Free Death of a Cozy Writer: A St. Just Mystery by G.M. Malliet

woman’s self-possession. It was an excellent impersonation of aristocracy putting the revolting masses back in their place. Natasha, who had done her own research, found the act nearly pitch-perfect—for an act it was, she was certain. She wouldn’t have put it past Lillian to have arrived at breakfast dressed in jodhpurs, cracking a whip against her highly polished boots, despite the absence of a stables for forty miles or more. Instead, Lillian had opted for the simple wool sheath bedecked with a king’s ransom in pearls at neck and wrist: the uniform of the bored society matron. But not, Natasha recognized, quite the done thing for breakfast in a country manor house.
    “Well,” said Natasha, dabbing at invisible crumbs before putting her napkin by her plate, “I’m off. Time to mobilize George. We’re going into Cambridge today to have a look in the Fitzwilliam, perhaps visit some of his old haunts.”
    Ignoring the pleading look in Sarah’s eyes that said more plainly than words, Don’t leave me here alone with her! , Natasha took herself off. High time Sarah learned to stand up to bullies and snobs, she told herself.
    Lillian aimed an insincere but well-bred “Enjoy your day” at Natasha’s back. Natasha turned at the door, smiling, and said, “Oh, never fear.” Lillian’s newspaper shielded her from the chilly smile, which was just as well. With a kindly wink at Sarah, Natasha was gone.

SECOND SEATING
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    “I CAN SEE WHAT he sees in Mrs. Romano,” Albert was complaining, “but why the deuce does he put up with Paulo?”
    “Deuce?” drawled Ruthven, from behind his paper. “Do you know, I can’t recall the last time I heard anyone use that expression.”
    “Occupational hazard,” muttered Albert. “Too many drawing-room dramas.”
    “I thought you were excellent in Noises Off ,” said Lillian.
    Albert looked at her. For one thing, he had never actually been in Noises Off .
    “Thank you,” he said at last. Lillian, he decided, was probably always so fashionably late to the theatre it was doubtful she’d ever actually seen a play.
    “To answer your question: ‘Package Deal,’” Ruthven went on, turning a page of the Times . “The price for having a dream of a cook who happens to make the old sod think he’s starring in a remake of La Dolce Vita seems to be that he gets saddled with her son, a butler/chauffeur who drives like a maniac, when he can be induced to work at all.”
    “I rang for coffee ten minutes ago. Where in hell is he? My head is splitting.”
    Indeed, all the excesses of the day before were written large on Albert’s prematurely aged face. Ruthven began calculating, not for the first time, when Albert might drink himself out of the running in the contest for heir apparent. The old man was in bad shape but his youngest son was in demonstrably worse.
    Complacently, Ruthven surveyed his own solid paunch, giving his biceps an unobtrusive flex. Sound mind in a healthy body, that’s the ticket, he thought. If Albert drank himself to death, Sarah ate herself to death, and George orgied himself to death, it would nicely clear the field without his having to lift a finger. The appearance of Violet had put something of a damper on this happy prospect, but that, he was convinced, was a temporary inconvenience, soon disposed of. The flood of faxes into his laptop, starting at nine this morning, had only buoyed his hopes in that regard.
    At the thought, he turned to his wife.
    “Lillian, my dear. Would you be so kind as to see if you can persuade Mrs. Romano to replenish the sideboard, if her worthless son cannot be found?”
    “I?” The raising of one of Lillian’s painted eyebrows would have quelled a lesser man, but Ruthven was this morning determined to have a private word with his brother before Albert’s habitual cycle of drunkenness began for the day. He estimated that he had less than an hour before Albert began his “hair of the dog”