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her revenge by bumping off all these members of the family! Well, one good thing. It shouldn’t be hard to catch up with her. All we have to do is look for someone as fits her description that’s been bobbing about on holiday all of a sudden to Australia and the like. Course she’s probably aged a bit like we all do, but even so . . .”
    â€œIf bent on murder,” I interposed, “why wait this long to get busy, and, if you’ll forgive me, Lady Krumley, why not start with you?”
    â€œI am not talking murder, Mrs. Haskell, at least not in the usual sense of the word.” The bourbon disappeared in a gulp. “Flossie herself died within a year of leaving Moultty Towers. My contention is that she is wreaking havoc from beyond the grave. With her last breath Flossie Jones cursed the Krumley family.”
    â€œGracious me!” Mrs. M. looked unsuitably thrilled.
    â€œAre you absolutely sure the brooch your new maid discovered was the one that had gone missing?” The night wind moaned an echo and somewhere inside the building a floorboard creaked, but I didn’t go and take a peak outside the office to see if anyone was lurking in the shadows. Her ladyship’s dark tale, had yet to set my nerves jumping.
    â€œNot a doubt in the world! That brooch was engraved on the back with his Sir Horace’s maternal grandmother’s initials and her birth date. He was seriously displeased at the time of its disappearance by what he asserted was my carelessness with a family heirloom. I had left it on the dressing table instead of locking it up in my jewelry box.”
    â€œWas it extremely valuable?”
    â€œA mere trinket.” She waved a gnarled hand. “It wasn’t even insured. The stones weren’t the finest, having been given to Sir Horace’s grandmother when she was a young girl by an aunt in straitened circumstances.”
    â€œShame! But have to cut your garment according to the cloth.” Mrs. Malloy shook her head as if remembering all the second- or third-rate emeralds and diamonds she had accepted with feigned enthusiasm.
    â€œMy husband liked me to wear it. Alas, truth be told, it was not to my taste. Far too dainty and demure. It was never my desire to look like a determinedly youthful debutante. There were already enough people wondering why he had married a beanpole like me, when he might have had his choice among the great beauties of the day. Sir Horace was at that time an extremely handsome man in his mid-fifties; indeed his looks never left him. Upon his death ten years later he made a fine corpse.” Lady Krumley stared into some distant place.
    â€œTell us how Flossie came into the matter?” I prodded gently, feeling an unexpectedly strong wave of sympathy for the autocratic old lady.
    â€œSir Horace and I had been married for three or four years when she came to work at Moultty Towers. Her Christian name was actually Florence. But as that was also the housekeeper Mrs. Snow’s name, the senior members of the staff would have deemed it an impertinence for a parlor maid to share it. Hopkins the butler, after consulting with me, made the necessary adjustment. That should of course have been the end of the matter.” Her ladyship’s mouth tightened. But the girl protested to Sir Horace, not to Mrs. Snow or to me. I was annoyed. My husband amused. He laughed and said the girl had spunk and that we should make allowances. He reminded me that it had become increasingly difficult since wartime to keep any sort of help, good, bad or indifferent.”
    Mrs. Malloy opened her mouth. I thought she was about to state the main cannon of the Chitterton Fells Charwomen’s Association, that employers needed to be kept firmly in their place. But she bit her lip remembering, no doubt, that if she really wanted to become Milk Jugg’s Girl Friday, her first objective must be to keep the client talking.
    â€œMay I?” Lady