Michael tired of playing with the goggles quickly—after all, it was almost four o’clock in the morning—and we went back to sleep. I made sure my goggles and my shoes were handy, though. Spike was quiet now, and I doubted that whoever had tried to break into the shed would do it again tonight, but just in case.
Chapter Twenty-five
Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. Normally, I’d have taken the weatherman’s word for it, but I got to observe it firsthand, thanks to the Shiffleys, who began talking, laughing, and rattling pots and pans outside at 6:00 A.M. Only the fact that they were producing the most heavenly smells—of bacon, sausage, eggs, and, above all, coffee—saved me from demonstrating what an ungracious hostess I was, and even then it was touch-and-go.
Michael brought me some coffee and wisely left me alone until the caffeine could take effect.
If only everyone were that considerate.
“I’ve got the new mallets,” Mrs. Fenniman said, bursting into the stall when I was halfway through my mug. I looked up blearily. Yes, she was flourishing a pair of croquet mallets. How remiss of me, not spotting their usefulness as weapons before.
“That’s nice,” I said. “Who knows when we’ll get a chance to use them, though.”
“This afternoon,” she said. “Didn’t you get my message?”
“Message?”
“The chief said last night that he’d probably allow us to use the course this afternoon,” she said. She leaned one mallet against the side of the stall—mine, I deduced—and began taking practice swings with the other.
“Afternoon is six hours away,” I pointed out. “And didn’t he say ‘probably’?”
“Need to start working on our form,” she said, lining up an imaginary shot. Or maybe not so imaginary—was she about to roquet my travel alarm out of the barn?
“My form will be better if I get more sleep,” I said. “Or didn’t you hear what an exciting night we had? Someone kidnapped and shaved several of poor Mr. Early’s sheep. No telling what he’ll do if he ever finds out who’s responsible.”
“Hmph,” she said, abandoning her attack on my alarm clock. “You’ll thank me next time we tackle those walking wickets!”
“I thought we were going to finish the game on the cow pasture first,” I said. “Or replay it, if that’s what the rules require.”
“Probably replay it,” she said. “Unless the chief gets on the ball and arrests one of the Dames. You think that’s a possibility? I could drag my feet on getting the tournament started if there’s a good chance one of them will land in jail and they’d have to forfeit.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “No idea how likely. But you said there was no penalty for murder.”
“Yeah, but there is for not showing up.”
Of course. I closed my eyes, lay back as if returning to sleep, and hoped she’d take the hint. This was more family togetherness than I wanted before I’d finished my coffee.
“I’m rooting for Claire Wentworth as the culprit,” she said.
“Her rather than Mrs. Pruitt?” I asked, opening my eyes again in surprise.
“You think Mrs. Pruitt is more likely?”
“They’re both equally likely, as far as I can tell,” I said. “It’s just that most people find Mrs. Pruitt more annoying.”
“That’s only because most people see more of Mrs. Pruitt,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “Believe me, if you’d spent the whole afternoon hiking around a bog with Claire at your heels, you’d find her just as annoying.”
“No doubt,” I said. Then what she’d just said hit me.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean the whole afternoon? Were you and Mrs. Wentworth together that long?”
“From the second wicket, when she broke her mallet,” Mrs. Fenniman said. “That’s right, you’d forged ahead, you and Henrietta, and the rest of us were stuck on the second wicket. Now there’s a diabolical wicket, if I do say so myself.”
She beamed with pride. I didn’t argue with her. She’d placed the wicket on a small island in the middle of what would be, come summer, a babbling brook. This early in the spring, though, the brook was a mean gush of ice water, interrupted not only by hundreds of rocks but also by the exposed roots of a large oak tree that would topple when the running water had eroded another foot or so of the stream bank out from under it. I’d nearly broken my own mallet there.
“Diabolical,” I agreed. “So Mrs. Wentworth broke her mallet there? Didn’t she have a spare?”