Christmas is Murder Read Online Free Page B

body.”
    “Aye, though I’m no medical examiner. You’d know more about the effects of poisoning than I, so I’m just going to have to take your word for it until we can get a drug screen report.”
    “A heart attack wouldn’t have caused frothing at the mouth,” Charley insisted.
    Rex made a mental note to sound out the other guests about how Lawdry looked at the time of death. “It is a wee bit suspicious,” he agreed. “Perhaps I should ask Mrs. Smithings about the staff.”
    “I wish you would because I’ve been a bit off my food, wondering if arsenic’s going to turn up in the soup. Know what I mean?”
    The same thought was beginning to occur to Rex, and he had been so looking forward to a proper Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
    There was no time to lose. If Charley was right, they had to find out why and how the old man ended up with a poisoned iced tart.

Leaving Charley at the honeymoon suite, Rex went back down to the foyer and knocked at the parlor-office door. Without waiting for a response, he entered a room formally and abundantly furnished in the Victorian tradition—upholstered sofas in burgundy velvet and ornate mahogany tables, every available surface crammed with Oriental vases, statuettes, and framed photographs.
    Over the mantelpiece hung a curved Gurkha knife with a stitched leather scabbard that Rex remembered from childhood. The thin form of Mrs. Smithings bent over a ball-and-claw footed writing desk, an Edwardian cradle phone within her reach. With an expression of vague annoyance, she looked up at him from above a pair of reading spectacles perched on her aquiline nose.
    “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he apologized. “I came to discuss the matter of your deceased guest.”
    Mrs. Smithings sat upright. “Well, you had better shut the door and sit down.”
    Rex did so. “The long and the short of it is that Charley Perkins, who is a paramedic, thought he noticed some irregularities concerning Henry Lawdry’s death.”
    “I see.”
    “He appears convinced the old man was poisoned by a dose of cyanide that somehow found its way into his almond tart.”
    “Preposterous.”
    “So it would seem, but I thought it prudent to advise you, in the remote event it might be true. Now, is there any member of your staff capable of committing such an act?”
    “The very idea!”
    “Mrs. Smithings, I know how hard it must be for you to even consider such a thing, but I must warn you: Charley Perkins intends going to the police with this. If there are grounds for his allegations, it would not look well if we were seen to be remiss in taking the appropriate action.”
    Rex knew he sounded pompous, but Mrs. Smithings had that effect on him. A fax machine stashed in her desk whirred and beeped incongruously.
    “What do you propose we do?” she asked.
    “I’d like to interview the staff—discreetly, of course. And I suggest that no more tarts be made available for consumption.”
    “There are no more,” Mrs. Smithings replied archly.
    “When were they baked?”
    “Yesterday after lunch. Please proceed with caution, Reginald. Any suspicion of a scandal would bode ill for my business.”
    “I quite understand. Can you tell me who was in the kitchen yesterday?”
    “The cook, naturally. Sandy Bellows has been with me for six years. Louise comes in from the village to clean, but was unable to yesterday and today due to the snow. Mrs. Bellows, who starts early to prepare breakfast, arrived yesterday before the worst of the weather. Rosie Porter is in and out of the kitchen. Her duties mainly entail waiting upon the guests. She lives in.”
    Rex was well aware of Rosie, who’d brought in the tea earlier. Hard not to notice the sloe-eyed, dark-haired beauty with cheeks red as apples. She was the sort of girl who brought to mind such bawdy expressions as “comely wench” and “tumbling in the hay”—and visions of bosomy rollicking behind the hawthorn hedge of a May evening