The Butler Did It Read Online Free PDF Page A

for one. Packets of pins and needles, a well-worn darning knob, a full set of workmanlike scissors. That basket isn’t for show, I tell you. It has been used. That,” she said, “and the fact that her underclothes and nightwear are of sturdy, oft-mended spinster quality. Meaning,” she ended, looking to her daughter-in-law, “they were never meant to see a man, just a long, cold winter.”
    â€œSo you did sneak into her room and look in her drawers,” Daphne said, slowly catching up.
    â€œLooked at ’em, picked ’em up and inspected ’em,” Fanny said (as Emma gave in and began laughing), then downed the remainder of her port. “I had so hoped she’d been a streetwalker, even a kept woman. But she’s a demned seamstress, which makes her about as interesting as the mud fence she so greatly resembles. But I have hopes yet for Sir Edgar. There’s something about that man that screams out to be investigated.”
    Emma sobered. “Grandmama, you will not be looking at his drawers, understand? I won’t have it.”
    â€œAnd I’m not interested in his drawers. He’s older than dirt,” Fanny shot back. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry, gel. I just want to know our fellow tenants. Or are you looking to get murdered in your bed?”
    Emma sighed in the midst of picking up shards of very fine china cup and looked to her mother, who was going rather pale. “She doesn’t really mean that, Mama.”
    â€œYes, she does,” Fanny said, winking at her granddaughter. “There we’d be, dreaming sweet dreams, and bam, eternal rest, with sewing scissors sticking out from between our ribs. Or maybe a pillow over our heads, pressed there by Sir Edgar, who is really a bloody murderer who, even as we lay there, cold and dead as stones, spends the rest of the night going through our drawers.”
    â€œShe doesn’t really mean that, either, Mama,” Emmasaid as Daphne clutched an embroidered silk pillow to her ample bosom. “Grandmama, you’re impossible.”
    â€œAnd I pride myself on it,” Fanny said, standing up to go refill her glass. “Except, of course, you’re so easy, Daphne. I really wish you’d give me more incentive to tease you. But, then, I’ve got other fish to fry here in London, don’t I? And them I’ll tease to much better effect.”
    Emma laid the pieces of broken china on the tea tray and sat back once more, to stare in her grandmother’s direction. “What are you planning, Grandmama? We’ve got some funds left, but probably not enough to bribe your way out of the local guardhouse. And, come to think of it, we’d first need to take a family vote as to whether or not we’d wish to spend our last penny saving you. I’d consider that, Grandmama, as I know where my vote would go, and Cliff still hasn’t quite forgiven you for making him ride all the way here inside the coach with us.”
    â€œYou should both thank me for that. You know what would have happened if he rode up with the coachman. He’d have found some way to take the ribbons, and we’d all be dead in a ditch right now.”
    â€œDead, dead, dead,” Daphne lamented, still clutching the pillow. “Have you no other conversation today, Mother Clifford?”
    â€œI do, Daphne, but you don’t want to hear it. Now, Thornley told me that all social events have been postponed again because of this fog, which leaves us at looseends this evening, again. I’m bored to flinders, frankly, so what I thought was that we could corner Sir Edgar, all three of us, and press him for a bit of his history. You know. Where he was born, who his father was, why he keeps several extremely large, heavy trunks hidden behind the locked door of his dressing room. I saw them go up the stairs when he arrived, but they’re sitting nowhere they can be seen. He has to have