Christmas is Murder Read Free Page B

into a snowdrift.
    “He died yesterday afternoon, of a stroke, apparently. He was very old. I thought I should mention it before one of the guests does. We called an ambulance but no one could get here. So I have locked him in room number four, next door, with the window wide open to preserve the body until someone can attend to it.”
    “How are the guests taking it?”
    “They are a trifle upset. He was a popular old gentleman, a decorated veteran.” Mrs. Smithings turned on a table lamp, dispelling the winter gloom. “We now have eight guests including yourself: Charles and Yvette Perkins, the newlyweds; two men from London in the interior design business; two ladies from Derbyshire holidaying together; and a New York literary agent by the name of Miriam Greenbaum. I shall make the formal introductions at tea.”
    She paused, gazing at Rex with a faraway look in her faded blue eyes. He wondered if she was remembering her son killed on active duty in Basra two years before. Rex had not seen him since he was last here, and hadn’t much wanted to, unable to keep up with young Rodney’s insatiable enthusiasm for shooting anything covered in feathers or fur—when he wasn’t busy peeping through the maids’ keyholes.
    “ Tempus fugit ,” Mrs. Smithings uttered wistfully, commenting on the all too swift passage of time.
    “ Ita vero ,” Rex agreed, already deploring his next birthday.
    “Keeping up with your Latin, I see. I suppose you need it in your profession. Your mother tells me you took silk a few years ago. Do you still prosecute?”
    “Aye, someone has to bring the criminals to justice. Just when I think I’ve heard what must surely be the last remaining mitigating plea ever to be dreamt up in someone’s defense, I am surprised anew.”
    The last one, which he was too modest to cite in present company, being the PMS plea. A lawyer had actually argued that his client never would have doused her deceiving husband’s membrum virile in lighter fluid and then set fire to it had she not been suffering from the hormonal effects of Aunt Flo’s impending visit.
    “Quite, but desperate times call for desperate measures,” Dahlia Smithings remarked as though reading his thoughts. She crossed to the door. “I trust you will have a pleasant stay, in spite of this infernal snow.”
    “I’m sure I shall,” Rex replied, bowing slightly as she left—at the same time wondering why he felt compelled to revert to such anachronistic behavior in her presence.
    Closing the door, he began unbundling himself of surplus clothing. Mercifully, the puppy was still asleep in his pocket. Rex planted himself at the oak washstand that would have held a bowl and pitcher prior to indoor plumbing and now accommodated a sink. As he smoothed down his beard and whiskers, he speculated on the pair of single women from north-central England and the American lady whom Mrs. Smithings had mentioned.
    He was not free per se— Mrs. Wilcox had fulfilled his bachelor needs quite satisfactorily since his wife passed away years before—and yet the company of women could add charm to a room. His mother’s absence from Edinburgh would have provided an ideal opportunity to spend Christmas with Mrs. Wilcox, but alas, she too had left on an errand of mercy. His brush hung in midair as he pondered what might have befallen Moira. Even if the phone lines were down in her part of Baghdad, she could have written to him or at a pinch sent an e-mail if she had access to a computer. He wished he could have managed to persuade her to stay, but Moira Wilcox was a very stubborn woman.
    The cold wind and exercise lent a ruddy glow to his already florid complexion, making the green of his eyes all the more vivid. Rex did not consider himself a vain man, but he believed in making the most of what God had seen fit to bestow upon him. Accordingly, he now donned the powder blue lamb’s wool sweater his mother had knitted, fretting as she always did about his