Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes) Read Online Free PDF Page A

hasn’t burned to the ground.”
    “It was rented off and on for a while,” I reminded her, “but the last tenants couldn’t afford to heat those big rooms. You remember my cousin Nellie Virginia, don’t you? Well, she told me her son Vance has shown an interest in Willowbrook, but of coursehe’s young and has no idea how much it would cost to keep it up. His mother thinks he’s crazy. Says he’s got his head in the clouds because he’s in love.”
    Nettie nodded. “Bless his heart, I hope his girlfriend has money.”

    My neighbor hadn’t been gone five minutes when Ellis phoned. “Got something to tell you,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Tell you when I get there. Just wait till you hear this! Need anything from the store? I have to stop by the market first.”
    “Why do you do this?” I asked. “You
always
do this, Ellis Saxon!”
    “Do what?” Innocence dripped from her voice.
    “You know very well what. You bait me with the promise of some tantalizing news, then leave me hanging while you go running—”
    But I was talking to a dial tone. Ellis had hung up.
    I was washing a handful of dishes a few minutes later when a gust of cold air ruffled the pages of a magazine on the kitchen table and Augusta, followed by our dog, Clementine, came in from their afternoon romp in the backyard. The magazine was one of those publications that featured an article on “How to Lose Ten Pounds in Ten Days” and a recipe for Christmas trifle with eggnog custard and whipped cream, both in the same issue. Augusta had seemed especially interested in the trifle.
    “I do believe it’s getting colder,” she said, hurrying to warm her hands by the sitting room fire. “Must have dropped ten degrees since morning.”
    I followed her and curled at one end of the sofa where Clementine reached up to nuzzle me with her frosty nose. “Colder thanyesterday?” I asked. “I think I was almost as cold as you were while we waited for the police to come. I wonder if they ever found out what that man was doing at Willowbrook.”
    “I don’t imagine it was for any good purpose,” she said, turning to warm her angelic behind. “I’m afraid we haven’t seen the end of the difficulties out there.”
    “Does that mean you saw something when you were inside?”
    She added a stick of firewood to the blaze. “Not at all.”
    “Augusta Goodnight! You’re every bit as exasperating as Ellis! I do believe you’re teasing me on purpose.” I told her about Ellis’s earlier telephone call.
    “Lucy Nan, you must know by now that I dislike leaping to conclusions.”
    Augusta sat on the rug with the big dog’s head in her lap and stroked the animal’s ears. If Clementine had been a cat she would have purred. “If I had
seen
something I would have told you.”
    “Ah,” I said. “But you
heard
something, didn’t you?”
    Augusta stared into the flames. Her long necklace of glittering stones reflected the blue and amber of the fire’s blaze. “I’m not sure,” she said finally.
    “What do you mean you’re not sure?”
    “It could have been a mouse—and old houses do creak.”
    “What’s this about a mouse? Should I jump up on a chair and scream?” Neither of us had heard Ellis enter by way of her usual route through the kitchen.
    “It would take more than a mouse to make you scream,” I told her. I had made up my mind I wasn’t going to mention her earlier hint of news.
    “We were referring to a noise I might have heard while I was inside the house at Willowbrook,” Augusta explained. “It was rather like a … scuttling sound as if someone were trying to keep quiet.”
    “Could you tell where it was coming from?” I asked.
    “I thought at first someone might be hiding in the room to the right of the stairway, but there was no one there,” she said. “It was almost as if it came from inside the wall.”
    Ellis brightened. “Really? How exciting!”
    I made room for Ellis on the sofa. “Mimmer used to say there