Christmas is Murder Read Free Page A

clothes. Down to his last breath, he barely managed to gasp a greeting in reply as icy flakes stung his cheeks. Just a few more steps and he would finally, finally arrive.
    “What on earth are those contraptions on your feet?” Mrs. Smithings asked. “Oh, I must say, how very resourceful of you. You must have trekked the two miles from the station.”
    “I was hoping to play tennis while I was here,” Rex explained haltingly, recovering his breath on the doorstep. “I remembered playing on the lawn court. I never anticipated all this snow.”
    So far, Mrs. Smithings had not noticed the puppy whose black muzzle peeked from his coat pocket, and Rex decided it was just as well, certain there was a no pets policy at the hotel.
    “No, the snow is most unusual,” she agreed. “The weather is going to the dogs, just like everything else in this country. Cliff-ORD! Where is that beastly man when I need him? Clifford, there you are. Take this gentleman’s suitcase up to the green paisley room.”
    Rex’s gaze landed upon an old man in tattered tweed whose face looked as though it had been hewn out of bark.
    “Wot, carry it up all them stairs?” Clifford asked Mrs. Smithings, cupping his ear as if he couldn’t be hearing correctly.
    “Do you have a better idea how to get it up there?”
    He stared hard at Rex unstrapping his makeshift snowshoes, clearly trying to convey to his employer that the new guest was three times his strength and size, and she must be blind and half-witted not to notice.
    “Clifford, you are worse than useless. Then perhaps you can carry the racquets and that bag he has over his shoulder.” Mrs. Smithings closed the front door and addressed Rex. “Whatever you do, don’t tip him like our American guest does. That will only encourage his idleness. I will show you your room. Tea is at four-thirty in the drawing room. Do you recall where that is?”
    Rex glanced past the staircase to the end of a passage to his right where a set of French doors stood open, releasing the sound of desultory chatter.
    “Aye, not much seems to have changed since I was a lad.” Except that the manor had shrunk and wore a stiff and outmoded look, he thought.
    “Well, Clifford, as you can see, is immensely changed in that he is more useless than ever. I only keep him on because he has been with the family so long, and his father before him.”
    Clifford trailed behind them up the stairs, Mrs. Smithings leading the way. Rex wondered if Clifford’s feelings had been hurt by her insensitive remarks, but fortunately, the old man didn’t appear to hear very well.
    “There have been changes made upstairs,” she continued. “We added bathrooms. All the suites are taken, but as Mr. Lawdry is no longer with us, you will have the men’s bathroom to yourself. Rosie put a pile of fresh towels in there for your use.”
    The staircase angled to the left upon a short gallery, then left again, climbing to a first-story landing, which forked in opposite directions. Mrs. Smithings led Rex to his room in the west wing.
    “This will do me fine,” Rex said, glancing around at the Victorian furniture and hand-stitched quilt embracing a brass four-poster bed. The window overlooked the driveway, the impressions made in the snow by his racquets already losing definition as flakes white and chaste as communion wafers floated down past the panes and superimposed their predecessors on the ground below. Even as he watched, the flurries thickened and picked up a furious pace.
    “The heating is on,” Mrs. Smithings said behind him, “but you may light the fire in the grate if you wish. Thank you, Clifford. Now go and ask Cook if she needs your dubious help in the kitchen.”
    She waited until Clifford was out of earshot and then turned to Rex. “I’m afraid we lost one of our guests,” she told him. “A Mr. Henry Lawdry.”
    “Lost him?” Rex asked, imagining him having taken a wrong turn somewhere on the estate and disappearing