Murder Goes Mumming Read Free Page A

what’s put in front of me,” she replied in the prim Pitcherville way Madoc found so adorable. “We’ll be there on time if Madoc says we can. Now shouldn’t we be thinking about getting Lady Rhys to the airport?”
    They said their farewells to their prospective host and hostess, and set about getting Madoc’s mother out of her diamonds and into her traveling costume. While she was changing, Janet and Madoc telephoned up to Pitcherville. Annabelle was smug when Janet said she’d been wearing the beaver cape when Madoc put the ring on her finger and flabbergasted when she learned what sort of family Janet would be marrying into. Bert got on the phone amid great babble from the background and hoped his sister wouldn’t be too high and mighty to speak to her poor relations. Madoc said she damn well wouldn’t and Bert had better get set to catch him when he fainted at the wedding, and here was Mother to say hello.
    Thereupon, Lady Rhys said hello and a great deal more about how delighted she was that Madoc had found such a wonderful girl and what a credit Janet was to her upbringing, which of course was a most delicate compliment to Bert and Annabelle, who’d raised his younger sister since she’d been orphaned while still at school. At last they hung up in an atmosphere of long-distance bonhomie and went to the airport. The long taxi ride back was the best part of all.
    The next morning Janet was up betimes and, while she waited for Madoc to take her to breakfast, regaled her awestruck landlady with an account of how Lady Rhys had sung for the Queen Mum.
    They spent a long time over the meal, trying to have a serious discussion about the things they ought to be seriously considering and having to break off to say the things they really wanted to say. After that, Madoc took Janet to Birks.
    “I meant for us to pick out the ring today,” he explained. “Do you really like that one Mother gave us, or would you rather have something different? You’ll be wearing it for the rest of your life, you know.”
    “I know.”
    Janet gave him such a misty-eyed smile he was forced to kiss her right there on the sidewalk, to the delight of many Christmas shoppers and the Salvation Army lassie who was collecting donations on the corner.
    “I adore the ring, darling, and I wouldn’t dream of hurting your mother’s feelings by choosing another in its place. Why don’t you just buy me a nice, plain one to go with it?”
    So they picked out a wedding ring for Janet but not for Madoc because wedding rings were noticeable and in his line of work it was often better not to be. Then Madoc wanted to buy Janet some diamond earrings to go with her engagement ring, but she talked him into a string of pearls that would be modest enough for Pitcherville but elegant enough to wear before royalty should she ever have occasion, as it now seemed entirely possible she might.
    They then returned to get Madoc’s luggage and check him out of the hotel, retrieve his car from the garage, and swing around to collect Janet’s suitcase from her now totally overwhelmed landlady. At that point Janet gave Madoc the russet wool sweater she’d spent all fall knitting him because she couldn’t stand to wait till Christmas Day and he might as well have it to wear up at the Condryckes’ because goodness knew what the weather would be like up there. She herself wasn’t banking any too heavily on that old hot-air furnace and had packed her thermal underwear just in case.
    Then Madoc had to try on the sweater, which fitted him perfectly and made him look far handsomer than the pictures Lady Rhys had shown Janet of his famous brother Dafydd. What with one thing and another, they were impossibly late starting what would have been roughly a three-hundred-mile drive, so they drove the sixty-five miles to Fredericton, dropped in at RCMP Headquarters to receive general felicitations as well as sandwiches and mugs of tea gratis from the canteen, got rid of