Tudor Manor - Chapter Two |Green With Envy|

The billiard room fills with a haze of smoke, clouding the air. Cigars lie discarded and smoking themselves away. Ashtrays are pouring over, except for one. There is a chuckle of laughter, the clinking of glasses, but the noise here is nothing like in the ballroom. A woman comes in with a tray, and collects the ashtrays, leaving new crystal replacements, only to be filled again before the night is over. She coughs softly as she nears the table; the smoke is overpowering, and with the added height of her shoes, her head seems to float in a cloud of smoke. Murmurs to the men in the room, and scotch glasses clink on her silver tray. She will return with more.

The players, their faces illuminated by the greyness of the smoke and the greenness of the light, ignore her as she pushes through the door. No woman has ever seemed to be able to stay in this room for long, or to understand why it is just the way it is; no one here would change a thing. No woman, except perhaps Vivianne Scarlet, who had at least some sense of cards and billiards. But then again, she was an actor, the host’s niece or not.

One of these men seems most at ease here. His is seamless; his transition from billiards to cards, from table to table. He is most at ease here; the green light, the green felt, the smell of smoke: it is all his element. He does not reflect the emerald light; he absorbs it. Perhaps that is why he dresses in a dark green suit for the occasion, standing out amid the endless grey, black, and the occasional brown.

There are some, however, who have dared to encroach on Jonathan’s ideas of copyright through colour. Of course, he can forgive Vivianne, but he should have copyrighted it when he had the chance.

One such infringement walks through the door and into the dark, heavy room. The muted purple-mauve of his suit is unnoticeable under the light. He shuffles through, awkward; he is not a part of this elite. It catches Jonathan’s attention; he has been waiting for this. But there is no need to make the other man feel needed.

“M-Mr. Green?” Edgar stutters by his ear, “I-I have news. And… and imp-portant-”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Jon says to his opponents, “but I shall have to be excused.

Business matters, you see,” the entrepreneur explains, getting out of his chair, walking over to the humidor, Edgar Plum following. “Do tell me what is so urgent, Plum.”

“Th-the library is… I-I’ve just talked to Mr Boddy, a-about the”-

“Oh spit it out, I don’t have all day to listen to your mindless rambles,” Mr Green lights a new cigar.

“All the st-stock records are in-in the library. Th-the one h-here.”
Jon’s attention piques. But he does not show it, no, this is business, and this is his business savvy. “All of them, Plum?”

“A-all of them,” Plum coughs as Jon puffs smoke from his cigar.

“I do not want to waste my time, Plum.”

“Th-they’re all there.”

The corner of Jon’s lip curves up into a sly smirk, “Lovely, Plum, lovely,” he muses, “You can leave now,” he adds after the other man shifts awkwardly in place. Plum leaves, and Jon returns to the card table. Or attempts to.

“Oh! Dearest Jonathan Green!” a familiar voice exclaims from the doorway. It seems she was just passing by, and happened to spot him. Oh dear. Out of courtesy he must respond…

“Mrs Peacock-”

“Henrietta, dear, do call me Henrietta,” she interrupts, a flurry of blue feathers and caked makeup as she waltzes through the door. She pauses, and coughs slightly, fanning the air around her face dramatically, as if something were on fire. Jon is not amused. “How can you bear this room, my darling? Oh! The smoke is just too much. Jon, dear, be a gentleman and go get me a drink.”

Jon stops. There is no way in hell or heaven above he wants to get the senile woman a drink.

Mrs Peacock coughs again, her whole body shuddering with the fake attempt to draw Jon’s attention. She looks pointedly at Mr Green.

He considers for a moment, as if his brain were a scale, that she may be ageing, crazy, and senile, but that she does have a great deal of shares in important companies left to her by her late husband… what was his name… Albert? Shares she probably couldn’t make sense of if he told her how much they were worth. He is, after all, a business man, and this has become a business decision. A decision that may be advantageous to him if he plays his cards right. He knows it. He could suffer through a few minutes with the woman…

“Of course, Henrietta, of course I can fetch a drink. You must excuse me; something caught my eye through the door…”

“Well darling I’ll forgive you, but let us leave this room. The smoke will kill you one day, you know,” she tells him, taking another drag of her cigarette, which is mounted not so gracefully on a ridiculously long cigarette-holder.
They leave the room, Jon following Mrs Peacock as she swirls through the crowd, knocking over drinks and muttering apologies while rambling about her favourite lapdog to him.

“She was a purebred, you know – as always, of course – but there was something with that dog I tell you… something not quite good. And to think of it! The offspring of champions! But luckily for me, I decided to breed her anyway, and then out comes – oh, sorry, sorry, Colonel – the most perfect puppy!” Colonel Mustard, unfortunate enough to be in her path, looks as if he is nursing blunt force trauma to the head, Jon notes. Apparently, Mrs Peacock can create quite a lot of damage with that cigarette holder.

“What a wonderful story, Henrietta, but please, do tell me what drink you would like me to get you…”

“Oh, just tell the bartender it’s for me. He’ll know what to do.”

“I’ll return soon.”

“I’ll be waiting, Jonathan!” But in a flurry of feathers, the woman is gone. She will not be waiting. It will probably be hell to find her, but Jon has his eye on her stocks. He makes his way through the crowd to the bar, leaning on it and ordering her drink and his.

“A drink for your lady?” says a smooth voice to his side: Colonel Mustard.

“My lady?” he scoffs, “More like a senile old woman. And you?”

“Only Miss Vivianne Scarlet,” he smirks, pleased with himself, and leans his elbow on the bar, shouting his order to the bartender. “I think I’ve got her, finally.”

“Oh, what is it you want with Mr Boddy’s niece, Colonel.”

“I’m going to marry her! That woman has no idea how much she’ll inherit when the old fool dies.” Jon’s stomach twists for a moment. If a man marries into the family… that would ruin everything.

“You really think you can manage it? I’ve seen her drive off the eagerest of men,” he replies, assured by his own defence.

“When she wants to, but she won’t want to.”

“So you have an ingenious plan, Colonel Mustard?” Jon doubts Mustard; after all, this is Vivianne Scarlet, not some simple country girl.

“I have ideas, Mr Green, ideas that have been working.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Jon says, reassured but still with some doubts, “Vivianne Scarlet is not to be so easily controlled. And I have to leave now: an ageing woman with a ridiculous fortune is dying for me to see her.”

“Dying, Mr Green?”

“Oh yes, quite literally, Mustard. Quite literally.”

Jon disappears back into the crowd, calming his nerves with a shot of his brandy. He smells her drink. Sherry? How predictable. Just another sign she’ll die soon and leave him her fortune. Perfect.

Of course, even he had predicted the woman would be impossible to find, and she was. He looked closely where she had been last, and then scanned the room. In truth, the farther away from her he was, the more relaxed he would be. He set her glass down on one of the tables dotted around the room, and looked for Mrs White. Somehow, somewhere, White and Peacock had formed some funny kind of bond last summer when Mr Boddy’s six closest friends had visited the manor. If he could find White, he could find Peacock.

Now that he thought of it, leaning beside her drink, he could end it all now… and then go to court telling the jury she had given him access to her finances just before she died. It would work; yes… he did have the best lawyers, and enough money to bribe most, if not all of the jurors. His brow furrowed. No, then it would look to suspicious with the idea he was already planning.

From across the room however, Jon catches the ever noticeable black and white of Mr Boddy’s housekeeper. Mrs Peacock’s drink in hand, he sweeps fluidly across the room, not disturbing any of the conversation knots.

“Mrs White?” he asks, tapping the woman on the shoulder. She jumps, turning around flustered.

“What! Who? Wh- Oh!” she regains composure instantly, “Mr Green. Jon. What can I do for you?”

“I’d hoped you’d know where Mrs Peacock is.”

“Oh yes, yes, she’s at the far end of the ballroom. Is there something you wanted to tell her?”

“Well, no. I was just wondering if you could take this to her – this drink. I ordered it for her but I’m afraid I have to leave now.”

“Of course I can get it to her. But what is it you have to leave for? It’s very early, Jon.”

“Some… business. It’s all business,” he laughs at her blindness internally as she sweeps the drink out of his hand and onto a silver platter.

“Well I hope to see you soon, Jonathan.”

“I will be back, Mrs White.”

Quickly, before the woman brings up anything else to explain, Jon ducks back into the crowd, hopefully loosing her until he has to “leave.” From near one of the tall, draped windows, his shrewd eyes scan the party, looking for Mr Boddy. Within an instant, Jon spots him, and follows him. Mr Boddy is leaving the party quickly and rather inconspicuously for its host. Jon smiles as he winds through the guests, it’s just all too perfect. He is in flawless pursuit, until –

“Oh my dear! Oh I’m so sorry, oh dear!” One of the women present has spilled her drink over his pant leg. He looks down automatically. But as soon as he looks up for Mr Boddy, the host is gone. The woman has begun to pat down his calf with her napkin, and he hasn’t moved, overwhelmed with frustration.

“Its fine,” he growls, not caring about charm now.
Striding through the conversations, he is sure: Mr Boddy is gone. He curses under his breath. Out of pure desperation, Jon follows the path he guessed Mr Boddy would take, until a figure robed in red silk catches his eye from across the room. She makes a move to come over, and Jon notices that Mrs Peacock is behind Miss Scarlet. Now, without any options, he dashes out of the ballroom.

He doesn’t stop to think, and guesses. But despite his guess, he is ready. Now, he is soundless; ready and waiting for his opportunity. He must be in the library; Boddy must be in the library. The double doors of the room are in front of him, and Jon waits. From his jacket, he unsheathes his knife. There, he pauses, driven, hungry, and murderous for money.

Mr Green, in the library, with the knife.