“No, actually,” Daisy said finally. “Our maid, Trinity, does it. She’s the one who normally serves at the table.”
“May I speak with the maid, please?” Hershey asked.
“Of course,” Bernard told him. “I shall fetch her myself.”
He disappeared for a moment then came back into the parlor with Trinity in tow. “The inspector has a few questions.”
“Yes. They tell me you are responsible for serving at the dinner table, yet last night the butler, Harold, obliged. Can you explain why there was a deviation?”
Trinity nodded. “Harold said I had a call upstairs. He knew the family was ready to eat, so he offered to serve for me, until my call was done.”
Hershey wrote down her statement. “And who was it? Who called?”
Araminta noticed she looked confused. “Well… no one, actually. By the time I got up to the land line that was installed years ago for the servants to use—it’s way up in the second-floor hallway, you know—they must have hung up, because when I answered, there was no one on the line.” She shrugged. “I hung it up and came back downstairs.”
There was a call for Trinity, but then no one was there when she answered it? Odd, Araminta thought. Unless that wasn’t what actually happened. She studied the maid, looking for anything that would hint at her words being untrue, because something just didn’t ring right with them.
Or maybe Harold had lied about the call. That would explain the line being dead when Trinity tried to answer.
But why, Araminta wondered, would either of the staff want Archie dead? “What about the food?” Inspector Hershey asked. “Was anything specially prepared only for Archibald? Something not consumed by anyone else?”
“No,” Trinity told him. “It was a celebratory dinner. Everyone ate the same food, and Mr. Moorecliff didn’t have any special requests.”
Ivan turned to Araminta. “We will need to have a look at the service used for dinner last night.”
Araminta nodded, but Trinity spoke up. “I don’t see how it would do any good, sir, as the service is always washed immediately after dinner. We take our duties quite seriously here, and despite the terrible event last night, we were sure to thoroughly clean each and every dish.”
Chapter Six
After the inspector left, Araminta went to Archibald’s study. It was the only room in the house with a computer.
“More questions than answers,” she said, though the room was empty of all but the cats.
Arun jumped up on the desk, walked over the keyboard, then settled in front of the monitor. Sasha chose her mistress’s lap. It was much comfier, and there, Araminta would pet her.
Araminta carefully lifted Arun and moved him to one side then opened a tab in the browser. Into the search bar, she typed one letter at a time: C-O-N-V-A-L-L-A-T-O-X-I-N.
“Well, would you look at that? It’s a poison that can be found in lily of the valley! You wanted me to go into the garden last night, and that was what you were trying to show me!” She cupped Arun’s face as she talked, her tone apologetic.
Arun’s answering meow indicated he would have rolled his eyes at her if he could.
Reading aloud a few more lines, she read that the toxin could also be found in the water in vases containing the flowers. She glanced nervously at the cats.
“Hopefully you two won’t eat those flowers or drink from the vases that have them.”
The cats blinked as if to let her know they weren’t that stupid. Of course they weren’t—they’d steered clear of the actual lily of the valley plants when they’d led her to the tree.
Thinking back, she remembered that while picking weeds from the garden last night, some of the white flowers had been missing—then she remembered Harold in the hallway earlier. Was there any lily of the valley in the arrangement Harold was perfecting this morning?
“No, I don’t recall seeing whites in there,” she said. Pressing her lips together, she drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk as she considered all the possibilities. “Very interesting.”
Araminta closed the tab then rose from the desk and looked around the study. Maybe someone had chopped up the lily of the valley and put it in Archie’s food, or perhaps they had used water from a vase or glass that held the flowers and mixed it into his food. They’d had beef and mashed potatoes. Had the mashed potatoes on Archie’s plate contained a fatal dose of the toxin? It couldn’t have been in the gravy, since that was placed on the table for everyone to use. Araminta tried to think back but couldn’t recall how much of the potatoes Archie had eaten.
“If they used a vase, maybe we can find it somewhere in the house. Looks like it’s up to us to figure out where it’s been hidden.”
The cats padded alongside her as Araminta visited many of the rooms in the manor, looking for a vase that contained the small white flowers. Hours later, Araminta felt defeated. The vase was nowhere to be found. But what they did find was curious as well.
In every room, whether cupboard, bookshelf, or mantel, there were clean, empty circles in the fine layer of dust, marking where something no longer sat but where several costly antique vases and other items that had been in the family for centuries were usually displayed.
“The Remington bronze, Great-Aunt Agatha’s silver creamer set, the Limoges vase mother bought in Paris. All of them are missing,” Araminta told the cats. There were several more items missing, too, all of them quite valuable. Not that it mattered. What was significant here was that there were too many things missing. “Now, where are all these missing items, and what do they have to do with Archie’s murder?”
Meow! Sasha looked at Araminta and twitched her tail.
Araminta gave her her full attention. “What have you found?”
A short hair was right in the dust-free spot where the sterling-silver vase rumored to have been made by Paul Revere used to sit. Yech. Could it be a clue, or was the cat simply alerting Araminta to the fact that Trinity was becoming slack in her duties?
Araminta knew that the killer had to have been in the dining room at dinner to make sure that Archie got the meal with the poison, so that left Trinity out. Or did it? Had she somehow managed to ensure Archie got the poisoned food without even being there? Certainly her absence from the room would provide her with an alibi of sorts.
There was only one way to find out. She needed to have a chat with Trinity.
Araminta found the maid seated at a small round table in the kitchen, cleaning the family’s silver. Her head was bent as she focused on the task. Though she had worked for the Moorecliffs for several years, she was a young woman. Her blond hair and peaches-and-cream complexion gave her a look of innocence. But Araminta knew from previous experience that sometimes those who looked innocent were anything but.
“I have a question about how the meals are served, if you don’t mind. Are you the one who places the servings on everyone’s plates?”
“No, that’d be Mary. She’s picky about portions, don’t you know? The meals are put together on the plates then kept warm in the kitchen until everyone is ready to be served. The meals are kept under silver domes and passed out at the table. Unless there is a roast to be carved at the table, that is. The side dishes come up with the food and are placed on the table the same way. I never touch the food.”