Hello, and welcome to my 2023 A to Z Blogging Challenge! For a detailed explanation of what I’m up to this year, see my Theme Reveal. But basically, I’m taking all the suspects I made up for my A to Z last year (with help from several commenters!) and putting them all into an actual murder mystery. See the sidebar for links to last year’s posts; if your device doesn’t display sidebars (if, for example, you are visiting on your phone), the links will be under the comment section, right under my A to Z 2023 participation badge.

Chapter Nine: Ingrid

Ingrid looked at Josephine. “I really feel that this is your bit, Jo,” she urged.

“Oh! I couldn’t! I really couldn’t!” cried Josephine, her emptily pretty face showing traces of panic. “It’s so terribly awkward!” And she looked helplessly round the room. Her eyes fixed on Leonard the solicitor. “Besides, I don’t think it could be true, not really. Or anyway, not… I think I must have been wrong. Don’t you?” And she looked at Ingrid with a plea in her guileless blue eyes.

Ingrid looked at Josephine with a mixture of pity and exasperation. Crowner, who had interviewed the lady several times, understood entirely.

“Fine,” said Ingrid, grimly. “I’ll do your dirty work for you. Sorry and all that, sir.” And she looked at Leonard, too. “But it has to come out. And I’m sure we can make it right. Gregory isn’t vindictive, you know.”

Leonard looked somewhere between mildly alarmed and mortally terrified. “Oh dear,” he said. “Oh my.” And he turned to look pleadingly at Gregory.

“Oh, rather,” said Gregory, waving a hand. “What are you talking about, though?”

“First,” said Crowner, “let’s fill in the scene a bit. We’ve heard that you arrived in the middle of a quarrel; tell us about it.”

Ingrid made a face. “I suppose I’d better. Very well. Eli and I showed up at Jo and Fred’s place at around six. They don’t have servants, so the door was cracked open—that’s standard, for them, and it means that you’re expected to just walk in. We caught the tail-end of a pretty impressive dust-up. Josephine was—well, I’m afraid she was ripping into poor old Fred. Didn’t know she had it in her. He sounded pretty subdued—wordless cries, you know, like she’d worn him down. It was embarrassing, especially because they were clearly arguing about the conversation she was planning to have with us. We were standing petrified in the hallway when we heard Fred bang out of the house in a rage.

“Then Jo came out. Said that her husband thought she should keep her mouth shut, but that she was quite sure we needed to know. Said she thought we should be the ones to decide whether she told the police about it. You see—” and Ingrid blushed a bright red, “Josephine and my father were—close friends…”

Annabelle snorted. “You mean Josephine was his mistress. Don’t hedge, girl.”

Fred suddenly exploded. “She wasn’t! She’d never, with him!” Then he made a gurgling noise and pitched forward, his face contorted with fury. It sounded like he was saying some very foul things about Annabelle into the muffling privacy of the dome he made of his arms.

Ingrid looked terribly unhappy. “Look, let’s just leave it that my father and Jo were friends, and that Jo was pretty miserable here, on the whole.”

“Jo was miserable? Jo?” Annabelle shrieked. “Poor Jo. Everyone feels sorry for Jo. Everyone understands about Jo. But she’s not half so silly as people think. If you knew how much jewelry that empty-headed little fluffball had gotten out of my husband—my husband!—you’d know she knew at least a thing or two.”

Annabelle’s outburst seemed to ripple round the room. In his chair, Fred started to shake. Cecil sat up suddenly, and his flask fell with a clatter to the floor. Kathy stopped knitting and bent down. Ravi and Yuri exchanged embarrassed looks. The Vicar held up a hand, as if mutely calling for peace. Gregory’s face hardened. Meghan looked down at the ground, as if afraid to meet Annabelle’s furious glare. Josephine herself looked vague, but vaguely upset. And in his corner, Sergeant Mug straightened to attention.

“Must we?” said Ingrid. “Scenes are so exhausting, don’t you think?” Then she hurried into speech again. “Let’s get this over with. Josephine told us that my father told her that Leonard had been embezzling from him for years. My father had just found him out. Apparently, he was amused as well as angry. The cream of the joke, to my father, was that Leonard had been stealing from my father in order to pay off a blackmailer, who happened, unbeknownst to Leonard, to be my father. My father intended to ruin Leonard professionally and, if possible, get him sent to prison for the embezzlement, knowing full well that his own blackmailing role in the affair would never come out.”

Ingrid looked both bitter and utterly weary. “It was all very disgusting of father, and I quite see why Jo told me before making any further moves. Still, it was a terribly uncomfortable interview, and it seemed to go on forever. Her big question was, should she go to the police? She was certain that Leonard had killed my father. It seemed so obvious to her, knowing what she knew. On the other hand, it hadn’t been very nice, of father, to do that to Leonard. Did I want her to keep mum? Frankly, I did. Eli, however, rather thought it placed us all in an awkward legal position. We left without giving any definite answer. We met Fred, having a stroll outside; he was obviously having trouble with his leg, and his face looked like thunder. We asked if we could help him to the house, but he said he wasn’t ready to go back yet. So we—”

“Do you mean,” said Leonard, his voice barely under control, “that it was Sir Adam himself who was blackmailing me? That—that—” and he looked at Josephine. “Is it really true?” He asked, quietly.