A Farewell to Yarns

How awful for you. Come right inside.”
    Fiona got Jane comfortably settled in her kitchen with a plaid wool blanket over her knees and a hot water bottle under her feet. She seemed to be operating on the premise that if she could get Jane warm, everything else would be solved. In other circumstances, Jane would have been amused by these terribly civilized antics. As it was, she was feeling stupefied by recent events. The heat was making her sleepy, too. If only she could go back to bed and get a new start on this day with no bad news.
    Fiona had just handed her a cup of hot, strong, sweet tea when Shelley rushed into the kitchen. “Fiona, your maid let me in. Dear God, what’s happened. Jane, are you hurt?“
    “No, it’s Phyllis. She’s dead.“
    “Oh, no!“
    “Was it a heart attack?“ Fiona asked, pouring another cup of tea for Shelley. “She looked quite healthy, and she wasn’t old. Only our age, wasn’t she?“
    “It wasn’t a heart attack. It was murder.”
    “Murder!“ Shelly and Fiona said in chorus. “She was stabbed, I think. There was a terrible amount of blood.“
    “You saw her?“ Shelley asked. “Jane, how awful—Fiona!”
    Fiona had staggered against the kitchen counter and was slowly crumpling. Jane and Shelley leaped forward together, caught her, and managed to get her into a chair. Forcing her head down between her knees, Shelley whispered, “I should have warned you. She’s funny about blood. I saw her nick her finger once cutting a radish, and she keeled right over into the salad.“
    “I’m so sorry,“ Fiona said, sitting up straight. “How utterly stupid of me.“ The color was returning to her face, and she gave herself a little shake before standing up. “Jane, sit back down, and cover yourself with that blanket. You still look chilled.”
    Jane willingly did as she was told, not that she would mind falling into a restful little faint for a few minutes.
    Shelley sat down across from her. “Jane, what do you know about this? Who would kill Phyllis, and why?“
    “They don’t know. I think it was a mistake. I mean, I think whoever did it meant to kill Bobby, not her.“ She explained about the rooms and about Bobby having the master suite.
    “I don’t know. That assumes the killer knew the layout of the house,“ Shelley said.
    “Not necessarily,“ Fiona commented, now recovered. “You can tell from the outside that the bigger room must be the one that adjoins the deck. In fact, the way the staircase is set up, you’d assume the smaller room was just a closet or something unless you opened the door. I used to take food and magazines over occasionally to the old lady who lived there, and I was quite surprised to discover that it was a bedroom.”
    Shelley nodded. “All right. So somebody tried to kill him and got Phyllis by mistake. Who would that be? Aside from anybody unlucky enough to have met him. God! The police must have a world of suspects.“
    “There’s another possibility,“ Jane said. “What if Bobby himself did it?“
    “Is he really that awful?“ Fiona asked with amazement. “She was his mother!“
    “I’ve read that most murders are committed by family members,“ Jane said. “I think he could have done it. What I don’t see is why he would. She was his meal ticket.“
    “But he didn’t have the sense to treat her well,“ Shelley said. “If he’d had any brains at all, he’d have been buttering her up. He’d have been buttering us up, for that matter, to impress her.“
    “Meal ticket? What do you mean?“ Fiona asked.
    “That’s right. You don’t know the story of how she came by him, do you, Fiona?“ Jane explained what she’d learned the day before about Bobby’s origin.
    “I had no idea,“ Fiona said, when Jane had completed the explanation. “Albert told me how she’d gone on and on about having found a long lost son when he took her over to see the house, but I assumed she was a widow. You mean there’s a discontented husband somewhere? I should think he’d be the first one to consider.“
    “I imagine the police are considering him pretty strongly,“ Jane said. “But he’s somewhere in the Caribbean, I assume.“
    “People can be hired for that sort of thing,“ Shelley put in.
    “I know, but I’m sure that’s not it. If Chet were driven to killing her, it would have to be a crime of passion. A sudden fit of rage. He loved her too much to get rid of her so coldly. Besides, there was no need. If he