She was about to ask his opinion of her new status as heiress when Agnes Beech appeared in the doorway bearing a silver tray. Emily smiled to see her old favorite tea service—white bone china with tiny pink rosebuds. As a child she'd dawdled over her tea just so she could look at the rosebuds a little longer. She'd hoped Aunt Beatrice might leave the service to her someday. And lo and behold, she had.

Agnes deposited the tray on a small table beside the deepest, cushiest chair in the room—leather spread with a tan knitted blanket. But before Emily could sit, the obese black-and-white cat she'd glimpsed earlier jumped onto the blanket and circled, then plopped sideways, his immense belly bulging. His stare dared her to try dislodging him.

“Bustopher Jones, you get off that chair this minute!” Agnes scolded. He blinked at her as if to say,
Make me
. Emily would hardly have dared, but Agnes scooped him up, and he lay cowed in her arms. The glare he shot Emily was enough to curdle the milk for her tea.

“Do you have everything you need?” Agnes asked.

“Oh, yes. And my old favorite tea service—thank you. Of course you couldn't have known, but this is the one Aunt Beatrice always used when I came to visit. I can almost see her sitting there, pouring out, asking me, ‘One lump or two?' though she knew I always took two. It's hard to believe she's gone.”

Agnes gave a sniff that seemed somehow expressive of grief. “She was a good woman and a good mistress. She'll be greatly missed.”

“Do you know, I just realized no one's told me what she died of. Just old age?”

Agnes snorted. “Old age! That one? She was younger than most people half her years. Old age indeed! She died of acute gastroenteritis.
Not,
I'll have you know, due to my cooking. She ate
out
that night.” She said
out
as one might say
at a drunken orgy
.

“Oh, I see!” Emily had been picturing a quiet end, at worst a massive heart attack or stroke that would have killed Beatrice instantly. But acute gastroenteritis—that likely meant hours of suffering, and highly undignified suffering at that. Poor Beatrice. “Was she prone to that sort of thing?”

“Only one food she couldn't eat without getting sick and that's lobster, but she was so stubborn, she wouldn't give it up for good. Apparently, that's what she ate that night. Doc said that's all it would've taken to kill her.” Agnes's brow darkened like a winter storm. “I don't believe it for a minute. Mrs. Runcible was too strong to die from anything that plain disagreed with her.”

Her next words sent a chill through Emily that all her logic could not dissipate. “Something poisoned her. Something—or someone.”

 

five

Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterward.

—
Persuasion

Emily awoke in the room that had always been hers years ago—the octagonal tower room on the third floor. It was small and far from the bathroom, and the attic stairs had surely grown steeper since she was last here. But she loved the tower's bird's-eye view of both the ocean and the grounds. The same lace canopy hung above her, the same birds trilled outside the window, and for the moments stolen from eternity that hung between sleep and waking, she believed she was still sixteen-year-old Emily Worthing on summer vacation, free of school, free of parents, and gloriously in love.

The illusion lasted only until she stretched and winced at the stiffness of her fifty-one-year-old joints. Then all the events of the last few days came flooding back. The inheritance. Luke. And her conversation with Agnes Beech the night before.

“Agnes, you're not serious? Who'd want to poison Aunt Beatrice?”

“There's plenty in this town'd be glad to get her out of the way.
Plans
they have. Plans she'd never have stood for.”

“What sort of plans?”

“Developing.” As one might say
chopping up innocent children
. “They want to make Stony Beach into another Seaside.”

“Oh, that would be too bad.” Seaside and Cannon Beach were the most popular getaway spots on the Oregon coast. In the summer they were overrun with vacationers—a louder, rowdier crowd than Stony Beach attracted. In July and August one could barely find beach room. Stony Beach got enough traffic to keep itself alive, but it was still a quaint and quiet place, with plenty of sand and waves for all.

“Well, don't you worry, Agnes. I have no intention of going along with any development scheme. I assume Aunt Beatrice's financial interest in this town will still carry plenty of weight, even though I'm not half the businesswoman she was.”

“As long as you don't go selling out to the mayor and that real estate hussy, we'll get along all right.” By
we
Emily wasn't sure whether Agnes meant herself or the town. She'd prefer to get along with both.

But the first thing to do was to gather more information. She needed to read the will, see exactly what her inheritance consisted of, and meet with Beatrice's accountant and property manager. She ought to make a tour of the town and check up on her properties in person. She wanted to be well armed when the seemingly inevitable confrontation with Mayor Everett Trimble took place.

Not that she put any stock in Agnes's poisoning theory. That kind of thing only happened in books.

Emily said good morning to Philip, who greeted her with his usual laconic affection. She hauled her stiff bones out of the soft bed, pulled on her robe, and went to the window. The poplars that bordered the lawn bowed before their oppressor, the constant shore wind. Waves slammed against the beach, and in the distance, a gray expanse of water blended into gray sky. She knew from experience the temperature would have dropped twenty degrees from yesterday's balmy seventy-five. The weather on the Oregon coast was as unreliable as a summer romance.

After a long, hot shower, Emily dressed in yesterday's skirt with a plainer high-necked blouse, a warm cardigan, and low pumps. She'd have preferred something more comfortable, but it looked like it was going to be a doing-business day, and she needed all the help she could get to feel businesslike. If only she had an ally in this place—someone who was not only sympathetic but knowledgeable about all the ins and outs of the town. Someone she could trust.

Someone like, say, the local sheriff.

She shook that thought aside. Business and Luke could not occupy the same brain-space. Her mind still felt like a blender on
CRUSH
whenever he entered it.

She descended the U-shaped wooden stairway to the dining room and found the sideboard laden with silver dome-covered salvers. Scrambled eggs in one, bacon and sausage in the second, steaming fried potatoes in the third. A bowl of sliced cantaloupe and strawberries ended the row. Enough to feed a houseful. She took a modest portion from each dish, poured herself some coffee from the silver pot, and sat. Two neatly folded newspapers lay next to her napkin—the
Oregonian
from Portland and the
Wave,
the weekly that covered this section of the coast.

News of the larger world could wait. She unfolded the
Wave
and jumped to see her own face staring back at her from the front page.
Portland Professor Pockets Pretty Penny
. The story took up three full columns.

“What on Earth…?” Where could the reporter have gotten that much material? No one had asked her for an interview.

She glanced at the byline—Rita Spenser—accompanied by a picture. The whale woman who had waylaid her and Luke at the reception. Emily couldn't remember exactly what she'd answered to the woman's nosy questions, but surely she hadn't said everything that was quoted here; some of it wasn't even grammatical. Added to this flight of fancy were quotations from Luke, Brock, the mayor, and several other people she'd met yesterday afternoon. The woman must have had a hidden tape recorder—or maybe a Quick-Quotes Quill. Her name was Rita, after all.