Tea with Milk and Murder (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 2) by H.Y. Hanna Read Free Book Online

overall effect felt slightly fake, like a little girl playing dress-up with her mother’s clothes and make-up.
    She caught me looking at her and I flushed. To cover my embarrassment, I said quickly, “I’m really sorry about your daughter, Mrs Waltham.”
    “I… I just can’t believe it…” said the other woman in dazed disbelief. She stared blankly into space. “I don’t know… How can it be…? She was fine earlier this evening… She was going to a party…”
    “Yes, I met her there,” I said without thinking. Then I bit my tongue. I didn’t want Mrs Waltham to start asking me for the gory details. Although I suppose if she found out later that I had been at the party and seen Sarah and hadn’t mentioned it, that wouldn’t have gone down well either.
    Mrs Waltham turned to look at me uncomprehendingly and I hastened to explain. “I was at a party this evening—at a gallery in Oxford—and Sarah was there.”
    She shook her head, still with that look of dazed confusion. “The policeman said there was an incident at the gallery and the ambulance didn’t get there in time. What kind of incident? Did you see what happened?”
    I shifted uncomfortably. “It looked like Sarah had some kind of seizure.”
    “But that doesn’t make sense!” Mrs Waltham burst out. “Sarah didn’t have epilepsy.”
    “And she wasn’t a diabetic?”
    Mrs Waltham shook her head.
    “Did she… did she seem like her normal self when she left for the party this evening?” I asked hesitantly. I really wanted to ask if she had been drunk but I couldn’t think of a polite way to broach the topic.
    “Yes, I think so,” said Mrs. Waltham thoughtfully. “Much happier than she’s been lately.”
    What did she mean by that? Before I could ask, my mother came in carrying a tray laden with a Royal Doulton tea set in rose pink with soft gold accents, a plate of home-made butter shortbread and a stack of linen napkins. She set this on the lounge table, sat down, and gracefully began to serve tea, carefully pouring out the deep, orange-red liquid through the silver strainer into the teacups and handing these around.
    I watched her admiringly. Much as I disagreed with my mother’s 1950’s housewife approach to life, I did wish I could perform everyday domestic tasks like this with such poise and elegance. It’s a bit of a lost art in recent generations of women, I think, with our race to get to the top of the corporate career ladder and our contempt for “ladylike” habits and pursuits.
    “Sarah loves… I mean, Sarah loved shortbread,” said Mrs Waltham suddenly, eyeing the plate. “Our old housekeeper, Mrs Hicks, used to make some each week.” Her lips quivered. “I… I can’t believe that Sarah is never going to be helping herself from that tin anymore…”
    My mother looked slightly alarmed at so much emotion being displayed. The thought of having to discuss “Feelings” was just too much for her British sensibilities. She was no doubt thinking that Mrs Waltham ought to show more of a proper stiff upper lip in the face of tragedy.
    She lifted the milk jug and said brightly, “Milk? Sugar?” as if we were all sitting down to Sunday afternoon tea.
    Still, maybe my mother was right about the tea. There was certainly a kind of comfort in the familiar ritual and it gave one something to do, something to focus on. There was a companionable silence for a while as we busied ourselves adding milk and sugar to the cups, tasting the shortbread, handing around napkins—broken only by Mrs Waltham suddenly jerking upright and saying:
    “Oh God, I… I’ll have to tell David.”
    “Is that Mr Waltham?” I asked.
    She nodded miserably. “He’s in hospital at the moment.” She saw our expressions and explained, “He went in for a prostate operation, and then unfortunately, developed complications afterwards: he got septicaemia. He was quite bad earlier this week and we were so worried… but thank goodness, he seems to