Femmes Fatal

by Dorothy Cannell

  In the last couple of days my life had turned into a quagmire. For that I could not entirely blame Fully Female. But it did occur to me as I stood in my Turkish bathroom that there were dangers inherent in becoming the Woman He Always Wanted. Already we had Mrs. Huffnagle accidentally or otherwise frizzled by an electrical appliance. This evening I had almost gone up in flames and—

  The ringing of the telephone brought me out of my reverie. I hastened to pick up the extension on the landing before the babies woke up. All prepared for a wrong number, I was shocked when a feverish voice blasted: “Ellie Haskell?”

  “Yes—”

  “You must come at once.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Jacqueline Diamond. Please! Don’t ask any questions. Just get here. Twenty-one Rosewood Terrace. Hurry! And whatever you do—don’t bring anyone with you!”

  The desperate urgency of the plea numbed my brain. If I ran to tell Ben I was leaving, he would ask all sorts of questions which I couldn’t answer. He would insist on going with me, despite instructions to the contrary, which would mean getting the twins up and taking them down to Freddy at the cottage. By the time I had worked out this scenario and voted it impossible, I was in the estate car and backing out of the stable in a roar of exhaust. The gravel driveway vanished under my wheels and I was out on Cliff Road, racing through the night on my way to an unknown house at the request of Mrs. Norman the Doorman. That I was on the verge of meeting my children’s idol never crossed my mind. Nor did I fret that my green negligee was unsuitable attire for so momentous an event. Neither curiosity nor apprehension wracked my soul. The desperate urgency of Jacqueline’s plea had driven all caution from my soul. I have no sense of direction, but I drove to Rosewood Terrace as if I had a map etched in my brain. If memory served me correctly, Miss Thorn lived on this street. A year or so ago she had invited me over for tea, and we had talked about twins. Prophetic … and quite irrelevant at this moment.

  Number Twenty-one was a detached Tudor-style dwelling set back from the road in a garden dense with fir trees. Having parked at the curb, I hurried up the narrow path, my bare feet impervious to the chill of concrete, but the rest of me aware of a prickly sensation that was only partially due to those pine trees brushing up against me with their needles. A strip of light showed from an upstairs room but otherwise the place was uncompromisingly dark. The covered porch might have been welcoming in daylight, but the damp had brought out the smell of cats who had left their calling cards. By feel and error I found the doorbell and heard its peal invade the dim interior. No scurry of answering footsteps, but I thought I heard a distant voice call, “Ellie?”

  Feeling came back as I stubbed my toe on a rock by the door. The dam was broken. Terror poured over me like sweat. Something was seriously amiss within these walls. Bending down, I picked up the rock with the intention of smashing one of the glass panels, but fortune was with me. I didn’t have to resort to breaking and entering. A stray streak of moonlight pointed out the key which had been hidden under the rock. I slipped it into the lock and with a mixture of relief and dread stepped into the unlit hall.

  “Jacqueline?”

  “Up here!”

  My hand found a light switch and I mounted the stairs as fast as I could—given the fact that I was weighted down by legs borrowed from a convict in irons.

  “I’m in here.”

  What a coward! I longed to turn and flee from whatever torment of the soul lay behind the door now staring me in the face, but I grasped the crystal knob and walked into a room dominated by an iron bedstead. On it lay Mrs. Jacqueline Diamond, bound hand and foot—gasp!—and naked as the day she was born, save for a pair of cowboy boots and a leather holster.

  Speechless, I looked at the telephone half on and half off the bedside table, the receiver dangling by its cord. Moving towards her—wishing I had a scarf, a handkerchief, anything to cover her embarrassment—I almost pitched over the caped figure sprawled on the floor.

  “I would kill for a cigarette …” Jacqueline rammed her knuckles against her mouth.

  Poor dear, I am sure she wanted to bite off her tongue, for we hadn’t needed a medical dictionary to clue us in that Norman was dead. She had staggered frantically to her husband’s side the moment I had undone her constraints. When I knelt beside her to drape a blanket around her nakedness, she was trying to find a pulse, but her hand trembled so violently she couldn’t hold it down. Norman’s face was as kind in eternal repose as it had been when talking to children on television. His fixed stare looked upon a distant place where he saw them still … young Marcie and Andrea, Philip and John. Surely wherever he had gone there would be a position available for a man who made little ones smile.

  “He has climbed the ladder to the moon,” I said.

  His wife, now his widow, sat huddled on the bed, her ash-blonde hair dragging on her shoulders, her mascara smeared, her cowboy boots protruding below the hem of the blanket. A fat lot of use I was, standing shivering in my stupid negligee. I knew I should right the telephone and call a doctor or the police, but it seemed inhuman not to first fetch her a glass of brandy or a hot drink.

  “Third drawer, dressing table.” Her raspy voice jolted me into action. I assumed she wanted me to fetch her something to wear, but she had belatedly remembered a hidden cache of cigarettes.

  “Thanks.” Taking the packet I handed her, she tapped out a king-size filter tip and asked for the lighter on the black oak tallboy. “Want one?”

  “No thanks.” In all honesty, I—who had never stuck a cigarette between my lips, unless you count those kiddy candy ones with the sugary pink tips—would have given my left lung for a puff. Anything to block out the realization that death is always waiting in the wings, a black-cloaked figure … like the one sprawled at our feet.

  “Norman was always after me to quit smoking. He didn’t like me swearing either. But what the hell, doesn’t count now, does it?” She screwed up her Lauren Bacall eyes against the smoke rising in a small cloud and looked at the phone. “It took me forever to work my hand loose, and almost as long to reach the operator with the butt of the receiver.” Another puff of smoke. “You must be wondering why you’re the one I phoned.”

  “I do see it had to be someone in Fully Female.”

  “You bet.” Her cigarette voice held a wheeze of humour. “And who was it, Ellie Haskell, who suggested at Marriage Makeover that I liven up my marriage by playing the part of a poor little dolly in need of rescue by Norman the Doorman?”

  Gripping the iron bedpost, I hung on for dear life.

  “Wipe that look off your face; I’m not blaming you.” She ground out the cigarette in a crystal dish and immediately lit up again. “All I meant was yours was the name which leaped to mind. What scared the piss out of me was thinking you might have an unlisted number. Luckily the operator didn’t even ask me to spell the name.” Jacqueline hoisted the blanket up over her shoulders. “Want to know how it happened?”

  “Should we take the time?” My mind was backing away like mad from invading the final moments of Norman the Doorman. What had happened in this room to bring about this tragedy should remain sealed within the heart of his spouse, at least until the police and the medical examiner dragged the story out of her. “Don’t you think I should telephone …?”

  “Not yet.” Jacqueline was on her third cigarette. “Telling you will get things straight in my head. I took the idea of dressing up in the boots and holster from the Fully Female manual.”

  “The Ranch Dressing,” I interpolated, “to accompany the Bird of Paradise Fondue.”

  “Norman doesn’t … didn’t care for chicken. What shocked me was that he went for my fantasy fling-ding in a big way. Not so much as a peep out of him about what his kiddy audience would think if they knew he was up to high jinks. Normie was always at his happiest in the Land of Let’s Pretend. The moment he tied me to the bed, I became Babbsie Bang-Bang, kidnapped from her plastic ranch house by the terrible Toy
Snatcher. Before I could grow one goose bump, Normie had donned his mask and cape and was scaling the armoire … with a leg up from a chair …”

  “But didn’t you tell me the other day that Norman was afraid of heights?”

  “So he was.” She looked away from me.

  Removing Jacqueline’s cigarette before it dropped two inches of ash on the floor, I ground it out on the bedpost and waited for her to continue. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Norman’s hand, fingers spread wide as if making one last desperate clutch at life. Awful as it was to be discussing the man while he lay not a yard away, it was worse to think that Jacqueline’s voice fell on dead ears.

  “Normie was crouched on top of the armoire, caped arms spread, ready to leap onto the bed and rescue me when I aimed the water pistol I had cupped in my hand. You know how it was on the show—Norman the Doorman could only be destroyed by soap or water—and I thought it would be cute to add an element of surprise.”

  “But surely Babbsie Bang-Bang wouldn’t hurt Norman?” My interruption was a wild pitch to ward off the inevitable.

  A smoky laugh. “I’d been brainwashed by the Toy Snatcher. When Norman leaped, I fired. He was bloody surprised all right. The old dear missed the bed … end of show.” The harshness of her voice didn’t fool me. The woman was … had to be … choking on misery and remorse. I could see the blue plastic gun peeking out from under the bedside table.

  “I killed him.”

  “No.” Sitting down on the bed, I put my arm around her. “Jacqueline, you mustn’t do this to yourself. It was an accident.”

  “Think the cops’ll see it that way?”

  “You’ll explain—”

  “Before or after you tell how you found me strapped to the bed naked as a jaybird? And what do you think this will do to Normie’s Tinseltown image?”

  The word tarnished sprang to mind.

  Night gathered up its black cape with a swirl of purple lining and stole across the housetops as if aware that dawn was hard on its heels, a ray gun in its hot little hand. Driving through streets more tortuous than my thoughts, I reflected wryly that a few days ago I had worried about lying about my weight on a yogurt survey. Was it possible my conscience was too finely tuned? Was I engaging in hyperbole when sensing the hand of the law ready to descend on my shoulder, the way Miss Clopper’s had in algebra class?

  “Ellie Haskell, née Simons, it is alleged that with duplicity aforethought, you did conspire with one Jacqueline Diamond to conceal facts pertinent to the death of her spouse, the beloved television personality Norman the Doorman.”

  “Your Lordship!”

  “Be brief, Mrs. Haskell.”

  “Learned Counsel is attempting to mislead the jury with conclusions which, while in the main true, do not reflect the motives of myself or the grieving widow. Yes, I left the premises before the police or a medical examiner arrived at the scene because I wanted to help spare Jacqueline Diamond embarrassment. What was the harm in her giving an abbreviated version of the facts—that her husband fell and hit his head while practicing one of his stunts? It’s not as though there’s any question of foul play.”

  “That depends on your idea of play, Mrs. Haskell. I suggest, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that on the night in question, Mr. Diamond was not practicing Boy Scout knots. It is my contention that Mrs. Diamond enticed her husband—a man of guileless naivete—into engaging with her in a game of bondage which I submit ended in his untimely death. Your Lordship, I offer into evidence Exhibit Forty-three, the Fully Female manual.”

  “No need, my wife has one.”

  “I do not question Your Lordship’s impartiality—”

  “Pray proceed, Mr. Rimple.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I sorrowfully suggest that Mr. Diamond rebuffed his wife’s animal advances—culled from this paean to erotica—and thus doing, so outraged her that she provoked the fall that killed him.”

  “Objection! Your Lordship, Learned Counsel is accusing my Fellow Female of murder!”

  “Mrs. Haskell, I will hold you in contempt.”

  “I don’t care. I refuse to sit still in the dock for this nonsense. Mrs. Diamond loved her husband.”

  “Hearsay!”

  “Are you suggesting, Mr. Rimple, that she tied herself to the bed after giving her husband a fatal shove?”

  “Mrs. Haskell, all things are possible in love and law.”

  Emerging from my courtroom nightmare, I discovered that I had been driving on mental cruise control. I began praying for guidance, not out of my moral dilemma, but out of the one-way street, down which I was driving the wrong way, intent on going goodness knows where.

  When at last I parked under the archway at Merlin’s Court and switched off the ignition, it dawned on me that Ben might reasonably expect some semirational explanation of my exploits following my precipitous flight from home. A friend needed me, I would say. Whereupon he would naturally inquire the name of said friend. Harmless, husbandly chit-chat with potentially awkward repercussions. Tomorrow, when Norman’s demise was plastered on the front page of The Daily Chronicle, it would be difficult to convince Ben that Jacqueline and I had spent the midnight hours exchanging cross-stitch patterns. He would press me for all sorts of tiresome details which would infringe on my loyalty to a woman I barely knew. I would threaten to leave him if he didn’t shut up. He would say, Suit yourself, but you get the cat, I get the kids … and I would be tempted to take a flying leap off an armoire.

  Stepping from the car, I stood in the courtyard beneath a gauzy grey sky, drained by night of its colour as was my face by the sound of footsteps. Ben emerged through the portcullis to stand like Heathcliff, his shirt ruffling in the wind and his eyes blazing black in a face parched as death. Thank God, my name wasn’t Catherine. Ellie is no name for a doomed heroine, and as such, I had never feared to hear it hurled against the twilight sky.

  “Ellie!” The wind echoed the mournful sound.

  “Yes, dear?” I moved toward him, wishing I were a ghost who would evaporate at his touch. But there was no escape, he reached out his arms and crushed me to his manly chest. He bent his dark head, blocking out the moon—or it could have been the sun coming up; at such moments one loses track of time and place. His mouth seized possession of mine in a kiss of such searing passion that it sucked the soul right out of my body. I would like to say that I fell in love with my husband all over again at that moment, but the shameful truth is that I did not use the moment to step outside myself and analyze my emotions. I did not look into my husband’s eyes and think, Damn, you’re a good provider, and I adore the way you handle our tax returns. I wanted us to take possession of each other out there in the courtyard; I wanted to be his lover, not his wife …

  Ben wrenched his lips away from mine, but held on to me with his eyes. “Thank God, you came back to me, my love. I thought I would go mad, pacing the house, knowing I had driven you away by my stupid insensitivity. I was planning on putting an advert in The Daily Chronicle this morning: ‘Ellie, please come home. Things will be different. Please contact and say all is forgiven.’ ”

  My breathing slowed. I was remembering my anguish upon finding the twins gone from their playpen.

  “Ben, aren’t you angry that I walked out?”

  “Sweetheart, the thought of you driving around in circles for hours …” He had that part right at least. “I was filled with such shame!”

  That made two of us.

  He touched my face with fingers more gentle than the breeze that ruffled my green lace negligee. “I kept thinking I didn’t have one portrait-sized photo of you with the twins.”

  “Ben …” I couldn’t go on. There was so much to lose by telling him the truth.

  He drew my hands to him, and through the fabric of his shirt I could feel his warmth and the pounding of his heart when he said, “Never in my life have I felt such dread.”

  “Don’t think about it,” I said hastily.

  “How can
I not? The thought of having to ask my mother to come down and take over was so demoralizing. Not that there’s any doubt she would have done a superb job.”

  “Sublime!”

  “But, Ellie, I wanted my children’s mother, not my mother.”

  Laying my head against his shoulder, I asked him how he could seriously have believed that I would stay away forever. Abandon him, abandon my children, just because things had become a little sticky for a while?

  “At such times, Ellie, one doesn’t think rationally. I’ve forgotten how to be alone.”

  The wind chose that moment to step between us like a third presence. Too many powerful emotions too late at night turned the world topsy-turvy. Or that’s what I thought had happened until it occurred to me that Ben had swept me up in his arms with my gauzes trailing and, like Heathcliff with his benighted Cathy, was striding across the courtyard into the house through the garden door, which he had left open and now kicked shut behind us, and up the stairs to our bedroom, where the pheasants on the wallpaper awaited us in a flutter of excitement.

  I can’t say I experienced any qualms upon returning to the scene of my fantasy fiasco. But when Ben settled me upon the bed in a swirl of skirts that would have done justice to a fabric softener advert, I did look with some aversion toward the fireplace area. No need for fear and trembling! Some genie had been at work here. The intimate table for two had been denuded of its oil-soaked cloth and returned to its everyday state. A collage of books and candlesticks was now arranged on its mahogany surface. The ruined rug, the fondue pot, and all other vestiges of our aborted midnight feast had been scraped from the landscape as if they never were.