Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince by Nancy Atherton Page B

Maddie?” Bree asked.
    A rosy blush tinted Madeleine’s cheeks.
    “To tell you the absolute truth,” she said, “we haven’t started yet. If you’d been
     the Graham sisters, you would have been our first paying guests. We rather hoped word
     of mouth would bring the right sort of people to our door, but so far it hasn’t brought
     anyone but the Grahams. Bunny told them about us when she was visiting friends in
     Dundee last August.”
    “Have you considered creating a website?” Bree asked delicately, as if she wished
     to give our hostess a hint about how to run a business.
    “A website would be a great help, of course,” Madeleine acknowledged, “but my husband
     has been terribly busy at work lately and I’m no good at all with computers, so we
     haven’t got round to setting one up.”
    “How long has your family lived at Hayewood?” I asked.
    “Let’s see . . .” Madeleine tapped an index finger against her pursed lips, then said
     in an amazed tone, “Gosh! It’ll be twenty-five years next December. How time flies
     when one’s raising a family!”
    A gray-haired woman in a maid’s uniform entered the drawing room and deposited a heavily
     laden tea tray on the satinwood table at Madeleine’s elbow.
    “Will there be anything else, Mad—er, madam?” the maid asked.
    “No, thank you, Ernestine,” said Maddie.
    “Look, Lori,” said Bree, pointing to the plate of dainties Ernestine had brought with
     the tea. “Pecan balls.”
    “I beg your pardon?” said Madeleine.
    Bree looked at Ernestine.
    “Those round biscuits covered with icing sugar,” she said. “They’re pecan balls, aren’t
     they?”
    “No, ma’am,” the maid answered. “No pecans in them. They’re made with hazelnuts and
     Cook calls them Russian tea cakes.”
    “Russian tea cakes?” I said. “Is your cook Russian?”
    Ernestine and Madeleine exchanged amused glances.
    “Goodness, no, ma’am,” said Ernestine. “Cook was born and raised not ten miles from
     here. She got the recipe for the Russian tea cakes from the receipt book.”
    “What’s a receipt book?” Bree asked.
    “It’s a book cooks keep,” Ernestine told her. “They write recipes in it and hand it
     on to the next cook.”
    “Who wrote the Russian tea cake recipe in Cook’s receipt book?” I asked.
    “No idea, ma’am,” said Ernestine. “Our book goes a long way back, you see. Some of
     the recipes in it are more than a hundred years old.” She turned to Madeleine. “Will
     that be all, madam? Only, I promised Cook I’d help her prep for supper.”
    “Yes, that will be all, thank you,” said Madeleine.
    The maid curtseyed and left the room.
    “Ernestine is a treasure,” said Madeleine, turning to gaze soulfully at the door through
     which the maid had exited. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
    “As a matter of interest,” I said, “did a Russian family ever own Hayewood House?”
    “No,” Madeleine replied. “Hayewood House was the country seat of the Hayewood family
     for three hundred years until Sergei and I bought it.”
    “Sergei,” I said, taking the bull by the horns. “It’s an interesting name. Is your
     husband Russian?”
    “We do seem to have a theme going, don’t we?” Madeleine said, nodding at the tea cakes.
     “But, no, my husband isn’t Russian. His mother was mad for the Russian ballet, so
     she named her three sons Sergei, Vaslav, and Rudolf, after Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav
     Nijinsky, and Rudolf Nureyev.” She rolled her eyes. “You can imagine how well that
     went over with their schoolmates.”
    Bree and I chuckled politely, and though I felt a tiny stab of disappointment, I pressed
     on.
    “Do you have a full indoor and outdoor staff?” I asked. “Any retired retainers on
     the premises?”
    “Retired retainers?” Madeleine exclaimed, smiling. “No one has retired retainers anymore.
     Ernestine is our only full-time employee, and she has an apartment here in the