Death Among the Ruins by Pamela Christie

the removal of a window pane is as easy as all that, Lady Ribbonhat’s men may also have taken out a larger window, which has not yet been discovered. Perhaps they intend to return later, and come right inside the house.”
    Belinda laughed nervously. “Whatever makes you say that?”
    “I don’t know; I was recalling the tale of Lankyn, for some reason. You remember, Arabella; Molly used to tell it us, when we were children. Lankyn was a workman of some kind,” he explained to Belinda, who was too young to remember their nursemaid, Molly. “He revenged himself on a welshing nob by creeping through a window whilst the fellow was away, and murdering the nob’s wife, his baby, and all of the servants, besides. Do you suppose he had a glass cutter, too?”
    Arabella looked at Belinda.
    “He must have done,” Charles continued, building a tumulus, strand by strand, out of spaghetti, “because Nurse told us that the man had impressed upon his wife the importance of locking up the place as tight as could be. And any woman left alone in a house on the edge of a moor, especially one with a baby, is going to follow that particular directive to the letter. I think he must have had a glass cutter.”
    “Stop it, Charles,” said Arabella. “You’re upsetting Belinda.” She poured herself another glass of wine and called over her shoulder, “Fielding! Could we have the pasta con funghi again, please?”
    There was no reply.
    She rang the bell.
    “Fielding . . . ? Mrs. Janks . . . ?”
    “I don’t believe there is anyone in the butler’s pantry,” said Belinda quietly.
    “Or at least,” said Charles, “none of the servants . But there could be . . . someone else . . . couldn’t there? Someone who is standing in there, waiting until . . .”
    “They’ve probably all gone down to the kitchen,” said Arabella swiftly.
    “But why should they do that,” asked Belinda, “before we have finished our meal?”
    Charles wore an odd sort of puckered expression, and Belinda goggled at him in mute terror.
    “Of all the infernal . . . !” Arabella flung down her napkin, as though it were a gauntlet, and rose from the table. “Hellooo!” she called down the passage. “Is anyone there?” When no one answered, she went to the pantry herself, retrieved the pasta bowl, and plumped it onto the table.
    “The butler’s pantry,” she announced, “is vacant.”
    “D’you know,” said Charles, who had made a funereal pile of his mushrooms, “I am not really partial to Italian food. I think I shall get dinner at my club.”
    So saying, he got up from the table and quitted the house. It was true enough that he had scarcely touched his pasta, but the timing of his departure reminded his sisters, who were in no real danger of forgetting, that Charles was not a source of strength in a crisis.
    Arabella had therefore to go downstairs alone. And her pace slowed as she neared the kitchen, for she half-expected to find her staff strewn about the room with their throats cut. Well, she told herself, if they are all busy in the kitchen, they won’t have heard me ring. For there were no bells in that room, owing to her own insistence that the preparation of food was too important to interrupt with mundane requests from upstairs. Still, if the servants were in there, she would be able to hear their voices from where she now stood. And Arabella could hear nothing. All was as quiet as a graveyard after curfew.
    Pausing at the threshold, she sucked in her breath and pushed the door open.
    There was no blood on the floor, but what she found instead was almost as upsetting. Every member of her staff was gathered round the ginger tom. They were feeding it cream and stroking its fur, and they all looked up at the same instant to see their mistress regarding them from the doorway with extreme irritation. She had gone all white round the nostrils, which was always a bad sign.
    “I want,” said Arabella, massaging her temples, “I want that