Chapter Fifty-Four #2
“Tracy had threatened to tell Pippa everything, which surely would give Stanley a reason to want her dead,” Wyatt says.
“She had even set a deadline, after which if he didn’t confess everything to his wife, she would tell her herself.
But before Tracy got the chance, Stanley admitted everything to Pippa.
In penance, he took her away to Clitheridge Spa for the weekend, where they were the night that Tracy was killed. ”
Pippa looks around the room with smug satisfaction. She kicks Stanley, who looks up from his drink for a moment and then downs the rest of it in one go.
“This leaves us with the least obvious person of all, the person without an apparent motive to kill Tracy Penny.” Wyatt is walking back toward Lady Blanders.
“Lady Magnolia Blanders did not plan to have her hair done by Tracy Penny. She had never been to Hairs Looking at You and only went there because of a fashion emergency. Like many of you, when Lady Blanders entered the salon, she would have seen the photographs on the walls. But the one that caught her eye, and alarmed her, was a framed magazine article about a riding school that included a full-page photograph of Tracy holding the bridle of a pony on which sat a small child with red hair. A girl, according to the caption, named Ambrosia. When Lady Blanders saw this photograph, she knew she had to act. It was because of this child that Lady Blanders made monthly visits to Sproton House in Whitby—not for spa treatments as she’d claimed, but to see the child she had hidden away in an institution after meeting Lord Blanders. ”
The audience breaks into exclamations of shock and confusion.
“Yes, that is the sad story. Lady Blanders had put her first child, born with a disability, into a home for children, the same home that took its residents for equine therapy at Whitby Stables, where Tracy Penny had worked. In terror that Tracy would remember seeing her at the stable, where she often went to visit her daughter, Lady Blanders came up with a plan.”
“I had no choice, I was in a panic,” Lady Blanders says.
“Tracy kept saying I looked familiar. I couldn’t risk it.
You don’t know my husband. He annulled his first marriage because his wife couldn’t produce an heir.
He wouldn’t have married me if he’d known about Ambrosia.
It was him or her, and I chose him. And now I was trapped.
If he found out I’d been lying all these years, he’d leave me and he’d take our boys. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Ah, thank you for the confession, Your Ladyship,” Wyatt says. “It adds to the convincing proof we already have gathered.”
“How’d you figure it out?” Bix asks.
“Listen to the story,” Amity says serenely. “All will be revealed.”
“The first clue,” Wyatt says, “was Lady Blanders’s bracelet.
She poured tea for all those who questioned her, did she not?
And she poured magnificently, lifting her arm, making sure that her bracelet caught the light.
Her bracelet with letter charms— A, B , and C .
At first, we thought them meaningless, just an indulgence, the work of a Swedish designer who Lady Blanders admired.
But then Lady Blanders mentioned her sons, Benedict and Charles.
Together, they account for the B and C on the bracelet.
But what about the A ? When asked about children, Lady Blanders said only that she had two sons.
She said nothing about a third child, because that was her deepest, darkest secret.
The third child was the daughter sent to a children’s home in Whitby.
A little redheaded girl who looked strikingly like Magnolia Blanders. Ambrosia. The missing A .”
The crowd bursts into applause. When it quiets down, Wyatt turns toward Lady Blanders. “Your Ladyship, would you like to tell us how you killed Tracy Penny?”
“I would prefer to consult with a solicitor.”
“Then I will proceed,” Wyatt says. “First, she made sure she had a solid alibi, dinner here at the King George Inn with her dear friend Demetra Sissington.”
“Dissy,” Lady Blanders says.
“She also had an accomplice, her devoted maid, Gladys Crone, who had been with her for years, since before the marriage to Lord Blanders. Gladys was there when the daughter was born and sent off to the institution. She was loyal to her employer and wanted to protect her reputation. She would do anything for her. Even get on a horse.”
“Of course!” shouts Naomi.
“Lady Blanders went to dinner by car, as she said, to meet Sissy,” Wyatt says.
“Dissy!” several people shout.
“She dined on snails, also as she said,” Wyatt continues.
“But during dinner, according to the ma?tre d’, she excused herself to go to the loo.
A normal enough occurrence, except for the fact that she was there for quite some time.
Long enough for the ma?tre d’ to worry that the restaurant might have given her food poisoning.
Thankfully, Lady Blanders returned to the table, not looking pale at all.
She even looked quite flushed. By which I mean, very flushed.
” Wyatt gives me a wink. He weaves through the crowd and stops inches from Lady Blanders, who, other than a delicately raised eyebrow, doesn’t flinch. Wyatt continues.
“It’s not surprising that Lady Blanders was flushed, because she had not been in the lavatory but had gone on an adventure.
She had slipped out the back of the restaurant, where she met her devoted maid, who had come from Hadley Hall on horseback, with the murder weapon in the saddlebag.
The maid got off the horse, and Lady Blanders got on.
She rode along the footpath that goes behind the shops to Tracy’s building.
There, she banged on the back door for Tracy to open up.
Inside, Lady Blanders hit Tracy once, knocking her unconscious.
Then, to protect herself from spattered blood, she donned a plastic face shield, also brought in the saddlebag and smuggled into the salon, and one of the black nylon robes, and bludgeoned Tracy Penny to death.
She then manipulated the crime scene to make it look like a man had been at the salon after her that afternoon.
She left an extra-large robe on the back of the chair, and on the counter left a bowl of shaving foam and a brush.
She washed the plastic face shield in the sink and put the robe in the washing machine and turned it on. ”
“How about that, a toff like her knowing how to do the wash,” Dinda says with a smirk.
“Oh, Lady Blanders was very clever,” Wyatt says.
“Almost clever enough. When she was set to leave the salon, she bolted the back door from the inside and took one of the large black umbrellas that Tracy kept for clients who didn’t want their new hairdos ruined by the rain.
She opened the umbrella and let it shield her from view as she left via the front door, no doubt unaware that she had been spotted from across the street by Edwina Flasher, who assumed that the tall person hiding behind the big umbrella was a man.
It was a stroke of luck for Lady Blanders that Edwina Flasher, who had been sitting in her living room, had left her glasses upstairs and was too nearsighted to realize that the tall person behind the umbrella was a woman.
Lady Blanders walked down the alley to the back of the building, got on her horse, and galloped back on the footpath to the restaurant.
At the King George, Lady Blanders dismounted, and Gladys got on the horse and rode back to Hadley Hall, which explains the maid’s noticeably stiff, bowlegged walk on the following days. ”
“I thought she had a dodgy hip like me,” Naomi says. “It never occurred to me that it was a clue.”
“And it never occurred to Lady Blanders that she had left behind several clues,” Wyatt says.
“First, Lady Blanders put the black nylon robe in the washing machine to ensure that there would be no traces of blood on it. But the fact that the next day there was only one robe in the machine was suspicious, as surely the practice would have been to wash all the robes at the same time. She also left the plastic face shield in the sink, no doubt assuming that since it was clean it wouldn’t raise suspicion.
Which might make sense if Tracy was known to use face shields, which she was not.
Lady Blanders also failed to adequately hide either the umbrella that had shielded her upon her exit from the salon or the murder weapon, both of which she tossed in the bushes along the path.
And there was one crucial clue that was an unfortunate act of nature.
No doubt unbeknownst to Lady Blanders, her horse deposited a pile of manure on the path, which was immediately suspicious to the careful observer given that the path in question was clearly marked as a footpath, not a bridle path. ”
“Damn horse,” hisses Lady Blanders.
“Impressive,” Bix says, holding up his arms and clapping loudly. “Bravo!”
“Very smart indeed,” says Selina, looking dumbfounded.
“We’re not done yet,” Wyatt says. “We still need a murder weapon to clinch this case. And for that, I would like to thank Cath Little and Roland Wingford.”
Roland, who had been nodding off on the side of the room, perks up and smooths his tweed jacket.
“As you know, the autopsy results described but did not identify the murder weapon. But Cath’s careful reading of Roland Wingford’s detective novel Murder Afoot pointed her in the right direction.”
General surprise, with none looking more delighted than Roland Wingford himself, who turns red in the cheeks, either from pride or the realization that he might be a few pounds closer to earning a royalty on his book.
“By reading about the hero of the book, Cuddy Claptrop, Cath learned about a blacksmithing tool called a flatter that is shaped precisely as the mysterious murder weapon described in the autopsy report. A flatter may seem like an unlikely weapon for Lady Blanders to secure, unless you recall the conversation between Lady Blanders and her groom after her daily ride. He inquired about ‘the new shoes.’ He was referring, of course, to new horseshoes. Lady Blanders said they were fine and asked if Mr. Welch was finished ‘with the others.’ He was not; he still had other horses to shoe. Remembering this unusual detail, we visited the blacksmith, Mr. Welch.”
This version is not accurate, of course, but I appreciate Wyatt not bringing in my personal story and the truth of what led us to the blacksmith.
“Lo and behold,” Wyatt continues. “Mr. Welch was missing a flatter. And he revealed that none other than Gladys Crone, Lady Blanders’s devoted maid, had been hanging around his van in the late afternoon on the day of the murder.
A quick search in the bushes behind the salon and, voilà!
” Wyatt nods to Amity, who steps forward with a tote bag.
Wyatt takes the bag and, using his handkerchief, pulls out the tool.
As the crowd exclaims and applauds, he hands the murder weapon to Germaine, who takes it between two fingers as if she’s holding a dead mouse.
When the room is quiet, Wyatt says, “I’m quite sure that, upon testing, the traces of blood on the flatter will prove to be a match for the blood of Tracy Penny.”
Everyone is clapping and hooting, even Lady Magnolia Blanders and Mrs. Crone. Wyatt takes a bow. He is beaming and laughing and might even be a little teary. Amity hugs me tight. If I hadn’t cried so much in the past two days, I might be crying too.
Wyatt can’t stop smiling. He looks so proud and happy and like he’s just had the most fun of his life. I’m impressed with how he put it all together. And he was clearly born for the stage.
Lady Blanders asks to have a word. She goes up and takes the microphone.
“I am guilty, as charged,” she says, apparently back in character.
“What was I to do? I was crazed with fear that I would be exposed and would lose everything. I had to act quickly. Tracy was a hairdresser, for god’s sake.
She would gossip. I couldn’t take the risk.
I had no choice but to protect my reputation, my marriage, and my children. ”
This elicits much laughter and applause and shouts of “Boo!” from the crowd, at which point Lady Magnolia Blanders curtsies slowly, all the way to the floor. When she comes up, she is laughing too.