Chapter Nineteen
With such a response, there was nothing for it but to join the group at the next table.
“Hello,” Georgie said, a trifle sheepishly, hovering awkwardly behind Miss de Vere’s chair.
“Miss Radcliffe,” Miss Singh said, her smooth brow puckering. “Mr. Fletcher-Ford said that you were at home this evening? Doing—” She glanced around, then said in a stage whisper, “—important detective work.”
“Er,” Georgie said. “I was.”
“She wasn’t,” Sebastian said, at exactly the same time, and Georgie gave him a scathing look, which naturally he ignored. “The fact is, ladies,” he said, spreading his hands wide in a mea culpa sort of gesture, “you’ve been brought here under false pretenses.”
“We… have?” Miss de Vere looked perplexed, and Georgie honestly couldn’t blame her.
“I did not stumble across you by accident, as it seemed, but it was all part of a deliberate, forearm-forward attack.”
Miss Singh blushed. “I did think that was an awful lot of forearm to be showing on a Monday night.”
Miss de Vere looked at her inquiringly. “I’m sorry, when would be a more appropriate evening for Fletcher-Ford to be showcasing his forearms?”
“Thursday,” Miss Singh said promptly. “It’s the most licentious of the weekdays.”
“Fair enough,” Miss de Vere agreed.
“My forearms were to entice you!” Sebastian said, looking offended. “No woman can resist the sight of a man glistening appealingly with bared forearms!”
Miss de Vere and Miss Singh looked at him skeptically.
“Sebastian,” Georgie said, with what she personally thought was admirable patience, “could you please explain why you have undone a carefully laid plan for the sake of some alleged evidence that you believe I possess?”
Sebastian, with one last disapproving shake of his head at the Murder Tourists, turned to Georgie. “Georgie, do you recall anything about the letters we saw today, at Mrs. Penbaker’s?”
“Um.” Georgie considered. “There were an awful lot of them?”
“No.” Sebastian shook his head, frustrated. “The letters themselves. Did you notice anything about the type?”
Georgie considered; after a moment, it came to her. “The letter ‘O,’ ” she said slowly. “There was a… smudge, or something. Each time it was typed.”
“Exactly.” Sebastian nodded. “An irregularity with the key—it happens with typewriters, when they’ve been used for a while, they develop odd quirks. Fitzgibbons’s typewriter has a hook on the lowercase ‘g.’ ”
In unison, Miss Singh and Miss de Vere clapped their hands to their mouths. “Fitzgibbons?” Miss de Vere demanded. “As in, Delacey Fitzgibbons?”
Georgie sighed as Sebastian looked sheepishly at her. “You may as well tell them.”
“He is my employer,” he confessed to the Murder Tourists, who gasped again, even more dramatically.
“Then… you are not here on holiday at all!” Miss Singh said, looking entirely thrilled by this development.
“You are here to investigate!” She paused to consider.
“How fortunate, Miss Radcliffe, that you should have a family friend who is employed by a detective! Did he help you solve any of the previous cases?” She looked a bit disappointed at the notion that her heroine might have had outside assistance—and from a man, at that.
“Well,” Georgie hedged.
“I did not,” Sebastian said firmly. “Miss Radcliffe did all that detective work herself, with that admirable mind of hers.” Georgie glanced at him, but his attention was on the Murder Tourists, and he adopted a confessional sort of tone.
“And Miss Radcliffe and I might have exaggerated the extent of our family connection.”
“Exaggerated… by how much?” Miss Singh asked.
“Er.” Sebastian smiled winningly at her. “By implying that any existed whatsoever.”
Miss Singh clapped a shocked hand to her mouth yet again. “Then you are here in an official professional capacity?” Rather than looking betrayed to have been lied to, she looked—if possible—even more delighted by this development.
“Yes,” Miss de Vere said, eyeing Sebastian with a discerning gleam in her eye.
“Which means, when you tried to lure us into a pub using your masculine wiles, you were doing it as part of the investigation. Because—” Here, she broke off, looking more excited than Georgie had thought the sophisticated Miss de Vere was capable of looking. “Asha, he thought we were suspects!”
“It made sense!” Georgie said defensively. “You’ve been to visit multiple times, and you’ve been prattling on nonstop about The Deathly Dispatch, and you’re just… constantly underfoot. It didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility.”
“It does make a certain amount of sense,” Miss Singh agreed, looking absolutely elated. “This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me!” She clasped her hands together. “That would be a thrilling end to this story, I have to say. Do you mind if I steal it for my manuscript?”
“Manuscript?” Georgie said blankly.
Miss Singh nodded happily. “I’ve decided to try my hand at writing a novel of my own! There’s so much inspiration here!”
“Is that why you’ve been to visit so often?” Arthur asked; he was leaning against the edge of a neighboring booth, arms crossed over his chest, watching this entire scene with considerable entertainment.
Miss Singh and Miss de Vere exchanged a look.
“In part,” Miss Singh said. “I’d been considering making the culprit you, Miss Radcliffe,” she added, a bit apologetically.
“Or not you you, but an intrepid lady sleuth who wears sensible jumpers. But then I decided that it’s not really playing fair, is it, to have the detective be the murderer? Agatha Christie would never.”
“What was my motive going to be?” Georgie asked, curious in spite of herself.
“Continued employment!” Miss Singh said, looking pleased with herself. “Got to have a steady supply of murder victims to keep yourself earning a tidy income.”
“I am not earning an income,” Georgie pointed out.
“Oh.” Miss Singh’s face fell, but she rallied a moment later. “Well… you do it for the fame, then! The attention it brings you! You need people to continue being murdered so you don’t get pushed out of the limelight!”
“I do not think your lady detective has all that much in common with me,” Georgie said, feeling a headache coming on, then shook her head, looking at Sebastian. “If we could get back to the point—what’s the issue with the typewriter?”
“Well,” Sebastian said, “it occurred to me—that quirk on the ‘O’ from that typewriter looked familiar.”
“Familiar how?” Georgie asked.
“That’s what I’ve been wondering all afternoon—but Miss Singh has made me realize where I saw it: on the letter from the orphanage to the Mistletoe Murderer. It was on display at the village hall!”
Georgie stared at him, her mind racing; she dimly remembered, now, him making some sort of comment about a distinctive typewriter key on that letter, though she hadn’t paid it any attention at the time, dismissing it as more of his incessant babble.
But if the typewriter that produced that letter was the same typewriter that the Penbakers owned…
“Then either Mr. Penbaker or his wife sent that letter!” Georgie said excitedly. “And the typewriter would be evidence—and all those papers that Mrs. Penbaker was getting rid of, too!”
She and Sebastian stared at each other. Arthur had retrieved his notebook and was scribbling away feverishly, while the Murder Tourists were literally and figuratively on the edges of their seats, eyes wide.
“So the question is,” Sebastian said, his eyes still locked on hers, “whether Mr. or Mrs. Penbaker was the one who sent them.”
“Well, Mr. Penbaker is dead, Mr. Fletcher-Ford,” Miss Singh said very gently, as though worried about offending him.
“He is,” Georgie agreed. “Which doesn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t have anything to do with any of the previous cases, but which does rather beg the question—” She glanced over again at Arthur, whose pen at this point was moving so quickly it seemed in danger of levitating.
Sebastian finished her thought for her.
“Of whether his wife is the one who killed him.”