Free Anything Goes by Jill Churchill Page B

certainly eager to know more, now that he thought there might be a story in it, but he hadn’t intended for his investigation to be a group effort.
    Still, the Brewsters lived in the victim’s house, as did two of the other people who had been aboard the boat.
    “Let’s do that,“ Jack agreed.
     

Chapter 9
     
    Lily and Robert had decided that they’d go to Voorburg and beard Mr. Prinney in his den. Questioning him about Uncle Horatio seemed likely to be more effective in an office setting than at home.
    But in the meantime, Lily intended to find out what more she could on her own. Two of the men on the boat were unknown; one lived in New York and one in Poughkeepsie. She could do nothing about them. She could write to Cousin Claude, but would be unlikely to get a reply unless she took him on in person. At least she knew where to find him. He still lived with his mother—Lily and Robert’s Aunt Hilary.
    Major Winslow had been on the boat as well and was close by, but she’d never met him except years ago at a school play she and Sissy had been in. She’d wait on him.
    She hadn’t met Mr. Kessler, the newspaper editor who was another guest on the boat, and as closemouthed as he’d been in the reports in the paper, he was unlikely to spill the beans to her.
    Billy Smith was impossible. She couldn’t bear the thought of speaking to him.
    So that left Mimi. She felt Mimi would talk about the accident, but only with some chummy buttering up first.
    “Mimi, come sit down for a minute, would you?“ Lily said.
    Mimi had been cleaning the runner in the upstairs hall with a carpet sweeper when Lily ran across her and looked alarmed when Lily made her request.
    “I ain’t done nothing wrong, did I?“ Mimi asked, gingerly taking a seat on one of the Chippendale chairs that flanked a tiny table in the hall.
    “No, of course not,“ Lily said, also sitting down carefully. She suspected the chairs were probably fragile. “I just wanted to chat with you. I’m curious about something Mrs. Prinney said about you growing up in this house.”
    Mimi relaxed a little. “Well, my ma, she was Barbara by name, she came to work as a girl for Miss Flora, who was a spinster. Ma started in the kitchens when she was about fourteen, and was a good hard worker and by and by she came to Miss Flora’s attention and Miss Flora took her upstairs to be her maid. Miss Flora wasn’t old then, but she enjoyed poor health even then. She’d had that infant disease...“
    “Infantile paralysis? Like Governor Roosevelt had?“
    “That’s it. She could walk and all when she got well, but had trouble getting in and out of bed and lacing up her shoes and such. So Ma helped her. Then when the housekeeper up and died right there in the front hall, Miss Flora made Ma the housekeeper.“
    “And when did you come along?“
    “Just a year or two later, I think. My ma married, but he ran off with some floozy from town before I was even born. And Miss Flora, who liked my ma a lot, let us stay on here and Ma kept on being housekeeper.“
    “What about my Uncle Horatio? Did you like him?“
    “Oh, no, miss.“
    “He wasn’t nice?“ Lily asked.
    “It’s not that. He wasn’t here. He left before I was born. I never met him until this summer.“
    “Why did he leave? Didn’t he get along with his aunt?”
    Lily’s animated expression suddenly faded. “Yes, miss. They got along well enough, my ma told me. But they had some sort of fight and he went off on his own. Never came back except for when Miss Flora died.”
    Mimi made a vague gesture toward her abandoned carpet sweeper. Lily sensed that she had hit a nerve, or maybe Mimi just wasn’t interested in talking about Uncle Horatio since she’d never known him.
    “What about your mother?“ Lily asked. “Does she still live nearby?“
    “No, miss. She took the flu something awful in twenty-three and died. Miss Flora died three years later, even though I took real good care of her. I’d