The door opened, and at first I thought no one was there. Then I glanced down and saw a tiny, frightened maid looking up at me. She was so short that I found myself wondering for a moment if she qualified as a little person.
“Meg Langslow to see Mrs. Winkleson,” I said.
She backed away from the door, pointing toward the archway to the living room, and then turned and fled.
It couldn’t possibly be what I’d said, and I thought I’d managed to keep my voice calm and civil. Did my face look that stern? Or had Mrs. Winkleson’s high-handed treatment of her staff rendered them as easily startled as the fainting goats?
“Ridiculous!” Mrs. Winkleson bellowed. I confess, I jumped myself, before I realized that she wasn’t even in the room with me.
“It’s not ridiculous, and I won’t keep quiet any longer,” said another woman’s voice.
“If you dare say that in public, I’ll sue you for every penny you have! I’ll ruin you!”
“Sue away.” I didn’t recognize the second voice. It was softer than Mrs. Winkleson’s, but you could tell she was angry. “Every penny I have wouldn’t begin to pay your lawyers’ fees. I’m tired of covering this up. And if I went public with it, you’d be the one ruined.”
Their voices were coming from the living room. The maid had waved toward it. Should I go in? I was dying to see who Mrs. Winkleson was arguing with, but then again, I’d probably learn more by eavesdropping from here in the hall.
Too late.
“I must insist that you leave my house!” Mrs. Winkleson said. I heard the brisk tapping of her shoes on the marble floors as she headed for the front door.
I didn’t particularly want her to know I’d heard the quarrel. I opened the door, ducked outside, and shut it behind me. Then I waited a couple of seconds and rang the bell again.
After a few more seconds, Mrs. Winkleson answered the door.
Chapter 14
“Yes?” Mrs. Winkleson said. She didn’t look happy to see me. Of course, Mrs. Winkleson never looked particularly happy to see anyone, but she looked even less happy than usual.
“May I come in?” I was using my most icily polite tone. Rob called this the Mother voice.
She hesitated for a few moments, and glanced back. Then she opened the door.
I stepped in, and looked around to see if whoever she’d been quarreling with was still here. No such luck. I did see the tiny maid pop out of the usual door and stare at me for a few seconds in puzzlement before she disappeared back into the door. A few seconds later the butler popped out to stare in her place.
“So sorry to bother you, but I think there’s been a miscommunication,” I said.
“Can we discuss this later?” she asked. She seemed uncharacteristically anxious.
“Your staff don’t seem to have gotten the message to leave the gate open for the arriving volunteers,” I continued. “My brother is standing there with an official list of volunteers, to make sure no unauthorized people come in. But whoever’s in charge of the gate keeps shutting it, and he has to call up to the house every time—”
“Fine,” she said. “Marston— deal with it.”
She strode out through a door on the same side of the foyer as the servants’ door, slamming it behind her. I glanced at the butler.
“You’re Marston, I assume,” I said.
“Technically no, madam,” he said. “But that’s what she likes to call me.”
His rich, deep voice sounded slightly incongruous coming from someone barely five feet tall. He had a faint accent, so faint I couldn’t be sure what it was. Hispanic? Slavic? All I could say for sure was that he wasn’t from around here.
He walked across the foyer, and I followed him, glancing into the living room as I passed the wide opening. No one there. Apparently whoever Mrs. Winkleson had been arguing with had slipped out before she opened the door to let me in.
Marston opened a door to what I would have assumed was a coat closet. Inside I saw the gleaming components of a very modern security system. A pair of computers occupied most of a shelf spanning the width of the closet. On one of the monitors, I saw a grainy view of the front gate. There were five cars lined up at the gate, and for all I knew there could be others behind them, off camera. A damp human figure, hunched against the steady rain, was standing beside the driver’s window of the lead car, talking to its occupant. Then the figure turned around and pushed the intercom button again. Rob, of course.
“Hello?” he said, into the intercom. “Anyone there?”
Marston shook his head and pressed a button on the wall, just inside the closet door. The gate began slowly swinging inward.