Murder Goes Mumming by Charlotte MacLeod Page A

made necessary, that he himself was the true and lawful heir. Whether in fact he had the right to turn off his kith and kin at will was debatable, but considering that Cyril must be well over fifty years old and probably missing on a cylinder or two from chronic alcoholism, one could understand why he might now be feeling vindictive and inclined to throw his weight about.
    Janet touched Madoc’s arm. “Do you suppose we could borrow some snowshoes and get out for a little while?” she murmured. “It’s not snowing all that hard right now and I’d love a breath of fresh air.”
    “Good idea, love. So should I.”
    Under the circumstances, it might be tactful of them to make themselves scarce for a while. They could stay close to the house. Then there’d be no danger of losing themselves even if the snow did come on heavily all of a sudden. He passed on Janet’s request to Babs, who was all for it.
    “There are lots of skis and snowshoes in the woodshed. You just go down the long hall and through the door at the end. All the outbuildings are connected by covered sheds so they can be got at without going outdoors, winters being what they are up here. If you get cold, just come in any door you can find and walk through. There should be people around who could set you straight if you get lost in the barns, except that most of them can’t speak English, or won’t.”
    “That’s all right, Janet and I can make ourselves understood in French if we have to.”
    In fact Janet was almost as fluent as Madoc, thanks to Annabelle and her many relatives. Rhys quite liked his future sister-in-law and all the Duprees he’d met so far. It was a damned shame they hadn’t taken their chances on Marion Emery’s hospitality and gone to meet brother Pierre and his tribe instead of the Condryckes. He’d a far sight rather be sitting at the kitchen table with Bert right now having a modest tot of rum than drinking this excellent claret and wondering what new disaster was going to strike next.
    At any rate, now that Cyril was peacefully slumbering with his chin propped on May’s shoulder, Squire was back in charge and misrule happily restored. Herbert was showing Val how to make castanets out of two spoons. Roy was laughing a good deal at her efforts so that everybody could see what nice, white teeth he had. Clara was telling a screamingly funny story about some local club she belonged to. At least there was a good deal of screaming, so it must be funny.
    Clara had a malicious sense of humor for one who dressed in such demurely subdued taste. Rhys could picture her at the club meeting, perhaps wearing the same brown and beige ensemble she had on now, smiling politely and sipping her tea while she stored up her fellow members’ little follies for her family’s amusement.
    She and Lawrence lived in one of the neighboring towns, it appeared, but spent most of their weekends at Graylings now that their own young had flown the nest. There was a married daughter down in the States, and a son making his fortune in the oil fields out around Banff. Neither of them could get home for the holidays, for reasons their parents managed to extract a fair amount of humor out of.
    Clara must have started a good deal earlier than her sister to raise her family. She was evidently Squire’s baby, and May next oldest to Cyril. The mother having died young, May had stepped into a quasi-maternal role, as witness her present solicitude for the plastered Cyril. He didn’t know how lucky he was. A sister like Gwen would have left him to drown in the gravy after the way he’d been acting before he committed the final breach of passing out at the luncheon table.
    May had no doubt been gently discouraged by Squire from setting out to seek her fortune. He couldn’t have remarried himself so long as Granny was alive without jeopardizing his position at Graylings, and that boundless energy of his daughter’s must come in handy around a place this size. May