At last my story was over. I had told these strange women my macabre tale and now must go home to my husband.
“The important thing is that Ben is going to be all right.” Hyacinth interrupted my thoughts.
“The important thing,” I contradicted, “is that Charles Delacorte is dead. And by my hand. He was allergic to seafood as well as other things such as cats. That was why he was always picking through the sandwiches and occasionally sniffing them for good measure. But I outfoxed him. I made some of my chicken tarts with tuna, remember?”
“My dear, dear Ellie.” Primrose proffered the smelly salts. “Of course we remember. And you should remember that although these club women may not be our sort in some ways, they are not stupid. They would never have banked on your running out of chicken. No, indeed! One of them will have brought along something fishy in disguise-possibly a look-alike tart-and fed it to Mr. Delacorte when he wasn’t looking. You had received many requests for them.”
My shoulders sagged. “Even so, Charles Delacorte may well have eaten one of my tuna tarts before he got to theirs. I can never be certain I didn’t cause his death.”
Hyacinth snapped the green book closed. “Stop wallowing, Ellie. If we all went around worrying about who we might have accidentally killed, we would never get any work done. And set to work we must.”
That was, I trusted, the royal we. Shifting in my chair, I stared at the clock on the wall. Nine o’clock. We had sat in the rose and green coffee room at Abigail’s for hours. We had drunk innumerable cups of tea and dispatched William Butler to the kitchen so many times he was undoubtedly dizzy or asleep. I wanted to go home to Ben.
On the morning after The Death, Dr. Melrose had come out to Merlin’s Court and confirmed my diagnosis of a relapse. Ben was now suffering from a viral condition contracted while in a weakened condition and aggravated by gate-crashing his own party.
Generally speaking, I think Ben was pleased with his setback. Now he could call a halt to conversation simply by closing his eyes.
It had been a bleak moment when I had confessed to him about the fake chicken tarts. What I had done violated the fundamentals of his professional code. He was sorry about Charles, but it could not be said he felt his loss keenly. Momentarily hope had flickered in Ben’s eyes. If I were to keep quiet at the inquest and let it be thought that Charles had absentmindedly scoffed a tuna toastie… but Ben was pulled up short by his conscience and I by the memory that Bunty had been present when I made the tuna/chicken tarts.
The ruin of my husband’s dreams stared me in the face. His professional integrity was in question. No one would patronize Abigail’s; no one would buy the cookery book. Ben would become the butt of such jokes as, Chicken by any other name is not the same. Perhaps if we were to flee the country and start afresh under an assumed name, things might improve. But for the present, all I could do for Ben was not to burden him with my guilt and misery.
I insisted he obey Dr. Melrose’s orders not to attend the inquest. I even talked glibly about what I would wear to the funeral and whether we should send a wreath or a cross. On the plus side, I felt glad the pressure of having me as a daughter-in-law was bringing Magdalene and Eli closer together. They eyed each other sometimes over my head. Ben closed his eyes a lot. I was glad that he bought the notion that I was shrugging the matter aside. At the same time, I resented his not seeing through me.
But did he? Had we been deluding ourselves that ours was a grand passion because the circumstances under which we had met had been so romantic? To say nothing of all that romantic money. I kept remembering the wedding reception and those whispers in the hall.
“A shame she didn’t marry the vicar.” “This one is much too good-looking.” “She’s bound to get fat again. People do when they’re happy.”
“Poor Ellie.” Primrose leaned across the seersucker tablecloth and touched her papery hands to my face. “Indeed I know how you must feel. Every time I step on a beetle I anguish, but it is our duty as Christians to combat grief with work.”
“Which,” Hyacinth cut in briskly, “offers the additional advantage of being an excellent means of getting things done. Ellie, should you sincerely wish to redeem Ben’s reputation and your own self-esteem, I urge you to help Flowers Detection in the noble endeavour of uncovering the identity of the founder of this widows club. In so doing you may find that Charles Delacorte’s allergy to fishy food didn’t kill him per se; it was used to reduce him to a state of helplessness so that someone hidden in the study could step out and quickly and easily smother him without suspicions of foul play being aroused. Someone could have had a plastic bag in her pocket.”
Hyacinth stopped and her eyes snapped me to attention, but I went almost immediately back into a sag. I wanted to believe… and true, I needed a bit of nobility in my life right now, the sort of stuff that would bring Ben running to me on his knees. But was I fully convinced that this evil organisation existed? And supposing it did, what could I, the notorious bungler, do about it?
Tapping the green notebook on the table, Hyacinth fixed me with her dark eyes. “You want proof, don’t you? Well, for starters, Mrs. Daffy told you at the party that those black dickybirds on the brooches worn by the women are crows.”
“So?”
“Don’t you find it suggestive, Ellie, that she had scarce uttered the words when Mrs. Bottomly snatched her away?”
I placed my bag on the table to signify that I was about to snatch myself away. “Presumably Mrs. Bottomly had someone she wished Mrs. Daffy to meet.”
Primrose shook her head of curls, tut-tutting gently. “I fear, Ellie, that you slept through some of your school days, as I did. The proper terminology for a line of crows is”-she paused theatrically-“a murder of crows.”
I stared at her in horror.
Primrose nodded at her sister. “We imagine that Mrs. Daffy, in a flash of self-importance at becoming a new member, forgot she wasn’t supposed to reveal the species of the bird. The brooches are so small that people on the outside are likely to think, as you did, my dear, that the birds are of the four-and-twenty kind that got baked in the royal pie.”
I looked from Primrose’s faded flower face to Hyacinth, with her hooded dark eyes and cone of black hair, then set my bag down on the floor. “Have you asked any of these women what the brooches represent?”
Primrose smiled at my curiosity. “Last Tuesday at the post office, I trod on the foot of a woman wearing one. Understand, Ellie, I did not press hard, only enough to enable me to apologise and start up a conversation. One does not wish one’s profession to make one ruthless. And she was really such a charming woman. She’d had an uncle who had gone out to India, I remember…” Hyacinth winced and Primrose collected herself. “To put it in a nutshell, she admitted quite freely that the brooch was an insignia of a widows group, the birds symbolic of women closing ranks in the struggle to rebuild the nest.”
“Sounds logical. Birds, crows, and the rest of the fowl of the air must go through the same struggle with the grief process as the rest of us.” I pushed back my chair. “This conversation has been extremely stimulating, but as you know, Ben is not fully recovered, and if I don’t get home soon, Magdalene will have slipcovered all the furniture and Poppa converted the dining room into a workshop.”
“Sit down, Ellie.” Hyacinth was firm.
I sat.
“Please do not think I am applying the thumbscrew, but do consider-if you do not help us, you may find yourself begging your in-laws never to leave because the thought of life alone with Ben is untenable.”
I wavered, but somehow managed to drag a rabbit out of the hat. “Dorcas and Jonas will be returning soon.”
Primrose nodded at me sadly. “Your dearest friends will immediately intuit that something is supremely wrong between you and your spouse. They will suffer with you. My dear, friends are never an escape.”
I twisted a corner of the tablecloth into a point. Tomorrow I would airmail a note to D. and J. telling them I was frightfully busy entertaining Ben’s parents and the house seemed unbelievably crowded. It was the kindest thing I could do.
Hyacinth pushed back her chair. “Ellie, the brooches are indicative, but they do not prove that this murderous organisation exists. However, I believe that Flowers Detection can convince you.”
“You needed me, madam?” Unnervingly Butler made no sound on entering.
“I did. And next time try to be a little more prompt. Did you fetch what I asked for?”
“Is rain wet, madam?” Expressionless, he handed Hyacinth a book in a white-and-red jacket.
“Splendid, Butler.” Primrose beamed up at him. “You also took care of that other small matter?”
Butler inclined his head. “I found the party at home and agreeable to visit at the time you suggested.”
As the door closed, I said, “Who, if I may ask, is the person he has invited to visit you? Or should I say us?”
“First things first.” Hyacinth held up the book Butler had handed her. The red splattering on the white background was an artist’s rendition of blood. The title was The Merry Widows. My bag slid off my lap, spilling its contents all around my chair. My voice cracked. “Edwin Digby, alias Mary Birdsong, wrote that book. I stumbled upon it in his study.”
Hyacinth’s orange lips curled in a smile. “You told us so in describing your visit to him.”
“While I was requesting Butler to fetch more toasted tea cakes”-Primrose adjusted the curls upon her forehead-“I whispered to him that it would be extremely helpful were he to admit himself to The Aviary and fetch the volume, which, needless to say, we will return in the condition we received it.”
“What if he had collided with Edwin Digby?”
Hyacinth waved a nonchalant hand. “Butler has his ways, which we never probe. I think he may have been somewhat concerned about colliding with Mother, but happily all went well.” She tapped on the book. “We knew about this through our research.” She held it out to me. “Do you wish, Ellie, to read the plot outline on the inside flap of the jacket?”
“Certainly.”
Primrose edged her chair closer. “I would appreciate your reading out loud, Ellie.”
I cleared my throat.
From the pen of Mary Birdsong drips another tale of icy terror. This time the locale is the picture postcard village of Nettleton Byways, where a group of ladies, wholesome as wholemeal bread, have formed a club. A club for would-be widows. Women who choose widowhood over divorce. This organisation has been operating successfully for many years and provides the following services:
1. Elimination of adulterous husbands, with an emphasis on the death appearing to result from natural causes, an accident, or suicide.
2. Emotional support in dealing with subsequent guilt or remorse.
3. Social activities, which include a monthly luncheon meeting, bridge, whist, gardening groups, and charitable works. Board meetings are held in closed session.
Deaths are prescribed by the club’s founder. Members of the board are encouraged to assist in implementation. The identity of The Founder is known only to charter members who are no longer active. His/her instructions are issued by telephone to the current president, who sees they are carried out. The heroine of this tantalising novel…”
My hands trembled so violently the book fell. “Are you saying that Mary Birdsong is our man?”
Primrose pursed her lips. “My dear, Ellie, don’t you think he’s a shade too obvious?”
I ran my fingers through my hair, causing it to slide down my neck. Speaking through a mouthful of pins I said:
“I think Mr. Digby’s background-which, from what Roxie said, has been marked by tragedy-should be checked. But drunk or sober, he isn’t a fool. The fact that everything points to him-this book, the brooches (he is an ornithological enthusiast)-suggests to me that The Founder has set the stage so that if the blade of the guillotine ever falls, it will land on Mr. Digby’s head.”
Hyacinth looked from me to Primrose and back again. “The possibility should be considered that he wishes to be caught. But let us remember that even if The Merry Widows is still in print, which I doubt-seeing that it was published twenty years ago and Mrs. Malloy said his early work is unattainable-no one would connect it with a real club. Except the widows themselves. And they can not be sure that Edwin Digby is involved in any way, other than an inspiration.”
Primrose drew her shawl tighter. The room was growing shadowy. “Ellie, I know you have been busy with such distractions as death and illness, but have you talked with Lady Theodora about why she went into Abigail’s office and discovered Charles Delacorte that fateful night?”
“I haven’t spoken with her. I saw her as I was coming in here this evening, but she pretended not to see me and crossed the road. My knowledge of what she told the police is reported in The Daily Spokesman.”
“She said that she entered the office, mistaking it for the bathroom.” Hyacinth tapped on the green notebook with a ruminative finger. “Not quite plausible, but so often the truth is not. By the way, Ellie, did Mr. Digby ever collect his pin-striped suit?”
“Yes, the morning after the death. You think his haste unseemly under the circumstances, that he was desperate to recover that photograph?” What was wrong with me? I wanted Abigail’s name cleared at all costs, didn’t I? And surely someone would take Mother in if Mr. Digby were sent to prison.
Primrose’s blue eyes met mine. She exchanged looks with Hyacinth and said, “Butler must begin a full-scale investigation of Mr. Digby, tomorrow at the latest.”
“Agreed.” Hyacinth lifted the teapot and poured a trickle into each of our cups. “He will also check out Lady Theodora; likewise Lionel Wiseman who, so says his wife, is especially sympathetic to his female clients! And Bunty Wiseman-married (although gossip says otherwise) to a man old enough to be her father. Is the attraction love, money, or something more Freudian? And I mustn’t have Butler forget Mr. Sidney Fowler, whose father deserted him as a boy, had a reputation as a Casanova in his youth, and-”
“-And may have locked Bentley in the potato bin during a childhood game of hide-and-seek,” Primrose contributed.
Hyacinth moved our cups toward us. “I will conclude this summation, thank you, Prim. Roxie Malloy’s references must be rechecked. The Founder is a person with both ears to the ground and the opportunities inherent in Roxie’s work are boundless.” Hyacinth stopped and looked toward the door. “Am I hearing things or was that the doorbell?”
Standing, I pressed my hands on the table. The cups and saucers did a slow slide. “Isn’t it a strange coincidence that all of these suspects are known to me?” I took a steadying breath and the crockery came to a standstill. “We cannot assume simply because these people have cropped up during the course of this evening’s conversation that one of them is The Founder. He/she and I may never have crossed paths, let alone spoken to each other!”
Hyacinth’s black eyes burned into me. “My dear Ellie, I don’t assume. I know.”
The orange lips smiled complacently. “Did you receive a bouquet of roses the morning after Charles Delacorte’s death?”
“Yes.”
“Enclosed with them was a card, am I right? Inscribed with the words, I am sorry. There was no-”
“-signature.” That moment seeped back.
… I am standing in the hall at Merlin’s Court, the yellow roses in my hands… I feel such elation at the belief that Ben has sent them… then I see his stony face when I come running into the bedroom with them. “The gallant Rowland strikes again,” he said…
I sat down.
Primrose touched my hand. “My dear Ellie, Charles Delacorte had to die that evening at Abigail’s. The occasion was too ideal to be missed. But, small consolation that it is, someone regretted the necessity of involving you. Someone who knows you, likes you, and quite possibly admires you.”
“The signature could have easily been omitted by mistake,” I protested. “But how did you know about the roses?”
“Our discovery of the flowers sent to you was fortuitous.” Primrose stretched the edges of her shawl over her arms. “We thought it might be of interest to know who sent wreaths to the funeral, so we instructed Butler to check the florist’s order book, which he did last midnight-” Primrose coughed behind her hand-“not wishing to intrude upon working hours.”
“Most considerate.” Belatedly, I picked up my scattered possessions off the floor and replaced them in my bag. Would that I could collect my scattered thoughts that easily. The analysis of the suspects, my supposed connection with The Founder, was leading straight as a homing pigeon to the moment when the Tramwells would reveal what they wanted from me. Part of me determined that whatever it was, the answer was NO! Another part kept stuttering, but think-this may be your one chance to put things right for Ben and Abigail’s, to say nothing of saving the lives of countless erring, unsuspecting husbands. What was a little danger, a little terror, in so good a cause? If only I were the stuff of which heroines are made.
“If there is a Founder,” I said, “I’ll put my money on Dr. Simon Bordeaux. He must know what is behind all those nervous breakdowns at the Peerless. He cannot be totally evil because he is taking care of Jenny Spender and her mother, but he is creepy.”
Hyacinth squared her shoulders. “Ellie, the most vital thing we have learned concerning The Founder is that he or she is diabolically clever. Dr. Bordeaux may be diabolical, but clever-no. Otherwise he could have managed to bump off a few helpless old women without causing a ruckus.”
“He was never brought to trial on any charges,” I reminded her.
“He may not have been guilty of anything. Those women who remembered him in their wills may have done so by desire. To earn an undeservedly sinister reputation doesn’t smack much of cleverness, does it?” Hyacinth closed the green book and laid it on the table.
My heart thudded. My hands felt as though they were smeared with cold cream. The sisters were bracing themselves to appeal to my nobility of character. They were going to ask me to risk everything that mattered most to me. Grabbing at the first thought that came into my head, I said, “What about Miss Gladys Thorn? Isn’t she as suspect as any?”
The parlour door opened and closed; I heard Butler’s tentative cough, but kept talking. “The Maiden Voyage, a book on the subject of repressed feminine sexuality, strongly suggests-”
Primrose smiled gently. “Dear Ellie, why not talk to Miss Thorn herself?”
I could not move my eyes, let alone anything else. Butler was walking Miss Thorn across the room. Now he drew out a chair for her. She twitched a smile at me and I strove to indent my face in response.
“Tea, madam?” Butler spoke through his nose.
“Oh, that would be nice, thank you so terribly much.”
As the door closed behind him, Miss Thorn straightened her glasses, fumbled with the tablecloth, then locked her bony hands together. “Mrs. Haskell, you now know all. I do beseech you-if you feel some particle of charity in your heart-not to tell the dear vicar. He would be so grieved.”
“I imagine he would be aghast,” I said hoarsely. “To know that men of his parish are being murdered in record numbers-”
Primrose coolly interrupted me. “Quite, my dear Ellie. Mr. Foxworth might feel that his sermons weren’t getting through.” She patted the church organist’s hand. “Do you recall, Ellie, our telling you that Flowers Detection was brought into this investigation through the efforts of someone personally affected by the number of men in this locality meeting untimely deaths?”
I responded a little impatiently. “Absolutely. You described her as the Other Woman in so many ill-fated affairs that she had contacted an insurance company-” My eyes met Miss Thorn’s. She was blushing.
“I fear, Mrs. Haskell, you are looking at her.” Her mushroom eyes swam behind the glasses. “How can I hope to make you, an ordinary woman of pure impulse, understand the curse of one born with an animal magnetism, a musk, if you will, which draws men willy-nilly? My reason for not marrying-although I have had more proposals than I can count-is that I know”-she touched her forehead, now glistening with perspiration-“that it is physically impossible for me to confine myself to the passions of one man. Those others out there wouldn’t let me. And does not the dear vicar so often say we must use our unique gifts for the enrichment of others?”
She was wringing her hands so tightly I thought they would start dripping. The nerve of her. Speaking about marriage that way as though it, and people like me who settle for it, were incurably dull. And yet… hadn’t Ben awakened on our wedding night shouting out Miss Thorn’s name? I had thought he was having a nightmare. Et tu, Jonas. Hadn’t he once said he got all hot under the collar when looking into Miss Thorn’s eyes?
“Can it be true, Mrs. Haskell, that you never suspected?” Miss Thorn’s eyes shuddered away from mine. “Vernon Daffy, may he rest in peace, refused to leave me alone. At your wedding reception he followed me upstairs, and after we had… delighted in each other, he begged me to play the piano for him, and I was so transported that I didn’t notice that his wig had come off until the cat started playing with it. The next moment you entered, and Vernon hid under the bedclothes.”
Hyacinth thumbed through the green book. “Mr. Vernon Daffy made the fatal mistake of asking his wife for a divorce, so he could marry another woman.”
“My men, God bless them,”-Miss Thorn closed her eyes-“have always respected me too much to reveal my name, but some suspicions must have been aroused because-” She stopped, digging her fingers into the edge of the table. “I heard rumours, shocking, unfounded rumours, that I was having an affair with a gentleman whom-although I never disliked him as much as many people did-I was never once tempted to visualise… naked.”
Primrose closed her eyes.
“Ellie,” said Hyacinth. “Miss Thorn is speaking of Charles Delacorte. Granted, he may have been having an affair with some unknown woman and used Miss Thorn as a scapegoat. But, what if he were guiltless of all wrongdoing, other than being an extremely unpleasant human being?” She paused for emphasis. “Something tells me we may have encountered a motive for murder different from the norm here. In other words, Mrs. Delacorte’s reason for wishing to be a widow may differ from that of the other club members.”
I tried to grip the seat of my chair, but my hands kept slipping. “You’re thinking Ann may have wanted Charles out of the way because of what I told you about her feelings for Lionel; but that doesn’t add up.” We were talking about a friend of mine. The sisters nodded and Gladys Thorn’s mushroom eyes magnified behind her glasses.
“Bunty’s still in the picture, you mean?” Hyacinth stood, paced for a few seconds and sat back down. “A stumbler, but Ann Delacorte may be banking on her allure as a heartbroken widow. And Flowers Detection must bank on her loyalty to the club not equalling that of her sisters, making her a little more approachable, a little less guarded if someone-”
She stopped significantly. I finished for her. “If someone attempted to infiltrate the group.” I picked up Edwin Digby’s book, The Merry Widows, then dropped it, as if it were white-hot. “I can’t do it; I can’t phone Ann and tell her I’ve just begun to realise how much we have in common-that I, too, want to murder my husband. What if something went wrong? What if I got in too deep and couldn’t get out?”
The pink bows in Primrose’s silvery curls and the Mickey Mouse watch were suddenly at odds with the sternness in her blue eyes. “Ellie, men are being murdered. Can you live with yourself knowing that?”
“I’m not at all sure that they are,” I flashed back.
“Then, my dear, nothing terrible can happen, if you just have a little chat with Ann about your unhappy marriage and how you are desperately seeking a way out.”
I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t have any words left. I opened up The Merry Widows and continued reading from the jacket where I had left off.
The heroine of this macabre tale is a foolish female who eventually gets what is coming to her.
“And now, my dear Ellie,” said Primrose, “it’s time to assign Bentley a paramour. Remember, to meet the eligibility requirements of The Widows Club, you must accuse him of conduct unbecoming a married gentleman.”
Miss Thorn raked fingers through her hair. “Anything I can do in the line of duty?”
Hyacinth froze her with a smile. “Without doubt, cousin Vanessa is the ideal choice. Her attentions to the vicar can so easily be made to look like camouflage. Now, Ellie, as to contacting Mrs. Delacorte and requesting she put you up for membership in The Widows Club, I suggest you allow a decent interval to elapse, say, a few days. Perhaps you could use the interim period to do something about eating sensibly?”
Miss Thorn twitched agreement. In addition to her other shortcomings, she undoubtedly ate like an elephant and lost rather than gained.
At midnight, after that marathon talk with the Tramwells, I crept into Merlin’s Court like a thief.
“Ellie.” Ben came out of the hall shadows and crushed me in his arms. “I thought you had left. And I was desperately worried about you; I didn’t think you would like being a nun.” He attempted a laugh. “I couldn’t blame you though if you’d had enough. I’ve failed you miserably.” He kissed my neck, my weakest spot. “My illness is no excuse…” Something in his voice told me he hoped it could be. “My treatment of you has been unforgivable.”
I wasn’t the innocent I had been when we married. I knew now that unless one chooses to join the ranks of the divorced-or worse-a spouse has, at times, to forgive the unforgivable. And Ben was compounding all the horrors of my situation by being utterly desirable. I stood there, my nose against his ear, arms rigid at my sides.
“Ellie, I know that even without what happened to Charles Delacorte, this has been a time of adjustment for you. First Mum, then Poppa descending on us with their problems, but in the end nothing counts but our love for each other. That is still so, isn’t it? We would have married even if so doing had cost us the inheritance. The house, and the money is just the fondant françois on the cake.”
This from the man I was plotting to murder! That I was doing so in a just cause and did not plan to bring the matter to fruition seemed, as the shadows in the hall stealthed the walls, to be splitting hairs. Ben had every right to know about my involvement with Flowers Detection; he was crucially involved. But if I told him everything… anything, he might be consumed by guilt, thinking that he had reduced me to this state of lunatic credulity. And… he might respond with heavy-handed chivalry and demand that I stop. A big chunk of me wanted to stop. But what if no one combatted the widows? What if they expanded their horizons? Did I want to raise children in a world where it was off with the heads of grannies who wouldn’t babysit every other Saturday or teachers who didn’t give all A’s?
In such a frame of mind, how could I go freely into my husband’s arms? That night I did not worry about the absence of violins; my head was filled with bells knelling. That sort of thing makes a woman frigid in a hurry.
There was, however, a glimmer of help for me. Ben blamed my abstraction upon his mother, who spent half the night pacing in her turret room. Even now we could hear every step, every chink of the rosary beads.
Poppa, on the other hand, caused us daytime audio problems. The next day and the next, the sound of his saw was enough to send anyone into orbit. He had turned the loggia into his workshop, and sawdust rose like a Sahara sandstorm. I tried to look pleased. He was, after all, engaged in making the cake from which I was to leap the night of Bunty’s Follies-now only a few weeks away. I had expected something disposable, but this was a magnificent edifice, good for the wear and tear of the next three generations. Not that my crystal ball showed any future generations.
Monday morning, three days after Charles Delacorte’s funeral, I determined I could do something about my marriage. I could eat the attractive, delicious, well-balanced meals Ben prepared. And if in so doing I gained a pound, so be it. Somewhere along the pathway to becoming the perfect wife I had forgotten that I had needed Ben’s help to keep trim; I had stopped letting him support me in this very important area of my life. We had been more of a team, more married, in the days when we were friends.
If only… if only we could have a second chance. I made a second determination. At nine-thirty, give or take an hour, I would pick up the phone and dial Ann’s number.
Magdalene and I were alone in the kitchen, but I was barely aware of her until she said, “If it’s something I’ve done to upset you, Giselle, I’d rather you told me straight out. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings, I’m not as frail as I look.” She picked up the milk jug with both hands. “I draw strength from doing for others.”
I believed her. The kitchen was a changed place. Strung above the window were brightly painted egg shells sprouting tiny plants. A patchwork rug lay on the floor, a doily draped over the back of the rocking chair, and a new army of statues topped one of the cupboards. But the biggest change was in Magdalene herself. She wore a secret glow that perked up her dusty sparrow face. She and Poppa still weren’t speaking beyond essentials, and she continued to cross herself every time he came into the room. But there seemed something different about the way she did it. Had Charles’s untimely demise brought home to her the temporary nature of all things, including extramarital flings?
“You haven’t done anything to upset me, Magdalene. I’m just a bit preoccupied.” A nicer person would have reassured her with a hug. My uncooperative arms dangled at my sides. In a few minutes I must take that long walk to the phone.
“You’ll just be saying that, but it’s not in my nature to poke and pry.” Opening the garden door to admit Sweetie, her expression clouded. “Hm! Here comes Mrs. Malloy.”
“Morning!” Roxie rattled the supply bag at Sweetie. “Not another in the world like the little moppet, is there? Only scratches to come in when she has to go.”
Magdalene and Sweetie bristled. Hurriedly, I mentioned the post Roxie had in her hands.
“Don’t get excited, Mrs. H. Nothing of interest.” She licked her index finger and continued to flip through. “Nothing but bleedin’ bills, by the looks of it.” She whapped the envelopes on the table and prissied her lips at Magdalene. “We can’t get letters from France every day, can we, Mr. H.’s Ma?”
My mother-in-law hadn’t mentioned any foreign correspondence. She avoided my eyes and got busy stroking Sweetie; her lips were tight. Roxie dumped the supply bag on the table and gave me a lavish smile. “How’s Mr. H. and the restaurant coming along?”
“Ben’s at Abigail’s now. It’s going to reopen for lunch tomorrow.” I leafed through the envelopes and put them in the wire rack. I didn’t want either of the women to realise how scared I was that he wouldn’t be given a fair chance to live down the… my past.
Roxie unstoppered the all-purpose bottle. “My guess is things’ll be all right. There’s always them what like to live dangerously.”
Spoken from firsthand experience? Did that two-tone hair and madam makeup hide a face I didn’t know?
“Mr. Flatts’s back on the job, is he? Not nursing his dart wound so he can sue Sid Fowler?”
I started to say that Freddy was again an employee, but was cut off by my mother-in-law.
“Mrs. Malloy, this isn’t my house but-”
Roxie looked right, then left. “You could’ve pulled the wool over my eyes.”
“-and I’m never one to criticise, but the last time you were here you did miss three finger marks on the left side of the cooker.”
“Ooooh!” Roxie snarled a breath which tripled the size of her bosom. “Begging your royal pardon, I must not have had the time. I’m that busy these days putting fresh water in all them little birdbaths you’ve got dotted around the house. And there’s not even a budgie in the house!”
Magdalene crossed herself.
“And another thing!” Roxie smacked her lips. “Haven’t I been telling Mrs. H. until I’m purple as this hat that I don’t dust little graven images.”
A blessing on my house. I was driven from the kitchen, driven to phone Ann. Out in the hall I seized the telephone off the trestle table and trailed its cord into the drawing room. Closing the door, I deposited the phone on a chair, shoved another chair against the door, and paced the room. Ready or not! Hands shaking, I picked up the phone, put it down, picked it up again, and dialed. Ann answered at the second ring.
“Ellie! Lovely to hear your voice.”
“And yours.” I was appalled at how calm I sounded. “How are you feeling?”
“Serene. In so many ways this has been harder on you than me.”
Indubitably true, if the suspicions of Flowers Detection were correct.
“Ann, you are incredible.” My voice splintered. “You make me ashamed of myself. There you are getting on with your life while all I’m doing is making the most terrible botch of mine.” Again, true.
“Ellie,” her voice rang with sincerity. “Clearly you need to talk, really talk. Would you like to come over here?”
“Now?”
“What better time?”
I had to wash my hair, grow my nails…
I drove, rather than taking the bus, because the odds as always were excellent that the Heinz would break down midway. That damn car!
Ann met me at the door of the shop, put up the Closed sign, and led me through the amber velvet curtains, across the storage room, and up a flight of varnished stairs into the flat. On first coming here I had been intrigued by Ann’s collections. Music boxes, clocks, crystal, jade, salt cellars, and inkwells crowded the sitting room. Now the place had a narcissistic look. The many photos were all of herself, most of them taken in childhood with some singer of forgotten fame. Several were inscribed, Me with the wonderful so-and-so. My misgivings intensified when I saw, newly pinned to the collar of Ann’s white crepe blouse, a blackbird brooch. She closed the door. The very ordinariness of her smile made my skin prickle.
“Would you like a sherry?” She moved to a table covered with a tapestry cloth and crammed with decanters, some with price labels on them.
“No, thank you.” My fingers brushed a silver frame surrounding the image of little Ann gazing idolatrously into the face of the songbird Sylvania. “I… I am avoiding alcohol at present on account of its being a depressant.” Far smarter not to think about what I was going to say or the consequences. Get on with it and get out of here.
“I understand.” Ann smoothed down the sides of her maroon and black skirt and perched gracefully on the arm of the horsehair sofa.
“No, you don’t!” I crossed to the window and flung my arm around my eyes. “You’re too good, too decent to have any idea what is going on inside my head. All the anger! The feeling that all men are beasts!” Was the great Sylvania smirking at me?
“May I hazard a guess as to what is distressing you so? You feel guilty because you don’t pity me… you envy me.”
My neck came up, almost snapping off my head. Thank God for long hair. It is forever tumbling down and providing something to do for one’s hands.
“Ann, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” She crossed her ankles, inserted a cigarette in a jade holder, and lit up. “This, for instance.” She blew out a curl of smoke. “When Charles was alive, I couldn’t have a cigarette in peace. I couldn’t do anything in peace, even dislike him.” She leaned back and exhaled. “There, I am finally telling you the truth. All the other stuff I told you regarding my relationship with him was rubbish, invented according to the rules of…”
“Yes?” A hairpin dropped down the front of my shirt.
“The rules of… the stiff-upper-lip club.” Ann tapped away ash. “Strangely enough, I never hated Charles. He wasn’t man enough to inspire that deep an emotion. But even from a distance I can see Ben is different. He is virile and dynamic, and you are in love with him, you poor fish.”
“Why else would I marry him?” I turned back to the window.
“Not for the reasons he married you. It isn’t necessary for you to tell me anything, Ellie.”
How convenient, considering my lips were hermetically sealed.
“It was crystal clear to me the day of your wedding that Ben was nothing but a handsome rogue. That service, a menage à trois, and the reception crammed with his debauched friends. Where did he dredge up that woman who did obscene things to the suit of armour? And that paunchy man who kept chasing the woman in paisley up and down stairs! Small wonder his parents refused to come. Ellie, dear,” she continued serenely, “everyone felt frightfully sorry for you, especially when the policeman dropped in and Ben was so cavalier. ‘Just a little private business.’ ” Ann mimicked his voice so closely that I almost wrenched the cigarette away from her and stubbed it out in her face.
She leaned toward me. “Sweet, innocent Ellie. When word got out that you had hooked up with him through an escort service, no one was surprised or thought any the less of you for succumbing to his fortune-hunting charms. Your being overweight made you an easy mark.”
“I was fat, actually.”
“Yes, well…” Ann touched her fingertips to her smooth dark hair. “Poor dear.” She sounded as though I had said something a little coarse.
“Happily you are a resilient person, Ellie. I imagine you would have continued to endure being used if only Ben had exercised the decency to be discreet in his relationship with your cousin.”
Incredibly, Ann was speaking the lines assigned to me by the Tramwells, making everything so much easier, but I forgot I was playing a role. “Not true, there is absolutely nothing going on between-”
Ann rose from the sofa and placed a hand on my arm. “Ellie”-her voice throbbed with sympathy-“you know it is true. Don’t hide behind passive misery. Feel anger! Feel murderous rage! Think of all you have done for your cousin-giving him a job, letting him live in your cottage.”
Him? She wasn’t talking about Vanessa. My eyes dilated. Ben and… Freddy! Those two would collapse with laughter if they heard this. But my mind went into reverse. I was back at the wedding reception, overhearing snatches of conversation puffed on the air.
“A fairy story in the true sense of the word.” “Extremely good-looking, but then they so often are. More unfair, I always say.” “Best man a hairdresser…” And later, Ann herself had talked about it’s being worse when the Other Woman was a man.
I sank into an armchair. It made grotesque sense. Freddy’s masquerade had set the spark and eager tongues had fanned the flames.
“Ellie, do you feel faint?” Ann was all solicitude.
“No, I’m fine.” And so I was. Blood surged to my brain. I was angry-for Ben, myself, and Freddy. Whatever my cousin’s failings, he would never have stooped to setting his cap at my husband. I didn’t doubt that the most venomous of the gossips were those same women who were bumping off their husbands right, left, and center.
Eyes closed so their expression wouldn’t give me away, I groped for Ann’s hand. “What a coward I have been! I haven’t wanted to face the truth about those nights when Ben and Freddy stopped for a drink after work, the hours they spend engrossed in each other, talking about secret”-I had to do better than recipes-“things.” Then I let my anger work for me. “Ann, I can feel it! The beginning of that murderous rage!” I pounced out of the chair and paced the crowded room. “They have taken me for such a fool! I could kill them! Kill them both!” My voice spiralled. I could feel the heat of Ann’s eyes on my back.
She gave a light laugh. “Wouldn’t one of them be sufficient? It does, after all, take two to have an affair. Ellie, have you ever heard of a novel called The Merry Widows?”
I tensed. So this was how the approach was made. “I… I can’t say I have.”
“Not surprising. It’s been out of print for years; a book that sank without a ripple. We get boxes of such in the shop and end up using the paper for packing. This one’s by Edwin Digby actually and is about a group of wives who form a club, the purpose of which is to murder off their adulterous husbands. The especially nice thing about the scheme is that one doesn’t plunge the knife or the poison… into one’s own mate. The necessary steps are taken for one, and afterward, an abundance of emotional and social support is provided.”
Silence.
“Amusing, don’t you think?” Ann peeled a price tag off a decanter.
“I think… it’s a pity there isn’t something like that locally. I could divorce Ben, but then he would get a share of the inheritance and I… I can’t bear the thought of him walking away with more than the clothes on his back.” Pressing my fingers to my brow, I waited.
“What if there were such a group?” Ann circled around me, fingers trailing the furniture.
“I suppose… I wouldn’t be eligible. After all, mine isn’t a case of another woman.” I fought a feeling of sickness.
“Oh, I don’t think that-it’s only a technicality. The important thing is knowing the right people.” Ann brushed my arm. “And, of course, we are talking about fiction.”
I moved away from her to stand in front of a Victorian standing lamp. “Fictitiously speaking, how would someone apply for membership?” The room seemed to dim.
“Come here.” Ann pulled a chair away from a table with claw feet. “Sit down and tear a sheet off that pad of paper, and yes, there’s a pen behind this vase. You are going to write a letter.”
“I am?” My heart pounded.
“Yes, to Dear Felicity Friend.” The paper nearly blew off the table. Ann stood in front of me, tapping out a beat on the table. “Wisest, I think, to keep the message short and sweet: Dear Felicity Friend, Please help me get rid of a terrible problem-my husband.” Ann picked up a cigarette and flipped it between her fingers. “Sign it with your full name and a code.”
The pen dug a hole in the paper. Could I assume that Felicity Friend was The Founder, or was Felicity merely an unwitting instrument? “Why a code?”
Ann touched a cold finger to my cheek. “Why, Ellie, so Dear Felicity can answer you in the confidential column. Let’s see, how about something charmingly traditional like Heartbroken. That’s it! Write it down.” When I had done so, she tweaked the paper out of my slack grasp and folded it in two. The urge to snatch it back made my throat hurt.
“What next?” I managed. “… if this were fact, not fiction.”
Ann folded the paper again. “I would take this to the president of the club and urge your admission to our… the ranks.”
“The president being…?”
“Let us say Mrs. Amelia Bottomly, although I don’t suppose I should be saying anything of the sort. But we don’t have to be terribly discreet, do we, as this is only fiction. She would then get in touch with the founder of the organisation, who would make the decision as to whether or not you were eligible.” Ann straightened the Sylvania photo. “Then if you got clearance from the top, you would be contacted by telephone and asked in so many words if you wished your husband murdered. If you answered yes, you would be told the amount of dues payable and where to deposit. Simple, isn’t it?”
“Admirably.” My hands relaxed. No need to snatch back the letter to Dear Felicity. It only constituted an application; it was not a signing of the contract. I was ready to get out of here.
Ann held the paper between a finger and a thumb. Her eyes gleamed.
“Would you want me to tear this up if this were fact?”
“I…” Remember two important things, Ellie, I thought. You are not endangering Ben’s life and you are serving mankind. If you proceed to Point B-the telephone call-you may help accumulate enough evidence to call a halt to these vile murders. “Widowhood certainly becomes you, Ann.” I stood up.
She tapped the paper to her lips, picked up a black suede handbag, and dropped the paper inside. Then she went to stand by the fireplace, looking up into the gilded mirror. Her reflected eyes met mine.
“Life is what we make of it, don’t you agree, Ellie? If there were a Merry Widows Club, I would have had to worm my way in because my marital situation wouldn’t have met the admission requirements. Charles was incapable of having an affair, that is, with anyone except himself. But rumour, goodness knows who started it, buzzed it about that he was carrying on with Miss Thorn, of all pitiful people. I have always thought that lies are so much more credible when far-fetched. Although Charles did seem to rather like the poor wretch.”
Ann turned back to me, her fingers stroking the blackbird brooch. “My only regret concerning this death was your involvement. I like you, Ellie, and I don’t like most women.”
“Bunty Wiseman, for instance?”
“You noticed.”
“Could it be that you are in love with her husband?” When would I learn to be discreet?
Ann’s smile vanished. She stared at me, perhaps without seeing me. I had gone too far.
“You’re right,” Ann said softly. “Lionel Wiseman affects me as no man ever has, and he was showing definite signs of being attracted to me before he went and married that piece of candy floss. The day you and I went to his office, I felt the room begin whirling the moment he entered. Here’s something amusing. I wrote a letter to Dear Felicity myself several weeks ago, just to cool off. I told her that I had this uncontrollable urge to rush into Lionel’s office and fling off my clothes.”
“I have the feeling I read that,” I murmured.
Ann gave no sign of hearing me. She removed a black hat from a rack on the wall and stood in front of the mirror, tilting the brim over her brow. “Of course, that was before I knew that there were other, more valid reasons for writing to Dear Felicity.” She adjusted the hat to another angle. “Ellie, I do hope our little chat has helped clear your head. It has mine. If there were a Merry Widows Club and I had my suspicions as to the identity of its founder, I might decide that I had waited long enough to approach that person and request a small favour. Widowhood is pleasant, as I have said, but I don’t think I want to make it a way of life.” She stopped talking to herself in the mirror and addressed me. “How about lunch, after which I do have an errand to run…”
Run was what I was going to do, run to the nearest telephone kiosk. Ann’s last words were fraught with ominous possibilities. I stammered that I couldn’t make lunch. I had to get out of this room. But suddenly it was a long way down the stairs, through the amber velvet curtains, across the shop floor to the fresh air of the world outside.
“Miss Hyacinth or Miss Primrose Tramwell, please.” I stood in the telephone kiosk at the corner of Market and Herring streets, convinced I was being photographed by hidden cameras.
“Sorry to keep you, love,” said the female voice from the Pebblewell Hotel. “Our gentleman at Reception says the ladies left word they’d be out all afternoon, fishing.”
Hair curtaining my face, I stepped into the pedestrian flow. Out baiting their hooks, were they? The tower clock struck noon. My conversation with Ann kept scraping round and round in my head, with certain names making the loudest noise. Bunty and Lionel Wiseman. I stepped back into the kiosk and dialed Bunty’s number. What would I say to her? Ann Delacorte is out to get your husband… and maybe you too. No answer. I hung up.
Another name bounced out at me. Teddy Peerless. She had found Charles’s body. She was in that photograph with Edwin Digby and the young woman I presumed was his daughter, and Teddy was closely acquainted with both Wisemans. I had no idea what rivers the Tramwells might be fishing, but I would tackle the pond.
Pushing open the street door, I mounted the bottle-green staircase to the offices of Bragg, Wiseman & Smith.
“Hello, Teddy.”
No answering smile. Her hands kept moving, ruffling through cardboard folders in the file cabinet. “You made me jump.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to the back of her head. Why this feeling that she had been expecting me for some time? I came further into the room, put my hand on the desk, and took it off again. “I see you’re busy, but if you haven’t had lunch, Teddy, could we go somewhere-not Abigail’s-and talk?”
“I can’t.” Teddy finally turned to me, a folder held to the front of her cardigan. It struck me that she looked more beige than ever. Her prominent teeth bit into her lower lip, but otherwise her face was expressionless. Bunty had provided a detailed account of what Teddy Peerless was-daughter of an earl, neglected sister, dedicated secretary-but did even Bunty know who Teddy was?
“Are you afraid to be seen with me because people are making nasty jokes about Charles’s death?”
“I am not.” Her voice was flat, but something stirred in her face. I thought I saw sympathy, the desire to tell me something.
“Liar!” squalled a voice. I jumped. I had forgotten the parrot. It pranced gleefully upon its perch. Avoiding his knowing eyes, I said, “How about a half hour, Teddy? You have to eat sometime, and I need to discuss that night at Abigail’s.”
Her face had gone neutral again. “Mrs. Haskell, I have a will that has to be typed immediately.”
“Liar!”
Lady Theodora-I couldn’t continue thinking of her as Teddy when I had ceased being Ellie to her-closed the file cabinet and began organising stray paper clips on her blotter. I sat down because I didn’t know what else to do with my legs.
“I’ll talk fast,” I began. “I’ve been trying to put together all the higgledy-piggledy pieces of the night when Charles died. When I was leaving the room to talk to a man-who turned out to be Mr. Digby”-her hands stopped moving-“you and I collided. And even though my mind was on other things, I was struck by how agitated you looked. Mrs. Malloy, who works for me, had mentioned earlier that you seemed bothered by the presence of Dr. Bordeaux-”
“I can understand, El… Mrs. Haskell, that what happened was a distressing experience for you and your husband, but really, you sound irrational on the subject.” A paper clip landed in a tin with an earth-shattering ping. “A man unfortunately died. What do I have to do with that?”
“I want to know why you found him, why you went into the office.”
“Bite your tongue!” screeched the parrot.
Teddy was now taking the paper clips out of the tin. “As I told the police, I simply mistook that office for the powder room.”
“Why?” I stood up. “There would have been a sign-one of those stiff girls with the triangular skirts-on the door.”
“Please excuse me.” Teddy crossed to the far side of the desk. The protruding teeth gnawed at her lower lip.
“Did you see Mr. Digby?” I asked. “Were you upset and wanting a place to escape for a few minutes? Is Mr. Digby your brother, returned here under an assumed name… and a beard?”
“Kill, kill!” shrieked the parrot. “Drown the pretty damsel in the nearest sea!”
“Silence, you old barnacle. And how do you do, Mrs. Haskell.” Lionel Wiseman filled the small office, not only on account of his height and powerful build, but because he was (with full apologies to Ben) powerfully handsome.
“Abigail’s lease holding up?” He was still clasping my hand and I didn’t know whether it would be ungracious to remove it or inappropriately friendly to leave it there.
“The lease is doing splendidly. I came to ask your secretary to lunch-but another time. I did phone Bunty, but she was out.”
He held the door for me, his gold cuff links gleaming. “My wife keeps herself entertained. I count myself fortunate if I find her at home in the evenings.”
Teddy was back at the files. As I went down the stairs and out into Market Street, I remembered Roxie saying the village gossips didn’t believe the Wisemans were married. What, I wondered, was Bunty’s real name? Something awful she had said. Something… beginning with a “W”?
When I entered the kitchen at Merlin’s Court, Magdalene and Poppa were at the table having lunch, the earthenware teapot between them. Sweetie lay across Magdalene’s feet, grunting out little snores. Tobias was a mere dangle of tail from an upper cupboard. My in-laws weren’t talking, but the silence was of the sort that binds people together.
“Back with us, are you, Giselle?” Magdalene flitted up from her chair. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if you want a sandwich.”
I stripped off my gloves and unbuttoned my coat. “I would like two, please, and some of that soup.” As Magdalene disappeared into the pantry for bread, Poppa’s voice spoke in my ear.
“Such a feisty one, that woman! Doesn’t look a day over sixty-five, does she?” Was this the man who had talked about Mrs. Jarrod with a similar gleam in his dark brown eyes? Could it be that he was over that woman? I hung up my coat in the alcove. In his favourite red cardigan and leather slippers. Poppa didn’t look like a lecher and even less like a man who would decide to revitalize his marriage by injecting a little jealousy. But then did Miss Thorn look like a vamp? Or Teddy Peerless a woman with a secret? Or the Tramwells detectives? Did I look like a woman who could inspire a grand and undying passion in a breathtakingly handsome man? Well I had, which goes to show that you can’t tell anything about anyone, especially murderers.
After lunch, all three of us did the washing up. I had just put away the last cup and Magdalene had rearranged the handle when the phone rang. I didn’t think the Tramwells would ring me; we had arranged it would be the other way around, but out in the hall I dropped the receiver before getting it to my ear.
“Did I tell you this morning how much I love you?”
“I believe so, thank you, and… ditto.”
“Is one or more parent lurking in the immediate vicinity?” Ben’s voice dropped to a stage whisper.
“That could be so.” Apart from Rufus and his mate, I was alone in the hall, but the memory of my visit to Ann stung, and what’s one more lie in a healthy marriage?
“I’ve been thinking, Ellie.” Holding the receiver was almost like touching him. I could see him, the dark brows coming together, the intensity of his blue-green gaze. One of the more unsettling features of frigidity is that it leaves you at the worst possible moments.
“What have you been thinking, Ben?”
“That it may be time to give the parents a nudge. I am sorry about their problems, but I am not sure coddling them is the answer. Living with us is like living in a hotel for them. They are together without ever meeting, if you know what I mean.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
“Ben, we can’t hustle them. For starters, your father hasn’t finished my cake. It’s turning into a drawing room conversation piece. Also, I am sure there is more to their marital difficulties than Mrs. Jarrod.”
“You don’t think that Poppa could be… one hates to suggest such a thing about one’s own father, but… well, impotent, and he’s been trying to give himself an out?” Ben’s voice dropped lower. “If it is that, I hope it isn’t… hereditary.”
“Ben, it doesn’t do to make wild guesses.”
“You’re right. And I should worry about my own life. Ellie, there’s more to our marital situation than I can put my finger on.”
Oh, the folly of marrying a man of above-average intelligence!
“Sorry, Ben, but there goes the doorbell. I have to go.”
“Let Poppa or-”
Pretending not to hear, I hung up. Chalk up another lie; I hadn’t even asked Ben if the luncheoners at Abigail’s had included any patrons other than himself and the staff. I whispered into the empty hall. “All for your own good, my darling. You will thank me for my strong-mindedness when single-handedly (give or take Flowers Detection) I unmask The Founder and restore your professional reputation.”
The phone rang again as I was prying my hand off the receiver. Don’t let it be Ben. I might lose all control and beg him to abscond with me to a desert island.
“Ellie, such a thrill finding you at home.” Vanessa’s voice breezed into my ear. “I’m at the London flat, but I plan to come down to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang next Saturday and wonder if you and I could get together for a cousinly chat?”
I didn’t like this. Was she out of work and forced to pawn one of her furs? With so many illusions already stripped away-Ann, Miss Thorn; and big questions raised about Teddy and… Bunty-I wasn’t ready for anything that would put a crimp in a lifetime of loathing Vanessa.
“Is something wrong?”
“What a foolish question. Life for me began to fall apart when you got married and I realised that none of the important things-looks, charm, style-counted for anything.”
“Does Rowland fit into this?”
She smirked audibly, said, “See you Saturday evening,” and hung up.
I almost wished the phone would ring again. The prospect of nothing to do stared me in the face. My thoughts weren’t good company. Had I read too much into my conversation with Ann? She had admitted she hadn’t loved Charles and that she wanted him dead. We had discussed a book by a local author and played a silly charade of writing to an advice columnist. I had felt concern for Bunty as the wife-in-the-way; but as it seemed highly unlikely that a wife-murdering organisation had set itself up in competition with The Widows Club, Ann would surely be content with trying to break up the Wisemans’ marriage. An anonymous letter here, a venomous word there… I paced the flagstones in the hall.
Desperation, it was once said by my mother, makes geniuses of us all. Inspiration struck as I foresaw an afternoon-alone-of listening to the clock tick.
The Peerless Nursing Home. Confirmation or negation could be found there. So, alas, could Dr. Bordeaux. Grabbing the telephone before I could lose my nerve, I dialed directory enquiries, got the number, and stuffed a finger, which felt big and boneless as a sausage, into the dial hole. In that moment I empathised deeply with obscene callers everywhere.
“The Peerless Nursing Home.”
“Gggg.” In deepening my voice it went so low I lost it. Start again. “Good afternoon, this is Nurse Jones”-oh, come on!-“from the Cottage Hospital. Our Dr. Brown… ing is having some problems with a patient in Psychiatric-a woman with sixty-one different personalities, a record, Dr. Browning believes, and he wonders if Dr. Simon Bordeaux would be free to come over immediately and offer some helpful hints? The case promises to be written up in all major medical journals.”
“I’m sure Doctor would have been only too pleased, Nurse Jones. But this is Doctor’s afternoon off. He has already left the premises. If another time would suit Dr. Browning?”
“I don’t think so; the patient isn’t expected to live more than half an hour. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so to speak.”
His day off! What luck! My breath exploded in a whoosh of relief as the receiver hit the cradle. What did I have to lose on entering The Peerless and making contact with one or more of its patients? Other than my life, that is. And if I played my part well, the part of a would-be patient checking out the nursing home to see if it offered the right… no, the wrong facilities, I should not only be safe, but informed. I smiled up at Abigail’s portrait. She appeared to wink, but it may have been a shadow hitting the portrait from the window.
There are advantages to having seen fatter days. I did not have to search far in my wardrobe to find a garment with stretch appeal. The dress which I held against me and surveyed in the mirror had huge white spots on a red background. Not ideal. With my coat gaping open, it would be possible to see me coming or going for miles around. But I decided I liked the dropped elastic waist more than I disliked the spots. Now-a major decision. Should I use a pillow? No, too big. A chair cushion worked but didn’t provide the look I wanted. I wished to appear so imminently pregnant that no starch-crackling nurse would dare raise her voice above a whisper to me. I wandered about the bedroom, practising maternity posture. What would make the ideal baby? Oh, for Dorcas! She would have come up with a bright idea. Bright, that was it! I sped along to my friend’s old room, sniffed the air nostalgically for a whiff of Athletic Woman’s Talc, and found the bag of balloons, the remains of those she had strung up for the engagement party. Dear Dorcas, everything in its place and a place for everything. I could almost hear her voice: “Frightfully spiffing of you to attempt this, old girl.” Mmmmm. She might not think it so spiffing if she came home from the States to find me not in my place.
The balloon looked great, but being light, it tended to shift. A problem easily solved by filling it with water. I decided against wearing it while driving the car. Into a carrier it went. On with my camel coat, over the shoulder with my bag, and down to tell Magdalene and Poppa that I had some shopping to do.
“Nice to have so much free time on your hands, Giselle.” Sunshine sparks flew off Magdalene’s knitting needles; the jacket she was making for Sweetie grew even as I watched.
It seemed a safe kindness to ask her to join me. Since the fateful evening at Abigail’s, Magdalene had stayed close to home, although she was no longer fanatical about locking windows and doors.
Poppa looked up from his cake carving and smoothed his bald spot. “Go, Maggie, why don’t you?” His voice sounded… creaky. And why wouldn’t it? He spoke to her so rarely.
The needles slowed.
“On second thought,” I said, feeling as if I had offered a sweet to a child and snatched it back, “it is still unseasonably chilly.”
“Wouldn’t do, then. Maggie’s always had a chesty chest.” Poppa cleared his throat and got back to carving.
As I crossed the courtyard to the car, I heard a creak behind me and felt a presence, but I didn’t slow my pace. I wasn’t going to give Tobias the pleasure of thinking he could scare me out of my wits, not that easily. And I wasn’t much concerned about the Raincoat Man. The average person only has the capacity to be petrified of one thing at a time. Besides, I had strong suspicions that the Raincoat Man was Butler, out on surveillance, even though he had responded to the suggestion with-“Me, madam? But I h’understood you to say the fellow had ’orrible teeth.” My one concern was that the balloon might burst before I got to The Peerless. Nose pressed to the steering wheel, I bounced down Cliff Road.
As I rounded the first bend, I spied Mr. Edwin Digby and Mother coming toward me. Her feathers had an icy gloss to them, and she was poking him along with her beak. Dropping down so that my knees grazed the car floor I concentrated on neither seeing nor hearing when Mr. Digby’s voice was blown in my face by the wind.
“Incomparable weather for a stiff neck, Mrs. Haskell.”
Ditto a stiff drink at The Dark Horse. I wished I didn’t have this sneaking liking for Mr. Digby. I wished I didn’t suspect him of being the evil force behind a murder network. I wished… that life wasn’t littered with foolish wishes.
The Heinz showed its true colours as I exited the village. Its whine turned fretful, eerily echoing the wind. A couple of times I swear it tried to go backward. But the secret was never to let it get the upper hand. I had just given the gear knob a vicious twist when I beheld the long, high wall of the nursing home. A yellow van inched around me, then a dark green car slashed past. The steering wheel vibrated in my hands, but my eyes were on the stone eagles atop the pillars. I passed through the entrance and down the avenue until-there loomed the mammoth stone house. At that point, I fervently wished the avenue could have gone on to John O’Groats.
I stopped, positioned the balloon, then drove forward a few more yards to park in the middle of the gravel semicircle. Sneakiness oft draws attention to itself, and if matters went awry, I needed to be able to leap from the top of that flight of steps into the Heinz. Telling myself that all the signs were favourable (the bloodhounds Sin and Virtue weren’t out and about today), I gathered my courage in my clammy paws, got my legs going, and lifted the door knocker. It fell like a lead… balloon. All too promptly the door opened. Facing me was a large nurse in a small frilly cap.
“May I help you?” She had eyes like pellets and a face which had been chiseled into shape. She breathed Detol the way Roxie breathed Attar of Roses.
Pressing both palms against the small of my back, I stepped inward, forcing her to step back. “I’m-Mrs. Heinz. You are expecting me, I hope? My doctor sent me to have a look at the place to see if I could be comfortable here during my confinement.”
The nurse stared at me. Had I blown it too soon by using a word no longer in maternity jargon? I moved my hands to place them protectively on the protrusion jutting through my gaping coat.
“We don’t confine people here.” The nurse’s face bleached out to match her white cardigan. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but this most certainly isn’t a prison.”
“I can see that, indeed I think the place looks most inviting.” Taking another step forward, I fixed eager eyes on the black-and-white checkerboard floor, the white walls rising to a lofty and ornately plastered ceiling. The staircase, also painted white (criminally, in my opinion), rose at the end of the hall, facing the front door; it went up steeply for a dozen steps, then divided.
“Mrs. Heinz?” The nurse jammed the door shut. “Are you having a nervous breakdown?”
“What, in my condition!” I clasped a hand to my throat. “Dear Dr. Padinsky”-if he was good enough for Magdalene, he was good enough for me-“has warned me repeatedly that trauma of any kind could be hazardous to the baby, which is why he insisted I look this place over.”
“Mrs. Heinz,” the nurse replied in a harsh, cold voice, “how will visiting a nursing home for emotionally disturbed women help you to a problem-free delivery?”
A chair, painted white, was at hand. Legs spread, back arched, I lowered myself into it. “Don’t tell me,” I bleated, “that this isn’t Chitterton Fells Maternity Home?”
“It is not.” She had the door open. “You haven’t come much off course. Turn left on the Coast Road, proceed two miles, and you can’t miss it-a modern, red brick building.” She was close to smiling at the prospect of being rid of me.
“Why silly me!” I gave a light laugh which tapered off into a most satisfactory “ooo-ooch!” Gripping my hands to my balloon stomach, I rolled my eyes and lolled my head sideways.
Nurse let go of the doorknob in a hurry. “What is it? Do you think you are in labour?” Her eyes were almost kind, but I wasn’t fooled. That was a blackbird brooch protruding from beneath the white cardigan,
“I’ve been having these twinges. Dr. Padinsky says they are warnings, that I must rest.” A small shudder. “Oh, what would he say if he knew I must get into my car and drive when feeling like this?” I addressed her nose. “Would it be possible for me to lie down somewhere quiet? These episodes usually last only half an hour…”
She glanced, furtively it seemed to me, around the antiseptic hall.
“I can’t risk hurting the baby or having Dr. Padinsky cross with us-I mean, me.” Although I had quickly changed that last word, the plural had done its job.
“No, of course not. And we do pride ourselves on our personal approach at The Peerless.” She sounded conciliatory, almost jolly, as she placed a hand on my arm. “This is Dr. Bordeaux’s afternoon off, otherwise I know he would have been only too pleased to examine you.”
“That would have been wonderful.”
The nurse’s strong fingers handcuffed my wrist as she led me under the righthand sweep of stairs into a room that in the days when this was a house and not a nursing home had probably been a parlour. French doors led into the garden, and I could see a corner of the Dower House. With a pang, I thought of Jenny, her invalid mother, and the old nanny. It was easy to say they would all be better off when removed from the doctor’s criminal clutches, but the shock of disclosure would be shattering.
“This is the visitor’s waiting room.” The nurse helped me onto a tweedy brown couch. “I will just take your pulse and blood pressure.”
“Please, I really don’t feel up to that sort of thing.”
“What if I fetch a glass of water?”
“That’s very kind, but I would prefer to be left completely alone for that half hour. I can never relax if I think someone is going to come into the room just as I am drifting off to sleep.”
“Very well.” She straightened an embroidered chair-back, which looked as though it had been an occupational therapy project, and left the room.
I forced myself to wait a full minute after the door clicked shut before tiptoeing up from the couch. The door handle, when I lowered it, made a fearsome noise, but when I pressed an eye to the thin strip of opening, the hall looked deserted. Crossing it, however, was like swimming the channel.
My dash up the stairs to the third floor felt like scaling a wall. Drying my palms on the sides of my coat, I tapped on the door immediately to my left, then, allowing a scant second for a response, depressed the handle. The door didn’t budge.
“Nurse, is that you?” wheedled a voice. “I’ll let you have my sago pudding for a week if you’ll talk Doctor out of giving me any more injections.”
“Hope you’re feeling better, Mrs. Freebrun.” I read her name off the doorplate. Was her door locked because she was an especially difficult patient, clinging obstinately to remorse? Or did she pose a danger to her doctor, should she escape and denounce him as a villain?
I tried the doors of Mary Wallace, Doris Barch, Ida Parkhurst. The same; no admittance. Would I be wasting valuable time were I to attempt a conversation through one of their keyholes? And how could I inspire instant trust?
“Ida, I am a missionary worker. Will you help me reach my daily quota of redeemed souls?”
No answer from Ida, but what was that noise? The handle slid wetly out from my grasp. There it came again, identifiable now as footsteps mounting the stairs. Caught with my neck in the rope. No escape, except by leaping the bannister railing, and I couldn’t take that route; not in my condition. Breaking into a fog of perspiration, I grabbed the next handle down the line, bracing myself for what was to come. Amazingly, this door opened. Quicker than one can say, “Nurse,” I was inside. It was a household cupboard, crammed with mops, buckets, brooms, and the reek of disinfectant.
All this I saw at a glance from the ruddy glow of a cigarette lighter.
“Hello, my love,” said the other occupant of the cupboard placidly.
She was seated on the base of a Hoover, lighting up a cigarette. She looked a nice enough woman, meaning she wasn’t dressed as a nurse, but I eyed her in horror as I pressed a finger to my lips. If the person on patrol smelled smoke or saw it creeping out from under the door, we were done for. The same applied if the fiery tip of the cigarette got any closer and I popped. I held my breath. The lighter snapped shut. The footsteps drew level with the door, then passed on. Tomorrow I would take out stock in disinfectant.
“It’s young Mrs. Haskell, isn’t it? I’ve seen you about in the village.” My companion’s voice spoke into the darkness.
“Yes, and you are…?” The smoke, the close quarters, and the possibilities of the situation were all combining to suffocate me. The lighter flared and I was looking down at a face that might have belonged to a kindly middle-aged sheep.
“Beatrix Woolpack. This is such an unexpected pleasure. Although, come to think of it, you are the second person I have bumped into in this very cupboard. The other was a man named… now what was it? Butcher? Baker?”
“Butler?”
“That’s right.” The fiery tip of her cigarette danced. “He was so interested when I told him about my late husband being a locksmith and how I had worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him all our married life. Sad, isn’t it. To think that all I got out of marriage, other than two quite nice children, was the know-how to get me out of my room here for a change of scene and a Players.”
“Very sad.”
“The same tired old tale, isn’t it, my love. A woman living for her husband by his rules, staying home to raise the children because he said a woman’s place was in the home, and then being slapped with the news that he’d found someone younger, better-looking, and with the gumption to be her own person. The wonder isn’t that I joined The Widows Club, but that more women don’t pawn their engagement rings to have their husbands killed.”
“Quite.” I backed against the wall. One of my feet landed in a pail; a pole rapped me on the head.
“What will you be thinking of me?” came her voice. “I haven’t asked if you mind me smoking.”
“Not a bit.”
“His car went over the cliff, if you remember. Relatively quick and painless. I wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer. He wasn’t a bad man, just a bad husband. So often the case, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” My ears were on the alert for more footsteps.
The red dot vanished. Mrs. Woolpack must have stubbed out the cigarette. “This has been so nice, Mrs. Haskell. We must do it again some time, mustn’t we? But now I shall be getting back to my room. It’s quite cosy, you know. I have photos of my dog George and my cat Minx; my daughter has given them a temporary home. I shall be out of here soon.”
“That will be lovely. Mrs. Woolpack, before you go, do you know the name of the person who founded this Widows Club?”
“I don’t, my love.” She was inching the cupboard door open. “But if I did, I wouldn’t say. To thine own club be true, isn’t that right? As it is, I can never make it up to my dear friends for my wickedness in rescuing that wretched Mr. Daffy from that train.” She picked up her cigarette stub from the floor.
We tiptoed to her door. Drawing a knotted wire from her pocket, she deftly inserted it into the lock. I was halfway down the stairs when it struck me that she hadn’t asked what I was doing in her cupboard.
The hall seemed to have doubled in size since I left it. Could I get across to the waiting room and my invalid couch without being discovered by my least favourite nurse? Maybe. Things looked hopeful as I came off the last stair. Not a twitch of a uniform or any other sign of human, make that inhuman, activity. I traversed the black-and-white tile without hearing a sound save my own footfall.
“Mrs. Heinz, where have you been?”
Pivoting toward the accusatory voice, I gripped my balloon stomach in a last sympathy pitch and heard a thuwpp! I could feel myself deflating, feel water gushing down my legs. Eyes glued to the face of the nurse, that same sweet soul who had admitted me, I wondered if I looked as aghast as she.
Her voice shook. “It appears that your water has broken.”
“Oh, is that the problem?” Mesmerized, I studied the spreading puddle. “I felt a bit odd and came to find you. I should never have attempted the stairs, I know, but-could you please telephone?”
“A Dr. Padinsky, I believe you said, but perhaps Dr. Bordeaux has returned to the Dower House.”
“No. Absolutely not. I won’t see anyone but my own doctor.”
“Very well.” She looked relieved. “I will make the phone call immediately after I take you back to the waiting room.” She reached for my arm.
“No.” I shook her off. The situation permitted extreme agitation. “I will go and lie down. You phone Dr. Padinsky immediately.”
I was within a couple of yards of the waiting room. I grabbed the door, closed it behind me, then raced for the French windows. Could I make it around the side of the house to my car before Nurse got off the phone? Was she suspicious? Was she even now speaking to Dr. Bordeaux, listening to his instructions, preparing to arm herself with a poisoned syringe and pursue me at full tilt? Or had she swallowed the situation because she had let me into the building, and Dr. Bordeaux might be very, very annoyed with her if anything were amiss?
Ducking across the lawn, I felt weighed down by hopelessness. The doctor could appear at any moment, the dogs panting at his heels. And menace there already was aplenty. The wind dragged at my hair like an outstretched hand and sucked in gloating breaths. The trees kept breaking through the tattered mist to stand directly in my path. My hip whapped into a bench. Inside the house, the dogs Virtue and Sin began to bark.
Immediately ahead now was the Dower House. No sanctuary to be found there even if the doctor were absent. Jenny was only a child, her mother helpless, and the nanny ancient. Dr. Bordeaux was their patron, probably respected. Possibly loved.
I was now level with a set of French windows similar to the ones I had just exited. Panting, I peered through the glass and saw two people. Clinging to a web of ivy, I strove to catch my breath. The couch was empty, unlike the time when I was in this room and the invalid lay there. Jenny was in the middle of the room with her back to me, her hair-more auburn than sandy under the electric light-spilling loose about her shoulders. It struck me that something was different. Her dress, a green silk sheath, was for once not too young, but too old for her. The other person in the room was Dr. Bordeaux. I couldn’t see much of his face because Jenny kept moving, blocking off my view, her gestures angry. Clearly some sort of altercation was in progress. Good for me, but I was sorry for Jenny.
Nipping past the window, teeth chattering, I slithered around the side of the house and raced towards the gravel semicircle. Virtue and Sin waited, bowlegged, muzzles at the ready, directly in front of the Heinz. I expected to freeze with stupefied terror, but the stupefying part was, it didn’t happen. Perhaps life with Sweetie had toughened me or perhaps as adversaries I would take the dogs over the nurse. Teeth bared in a playful smile, I hurled a shower of pebbles into the air. With canine shrieks of glee, they leapt into the air, tongues lapping, paws flapping, while I made the last desperate hustle toward the Heinz. Would a hand reach out from behind me and twist my neck into a rope?
I jabbed the key in the ignition, my eyes riveted to the door of The Peerless. Foot on the accelerator, I begged, “Heinz, don’t fail me now.” Then I rammed into reverse and whizzed backward down the avenue. I couldn’t risk the precious minutes necessary to turn the car around.
Not only had I to get away from here, I had to get to the Tramwells. I had to tell them that my visit to The Peerless had convinced me, as nothing else could have done, that The Widows Club was a matter for the police. Yes, the men in blue had been unreceptive at first, but I would accompany the sisters to the station house and offer all the information I had garnered. But I couldn’t-wouldn’t-play amateur detective any more. The risks were too great. I wasn’t going to end up in a broom cupboard, and I wouldn’t have Ben involved. I couldn’t shake off the feel of the nurse’s hand on my arm or the look in those pebble eyes. And if such a woman was afraid of Dr. Bordeaux, God help us all.
I sat shivering in a maroon leather chair in the reception room at The Pebblewell Hotel from four that afternoon until six in the evening, drinking countless cups of coffee and whiling away the time by counting people going up and down the red carpeted staircase. Soon they all wore grey woolly coats, had faces like Mrs. Woolpack, and talked in sheep’s voices. When I awoke, the Tramwells still hadn’t returned. What if they didn’t come back? What if they had decided they were not equipped to handle a murder investigation and had returned to their pastoral village? Panic broke in icy waves through my skin. What if Ann were hit by a car? Her belongings would be examined by someone in authority who would find the damning note I had written to Dear Felicity Friend. What precisely had I said in that note? Forget the police! What if Ben somehow got hold of it? I began pacing the space between the two couches, bumping every third step into the oversized coffee table. The receptionist had her eyes on me. Mine kept time with the onyx clock on the mantel. Still the sisters did not return. When two elderly gentlemen, newspapers tucked under the arms, invaded my territory with talk of grouse shooting, I had waited long enough.
The Heinz, marvel of marvels, started right up. I drove through the dark blanket of evening into Chitterton Fells and along Market Street. I had to get that piece of paper back. A streetlamp spread a silvery sheen outside Delacorte’s Antiques. I drew up at the curb, opened the door to step out and jumped when something brushed against my calf. Looking up at me was Mother. She honked, eyes bright with hope. Mine scanned the street but I could see no sign of Mr. Digby. He must be swilling it back at The Dark Horse.
“Unlike you, old faithful, to leave your post,” I said to Mother. “Seen someone you know?” I stroked her head. “Some people don’t deserve to have geese.” She looked defensive, then forlornly scooted away.
The shop sign said Closed, but Ann might not yet have locked up. She hadn’t. I entered to greyness, dramatised by shadowy humps of furniture and the William Tell Overture.
“Ann,” I called, fumbling for the light switch. The room sprang to eye-smarting brightness. “Ann!” No answer. The shop looked different at night, less cosy, but something was wrong… no, more like-missing. And why not! After all, everything here was for sale except the cash register. I shook myself, but the day’s events crowded in on me. Would there be repercussions to my visit to The Peerless? What would I say to Ann? Could I persuade the police that Bunty might be in peril if the widows were prepared to bend the rules? I crossed the shop, telling myself that I would walk up those stairs and knock on that door. My hands reached for the amber velvet curtains and pulled them apart… I would say, Hello Ann, I’ve been thinking about that little charade we played…
Something brushed against me and I was so startled I toppled over. When I opened my eyes and grovelled to my feet, I found myself looking at Ann. Her eyes were opened wide, her hair and fortyish clothes as elegant as when I had seen her that morning.
There was only one real difference. She was dead. Two arrows pinned her jacketed shoulders to the wall under the left-hand curtain. A third was punched into her chest.
I had been right: there was something different about the shop. The crossbow was missing from the wall behind the register.
I was standing there looking at this woman who had been my friend when I heard again the tinkle of the William Tell Overture.
From the Files of
Minutes of Board Meeting, Monday, 11th May
The minutes of the March meeting were approved as read. Treasurer, Mary Ellis, reported a current balance of £139.71 and fended off an accusation by Betty White that £2.13 had been misappropriated for the purchase of fertilizer for the gardening committee. Activities Chairwoman, Martha Grub, made a motion that a trip to Hampton Court be made an annual event. Motion seconded by Mrs. Shirley Daffy and unanimously approved by the Board. Mrs. Agnes Levine, Membership Committee, circulated copies of the updated standard Telephone Approach To Prospective Members. Two spelling and three typographical errors were called to the Board’s attention, but the document passed by a two-thirds vote for immediate implementation. Corrected sample attached. Refreshments of currant buns and cocoa were served. The meeting concluded abruptly at 9:36 P.M. when the news of Ann Delacorte’s death was received.
Respectfully submitted,
Millicent Parsnip,
Recording Secretary
The Widows Club
Membership Committee Member:
Good day, Mrs. Jane Smith (fictitious name). I am telephoning at the request of a mutual friend who tells me you may seriously be considering the possibilities of becoming a widow.
Mrs. Jane Smith:
a. I am indeed.
b. Is this an obscene phone call?
(If the response is b, pretend you have the wrong Jane Smith, on whom you are playing a practical joke, and hang up. Otherwise proceed.)
M.C. Member:
Let us be sure we fully understand each other. You do dream of having your husband murdered?
Mrs. J.S.:
I can’t think of anything nicer.
M.C. Member:
Well then, Mrs. Jane Smith, you are exactly the sort of woman we want in The Widows Club, a local organisation that offers a vast assortment of social and cultural activities along with its guilt management services. Your sponsor will be happy to discuss them with you, if you decide to join us.
Mrs. J.S.:
When may I be admitted to your ranks?
M.C. Member:
That I cannot tell you. The admittance procedure varies anywhere from a few days to a few months. We do ask that you begin preparing yourself emotionally. Get plenty of rest and exercise to control nerves. Endeavour to treat your husband as though you were readying him to go away on his holidays. A little kindness now is an investment in both your futures.
Mrs. J.S.:
I cannot wait to begin.
M.C. Member:
Good. Now we come to the matter of the initiation fee. The Widows Club realises it is difficult for many women to come up with one thousand pounds cash. If you can, splendid; otherwise we ask that you make a contribution of jewelry-your engagement ring, gold watch, etc. The Widows Club does not discriminate on the basis of economic status. On payment of your fee it is required that you enclose a brief, handwritten application. This, along with the note you recently wrote to an advice columnist, will be kept on file.
Mrs. J.S.:
How and where shall I deposit the membership fee?
M.C. Member:
The current depository is the statue of Smuggler Jim in St. Anselm’s churchyard. The left boot contains a crevice ideal for the purpose. Please deposit the fee between midnight and four A.M. during the next forty-eight hours. On the remote chance that you are seen in the churchyard, say you felt a need to come to terms with death.
Mrs. J.S.:
And then?
M.C. Member:
Relax and wait. You will receive notification of approval through the confidential column of our local advice columnist, Dear Felicity Friend. Mrs. Jane Smith, it is my privilege and pleasure to assure you that your husband will be detained on earth no longer than strictly necessary. I look forward to that happy day when you join us at one of The Widows Club’s general meetings and receive your membership badge.
Primrose was, I think, disappointed that I didn’t faint dead away or, at the very least, go into hysterics when she and Hyacinth entered Delacorte’s to find me in the most compromising of positions, inches away from Ann’s body.
“My dear Ellie,” she said, as she propped me against a bureau, “what a very nasty shock for all of us. I have for years considered bows and arrows one of the menaces of modern society, but, on the bright side, we must remember that Mrs. Delacorte was hardly a person you would have wished to keep as a friend.”
“True, but I didn’t kill her to get her off my guest list.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Primrose soothed. “This wasn’t a murder, it was an execution. Oh, the thrill, Hyacinth, of being proved right!-professionally speaking.”
I wished she would keep her voice down. I could not shake the feeling that the murderer might still be here, lurking behind a piece of antique furniture.
Hyacinth lowered me onto a chair. “I couldn’t agree with you more, Prim. We suspicioned (did we not?) that Mrs. Delacorte had used The Widows Club for her own ends. But there has to be more. She must have taken some action to precipitate this.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, trying to shut out the horror of Ann’s unflickering gaze. “Life is what you make of it,” she had said. “If you want something done, an obstacle removed from your path, it is best to go to the top.” I heard myself giving the Tramwells a fractured account of my visit here this morning.
Primrose fluttered in circles like a moth. “Somehow Mrs. Delacorte discovered, or guessed at, the identity of The Founder. After you left her, she went to see him or her. Putting you up for membership would not have sealed her fate, so my belief is she requested that Bunty Wiseman be eliminated; perhaps she even put the squeeze on The Founder. But that is neither here nor there. Mrs. Delacorte placed herself in a very perilous position and it was decided she had to be removed. It most assuredly would not do to have members of the club stepping outside the club’s charter. Oh, dear me, no! The results would be murderous mayhem.”
“Absolutely,” said her sister. “But I feel very strongly that the swiftness of the response indicates a breathless kind of fury, due to the fact that Mrs. Delacorte’s desired victim was a woman and one whose husband she coveted. We have much to discuss-why we are all here, for instance-but now we must do the courteous thing and telephone the constabulary.”
“Not for a few minutes, please. I have something I must retrieve from Ann’s bag.” I pried myself out of the chair.
“Dear me, of course!” fluted Primrose. “The note you wrote to Dear Felicity Friend! Who is, as Hyacinth and I have been meaning to tell you, none other than Edwin Digby, under the guise of another female pseudonym-”
“We can go into all this later,” Hyacinth interrupted, but Primrose swept on.
“Butler has confirmed the suspicions aroused, Ellie, when you spoke of the page you saw in Mr. Digby’s typewriter. The writing had the cadence of something from an advice column. And when Mrs. Malloy arrived at The Aviary that day she mentioned that she had seen him entering the…”-Primrose stumbled over the next word-“Gentleman’s. Her hints that she could keep her mouth shut suggested that this observation had been made somewhere other than The Dark Horse. Earlier she told you, Ellie, that she had cleaned the executive toilets at The Daily Spokesman and knew the identity of Felicity Friend. Am I making myself clear?”
“You are making yourself long.” Hyacinth tapped on a Victorian desk. “We must look for that note at once, although Mrs. Delacorte may have already passed it on. Indeed, she may have used it as an excuse for her fatal visit. Ellie, your contribution to our efforts is magnificent and I regret you have been forced to spend the remainder of the day aimlessly awaiting our return from London. When we arrived back at the Pebblewell Hotel we were told that you had just left the premises. We followed at top speed and spotted your car.”
“My dear,” scolded Primrose, “you were saying that I was talking too much. The police tend to be nitpicky over such questions as ‘When did you enter the premises and discover the body?’ ” She touched my arm. “We will say that you fainted, Ellie, and we dithered about reviving you. However, two minutes is all I think we can allow ourselves to search for the handbag with the note.”
“Are we going to tell the police about The Widows Club?”
“Indeed not. Think how galling if they were to step in at this late stage, solve the case, and scoop the credit. I think I would weep after the exhausting day we have had browsing in Harrods, waiting for Butler to get finished checking up on Edwin Digby’s genealogy at Somerset House. And all for naught. It seems Digby isn’t his real name either. Oh, and Ellie… Put your gloves on, dear.”
I went through the amber curtains sideways so as not to brush against Ann’s body, then up the stairs to the flat. I had to find that note. If the police got their hands on it, I doubted my marriage would survive, and prison decor had never excited me. As things stood, the police would surely put me under the microscope. This was my second body in less than a month. First the husband, then the wife.
Switching on the light, I lifted Ann’s coat from the chair where it had been tossed, but the bag wasn’t underneath. Hyacinth’s voice sliced through my jumping nerves. She was telephoning the police station. I could count on a minute at most.
How ironic to realise that less than half an hour ago I had wanted to talk to the police. I had pictured a kindly detective patting me on the arm and saying, “Thank you, madam, the boys and I will get right on it.” Alas, how a corpse alters the case. Now I pictured a different look on the inspector’s face as I babbled away about a widows club while Ann’s body was pinned to a wall. I had to find that note.
The scream of the sirens ripped into my head just as I discovered Ann’s black suede bag on a bookcase. Hands shaking, I snapped open the clasp. Comb, mirror, purse, cheque book, oh, please… My fingers were stiffening up. But there it was, the folded square of paper. I opened it just to make sure. Yes. I moistened my lips and placed it on my tongue. I always said I could eat anything. Then I flicked off the light and, chewing madly, stumbled down the stairs.
I wasn’t alone in the narrow dark. The what-if demons pressed in on me. What if Ann, even though she had not passed on the note, had mentioned my interest in becoming a member of The Widows Club? What if the nurse described me accurately enough to Dr. Bordeaux that he recognised me? What if I broke down under police questioning? I took the last step and edged the curtains apart.
Hyacinth was on her knees half under a table; Primrose was atop a stepstool.
“There, there, ladies,” came a comfortable male voice. “You can come out of hiding. You are perfectly safe.” The shop was crammed almost as full with policemen as it was with merchandise. I swallowed hard.
“Well, that didn’t go too badly, did it?” remarked Hyacinth. Primrose had driven the hearse around the corner from Delacorte’s. She now proffered a bag of extra strong peppermints, saying they would warm us up. I liked the way they killed the taste of paper and ink.
Didn’t go too badly? I sank low on the seat. Please don’t let Ben amble this way and see me! There was no reason for him to walk in this direction on leaving Abigail’s, and if he had any dinner customers, he was probably still at the restaurant. But the last hour and a half seemed to lead inexorably to the moment when I must break it to my husband that I had spent the evening with a dead body and the police. And he must be warned to brace himself for the newspapers’ gleeful rehashing of Charles Delacorte’s death.
The inspector had suggested that one of his men get in touch with my husband-“You’ve had some nasty experiences recently, haven’t you, Mrs. Haskell?”-but I had declined. I preferred to tell him myself, at home. A constable had been stationed outside the shop to disperse the crowd which had gathered with the arrival of the police and the ambulance. He was told to give out the information that Mrs. Delacorte was dead and that the till appeared to have been raided. Better that, the inspector had intimated, than a panic spread that a maniac killer was on the loose in Chitterton Fells.
“Ellie, I don’t feel that this murder can fully account for the distress and agitation I sense in you.” Primrose handed me another peppermint. “Tell us, my dear, what else happened today?”
“I went to The Peerless Nursing Home.”
When I finished my account of that little visit, Primrose ecstatically pressed her hands to my face. “So brave, so ingenious! And I do feel you should put aside your little fears about the nurse going to Dr. Bordeaux and confessing her stupidity at leaving you unchaperoned. Even were she so lacking in self-preservation, you don’t look like a Mrs. Heinz.”
“But if she gave an accurate description of my car…”
“How could she?” Hyacinth flexed her pencil. “Isn’t its right side an Austin, the left a Rover, the right door a Vauxhall? Let us proceed. You say Jenny Spender seemed to be remonstrating with Dr. Bordeaux as you passed the window?”
“Yes.” I pressed my hands against the back of my neck and rubbed my feet together to stop a creeping pins and needles sensation. “I have to go home.”
“We can all do with an early night, Ellie.” Hyacinth’s voice was reproving. “We have arduous days ahead. It is surely folly to think that the police won’t wish to interrogate us further.” She made another notation in the green book.
Primrose fussed with a button at her throat. “I do believe we have so far been a credit to ourselves. Was I not splendidly tiresome in explaining how we had missed an appointment with Ellie, raced in pursuit of her-without speeding, of course-and entered Delacorte’s just in time to see her collide with the corpus delecti?” Her eyes sparkled, then sobered. “Ellie, you seem so constrained. Is it possible you felt obliged to tell the inspector certain small untruths and now feel guilty? For instance, when he asked whether you had noticed anyone in the vicinity of Delacorte’s as you were about to enter-”
“I didn’t see anyone; I saw a goose-Mother Goose. She was only a few yards from Delacorte’s. Mr. Digby must have been in The Dark Horse, and I wondered if she had seen anyone she knew to make her cross The Square like that.”
“You handled the entire situation commendably,” approved Hyacinth, her earrings swivelling.
“Given my growing reputation,” I said, “the inspector was pleasant. And now”-I opened my bag and took out the car keys-“before I leave, I do have something I must tell you. I can’t help you anymore. I’m a coward, not a heroine. Seeing Mrs. Woolpack changed things. She made it all real, and I’m afraid that if I go on attempting to infiltrate The Widows Club, something may go wrong. Something could happen to Ben, such as his name ending up in the wrong file.”
“Oh, what a dreadful thought!” Primrose reached into her handbag. “Do have a sip of brandy.”
For the briefest moment I was distracted by the enchanting little flask with the minute silver cup chained to the stopper.
“I do urge you to reconsider,” said Hyacinth. “Thanks to Mrs. Delacorte’s death, we would seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough.”
“One would like to think that the woman is at peace, but I rather fear”-Primrose lowered her eyes-“that where she has gone, her troubles are just beginning. However, we at Flowers Detection must always feel gratitude toward her because, in dying, Mrs. Delacorte showed us how to entrap The Founder.” Her silvery curls shone in the electric light. “Is it too much to ask, dear Ellie, that you display that nobility of character which we know you to possess and act as the scapegoat?”
“Me?” I had guessed this might be coming. “I am the girl who is frightened of food, remember! Besides, my life is full enough as it is with inquests and funerals and the imminent possibility of being arrested.”
Primrose dabbed a lace hanky to her eyes. “We do have our way to make in the detective world, you know. And the lives of countless husbands are in your hands.”
Those words buzzed in my ears like a bluebottle the next few days when I wasn’t giving way to more dismal thoughts.
On the night of Ann’s murder, Ben and I arrived home within minutes of each other. He was aghast when I broke the news to him. I was aghast by the sincerity of my lies.
“My poor darling.” He cradled me in his arms. We were in the hall, still in our coats. “You go to visit a friend to see how she is surviving the death of her husband and find her dead. It’s unspeakable. Those two old ladies who came in the shop immediately after you-were they shoppers?”
I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted us to have been married for fifty years so nothing I might do could shock him. But I was afraid that the truth, the whole truth, spilling from my lips would send him thumbing through the telephone directory for the name of a solicitor specialising in divorce. Ben didn’t know the Tramwells. He couldn’t be expected to view them as anything but oddities. Dangerous oddities with whom I had been in communion for some time, without mentioning it. He would begin watching me over the rim of the morning newspaper, wondering how it was that he hadn’t recognised sooner my strong resemblance to my wacky relations. The lights glinted on Rufus’s visored face; memory came of him in Aunt Astrid’s arms, her hand on his metal thigh. And then there was Aunt Lulu pocketing ashtrays, and Uncle Maurice panting after the woman in paisley, and Freddy-the sanest of the lot-threatening to sue Sid Fowler. My fingers dug into Ben’s shoulders. I couldn’t risk giving him anything but an expurgated version of this evening’s events. My faith must be in the police; they would do a little digging and come up with a lot of skeletons. The Widows Club would come to light eventually, without my holding the torch. If the Tramwells were determined to proceed with the case, then so be it. I couldn’t put a host of anonymous, adulterous males ahead of my husband, my marriage. A good wife gets her priorities straight.
“Darling, this is bound to be rough on you.” Ben smoothed my hair. “But this time I will be with you. If the police need to speak to you again at the inquest, I’ll be there all the way.”
He was making this so hard for me.
“So, the motive was burglary, and Ann walked in on it.” Ben helped me off with my coat. “I wonder if the murderer had ever used a crossbow before. That sounds like good marksmanship to me, getting her through the heart and pinning her to the wall so she’d stay propped behind that curtain. Quite the theatrical touch.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, only sharpening the gruesome image, but I did feel heartened in one respect. If Ben was questioning the use of weapon, so would those trained in detection.
“I’ll get you a cup of tea.” Ben drew me toward the kitchen, where we found Magdalene and Poppa. The whole story to be gone through again! And I knew exactly what my mother-in-law would think: All the girls my son could have picked, and he marries one whose life path is strewn with bodies!
That week moved forward, as excruciatingly slow as babies in a crawling race. The Daily Spokesman headlined first the announcement of, then updates on Ann’s murder. According to the reports, the police were pursuing several leads. The good news for me was that the medical examiner decreed death had occurred during that time when I was within full view of eyewitnesses. But I still thought the Tramwells’ alibi might be iffy.
On Thursday morning Ben and I went down to the police station and I read over my typed statement and signed it. No one gave me any funny looks. Afterward I insisted that Ben return to Abigail’s. As I walked into the house I was trying to cheer myself up with the thought that I was down to two unwelcome engagements. Ann’s funeral was set for Monday at 4:00 P.M., and the inquest would be as soon as the coroner’s court convened. After that, my calendar was a social vacuum.
I was passing through the hall on my way upstairs to put away my coat, wondering where Magdalene and Poppa were, when I saw Magdalene by the trestle table. Her hand was on the telephone receiver; her eyes reminded me of Ann’s-unblinking, fixed.
“What is it?” I rushed to her.
“Nothing!” She covered the receiver with both hands as though trying to hide it.
“Is telling lies a mortal or a venial sin?” I plonked her down on a chair. Poor little wispy person. “You’ve had a crank phone call. No point in denying it, I know the look. I had a similar experience once.”
She stared up at me with unseeing eyes. “I was just offering it all up for the souls in Purgatory.”
“What did this person say to you? Something vicious about the murder? About me?”
“The… the word murder was used.”
“Where’s Poppa?”
“He took your cake over to the church hall in the wheelbarrow. I couldn’t go with him, not without a special dispensation, because of it being that sort of place. I’m from the old school, before Vatican Two.” Her voice faded.
I had to snap her out of this. I suggested we do a little weeding in the herb garden. Reluctantly, she agreed. But I continued to worry about her; she wasn’t her usual prickly self. That evening, when I mentioned the phone occurrence to Poppa and Ben, she refused to talk about it, and when Freddy climbed through the drawing room window at a little after nine, she came out of her chair as if hooked to a spring.
“It’s only me, Maggie dear, not the Chitterton Fells murderer.” Freddy eyed the tea tray. “What, no cake! This may cease to be my favourite eating place.” He threw himself prone on the sofa. “And what’s up with you, Ellie? Been finding the last day or two deadly dull?”
“Freddy, put the gag back in your mouth.” Ben emphasized his displeasure by snatching away the dish of chocolates before my cousin got his fingers in it.
Poppa said, “You look exhausted, Mr. Flatts. Must be the short hours you young people work.”
Magdalene was silent. I said I would fetch Freddy some Madeira cake. I wasn’t being nice. I was grabbing at an excuse to get back to the kitchen and have another search for my engagement ring. Before going out to weed I had stood right by the sink and was certain (twenty percent so) that I had put it in a flowerpot saucer on the window sill. Could Tobias have gotten his paws on it and knocked it flying? I crawled around the floor. No luck. Had this happened at any other time, I would have gone to bed on a stretcher. The memory of Ben placing that ring on my finger was particularly sacred because I couldn’t remember his doing the same thing with my wedding ring. I had developed an arthritic-looking hump to that finger and had worked at becoming left-handed so as to flash that diamond shine.
But murder alters people. I was distressed, but not distraught. The ring was bound to turn up. I returned to the drawing room with the Madeira cake. Magdalene and Poppa had gone to bed. Ben and Freddy were discussing the cookery demonstration Ben was giving to the Hearthside Guild between noon and 3 P.M. on Saturday, the 16th May. Why… that was this Saturday! I had forgotten all about it, but I imagine the fortnight I had recently undergone would have put most people off schedule. Thank God, Ben had remembered.
“Really, mate, I don’t know why you are lowering yourself.” Freddy rolled over on the sofa and hung face down over the edge. “I can’t credit the gross insensitivity of those women, asking you to create a stew á la difference in a pressure cooker! Where’s the magic? Where’s the mystique? Aren’t those the things where you just bung everything in and cover your ears?”
Ben scowled. “Will you lay off? The spokeswoman for the group didn’t ask me what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to be temperamental. I thought myself lucky not having been struck off the list of coming events.” He halted. “Ellie, I didn’t mean-”
“Yes, you did,” I said, “and it’s all right.”
A smile crept into his eyes, then vanished. “I would have liked to have done something more challenging, especially as”-his voice picked up speed-“Angelica Brady, the editor from Brambleweed Press, indicated she might come down for the demonstration. She thinks the book’s appeal may be enhanced if the jacket contains a spiel about the charming little doings of charming little Chitterton Fells. She had me send her some copies of The Daily Spokesman and claimed to be enchanted by our rusticity.” Ben looked down at his plate of cake, then came and sat on the arm of my chair. “Ellie, is something wrong?”
I thrust the thought of my engagement ring out of my head. “No. I’ll enjoy meeting Miss Brady.” I picked crumbs off his plate, then put them back. “I was just wondering about Abigail’s.”
Freddy sat up, blew on his fingernails, and rubbed them against the lapel of his suit jacket. As usual, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Yours truly will manage alone and undaunted, even if we are mobbed by more than six customers.” He shook back his hair. “Business, Ellie, has been picking up by leaps and bounds this week. We had four people today, if you count Mrs. Bottomly as two.”
I hardly slept that night. I lay looking into darkness, afloat with wide-open eyes. I spotted those of Charles Delacorte, Vernon Daffy, Ann Delacorte, and-I had to squint to be sure-Poppa’s dark brown ones. What if some of the husbands, dead or soon to be dead, were one-time sinners like Poppa? I turned over all in one movement so as not to disturb Ben and buried my face in the pillow. Had I lowered my moral standards to the point where I was prepared to concede that in some cases the crime merited the punishment? I wanted so much to shake Ben, wake him up, tell him that I was an accessory before and after the crimes. Moonlight washed into the room, showing me his face-peaceful, unsullied. I had to get up, pace around, think. The illuminated face of the bedside clock said four-fifteen. Shifting silently off the bed, I grabbed some clothes, including a sheepskin jacket, and stole into the bathroom to dress. A brisk walk would either clear my brain or numb it.
The night was like a jeweller’s window; the moon a silver salver displayed on black velvet studded with diamonds. Spring, it would seem, had come in on the back of a snowbird. The air was filled with innocence. I didn’t think about where I was going. I was doing battle with the demon. Me. Why is the easy way out never all it is cracked up to be? When my feet brought me to the churchyard railing, all I had settled upon was that I would talk to the Tramwells again… sometime soon. I was coming through the lich-gate when it suddenly struck me that Sweetie hadn’t set up the alarm when I left. I would have expected her to drag me back upstairs by the cuffs of my slacks and deposit me like a trophy outside Magdalene’s door.
Speak of the dear little doggie, a yap shrilled the air and a splodge of shadow leapt at my leg. I started to shake it off, then let it hang. Coming toward me through the purple haze was either a ghost or my mother-in-law. She was wearing the damson beret that made her ears stick out and she showed neither surprise nor pleasure in seeing me. Her eyes were those of a ghost. She reached out and curled her fingers around a tombstone, but she didn’t speak. Sweetie, on the other hand, was making enough noise to disturb the dead. I moved my palm in front of Magdalene’s eyes. Could it be?
Her voice startled me. “Giselle, I won’t think you’re interfering if you tell me I’m sleepwalking.”
“It runs in the family.” I put my arm around her. “Let’s go home.”
Magdalene spent most of Friday in her room. When I passed her door, I heard Poppa reading to her, something about the power of faith. I couldn’t tell how far their reconciliation had come; they still spoke little in my presence. So many half-knowns. So many loopholes for fear.
Roxie arrived Friday morning and was bringing out the all-purpose bottle from the supply bag when I noticed, snagged on her sleeve, a brooch. A blackbird brooch. To stop my hands shaking I unsnagged it. Roxie was not one whit abashed.
“Like it, Mrs. H.?” She slopped liquid onto a rag. “Keep it.”
Three-or was it four-husbands she had gone through?
“No, really I couldn’t. These are crows, aren’t they?”
“Are they?” She dusted Sweetie off a chair. “Well, suit yourself. I like a nice brooch but these are a bit on the common side, aren’t they? You see them everywhere. I picked this one up on the street.”
A likely story. So likely it could be true. I escaped with The Daily Spokesman to the drawing room. Nothing about Ann today. My hands took me directly to the Dear Felicity column. Edwin Digby’s face loomed in my mind’s eye. Was he the evil force or the dupe of the evil force? Unwillingly, my eyes scanned the column… Dear Heartbroken, your problem will soon die a natural death. I could not breathe. It couldn’t be… but Heartbroken was the code name I had used on that damning note.
I began to pant and then, miraculously, euphoria burst upon me. Not only had I retrieved that note, but Ann had explained to me that it represented only an application for membership. A woman wasn’t admitted to the club until after a telephone call, asking-in so many words-do you want your husband murdered? And I hadn’t received such a telephone inquiry. I would have remembered.
Saturday. Ben’s big moment before the Hearthside Guild. The church hall was a long room with plank flooring, brick walls, a stage at the north end, and a kitchen at the south, behind whose green accordion doors Ben was now making ready. He had brought all his equipment from home except the pressure cooker. He didn’t own a pressure cooker.
Magdalene, wearing a little brown hat with a feather, and I, in a black leather coat and boots, had accompanied him. We were now trying to get out of the way of the women who were either setting up rows of folding chairs or sticking Reserved labels on them. I glimpsed the back of Millicent Parsnip’s head, got a side view of Mrs. Hanover, and a full view of Mrs. Daffy’s rear end as she unfolded a wooden seat. A huddle of men stood against one wall, voices a little too loud, making it clear the speakers weren’t the least embarrassed at being dragged to this sissy affair by their wives. My heart began knocking. Could that be Dr. Bordeaux on the edge of the group? A chair was lifted in front of my face, and when I looked again, none of the dark-haired men resembled the doctor. It was Sidney I saw standing on the fringe. He had a red rose in his lapel and his hair appeared to have been set in rollers. He still looked like a caveman, but one considerably ahead of his time.
“Eli never could face any of the little plays Ben was in at school. It was always the same. He would come down with stage fright just as we were leaving the house.” Magdalene had her hands on two chairs as if restraining them from walking away. She looked better for her day of rest yesterday. Still perhaps a little shadowed under the eyes, but otherwise recovered from the shock of her sleepwalking experience.
“Poor Poppa,” I said.
“Men don’t have our stamina. It comes of having one less rib.”
Millicent Parsnip knocked a chair against me, and through every detour of her apology, I kept my eyes on hers. I didn’t want to know if she was wearing her blackbird brooch.
“Such a pity Reverend Foxworth decided to go on holiday today instead of tomorrow, as he had planned. It would have been so nice if he could have opened the occasion with a prayer, but I understand his mother phoned and asked him to make the change. Well”-Millicent’s pussycat face spread into a smile-“looks like the big moment is almost upon us.” She moved off along the row. The curtains had parted a foot. I could see a man, or rather part of a man’s suit, going through. I could hear Roxie’s voice.
“Should you require an assistant, Mr. H., I’m your woman. And I won’t charge you more than a couple of quid.”
The steam from Ben’s voice reached me. “Move my salt! Move my pepper! Move an inch and I’ll kill you.” Curtain. Magdalene was rearranging her chair when the advent of Mrs. Bottomly obscured all else from view.
“A marvellous afternoon to you, Mrs. Haskell.” The chins swayed. “We”-she sloshed out an arm to include the rush of women-“we are all so much looking forward to this. And you, my dear, must relax and savour every moment!”
She was gone without a glance at Magdalene. She was sitting with her eyes downcast, her hands clutching her bag, murmuring, “He will be just fine, and if he isn’t, I don’t need to tell anyone.”
I was about to sit down beside her when I saw a young blond woman coming through the door with a red rose in the lapel of her silver-grey suede jacket. At first I thought she was Bunty. The height was similar, but this woman was strikingly beautiful, whereas Bunty was merely striking. Could there be any doubt who this was? Parents who name a child Angelica have something like this in mind. She saw me staring and with long strides, alligator briefcase swinging alongside her midiskirt, came over.
“Greetings! Hope I’m not frightfully late.” She had a slightly raspy, more than slightly sexy voice. “I’m Angelica Brady and you must be Ellie because this certainly is Ben’s dear mum.” She extended a gloved hand, breezily friendly. Then… bingo, her eyes glazed. Magdalene was half out of her seat; was Miss Brady shocked by the changes time had wrought in my mother-in-law? Or was there something about me she found instantly repellent? I started to say how pleased Ben would be at having her here, but neither of us was listening. Miss Brady was staring into space-a space occupied by Sidney Fowler. The roses worn by each were as alike as two red roses can be. So were their facial expressions.
“Angie, didn’t my Ben tell you Sidney also lives here?” Magdalene asked.
“No, but I have only myself to blame for that.” Miss Brady’s voice could have been produced by remote control. “One of the first things I said to Ben was that I didn’t want Sid’s name to crop up in conversation.”
Sidney moved, but not toward us; he stumbled about on his heel and made for the exit door.
“Say hello to Ben for me,” whispered Miss Brady, then she too was gone.
“I’m beginning to be glad Ben didn’t marry her.” Magdalene sat back down and smoothed her skirt over her knees. “Shush. I think my boy’s performance is about to begin.” Out came her rosary. The last of the seats filled up and Bunty squeezed into the row in front of us.
Music flooded the room, golden, effervescent, like sunlight. At the piano in front of the stage was Gladys Thorn. Her dress had baggy silk sleeves, turning her arms into great moths, darting, floating. The curtains were opening. I tensed. The inexplicable behaviour of Miss Brady and Sidney was forgotten. Magdalene and I hitched our chairs close together, hands brushing as we placed them on our laps. Behold a narrow hospital-green kitchen. Behold Ben (my hand inched up in a wave), television handsome, behind a table lined with all the makings of a stew, his backdrop a surgical-steel cooker and sink.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.” Since last I had seen him, he had acquired a trace of a French accent.
Magdalene kept whispering to herself. “Shoulders back, son. Talk up, and don’t lick your fingers.”
Millicent Parsnip stepped out of the wings, a small piece of paper held out in front of her. Beaming, she read from her notes.
“Dear friends, it is a pleasure and a privilege to have with us today Mr. Bentley Haskell. His theme is Cooking Under Pressure.” Mrs. Parsnip’s laugh got only one echo from the audience. Ben stood with a receiving smile on his lips. Miss Parsnip skipped page two of the notes. “And so, without any more ado, on with the show!” A round of perfunctory applause as, plaid skirt twitching, she exited. I bit down on my thumbs.
Ben held up a piece of meat shaped like Australia. “A stew by any other name is… a ragout.” The meat sailed up in the air. He caught it with one hand and began squirting with lemon and peppering away. “The integrity of this recipe is dependent upon a refusal to allow the beef to dominate the vegetables.” I stopped listening. Hands shot up throughout the hall. I sat up tall in my chair. My husband had his audience in the palm of his hand.
“Yes?” He arched a black brow, tossed a dollop of butter in the pressure cooker and set it to sizzle on the burner.
“Aren’t you going to coat the meat with flour?” demanded a voice belonging to the hand in the front row.
“No.” Ben blew out the word and slashed into an onion.
I sank down in my chair until my head was level with Magdalene’s. Would it be cheeky to ask if she had another rosary? The show went on, fired by commentary from the audience and rebuttal by the star. Ben was locking the pressure cooker handle, explaining he would now prepare a couple of loaves of hurry-up bread, along with a cinnamon custard. I was thinking, we’re on the home straight now, when it happened. A monumental bang.
My immediate reaction was that the room had exploded, but as steam fogged the kitchen, I knew. The pressure cooker had blown up. Ben! The audience was in a shambles, screaming, knocking over chairs. A voice from the kitchen bellowed, “Stay back! Everyone stay back!” The green accordion curtains swished shut. Magdalene was dragging me down as I dragged her up. I could see her mouth opening, but her screams, like mine, were lost in the hubbub. My hand tightened on hers, the rosary beads knotted between us.
A great weight came down on my shoulder. I wrenched my neck round to see Mrs. Bottomly, her face cracked in two by a consoling smile. “Relax, Mrs. Haskell, Dr. Bordeaux is with your husband now; so fortuitous that he happened to be here. He will take Mr. Haskell down to the nursing home in his car, and if necessary, keep him overnight.”
Her eyes were sending me a secret message. I felt myself falling into nothingness. I didn’t understand, and yet I knew what was happening. I must get to Ben! Once that was accomplished, I could fight the doctor off with a carving knife. Magdalene was on her feet. “No one will stop me seeing my son. Didn’t I almost die three times giving him birth?” We were surrounded by a wall of concerned faces. My hands clenched into fists, but I thought better of punching my way out. I stood a better chance of making it if I ducked down and crawled. I was half up, half down, when I saw the hall’s entry door fling open, saw a man’s trousered legs, and a swatch of raincoat.
“Sorry to break things up, guys and dolls, but I’m from the police!” a deep voice grated. The circle crumbled. I clung to Magdalene’s hand. Later, I would experience exuberance, incredulity-right now, nothing mattered but reaching Ben. I yanked my mother-in-law past dozens of disappointed eyes. A husband, my husband, was about to be snatched from the jaws of death-otherwise known as The Widows Club. Whatever the explosion had done to Ben, I would put him back together-or love him the way he was. A sob of relief, he wasn’t in pieces! I could see my darling lying half on, half off, a metal serving cart. Dr. Bordeaux stood nearby, his fingers steepled out from his chest.
“Mrs. Bentley Haskell.” The man in the raincoat cut a path through the crowd. He wore a hat with the brim pulled low and had greasy black sideburns. “I’ve been sent to fetch you down to the station to answer a couple more questions about the murder.” He reached into an upper pocket, flashed a leatherbound square of cardboard and intoned, “Homicide. We’d like you to bring your mother-in-law with you”-he tucked the folder away-“to make things a bit more comfortable for you.”
I didn’t ask how he knew I had a mother-in-law and that Magdalene was she. He had a bulge in his raincoat pocket that looked like it could be a gun, and his teeth were rotten. I played along.
“We’ll… we’ll have to take my husband home first. He’s had a cooking accident.” I moved in with agonising nonchalance to the serving cart and reached for Ben’s hand. Thank heavens, it felt alive. Was that funny smell chloroform?
Dr. Bordeaux’s voice chilled the back of my neck. “No need for that, Mrs. Haskell. You go along with the policeman and I will take-”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” snapped Magdalene, “because I won’t budge from here without my son!”
The Raincoat Man swaggered toward me, hand in his pocket. “You’d best get your husband rolling, Mrs. Haskell. As for you, Doc, I’d start giving first aid to some of the others here.”
Butler! It had to be he, playing his part brilliantly. I had to crush down my elation, to prevent it bubbling out of my throat in hysterical laughter.
“Excuse me.” I addressed Mrs. Bottomly’s chins, my hands gripping the handle of the cart. “Coming, Magdalene?” The horrid faces of these women! Mrs. Parsnip backed away from me, her eyes immobile.
“Sorry everything went so wrong,” I babbled, thinking it prudent to pretend a kind of normalcy, but the possible interpretations of my words abruptly sobered me.
The menace in the hall had been so strong that I had been afraid that of itself it might prevent our leaving; once outside, I clung to Ben’s hand, trembling. We stood on the gravel path, the elms casting green shadows over our faces. A bee buzzed close to my ear. “What now?” I asked.
The Raincoat Man withdrew his hand from his pocket and with it a gun. He rubbed the barrel against the bridge of his nose, then pressed it against the base of my throat. “We take your car, sweetheart, and we drive away from the village.”
“So we aren’t going to the police station?” Magdalene pulled her hat down over her ears.
“Not within a mile.” He drew the gun back a few inches. The rotten teeth were very much in evidence. “Sorry, old woman, but you don’t get to drive down busy streets and toss a shoe out the window with a message inside.”
Something was seriously wrong with his speech. Not a wink, not a word that he was Butler. Ben made a grunting noise and his arm lolled off the cart. I prayed he wouldn’t wake up. This rescue was deteriorating with every step. Silently, Magdalene got into the back seat of the Heinz. The Raincoat Man watched with a sardonic smirk as I manoeuvered Ben, by means of a modified fireman’s carry, alongside her.
“Well, Reggie Patterson,” my mother-in-law snipped. “I must say this is a lot better than knowing you were out there somewhere, watching. You nasty boy. And don’t go taking on airs thinking I’m frightened. What, me frightened of anyone as stupid as you? I remember well when you used to come and collect your father’s rents. It was said up and down the street that all his money couldn’t do for you what nature hadn’t. You’re stupid and a coward!”
“No, I ain’t.”
Magdalene’s lips ruched into a smile. “Those that were short on the rent put their dogs out the minute they saw you coming-even Mrs. Rose with her Pekingese. And those who didn’t have dogs had their kiddies bow-wow at the window. My Ben”-she looked lovingly at the dark head on her lap-“he used to feel he’d missed out because we weren’t on your rent books and he didn’t get to send you scampering with your tail between your legs.”
“Yeah,” came a snicker. “Benny boy stopped laughing, didn’t he, when I shut him in the tater bin?”
The gun muzzle rested chill against my neck as I slid into the driver’s seat. The Raincoat Man was the son of the wicked landlord of Crown Street and Magdalene was being kidnapped, with Ben and myself going along for the ride. The Raincoat Man got into the passenger seat.
“Move it, sister.”
Please, Heinz, I prayed, do what you do best: stall.
While I fumbled with the key, Magdalene spoke. “I’d like to know, Reggie, why you never showed after luring me to the churchyard at dead of night?” She gave a sarcastic little laugh. “Did something better turn up?”
The damn motor throbbed to life.
Reggie pulled the brim of his hat low over his mean little eyes and stuck a home-rolled cigarette between his lips. “I dunno what the bleedin’ hell you’re talking about, which is because you’s trying to confuse me. But it ain’t gonna work.” He twisted around and tapped ash in Magdalene’s general vicinity. “I tell you I ain’t stupid. Me dad’s gonna get that through his skull when I pull this baby off.” He tapped his chest with the gun.
We were through the churchyard gates, the stupid Heinz purring along as if newly minted from the factory. The breeze kept blowing my hair in my eyes. “Dad was all for putting the squeeze on old man Haskell when we got the chance to sell out all them scum-bag houses on Crown Street for a dozen times what they was worth. Some blokes wanted to tear them down and build a shopping arcade, but it was all nixed because that lousy little Shylock you’re married to wouldn’t part with his shop. The trouble with Dad is he don’t think big. He made a couple of threatening phone calls and then got the wind up his pants when your coloured shop assistant rung back and told him, in that plummy voice of his-just like he was spouting poetry, to pack it in. Dad carried on like he’d been fixed with the evil eye.”
Reggie shoved the cigarette to one side of his mouth and spat out the window. “Me, I was all for torching the shop but Dad said if I did, we was through. The arcade boys would smell a rat and call the whole deal off. It was me, the numbskull, who could see what he couldn’t, that it didn’t do no good threatening old man Haskell himself. The way to get to him was through his old lady. So I starts hanging about, watching you, letting him know that if he didn’t sign on the dotted line his missus was like to disappear.”
I stared straight ahead. “She disappeared all right, but at Mr. Haskell’s instigation. You dithered too long, Mr. Patterson. My guess is that for all your brave talk, you were afraid of Paris, the Magnificent, afraid that he might step on you and not notice.”
“No, I ain’t.” Reggie’s eyes disappeared between lash-less folds. “And I ain’t afraid of no dogs.” A scowl slid over his face like slime. “I just don’t like the way they bark and set up the alarm. And in that buggering big house of yours, someone could creep up behind me and I’d have wasted me time.”
I felt better but I was worried about Ben. I had to stay alive. I must take care of him. Keep Reggie talking. Try to get him to see the futility of his schemes. We were approaching The Aviary; there was the low buff wall, the gate, and the arthritic tree with its crippled branches supporting a huge bird’s nest. But no sign of Mr. Digby.
“I suppose,” I said to Reggie, “your plan is to detain us until my father-in-law agrees to sell his shop to you and your father. But where does that really get you? The minute we are free he can cancel the agreement and stroll down to the police station.”
Reggie turned a blackened smile on me. “No, he won’t. Not if he’s given his bleedin’ word not to. Ain’t it known from Crown Street to Buckingham Palace”-he flicked more ash at Magdalene-“that old man Haskell never breaks his word, not even if it breaks his heart?”
We were coming to a stretch of road I hadn’t travelled before. The lighthouse rose up from a serene sea, the wind dropped. What better place to keep us prisoner than in a disused lighthouse? “Magdalene,” I said brightly, “how long have you known, fully, what was going on?”
She sighed. “I suppose I’m not as quick as some. When I first came down here and saw Sid, I wondered if he might be the one, out to even some old grudge. I didn’t figure out the truth until the night of the party at the restaurant. I don’t suppose you remember, Giselle, but I was looking out the window, and I saw Reggie across the road under a streetlight, staring his weasel stare, and suddenly all was made plain.”
The Raincoat Man tossed his cigarette overboard and scratched at his greasy sideburns with the muzzle of his gun. “I was halfway up the stairs of the bloody restaurant when two waiters chucked me out, the sods, otherwise I would have nabbed you that night.”
“You wouldn’t,” snapped Magdalene. “I had my watchdog with me.” She tapped me on the shoulder and Heinz’s bumpers grazed against a jut of rock in rounding a curve. “Giselle, I know you won’t understand why I didn’t tell Eli how I’d finally seen through his pretense of being keen on Mrs. Jarrod. But after him being so strong and splendid in driving me away to the safety of the convent, I wanted him to go on thinking he’d spared me.”
“I do understand completely,” I said.
“What I don’t understand is how I could have been so simple as to believe that he and Mrs. Jarrod were… you know.”
“You mean because she was taller than he?”
“That, and Eli doesn’t like pickled herring.”
“What is this?” sneered the Raincoat Man. “Schoolgirl confessions?”
We ignored him. Magdalene sighed. “Just to make sure I wasn’t going peculiar in my old age, I wrote to Paris and asked him to tell me, was I right-was I wrong? I got a letter back saying that Eli had decided to face up to the inevitable. Sometime this idiot was bound to get up his courage and kidnap me. So, best to get it all over and done with. Eli would pay the ransom, get me back, and then go to the police. They couldn’t talk about idle threats then, could they?”
“Yeah! Well, the brain here outthought your old man.”
I took another curve. The letter that, according to Roxie, had come for Magdalene from abroad must have been the one from Paris. Ben started to snore, which comforted me; the sound was noisily healthy. The same could not be said of Heinz’s emanations.
Reggie’s hateful currant eyes turned toward me. His dirty fingernails grabbed at my sleeve. “Why are you slowing down?”
“I have the thing floored,” I pacified. The purr was still nice and even, but sleepy. We were coming to an elbow of land directly in line with the lighthouse. The Heinz slid a few more yards, then stopped. I gripped the steering wheel. “Sorry, Reggie, this is as far as we go. Something must have died.”
“Something is going to die, sister, if you don’t think again.” His voice came silky quiet as his fingers closed around my knot of hair.
“You wouldn’t kill us. You’d lose your bargaining edge.”
“I could kill one of you.”
“And then the arcade boys might decide not to do business with you.” A gull winged it overhead. The scent of hawthorn on the grassy incline to our left and the distant swish of the waves made the place cruelly peaceful.
“Giselle, far be it from me to interfere,” came Magdalene’s plaintive voice, “but I think, for the sake of my son, you might start the car.”
“Spoken like a first-rate mum.” Reggie licked his scaly lips. “Benny boy mightn’t love his wifey anymore if her nose came out the back of her head.”
I explained and continued to explain until the message sank in that the car, not I, was the one playing games. Reggie sat picking his teeth and thinking, something clearly at which he wasn’t too handy. At last he snarled, “You two out. Benny stays where he is.”
To be preyed upon by wild dogs and the elements? Now I had to stall. “What are we supposed to do-thumb a lift?” The last words came out in jerks. I was half out of the car. Reggie and Magdalene were already in the road and I was hearing the loveliest sound on God’s earth. And, what was more, a sound that was endearingly familiar. Creeping toward us was the hearse. I recognized Butler, who was driving, but the other two occupants were strangers. Both wore leather riding helmets and goggles, but then I saw a flutter of lavender shawl and a beaded carpet bag being flagged out the window. Spitting fury, Reggie waved the hearse on. Perhaps he had forgotten the gun in his hand.
The hearse stopped. Nipping out of the vehicle, Butler glided around to open the other door, but Primrose was already trotting toward us, the ends of her shawl blowing in the breeze. “Ellie, my dear! Hyacinth and I are out on a scenic drive. How very pleasant encountering you! Surely this must be your mother-in-law, of whom we have heard so much. Have you also stopped to admire the view?” Primrose peered into the Heinz. “Why, poor Mr. Haskell! Carsick I see.” Deliberately, she looked at Reggie and the gun. “Young man, were you never told it is rude to point?”
Snickering, Reggie chucked Primrose playfully under the chin with the gun. “Hey, old girl, was you born when brains was rationed?” He sucked in a fetid breath. “You got a choice. Get back in the death wagon with the other ugly sister, or come for a little walk and spend a naughty weekend with me. Only it won’t be just the two of us, sweetheart, I’ll have me other prisoners along.”
Butler amazed me. He stood immobile in front of the hearse, his eyes fixed on the puffy little clouds, his expression one of mild amusement. It was Hyacinth in a Sherlock Holmes cape who now whapped past Magdalene, me, and Ben, still mercifully prone and oblivious in the back seat.
“How dare you!” She swept her sister aside and fixed her goggles on Reggie. “How dare you address my sister as sweetheart! I demand satisfaction, sir! And choice of weapons.”
Her arm swung out in an arc, her hand cracked Reggie on the chops, her elbow caught the gun, sending it spinning over the cliff edge. It was probably imagination overload, but I swore I heard a small gulp from the sea.
From the Files of
Saturday, 16th May
The Whist and Crocheting Groups both cancelled meetings on the evening of the above date, on account of several members not feeling up to light-hearted socialising as a result of the immensely disappointing cookery demonstration in the church hall. When it next meets, the Board will consider whether to withdraw our annual contribution to the Policeman’s Benevolent Fund. It will also discuss whether the club feels it would be immoral to serve the recipe provided by Mr. Bentley Haskell at the Midsummer Potluck.
Also to be discussed at the next Board Meeting-1st June-is the matter of membership badges lost or misplaced by owners. Suggestions for penalties for this infraction will be voiced. In the past, offenders have been banned from participating in trips for a three-month period, but with the rising cost of badges, it is felt that this censure is insufficient.
“I always hoped I would get to meet the Raincoat Man.” Primrose pushed her goggles up on her forehead as, with cowardice aforethought, Reggie decided against taking on four women bare-handed. Away he went, slithering over brambles and boulders to the flat land above the road, hurling down stones and threats.
“I ain’t done for! I’ll be back!”
“I shall pray for you,” Magdalene called after him triumphantly. I would have cheered for her if my throat hadn’t squeezed shut.
Butler coughed deferentially. “A very small world this is, madams. That cove… person is none other than Reggie Patterson; he and I were partners once upon a time in a pickpocketing h’enterprise.”
“Really, Butler, you should be ashamed,” reproved Hyacinth.
“Agreed, madam. I should have known better than to work with someone so incompetent.” Butler flexed his fingers. “I’ll see to your car, Mrs. Haskell. There’s nothing I can’t start, not h’even if the motor’s missing.”
“Where the hell am I?” came a drowsy growl from the back seat. It began to rain, a few drops at first, then a gauzy blur, like curtains blowing at the window. The Tramwells were talking to Magdalene, their exclamations of concern laced with professional excitement. Finally, the full horror of the afternoon’s events clobbered me. I took Ben’s hand, glad he couldn’t see my face clearly. “We’re on our way home, darling. There was a little accident with the pressure cooker.”
Strangely, he looked more pleased than not. “Really! Well, you know what I think of those things. I’ve been having the most awful dreams, fraught with menace. I dreamed I was dying.”
“You’ll live,” I promised fervently.
I was alone in the drawing room. Magdalene had led the Tramwells to the bathroom so they could freshen up. Butler was in the kitchen. And Poppa was with his son. Ben had insisted he was fine. His face and hands were only slightly reddened and sore from the steam, and his headache was negligible. Poppa had gone the colour of putty when he learned about the pressure cooker, and although he quickly rallied, saying that a mishap of that nature was preferable to rotten eggs being thrown by the audience, it wasn’t hard to persuade him to take a little rest himself and keep his son company.
The women were back.
“Yes, Giselle does have everything nice and clean; my son won’t have it any other way.” As I got up from the sofa, Magdalene paused behind me and whispered, “These are your friends and this is your house, but you won’t encourage them to stay long, will you?”
Both sisters heard, but gave no sign of taking offence. As we settled ourselves, Butler entered with a loaded tea tray.
“I can highly recommend the cherry cake,” he informed the Tramwells. “Should anything further be required, kindly knock on the wall with the poker-this h’establishment lacks a bell.”
As he padded from the room, Hyacinth adjusted her chair and drew out the familiar green notebook. “Where”-she flexed an orange-lipped smile-“do we begin?”
I handed out cups of tea. “Magdalene, the Misses Tramwell are private detectives. I want you to tell them about the Pattersons, after which they will have something to tell you.”
Abigail watched from her portrait.
“My dear Ellie.” Primrose clinked her teaspoon into her saucer. “Naturally, Flowers Detection will be delighted to do everything possible to assist Mrs. Elijah Haskell against the forces of evil; indeed, we regret that more pressing matters placed the Raincoat Man low on Butler’s job list. As for…” she floundered, “I am not sure it is wise to discuss a certain organisation…”
“It isn’t only wise, it’s morally right,” I said firmly. “Ben is Magdalene’s only child and she nearly died three times having him. Besides which, I think she may unknowingly have the answers to some questions of mine.”
“I don’t know about that.” On the edge of the seat, her feet tight together, Magdalene tugged at her cardigan. “And before I say anything about the Pattersons’ persecution of Eli and me”-her eyes nipped from one sister to the other-“I do need to know if you charge by the hour. Otherwise I won’t know whether to talk at a run or a walk.”
Butler replenished the teapot twice during Magdalene’s story. The Tramwells commented and exclaimed. They expressed sympathy and a willingness to assist, but I knew that their curiosity having been appeased, they were anxious to discuss Ben’s close call.
“Magdalene,” I said, moving to the edge of my seat so I could catch her if she swayed, “you face a very difficult problem. In fact, you face two. What happened to Ben at the church hall was no accident. It was a vicious attempt on his life.”
Her screech brought an I-told-you-so look to Primrose’s face. Out came the smelling salt bottle and at the close of the next minute Magdalene had a lavendar shawl around her shoulders, properly set for her hour of suffering. Throughout the horrible disclosures which followed, she resorted to the smelling salt frequently and was so silent I was afraid shock might have affected her vocal cords.
I took over the story from the Tramwells at the point where they entered Delacorte’s to find me crouched over Ann’s body.
“When I retrieved that note to Felicity Friend from Ann’s bag and consumed it, I foolishly believed my involvement had ended. Admittedly, I felt a momentary alarm when I read a confidential in her column to Heartbroken, but I was confident it was a coincidence.”
Magdalene’s eyes closed. Was she praying for strength to forgive me?
“Completely understandable, my dear.” Primrose’s small papery hand closed over mine. “Your mind rebelled at the possibility of the unbearable. But it is apparent that the late Mrs. Delacorte had discussed with The Founder your avowed interest in joining the widows. What amazes me,” she said with a tiny sigh, “is that anyone whom Mrs. Delacorte put up for membership should be accepted as a viable candidate. One must assume that your being known to The Founder stood you in good stead.”
Hyacinth took up from Primrose. “We were duplicitous in saying that we were out on a scenic drive this afternoon. The confidential you mentioned, Ellie, did not escape our notice.” Her voice was grave. “We, too, hoped it was a coincidence, but Flowers Detection leaves nothing to chance. Perceiving the grim possibilities of the cookery demonstration, we parked at the side of the hall in readiness for a quick getaway and, when everyone had gone inside, moved to stand outside the main entrance, where we could hear what was going on without our presence disturbing you, Ellie. I had brought along my grandfather’s duelling pistol”-she patted the carpetbag-“and when the commotion commenced, we were about to charge to the rescue when the Raincoat Man burst around from the other side of the hall, barged against us without so much as an apology and went inside.”
“An unsettling moment.” Primrose crumbled her cake. “But after overhearing what he had to say, we thought it best to protect our cover and let him make the rescue. One does, at times, have to practise a professional detachment.” Her face puckered. “I do hope you understand, Ellie?”
I took a slice-two slices, actually-of cake. “What I understand is that someone unknown fiddled with the pressure cooker valve and from behind the screen of steam a chloroforming hand was pressed against poor Ben’s face.” I stopped. Magdalene was crumpling. However, before I could touch her, she straightened, lips so compressed they disappeared. I continued, keeping a watchful eye on her. “And then came that awful Dr. Bordeaux. What sort of accident, I wonder, would have befallen Ben at The Peerless?”
“One can only surmise, of course, but one suspects he would have been sent spiralling down the stairs onto the marble floor or got tossed out of a window.”
I reached out and took Magdalene’s cold hand.
“Oh dear, yes.” Primrose brushed cake crumbs from her fingers. “There would have been a distraught nurse sobbing into her starched handkerchief at the inquest, saying she had only left the patient for a moment, and when she got back, he was gone. He must have become disoriented waking up in a strange place and… thank you, Butler, I will have a ginger biscuit… I doubt she would have been sufficiently composed to go on.”
“But why? Why did it happen? Why did Ben get put on the widows’ hit list? Ann said there were four stages to the application process. First, the heartbreak letter to Dear Felicity Friend; second, a telephone contact asking if you want your husband murdered”-Magdalene was going over the side of her chair again. Butler realigned her and I rushed on-“third, the confidential item in Dear Felicity’s column delivering the message, your application is approved. Fourth, the initiation fee. But I was never contacted by phone, meaning Ben should have been safe.”
The Tramwells weren’t looking at me. They were staring at Magdalene, who sat there like a broken-winged sparrow. Somewhere in the house Sweetie howled.
“The voice didn’t say ‘Do you want your husband murdered?’ ” The movement of her lips made the rest of Magdalene seem abnormally still. “It said, ‘Do you ever dream of having your husband murdered?’ I thought it was Reggie trying to lure me out of the house in the middle of the night. I was told to bring money or jewelry and a signed note saying it was blood money and hide them in a statue in the churchyard.”
“The dues.” Hyacinth’s earrings bobbed as she wrote.
Magdalene kept staring straight ahead. “I didn’t know what to do. If I notified the police, they might capture Reggie in the churchyard, but what if he started shooting? How could I guess the voice was talking about murdering my son? Giselle hadn’t thought to confide in me. His own mother the last to know! I still can’t believe it. When I picked up the phone, the voice asked for Mrs. Eli Haskell…” Her voice wound down, and she stared at me. “Oh, I think I see… Mrs. Ellie…”
It was exactly the sort of bungle I might have made. Butler pressed a glass of brandy into Magdalene’s limp hand. “I must be going senile,” she sighed. “First the wrong convent and now this. I… I signed that note Mrs. E. Haskell.” She reached into her cardigan pocket for a handkerchief.
“Nonsense.” Hyacinth eyed her imperiously. “You-a woman stalked by an unscrupulous villain-pick up the phone to hear the word murder. What could you be expected to think? And to all proper-thinking people, Mrs. Ellie Haskell is an error of address, but”-a mild shudder-”these people don’t think like us.”
Magdalene held her nose and downed her brandy. “I have to blame myself. Perhaps if I hadn’t come here, been such a burden, none of this would have happened.” She set down her glass and squared her shoulders. “I have something to confess to you, Giselle, and, later, to Father Padinsky. I don’t have any jewelry other than my wedding ring, so I took… stole your engagement ring. Naturally, I don’t expect you ever to understand…”
I stood and glared down at her. “Will you stop with this nonsense! That was a ring well spent if it saved Poppa’s life, or if you thought it would. Now, can we stop talking about trivia, please, and decide how we are going to keep Ben from being murdered!”
Her eyes spun. When she revived, they gleamed with determination. Primrose signalled for Butler to fetch more brandy.
“My dear Magdalene, if I may so presume to address you, I do hope you do not think Flowers Detection is minimizing your personal plight, but kidnapping, whilst most annoying, is scarcely as onerous as murder.”
“It would take a very selfish mother to put her own safety ahead of that of her son, and I am sure Giselle would not intentionally have given you such a view of me.” Magdalene, hair wisping around her set face, was back in form. Primrose and Hyacinth made admiring noises.
Despair had me by the fetlock again. I stood up, drew the curtains against the gathering of evening, and spied a protrusion of tail over the edge of the bookcase. Reaching for Tobias, I buried my hands in his fur. Eyes on Abigail’s portrait, I said, “It is clear to me what must be done to unmask The Founder and I am entirely prepared to face the risks involved. But in the meantime, how do we keep Ben safe? The widows won’t fold up their weapons and go away. Remember Vernon Daffy? They tried and tried again until the third time was the charm.”
Magdalene sat on the rim of her chair. “Far be it from me to interfere, Giselle, but if you insist… Why not phone up one of these wicked women and say, being careful not to give offence, that you’ve changed your mind. Say that Ben-oh, it breaks a mother’s heart to think of the horrid things being said about him-has changed his ways, thrown Frederick over, so you’ve decided to keep him.”
Primrose shook her silvery head. “I seriously doubt that backing out would be permitted at this stage. The risks to the club would be too great.” She turned to me. “Indeed, Ellie, Ben must be hidden until all is safe once more. What a pity, Hyacinth”-she dimpled at her sister-“that we are not at Cloisters; the priest hole would be perfect.”
Abigail’s eyes smiled serenely down at me. “No more perfect than a dungeon.” The Tramwells looked a little envious as I explained.
“I think we should explore the dungeons as soon as possible.” Hyacinth rapped with her pen on the green notebook. “But first, Ellie, let us make sure we understand your plan.”
Magdalene lowered her head onto her hands. “This will be Purgatory for my dear boy with his claustrophobia.”
I couldn’t answer her. My throat felt like straw. In attempting to save Ben’s life, I knew I stood to lose him. Could he ever forgive me for this? If only I had talked to him, but the time for talking had been lost somewhere along the way.
“My plan is what you, Hyacinth and Primrose, hoped for all along.” I let Tobias slide out of my hands. “Ann showed us the way. Can any of us doubt she got herself killed because she committed the unforgivable sin of asking The Founder to murder Bunty Wiseman so that she could make a play for Lionel? Therefore I must make a similar request. But what man shall I say I want at any cost, and what female stands in need of being removed from my path?”
Primrose watched me solicitously. “If Bentley hadn’t been so charming, you and that handsome vicar would certainly have made a splendid couple.”
“Rowland really isn’t my type.” I was remembering with a bitter pang that moment of emotional infidelity at Abigail’s. “But-yes, I will telephone Mrs. Bottomly (I suspect from something Ann said that she is the president) and say that Ben has left me and ask her to put before The Founder my request that my cousin Vanessa be removed because she would make a terrible vicar’s wife and I wouldn’t.”
“Oh delightful!” Primrose leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. “This should bring the same swift retribution meted out to Mrs. Delacorte.”
Hyacinth folded up the green notebook. “The vicar is on holiday, but I see no reason to inform him on this matter. As I see it, the danger to Vanessa is nonexistent, but I suppose it would be courteous to inform her that her name is being used in this matter; an ideal time, perhaps, for her to leave the country.” Hyacinth looked at me.
“At my expense, naturally.”
“As for Ben’s whereabouts, I believe that Flowers Detection can supply a credible fabrication to be put into circulation. We have in the course of our research discovered something interestingly unpleasant about Mr. Sidney Fowler.” Hyacinth’s lips formed a complacent crescent. “He is a bigamist.”
Magdalene winced. “This will kill his mother. How… how many wives?”
“A lot,” Primrose answered. “But, to give credit where credit is due, it would seem he came down to this obscure village and made a valiant attempt to fight his beastly urges. But Bentley”-she raised a finger at me-“all unwittingly, asked him to be best man at your wedding, Ellie, and at the sight of orange blossoms and bridal cake, old temptations must have flooded back. Mr. Fowler thirsted for the excitement of being once again a bridegroom. He put an advertisement in The Daily Spokesman. Perhaps none of his customers appealed or he didn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure.”
This was interesting, but Ben and Poppa might come down any minute. To move things along I said, “Sid told me that he had put a personal in the paper and had received a response from someone who seemed a soulmate.”
“He most certainly did.” Hyacinth’s black eyes gleamed. “He heard from wife number one, Angelica Brady.”
“Never!” said Magdalene and I together.
“We fear so.” Primrose fussed with her curls. “Again unwittingly, Bentley sent Miss Brady some copies of The Daily Spokesman, and in one of them was Mr. Fowler’s appeal. We have spoken to her and she likened the effect upon her to being drawn by an invisible cord. However, being a woman of the world, she did exercise some caution. She insisted that they hold to a use of code names and continue addressing their correspondence to post office boxes. Fear of disillusionment kept her from setting a first meeting, but with the cookery demonstration so apropos, it was arranged that they should each come to the church hall wearing a red rose.” Primrose sank back in her chair, in breathless need of the fresh cup of tea Butler promptly handed her.
“And one or both of them told you all this as they rushed from the hall?” I didn’t mean to sound biting, but how did Sidney’s plight help Ben?
Hyacinth surveyed me. “Miss Brady put up at the Pebblewell Hotel last night and we engaged her in conversation; quite easily done-young people find it difficult to make a getaway when the elderly are persistent. And Miss Brady is a singularly sweet person. She confessed to us all about her early marriage and her acute distress upon discovering that her husband was leading not a double, but a quadruple life.”
“No way round it, this will kill Sidney’s mother.” Magdalene was looking a little more perky. “Although there’ll be those that’ll say she brought it on herself, letting him get his own tea when he was little.”
Hyacinth replaced the green book in the carpetbag. “When Miss Brady dashed out of the church hall this afternoon, she collided with us, babbling that her amour de plume was none other than her bigamist husband, Sidney. Scarcely had she fled between the gravestones when Mr. Fowler cannoned into us, babbling that he was going to grab a boat and head for France.”
“We don’t want to seem dim-witted…” Magdalene and I said as one.
Primrose gave a dimpling laugh. “My dears, Sidney disappears and Bentley disappears. Can you believe it won’t be said that they have gone off together, to the chagrin of cousin Frederick?”
The sisters stood up. “Perfect, don’t you think?” one of them said.
I could see a couple of flaws in the plan. Ben didn’t deserve this. And what if Sidney was something worse than a bigamist? But there were bound to be holes in any other ideas produced. I looked at the clock on the mantel. Ben and Poppa had been upstairs for nearly an hour. It was time to explore the dungeons.
The Tramwells and I positioned ourselves on the spot next to Rufus. Magdalene, her face pinched, was assigned to twist the bannister rung, Butler, to depress the alcove ledge and send us on our way. If either man left his bedroom while we were down below, Magdalene was to stall him.
On our marks. The floor dropped away and my insides leapt into my throat. No sound from the sisters. Had they died of fright? A shuttering sound overhead. Then nothing but sooty blackness sucking us down… and down… A light burst on, splintering the dark into hundreds of stars, and once again there was solid ground under our feet. Either by error or design, Primrose’s hand had found the light switch. Was Abigail the one who installed electricity down here? I wished someone had installed an automatic air freshener.
“That was quite delightful.” Primrose smoothed her curls and took a step toward Hyacinth, who had proceeded through a gothic arch and down some shallow steps into the main stone chamber lined with cells, the kind whence the sheriff was forever tossing Robin Hood. Each had a tiny grill in its door, enabling the prisoner to look out upon the focal point of the room-the rack. On closer inspection, this proved to be a reproduction. The walls weren’t dripping and the chill was not unbearable. But the fustiness of the place lacked only the smell of hopelessness and fear. Hyacinth had one of the cell doors open and was urging Primrose and myself to come in and enjoy a peek.
Primitive but not punitive. I saw a narrow bed covered with a grey blanket riddled with moth holes, a stick table, and chair. Ideal sleeping quarters for guests who might otherwise have outstayed their welcome. Had such been Wilfred Grantham’s thinking? We looked into several other cells. A few had the same narrow beds, others were empty, but one contained two beds pushed together. A grimy crystal vase stood on a handsome smoker’s chest… exactly what I had been wanting for the study. The cell next to it had been fitted with all the accoutrements of a late nineteenth-century bathroom, including an oak-encased water closet. Hyacinth had out the green notebook and was murmuring to herself as she scribbled. “Pillow, sheets, blankets, electric kettle, tinned foods, fizzy drink, books, gallons and gallons of water.”
“Ellie”-Primrose squeezed my shoulder-“I feel quite sanguine that Ben can be comfortable here.”
Comfortable! My professional instincts might have been the teensiest bit inflamed by the romantic possibilities of the place, but Ben’s claustrophobia would soon have him clawing the walls.
Hyacinth was looking upward. “No prison could be more secure. Not even the smallest window, only those pencil-like apertures close to the ceiling, which has to be fifteen feet up.” She grasped my elbow and propelled me to the exit. “Let us depart, confident that your dear husband has no chance of escape.”
It was going to work. A man at the complete mercy of his maniac wife.
Magdalene mashed into us as we stepped into the hall. “Someone is at the front door and I didn’t want to let whoever it is in, not with you still down there.” The floor slid into place. Butler penguined to the door and in swept Vanessa, all fox fur and gorgeous. What could be more propitious. Was fate beginning to smile?
“Ellie, darling! My, you look surprised! But when I phoned, I understood I would be welcome.” She peeled off a glove and swirled it around. “Oh, I see you have other guests, but”-she dismissed the Tramwells and Magdalene-“surely they can entertain themselves while you and I talk about Rowland.” Her eyes welled with tears, which may have been artificial but were nonetheless dazzling. “I want him, Ellie, and it is driving me insane that I can’t buy him the way I bought this coat or… the way you bought Ben. So you-my only wholesome acquaintance-are going to have to advise me how I can sluff on the sort of attributes that will make me irresistible to him.”
“You might,” I said, “start with doing me a favour, one that should cost you little and gain you a trip anywhere you wish to go and save many lives.”
“What kind of lives?”
“Male.”
“Well, in that case”-she tapped me on the cheek with her glove-“how can I refuse! Especially when it puts you right where I want you-in my debt.”
Somehow, I got through the rest of the evening. Ben and Poppa came downstairs seconds after Vanessa went out the front door. Butler made himself scarce. I discovered later he had gone to fetch the Tramwells’ overnight bags. The sisters made rustling noises to the effect that they must be leaving. But Magdalene and I urged them to stay for dinner. The more voices, the more faces, the more hers and mine could get lost in the crowd. Ben was in excellent spirits. He was convinced the Hearthside Guild would never ask him to demonstrate again. His headache was gone, his burns superficial, and his hand kept touching my thigh under the table. Does chloroform have aphrodisiac aftereffects? Between dessert and coffee he came up with an excuse to lure me into the kitchen.
“Your friends are charmingly odd”-he drew me into his arms-“but let’s not encourage them to stay late. I’d like an early night. And perhaps we can take a bottle of champagne up with us to celebrate being alive.”
I dreaded going to bed. How could I lie beside him, knowing that in the morning I would send him hurtling into darkness? How long would it take him in his panic to find the light switch? What if his hair turned white within hours?
“I… I don’t know about the champagne, Ben. I think I am catching your headache.”
“You poor darling. You had a rotten scare this afternoon, didn’t you? And Mum seems a bit off, too. She’s back to hardly talking to Poppa.”
When we returned to the table, Primrose brought out her ornamental brandy flask and demurely asked the gentlemen if they would take a drop in their coffee. They accepted, and while I was wondering why the ladies were excluded, both men flopped forward, their noses landing in their cups.
“Just a very mild sleeping agent, made entirely from the gifts of Mother Nature,” Primrose assured us.
“I think you have overstepped yourself this time.” I glared at her over the top of Ben’s head as I struggled to hoist him up.
“It does look that way, doesn’t it, my dear, but how could we get the dungeons all nice and cosy for Bentley, if he or his father are liable to descend the stairs at any minute?”
“Miss Primrose Tramwell is absolutely right, Giselle,” said Magdalene as Butler appeared and lifted up Eli like a rug.
“Which bedroom, Madam?”
Magdalene said she would show him; they were gone no more than five minutes, then it was Ben’s turn.
“Giselle,” came Magdalene’s voice; I couldn’t see her because my eyes were a bit messed up. “Giselle, I have prayed and reached a decision; Eli must go into the dungeon with Ben.”
“Oh, yes!” I turned and hugged her so tightly I almost toppled us. “What a brilliant idea!”
We were all soon engaged in a flurry of activity. Ann had been murdered with such alacrity that we hoped I would not be kept waiting above a couple of days, but we wanted to be sure we provided enough provisions for Ben and Eli’s imprisonment. While Butler was making one of his bucket-of-water trips, I unearthed an electric frying pan. Ben had to be able to cook.
“And what of razors and soap?” whispered Primrose. “I always think bearded gentlemen rather winsome, but I believe their morale remains higher if they can shave. And”-she dropped her voice-“don’t forget fresh unmentionables.”
I selected several books which I thought Ben had not read, including the Edwin Digby novels that I had not returned to Roxie. I was about to make a descent with them when I noticed Hyacinth’s green notebook lying on the table. An idea broke into my mind, and I found her in the kitchen.
“Hyacinth, this journal provides a detail-by-detail account of your investigation, isn’t that so?”
“Correct; it is a useful tool and one which I hope may one day become part of Primrose’s and my memoirs.”
“Let me leave it in the dungeon for Ben to read. I am going to write him a letter, but-”
Hyacinth put down the biscuit tin she had been holding and pressed her hands over mine. “Absolutely! Flowers Detection cannot properly thank you for what you are doing, but anything we can do to make things easier is done.”
At last everything was in readiness. Two of the beds had been stripped and made sleepworthy with fluffy rose blankets and fat pillows. Now it was a matter of waiting for morning. Butler at dawn did offer to carry the drugged men downstairs and put them in the dungeons, but I wasn’t utterly hardened; I couldn’t have those sleepyheads wake to find themselves imprisoned. I’m a hands-on type. As my mother used to say, if a dirty deed’s worth doing, do it well. Magdalene and I left the Tramwells and Butler in the drawing room to go upstairs.
“Ben, wake up! I have something you must see! A big surprise!” I had no trouble gibbering. I did have some trouble getting him to dress before coming downstairs.
“Why can’t I wear my dressing gown?” His hair was rumpled, his face flushed like a sleepy child’s. I wound my arms around him, clinging long enough to almost lose my nerve.
“All will be explained later.”
“Oh, all right. But if this isn’t something ultra special, you won’t be my favourite wife anymore.” He shook his head. “Must have been out of it last night. Don’t remember getting into bed.”
Magdalene also had some problems with Poppa, this being the first time she had entered his bedroom at Merlin’s Court; but the four of us arrived in the hall on the heels of each other.
“Very good, now you two stand over there,” I ordered. “That’s right, next to Rufus. Close your eyes, close your mouths, and don’t move.”
“What is this? You have some hidden cameras?” Poppa straightened his bald spot. Ben shrugged, then grinned and spread his hands. Magdalene twisted the bannister rung, I depressed the alcove ledge… and the earth swallowed them up. Cries of horror included.
“Now, my dears, I know this is extremely hard on both of you”-Primrose pried my hands away from my ears-“so, Ellie, the sooner you telephone Mrs. Bottomly and get the chess pieces set up, enabling The Founder to make a move to murder you, the better.”
Hyacinth frowned at her, then said brightly to me: “Have no fear that we will let anything of a final nature happen to you, my dear. We will remain in the house with you day and night, always at the ready.”
Primrose settled Magdalene in a chair. “Rest assured, the presence of two seemingly”-a smile-“frail old ladies won’t do anything to scare off a determined assailant. Also, we are not big eaters and do all our own hand laundry.”
“And I shall h’endeavour to be of assistance in every way possible, madam.” Butler picked up the handkerchief that had fluttered from my mother-in-law’s hands.
I would need friends during this waiting period and later-when I was alone in the world. Staring at the phone on the trestle table, I thought, damn it, I am being selfish. Every minute wasted is a minute longer that Ben and Poppa are trapped in that hole. As my hand reached for the receiver, the phone rang. It was Bunty asking how Ben was faring after the accident.
“Fine.”
“What did the police have to say for themselves? Cripes, Ellie, wasn’t that detective a slug!”
“What?… Oh, yes.” Amazing to think that the Raincoat Man had become an appendix. “Bunty, I’m sorry but I’m a bit short on time.” The sisters were signalling frantically to me.
“Hold your horses,” sang Bunty. “Just wanted to let you know there’s a Follies rehearsal on Monday morning at eleven o’clock. You must be there because we will concentrate on your cake scene. Ellie, you’re breathing awfully funny. Is something wrong?”
I finally read the sisters’ mouths. “I’m feeling… I don’t know what I’m feeling.” A sob filled my voice. “Ben has… left. It may only be… temporary, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Marvellous!” Hyacinth enthused as I hung up. “No better way to fan gossip than to refuse to discuss something.” She then dialed Mrs. Bottomly’s number when my fingers refused to do the job, and wrapped my fingers around the phone.
“Amelia?” My voice sounded diabolically casual. “This is Ellie Haskell.”
“Oh, what a pleasure!” I heard an edge of uncertainty in her voice.
“Don’t worry,” I soothed. “I’m not ringing to complain about yesterday, but wasn’t it infuriating-that detective barging in just as things were looking so serendipitous?”
Her gust of relief almost blew me over. “What a splendidly understanding girl you are. Tell me, what can I do for you?”
“You can cross Ben off your list of husbands-in-waiting, I’m afraid. He’s spoiled everything by leaving me, never to return, so his note says. He’s asked me to send his clothes to Alaska.”
“Good gracious, how frustrating!” A tremendous vibration as Mrs. Bottomly plonked herself in a chair. “And to think we had it all set to have him go out with a bang!”
“Yes, but I have learned a lot from this miserable misalliance.” I paused to get my breathing under control. “What I should have done was to marry Rowland Foxworth.”
“Indeed you should, my dear!” Vast, sentimental sigh.
“And I still can, can’t I?” My voice slid into a blend of petulance and hope. “The only problem is my cousin Vanessa. She seems to have got darling Rowland infatuated, but if she were out of the way permanently, as in-”
“Mrs. Haskell, I cannot listen to such nonsense!” The receiver vibrated in my hand. “You can’t realise what you are saying!”
“Certainly I do. I want Vanessa done in. What’s the big deal? I’ve paid my dues, and I don’t want a refund; all I want is my money’s worth. If I don’t get it, I may say some things to the police that-” But the line was dead. Mrs. Bottomly had hung up.
Now the hardcore waiting began. We all avoided the hall because of the sounds we imagined below. A bitter pill to swallow was when Freddy pushed open the garden door as if nothing had changed.
“What’s wrong with this house?” He lounged against the door jamb. “The drawing room windows are locked up tight as a safe, and who are these people? Leftovers from a party?” He flicked his plait of hair toward Butler. “Don’t I know him?”
“You are correct, sir.” Butler held the frying pan aloft on his fingertips. “I did a stint as a waiter at Abigail’s. Now if you’ll h’excuse me, I don’t ’ave time to converse. My ladies get h’indigestion if they don’t eat breakfast at the appointed time.”
Freddy’s darting eyes reminded me of a ray gun. “Hey! What’s going on here? Even the doggywog”-he bared his teeth at Sweetie-“looks like it would go spewing if I pushed its belly button. Where’s Ben?”
The Tramwells’ faces had tightened. My mother-in-law’s lips moved in prayer. Butler stopped slicing bread and tested the knife blade against his finger, eyes on Freddy.
Arms and legs extended, my cousin’s body formed an X in the doorway. “I heard tell the pressure cooker backfired at the demo,” he mused, “but most of the chitchat at The Dark Horse last night was about Sidney pelting into his shop, shovelling the lolly out of the till and crying, ‘So long, it’s been good to know you.’ I do hope I didn’t drive old Sid into a flit.” Freddy’s body sagged. “I’d decided not to sue, and I keep telling myself there’s bound to be a simpler explanation, like he killed Mrs. Delacorte and the police were closing in.”
I had to get rid of Freddy. Picking up a stack of plates, I shuffled them. “Afraid I’m not going to ask you in because… Ben has gone away for a few days and I really”-one of the plates slipped-“want to be alone.”
Freddy yanked at the heavy chains around his neck, his eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong, Ellie, old sock?” He made another move to push past me. Butler took a measured step forward.
“There’s something going on here, but I know when to bugger off; I’ll just stay for breakfast and-”
“Freddy,” I said, “if you have any feelings for Ben and me, take care of Abigail’s until he gets back.”
I shut the door on him and leaned against it, trembling. I hadn’t felt so abandoned since Dorcas and Jonas left. Where was the bride who thought marriage meant never having to say I’m lonely?
“What a truly delightful young man!” Primrose said. “Concerned, thoughtful-patently he did not like us at all. And now I do think we should get down to making plans; we can’t continue to let the day slide away from us.”
It was agreed that I should go to morning service at St. Anselm’s. I usually attended so, if Mrs. Bottomly had been quick off the mark, it was a possibility that The Founder might try some not very funny business as I went to or fro or even as I knelt in prayer. Hyacinth would trail me with her duelling pistol at the ready. Butler and Primrose would stay with Magdalene. My mother-in-law was very distressed at having to miss Mass at such a time, but did feel that under the circumstances Father Padinsky would continue to give her a pass.
I went to church. I returned. No hand reached around one of the elms to encircle my throat. No car tried to nose me over the cliff. No whisper from bodyguard Hyacinth that we were being stalked. The day wore on with no one telephoning and attempting to lure me to a false rendezvous. Every time I forced myself to cross the hall to go upstairs I shuddered. Not a sound could be heard from below, but my head still rang with the tortured cries of Ben and Poppa as they descended into the stygian darkness of their prison.
Butler prepared lunch. Afterward we gathered in the drawing room and he gave the Tramwells what appeared to be an ongoing lesson in picking pockets. Magdalene and I sat and read, or pretended to. Dinner. Supper. I went out to the courtyard to fetch Sweetie in from her romp, but I wasn’t tossed in the moat or shot through the heart. When the hall clock struck ten, Hyacinth rolled up her knitting, Primrose laid down her embroidery hoop, and Magdalene awakened from her nap.
“Ellie, should we not prepare for bed?” Primrose’s eyes brimmed with the eager fear of a child playing murder in the dark. “I will conceal myself in your wardrobe, leaving the door agap, and Hyacinth will remain with dear Magdalene. Butler will be on the prowl.” She turned to him. “Should you hear two screams at once, pray answer the loudest.”
“Certainly, madam.”
Lying between the silver grey sheets, I watched the shadowed pheasants on the wallpaper and counted the folds in the velvet curtains. What if all our hopes were in vain? What if The Founder did not act with dispatch, or at all? What if he/she decided to punish me some other way? Or worse, grant me a reprieve? Where could I hide Ben on a permanent basis?
Monday morning came. I was congratulated on having survived unmolested, but I sensed a growing impatience and began to wonder how long it might be before the others began to blame me, unconsciously, for my ineffectualness. When nerves are frayed, nothing soothes like a scapegoat.
Roxie stomped through the garden door at 8:00 A.M. She did a double take on seeing the Tramwells and Butler.
“What ho, Mrs. H., taking in paying guests, are we?” She dumped the supply bag on the table and began popping open the buttons on her burgundy brocade coat. “Stands to reason it will be twice as hard on me, weaving the mop between all them extra legs, but I won’t charge you extra.”
I was about to say that I really didn’t need her today, but read Hyacinth’s eyebrow signals. Should Roxie, perchance, be the one, she must be given free rein to push me down the stairs, choke me with the Hoover cord, or hit me over the head with one of Magdalene’s statues. The sisters made a big production of sending Butler on an errand and saying they would walk in the garden and perhaps out onto Cliff Road, if Magdalene would accompany them. Minutes after the garden door closed, my hopes lurched when Roxie asked me to accompany her into the drawing room.
Since the curtains were still closed, it had a dim, unused look. “Over here, Mrs. H.” Roxie’s voice had an unmistakable gloat to it. “Now”-she flung out an arm-“if this isn’t going to kill you.”
An amazing calm enveloped me. My eyes followed her finger. Behold Sweetie, chewing on the leg of the bureau. Surprisingly, my heart and soul had not quite shrivelled away. A flame of fury leapt up in me. Thrusting open the French windows, I shoved a snarling Sweetie out into the garden. She might have remained planted in the flower bed had Tobias not shot out from under the bookcase and, like tabbied lightning, given chase.
“I’ll put some scratch-cover polish on that bureau leg. I have some upstairs,” I told Roxie. Out in the hall I listened to the deadening silence, then started up the staircase. I liked Roxie, but I wasn’t prepared to pick and choose villains anymore. Let her be the one. I knew the polish to be in the kitchen so I was elaborately enticing her. No sound. I sat on the stairs and waited, maybe dozed… A hand clutched at me, almost toppling me over backward.
“Rouse, my dear Ellie, I am most concerned,” trilled Primrose. “Magdalene went chasing through the grounds after little Sweetie dog, who was being pursued by the pussycat. Hyacinth went after them, and a minute later I dispatched Butler to follow, because we cannot discount the possibility of that dreadful Raincoat Man being about. And the outcome, alas, does look bleak. None of them has come back. Admittedly, it has only been about ten minutes, and Hyacinth does have the duelling pistol with her, but I do think-as nothing seems to be ripening here-that you and I should attempt to locate them.”
“No,” I said, eager to do something. “You stay here. I know the grounds and the places where Tobias may have cornered Sweetie. If your sister and the others come back to the house and find us gone, they will panic. I’ll be in no danger. The Founder isn’t given to impromptu murder.”
“Ellie, I think you should stay here and I… oh, dear me, no, that will never do; not if Mrs. Malloy is you-know-who.” I was dragging on an old raincoat. Primrose’s face crumpled. “I have an ominous feeling about this, my child.”
Out in the garden I called out the string of names: Magdalene, Hyacinth, Butler, Sweetie, Tobias. No answering shouts, no rustle of shrubbery. It had rained earlier and the daffodils shone yellow under the fruit trees, which had blossomed overnight into fragrant canopies of pink and white. Birds twittered. Bees hummed. Everything was coming alive. Dreariness clamped down on me and, at last, the fear I had been waiting-hoping-for. Where were they? Three people whose current mission in life was to protect me wouldn’t play silly games.
What was that scuffling noise near the iron gates? I began to run, feet skidding on gravel. As I drew level with the cottage, I saw Sweetie wriggle out from under the hedge and go hopping like a rabbit out onto Cliff Road. I raced after her.
She stayed barely ahead of me, but every time I was within reach of grabbing her, she would shoot ahead. Could it be that Magdalene, pursued by Hyacinth and Butler, had chased her this way? And the little wretch had doubled back? Sweetie dodged into the churchyard; so did I.
“Magdalene! Hyacinth! Butler!” What was that? The moan of the sea? The screech of a gull? Or a voice crying out, “Here! Here!” Sweetie had vanished behind a tombstone, but the sound had not come from that direction. I ran up to the church steps and lifted the iron handle. The door was locked. A branch grated against a stained glass window and I told myself I had certainly imagined the voice. Hands in my pockets, I descended the steps. I would go home where doubtless I would find everyone returned safe and sound. A deepening of shadow against the east wall of the church hall caught my eye. I crept forward in time to see the delinquent dog make a dive toward the door, which was propped open. I couldn’t go home without her, could I?
Memories of the aborted cookery demonstration crowded in as I stepped through that doorway. The place was thick with shadow and I could not find a light switch. Damn! I almost turned about and left, but a muffled noise convinced me that Sweetie was still in here, waiting to be caught. I felt my way along the wall, past the rows of chairs, stumbling into a table. At last. I was at the stage, hoisting myself up. Only a few yards now from a familiar light switch. My hand was on the curtain when I heard it again, unmistakably a human whisper. “Here… here…” A chill slid over me.
Something was wrong here. Something was missing… And then it came to me. Bunty on the telephone telling me that there would be a rehearsal of the Aerobics Follies at 11:00 A.M. on Monday. Today. It must now be a few minutes one way or the other of that time. That’s why the door had been open, but the hall should have been ablaze with lights and alive with the voices of my showmates. Instead, the emptiness and silence expanded until it seemed infinite. Almost. The whisper came from somewhere above me, or it might have been behind me.
“Here… Ellie.”
Either someone, pretending to be Bunty, had phoned the others and cancelled the rehearsal, or-I desperately needed something to hold onto, like a large bar of chocolate, was I the only one Bunty had contacted in the first place?
This was the moment for which I had been hankering. The enemy was at hand. My support troops were otherwise occupied. I must hide, play dead; such was my only hope. I fought the urge to wrap myself in a fold of curtain-surely one of the first places The Founder would look. Forgotten was my conviction that life without Ben’s love was meaningless. I wanted desperately to survive this character-building experience. When push comes to shove, life in a parrot’s cage is better than nothing. I dropped to all fours and began crawling. My knees burned away the floor, until abruptly, my hands came to a full stop. Some obstacle was in their path.
“Here, Ellie…”
As the whisper came again, I frantically frisked the thing and felt a pinprick of hope. My cake. The one darling Poppa had made for me. If I could climb into it without making a breath of sound and draw down the wooden flap, I might be able to elude my persecutor until someone… say, the church hall inspector… came.
“Here, Ellie.”
A thin hope against a dead certainty. The lid lifted silently; a blessing on Poppa’s head for oiling the hinges. I was inside, huddled in a dark that was complete. I ordered my heart to slow down. If it kept up its present racket, it would either be heard or would set the cake walls to vibrating. The seconds stretched.
And then I heard footsteps and someone laughing-rather sadly, it seemed to me-before the hammering started. The hammering of my heart. The hammering of nails being driven into the carved icing of the cake top.
At first I struggled. If I could get my head back and my feet in kicking position… hopeless. Then I rationalized-there must be enough air in here to keep me in agonizing breaths for… minutes, after which my lungs and heart would explode. One second gone, two, three… Oh, God!
The horror seeped away, leaving me almost peaceful. I said my prayers. The Tramwells would rescue Ben from the dungeon and whilst he might not have been able to forgive me, had I lived, death would enshrine me in his memory, eternally angelic, eternally thin. The tragedy was that I was dying for nothing. The foul murders of the Chitterton Fells husbands would continue. The devilish Founder had escaped the snare. Stop it, Ellie. Focus in these last few moments on the good things. You could have died single. Instead you have known the great joy of loving Ben, and you know that what you have shared will enable him to go on when you are but a name engraved upon a stone. He will mourn for a while, and then one day some lovely young woman will admire the elegant way he holds an eggbeater, and you… you, poor fish, will be forgotten, except when casually mentioned as “my first wife.” That apprentice wife who taught Bentley T. Haskell all the pitfalls of the first year of matrimony so he could avoid them the second time around.
It seemed I wasn’t going to die at peace after all. Breathing had become an impossibility, but my lungs filled up with something more vital than air. Willpower. Ben would not have a second wife. I was going to scream if it was the last thing I did. I was going to tear this cake to shreds if… I don’t think I had got past the planning stage, but such is the power of positive thinking that my prison was coming apart. Or was I dead and having one of those transcendental experiences?
“Ellie,” whispered Ben.
I smiled seraphically. Heaven was every bit as wonderful as the prospectus claims. I was lying on a pillow cloud, and my beloved was present with me in spirit and coincidentally in the flesh, too. I blinked because the light had a sparkling brilliance, then weakly stroked Ben’s hand. It felt almost real.
“Ellie, darling. You can’t die. I don’t care what your religion teaches, but I have it on the highest authority that there is no chocolate in heaven.” He was kneeling beside me.
I struggled to sit up. “Ben, I think we are having a joint hallucination. I’m really in the cake and you are in the dungeon at Merlin’s Court.”
“No.” He was rubbing my hands. “I got you out, thanks to Sweetie, who kept whining and chewing at the cake. And Poppa and I escaped the dungeons by means of a secret tunnel which exits under one of the beds. Poppa got the idea from reading about a similar arrangement in one of Edwin Digby’s books. And, interestingly enough, our tunnel ended at the cellar of Digby’s house. Highly convenient for old Wilfred Grantham and his assignations with the two sisters at The Aviary. Wonder if it dates back to smuggling days?”
Ben was talking as though he had been away for the weekend and wanted to share the details. I shuddered and hung my head. “That cake was hell, but I wasn’t in it long and I don’t have claustrophobia… What I am trying to say, Ben, is that I don’t expect you to forgive me for the misery I have inflicted on you, locking you up, forcing you to crawl through that blackness, not knowing where, or whether it would end.”
He leaned backward so that I had to look at him. “Hell was feeling the hall floor disintegrate under my feet. I was livid with you. I planned to murder you the minute I got out, but when I read that green notebook and realised that someone else was in all likelihood making the same plans, I didn’t have time for claustrophobia.”
I touched his face, so handsome, so concerned. “It was the same for me, in a way. When I became caught up in worrying about you, I stopped being frightened of food; I didn’t have time to concentrate on not eating.”
His arms entwined about me. “Ellie, don’t be afraid now. We’re going to the police; this monster-The Founder-will be stopped.” His lips brushed my throat. “We’ve made a lot of mistakes, but what can we expect, we are only beginners. I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand you completely. I don’t need to understand you to love you. All that matters is that I would have crawled through the centre of the earth to get to you and that I wasn’t too late.”
The moment was so fragile that I was afraid to say anything of what I felt, in case it broke. I cleared my throat and asked if Poppa was all right.
“Yes and no. Physically he’s fine, but he’s worried about how Mum’s feeling and consumed by guilt because in the shock of being plunged into the dungeon he accidentally spoke to me.”
“What made you look for me here?” I asked as Ben helped me to my feet.
“When we were racing up to the gates of Merlin’s Court, Poppa and I saw Miss Primrose Tramwell; she was in a flap about everyone being missing.” He touched his fingers to my lips. “It’s all right, darling. Everyone is found. Poppa is with them. I didn’t know where to look for you until we saw Sweetie coming along Cliff Road, and I clutched at the possibility you might have gone looking for her in the churchyard. When I turned that way, she ran back ahead of me and eventually in here to the cake.”
I shivered, as much at owing Sweetie a lifetime of gratitude as the memory of what I had been through. She had probably only come in here to ‘go’; so Roxie would claim anyway; but I would buy Sweetie a lifetime subscription to How to Train Your Owner. My mind began to whirl with questions. Had Ben and Poppa seen Edwin Digby when they exited in his cellar? What had befallen my comrades-in-arms? And… where was The Founder now?
Ben guided me to the door. “You have to get some fresh air, darling.”
As we stepped onto the grass, my legs went pulpy, and the noonday sky seemed to tilt. The Founder could be behind any one of a hundred tombstones. I gripped Ben’s hand tighter.
Mr. Digby was standing on the sun-dappled path, a gun in his hand, and my surprise was that I was surprised. Everything had pointed to him, but in his drunkenness he may have thought himself invincible. Mother was waddling around him in narrowing circles. I felt sorry for the goose. Mr. Digby’s purplish fingers were pointing the gun, not at Ben and me, but at someone standing in front of an angel monument.
“Mrs. Haskell.” His head moved an inch in my direction. “My abject apologies on behalf of my daughter Wren.”
Ben and I turned in slow motion.
“No!” I exclaimed. “She can’t be, she isn’t… this is Jenny! Jenny Spender.” I had suspected Bunty might be his daughter; she was the right age and admitted she used a nickname. Digby had said Wren was living with a man; gossip said Bunty and Lionel weren’t really married. But, Jenny! Ridiculous! On second thought, maybe not…
Her eyes, those eyes which I had always thought too old for a child’s face, drifted over me and fixed with the most chilling hatred on Mr. Digby’s face.
“Jenny Wren.” Ben stroked my hair back from my face. “Hyacinth Tramwell recorded all the clues in her little green book. That farthing, as well as the photograph in the pocket of the pin-striped suit you borrowed from Mr. Digby, suggested to yours truly that Jenny was the one. The farthing was the smallest coin in the realm and carried the symbol, on one of its sides, of the smallest British bird, the wren.”
“She was such a tiny baby,” Mr. Digby mused, “and she had given me that farthing in the happy days for a good-luck charm. It was easier to believe I had gone mad than to think of her grown evil. These past five years I have cowered in the bottle. But when you, Mr. Haskell, with parent in tow, burst into my house ranting about a widows club, I knew I had to pull the stopper, on myself, on my child.” The gun wavered but he steadied it with his free hand.
Ben stared into the wedge-shaped face framed by the childish plaits. “The Founder had to be someone who could observe and listen unnoticed. A hairdresser? A solicitor? A secretary? A charwoman? All good possibilities, but what better cover than that of a child?”
Jenny smiled, her fingers gripping the angel’s marble wings as if she would snap them.
“You were at Abigail’s the night of Charles Delacorte’s death,” Ben continued, addressing her, “carrying a white plastic raincoat. How convenient! I suppose you walked into the office, smothered him, and wore the murder weapon off the premises.” He paused. “Did you inherit your stage presence from your mother, along with your father’s macabre imagination? Was she eternally youthful, like you?”
“I can’t sing like Mummy,” said Jenny in that dreadful childish voice, “but I do have her ear, as well as her great sense of timing.” Her laughter went right through me. “I was able to phone all the ladies in the aerobics class-pretending to be Bunty Wiseman-and I cancelled the rehearsal. Then I rang her up, claiming to be Miss Thorn, saying the church hall wasn’t available. A clever ploy, wasn’t it, Mrs. Haskell,” she twiddled with a plait, “to get us alone?”
Ben continued remorselessly, his hand tightening around mine. “Ann Delacorte recognised your mother as Sylvania, the singer on whom she had an almost schoolgirl crush, when she went to the Dower House that day with Ellie. That idea sneaked up on me when I read that the nanny called your mother Vania. And I’ll wager the record being played was one of hers, from her heyday. The excitement caused Ann to turn faint-two thrills in one day, Lionel Wiseman and now the discovery of her idol.” Ben shook his head. “Foolish Ann. She made a big mistake. She thought The Founder was pretending to be an invalid, not a child. And she was gripped by the sort of groupie closeness that gave her the confidence to go and ask a favour. That green car that slashed past you, Ellie, when you made your pregnant visit to The Peerless, I wonder if it was Ann’s Morris Minor?”
“I really enjoyed killing her.” Jenny’s voice wasn’t a child’s anymore. It seemed especially evil that she should make such a pronouncement in this little place of consecrated ground. “I became quite expert at archery when Daddy here was doing research for his book, Robin of Nottinghill Gate. Simon tried to talk me out of retiring Mrs. Delacorte. He said it might stir up a panic among the widows, but Simon always comes around to my way of thinking. That’s what love does-it turns people into fools. I rather enjoy watching the good doctor squirm for me the way my mother used to squirm for Daddy.”
“Not true, Wren,” said Edwin Digby.
“Yes, she did. She, the sparkling, glittering Sylvania, who had men reaching for her every time she stepped on stage and lit it up with her voice. She was ageless and she loved you, God only knows why, you ugly man, only to discover that you were trying to relive some adolescent passion with your secretary, the washed up, washed out Lady Peerless.” Jenny took on Teddy’s toothiness. “And because of you and your unfaithfulness, my mother, my exquisite mother, stuck her head in the oven and wasn’t lucky enough to die. She became a husk. I can look in her eyes and call, but she isn’t there.”
Edwin Digby took a step toward his daughter and then retreated, the gun dangling in his hand. “Wrong, Wren! Your mother never really loved me. Her one passion was her career; she would never acknowledge she was married, even after you were born. She was obsessed with keeping up the aura of being unattainable. She insisted that I use the pseudonym Edwin Digby-in private life, to tighten the veil of secrecy, and you were kept hidden away with her childhood nanny.”
He was a figure out of a vampire skit, with his twirled eyebrows and beard forked by the wind. “Teddy and I had been youthful sweethearts, but Sylvania demanded that I sever all ties with the past. Think what you will of me, all of you!” His eyes glared at Ben and me as well as his daughter. “Teddy is guiltless!” The words might sound as if they came from one of his books, but I felt drops of water on my face, that weren’t rain. “She did not realise she would be working for me when she applied for the post of my secretary, ten long years ago. She had known me under my real name of Robert Burns, which-” his rheumy eyes were turned fully on Ben and me now, “I never used professionally, for obvious reasons.”
“And you fell in love.” Jenny (she would always be that to me) made the words sound like gutter ones.
“I swear there was no unfaithfulness. What drove your mother mad”-Mr. Digby’s lips twisted-“was the idea of so unworthy a rival.”
Jenny smiled mockingly. “You did not think it unfaithful to ask Mumma for a divorce.”
I said, to be saying something, “The parrot in Teddy’s office talks like one of your characters, Mr. Digby.”
“A farewell present, Mrs. Haskell. Teddy was ever a bird fancier. I settled in Chitterton Fells to be near her, even though we had assured each other that all was over between us. I came to the Haskell wedding reception,” the wind lifted his crinkly hair from his high forehead, “but too late, too drunk, to catch a glimpse. The first time I saw Teddy in all the years, other than to pass on the street, was at the restaurant soiree, the night Charles Delacorte died.”
“Teddy saw your daughter there.” I wrenched my eyes away from Jenny’s smile. “Maybe she wasn’t sure at first, but then the full horror must have hit her-that this was Wren,” I inched closer to Ben, “grown frighteningly younger than when last seen. No wonder Teddy blundered into the office to escape and, instead, found a body. No wonder she wouldn’t talk about that night. I don’t suppose she suspected-do you Mr. Digby?-that Wren had anything to do with Charles’s death, but I don’t doubt she blamed herself, all over again, for the old tragedy and… the results to Mother and now…”
Jenny was still smiling. “I’m not mad and I do not consider myself a criminal.”
Mr. Digby steadied the gun again. Mother trod over his feet, as he said, “I have not seen Teddy since that night.”
“I imagine,” Ben said to Wren, “that it was your father’s latest pseudonym, that of Felicity Friend, that embarked you on your voyage of revenge?”
“It wasn’t only revenge.” Jenny’s voice was wistful, a child’s again. “I wanted to help other women whose husbands were betraying them. And when Daddy became Felicity Friend and I remembered that book, The Merry Widows-that sold three copies, it all became clear. I had expert medical advice from Simon, who yearned to suffer at my hands. I could kill off Daddy a little bit at a time with every other man whose death I staged and bide my time until I decided to bury him.” Her eyes were on Mother, who was standing motionless with her wings spread. “You didn’t like to refuse me, did you, Daddy, when I asked you to put the occasional message in your confidential column? I told you it was a little game I was playing. But you worried nicely about what it all meant-the dickybird brooches… the deaths, but Daddy’s little girl was too big to go in the corner. And what you didn’t see couldn’t happen. What a weakling you are! Not even man enough to fight for your Teddy bear. I wish I could think she had read The Merry Widows and suffered accordingly, but even if she had-which isn’t likely-I don’t think her capable of taking the leap from fiction to fact. And such was your downfall, Daddy. You were ever so grateful (weren’t you?) that I was looking after Mumma, and came to see you sometimes.”
Jenny gave a childish giggle and addressed me. “I was at The Aviary the day you came, and he got the wind up, first that I might do something to tease you, and then that your charwoman had recognised him as Felicity Friend. I was so tempted to cheer him up by telling him I would kill her for him.”
I drew closer to Ben. The rustling of the trees and Mother’s feathers were for a moment the only sounds. “I should have guessed, with so much typing on his desk, when supposedly he hadn’t written in years, that Mr. Digby was a prime candidate for the role of Dear Felicity. And I should have realised that the only reason to wear plaits that make you look too young for your age is because you are too old for them. I suppose that makes me rather stupid, but I really prefer that to being diabolically clever.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Jenny stepped away from the angel. “And to think I thought you so guileless. I liked you. I really did. You gave me your wedding roses and I sent you some. But you figured out the way to trap me. Only it isn’t going to work.” She lifted up her arms and spread her fingers, as though pushing back the clouds. “It can’t work because my dear Daddy wouldn’t shoot me. He doesn’t have the courage.”
She stepped toward us. “I have nothing to lose, you see, because I have nothing to love. Mumma was gone a long time ago.”
She kept coming. She was right. Edwin Digby couldn’t pull the trigger. Closer, closer. Mother must have felt threatened, for suddenly her wings fanned out. Neck extended, she rushed toward Jenny, who turned her back and with an eerie, childish laugh, darted and zigzagged between the tombstones, arms outstretched. Maybe she didn’t look ahead, maybe she did. It doesn’t alter anything. She tripped and tumbled headlong into an open grave-the grave waiting for Ann Delacorte. And we were left standing in the wind-ruffled churchyard, listening to the gulls and the distant moan of the sea.