Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(101)

When the service was over most people trooped down the aisle to the front of the church where there was a door lead— CANDY CANES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

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ing to the parish hall where coffee was served. Bill started to go in the opposite direction, but Lucy stopped him.

“Let’s get a cup of coffee,” she pleaded. “Maybe we’ll meet some people.”

Bill was less than enthusiastic. “Aw, Lucy… .”

She cut him off. “It won’t kill you to be sociable, you know,” she said, taking Toby by the hand and marching down the aisle. Bill followed, a glum expression on his face.

The parish room was crowded and there was a happy buzz as adults greeted each other and children, still dressed in their shepherd and angel costumes, dashed around and helped themselves to more cookies than was wise before lunch. Appetites would certainly be spoiled, thought Lucy, accepting a Styrofoam cup of rather weak looking coffee. She chose a plain sugar cookie for Toby and looked around for a familiar face. Bill, she noticed, was already deep in conversation with a man she recognized from the lumber yard. She was sipping her coffee and feeling rather hurt that he hadn’t thought to include her in the conversation when she saw the Miller twins approaching her.

“So nice to see you, Lucy,” said Emily.

“And Toby, too,” said Ellie. “Maybe he can be in the pageant next year. He’ll be old enough to be an angel.”

“He will have to be quite an actor to pull that off,” said Lucy, remembering the previous day’s tantrum.

The two ladies’ eyebrows shot up in surprise, then Ellie smiled. “It’s a joke, dear,” she told her sister. “Just look at that angelic little face.”

Lucy looked at Toby, trying to see him through another’s eyes. He was angelic looking, she realized, with his blond curls and pink cheeks. “Thank you,” she said. “It was a lovely pageant. I really enjoyed it.”

“They do it every year,” said Emily. “It’s always the same.”

“And it’s always wonderful,” said Ellie. “We were in it, years ago.”

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Leslie Meier

“Ellie got to be Mary,” complained Emily. “It wasn’t fair.”

“Emily was supposed to be Joseph,” said Ellie. “She wasn’t happy about it.”

“No, I wasn’t. I got Hannah Sprout to take my place. Oh, my goodness, here she comes.”

Lucy watched as a tall, gray-haired woman in a bright red suit with a Christmas brooch pinned on the shoulder crossed the room. “Good morning, ladies,” she said, looking curiously at Lucy. “Wonderful pageant, wasn’t it?”

“We were just telling Lucy here, oh, this is Lucy Stone and her little boy Toby. They moved into the old farmhouse on Red Top Road.”

“Nice to meet you, Lucy. I’m Hannah Sprout.”

“We were telling Lucy about the time you had to play Joseph in the pageant because Emily wouldn’t wear that beard.”

“I don’t blame her one bit,” said Hannah. “That thing was scratchy. But, my word, that was a long time ago. We were just kids.”

“Actually, Lucy’s interested in the old days,” said Emily.

“She was asking about your mother.”

Hannah turned to face Lucy. “Mother? What do you want to know about her?”

Toby was pulling on Lucy’s hand so she picked him up and balanced him on her hip. She was beginning to put one and one together. Hannah Sprout, she realized, must be Helen Sprout’s daughter.

“Was your mother a cook? Did she work for Judge Tilley?”

asked Lucy.

“She sure did. But why do you want to know about that?

That was ages ago. Before the World War.”

“I’m doing a bit of research. I’m trying to write a sort of Upstairs, Downstairs sort of thing.”

“For TV?” Hannah’s eyes were big.

“Possibly,” said Lucy, relieved to see Bill coming toward CANDY CANES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

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her. Toby was squirming in her arms and her back was beginning to hurt. She greeted him with a big smile, handing over Toby as she introduced him to the ladies.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked, perching Toby on his shoulders.

“Actually, I’d like to chat a bit more. Would you mind taking Toby outside to play?”

“Take him to the general store,” suggested Emily.

“They have penny candy,” said Ellie.

“You have to go to Country Cousins after church,” added Hannah. “It’s the Eleventh Commandment.”

Bill knew when he was beat. “Okay,” he said, nodding at Lucy. “I’ll meet you at the car in ten minutes.”

“Every mother deserves a break now and then,” said Hannah, nudging Lucy.

“A break, that’s right, a break,” chorused Ellie and Emily.

“So tell me about your mother,” said Lucy. “Did she ever talk to you about Judge Tilley and his wife?”

“All the time,” said Hannah. “It was so sad, you see. ‘That poor woman,’ she used to say. ‘How she suffers!’ She was talking about Mrs. Tilley, of course. She was very ill and nobody, really, was taking care of her. The judge was occupied with important matters and the two daughters, well, Mother always said she thought Mrs. Tilley kept her true condition from them, didn’t want them to worry or fuss. Not that it did her a lot of good, considering how that wicked Harriet ran off with that labor union fellow, eloped she did, and I don’t think she was ever heard of again. But it wasn’t until the judge finally hired that nurse that things began to improve. A blessing that was, at least that’s what Mother used to say.”