Page 11 of Murder at the Dinner Party
“Fifth! Either she lives in a house riddled with crime, in which case you’re not doing your job properly, or she simply wants to spend time in your company. A merry widow, is she?”
He grinned. “She is a widow, as it happens, and is also good company. I like her very much.”
“Do you?” I murmured. I wished I hadn’t brought it up. “And what reason did she give for hiring you for the fifth time?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his lips tilt with his smile. “Her housekeeper thought she heard a noise in the kitchen.”
“How strange that a large house filled with servants should have noises coming from the kitchen,” I said wryly.
“There are no other servants. Just the housekeeper. She and my client were in the sitting room at the time.”
“Did your client hear the noise, too?”
“She’s hard of hearing, so no, but she gets anxious if her housekeeper is concerned. She’s eighty, you see, and her housekeeper is not much younger.”
“Eighty!” I blurted out. “Ohhhhh. So she just wants to haveteawith you.”
“Probably.” His lips twitched again. “Why? What did you think she wanted?”
“To, er, ask you to reach things on high shelves.”
He laughed. “That and drinking tea have become my main tasks when I call on them. I no longer charge Mrs. Danvers a fee after the last time when I discovered her cat lapping up milk spilled from a bottle it had knocked off the table. The time before that, she tasked me with finding her missing jewelry. I found the necklace under the bed and the earrings in the bathroom. The housekeeper thinks Mrs. Danvers is losing her memory.”
“The poor dear. It must have been upsetting when she thought she’d lost valuable jewels.”
“They were paste. I gather she has sold off everything of value over the years. I think she and the housekeeper were more fearful of an intruder being inside. I checked all the doors and windows and assured them they would keep thieves out as long as they remembered to lock them at night.”
It was good of him to take extra precautions, as well as not charge a lady in reduced circumstances for a false alarm.
He stopped before reaching the hotel. “I’ll cross the road here.” He paused. “Cleo…” He released a breath and shook his head. “Good luck with your investigation.” He gave me a flat smile, touched the brim of his hat, and looked down Piccadilly for a gap in the oncoming traffic.
“Wait!”
He turned suddenly. “Yes?”
I removed the seltzer salts bottle from my bag. “You’ve got a knack for sciences, perhaps you’ll know the answer to this. Do poisons all have a distinctive smell? Or do some have no smell at all?” I removed the cork stopper and held it out.
“Some have no smell or taste, so my reading of detective fiction tells me. I don’t know which ones.” He sniffed the bottle’s contents. “It smells like bicarbonate of soda.”
I replaced the stopper. “I’ll take it to a pharmacist and see what he has to say.”
“I may have a better idea. When my father left Scotland Yard, I met a fellow at his farewell party who works at St. Mary’s Hospital. My father and his team sometimes took their medical questions to him. He should have the right chemicals on hand to test the seltzer salts for poisons.”
“Is he a doctor?”
“More of a scientist. His specialty is dead people, not living ones.” He put out his hand. “I’ll take it to him now.”
“We both will.”
“Are you sure you won’t be missed?” He glanced at the hotel where Frank was opening the door of one of the hotel’s carriages as Goliath retrieved luggage from the back.
“I’m sure. I have nothing scheduled until afternoon tea.”
“And if your family looks for you before then?”
“I’ll tell them the truth. My uncle doesn’t mind my sleuthing now, as long as it doesn’t interrupt my social engagements and nobody finds out.”
“I was worried Sir Ronald had changed his mind. He tends to do that.”
