“Lottie lives here,” said Mia, not going to the slightest trouble to sound friendly. “Where else would she eat breakfast?”
Mrs. Spencer raised her eyebrows again. “As far as I know, my granddaughter has had to give up her rooms on the top floor to your au pair—goodness knows there’s more than enough room there.”
Here we went again.
“Mother, surely we’ve discussed that quite often enough. Can we please talk about something else?” Ernest wasn’t looking at all happy anymore. And Mom was clutching the tablecloth as if she were afraid that if she didn’t, she’d jump up and run away.
“All right, I’ll change the subject: you must come and put new batteries in my fire alarms, Ernest,” said Mrs. Spencer. “Charles’s alarm went off in the middle of the night last night because the battery had run out.” (Oh, good. Then he was still alive!) “I’d have a heart attack if such a thing happened to me.” She ostentatiously put her hand to her ocher twinset at roughly the spot where her pacemaker would have been fitted if she’d had a weak heart, which she didn’t. She had the constitution of an ox.
“A nice cup of tea.” Lottie put the teacup down in front of her. “Earl Grey, with a dash of lemon.”
“Thank you, Miss … er?”
“Wastlhuber.”
“Whastle-whistle?” repeated Mrs. Spencer.
“Oh, just call me Lottie,” said Lottie.
Mrs. Spencer stared at her, horrified. Then she said, “Certainly not!” emphatically, and began rummaging in her handbag, probably looking for smelling salts.
“Oh, loosen up, Boker,” muttered Mia under her breath.
The Boker let a little sweetener drop into the tea from her personal pillbox and stirred the cup. “Why I’m really here is … well, as you know, I always have a little Twelfth Night tea party in January.”
“Little is good,” murmured Grayson, but his remark was drowned out by Florence’s enthusiastic, “Oh, I just love, love, love your Twelfth Night tea parties, Granny!” As if they were the grooviest occasions of all time.
Mrs. Spencer smiled faintly. “Well, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to, but as my friends are always asking, and clearly none of you here are going to come to your senses”—at this point she cleared her throat and looked sadly at her son—“I can see I have no option but to extend my invitation to your new entourage, Ernest.”
When no one reacted—Mia and I because we weren’t sure what entourage meant, and were trying to work out whether it was something nasty—she added, sighing, “That means that I would”—once again she cleared her throat, and this time she fixed her eyes on Mom—“that I would be very glad, dear Ann, to welcome you and your two daughters to my house.”
It was remarkable the way she managed to make that sound like an order. And you could bet that no one had ever looked less happy than she did when she uttered the words very glad.
Ernest thought so too. “If you…,” he began, frowning, but Mom put her oar in before he could go on.
“That’s so nice of you, Philippa,” she said warmly. “We’d love to accept your invitation, wouldn’t we, girls?”
It took us a couple of seconds, but because Mom was looking so hopeful, we finally managed to smile and nod.
Okay, so we’d be going to an English tea party on Twelfth Night, to have a lot of old ladies look at us curiously. We’d been through worse.
Mrs. Spencer, satisfied, sipped her tea. She’d certainly have swallowed the wrong way if she’d known that Twelfth Night was to be the day when Mr. Snuggles died, and she had just invited his murderers to her house. The murderers themselves hadn’t the faintest idea who Mr. Snuggles even was. Without any forebodings at all, we reached for the cinnamon waffles.
TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG
The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.
ABOUT ME:
My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.
25 December