I stood by the wood stove for a few moments. I wasn’t looking forward to going back out in the drizzle, especially since I’d become used to the temperature in Mr. Darby’s overheated cocoon. And—
I suddenly caught a hint of a familiar smell. The sharp, metallic smell of blood. Was it coming from the stove? Or somewhere else in the room? Or—
After a few minutes of sniffing the air like a hyperactive beagle, I realized that the smell was coming from my own jeans. The rain had washed away most of the blood, except, I suppose, in the cuffs. When I stood by the stove, the heat brought the smell out more strongly.
I wasn’t going to find anything incriminating or useful here in Mr. Darby’s cottage. I decided to return to the barns by way of the house. I had a change of clothes in the trunk of my car. I made sure everything looked untouched, clicked the door knob button back to the locked position, and shut the door carefully behind me.
I only made two wrong turns on my way up to the house, and the swan had not returned to haunt my car. I grabbed my black pants and shirt from the trunk and trotted up the steps to ring the doorbell.
Marston answered and made no objection to my using the powder room off the foyer to change out of my bloodstained clothes.
“If you’d like us to launder the soiled garment, I would be happy to arrange that,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Tempting, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
I shed my jeans and T-shirt and looked to see if there was any blood on the underwear or skin beneath. I couldn’t see any, but then the light in the powder room wasn’t the greatest. Considering that this was where any guests would go if they wanted to check their hair and makeup, I’d have installed something brighter than a 25-watt bulb. But Mrs. Winkleson might not have many guests to worry about.
I’d also have gone for a different interpretation of the black and white color scheme. The black sink and toilet were a little hard to spot against the black tiles, black walls, and black ceiling. Even the mirror was black tinted glass that made me look like one of the undead.
It occurred to me that since the hand towels were also black, I didn’t need to worry about leaving stains on them. I grabbed one, drew a basin full of water, snagged the soap— where in the world had she found black soap?— and gave myself a quick scrub, just in case there was blood that I couldn’t see for the dim light.
As far as I could tell, I was bloodstain-free and looking reasonably presentable in my party gear. Of course, by party time my nice clothes would probably be damp and mud-spattered. The other party guests, the ones who hadn’t spent part of the day finding a blood-soaked stabbing victim, would have to overlook that.
I didn’t see a laundry hamper, so I placed the towels I’d used on the floor beside the sink, neatly folded. Knowing Mrs. Winkleson’s staff, I had no doubt that they’d be replaced with fresh ones within minutes of my departure.
I drove my car back to the barns and parked it near Horace’s truck. When I strolled into the goat barn, I found four volunteers there gathered around a box. They looked up when they saw me enter.
“Thank goodness you’re back!” one of them said. “We have a crisis!”
Chapter 23
A crisis? On top of a real or attempted murder? I braced myself as three of the volunteers surrounded me, waving copies of the show program.
“There’s a horrible typo in the program!” one of them shrieked.
“We’ll have to throw them away!” the second added,
“We should burn them!” the third exclaimed.
Molly Weston, the fourth volunteer, strolled up in a more leisurely fashion. She was the only one who didn’t look panic-stricken.
“There’s no time to print a new program,” she said, shrugging. “These will have to do.”
“There’s no need to throw away the whole program over a single typo,” I said. If there was only a single typo, I was going to award myself some kind of medal, since I’d done most of the proofing all by myself, despite many calls for help. “If it’s something that would confuse people, we can always run off some error sheets.”
“We can’t possibly use it,” one of them said. She held out her program, one finger pointing dramatically to a spot on the page. I read the entry in question: “Category 127: The Winkleson Trophy for the darkest rose grown or hybridized by the exhibitor. Trophy donated by Mrs. Philomena Wrinkleson.”
Oops. Old Wrinkles wasn’t going to like that.
A pity that instead of my suggestion of a one-page, black-and-white photocopied program they’d opted for a much longer, saddle-stitched booklet with a four-color picture of a rose on the cover. It was beautiful, but there was no way to do a reprint by tomorrow.