deep voice.
“I am not Rupert Mandeville,” the apparition intoned, “I am Phillip Mandeville!”
That pronouncement caused Madame Ouida to suddenly open her eyes, turn to the cabinet, and scream.
“Good lord, Charles,” she shrieked, “we’ve actually brought someone back! I’ve had enough of this!” With that, she leapt up from her chair and ran out of the room.
Edward tried to rise from his chair as well, but Charles dashed around to prevent him. Calling to the spectre, Charles asked, “Why have you returned to us, brother?”
“To avenge my murder,” the ghost replied.
“John, this cannot be real!” I whispered, and he responded by squeezing my hand tightly.
“My killer is in this room,” the spectre continued, turning its pale, ghostly gaze to each one of us before settling on one person in particular. “It was you who murdered me!” the apparition shouted, pointing at Gwyneth the cook! “You poisoned me, just as you poisoned my father!”
“No!” Gwyneth shouted, leaping up, thankfully dropping my hand. “I did nothing to you, Mister Phillip!”
“You murdered Rupert Mandeville!”
“I—I,” she stammered.
“Just as you murdered me!” the ghost howled.
“Noooo!” Gwyneth wailed, leaping up and retreating from the spectre. “It’s true I killed the master, but I swear before God I never harmed you!”
Upon this pronouncement, my mouth dropped open, and I noticed a similar reaction coming from young Edward.
Charles, meanwhile, sighed as though a great weight had been lifted from him and let loose of his younger brother’s shoulders. However, the most startling response came from the ghost of Phillip Mandeville, who uttered, “Thank heavens,” before commanding that the lights in the room be switched on.
When Charles did, the “ghost,” his face daubed a pale yellow, stepped out of the cabinet, very much alive.
“John, I don’t understand,” I uttered. “Phillip was dead. You declared him so yourself!”
“So I did,” he replied. At that moment a police officer rushed into the room.
“Were you able to hear it, Constable Macaulay?” Phillip asked, and the policeman confirmed that he had.
Charles knelt down to the seated figure of Edward Mandeville. “I’m sorry to have put you through this, Eddie, but we need every witness we can get for the inquest”
Looking quite sick, Edward turned to the miserable cook, who had collapsed into sobbing convulsions. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “What did father do to you?”
Recovering from her fit, she looked up, enraged. “He said he wouldn’t marry me!” she shouted. “I even went to his bed because he promised me!”
“I want to hear no more!” Edward moaned.
Softly, Charles said: “I am sorry, dear brother, but we have to.” Then turning to the cook, he added, “It’s all over for you, now, you murderess, so you might as well tell everything.”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, you whelp, I could’ve been your stepmother!” Gwyneth said. “Oh, Lord, how many times did I go to his bed, all the whiles assuming I would soon be mistress of the house, and not just a servant! Then came the terrible day when I learnt he was only using me. I nearly died, I wanted to die. Then I thought, ‘Why should I be the one to die?’ Right then and there, I decided to avenge myself. I started to poison him, slowly at first”
“We knew you were poisoning him, but how did you do it?” Phillip demanded, wiping off the yellowish face paint that had given him his ghostly pallor. “We examined his food and found no trace of poison.”
“I’m not so stupid as to put it in his food,” Gwyneth sneered. “It was in his nightly whisky and water. I made sure the water came from the kitchen, where I kept—”
“Lilies-of-the-valley!” I blurted out, unable to stop myself. “Even the water in which lilies-of-the-valley have set is poisonous. Oh, why didn’t I realize that before?”
Charles regarded me with a pained expression. “Indeed, Mrs Watson, if only you had, we might not have been forced to enact this charade and upset Eddie so.”
“This charade,” I sighed, “was the work of a not-so-bad dramatist”
“I beg your pardon?” Charles said, not having heard me.
“Oh, nothing.”
After the police officers had led the half-sobbing, half-defiant cook out of the house, an uncomfortable silence descended upon the place, a silence finally broken by Edward, who said: “I feel like an imbecile! All of this has been going on around me, and I’ve acted the part of the fool!”
“Eddie,” Charles began, “we knew we couldn’t involve you in this. Phillip and I knew full well that father was being poisoned, but—”
“You told me he was delusional!” Eddie shouted. “You liars!”
“Edward, none of us wanted to hurt, you,” Phillip said, “but we had to keep up the pretence of disbelief to keep you in the dark. You see, we suspected Cook, but we had no proof. Father talked about simply dismissing her, but we didn’t know what she might do in retaliation. We had little recourse but to wait, and hope the evidence of her perfidy would be discovered. Incidentally, father called inviting her into his bed the most grievous error he ever made, one borne of his weakness combined with her eagerness. Unfortunately, it was his undoing. But even after his murder we had no evidence incriminating Cook.”
“So there was nothing left to do but try and force a confession from the old girl,” Charles added. “We took Jenkins into our confidence and began to set an elaborate trap. The business of the lost will was nothing but a ruse, and the woman you know as Madame Ouida was hired to play the role of a medium.”
“Tonight was the final act of the drama, designed to shock the truth out of Cook, and as you saw, it worked quite well,” Phillip concluded.
“I still don’t see why I was excluded from this knowledge,” Edward grumbled.
“Because, dear brother, you cannot hold a secret,” Charles replied. “Had we told you of our suspicions, you would have immediately challenged Cook with the accusation, and she would have flown the coop like a bird.”
“Maybe so, but she might have fled before finishing father off, and he would still be alive,” Edward rejoined.
“Or maybe she would have killed all of you before running out the door and disappearing,” John said. “Your brothers’ reasoning was sound, my boy.”
“By the way, darling,” I chimed in, “you have some explaining of your own to do.”
“Do I, Amelia?”
“Yes. How is that
