Page 64 of And Then There Was the One
Georgie considered; after a moment, it came to her. “The letter ‘O,’?” she said slowly. “There was a… smudge, or something. Each time it was typed.”
“Exactly.” Sebastian nodded. “An irregularity with thekey—it happens with typewriters, when they’ve been used for a while, they develop odd quirks. Fitzgibbons’s typewriter has a hook on the lowercase ‘g.’?”
In unison, Miss Singh and Miss de Vere clapped their hands to their mouths. “Fitzgibbons?” Miss de Vere demanded. “As in,Delacey Fitzgibbons?”
Georgie sighed as Sebastian looked sheepishly at her. “You may as well tell them.”
“He is my employer,” he confessed to the Murder Tourists, who gasped again, even more dramatically.
“Then… you are not here on holiday at all!” Miss Singh said, looking entirely thrilled by this development. “You are here toinvestigate!” She paused to consider. “How fortunate, Miss Radcliffe, that you should have a family friend who is employed by a detective! Did he help you solve any of the previous cases?” She looked a bit disappointed at the notion that her heroine might have had outside assistance—and from aman, at that.
“Well,” Georgie hedged.
“I did not,” Sebastian said firmly. “Miss Radcliffe did all that detective work herself, with that admirable mind of hers.” Georgie glanced at him, but his attention was on the Murder Tourists, and he adopted a confessional sort of tone. “And Miss Radcliffe and I might have exaggerated the extent of our family connection.”
“Exaggerated… by how much?” Miss Singh asked.
“Er.” Sebastian smiled winningly at her. “By implying that any existed whatsoever.”
Miss Singh clapped a shocked hand to her mouth yet again.“Then you are here in an official professional capacity?” Rather than looking betrayed to have been lied to, she looked—if possible—even more delighted by this development.
“Yes,” Miss de Vere said, eyeing Sebastian with a discerning gleam in her eye. “Which means, when you tried to lure us into a pub using your masculine wiles, you were doing it as part of the investigation. Because—” Here, she broke off, looking more excited than Georgie had thought the sophisticated Miss de Vere was capable of looking. “Asha,he thought we were suspects!”
“It made sense!” Georgie said defensively. “You’ve been to visit multiple times, and you’ve been prattling on nonstop aboutThe Deathly Dispatch, and you’re just… constantly underfoot. It didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility.”
“It does make a certain amount of sense,” Miss Singh agreed, looking absolutely elated. “This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me!” She clasped her hands together. “That would be athrillingend to this story, I have to say. Do you mind if I steal it for my manuscript?”
“Manuscript?” Georgie said blankly.
Miss Singh nodded happily. “I’ve decided to try my hand at writing a novel of my own! There’s so much inspiration here!”
“Isthatwhy you’ve been to visit so often?” Arthur asked; he was leaning against the edge of a neighboring booth, arms crossed over his chest, watching this entire scene with considerable entertainment.
Miss Singh and Miss de Vere exchanged a look. “In part,” Miss Singh said. “I’d been considering making the culprityou, Miss Radcliffe,” she added, a bit apologetically. “Or notyouyou, but an intrepid lady sleuth who wears sensible jumpers.But then I decided that it’s not really playing fair, is it, to have the detective be the murderer? Agatha Christie would never.”
“What was my motive going to be?” Georgie asked, curious in spite of herself.
“Continued employment!” Miss Singh said, looking pleased with herself. “Got to have a steady supply of murder victims to keep yourself earning a tidy income.”
“I am notearningan income,” Georgie pointed out.
“Oh.” Miss Singh’s face fell, but she rallied a moment later. “Well… you do it for the fame, then! The attention it brings you! You need people to continue being murdered so you don’t get pushed out of the limelight!”
“I do not think your lady detective has all that much in common with me,” Georgie said, feeling a headache coming on, then shook her head, looking at Sebastian. “If we could get back to the point—what’s the issue with the typewriter?”
“Well,” Sebastian said, “it occurred to me—that quirk on the ‘O’ from that typewriter looked familiar.”
“Familiar how?” Georgie asked.
“That’s what I’ve been wondering all afternoon—but Miss Singh has made me realize where I saw it: on the letter from the orphanage to the Mistletoe Murderer. It was on display at the village hall!”
Georgie stared at him, her mind racing; she dimly remembered, now, him making some sort of comment about a distinctive typewriter key on that letter, though she hadn’t paid it any attention at the time, dismissing it as more of his incessant babble. But if the typewriter that produced that letter was the same typewriter that the Penbakers owned…
“Then either Mr. Penbaker or his wife sent that letter!” Georgie said excitedly. “And the typewriter would be evidence—and all those papers that Mrs. Penbaker was getting rid of, too!”
She and Sebastian stared at each other. Arthur had retrieved his notebook and was scribbling away feverishly, while the Murder Tourists were literally and figuratively on the edges of their seats, eyes wide.
“So the question is,” Sebastian said, his eyes still locked on hers, “whether Mr. or Mrs. Penbaker was the one who sent them.”
