Welcome to the second chapter of the novel The Last Defender of Albion. Links for purchase of paperback and eBook editions appear at the end. Your comments are welcome!
2: What the Maid Saw
I made my own way out of the formal living room, past another uniform in the hallway. I nodded at the large Shep, a fellow older than Parsons, one who also had a far greater sense of decorum (if that’s the phrase I was looking for). He nodded in return. “Anything you need, sir?”
“Directions to the kitchen.”
He gestured toward my left. “Quickest way is through the dining room.”
“Makes sense,” I smiled, sneaking a glimpse at the name tag, then hesitating.
The dog chuckled. “Pah-DEE-ya. Everyone does that.”
“I wondered if it was more like the sounds in ar-mah-DILL-oh. Thanks for helping me out, Officer Padilla.”
“Anytime, sir.”
I moved off, daring to feel that the day might not be as hopeless as first I feared it might be. Cops like Padilla were always good to find; they had a sense of empathy toward others. He helped me avoid a moment of embarrassment by telling me how to pronounce his name. As burned-out as I get these days, I still hope for more like the Shep — in general, in the force, and in those I could work with. Luck of the draw stuck me with Parsons, so I’d live with it.
Navigating my way through an ornate dining room (the type no one in his right mind would use on a daily basis), I padded back into the warmth of a kitchen worthy of the old money that the Glovers pretended to. Generally speaking, “Winchester Heights” was a fancy name for a bunch of McMansions, carefully constructed for ostentation, designed to be mammoth buildings set like architectural sumo wrestlers squatting on perfectly-kept grounds. Having staff for gardening, landscaping, exterior and interior building maintenance, and household servants was a given; if you couldn’t afford them, you couldn’t live here. I made a wager that there were rooms in this house that were elegantly appointed, designer decorated, carefully kept, and never once used by anyone for any purpose. It was possible that the Glovers didn’t even know that they were there.
That was the difference between old and new money. I confess a weakness for a variety of British television programs, and my sense of manor houses made with old money was that they were useful as well as ornate. Even those rooms that look like they should be attic spaces, with dormer windows and a half-dozen sets of stairs to get to, were used by yowens growing up. A whole section of the place would be given over to the house staff, with their own dining areas, modest but well-kept living quarters, and the atmosphere of private gossip and intrigue that became known as “what happens below stairs.” Although that sort of thing didn’t happen often on this side of the pond, I hoped that some member or members of the staff had picked up on something, even if they didn’t know it.
At a kitchen table tucked into its own nook (mentally, I placed a further wager that Mrs. Glover had never stooped to using it), a female white mouse of perhaps twenty-some years sat almost as stiffly as did the white collar of her traditionally-designed gray housekeeper’s uniform. Her furless tail was still, her eyes clear; I figured that the tension was partly due to her not understanding why she was there, and partly shock over hearing of her employer’s death. Sitting with her, an older female panther in a similar gray uniform held the mouse’s forepaw in gentle commiseration. The feline had been there longer, both in terms of service and in terms of who had arrived first that day; the cook would no doubt have been in to prepare breakfast for her employers, and it was she who had kept the coffee pot going.
No matter how quiet I thought my approach, the feline’s ears pegged me before I was halfway across. She looked up first, followed by the mouse. I introduced myself, took out the shield to make it official. The panther took up the duties. “I’m Bessie Long, the cook; this is our housekeeper, Allison Doyle. An officer told us to wait for you, ‘though the missus…”
I nodded. “She buzzed while I was there. I think she wants more coffee. I also told her that I had asked you to stay here until I saw you, so you aren’t to be blamed. Let me know if she says anything to the contrary.”
The panther rose with the fluid grace of her kind, a smile on her muzzle. “I’ll make a cup ready to take through. Saves time.”
“Let me ask the officer in the hall to take it through. It’s sort of a detective thing.” My smile was intended to take the sting out of it; instead, I noticed that it made the mouse at the table more nervous. I turned back toward the feline, who busied herself at the counter near the stove. “Does she often take this much coffee?”
“I think it’s to give herself something to hold on to that feels normal.” The comment was made with a distant compassion. She felt a responsibility toward her mistress, and she was herself compassionate, but not out of a closeness with this employer. The preparation of the brew was quick, made out of ingrained habit, almost without thinking.
“Is so much caffeine healthy for a bereaved tigress?”
“It’s been decaf after the first two cups; she hasn’t noticed.”
That got an appreciative nod from me, and I padded back to the door I had come in by. “Officer Padilla?” I called. “A favor from you.”
The big dog made his way through, nodding genially to the maid and the cook, who passed the cup and saucer to him. “Thanks for waiting on her ladyship,” the panther winked at him.
“Is that what I should call her?”
“For the sake of your tail, please don’t!” The cook laughed gently. “Just ‘Mrs. Glover’ is plenty.”
With an understanding smile, the Shep moved off to deliver the fresh, decaffeinated brew to the mistress of the household, without (I felt sure) supplying the honorific along with it. I wouldn’t have trusted Parsons with the job, if only because the pup would have spilled half of it before he’d gotten back to the living room.
The cook resumed her place next to the young maid, once more taking the younger female’s forepaw into her own. The mouse still had a quiver about her, one that most cops would think came from guilt. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but I also wagered they’d misinterpret it. I supposed it would have been a good time to bring out some charm, but I’d left it in my other overcoat.
“Did you have questions for us, Detective Luton?”
“Just a few, thank you. I’ve already been told that neither of you was here prior to Mrs. Glover telephoning nine-one-one; is that correct?”
“Yes.” At a gentle squeeze from the panther’s forepaw, the mouse nodded.
“I’m looking for information about the household in general, if that’s all right.” I indicated a bench across from them, and the cook waved me to it. As I sat, I took note of the view. The breakfast nook wasn’t in some dark enclosure; two sides of it were made of what appeared to be double-paned glass, looking out onto a meticulously-kept garden of seasonal succulents, or whatever they were called. I’m bright about a lot of things, but gardens, landscaping, even mowing a lawn was not among them. What I did know was that the view was beautiful. Spring may not have sprung, officially, but a lot of these flowers didn’t care.
“Ms. Long, may I ask when you arrived this morning?”
“When the kits are away at school, I’m told to get here to have breakfast ready by seven-thirty on weekdays,” she said, either from a practiced rehearsal or from having it ingrained for a number of years. “That’s for Mr. Glover; he gets to his office about nine, generally, and he usually keeps it simple. The missus, she could want just about anything, but her schedule is… flexible.”
I let the comment pass with a nod. “You arrived today at…?”
“Not quite seven.” Her yellow eyes were half-lidded. “I was stopped at the gates by an officer. He didn’t want to let me in, until the missus insisted. Word was passed by someone or other, I’m guessing.”
“So you were physically in the house at…?”
“Gettin’ on for seven-forty-five, I’d say. I had waited out front, to see if the missus wanted me sent home, and when she finally found out I was outside, she sent the word down. I was let in through the back door, like always. Started coffee. Don’t think she knows how to work the coffee pot.”
I allowed a small smile to agree with her. I took a breath, putting things into a mental timetable; it was creeping slowly toward ten-thirty now. “Are you here through the day, to cook other meals?”
“Weekdays, if the missus goes out, I can have the middle of the day to myself.” The panther leaned back a little, her tail making a lazy sort of twitch behind her. “If she’s here, I can do the grocery shopping after she’s done with breakfast. I get a list, most often, although I can stock up on things we use up regular. I get dinner ready for seven at night, and I can go home after I clean up.”
“Long days.”
“Pay’s okay. I have afternoons out, or take a nap in one of the guest rooms.”
“Lot of years?”
“Seven. Since they moved in here. I worked other big houses; this one’s ‘bout the same.”
I nodded, actually making notes for a change. “How was Mr. Glover to work for?” The panther looked cagy for a moment. “I’m not likely to talk to Mrs. Glover again, and I need to know all I can from you. This is between us.”
She nodded, although she still had some guard up. “He was always very reasonable.” The implication in her tone of voice was that “the missus” was not always so. “Simple tastes. Easy to cook for. Had some favorite recipes that he asked to be sprinkled in among more usual foods. Bad day at the office, he’d call to ask if it would be trouble to make a certain dish, and he was always very grateful for it. Didn’t use his buzzer if he could pad his way here. I’d tell him it was no trouble for me, and he’d say that he needed a chance to get away from his work for a few minutes while I fixed up some tea or cocoa for him. He’d sit at this table and talk to me.”
“Just talk?”
The yellow eyes turned on me, fully open and hostile. “Mr. Glover wasn’t like that.”
I held up a placating forepaw. “You know I had to ask.”
She paused, backed down from her boil. “Yeah, suppose you did. No, he wasn’t like that at all. He was just bein’ pleasant. He treated me like a cook, not a slave. He didn’t demand; he asked. Said that’s why he didn’t like the buzzer. Sounded to him like a scream, not just a signal.”
“You served dinner last night?”
“As always.”
“Anything special?”
“He didn’t ask for a special meal, if that’s what you mean.” The panther took stock of herself and the moment, getting my drift. Her face showed pain at the thought of it. “I have a trick with meatloaf that he liked, and it was a joke sometimes, ‘Meatloaf Monday,’ like we had it all the time. Just happened to fall…”
Her voice trailed off, and I waited a moment before asking gently, “How did he seem?”
“Quiet. Not so unusual; him and the missus didn’t talk much during meals, not for a long while. He was still polite, still turned a smile to me to thank me. It was… well, lookin’ back, it was…” She took a long breath. “Nothin’ I’d expect from that. Nothin’ made me think there was that much wrong.”
“It’s not something you can actually see, they tell us. Not something you could know.”
After a moment, the cook nodded a little. “Such a shame anyhow. He was a good furson. Treated me good.”
I nodded, then turned to the white mouse. “Ms. Doyle, what was he like to you?”
“Same.”
She continued to avoid my eyes. I put the pen and notepad back into my pocket and brought out my softest voice. “Ms. Doyle, are you all right?”
“A’course I am.”
I flicked a glance to the panther, who nodded and leaned a little closer to the mouse. “Allison, how about I make a cup of tea for us? I know you don’t much like coffee. How about you, Lieutenant? Which would you like?”
“Tea would be very nice, thank you. If Mrs. Glover decides she wants more than coffee, she can wait for it.”
The panther allowed herself the tiniest of smirks. She squeezed the mouse’s forepaw again and rose to tend to matters. I shifted, trying to make myself look as casual as possible. “Ms. Doyle, how long have you been working for the Glovers?”
“Three years.”
“That’s time enough to develop some loyalties. I promise I’m not here to dig up dirt or anything. Must seem like it; cops always have ulterior motives, don’t they?”
An involuntary darting of the eyes told me that I’d struck home. Behind me, I heard the panther getting water from the filtered tap to make the tea. Her movements were efficient, and I had solid reason to think that her ears were trained on my every word.
“Ms. Doyle… may I call you Allison?”
She nodded curtly.
“Allison, would you tell me what it was?” She didn’t answer, although her tail shook once through before she could stop it. “You appear rather young. I’m thinking it was a time ago, probably juvenile, so the records are sealed. I promise you, I’m not here to expose anything. Please answer one thing. Look at me at tell me that you’ve had no trouble since.”
She turned her terrified, defiant eyes on me, but still she wouldn’t or couldn’t speak.
“You’re in a position of trust in this household, and you’re worried about losing your job. You won’t, not if I have anything to say about it. Allison, I won’t hold this over your head. I need you to trust me, trust that you can talk to me in confidence, and I’m guessing you haven’t been able to trust that before. Not with a cop.”
The older female returned to the table and reached out for the younger’s forepaw again. “Allie… I won’t let him hurt you. I think maybe we can trust him. If he throws anything to the missus, I’ll call him a liar to his face.”
I smiled a little. “And I’d deserve it, too.”
The young mouse let fly with a kind of laugh that sounded more like a frightened snort, but she managed to loosen up a bit. “Took a car,” she managed.
“Like a joy ride?”
She shook her head. “Had to get away from him. He… he would…”
“I think I understand. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“I hope juvie was better to you than he was.”
A tiny smile emerged. “Not by much.”
I chuckled softly, then looked to the panther. “That’s why you defended Mr. Glover so firmly.”
She nodded. “He wasn’t like that, not to us, not to anyone I ever saw. The records on Allie were sealed, but she wanted to come clean with him when she answered for the job. It was considered GTA, so the files said nothin’ about the beatings that damned rat gave her. Mr. Glover, he got the whole story from her, gently. Never did anything, just took her forepaw as she got to crying, offered her the job on the spot. Called me in, told me the whole story, told me I was to help watch after her, in case she got any flak from anyone — ground crew, guests, the kits, his missus, anyone. He wasn’t no saint, but he was fair.”
“Then help me find out what happened to him.”
The tea kettle began to whistle as the panther nodded. She gave a squeeze to the mouse’s forepaw again and rose to finish preparing the tea. After a long moment, the young housekeeper managed a small sigh and nodded as well. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“Thank you, Allison. I’ll try not to be such a damn cop.”
Despite herself, the mouse giggled (nervously but rather cutely, I thought), and I smiled with what I hoped would be viewed as non-predatory encouragement. I’ve been told, by a few females in my day, that my eyes had a certain quality that they described as “seductively needful.” Apparently, what I had thought of as being a sympathetic look had some tinge of lustful predation to it. I made an effort to keep my ears at a friendly angle and my tail still. I would have had no designs on any female so young, but particularly not one who’d suffered abuse, and at such an early age, and doubly so not one who was connected to a case.
“Let’s start with the easy stuff. What time did you get here today?”
“About eight-thirty. Bus was a little early today.”
“That’s strange by itself!” I smiled, hoping to keep the ice breaking. The smile she gave me made me think it was working. “Which is your stop, to get here?”
“Tolbert Street, about three blocks. Guess I’m still sort of on winter schedules.” She must have registered my confused look. “If the streets and sidewalks are icy, I walk slower. Don’t want to slip.”
“Neither would I. Good thinking. So, about two hours ago?” She nodded. “You were stopped at the gate too?”
“Yes, sir. I was told—”
“Allison, would you like to call me Max?”
A pause. “If you wanted.”
Too far. “It’s just that ‘sir’ makes me feel old.” I smiled again. “Not a problem. What were you told at the gate?”
“They didn’t say much, just called up to the house to make sure I was supposed to be here. Bessie told me what happened.”
I wanted to tell her that it took some guts to face down a bunch of cops, given her experience, but that might also be too far. Sometimes, I can actually figure out that it’s better for me to keep my tongue behind my teeth. “So you usually get here about eight-thirty?”
“Ish,” she said. “Usually, Bessie’s the only one who notices.”
“I ain’t your time clock,” the panther smiled. She set down a tray bearing three mugs of hot water, offered me a china bowl with several types of teas in individual bags. “Sorry for the ‘instant’ treatment, but I didn’t know how much time you wanted to spend here. I’ll fix real tea for you sometime.” She sat, smiling at the mouse, then turned back to me. “Allison’s most flexible between us, probably. The missus doesn’t want to be disturbed by the cleaning up, so it’s the upstairs done anytime after nine, downstairs after lunch.”
“Does that include Mr. Glover’s library?”
The mouse nodded. “His study, yes sir… urm, yes.”
I kept the smile soft as I selected a packet of Constant Comment. Just opening it released the scent of spices into the air. I can be a slave to my nose. So sue me. I took out the bag, put it into the cup, let it soak and sink into the mug to do its work. “Did Mr. Glover ever work from home, Allison?”
“Sometimes.”
“Recently?”
She paused, taking a packet almost at random, as if wanting something to do with her paws. As the panther selected Earl Gray, silently encouraging her again, the mouse found her tongue. “A few days this past week, and he was here yesterday.”
“He didn’t go to the office yesterday?”
“I think maybe he did in the morning, but he came back, or maybe he didn’t go after all. Anyway, he was there in the afternoon when I came in to clean. I think I…” The moment stretched. “I think I interrupted him.”
“What makes you think that, Allison?”
“I didn’t expect him to be there, see, and I just walked in.”
“The door was unlocked?”
“Yes.” She squirmed, her round ears splaying a little. “I usually knock, just to be sure, but yesterday, I was distracted.”
“Music?” the panther asked, and the younger female nodded. The cook looked back at me with a smile. “When Mr. Glover and the missus are out of the house, I let her listen to her music box, whatever it’s called these days.”
“My phone,” the mouse blushed. “I stream music on it, and I’d gotten new songs this week, so I was listening to them.”
“Must be good tunes,” I agreed. “Was Mr. Glover upset?”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t like that…” She paused, looked embarrassed. “Well, he wasn’t… I mean, not usually, and not yesterday either. But it was…”
I nodded encouragement. “Just tell me what happened, Allison.”
One last hesitation, a flick of an ear, and the mouse plunged in. “It just felt different. I mean, I’d goofed up before, and he was pretty good about it, but he was always… usually, he smiled, being nice, as if he didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. This time, it was like he was sad. I apologized all over myself, and he said don’t worry about it. He looked like he was going to ask me something, and then he stopped. He just looked at all the papers on his desk.”
“Could you see what they were? I mean, if they’re just lying there, in plain view…”
“Not to read, no, but… well, you know how lawyers seem to have papers tucked into a piece of blue paper, so that it’s all stapled at the top?”
“Yes. I think they’re called ‘legal covers,’ and a lot of firms use blue or beige. It’s meant to look professional, I think.” I finished dunking my teabag, the liquid in the cup seeming about the right color. “It does stand out, though; you can tell at a glance that it’s supposed to be a legal brief of some kind or other. Were there a lot of them on his desk?”
“That’s the thing, see. Other times, I could see maybe three, four, a half-dozen of them, scattered around. There was only one, and it was over to one side. He was looking at something else, papers in that old-time plastic-backed binding, what’s it called?”
I thought back to self-bound sheafs of paper from clubs and some official offices back before emails, PDFs, all the electronic abolition of dead trees. “Comb binding?”
“That’s it.” She nodded vigorously, her eyes bright, her ears forward. “When I walked in, he closed it up.”
“Like he was trying to hide it?”
“Well, not really, I mean, he didn’t do it fast, like he was ashamed of it or something. He kept a finger in the place where he’d stopped reading, or I guess so. And he wasn’t sharp with me or anything, so it’s not like he was reading porn or something, like some males would do. I asked him if he wanted me to come back later, and he said tomorrow.” She paused, frowning, blinking a little.
“Allison?”
“Sorry,” she flinched a little. “Just… I don’t know if…” She shook her head, trying not to smile. “I know, I know — anything could be important. Like on the TV shows.”
I nodded, smiling gently at her. “Yeah. It’s corny, but it’s true. What were you going to say?”
“Well, he said it twice. ‘Tomorrow.’ The first time, it was like he was just giving me information, as though he’d said the whole sentence, like, ‘Come back tomorrow.’ And then he looked away from me, and he smiled a little, and he said it softer. ‘Tomorrow.’ Like he was thinking about…”
The mouse shuddered once through, violently enough to bump the table and jostle the mugs a little. Bessie reached across, taking Allison’s forepaws in her own, shushing and holding tightly. “You couldn’t have known, Allison. Don’t you take that on, hun; it’s nothin’ you done.”
“No, it isn’t,” I agreed.
“I know, I know,” she said, her muzzle quivering. “It’s just… remembering like that. It feels like maybe I should have known, like…” She stopped again, squeezing the panther’s forepaws, regaining herself slowly. I remembered my thoughts about her having courage, and I adjusted them up a notch. I waited until she had gathered herself enough to nod, release her grip on Bessie, and moved to sweeten up her tea with honey. After she’d had a fortifying sip, she nodded once more and looked at me with a more steady gaze.
“Shall we just enjoy tea for a bit?” I asked gently.
“Only if you’re done with questions.”
“Just one last one, if I may.” Her smile was strong again. “Could you read the title on that comb-bound volume?”
“Not all of it,” she admitted. “His forepaw was over a lot of it. I thought I saw the word ‘Manifest,’ like maybe it was some kind of inventory or something.” The young mouse sat up just a little straighter. “Got my GED.”
“And scored high, I’m sure.” I raised my mug in salute, and the two females returned it gently. I let the flavors of orange and sweet spices dance on my tongue as my mind tried to imagine what a real estate lawyer trying to evict squatters would need an inventory of, much less how or why it would be linked to his murder.
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