Genteel Spirits (Daisy Gumm Majesty Books) (34 page)

“No. He has his own home near Caltech. He arrives after breakfast and generally leaves before dinner
, unless Mrs. Winkworth needs a fourth for bridge. Thank God I never learned the game, or she might try to hook me
.
” Harold shuddered.
“Anyhow,
I don’t think he’s the culprit, mainly because he hasn’t had the opportunity to stick the letters where they’ve been found.”

“That makes sense.”
I wasn’t disappointed. Now that a romance seemed to be blossoming between Dr. Fellowes and Gladys, I didn’t want either of them to be
the
guilty of
party
.

The search of Monty’s quarters didn’t take long, and we didn’t find anything. However, as we went through his drawers—actually, I let Howard handle the drawer
s as
I
searched the closet, I was impressed by the elegance of his belongings.
To my practiced eye
,
it looked
as if everything had been hand-tailored. No surprise there. The man was rich as Croesus, whoever he was.

“Nothing.” Harold sounded relieved.

I was relieved, too. “I’m glad. I could almost picture Lola writing those letters, but I’d be
awfully
disappointed to learn that Monty was the culprit.”

“You and me both.”

“So who else is left?” I asked, my mind having wandered during my appraisal of Monty’s fabulous duds.
Then I thought about Monty’s mother. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Hanratty as the letter-writer, but figured I’d better ask. “Say, what about Mrs. Hanratty? Do we need to search her house, too?” It would kill me to discover that she’d been writing nasty letters to her own son.
”

“
Next Saturday morning. That’s when I plan to search her place
.”

“Good heavens,
how
do you expect to
manage that?” I was impressed
at the coolness of his plan
, if a little appalled.

“
Saturday morning is
when she teaches her dog-obedience classes. You know that. For God’s sake, you take Spike there.”

“Well, I know that, but how will
you get in?”

“Easy.
I’ve already visited her home
, and Mrs. Hanratty, just like everyone else in the known universe, keeps a spare key under the doormat.
I’ll just unlock the door and walk right in.
”

“
What about any servants? Won’t they think it odd that you’re there while Mrs. Hanratty isn’t?
”

“Mrs. Hanratty, unlike
her mother
Mrs. Winkworth, doesn’t need a staff of thousands to cater to her needs. She has a daily maid during the week and nobody at all on weekends, when she takes her meals with her mother and Monty, when he’s in town.”

“Oh.” I was already fond of Mrs. Hanratty. Learning of her simple—well, simpler, anyway—living habits, only boosted her in my esteem. “Okay. So that takes care of her. Who’s next on our list
in this house
?”

“Mrs. Winkworth.”

“You honestly think
we need to search Mrs. Winkworth’s
quarters?” I asked him. “Surely
she can’t
be
the one sending nasty notes to her own grandson. A grandson
, moreover,
who provided her these magnificent digs.” I
threw my arms wide
in an all-encompassing
gesture
meant to include the entire estate including its three mansions and extensive grounds.

“She violently disapproves of
the way
Monty makes his
moola
,” said Harold with a shrug.
“She keeps wanting him to quit
the pictures
.”

“But then she wouldn’t have this great house, would she?”

“Probably not. I’m sure Monty still owes a good deal on this property. If he no longer worked in the pictures, he’d
undoubtedly
have to sell the place.”

“Does she know that?”

“I’m sure she must.”

“Good Lord. The woman’s an idiot.”

“Perhaps. But she’s old and set in her ways.
She keeps waiting for
her beloved
South to rise again.”

I chuffed out an undignified
breath
. “She ought to be grateful she lives in Southern California, at least. Heck, Monty might have bought her a mansion in San Francisco, and then wouldn’t she have a lot to complain about?”

A laugh was all the response I got to that silly question
.

“Well,” said I as we traversed the mammoth hallway to the other end of the house where Mrs. Winkworth’s suite of rooms lay, “
I sure hope
Mrs. Hanratty
will turn out not to be the culprit
. I like her a whole lot.”

“I know what you mean. Monty thinks she’s a dear, even if she is a little loud for him. He’s quite the sensitive plant, you know.”

“Oh.”

Harold laughed again, and opened the door to Mrs. Winkworth’s suite of rooms.

Chapter Eighteen

Elegant is the word that springs to mind when I recall stepping into Mrs. Winkworth’s sitting room. The furniture was all the same
variety
as
furnished
the rest of the house. Louis the
Whateverth
.

I stood, staring around me for a moment or two, then said, “Wow.”

“Yeah,” agreed Harold. “And every stick of furniture was paid for by Monty Mountjoy.”

Shaking my head, I said, “Why in the world would anybody complain about living in this kind of luxury, especially if she’d been saved from abject poverty?”

“Beats me,” said Harold. “I guess it was
genteel
abject
poverty
, and she misses the genteel part.”

“Hey, I think we in Pasadena are pretty darned genteel.”

“So do I, but she’s from the great State of
South Carolina
, and I guess they’re more genteel than we are. According to Monty, she thinks
all people
from the North are heathens and bullies.”

“I see. Therefore she considers g
enteel poverty
superior to
crass wealth?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Harold heaved a sigh. “Well, let’s get to it. Her maid does a pretty good job of keeping everything spiffy, doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said, admiring a built-in bookcase crafted of some no-doubt wildly expensive imported wood. Curious, I walked to the bookcase and scanned the book titles. No murder mysteries for Mrs. Winkworth,
thank you very much
.
Poetry seemed to be her particular pleasure in life. Old poetry. The sonnets of Shakespeare, James Leigh Hunt, William Wordsworth. I was kind of surprised to see an Edith Wharton
novel
on the shelves, and wondered if Mrs. Winkworth had disapproved of
The Age of Innocence
. Probably.

But I
most assuredly
wouldn’t find a glue pot and cut-up newspapers in the bookcase, so I wandered off to another room, which turned out to be the bed chamber. Hoity-toity, indeed. But no signs of
crumpled newspapers or
chicanery.

Then I walked into a room that looked as if Mrs. Winkworth used it as sort of an office. There stood one of those dainty little
French
desks
, with curly edges and gilt
, adorned with scented paper and an array of pen holders and so forth.
Believing that this particular search was doomed to failure,
I pulled open the top drawer.

And I gasped.

“Harold!” I cried. “Come here!”

Harold did, at a run, and we both stared into the open drawer. Here’s what lay there: shreds of clipped-up newspapers,
a pair of scissors,
a glue pot, and a jar of black ink. I inspected the pens in the pen holders and, sure enough, there resided a fountain pen w
ith
the
exactly width of nib
that had been used to create all those blasted exclamation points. I lifted out a sheet of newspaper. “This is the
Los Angeles Times
,” I told Harold
, feeling more than slightly stunned
.

“And here’s a
Pasadena Herald
.” He lifted up another newspaper.
“And a
Star News
.”

“I’m surprised the word
tragedy
appears so often in the papers,” I said musingly.

Harold, who knew his stuff, said, “I’m not. Look here.”

I looked.
There before me, bold as brass, on the theatrical offerings page of the
Los Angeles Times
,
I read the words:
“
King Lear
, a tragedy by William Shakespeare.” Only the word
tragedy
had been neatly snipped out. “Well, I’ll be darned,” I whispered, faintly benumbed. “Why, the wicked old
crone
.”

“Speaking of
wicked
,” said Harold, “I wonder . . .” He flipped through more of the
Times
. “No. I don’t see it here.”

A thought occurred to me at that moment, and I picked up the
Pasadena Herald
. Yup. There it was:
The Wizard of Oz
, by L. Frank Baum, being presented as a play for children at the Shakespearean Society. “Look here, Harold. See the cast of characters? She’s cut out the ‘wicked’ before the witch.”

“Funny that the Shakespearean Society is putting on the Baum play instead of
King Lear
, huh?”

“I suppose so, but that’s immaterial. Whatever are we supposed to do now?”

“Lord, I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to tell Monty.”

“But we can’t tell Lola,” I said, my mind conjuring images of Lola murdering Mrs. Winkworth in a fit of passion. “And somehow or other we have to get the old bat to stop sending the letters.”

“You’re right, of course,” said Harold. “Lord, what a pickle.”

“I can’t
believe
that woman sent her own grandson those awful letters!” I said, becoming indignant all over again. “Why, he’s done everything for her! What ingratitude! Shakespeare had it backwards. What’s sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a nasty old granny who doesn’t appreciate what her grandson’s done for her.”

“Well . . . Don’t forget Stacy, Daisy.”

Stacy Kincaid, Harold’s ghastly sister, was indeed a problem child, and not even I could deny that. Stacy had been a thorn in my side for as long as I’d known her. “I guess that’s true. Maybe it works both ways.”

“The next important question is whether or not to tell your detective buddy.”

“Sam?” I stared at Harold, aghast. “No! We should definitely
not
tell Sam!”

“I don’t know
. If we don’t tell him, he might keep snooping and discover that Monty’s been getting letters as well as Lola
, and then his secret will come out, and his career will be over
. Let’s talk about it some more l
ater. Can you come over tonight?
Maybe the three of us—you, Monty, and I—can work out some sort of strategy that will keep the secret from Lola and at the same time get the old woman to stop writing the letters. We don’t want the police to know Monty’s been getting the letters, that’s for sure.”

“True.”

“Can you get away tonight?”

I heaved yet another heavy sigh. “I suppose so. Billy’s going to hate it.” It occurred to me that I might ask Sam over for dinner again that night. And maybe Flossie and Johnny
Buckingham
, too, if Aunt Vi didn’t mind. That would give Billy lots of company while I was at the Winkworth mansion, plotting.
Plotting
. Gee, that sounds like such a
n
ominous
word. But we’d be plotting for good and not for
evil
, so that took some of the bite out of the word.

“But we’d better get downstairs now. Poor Lillian’s probably wondering what’s happened to us.”
Harold
grinned at me. “Maybe she’ll start a rumor that the two of us are having an affair.”

My eyes must have opened wide in horror, because Harold said, “Not really, Daisy. Lillian knows exactly what I am. And y
our own moral rectitude is well
known in the City of Pasadena and its outer reaches.”

“I should hope so. That wasn’t even funny, Harold.”