Read 5 Murder by Syllabub for Free Online Page A

body bent backward as if in agony. It wasn’t just any man. For one brief moment, I thought Aunt Mary had been right—it was George Washington. Of course it wasn’t, but this man was dressed in dark-blue knee pants tied just below the knees. Rumpled white hose showed above black buckled shoes. The blue jacket had long, wide skirts, now half wrapped around the corpse. A ruffled white fissure, only partly visible, was white at the throat, the ruffles stained yellow. Yellow stained the Oriental carpet under the head of the man as well. A small crystal glass lay beside his hand, its pale yellow contents mixed with what had once been the contents of his stomach. A blue tri-corner hat lay half under the table.
    No one spoke for a moment. I don’t think any of us could.
    Finally, Elizabeth said, “It’s the ghost. Only, it’s not. It really is Monty. What’s he doing here?”
    “I have no idea.” Cora Lee stared at the body, then at an array of small tapered glasses on the buffet. “Looks like he was having a party that didn’t turn out so well.” She took a step closer.
    “What are you talking about?” Elizabeth looked around the room, then back at the body. “Why would Monty have a party in the dining room? Cora Lee, what are you doing?”
    “ Making sure this time he’s dead. If this is who you saw in our upstairs hallway, he was no ghost. At least, he wasn’t then.”
    “You’re making sure by poking him with your cane?”
    “How else am I going to find out?”
    “If he was faking it, he wouldn’t be lying in all that.” Elizabeth shuddered and took a step back. “He’s dead all right.”
    “Hmm.” Cora Lee pulled her cane back and leaned on it, still staring at the body. “I guess you’re right.”
    I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing. The need to take a deep breath suddenly became strong. I gave in, to my immediate dismay. Knowing what the stench was somehow made it worse. Much worse. So did the realization of what must have happened. “Not much of a party with only two people.”
    “How do you know there was someone else?”
    “Elizabeth, we’re here because we saw a light through the front windows, a light that shouldn’t have been there. This person,” I gestured at the dead man, “is very dead, and has been for more than a few minutes, so someone else had to have been present. Unless, of course, you think he swallowed something lethal, walked around with a candle until he started to feel bad, blew it out and came in here to die.”
    “A very unlikely scenario. I see a glass but no candle.” Cora Lee’s voice was amazingly matter of fact.
    From where I stood, only the back of the dead man’s head was visible. His white wig, its hair tied neatly back with a dark blue ribbon, had slipped to one side, covering one ear and obscuring his face. If he had appeared in my hallway, I’d have been just as terrified as Elizabeth evidently had been. Only, he wasn’t in the hallway. He was in the dining room of what was supposed to be an empty house, with one small glass from a set lying on the floor beside him. I looked a little closer. It appeared to have contained some liquid, yellow and sticky, that had not agreed with him.
    Aunt Mary looked a little white. I hoped she wasn’t going to faint. Cora Lee didn’t look much better. Her hand shook as she leaned on her cane .
    “Are you all right?” Should I pull out one, or two, or maybe three, of the chairs? Vague thoughts of crime scenes and much less vague thoughts of interfering with the scene stopped me.
    “Of course.” Cora Lee stood straighter, visibly trying to stop the trembling.
    “We’ve got to get the police.” Aunt Mary fumbled in her tote bag for her cellphone, dropping it back in before getting it all the way out. Luckily, it hadn’t landed on the floor. “Drat. Ellen, do you have yours?”
    “Let me call.” Elizabeth’s voice had a distinct tremor, but she still had enough control to take charge. She reached